Herein you’ll find articles on a very wide variety of topics about technology in the consumer space (mostly) and items of personal interest to me. I have also participated in and created several podcasts most notably Pragmatic and Causality and all of my podcasts can be found at The Engineered Network.
Movie Hype: When it's so far over the top you want to throw up...
Today I had the great pleasure of seeing the final instalment of Harry Potter at the movies: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Having read all the books some time ago (although it had been a couple of years since I read the final book) I roughly knew what was going to happen, but with a hectic lifestyle it’s harder and harder to sit down and read a good book from cover to cover (I hate having to put the book down and pick it up again hours or days or weeks later) I tend to favour the movies over the books. That said I still prefer the books as the story is much richer, a little less dumbed down and in many ways the plot points make more sense. There’s no doubt to me that J. K. Rowlings work has been well translated to the silver screen but then it could have been a little better in parts.
Enough of that - I’m not a movie buff or film critic and have no intention to ever be one. Instead however let’s look at movie hype. It’s becoming more and more of a phenomenon whereby a secondary camera unit follows the actors around behind the scenes on set and interviews/observes what they do and it becomes a “DVD Extra” usually - months or years after the movie goes to the cinemas. The more recent trend is to show these “behind the scenes / interviews” as promos for the movie to build up some sort of hype. Many web sites features them and they screen as “exclusives” after the news on TV and/or current affairs programs to attract the masses to the cinema to watch the latest and greatest movie.
As annoying as these techniques are to an old guy like me, I take particular exception when they show the promo, immediately before the movie starts! In the same cinema. Literally 2 minutes before the movie starts, we are shown a promo clip about how great the movie is. Seriously? I’m not kidding.
Who are they selling this to? They’re hyping it up for us when we’ve already come to the cinema, paid and sat down in the seat. We’re not leaving. It made me want to throw up.
HTC Cries Foul - Apple Sues Too Much
As reported by the AFP yesterday HTC have complained that Apple sues too much by stating: “HTC is disappointed at Apple’s constant attempts at litigations instead of competing fairly in the market.” The argument seems to come back to whether HTC think that patents are fair and reasonable. The quantity of lawsuits shouldn’t be considered unless they are saying ‘Apple file nuisance lawsuits against us…’ which is not apparently the case. Either you have a moral and legal right to defend your Intellectual Property or you don’t. Hence it seems HTCs main argument is that Apple should stop filing patent lawsuits against other companies and just make great products.
Patents can be broadly grouped into two piles: Patents that are based on a real world application of an idea that has been developed, implemented and tested by a person or company; and those patents that are about ideas that have not come to fruition. The patent system is suppose to protect the rights of hard working people/companies that pour hundreds, thousands or millions of dollars into the development of ideas into products that other people will pay them money for. In that respect if Apple did genuinely do the hard yards behind their patents surely it’s reasonable to protect their investment if other companies simply take their ideas and then sell them to make money for themselves.
If HTC have an issue it should surely be more that they are annoyed with themselves that they could not develop their own ideas to compete with Apple on their own terms. If they genuinely did develop their own ideas and Apple are out of order, take it to court and settle it there. Complaining about it highlights that HTC realize what they’ve done and that they’re going to lose or be forced to settle out of court.
Google+ Where Do You Start With A Social Network?
Social Networks have become ubiquitous of late with the success of Facebook and Twitter. Unlike computer software applications, getting people to consider an alternative social network is considerably harder. Not only do you need to convince existing users that there are new features that are really worth using on your new social network, but you also need to convince most of their friends, family and colleagues that it’s worth the switch. The years of momentum of bringing friends and family into Facebook may be difficult to overcome unless what you offer is substantially better than Facebook.
Why people like Facebook is a difficult thing to specifically nail down, however it seems to be more of an aggregation of smaller features bolstered by the games, applets and social games that the like of Zynga have made a fortune from - all the while pushing Facebook ahead of MySpace. Facebook as a messaging platform is relatively straight-forward however its biggest problem are its privacy settings and the confusion they cause. In more recent times there have also been malware applications that have spread through Facebook that have caused some annoyance but little major disruption to the service or its users. Still, the majority of users are quite happy with Facebook. It’s possible to easily post photos, videos, comments on your or other friends walls, play casual games and not be too overcome by advertising.
Why people like Twitter generally is its simplicity. Certainly the concept of Following someone elses comments is easy to grasp, however the service wasn’t well planned for the longest time and hasn’t been as organised as Facebook was. Until recently it wasn’t possible to natively post photos on the service and a myriad of third-party sites offered to do this for you. The 140 character limit (compared to Facebooks 420 character limit) per post can be annoying at times but it keeps it simple. The expression of Micro-blogging was formed essentially by Twitter. In more recent times Twitter has taken greater control and as such has its own native applications for most platforms and has also introduced advertising - albeit for the moment relatively minimal. Twitter solved the privacy issue by simply making accounts private or public. You can choose which you’d like, although picking up followers in a private account (if that is your goal in life) is more tedious. There are no games or applets to distract the user - just a steady stream of tweets from those you follow. Simple.
Google+ offers a blend of Facebook and Twitter. It offers a way to specify groups of friends (called circles) to which one may post or to post to everyone (public). A few other features such as Huddles are like a group chat on mobiles and hangouts that are just a multi-party video conference. There are no ads (yet - keeping in mind that Twitter started without ads as well) and also like Twitter - no games.
Google+ is not a Facebook competitor as much as it is a Twitter competitor. Its feature set is currently quite thin but covers all of Twitters functionality with a few minor extras thrown in. The burning question though is why do you need another social network? Twitter users will see a lot to like about Google+ - you can write messages as long as you like and restrict who the messages are seen by without making the whole account private. That said the interface takes some getting used to, although it is sound it is more complex than Twitter and that will turn some people off. Facebook users will not be attracted to it if they aren’t already attracted by Twitter. There is nothing that Google+ offers that Facebook doesn’t for the vast majority of people that use Facebook - in many ways it offers much less.
If Google can add social gaming into the Google+ platform then it may become a Facebook competitor but for the moment only Twitter should be concerned by Google+.
Filter Me Please Government, It's Why We Voted For You
Earlier this month the government imposed (but sorta optional) an internet filter that was applied by Telstra. Optus will follow suit shortly by applying the same filter. The filter itself is designed to stop access to websites with child pornography. The implementor and general champion of this cause is Senator Stephen Conroy, with the rather long-winded title of Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (MBCDE for short). Let me start by saying it’s sounds like an honourable intention. I have young children and nothing sickens me more than child pornography. The problem is that I also understand how the “black market” trades on the internet and sadly it is not through web pages. Web Pages can be easily shut down through court orders to ISPs, physically removing server hardware, denial of service attacks and so on and this makes them a poor way to trade in illegal materials. The most favoured methods include torrents (private ones) and individually encrypted emails. Neither of these methods can be blocked by any simple filter. Now to the second point - the filter itself is just a list of Interpol provided illegal websites. These websites are manually updated and the only way to prevent access is via a proxy, enforced by Telstra and Optus. These proxies can be bypassed as Telstra and Optus do not have control of your computer. Services exist to allow VPN Tunnels or Web Based Proxies that allow a computer to go directly to an exit point on the internet that is beyond the approval filtering proxy at Telstra or Optus. One method is for Telstra and Optus to then begin blocking access to the popular ones, however there are many ways to set up such servers around the world privately that the government will have a lot of trouble detecting. So if the filter can be bypassed pretty easily, only two (albeit two of the largest) ISPs are implementing the filter, why do it? Did the Australian people vote for this? The general consensus is probably not. Who are we protecting by doing this? Considering the alternative methods of trading illegal material all we are protecting are those who may accidentally happen across this information. Despite all of the issues the simplest reason to implement this filter is to save face. The government said they would do it and poured millions of dollars into the filter, so now it must be used. The reality is that Australia has long been a country with many resourceful people who can bypass anything the government throws at them. Unless the government thinks it can use strong arm internet filtering tactics like China and introduce severe jail terms and real-world policing for those people bypassing their filters, the end result will be unavoidable. This filter will fail.