Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Nexus One is here!

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Ever since they’ve been launched I’ve been refusing to get an iPhone. I have to admit that they’re great, but they’re just too ubiquitous and I would feel like a sheep if I jumped on board :-) . I was very excited when Google announced the Android-powered G1 back in September 2008, and was sure that an Android phone would be a great alternative.

I’ve been waiting ince then for a decent Android phone to come out with  a hardware keyboard (something like the HTC Touch Pro 2?), but on Friday I finally got tired of waiting and ordered the recently released Nexus One from the Google.com page.

Unbelievably the phone arrived first thing on Monday morning after being dispatched from Indianapolis. I was very, very impressed. Props to Google and DHL for getting it to me so quickly.

After two days playing with the phone I am very impressed. The 3.7″ OMOLED screen is very clear and bright, and the 1GHz snapdragon CPU makes it very snappy. More technical specs are available here.

There’s a bit of a division in my office between the designers, who generally favour the iPhone, and the developers, several of whom have Android phones. Until now I’ve been fighting the Android side despite not owning one, so I’m pleased that I’m now practising what I preach.

Here are some pictures of the phone when it arrives. Apologies for the quality they were taken with my old phone :-)

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The Apple Tablet

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

After months of rumour and speculation, the Apple tablet is due to be announced at today’s Apple event. Information that has appeared so far today are some grainy photos and rumour that the device will cost $800 on contract, or $1000 without.

Edit: well the event has been and gone and it looks like the rumour on the price was way off – it will be available from just $499. The iPad look like a scaled up iPhone. It has a 9.7 inch capacitative touchscreen, 1GHz Apple A4chip, 10 hour battery life and will come in a variety of disk capacities (16, 32 and 64GB), just like the iPhone. Wifi and 3G are available as options. There’s also been some interesting apps announced, like iBook (an e-reader application) and iWork (spreadsheet type stuff). The majority of apps on the app store will work on it – either in a window or scaled up to double size. It won’t be long before apps specifically for the ipad become available I’m sure, the iPhone SDK was updated yesterday to add support for the iPad.

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The beginning of the end for Internet Explorer?

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

In my years of developing for Internet Explorer I’ve been continually having to battle with it’s half-assed implementation of web standards and non existent debugging tools, but have to continue supporting it because so many people don’t know any better. A small ray of hope has emerged in the last few days off the back of the Google/China showdown. Apparently the Chinese hacks were taking advantage of an undisclosed security flaw in Internet Explorer. Because of the this on the 15th Jan the German goverment issued a warning to Internet users to avoid using Internet Explorer. They were followed by the French government on the 18th who issued a similar warning.

Now it seems the malicious code only targets IE6, and Microsoft released a patch for it yesterday (the 21st). Hopefully these security alerts will have caused some people to jump ship from Internet Explorer to one of the alternatives, and we can see those usage stats, particularly of IE6, start to drop off.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share

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Google threatens to shut down Google China

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Quite a biggy. It seems that Google has been having some problems with hacking attempts on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human-rights activists, possibly by the Chinese government, and because of this they want to stop the censoring of search results on the Chinese Google site. If the Chinese government doesn’t agree to this Google are threatenting to close the google.cn website and their offices in China:

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Full story

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