Technology

WWDC is nigh

| | Technology

I fly out to SF on Friday for WWDC next week. Schedule is done. Mostly Macs in IT with a smattering of Cocoa and iPhone sessions to break them up. Plus some extracurricular activities. See iCal screen grab below.

IRWWDC.png Click picture for larger view

iRex Iliad

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I’ve been using a Sony eInk device for about a year. It’s an excellent device for reading fiction (and text grabbed from opinion piece web sites). The Sony is poor for A4 PDF documents though, as the screen is too small. The whole A4 page is rendered on the small screen and the text is too small to read. There are tools to change the PDF’s and increase font size etc., put they are a bit of a pain.

I’ve been looking at the iRex Iliad as a device for reading A4 PDF’s on for a while as it has a larger display, but it has always been a bit too expensive. iRex recently introduced a new Book Edition model with a different case, no wireless networking and a reduced price. I bought one to replace the big pile of paper I’ve been reading (Apple Mac OS X Server and VMware VI3 documentation). I recently printed out a PDF technical manual (that was a few hundred pages long ) and 2 days later a new updated version was released! Now I just update the version on the Iliad. I could read these on my Mac laptop but the eInk screen is much easier on the eyes for prolonged reading. Plus you can use a pen to annotate the PDF’s.

I have to say that the Iliad did not have the wow factor that the Sony PRS-505 had. I think this is a function of the design of the device, and maybe because I’ve been using eInk for a while. The design of the Sony is much better than the Iliad. The Sony feels like a book, whereas the Iliad feels like an electronic device. Both are better than the Amazon Kindle though! What an abomination in design.

So the Iliad now hosts my technical library and the Sony is my electronic paperback. I’m hoping that there will be a larger screen iPod touch device released by Apple that’ll have a good PDF reader. The Sony will stay as a fiction book replacement for the foreseeable future though irrespective of any new iPod touch type devices. It’s just too good to be replaced. The battery lasts for weeks and it fades into the background in use.

Glad I got a hybrid car

| | General, Technology

I wrote about getting my new Honda Civic Hybrid in January. I got this model because I liked the body shape, the interior and the technology it uses in its IMA Hybrid Engine. I didn’t buy it to reduce the amount and cost of the fuel I used. The Honda sales guy kept offering to do calculations in a spreadsheet to show the fuel savings I would get. I kept telling him I wasn’t interested and I wasn’t getting the car for that reason.

Given the rise in petrol costs, I’m interested now! I filled the tank yesterday from reserve. It took 37.68 litres @ 117.98 pence per litre; or £44.42 to fill the tank. This is about £10 less than it took to fill the tank on my Renault Laguna late last year. Plus the petrol was around the 95 pence per litre price point then, if I recall correctly. One of my colleagues in work drives a large 4×4 Volkswagon and it costs him about £120 to fill the tank. Another one who drives a diesel Audi A4 (I think) fills his tank twice a week at £70 each time. He was asking me how I like the hybrid during the week…

Honda claim an extra urban miles per gallon reading for the Hybrid of about 65 mpg. Hmmm. For general start, stop driving around Belfast I’m getting (according to the onboard computer) about 42 mpg. Not too shabby all the same. I did some testing on longish runs recently and got the following fuel consumption figures:

Dual carriageway (50 MPH speed limit – cruise control set for 50 mph) = 55 mpg fuel consumption.

Motorway (70 MPH speed limit – cruise control set for 70 mph) = 46 mpg fuel consumption.

So the claimed 65 mpg is probably for 30 or 40 mph cruising. Still; I’m very happy. The Honda is a lovely car. It’s comfortable, well made and has enough grunt from the engine for normal driving. In fact it feels much the same as the 1.8 petrol Laguna’s I’ve driven for the last 6 years. The Honda has a 1.4 litre engine, drinks petrol like a 1.0 litre and drives like a 1.8. Works for me. Over the 3 years of the leasing agreement I have it on I should save quite a bit on fuel. If the cost of fuel continues to rise it’ll just get more beneficial.

Are you changing your car soon? Get a hybrid!

BBC iPlayer

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Virgin Media’s cable TV service now provides access to the BBC iPlayer service.. Excellent. It’s the best way to watch any TV programmes that have been on the UK BBC channels in the previous week. Just watching the first episode of Dr. Michio Kaku’s Visions of the Future.

iPhone SDK event today

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Apple are holding a press event at 18:00 UK time today to outline the roadmap for the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) and also to reveal some exciting new enterprise features. The iPhone SDK should be interesting. Hopefully we’ll be able to write iPhone apps using Apple Xcode and Objective-C. I’ve a few ideas for apps I’d like on my iPhone. I hope the enterprise stuff is a Blackberry client.

It seems that iPhone uptake in the USA is already outstripping the combined Windows Mobile based phone sales. So the iPhone is already a significant player and the development stuff we get today will be a significant announcement.

Game over

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Toshiba are preparing to announce the end of their support for HD-DVD. Given that they created the format this would seem to be the end of the disc based HD format war. Next battlefield will be Blu-ray HD discs versus HD downloads.

MacBook Air

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I got a MacBook Air. I had said I wouldn’t get one as it didn’t offer anything that my MacBook Pro didn’t have. However, several times over the last year when traipsing through an airport with the 17 inch MacBook Pro, in its Brenthaven case, pulling the shoulders out off me, I’ve thought about getting a lighter Mac. I’ve tried roller cases but didn’t like them. So I’ve been resigned to carrying the weight.

Last week I was away from home in Manchester. After the journey there, and the next day, carrying the MacBook Pro I had pains in my right shoulder. On Tuesday night I was in the Arndale Centre Apple Store and they had the MacBook Air’s on the table near the entrance. I’d seen them at MacWorld and knew they were thin and light. They felt really light when examining them in the store. Temptingly light. I dithered for a while, but in the end I bought one. I got the cheapest model with the 80GB hard drive, 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB Ram. I’m going to use it as my travel computer when away from home. It’s going to be perfect for that. It is very light. I’ll be able to load it up with my Open University course books in PDF format and read those on it when away. That’ll also reduce the weight of the stuff I need to carry when travelling. The screen is very nice and reading PDFs on it will be good. I had been thinking about getting an iRex Iliad for reading PDFs. I’ll use the MacBook Air instead. As a bonus it’s colour which is better for the books in question, plus my subscription copies of Scientific American Digital are far better viewed on a colour screen.

I bought a small leather Tumi case for it in the duty free shop in Manchester airport on the way home.

design_gal03_20080115.jpg Tumi case.png Click pictures for larger view

Sony Reader PRS-505

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I’ve been using a Sony Reader since last June. It’s an excellent device for reading fiction. I got the latest model (PRS-505) when in San Francisco recently. This has a slightly modified form factor that improves on the PRS-500. Plus it has a slightly better screen. One nice thing the the PRS-505 does that the previous one didn’t, is that it mounts as a USB drive in Mac OS X. This means that content can be copied on to it without using he Windows only Sony Connect Software. Don’t get me wrong, I still use the Windows software for most of the content management, but I use the USB disk mode to quickly get interesting web pages and articles onto the device for reading away from the computer. Copying the text from a web page into Microsoft Word and saving as an RTF file produces a file that looks really nice on the Reader.

Honda Civic Hybrid 1.4 IMA ES

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i got the new car this morning. I like it. Very shiny. love the IMA hybrid engine, and cream leather interior. Only 44 miles on it so far (I’m on holiday). Pictures below. Click them for larger views.Honda Hybrid side view Honda Hybrid rear view Honda hybrid front view 

Interior dashboard view Interior control column Click pictures for larger view

 

Macworld thoughts

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I got back from San Francisco on Monday afternoon after Macworld last week. The weather was a bit of a shock! I saw lots of flooded fields and rivers on the approach into Heathrow. The weather in San Francisco was very good. It was sunny for the whole time myself and 2 others were there. Apparently this is unusual for January. The sun shines on the Mac users! When I got back to Belfast it was blowing a gale and there was horizontal rain. Cold. These things are relative though. I came out of the hotel in San Francisco one day last week and saw a girl on her way to work with wooly gloves and scarf on. For me it was a warm morning, for the natives it was cold. Transplant one of them to Belfast last Monday and they’d probably have died on the spot!

On the subject of travel, well flying, I have to say that British Airways are excellent. I’ve always had excellent service from them and they are my carrier of choice.

Macworld itself felt a bit flat to me. There were some good points. The Microsoft Day at the Office session to launch Office 2008 for Macintosh was good. Attendees had to pay $199 to attend this session. It was worth it. There was some very useful info from people who knew the software. They also gave everyone a copy of the Special Media Edition of the suite. A $499 value. Nice. Other highlights for me from a product point of view were: TheSkyX and Seeker from Software Bisque, Casper from Jamf Software, and Filemaker Pro 9. The new virtualisation solutions from Parallels and VMware that allow Mac OS X Server to be run in a virtual machine looked good as well.

There were several very good talks, as well as several indifferent ones. On the good side there was the talk by Merlin Mann. Very entertaining and very useful as well. Leo Laporte and Alex Lindsey gave a good talk on podcasting and video podcasting. No slides in this one, just a conversation with the audience. Andy Ihnatko gave a good talk about how to use iTunes and iPods better. The Expo show floor was a typical trade show. I had a good talk and made some contacts with Jamf Software about Casper that’ll be useful for work.

I wouldn’t rush back to Macworld. I’d rather spend the money on attending Apple WWDC. This is a better conference for my needs. Entries in the Moscone Centre schedule for June list a corporate event from 8th to 13th June. That’ll probably be WWDC 2008. I’ll hopefully be at that.

This entry was composed using MacJournal 5 which has just been released and I’m testing to see if I can adopt it as my journal and blogging software. If you are reading this then it works!

UPDATE: MacJournal isn’t going to replace Ecto for blog editing.

Mini-review: Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGard headphones

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I picked up a set of Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGard headphones a few months ago in East Midlands airport. I’d been looking for a set of comfortable external headphones that I could use on longer flights. I finally got to try them out in anger on a flight to San Francisco on Friday.

They are very good. When you turn them on (they are powered by a small battery) the ambient noise in your surroundings just disappears. There is a very noticeable difference. The audio quality when using them is superb. I was able to hear very subtle background effects and vocals in the music I was listening to on the flight. The noise of the engines and wind were almost completely cancelled when using the headphones. When someone comes to talk to you, cabin staff for example, you just push a button on the right headphone and the music is cut and passthrough microphones allow you to have a normal conversation without taking the headphones off. I still have to get used to this and was constantly taking them off to talk to people.

They fold up flat and reasonably small and come in a nice carry case. This can be attached to a laptop bag handle and carried onto the flight as part of your hand baggage. Highly recommended. One note. If you adjust the volume when in voice passthrough mode it sets the music volume and ambient sound cancelling settings. If you do this you might think that these headphones are crap and don’t cancel external sound at all. I did this a while back by accident. If you have a set and you think they don’t work then this might be the reason. Get the manual out and reset them following the instructions. Then you’ll see they do work and are wonderful.

Warner to go Blu-ray exclusive

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Warner have announced that they will go Blu-ray exclusive for High Definition DVD from May 2008. This is good and significant news. Warner have been releasing HD content on both of the rival formats, Blu-ray and HD-DVD, up to now. As such they are one of the main content vendors releasing movies on HD-DVD. Now that they are going Blu-Ray exclusive probably means that the format war is over. Sony’s Blu-ray has won. Good thing to. We don’t need another run of the BetaMax vs. VHS war.

Sure, Universal and Paramount went HD-DVD exclusive last year. They’ll have to switch to Blu-ray as the momentum in sales, even before the Warner announcement, was 3 to 1 in favour of Blu-ray. Granted the sales of High Def DVD’s are still dwarfed by conventional DVDs, but over time as more people get HD TV’s and Blu-ray players this will change. Warner have a huge back catalogue of movies. Having these available on Blu-ray only will be a major advantage to the Blu-ray disc camp. It’s not often you get to identify a technological tipping point when it happens. It’s usually a hindsight thing. The Warner announcement on Blu-ray is a tipping point.

Blu-ray discs are definitely worth getting if available, as I rave about here.

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