Posts by Nick_Healey

Is Microsoft's chatty bot platform just Clippy Mark 2?

FryBot

can someone please develop a Stephen Fry Twitterbot?

AndrewO is miserable without our National Treasure.

Linus Torvalds releases Linux 3.18 as 3.17 wobbles

Re: Seems wrong...

thankyou for making my day

Ten ancestors of the netbook

oooh but if only...

when the S5 keyboard comes forwards, the sides should've come with it too, so that the front wasn't waving in mid-air, so typing on your lap didn't regularly tip the machine up a little... details, details...

Review: Vodafone Smart Tab II 7 budget 3G tablet

Re: Fonts Too Small To Read = Interface Difficult To Use

(Actually my v1 iPad has some ludicrously, insanely small text in places - maybe Apple's minimum-size is just for under-45s.)

Fonts Too Small To Read = Interface Difficult To Use

Android and iOS are now on smaller tablets, where fonts appear smaller, and yet neither have rejigged the UI to use a larger minimum-size font (even if only for the built-in apps at first), one that you can actually read easily, in mobile and sofa situations. This device, from the screenshot, appears to have the same issue.

I recall Psion doing this when they just shipped the Series5 software in the smaller-screen Revo - whoops, some fonts were really hard to read. At least Psion had the excuse of not having the people or the money to fix it. Not sure of the excuse for Apple and the Android firms.

Maybe Apple&Android don't want to sell to over-45's - a shame, as they're the people with more disposable cash, and they're clamouring for easy-to-use tech. But if they can't read the screen...

Amazon makes BEELLIONS from British customers, pays pennies in tax

Re: MP stands for Media Prozzy, right?

> "Good idea! How should they do that then? Pass a law that says don't use any of the hundreds of tax loopholes that exist, pretty please? If it were that easy, d'you not think they'd have done it by now?"

Actually they have already tried exactly that. This summer, Michael Meacher MP introduced a bill with simple wording, to do exactly what you were saying so ironically: to "outlaw any financial transaction for which the primary purpose is tax avoidance/evasion rather than any genuine economic purpose."

Plain English, and would give HMRC the power to give giant tax bills to the tax dodgers.

Needless to say, the Tories voted against it. (The super-rich tax dodgers own our governments.) Needless to say, it got almost no coverage in the press. (The super-rich tax dodgers own our media.)

Read about it here: http://bit.ly/Mg5ctu

Metro's mother to replace defenestrated Windows boss Sinofsky

How MS could've done ribbons without losing Toolbars

MS could've done ribbons while keeping toolbar users happy - design at www.nickhealey.com (with interactive wireframe to play with) - can I have her job? ;-)

WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped

It may be imitating singing snorkelers (!)

I've just been informed by a diver that those are the sounds that snorkelers make when they're encouraged to sing to dolphins - that's what it comes out like. So maybe that's what it's imitating?

Google ordered to censor 'torrent', 'megaupload' and more words

Why Google? Why not Operating Systems?

If your OS removed your attempts to type in or click on or view the word "torrent" that would be a lot more efficient. And Microsoft/Apple are just as big a part as Google in getting your torrent going, seeing as they get you online in the first place.

And a device that clipped on your head and gave powerful shocks if you ever thought the word "torrent"... we're just stopping piracy here.

RIM PlayBook strikes back at Jobsian internet dream

the "app divide" can be turned to their advantage?

"we don't leave you to find the odd nugget in hundreds of thousands of apps. we only offer you apps that *we know are great*. So, one mapping app, one train time app, one [etc etc]. Don't spend your days endlessly installing apps that turn out to be no use. We guarantee all the apps on Playbook" [or something like that] -

- yes, I know techies would much prefer the Apple environment of loads of apps in every area (heck, some of you even prefer *Android*, where most of the apps are unusable for anyone who isn't a techie) - but to normal people, they just want it to do each new thing, reasonably well and reasonably easily, without having to spend forever trying to evaluate a dozen alternative options (there's a reason that there aren't a dozen Contacts apps to choose from).

</marketing>

<apologies>

It's official: Nokia bets on Microsoft for smartphones

They haven't fixed *why* their UX is so bad

AFAICT Nokia are keeping their options open - they didn't kill Symbian or Meego (or Qt).

But since their bureaucracy stopped them creating a simple friendly UX on Symbian, over TEN years - when ten people could do that in six months, say - I don't expect their Win7 phones will be up to much. ('Successful UX *is* the end product, BTW...)

@Jah, even if Nokia got their EPOC/Series90 designers back, I fear they'd get nowhere in that bureaucracy. Nokia do have lots of talented designers still, but an insane development process / bureaucracy stifles them, AIUI. And that's something Nokia haven't fixed here. :-(

Firefox: freedom's just another word for 'kerching!'

@Drewc: then tell users, and give them the choice?

I carried out a user survey recently (of normal non-techie users), and out of 35 people, *none* of them were OK with advertisers providing "better ad targeting" by collecting data on what people do across different sites.

In fact, it was almost impossible to write this question without it sounding like a leading question. Because Google, Rapleaf etc, *people you don't know*, are hoovering up everything you do, *behind your back*, to build a secret picture of your life. Of course no-one wants this! No-one! It's a privatised Big Brother, just in order that the ads you see are more relevant.

So ask people. Tell them the whole story, ask them to choose - "choose free services paid for by ads that can be targeted at you, because everything you do online is collated privately somewhere. Or a small expense to use many web services, but no-one is collecting what you do online?"

Sure, some people will say "well, ok..." when you point out it makes things free. But ask people. So many of them hate Big Brother. And currently you're complicit in allowing it, secretly, as if it's more important than what your users want.

In other words, you're part of Big Brother. Sleep easy.

Apple Facetime flings out frightening random calls

thx for HTC input

@Hayden Clark - thanks for the tip (will do), though my HTC really ought to do the right thing out of the box. Normal folks likely won't find this workaround...

@Bunglebear - yes I did mean the hard button at the top - not difficult to brush it with enough accidental force when eg trying to extract something else out of the same pocket. And yes, I thought that the "capacitive" nature of the screen should mean this doesn't happen, but it does - and you can test it yourself. Get to the lock screen, then brush lower half of screen gently on your jeans... have a few tries - it really does work (well, for me it does).

@AC - I would turn the screen around, but it'd encounter keys and coins - not good.

My HTC Desire is forever calling my friends from my pocket

The HTC Desire has an unfortunately soft-touch "On" key, and the subsequent screenlock involves only a tiny downward stroke (instead of, say, iPhone's long left-right stroke). Result - it's trivially easy to accidentally turn the device on (ie you brush the "On" button when putting the phone in your pocket, or when later extracting cash from said pocket, or...) and for the screenlock to then be negotiated by leg-friction as you walk along.

After that, well, it's whatever random leg-engendered screenpresses the device detects as you're walking along / being vibrated by the tube / whatever. So when I extract my HTC from my pocket I sometimes find it's auto-editing my Phonebook, or that it has dialed a now-confused friend.

("Firm On/Off button" should be part of Mobile Hardware 101, IMHO, FWIW.)