I like predicting the death of the iPhone. I've been doing it since the device was first released - and I'm sure, one day, my doom-mongering will be proved correct! Apple is at an interesting nexus with its iPhone. It's hugely popular, vastly profitable, beloved by millions, and plagiarised by its competitors. The only fly in the ointment? It's just a little bit dull! Dull is, of course,…
Continue reading →
(I wrote this blog post in 2010. Given that I presented about this idea earlier this year, I thought it was time to publish it.) So, here's a good story. Having just finished my contract with Touchnote, I was looking for work. A friend of mine tweeted... Cathy Ma@cathymaknow any good mobile product manager? We're looking for a contractor role :) let me know and pls rt ;)❤️ 1💬 0🔁 011:55 - Tue…
Continue reading →
"This Is Not A Film" by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who is under house arrest in his country for alleged “propaganda against the regime,” will be screened under the Free Jafar Panahi Program of the 13th Cinemanila. The film was smuggled from Iran in a Flash-Drive hidden inside a cake to Cannes for screening a few months back. Manila Bulletin This is a microSD card. Currently on sale in the …
Continue reading →
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…
Continue reading →
The Python Pals Divine A Date Penny was in a right grouch. Her voice wobbled as she unloaded her woes on to her best friend, Poppy. "It's all so unfair!" She started to sob. "Oh sweetie," said Poppy, "I hate to say this, but you're sounding like a right stereotypical teenager!" Penny cracked half a smile and blew her nose. "I know," she said "But it's true. What can't I date him?" Poppy…
Continue reading →
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…
Continue reading →
What if they gave a war and nobody came? Why, then, the war would come to you! -- Bertolt Brecht The current Conservative Government (and their Labour predecessors) are obsessed with the idea of competition. Their theory is that competition lowers prices, improves services, and makes the world more efficient. The free market will arrive at an optimal solution for everything. In some cases,…
Continue reading →
This is the second of my "Python Pals" short stories. They're designed to be solve-it-yourself puzzle stories to help kids learn the basics of programming. All feedback welcome! The Python Pals Write A Wrong Poppy's mother, Ada, was not happy. "I don't care about that," she shouted down the phone, "Why am I always the one who has to pick up the pieces?" She carried on ranting. Penny and…
Continue reading →
As part of the Parliament and Internet Conference, there was a panel discussion about 4G networks. These are my notes on the session. I've applied the Chatham House Rule - mostly because I can't remember who said what, rather than any backroom skulduggery. Any errors are mine and mine alone. Neither Vodafone nor EE have signed up to the Network Neutrality pledge. O2 have. (Disclaimer, I work …
Continue reading →
No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that the online world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences lesser than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various blogs they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a woman with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm…
Continue reading →
As mentioned earlier, I've been inspired by the Byte Brothers to create a mystery story which kids have to solve using their l33t h4x0r skillz in Python. This is loosely based on The Byte Brothers Go to a Getaway, by Lois and Floyd McCoy. My well-thumbed copy was printed in 1984. I'm not sure when I got it, but I remember being around 8 or 9 when I first started writing programs in BASIC. …
Continue reading →
I'm currently getting involved in the Coding For Kids scene. I'm setting up a workshop in my local library to teach kids programming - specifically, the MIT language Scratch. I've been left slightly dissatisfied with the unstructured nature of the Scratch teaching materials. While it's quite fun to teach a cat to dance - it doesn't seem to be building up to anything. I'm also working with…
Continue reading →
