There's a cyclic nature to technology development. What starts small and personal, becomes big until - inevitably - it becomes small again. Then the cycle repeats. All this has happened before... We started with mainframes on which we had to time-slice. Then we got powerful personal computers. Now we're back to spooling up instances of cloud computers. ...and all this will happen again We…
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One of Android's great strengths is its openness. The source code is (mostly) there for anyone to see. If you're a hardware manufacturer, you can use Android on your devices with just a few mouse clicks. But there's a problem in Android-land, one which has been growing for several years. Open Software has many advantages - one is the maxim "Many eyes make all bugs shallow". If you have…
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So, a year after throwing the baby out with the bathwater by dumping its Palm WebOS software, HP has decided it wants to get back into the smartphone game. HP's position isn't quite as perilous as Nokia's "Burning Platform" was, but there are definite similarities. Apple sells more iPads than HP sells PCs, their traditional market for printers is drying up, its share price is on the wane, and a …
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Two years ago, a bunch of smart people told the BBC that its plans to build iPlayer for Android on Adobe Flash was nuts. We argued loudly, passionately, deployed logic and reason, and provided specific technical details. Naturally, we were ignored. Sure, Flash was only on a few high end devices now, but the BBC were confident that Flash would be soon be available on all Android devices and our …
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At Over The Air I demonstrated what I considered a novel use for one of Android's sensors. I wanted to create a Theremin - a type of musical instrument which is played by moving one's hand over it - changing pitch and tone by moving nearer or further away. My first attempt used the proximity sensor. However, on all the Android phones I tried the sensor's accuracy was binary - it could sense…
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I love Android, I really do. I'm chuffed to bits with the Galaxy Nexus I won recently. I've had a dozen Android phones before that - stretching all the way back to the HTC Magic. But it's getting obvious that Android has a serious design problem - even with the gorgeous new "Holo" theme for ICS. The issue is one of consistency. Users have limited cognitive surplus and often rely on muscle…
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(These notes are mostly for my own benefit). Android is moving away from USB Mass Storage. You will no longer be able to plug in a USB cable and have your Android show up as a USB disk. There are some good technical reasons for this, but it is a pain if you want to copy some files to your phone. The new system - MTP - isn't automagically detected in Ubuntu. This is something which is likely…
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In my quest to find the perfect phone, I was recommended to try the Motorola Pro Plus by Seb Schmoller. This is my attempt to review it fairly after a week of usage. Some people have accused me of being unfair in my review of the Nokia Lumia. I think I was harsh - but all of the problems I experienced were real. This review of the Pro+ is unvarnished - I paid for this out of my own pocket and …
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I think that WP7 is one of the first phone operating systems which natively has a QR scanner built in. It's rather hidden - you have to go in to search (not camera) then click the eye icon. However, it is one of the fastest and most accurate scanners I've ever used. It knocks Android favourite ZXing into a cocked hat simply by by speed alone - it's also very fault tolerant and was able to scan …
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After the disaster that was my experience with the Nokia Lumia and the rather underwhelming time I had with the BlackBerry Torch, I've been thinking a lot about what my perfect phone would be. I think I've found it... My Photoshop skills are legendary! Here are the things that I want - no one platform covers them all, so I've nicked the best bits from each. Blackberry Here's what…
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Last night I went to the Coding For Kids Barcamp. This event, organised by Emma Mulqueeny, was designed to bring together geeks, parents, kids, and educators to see if we can improve the woeful state of computer science education in this country. This is the blog version of the discussion I lead. (more…) …
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