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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