Posts by John Fairhurst

2012: The year that netbooks DIED

Perfect Net Books

I've an Asus eEe along with a standard notebook and a variety of desktops. The netbook gets used on bus or train journies so it's been subject to quite a bit of battering. It mainly gets used for word processing whilst on the use and I don't notice the lack of power re games (rather boringly, I don't generally play them :-/).

I've used it to play streamed TV shows and radios and while the speakers are awful, the sound itself is actually quite good (through earphones). Given the fact that even CD/DVD installations are quite rare these days, the lack of a DVD player hasn't been a problem.

Google delivers Java 'convenience' APIs

Still a Search Company

One has to wonder if Google can really be considered a Search Company any more?

It's where its getting the income, but one has to wonder where the core of its interests lie these days...

Icon design for dummies fanbois

...And Some Hokey Libraries

The freebies are good (especially for the price :-) ) but you can get caught between the trap of developing with a (near) free icon suite - extra and better quality libraries are always going to cost - fair's fair, and paying for an application that has good tools and libraries available all-in-one.

This is a balance that you'll have make for your own self - if you're using the free Express Studio tools, 3rd party libraries are the only way to to go here and as you aren't (supposed to be) developing professional apps with these, the temptation to shell out any real cash is low (though not quite zero I admit), At a certain level of development, a separate design team will be the way to go but for the small programmers who seem to be proliferating with things like iPhone and Android, design-work might not seem too important yet .

Microsoft offers online tools for Swine Flu infected kids

Cheeky Advertising

Nice to see MS using the opportunity to advertise the commercial offerings on top of its freebie...

Wonder which came first - the philanthrpoy or the marketing :-)

Google Android future haunted by fragmentation past

Time to Panic?

As a user and (potential) developer, Android's a really cool O/S and it gives users plenty of scope for installing applications on their phones (though just how many additional applications do you need to add before what you're running is a computer that's sometimes a phone rather than a phone with added functionality?).

To see this assumption that anything will run on any hardware platform lost will greatly reduce its utility but short of going down the Apple road of complete control over both software and hardware it's difficult to see how to avoid the fragmentation - Android's open so if a manufacturer is willing to spend the time and resources to customise it without any input from Google - something that phone companies are probably better able to do than PC manufacturers, then there's probably not much that anyone can do. It'll be up to the market to decide whether interoperability is a good thing or whether we'll be seduced by individual manufacturers' latest bit of flashy technology (though these have a habit of rapidly becoming mainstream must haves :-))

To the Moon - with extreme engineering

Can't Disagree

'Saturn V would surely never be completed now - somebody would complain about its "carbon footprint". With our impoverished idea of human achievement, pessimism about our scientific and technological capabilities, and little faith in human organisation, it is hard to imagine Apollo happening today at all.'

I really wish I could disagree with the above statement, but I have to agree, especially with the comment about the little faith in human organisation and the impoverishment of the human spirit.

It seems that the pedominant feeling these days is 'why should we...' or 'we can't do that...' rather than 'Why not...' or 'Let'ss ee what happens if...'

CompuServe signs off

RIP Compuserve

Compuserve was my first introduction to this thing called the interweb lo those thirteen years ago (an Age of the world ago as far as the 'Net was concerned :-)), and though I didn't stay with them all that long they provided a good introduction to the online world

Google Wave - interwebs idealism in real-time

Real Cool Demo

This looked really cool based on the demo video - which is it's job after all!

However, there are several interesting developments in Wave, including the ability to playback the editing history, the apparent ease with which participants can be added to a wave and this seems to be under the control of the participating members so you don't appear to be able to just add yourself to a wave though there doesn't seem to be anyway for a person to be blocked out altogether so later participants could in theory add a person that the original creator may not want in.

The ability to run a wave server internally must count very much in a system's plus as must the design of internal forms.