Items related to IT and computing in general
As expected, the Apple World Wide Developers Conference has been confirmed for June. My ticket has been bought and activated. Flight booking request sent to admin in work. Hotel booked from 6th to 15th June. Looking forward to having a chat with several people involved with 3rd party tools we are using in work. Plus the iPhone Development track will be very interesting.
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.
I love Motorstorm. The Dot.Life BBC blog is reporting that there will be a new version by Christmas –
Motorstorm 2 is due out in time for Christmas and moves the action away from the desert locale of the original. Gamers will be able to race around a lush island environment, full of interactive vegetation.The game will feature four-player split-screen action, righting one of the obvious failings of the first game.The title is some months away from completion but the game’s engine looked rock solid and the graphics were as impressive as one would expect from one of the best-looking racing franchises.
Yeah!
Tip of the hat to PS3Blog.
Announced today. Microsoft is saying it’ll play nice in the standards area and will provide open access to the API’s for several of it’s core product lines.
Assuming they mean it and follow through on what they are announcing, then this will be a good thing. Time will tell. Microsoft have a history of embrace and extend when it comes to industry standards. The extend part made them non-standard.
Ars Technica has more.
I’ve just moved into a new role in work. My new title is Technology Consultant. A major part of the job function will be finding, evaluating and introducing new technologies into the company I work for and into our ICT offerings. I’ll also have a team of people working for me. Should be fun. Getting paid to look at new stuff. Obviously there will be more to it than that, but still…
The iPod touch lacks the Notes application that is on the iPhone. As a work around for this (until Apple gets the message and adds it via a software update!) you can create a Contact called Notes and use the Note field of the contact to record snippets, to-dos, etc. on the go. The Contacts app on the iPod touch only shows fields with data in them. So Set the first name filed to Notes and put text in the Notes field and these are the only two fields that will be visible for that entry. When the iPod touch is synced with MacOS X the Notes entry and its associated text will be available in AddressBook. And vice versa, changed in AddressBook will sync to the touch.
Just got electronic access to the first few books for a new Open University course that starts on 6th October. It’s a 3rd level computing course called Natural and Artificial Intelligence. It covers traditional AI research and how ideas from biological systems and evolution are shaping AI ideas. Finished the introductory book already. Good stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the course. Also start the recently introduced course on evolution next February.
The exam for the AI course is sometime around 14th June 2008. I’m hoping that means it’ll be in the week after Saturday 14th and that it doesn’t clash with WWDC 2008. It looks from the Moscone Center web page for June 2008 that there are non Apple events on in the Moscone West on the weeks beginning 16th and 23rd June. Looks like the event listed as Corporate Event from Sunday 8th June to Friday 13th June in Moscone West will be next years WWDC. I’ve got enough British Airways air miles for a free flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, and enough Marriott Rewards points for almost a week in a hotel. So should be able to do WWDC next year pretty cheaply.
So I read on TUAW that some iPod touch units were starting to hit the Apple stores in the USA. So I hightailed it round to the San Francisco store to see if I could get one. I did. A 16GB one. There are unboxing photos in the web gallery linked on the right. In addition to being an iPod, it’s also a WiFi enabled Internet device. If you are reading this post then it seems that I can post to this site using the built in Safari web browser. More details and thoughts on the device to follow.
Update: Post spell checked and categories set from my MacBook Pro a few hours after posting from the iPod touch.
I’m off to San Francisco again in a few weeks. Maybe I should move there? Work is sending me to VMworld at the Moscone Centre. Same place as the last two Apple WWDC conferences. Should be interesting. They are expecting 10,000 attendees for the 3 day conference. There is also a partner day that I’ll be attending. VMware VI3 is really, really cool and very, very useful (as are the other VMware products). Looking forward to getting down and dirty in the deep technical sessions. I’ll also need to go to the sessions that are related to how educational organisations are using virtualisation technologies. And the green computing session will be a must as this is a hot topic in new school builds. All newly funded Building Schools for the Future projects in the future have to be carbon neutral.
Of course there are the VMware for Mac sessions as well. And drinks with the VMware engineers… 🙂
Made a few minor changes to the WWDC schedule I posted previously. This is probably close to the final session list I’ll attend. Unless there are some late additions after the keynote for super secret stuff. Not long to go now 🙂
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At previous Apple WWDC conferences Apple bused the attendees out to the Cupertino campus on Thursday night for food, beer and music. The so called campus bash. I’m glad I went last year because the bash this year will be held in San Francisco. Probably be in the big ground floor hall of Moscone West. Should still be fun but going to the Apple campus was part of WWDC the long time attendees tell me. Still, I can say I was at the last one 🙂
Not long to go until Apple WWDC 2007. Just done my preliminary schedule based on the published session info so far. See the picture below. Will probably change a bit as there are some slots in the published schedules on the WWDC site that are listed as TBA. These are likely placeholders for new stuff in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard or iPhone. The picture also doesn’t show any of the evening activities such as the Apple Design Awards, The Scientific Poster Session, The Apple Campus Bash and others. There is also a session entitled Mac OS X Scientific Computing State of the Union that is in the full listings but not on the calendar view. It’ll maybe a lunchtime session. I want to go to that. Many of the sessions I’m going to are IT technology related rather than developer related. This reflects that WWDC is taking on a more technical conference feel rather than a pure developer conference. The IT related sessions are of interest for the education technology job I’m doing at present.
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Flight to San Francisco on 9th June. 6 weeks to go. Can’t wait 🙂
Finally stepped into the High Definition television age. I got a Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 LCD television and a Sony Playstation 3. The TV has a 1080p HD display and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray HD drive in it. As a bonus I get a games console in the Blu-Ray player for free 🙂 Here is a picture of the beasts in situ. The image on the screen is from a Mac mini that I use as my music centre with iTunes.
The quality of Blu-Ray movies via the PS3 and the TV is stunning. Very, very happy. I had to take the first PS3 back as the fans would come on and once they got to a high speed, whilst playing a game for example, they would stay at the high speed until the unit was switched off. This was irrespective of what the PS3 was doing after the fans speeded up. So if I left it idling the fans would never slow down again. This was annoying when using it to watch movies when in a quiet part of a film. You could hear the fans over the film sound. The replacement PS3 seems to be quieter but I’ve still to test it fully.
The game MotorStorm is stunning on the PS3. Really, really good fun as well. It outputs at 720p resolution and looks excellent on the Bravia. Here is a picture of a bike from the game. It has a bit of motion blur.
So I’ve cast my die into the Blu-Ray camp in the great HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray face off. Hopefully Apple will go down the Blu-Ray route with their HD optical drives in Macintosh machines. A Mac mini with a Blu-Ray drive and a version of DVD Player that allowed playback of Blu-Ray movie discs would make a very nice media hub indeed. It’d need to output 1080p via HDMI cable though.
. . .when all through the house not a creature was stirring!
I’m really looking forward to the new toys and software that will be released over the next few days. I hope there is a iPod phone. I hope it works with the Nike+ shoe thingy. I really hope said iPod phone isn’t a lemon!
The ModBook should be interesting. If it can do screen rotation and doesn’t add too much to the price of a basic MacBook it might be a runner for me. The battery will need to be readily accessible to allow an easy sleep->battery change->wake from hibernation cycle.
Just a pity we’re not all in SF to see the stuff in the flesh. Still WWDC to come later in the year. Hopefully earlier this year than last. Anyone else planning to go? I’m making it my summer holiday like a sad git!
I suggest you read this. Do yourself a favour and look at the alternatives to Zune first if you don’t want an iPod. Then do yourself a big favour and buy an iPod anyway.
I’m moving to a new job!! If you look at the side bar it says that I’m employed as an IT Consultant by a UK based IT services company. I live in Belfast, UK, and work mainly in Northern Ireland. Well that’ll soon have to change to something like I’m employed as a Senior Solutions Architect by a UK based IT services company. I live in Belfast, UK, am based there but my work is focused on the education sector in England.
I’m moving sideways in the company I work for into the Managed Services Education section that delivers solutions for the Building Schools for the Future project. The new job will be helping to deliver environments and solutions to the education sector. It involves using technologies to create flexible learning environments, both physical and virtual, so that students can learn at their own pace, access lesson materials when not able to attend lessons (for whatever reason), adopt new technology to enhance learning (podcasts, digital media etc.).
I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll involve finding out how people learn. How the environment they are learning in influences this. How technology can help keep students interested and make them want to learn. Obviously the job will involve more than that, but I’ll learn that as I go along. I’ll transfer to the new role in January. Can’t wait.
I’ve signed up for a first course in a series that are required for an Open University MBA (Technology Management). Given that I’ve got about another 20+ years to work in the IT infrastructure sector I think this’ll help me add more value for the clients and companies i work for in the future. I’m starting with the course Technology management: An Integrative Approach as this is relevant to the work I do at present. I’ll do the pure management Stage 1 course after the technical stuff I think.
The Moscone West Conference Centre is ready for Apple’s WWDC 2006. Registration opens on Sunday and the event starts on Monday. This is my first WWDC. Can’t wait 🙂
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There is a new build of the Cocoa version of YAPT available. It now uses Objective-C rather than AppleScript internally (actually I’m still setting First Responder via AppleScript on application launch). See the YAPT page for more info and download. Here is a screen shot of the latest build with some data for Francium displayed.
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I’ve created a sub-page of the soapbox for YAPT. There will always be a link to this sub-page in the side bar on the right. This sub page will have a link to the latest version of YAPT. It will say when the latest build was posted and the archive will contain the latest post date as well.