Google blocked in many countries

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

It’s not just China that poses problems for Google’s services, according to a story over on sister site PC Pro.

Rachel Whetstone, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs has claimed in a blog post that while it offers search and other service functionality in some 100 countries, 25 of them are further restricted in some form.

Google has also pointed towards stats from the Open Net initiative to highlight the growing issue of web censorhip. The body reckons that just four countries chose to censor the web in some form back on 2002 – a figure that has since grown to 40.

When will video conferencing take off?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Today has seen Cisco finalise its offer for Tandberg in an attempt to build its telepresence business up to new dizzy heights.

The problem is though, however shiny the technology is, video conferencing still isn’t taking off is it?

I can’t dismiss how great the likes of Cisco’s TelePresence or HP’s Halo systems are. Having used them I was blown away by the clarity, the definition and the reliability of the services which took away the need for 11 hour flights across the pond or even just cutting out the couple of hours on national rail to have an half an hour meeting.

However as stunning as this tech may be, it has not caught on. Video conferencing was meant to be the next big thing for the past three decades now and yet people will still collect their air miles, jump on the train or leap in the car to get that proper one to one, face to face meeting.

Yes the technology has improved significantly but it seems even those in the tech world prefer being in the same room as one another, as well as these types of video conferencing simulate it, or having a glass of wine over lunch to discuss business.

It also turns out in many cases that said lunch, or even the 11 hour flight, could cost less than getting one of these beauties installed in your office, and of course, unless all your clients and/or branches have it to it becomes a little irrelevant.

There are places like one of the BT offices in London that offers them out for hire but companies would have look closely at the maths before paying the fee and sometimes a week of meetings could hammer out for one plane ticket what several hours in a video conference suite wouldn’t get round to solving.

Let me reiterate, it is stunning technology and I wish the likes of HP, Cisco and Tandberg all the luck in the world. I just can’t help but be slightly amazed that so much R&D is going into a type of technology that is still barely used 30 years after its conception.

Photoshop’s Content Aware

Monday, April 19th, 2010

I’m by no means a talented — or even competent — photographer, but I’m enthusiastic about it. (Proof, if you need it: the 732 photos from one weekend away in Scotland.)

Many of the photos I take are for creating panoramic images, but — and here’s where the incompetence comes in — I tend to miss snapping key bits of the image, especially along the bottom and top corners, meaning I have to crop things in a less awesome way.

That is, until Adobe unveiled the latest magic tool in its Photoshop CS5 update:

It’s as though Adobe finally realised that Photoshop isn’t just for the pros, but for those less talented amateurs, as well…

WiFi versus 3G: Dreaming of a dongle…

Monday, April 19th, 2010

I’ve never wanted a dongle so much in my life. This morning I took the 5:50 from Edinburgh Waverly to London, and — after an hour nap, which I think was a smart move for my productivity later this afternoon — started attempting to do some work.

Work these days is of course rather reliant on having an internet connection, but this is especially the case when you work for a website. For various reasons, I found myself without dongle, but East Coast rail considerately supplies free wireless access on its trains.

Perfect. We’ve finally hit the always-on era of ubiquitous internet, I thought. (I think that way when I haven’t had my tea yet.) But no so fast. Indeed, speed was the first of the problems. Loading up basic email took ages and frequently timed out — I nearly switched to my smartphone so I could reply to an important message.

But speed wasn’t the only issue. The connection kept dissappearing. No suprise really as the train careens through a tunnel, but rather irritating when it becomes clear that the WiFi drops out as we pull into a station — heaven forbid people waiting for a different train get to log on for free for a whole minute and a half while new passengers  board.

And once we pull out of the station, it’s time to log back in again — thankfully, East Coast’s site allows that pretty cleanly.

So yes. I’m whining about free WiFi access. Devices like the iPad and Google’s promised web-focused OS suggest the industry expects ubiquitous wireless — for us to shell out for 3G access.

While I’d have gladly done the latter today, it’s a shame WiFi deployments aren’t holding up their end of the bargain at the moment. Hopefully that changes before I find myself on a train trying to do some work next.

Is this the iPhone 4.0?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

And we don’t mean the OS.  Apparently, someone picked up an iPhone-looking device lying about, and sent it in to Engadget.

Their ever-wonderful sources say it’s real — but only time will tell… What features would you like to see on the next iPhone? Forward-facing camera? Faster processor? Let us know in comments below…

Does the geek vote really help you top the polls?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

At the start of last week, the manifestos began coming out thick and fast and it seemed like Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats were just never set to be taken seriously, even with the looming possibility of a hung parliament.

Then, lo and behold, the first ever television debate hit our screens and gave the lesser known leader an hour and a half on the platform with equal billing alongside his opponents.

Clegg was the only leader to mention any of the technological issues, even though both the Tory and Labour party have enjoyed using the “digital election” stamp, and most agreed he clearly outshone both David Cameron and Gordon Brown through this format.

Then came Friday and Clegg supported another tech driven policy, claiming the Digital Economy Act 2010 would be repealed if his party was to form the next government.

These two events were enough to send the internet crazy with “I agree with Nick” avatars and Twitter banners showing support for the third in line party.

The hype continued to grow over the weekend with the Lib Dems points in the polls rising at a dramatic rate. This morning even saw a poll from Tory supporters The Sun putting them in the lead above the traditional parties.

Now I am not saying the only reason they are doing so well is their tech policies but the Liberal Democrats seem to be benefiting both from technological issues in their manifestos and the technology to get their voices heard.

The introduction of live TV debates has helped the party with people really being able to get a good look at the leader and his policies, unlike the others who we are bombarded with all the time, and Clegg seems to understand the tech issues and their importance a lot more than the others as well.

I won’t pretend I am not biased; I do like the Lib Dems and hope they do well in the next election. I am just glad technology is giving them their way in to get their voices heard by more people.

Conservative website not winning web race

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

The looming election is generally being dubbed a digital election, thanks to all parties trying to use technology to their advantage, and the fact that the modern generation of Twitterers and Facebook addicts will perhaps be voting for the first time ever this May.

It must come as bad news for the Conservative Party then, that they’re losing the race. Just one of the races, that is, but quite an important one nonetheless. In a recent study of the three main parties’ websites, the Tories were crowned with the unfortunate title of wost performing. Pages were much slower to load than those of its political rivals.

That said, it was also the only site out of the three main parties’ websites to be up for the whole month of the study, while the Labour and Lib Dem sites both suffered some downtime.

Whether the slowness has anythig to do with more users looking at the website during this time or just bad tech decisions somewhere along the line remain unanswered as yet, but all will be revealed on 6 May.

Oi, Rooney! Step away from the Twitter…

Monday, April 12th, 2010

So along with limiting the team’s access to the affectionately termed WAGS (wives and girlfriends), Fabio Capello has decided our English football quad stands a better chance of winning the World Cup if they are kept away from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

The ever-so-slightly controlling Italian apparently believes online commentary from the England camp could be “divisive,” according to the Daily Mail, and is even threatening punishments for breaking these rules as extreme as exclusion from the final 11.

But perhaps this isn’t as mad as it sounds. I mean how often have you been distracted from the work at hand, be it in an office or out and about, by checking on your tweets or buying up some ludicrous items for a new Facebook game?

If you are anything like me it will probably be quite often.

Yet you can hardly see Wayne Rooney breaking out the iPhone mid-sprint to the penalty area and god forbid David James finding anything else that can distract him when he is supposedly keeping the ball out of the back of the net.

Perhaps a bit of relaxing and chatting would do the players good when they are on a break, meaning they are ready and raring for when the first whistle blows in South Africa?

However knowing how pessimistic us English fans can be and how easy we are to heap blame onto a single player after a less than satisfactory (or most) games, tensions could be caused and nerves raised if they read everything we were typing on the internet.

Ah well Capello, you haven’t often been wrong so far with our fair three lion wearing boys so by all means give it a go. Let’s just hope they show the same discipline when they walk onto that pitch.