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Feb
9

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Thinking about the Apple iPad with ‘man maths’

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I’m not going to write a review of the Apple iPad, that would be completely pointless as the most I’ve seen of it is a couple of hands on videos and a few photos.

However, based on that and the spec that’s been released I’ve decided I REALLY want one.

But first let me explain how I came to that conclusion, how I made use of the logic behind ‘Man Maths’ as James May would call it to work out it was good value for money.

First lets take a look at where I think this device sits in the gadget spectrum.

Spectrum: phone

On one side of this spectrum you have the mobile phone – the standard candy bar style of mobile phone – the Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc…

Next to that we have the smartphone – at the moment a whole range of companies have operating systems in this space: Microsoft, Apple, Blackberry, Google (Android)…

But the dominant three (excluding Windows because Windows Mobile is just crap to use) are Apple for the iPhone, Google for Android and Blackberry for … well the Blackberry.

The first is a device that allows you to make phone calls with the internet and simple applications as a sideline – the second group reverses that.

But they are both shades of the same part of our spectrum and so one of these two devices is needed for the ultimate geek kit bag – my device of choice is an Android phone.

The iPod also fits within this area.

I’m going to jump around a bit here by telling you I don’t intend to explain the third part as everyone knows what it is – that’s the full laptop. Instead lets skip back to the middling zone.

Spectrum: Ultra-portable

So lets move on to the second part of the spectrum – again there are two sides to the this part as well – the netbook and the tablet.

The Netbook, described by Steve Jobs as, and I understand I’m paraphrasing a little “not very good at anything”, is the mainstay of the ultra-portal laptop.

I have one and I use it all the time – it’s really light so I can take it away with me without having an extra load on trips to deal with and I’ve got the Samsung NC10 which is powerful enough for everything I need.

However, it’s still a pain in the rear having to pull it out of the bag, open up the screen, turn it on, wait for Windows to load, wait for it to connect and then get started.

Then you’ve got the problems faced with having a smaller screen, the resolution on this isn’t bad but it is still a pain – especially for real estate hungry apps like WordPress and Wave.

So we move on to the tablet – this isn’t really a new idea, Steve Jobs didn’t just pull the concept of a tablet out of thin air – the tablet concept has been around for a while now and in theory it’s a better approach to mobile computing than a small laptop.

However, every time I’ve looked into this in the past the implementation has been universally shit – a laptop without a keyboard attached – not great for quick, on the move web browsing, reading, writing and viewing.

Before I get on to the iPad – there’s a side market to this, a more recent development in the eBook reader – basically a tablet computer designed for reading large amounts of text relatively easily and in comfort.

The current gold standard, albeit pig ugly, is the Kindle from Amazon – using eInk to make reading more comfortable – it has an always on internet connection so you can buy books on the move without having to be in a WiFi zone.

Man Maths

Now we have the iPad. Some say a giant iPod Touch, some say a heavily locked down and crippled device that is useless for anyone but the most basic users.

Personally, I say it does what I need, it is better than the other options and at $499 for the most basic options – pretty good value for money.

And here is how I justify that claim using the technique pioneered by James May from Top Gear but perfected over many a generation of manhood – Man Maths.

An Amazon Kindle (I can live without eInk as I happily read books on my LCD screen anyway) costs around £311
A new Samsung NC140 costs  around £300
An iPod Nano costs around £120

The iPad can do the same things all of the above can do and is just one device that will turn on quickly and be easy to use.

So, at over £700 for the three separately - even if Apple sell the iPad $ to £ with the basic 3G model costing £630 it’s still cheaper than the three items.

See – man maths in action.

Although I REALLY WANT ONE there are two reasons why I’ll wait until version two or three with two probably out for Christmas and three out by next Easter.

No multi-tasking

Having the ability to listen to music from Spotify (there WILL be an app) in the background while working ona document or even writing a blog post is essential – the iPad currently doesn’t allow that.

However, this is something I expect they’ll introduce eventually under a hail of Apple fanfare as some miraculous and revolutionary new feature.

No camera

My first thought when Steve Jobs started talking about this device was ‘fantastic tool for video conferencing’ but a lack of multi-tasking (writing notes while talking with someone in another office) and a lack of camera makes that impossible.

Also – what’s the microphone like on the device? In fact does it have a microphone?

The camera is obviously held back so they can release version two or even three with an ‘added extra’ and given the track record of doing something OTT – it will probably have at least two camera on front and back.

So in summary – will I get an iPad? More than likely but will I get it as soon as it is released? No. I’ll wait until they’ve had a couple of versions out.

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Feb
8

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Am I confusing people by linking in line text?

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I know inline linking is important, I do it all the time and I understand how it helps keep the information flow going and aids the user journey from one site to another or between two sites.

And I understand how linking large chunks of text, describing the thing your linking to helps with Google Juice and page rank – that’s all obvious.

But what I’m really wondering is, and I’m thinking here about the person reading the article and not the money I might make from ads or the Juice I’ll get from Google – does linking long bits of text cause problems for novice users and skim readers?

According to an article on the Read Write Web, research by Jakob Nielson shows people only spend 4.4 seconds for every additional 100 words written on an article with more information and words.

The research also found that people read around 20% of the text on an average page and that they will spend some of the limited time on the page working out navigation and looking for images.

I’m not convinced this is people only reading the first 20% of the article, although they are more likely to be reading the first 20% properly – I think it is people reading the first few paragraphs and then skimming through the rest.

I don’t mind people skimming my articles, when I’m writing for the BBC I’ll write with all the main information in the first four paragraphs and then expand underneath that.

The idea there is that people can get everything they need to know about the article by just reading the first 70 words or so – but I prefer to be able to write more conversationally on my blog.

Should link titles be kept very short in the body text?

Having to tell a story within four paragraphs and then being able to continue it after that makes it a lot harder to write in a conversational way – it’s no impossible, just more difficult.

So, if you do decide to do what I’ve done on my blog and attempt to hold people for longer, to converse with them throughout the post and try to keep their attention – you need to be careful about post clutter.

For example

When I add an image to this blog I always make sure it is aligned to the right, that keeps the left hand side clear for text.

I’ll try to put sub-headings into very long posts to break it down and make it easier to skip through bits you’r not bothered about, or even to get a ‘rough idea’ of what’s going on.

I try to write very short paragraphs, ideally no more than one point per paragraph to make skim reading even easier.

And I’ll make sure any body links are clearly identified – brighter blue, bold and or underlined.

But that is what made me come up with the idea for this blog post.

I was reading a post the other day, can’t remember exactly what I where it was but I know it had a very long body link.

This link was spot on for Google Juice etc, it linked the explanation of the site it was linking to – it explained why it existed.

Unfortunately I nearly missed half the paragraph of text because my brain has been trained, over years of internet use to skip the link.

I just didn’t notice it and my brain just automatically stopped read at the last word before the link and picked it up with the first word after the linked text.

Here is an example of an SEO friendly link taking you to a Facebook group asking if a sausage roll can get more fans than Cheryl Cole that has nothing to do with this post but should help explain my point.

If your brain works anything like mine it would have read ‘link taking you to a …. that has nothing to do’ filling in the bit in between with the word group.

So the question I’ve been asking myself is – does long body linking cause problems for skim readers?

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Feb
2

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Google change results page for Chrome users

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Google started introducing an expanded right hand side bar (under a plus button) to let you filter the results a while ago – it let you show results from within a time frame or from a certain type of site.

Now, for users of the Chrome browser that side bar is more blocky – a sort of 1990s style channel bar – that lets you filter by the different types of Google results including Images, Maps, Videos, News, Blogs, Updates, Books, Shopping and Forums.

You can also filter by time (although that is in a traditional Google style text link) and further results including Social, images, shopping sites, previews and change view to related, standard and timeline.

That’s not the only difference though – the Google logo is much larger, the search button is blue and the ad block at the top of the search area is more prominent.

What with the addition of extension and native support for Greasemonkey – the speed of the browser and the fact that it just looks better than everything else – Chrome is getting better with every release.

Even now, having to go into Firefox to take the screengrab on the left above felt clunky and old.

See the results page.

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Jan
29

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See how SeeSaw could soon be seen in CI

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SeeSaw is the name of the online video service that was born out of the ashes of the fallen Project Kangaroo – purchased from the consortium of broadcast partners by the telecommunications infrastructure company Arqiva.

Arqiva was born out of a history in broadcast infrastructure running transmission faciltities as Crown Castle. Now they’ve moved into online transmission with the launch of SeeSaw, a service that will allow you to watch a raft of old and new television shows online.

The shows are displayed through a flash player, streamed and at the moment support by either advertising or pay per play.

SeeSaw wasn’t the first of its kind to launch in this space, beaten by offerings from both Google (YouTube) and Microsoft (MSN Video Player).

The YouTube offering has content deals with a number of content providers, most notable are Five and Channel 4 and for MSN their content deals are with BBC Worldwide and Channel 4.

SeeSaw has content deals in place with the BBC, Channel 4 and Demand Five as well as hints at a much wider range of content in the future.

Not to mention my favourite of all the online video services, BlinkBox, which has a huge range of content from the BBC, Channel 4 and American networks to view for free, pay per view or to keep forever for a fee.

And then there’s iTunes – a download you can put on your iPod, iPad (more on this in my next post) or iPhone and watch when you like.

This all sounds amazing, something I could easily spend hours using, catching up on shows I already own on DVD but can never be bothered to open – or shows I would like to watch but don’t want to spend money on the DVD.

Six different video players

But it isn’t that simple for me – because I live in the Channel Islands.

I’m not complaining about the fact that I live in the Channel Islands – I love it, I chose to live here and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else – but the perculiar political situation means some things work …. differently.

One of those things is content rights.

Yes we have the BBC in the Channel Islands, we have Channel 4, Sky and pretty much everything people in the mainland UK have – our television and radio is more or less the same.

However, when it comes to the internet things get a little bit more complicated.

For the iPlayer, 4OD (on the Channel 4 website) and Demand Five things are fine – we can access and watch shows on all of those services as if we were in the mainland.

But when those shows move across to YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw – things are a little different.

I recently got a beta invite to SeeSaw – very exciting, couldn’t wait and first impression were good – it’s usable, easy to navigate and seems to have a reasonable selection of content for a beta service.

But when I went to click play I got the same message I’ve become used to from Hulu, MSN and YouTube shows – they allow follow the ‘sorry this content isn’t available in your location’ structure.

My intitial reaction to this message, something I’ve not had confirmed despite several e-mails, is that it’s down to the fact that they’re using a GeoIP list that doesn’t include Channel Island IP addresses.

However, a little bit of research and an actual response from one of the companies involved (SeeSaw) suggests that in fact it is a rights issue.

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across ‘rights’ being used as a reason why a service isn’t available in the Channel Islands.

iTunes isn’t officially available here and an Apple spokesperson told me late last year that it was because they haven’t got rights agreements in place for the streaming of samples for the Channel Islands.

The e-mail from SeeSaw explained that: “Unfortunately, SeeSaw is not currently available in the Channel Islands (or the Isle of Man) as we don’t yet have the rights to show programmes there.”

However all is not lost as the next paragraph in that e-mail explained that they were in negotations with rights holders.

“The good news is that we are currently in negotiations to make our service available to you, so hopefully you’ll soon be able to watch your favourite programmes on SeeSaw.”

What I don’t understand is how I can easily watch the full range of 4OD shows on the Channel 4 website – with 4OD actively going out of their way to fix an issue that blocked access to CI users last year – but I can’t watch it on YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw.

Fortunately I work for a large UK corporation so my computer at work is behind a proxy that IS in the UK – so I got to try SeeSaw out, even if I didn’t have enough time to watch a full show.

My second impressions are that, although it is completely lacking in ANY social or sharing functionality it does have some nice features.

It is EXCEPTIONALLY easy to use and has a couple of nice touches like a fade to back on the background on the player page when focus moves away.

It has a lot of information on the programme you’re watching, the advertising isn’t OTT and it is very easy to find previous and future episodes of the same series.

So for a beta service with a limited user base and no external access (where sharing and social stuff wouldn’t be that useful anyway) I’d say it is pretty impressive.

As long as they work towards introducing social and sharing for launch in March I’d say this is a real contender for the television site of choice crown – especially as they’ve launched so far ahead of a UK release of Hulu.

But if they want to compete with Hulu when it launches - the social, sharing and ratings content will become increasingly important.

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Jan
8

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A night stuck in the North Terminal

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The following article was written over three days in the departures hall, past security in departures and back at my parents.

The British love the weather, especially when we get a chance to complain about it. And in fairness to us Brits we do actually get ‘weather’.

By this I mean a variation – snow, rain, wind, sun – and that’s just one Thursday in October.

But the fun, friendly ribbing we give the weather falls completely by the wayside when it turns nasty.

When, after a week away on the DAY you’re due to fly home you wake up in the morning to the worst snowfall in 30 years.

When you wake up, get dressed, get the cases ready to go, and leave the house to 10cm of snow – I sank in the stuff.

We complain about the rain – flooding, damage etc. We complain about the heat – burning, sunstroke etc.

100_0496But the one thing that makes the British wake up and complain the most is the white stuff that causes a whole national transportation system to roll over and scream ‘leave me alone, I’m going back to bed’.

Snow is a curse to the British – anyone planning to go anyway on a day that heavy snowfall is predicted would stand a better chance of recontruction a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of mechano – unless James May beat you to it.

And that brings us on to the night in the Departures Hall – boarding passes in hand but unable to go through security or check baggage.

We got to Gatwick Airport on 6 January for our flight to England at 10am – it was touch and go whether we would make it or not in the first place.

We couldn’t get a large cab out that would take us all the way to the airport so we needed to a smaller one, and my dad to take us to the train station;

This wouldn’t normally be an issue but when you’re treking out in 10cm of snow it becomes a little bit more difficult.

When we finally get to the airports South Terminal we need to make our way to the North Terminal with five bags, a pushchair and three kids by shuttle bus.

Then we find out our flights been cancelled – the queuing begins.

I got my wife, the kids and the bags all sorted on one of the VERY few seats left and went up stairs to wait inline at the British Airways ticket desk to change our flight for hte next available one.

That, unfortunately wasn’t until the next morning at 8.30am but I didn’t find that out until I’d been standing in a line for 7 and a half hours.

That wasn’t a mistype – I said to my wife “I’ll go and queue up and should be back in a couple of hours” thinking I was exaggerating - I wasn’t.

I waited in that line for just over seven and a half hours – and that was just to re-book my cancelled flight for one the next morning.

A night, a horrible night in the airport later and we finally get through to departures at 7.00 only to find further delays.

I have a feeling this was caused in part by backlogs from a day without any planes leaving, in part because there is still heavy snow on the ground and in a very big part because Jersey Airport was closed until 9am.

And those damn safety announcements – it is 10pm, there are hardly any people travelling tonight and hundreds sleeping in the airport.

Yet they still feel the need to put out LOUD safety announcements about the excalators every ten minutes.

They give you just enough time to start drifting off and then a mans voice booms over the tannoy about not taking suitcases up the bloody escalator.

With every flight we booked on to being cancelled and only able to get on the waiting list for the final flight likely to leave for Jersey – we decided go back to my parents.

Not wanting to face yet another night at Gatwick airport we braved the snow and got a train back to St Albans.

Then there was the hunt for a big enough Taxi prepared to take us all and to take on the heavy snow.

Still, you don’t realise how wonderful a comfortable bed is until you get to lie down in it and fall asleep.

The one thing I will say – despite all the queueing, announcements and delays – all credit to BA staff for being considerate, smiling and unbelievably helpful.

And just one final rant – couldn’t Gatwick at least get ONE of the five wifi providers to make it free for the day where hundreds were trapped overnight?

And, isn’t it about time airports started increasing the number of plug sockets? I’m sat on a freezing cold floor writing this plugged into a slightly dodgy looking socket in a pillar with another person.

EVERY available socket is now full in the North Terminal – how about offering a row of them under seats or something?

In fact here’s an idea – how about a geek zone – I’ll pay you £5 an hour to give me a comfortable seating area, a couple of plug sockets (who only has one device to charge up) and high speed wifi.

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Jan
5

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Starting Easter on Boxing Day

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Easter in 2010 doesn’t fall until the first weekend in April, yet for some reason I’ve already had my first Cadbury’s Creme Egg of the year.

Not only that but I’ve seen Easter mugs, bunnies and all manor of chocolate based symbols of the dawn of Spring.

All this despite the Christmas decorations still being up around us and Slade being played on the radio.

We complain on an annual basis about how early Christmas crap starts appearing in the shops – the earliest sign for me was wrapping paper on sale in September.

But having Easter based eggs out on Boxing Day? That my friend is just taking the very sweet, egg shaped gooey desire a stretch to far.

Although to be honest – it’s never too early for a Creme Egg – just keep the bunnies locked up until March.

Now be nice to this sleep deprived grumpy old git in his 29th year or I’ll write a blog post about all the cool mantoys I got for Christmas from my wonderfully geeky wife.

Credit: The photo used on this post was taken by by adobemac and made available under a Creative Commons licence through Flickr.

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