First it was the VCR, then CRT, now it's the CD

Five of years ago we all marvelled at the pace of technology when it was announced that Currys would stop stocking video recorders.

Then manufacturers stopped producing cathode ray tube TVs.

Now one specialist manufacturer of audio equipment has announced it will stop making CD players, such is the dominance and better quality of digital music.

The fact that Blu-Ray players also play DVDs mean that DVDs still have some life left in them, but it does make me wonder what the next technology to be dropped will be.

Why do I need Windows 7 & what exactly is wrong with a mouse ?

Microsoft have announced details today of the next version of Windows, called simply Windows 7 but it will probably get a fancy name before its release.

So why do we need a newer version of Windows ? Well I am asking that myself. I upgraded to Vista some months ago as I was having some problems with networking and sharing files in XP and Vista has done everything I have asked of it easily and without fuss, and more importantly without glitches and crashing.

Well apparently Windows 7 uses touch screen technology, and demo of it in action can be seen on the BBC website. Essentially, you will (with the right hardware) be able to do to a computer what you can already do with an Apple iphone (no, I don't mean take poor pictures and rely on very slow downloads). That's great surely ? Well no.

The problem is that touch technology is good when it replaces something that is awkward or slow. So having touch technology on a phone is great because your phone does not have a mouse and using a keyboard for some functions can be awkward. But with a computer a mouse is just what is needed. A mouse is pixel perfect, a mouse is very responsive and what's more, unlike the end of my finger, it is precise. I like sitting two feet away from my monitor but I don't want to have to lean across my desk to touch my screen all the time.

It's odd that when Nintendo have created the Wii-mote (their Wii controllers) which in effect act like a mouse in terms of responsiveness and the ability to use them away from the screen with precision, that Microsoft feel the need to go for touch screen when there simply isn't a need.

Microsoft say that Windows 7 will be out in 2009 or 2010, which in Microsoft talk means 2011 or 2012, so I guess it won't be an immediate concern. However, it does seem that Microsoft are rattled by Linux open source operating systems and are trying to put clear blue water between Windows and Linux. But in my opinion they are trying too hard. Too much clear blue water could leave them in to deep water.

Why should BT pay for phone boxes that are never used ?

I am a strong supporter of maintaining rural services, even if this means that some things like buses, schools and other things vital to rural areas receive more subsidy that those in towns. However, I have sympathy with BT's wish to remove phone boxes that are not used for more then 12 months.

BT have found a number of phone boxes that have not been used for 12 months and as a plc, a company listed on the stock exchange and not a charity, they want to remove them to save their costs. I really cannot see what is wrong with this.

Of course if the local council is so upset they could pay the full cost of maintaining the box, but in a world where mobile phones are so cheap, are phone boxes soon to be relegated to items for a museum anyway ?

The Emperor's new clothes syndrome - Old technology in the Apple iPhone

The Apple iphone was launched yesterday to a cavalcade of press publicity and the usual Apple junkies queueing all night in order to be the first to get one, but aside from a touch screen, what does the apple I phone offer that is new ?


I have had an MP3 player on my mobile phone for about three years now, so I am at a loss as to why Apple think they are the first people who have eliminated the need to carry both. As far as I can tell Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones have been around for years.


Then there is the iPhone's camera. 2 Mega Pixels is old technology. Apple putting in a camera from a phone that you could have picked up two years ago hardly set the pulse racing. Oh, and it has no flash either. With 7 mega pixel phone cameras expected in the new year, and 5 mega pixel camera phones being the norm now, Apple's technology is very dated.


What about the web browser. Apple have a funky browser that you can tilt and view from different angles. This is great, apart from ther fact that the phone relies on 2G technology. This means it's downloads are torturously slow, so unless you are in range of a wireless hotspot (and not just any hotspot, it must be from a specific company), your downloads will take an eternity. 2G technology is the technology introduced in 1995, so it says much for Apple that their "new" hardware makes use of a system 12 years old.


But the iphone has a touch screen ! Yes, that sound great, of course, that is as long as it does not have the fault that the American iPhones had where the portion of the screen you had to press to answer a call goes dead, meaning your phone rings but you cannot answer it. Of course if you want a touch screen that works and won't break, but a Nintendo DS, which can also do web browsing from any Wireless hotspot.


And finally, Apple tie you in to paying a higher rate with O2 for your phone, try to stop you going to a different network by blocking your phone and also charge you £269 for a phone that is essentially out of date already by some years.


So what has the iPhone got that attracts people to it in massive numbers ? See below.

So expect the new Apple product next year to be prefixed with the letter "i" and have an Apple badge on it which will ensure it sells in massive numbers. Yes, I can reveal the next product from Apple is the Apple iDog Turd.

The vested interests and hypocrisy of Microsoft and UK schools

For the first time in my teaching career I have heard something about ICT and software in schools that makes sense, when it come to talking about Microsoft.

After years of the government telling us all to install Microsoft software in school without hesitation, Becta, a government agency, have at last announced that schools should be very careful about signing any deals with Microsoft and should review whether open source software might be a better option.

The problem is with this advice is that it flies in the face of everything that schools are told and advised to do by education authorities and the government itself.

The problem is that some local education authorities have purchase agreements with Microsoft . this means that the LEA has a cosy relationship with Microsoft that they are not keen to break, even if it means schools pay more.

Then there are the ICT advisers who go out to schools from the local education authorities. I my old school when we went for Open Office, a free open source piece of software that replicate the functions of Microsoft Office, did everything they could to put us off it, told us it would not work, indeed they acted like agents for Microsoft such was the vigour of their opposition to the school's stance. In truth Open Office worked fine and the school are still using it without problems. We were lucky that we had a group of ICT competent teachers and support staff who could understand when the advice we were being given by the LEA was rubbish. Most schools are reliant on LEA advisers and will therefore have done what they said, and gone for Microsoft Office instead.

The final thing is the government's own attitude towards Microsoft. The government have made no attempt to ditch Microsoft Office for an Open source alternative. The Indian Government and others have done this recently, adopting Ubuntu ( A Linux based operation system) and use Open Office too, cutting out Microsoft completely and saving hundreds of millions of pounds of tax payers money in to the bargain. When will the UK government catch up with the third world on this ?

And what of the government's own relationship with Bill Gates. Didn't Labour award him with an honorary knighthood for his services to education ? This from the man who sells Microsoft software to UK schools for a profits whilst it is given away to US schools for free ?

So it is good news that Becta are advising schools to stay clear of Microsoft software, but let's hope this advice also gets to the local education authorities and to central government too.

The irony of the Life Phone

The Life Phone, a phone designed for the more technophobe elderly population is not available to buy in shops. You have to log in and purchase it from the internet if you want it.

Isn't it ironic that you are expected to be an IT savvy person and have knowledge of the internet before you can buy this phone which is intended for the non IT savvy population ?

And Yes, I know it is because retailers have so far refused to sell it and the Internet is their only outlet.

Remembering the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and its rubber keys

It is the 25th birthday of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the "daddy" of British home computers and arguably the reason why British programmers are still world leaders.

We first got our "speccy" 24 years ago, but fondly remember sitting in front of the screen for several hours, typing in programs from the magazine "Sinclair Programs". Getting a new game was always a buzz, but when a new game came out from certain manufacturers, particularly the iconic "Ultimate - Play the Game", who are latterly known as Rare and design software still for Nintendo and Xbox.

Another part of the whole Spectrum experience were the magazines. Sinclair Programs and Sinclair user were early ones, but no magazine could touch "Crash - Micro Games Action" to give it its full title. i still have the first 60 editions somewhere I my loft. I seem to recall in taking delight in being the best in the country at an odd game galled "bugaboo the flea", and getting my name in about issue 8 in the high score table !

I also remember how notoriously breakable the machines were, constantly having to but a new keyboard membrane every 9 months or so and the joystick ports, when launched, were as likely to make the computer crash as anything else, so wobbly were they in the back of the Spectrum's expansion port.

Some people moaned about the keys and the odd cursor keys arrangement, but personally, I found it dead easy for gaming and more intuitive than traditional keys on a keyboard. Okay, I wouldn't want to type on it, but for gaming it was no problem.

Overall though, a fabulous machine, and for all my gadgets (I have a DS, a Wii and an Xbox 360), I still also play Spectrum games on my PC (through an emulator), with my current favourites still being Chuckie Egg, Lunar Jetman (an emulated PC version available HERE), The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark's Revenge, Jetpac, Halls of the Things, Skooldaze (which you can play on this emulator over the net HERE) and Dynamite Dan.

Any other people with happy memories of home computing, I'd love to read what you have to say.

Why does technology always let me down ?

I love gadgets, I am a gadget geek. I've ordered a new phone today so I can blog from it, but the hassles "technology" gave me in ordering it meant I changed who I ordered it from because I couldn't trust their technology would work. Confused ?

I was all set to change networks and switch to T-Mobile. The only question I needed answering was "What are their call tariffs ?". Just a simple check on their website surely ? NO - I WAS wrong, it was certainly not the sort of information that they were going to give me via a website, at least, not without making me check every screen.

Never fear, I thought, I can phone them. Having phoned up T-Mobile three times, each time shortly after "this message may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes", I was promptly cut off. Oh dear, I thought. Shoddy website, poor phone system, can I trust them to operate a mobile phone network ? I saw it as a sign. Sop I renewed with Vodafone after all.

So then to my next problem. I go to Tesco, I am faced with two choices;

1) A Human serving me at a till (but with a long queue)

2) A Tesco automated self service checkout till (no queue)

"I'm not afraid of technology", I bravely and cheerfully wanted to shout as I walked past the queues as I happily strolled up to the self service counter with my milk and margarine. "Two items. I'll be done in a flash", I though rather smugly.

But no.

The machine breaks on me, a red light starts flashing at the top of the kiosk, a spotty but rather helpful boy called Matt who I used to teach 7 years ago comes over and tries to reset the machine whilst the queues waiting to be served by a human quickly get served, and I'm left standing there. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Eventually Matt tells me, "you'd be quicker going to the other counter whilst I sort this". Of course, of course. New technology is great, but I should have known it would have been quicker to have gone the "traditional" route. Stupid me. There's a lesson learnt.

So then off to MFI. No problems, exchanged some lights, bought a new dimmer switch, all dead easy and technology didn't interfere at all, I even paid by cash to make sure of avoiding any chip and pin nightmares. But as I left the shop, technology intervened again, sliding doors open, I leave, just as the shoplifting alarm goes "beep, beep, beep". Everyone looks at me, I'm standing there looking guilty as hell, I wait, and I wait, but no one, not a single member of staff appears. So after being humiliated by technology, and with a whiff of "deja vu", I then remember that the same thing had happened to me two weeks before. I was more upset that a member of staff didn't come over and publicly say "Oh, sorry about that", so people could at least see I wasn't stealing. As it was, I just looked like a crap shoplifter who got away with it because staff couldn't be bothered !

I wander back to me car asking my wife, who shows know sympathy for my trials and tribulations today, "Why does it always happen to me ?". I think she thinks I bring it on myself.

The right to Roam is free at last

Hutchison Three G, the mobile telephone company, have announced that international roaming charges are to end and that their inclusive minutes will be "cross border", in that they can be used in any country where Three run a mobile telephone network.

For many years I have wondered how Vodafone, Orance and T-Mobile can justify their roaming charges given that when you are aborad you are still using their own phone networks (they are international compaines running mobile networks in scores of countries).

Now Three have led the way, I hope other companies will follow. I guess the other main players will sit tight and hope that no one else will follow Three, but with my phone contract up for renewal in just a few days, it will certainly make me think about whether Vodafone deserve my custom.

Nintendo Wii - "We" can't wait !

I can't be the only one getting very excited about the iminent lauch of the Nintendo Wii, can I ?

For years people have liked to label video games systems as the spawn of the devil and responsible for obesity, crime, violence and just about any other ill the world is suffering from.

Well, the Nintedo Wii (pronounced "we") changes that. The games require active participation. The motion sensor in one of the controllers means the controller can be used a a sword, a bat in baseball, you can use it to hit the tennis ball in tennis, you can use it to replicate bowling at 10 pin bowling. Read more about it HERE.

This is the future, and I can't wait.

Another story of poor customer service - Amazon.co.uk

Following up yesterday's story about Amazon failing to sell products at the time they state, I decided to e-mail them. I got back a standard automated response along the lines of

"Sorry you were unable to but the Nintendo wii, etc, etc, high demand, etc, etc"

Amazon have a box on their website that says "has this answered your question ?"

When I clicked "no", and asked for further details about why they had not listed the product at the time they advertised, I have received no response. Neither has my friend who asked a similar question.

It seems that Amazon have the same customer care team as Sky TV. Both care little about complaints or problems and are only happy to respond quickly if you are spending money.

The Times also reports today on Amazon selling all their stock in one minute, but fails to report that they told customers that they would list the "wii" for sale at 9 am but failed to do so until 9.40.

Again, my advice, avoid amazon like the plague !

Amazon.co.uk = Amazon.useless.can't.tell.time.uk

A friend of mine was trying to purchase online today a Nintendo Wii (promounced 'wee') from Amazon.co.uk.

Amazon clearly stated on their website and in e-mails that they would list the product for sale at 9am. My friend sat waiting. 9 am arrived, but no, Amazon still didn't have the button up to "purchase this item". 9.10 came and went. 9.20, still nothing. 9.30, no, not a thing. 9.40, suddenly one was listed for sale as a second hand item, then by 9.42, they had all been sold. Unfortunately, being a working person, he was trying at this point to get on with some work. Due Amazon.co.uk not being able to tell the time and being 40 minutes late to list the product, he missed out.

Message for us all the Christmas, if Amazon.co.uk cannot even tell the time, then how will they send you the right gift ? Might I suggest cd wow, play.com or ebay for your Christmas gifts ?

Luckily I already have a "wii" on order. That didn't console my friend though.

Keith Vaz - What a prat !

Keith Vaz, that enormous wit (not the missing T) and intellect that has given so much to Britain during Labour's time in government has shown us just what talent the cabinet in his latest bleatings. This time it's him moaning about a computer game.

Yes, you heard it right, Kieth Vaz has so little to do that he has taken it upon himself to attack a computer game. The game is called "Canis Canem Edit", which I think is Latin for Dog Eat Dog. If so, at least the three months of latin I did at school was not wasted ! Actually, this game could make latin popular ?

So what is wrong with the game ? Well you take on the role of a school bully, hit people, steal things, generally have a bit of knock-about fun on a computer, note please (ON A COMPUTER - IT'S NOT REAL). Funnily enough, it is just like a computer game I owned in 1984 called "Skooldaze", a version of which can be viewed/played here.

In the game "skooldaze" you had a catapult to fire at people, you could write on the boards, you could hit teachers and other pupils and you could steal things from the staffroom and you could bunk off lessons. Basically, you could do all the same things as you can do in this new "bully" game.

If you thought that was bad, in the follow up "back to skool" you could break in to the neighbouring girls school, ride a bike around school and kiss girls (eugh !)

So why the fuss now ? Because it is all politically correct to attack computer games in 2006. In my experience though of playing skooldaze in 1984, I never copied any of the things I did in the game. I actually I did the complete opposite and became a teacher

Heaven knows Mr Vaz, perhaps this new game might solve the shortage of head teachers around the country, but seriously, get a life and stop jumping on bandwagons.

I-pod hacking is good news for consumers

The BBC reports that the I-Pod code has been hacked for the first time so that Apples own proprietry music format can be played on other brands of music players.

To explain to thos who are confused, Apple's "I-Tunes" website downloads music to I-pods in a way that means the music can only be played on an I-Pod, and not on any other multimedia device.

I am no I-pod fan (I prefer my Sony), with the biggest thing putting me off about I-Pod's being their inflexibility to allow music to played things other than an I-pod. I like to have music on my laptop, my PC, other music players, but Apple have done everything they can to prevent this when downloading via I-tunes. It's a great shame, because I am a gadgets geek in many ways and think the I-pod is a great bit of kit, I just don't want to own something that limits my options.

The funny thing is, if Microsoft had done it, everyone would be up in arms about it, but when Apple do it, nobody seems willing to take action.