Ben Nuttall

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Wednesday, 6 January 2010

This Week in Technology

I seem to have spent the last hour doing little else than sharing links to BBC News articles on technology. There seems to be so much going on at the moment, so I thought I'd write a short post to mention a few of them.

Dolphin Browser for Android
I just came across this app tonight (free from the Android market) - it's an alternative browser for Android phones which has more advanced features than the standard one, such as tabs, easy sharing, select text and so on. The standard browser is ok (it isn't Google Chrome, which isn't available for Android as yet, but should be in time - it uses the Webkit rendering engine - the same as Chrome and Safari - which is the best one of them all) but I find it rather limited as although you can have multiple windows open at once, they aren't displayed as tabs and only the one in focus can load at any time. Apart from this feature being available in the Dolphin Browser, it also has a number of other functions I wouldn't have thought to ask for.

It has a fantastic share function which allows you to post the current page to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Gmail, Text Message (all by default) or a particular app you have installed which supports sharing. It also supports gestures which you can set to perform a range of actions - so that, say, swiping an L-shape on the screen with your finger goes forward in the browser, or a backwards L-shape to go back, N to open a new tab, and so on. You can personalise them to do whatever you like.

Anyway, I've only opened it once to see whether it was any good, so I'm bound to find many more uses for it. I have Opera installed too, but I don't really like it and only use it if I have a problem with the standard browser.

Google Nexus One Mobile
This week, Google released their first mobile handset (although I'm not sure what makes it more Google than the first few handsets with the Android operating system). It's been released in the U.S. as far as I am aware, and is due for release in Europe in the second quarter of 2010. It's set to be made available on Vodafone in the UK, which is great news for me as I'm with them now (with my HTC Magic Android phone) and wish to stay with them. I've got about another 9 months before I'm due for an upgrade, so I'll have to see what's on the market then - maybe the Nexus One will still be the main contender, maybe something newer.

Anyway, it looks great - pretty much the same as my HTC Magic, with a few more good points to it, like the inclusion of a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack! Oh and apparently Google Maps comes with voice directions, telling you where to go while showing you 3D imagery from Street View! That's even better than a SatNav!

Firefox for Mobile
Apparently Mozilla have been building a mobile app for Nokia smartphones, which they will roll out to other smartphones in due course - including Android, but not the iPhone, as Apple are being very restrictive of what they will allow to get on to their devices (like Google Voice & Adobe Flash - and similarly, they restrict iTunes from synchronising with any device other than an iPod or iPhone, so users can't sync music from iTunes to a non-Apple mp3 player or mobile phone). Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what Firefox is like on a smartphone, but for now I'm happy with my recent discovery of the aforementioned Dolphin Browser.

Google Chrome OS Demo Video
The Google Chrome OS was announced in July of last year, and I'm terribly excited about it - as for one I love the Chrome browser, another I love the idea of a free & open source browser made by Google, also my mobile phone is powered by Google's mobile operating system Android (also free & open source), and I simply love everything about Google and its ways of furthering technology and its applications in society.

Anyway, today I caught an article on BBC News which showed a demo video of the Chrome OS in action - and straight away I could see how they had thought about extending the browser into a whole computer system, and even at a glance I knew I could see how it worked because it was purely simple and completely logical. The shot I saw had the look of the Chrome browser, with two small tabs to the left of where the browser tabs are positioned, only an icon's width: one containing the Chrome OS logo; the other containing the Gmail logo. It was logical that the Gmail icon would be a permanent tab containing the user's email, and the Chrome OS icon would drop down to show other applications to run, such as documents, pictures and so on, similar to the Start menu in Windows, or the similar variants in other systems such as Mac OS and various versions of Linux, but simple and minimalist. This was demonstrated in the video.

Google Homepage Celebrates Gravity for Newton's Birthday
If you were to go to the Google homepage on Monday, you would have seen an apple tree draped along the top of the lettering in the logo. Upon the page loading (it now loads only the logo and the search & I'm Feeling Lucky buttons until the user moves the mouse, when the other links and information fades in to view), an apple literally fell from the tree towards the bottom of the page. Google often celebrates the life and achievements of historical characters such as scientists, mathematicians, authors and inventors (as well as other celebrations such as the olympics, Christmas, Easter, and so on), but this is the first time the logo, however imaginative and brilliant, has ever been animated.

Labels: Android, Computers, Firefox, Google, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 03:29

Monday, 3 August 2009

Going Google

I just read an interesting short article on the official Google blog entitled "Going Google" with Google Apps which in just three short paragraphs sums up the benefits people experience by using Google Apps and other Google services. I'm a big fan of Google (as you may have gathered from reading my blog) and use a lot of their services.

Here are the first two paragraphs of that article:

Every morning, millions of people wake up to a very refreshing experience at work. They don't see "mailbox is full" errors in their email. They don't worry about backing up their data. They can get to any file they need from any computer, anywhere with Internet access and a browser. They can all access and edit the same documents and spreadsheets at the same time as their colleagues. They use Gmail and Google Calendar at work as fluidly and easily as they use their personal Gmail accounts. They video, voice and text chat with their peers globally as naturally as they send email.

The IT people at these companies and organizations don't waste time or money buying, installing or managing email servers. They focus on the smart, innovative stuff they want to work on, because they never have to bother with expensive and painful software upgrades, hardware compatibility issues or managing data centers. They have left many IT frustrations and costs behind and moved on to something better.

Hopefully that will give you an insight to how people benefit from using Google Apps, and why it is an ideal business solution.

The websites I run use Google Apps, which is a wholesome solution for companies or organisations for their domains. So say for my university canoe club's website (MMU Canoe Club), I set up Google Apps for the domain, which means we get as many club email addresses as we need (up to 50 for a free account) with a massive amount of storage; we get an online document collaboration tool which allows each committee member to add/edit documents, spreadsheets and other files online; and we can use a shared calendar and all add/change events.

Using these Google services doesn't require the user to use Gmail as their main mail account, use Google Calendar for their personal calendar, or have an Android phone - but if they do use any of these things they will continue to experience the benefits of Google Apps.

If, like me, the user uses Gmail as their main email account then they can set up forwarding (as I do) to ensure all their club mail goes to their main account and they can reply or send new emails from their club address without leaving their normal Gmail account. There's also the option to configure with Outlook (though why anyone would wish to do so is beyond me). If, like me, they use Google Calendar for personal use, then they can set it up to show more than one calendar's entries together (colour coded), so I could have my own calendar entries in blue and the canoe club's entries in red. If, like me, the user has an Android phone, then they can access their email on their phone at the touch of a button, and even be alerted of new mail. They can send mail, reply, search, archive and sort mail. Without going too far into the functionality of Android, they can do it all really easily. They can also access their calendars on their Android device, add/edit events and receive reminders of events on their phone.

Being a web developer, I need to look to find the solution the company I design for is looking for. If they don't have a company email system set up (say, for instance, they just use their own personal hotmail, yahoo or ISP email accounts) then I would suggest Google Apps as a solution. If they do have something set up (say, Outlook) then I would look at this and probably suggest Google Apps as an alternative if they would be interested in it.

Google Apps is simply a perfect solution for a business or organisation - and if they have fewer than 50 users then the free edition is open to them (for a small fee of $50/year they can get unlimited users and extra features) - why anyone would pay for someone else to provide them with email accounts and such, and pay for just a handful of POP3 email accounts, I can't understand. Nobody can provide a better service than Google and it's free, easy to set up and keep running.

Universities are a prime example of the perfect users for Google Apps - quite a lot of universities in America are using it, and Google have been working with education authorities in developing nations to give them the opportunities to have access to better learning resources. Unfortunatey my university has recently decided to "Go Microsoft" and opt for the evil alternative to Google Apps, Live@edu. It's launching in a few weeks so I haven't seen what it's like yet but I only hope I can have my email forwarded to my Gmail account like I did with last year's system, otherwise I'll be forced to use Windows Live Mail (ugh) and go out of my way to separately check my university email account.

If you don't use Gmail, give it a try. It'll change your life. Here's a video explaining what I just explained, but better, and in less than two minutes:

Labels: Android, Computers, Google, Internet, University

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 16:49

Friday, 29 May 2009

My First Two Weeks with Android

Two weeks ago I received my new HTC Magic smartphone - it's powered by Google's open-source operating system, Android. This means the source code for the system the phone runs on is freely available to download, which means any developer can write their own applications and tweaks for Android phones.

With switching from mobile provider 3 to Vodafone, I managed to negotiate a good deal on the contract - it's £40/month instore and I managed to get it for £20/month - that includes 600 minutes, unlimited texts and internet, as well as the free phone (worth £500). Also I have the option of starting a new contract after 15 months, obviously only if I stay with Vodafone (but my plan is to do so, as they're probably the best provider and loyalty is rewarded in this economic crisis - or at least if you tell them you're leaving it is!).

This is only the second Android phone on the market so far (with plans for about another 18 by the end of the year), following the G1 (aka HTC Dream) which was exclusive to T-Mobile. I was going to go for the G1 until I heard about its successor - a better phone on a better nework!

Within minutes of having the Magic perform simple tasks at the touch of my finger, I was enraptured by its user interface and functionality. The first thing I was asked to do was sign into my Google Account - this, I discovered a couple of minutes later, had automatically loaded my Gmail contact list into the phonebook - not particularly handy as I had no phone numbers in there, only email addresses - until I realised that once I transferred my numbers from my old SIM card - it automatically synchronised my contacts! Say I had Joe Bloggs stored as a phone number in my old nokia phone, and Joe Bloggs stored as an email address in my Gmail contacts - once I put them together I had one entry for Joe Bloggs with a phone number and an email address! And best of all - this contact list is constantly synchronised with my Gmail account so not only does it update both if I update one or the other, but it also means that I can never lose my contacts as they're always backed up automatically! It's the same for Google Calendar. Magic!

Apps

Once I'd got my head round how amazing the usability of the phone was, it was time to dip into the Android Market and see what apps were out there - I'd heard of a few good ones and wanted to see what else was available. It came loaded with Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Talk and a bar code scanner (I'll come to that later) and these are the ones I've downloaded in the last two weeks (all for free):

Shazam

Hear a song and want to know the name/artist/album - this recognises songs and shows you the info

Bubble

Spirit Level - hold the phone horizontally, vertically or flat on a surface and the on-screen bubble "floats" to the centre of gravity

handyCalc

Scientific calculator (damn right!)

Compass

A dynamic navigational compass

Metal Detector

Yes, you heard right. This app actually analyses what you place the phone near and buzzes more the closer it gets to metal. It's not practical at all, as you pretty much have to know where to position the phone in relation to the metallic object to get it to buzz, but it is novelty

Google Sky Map

Point the phone at a part of the sky and it shows you the stars, planets and constellations - you can also search for them and it tells you which way to point the phone to find it

The Schwartz Saber

A light saber that makes the noise when you move the phone

0870

Uses the database of SayNoTo0870.com to find geographical numbers to dial when you ring premium rate numbers

My personal favourite - Where's My Android?

You know when you misplace your phone, have to ring it to find it, then realise it's on silent? Well those days are over for Android users - with this app you set a particular word, and then when you can't find your phone you text it that word, and when it receives the text it turns silent off and starts ringing! Genius or what?

There are many more I have installed, little things like stopwatch, voice recorder, notepad, which come with phones as standard - but this way you get to pick and choose which one you use (like I did when I found out the standard calculator had only basic operations). There's also a good Facebook mobile app, as there is for Twitter, and a good multi-account IM client - ebuddy.

I've also got a few games I downloaded from the app market - sudoku, solitaire, ping pong, air hockey - the usual stuff - and also some brain training ones: MathPractice; Maths Workout; Iconic Memory; Slide Puzzle.

There are also widget apps you can download for the home screen - time & date, calendar, battery percentage, music player, etc.

The camera

How many mega pixels?? If I got a quid for every time I was asked that - as if the resolution of the picture is the only feature you can judge a camera on. It's like when people compare a high-res phone camera to a not-quite-so-high-res digital camera as if the phone will take a better quality picture, which it won't because it's not got the quality lens and focus of a digital camera. Anyway, rant aside, the camera's a 3.2mpx but it has a fantastic lens and focus! Nothing compared to a decent digital camera but very good quality for a phone.

The camera's focus quality comes into play for the aforementioned bar code scanner app - you can use the camera to scan the bar code of a product in a shop, research the product and compare prices online! You literally see and hear the lens focus in on the bar code in order to read it - it does the same when you're taking a normal photo - it adjusts focus automatically. If you scan a book, CD, game or something like that, you can read reviews, research information about it, as well as compare prices.

The video's ok. Nothing special but good enough (phone cameras are never going to replace digital cameras - their only purpose is for taking a picture or video when you don't have your camera on you).

Touchscreen

I love it. You can literally 'throw' icons, menus and page content to where you want it to go. Say with a web browser on a computer, to scroll down the page you would scroll down with the scroll bar or the mouse scroller, but on the web browser on the Android, to go further down the page, you touch the page and drag, or even flick, it upwards and out of view, bringing the below into view, as the same for up, left and right.

There's a menu bar along the top of the screen all the time (except in apps that use the full screen), this shows if you have any notifications (missed calls, texts, emails, downloads, etc.) on one side, and the time, your battery level, phone signal, 3G signal, and wifi signal and sync status when appropriate. If, say, you see you have a new text message, you touch the bar at the top and drag or flick it downwards to open it up and reveal the details. As for the tab at the bottom of the home screen, which you tap or drag/flick upwards to open, which shows all your installed apps.

When I talk about dragging or flicking things about, that's literally what it fells like when you touch something and move it - it feels like you're actually physically moving it with your fingertips, and when you drag the menu up or the notification bar down, it feels like you're actually holding it, pulling it up or down. On the home screen you have a selection of app shortcuts and widgets to start with, but this is 100% customisable - you can place icons wherever you want (none are locked), remove them, add new ones and add widgets. You have three screens: one central one, and one either side to the left and right. To get to each side you simply drag the screen to one side like you would with web content, move it out of the way to access another area. Each of the three screens has 4x4 grid for you to use as your canvas - icons take up a single 1x1 space and apps take up varying rectangular areas.

There's an interesting innovative unlock feature - you set a 'pattern' by dragging your finger over a sequence of nine pins on the screen, and you have to use that pattern/combination in order to unlock and gain access to the phone - this is in place of a PIN or password.

Google Maps

Other bits

Starred Contacts - in my opinion this is a much better, easier and more flexible function compared to standard Speed Dial, which requires you to assign up to 8 contacts to a number 2-9 (1 is voicemail) and memorise them. This is just a feature which allows you to 'star' a contact - like starring an email in Gmail, the empty star silhouette is there for you to tap to make them a starred contact - and then you open your list of starred contacts and pick from the list. I have a shortcut to my starred contacts on my home screen.

Buttons - this particular phone has 6 buttons on the front below the screen (green phone, red phone, home, menu, back & search), a tracker ball for precision (e.g. go back two spaces in a block of text while composing a text message), which is also a button (you can also use it to navigate but that's no fun!), and there's a volume up/down long button along one side.

Typing/Texting - this phone's predecessor, the G1, had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard but this one just has on-screen touch typing, which only took me a few days to get used to typing quickly on. I'm not perfect yet, I sometimes hit the full stop key which is next to the space bar. Occasionally I'll hit the wrong letter, where it'll usually pick up on the typo and automatically correct it. You can either type with it up-right (compromising keyboard width for extra viewing space) or rotate the screen to hold it horizontally in two hands like a PSP, using your thumbs to type).

It's good for suggesting/predicting words when you start typing them which is really useful for longer words, just saves you typing them in full - and it gives as many suggestions as it can fit along the screen (with an arrow to view the next ones). I was stumped for a few days on how to add new words to the user dictionary while typing them so that it could predict them in future, but I posted the question to the Android Community forum and the answer came within minutes - you just long press the word and it saves it.

One of the best things about this phone as a phone (as apposed to a palmtop gadget) is its conversation-view for text messages, similar to that of Gmail, whereby you see each part of a conversation rather than one message at a time, so if there's a text conversation between me and Joe Bloggs, it shows my message, then Joe's reply, then my reply, and back and forth following the conversation.

Menu Button & Long Press - long press (pressing and holding) is a really useful way of adding extra functionality without the use of buttons (on-screen or physical) - like if you're viewing a text message conversation you can long press a text message and it shows you a menu of options specific to the text message you pressed - call the sender, save the number, forward the text message, copy the content of the message, view the time & date of the message, etc.

The menu button (a physical button) is there so you can view the menu or settings of whatever you're viewing at the time (to save taking away space on the screen from what you're doing/viewing)

Music Player - the phone comes with a 1GB micro-SD card (which you can obviously replace with a bigger one) which is the ideal medium for data storage for pictures and videos (taken with the camera or transferred from your computer) and music. The music player is great as it organises your music into artists, albums, etc. and you can easily search for an artist or song or whatever. It's generally much more sophisticated than the previous generation of phone media players which usually only let you play, pause and skip - whereas this phone lets you drag across the timer to manually skip further on or back through the current song.

It comes with a nice smart little white leather case you can slip the phone in to to keep it protected in your pocket. This is great except for one tiny flaw - if I want to simply check the time (we all do it - who wears a watch these days?) I have to remove the phone from my pocket, slide it all the way out of the leather case to touch the menu button to turn the screen on to see the time.

For people like me, who use all the Google services anyway, and make full use of them - I can't see us ever going back from Android. Now I've lived like this I can't imagine going back! Not having my contacts synchronised with Gmail? Or my calendar? Or not being able to locate my phone with a single text message when it's on silent? Or not being able to pull a light saber out of my pocket at any time?

I've been following (in the Twitter sense as well as the normal sense) the development of Android and what to expect next from the project. Loads of phone companies are realising its potential and announcing launches of new Android-powered phones throughout 2009. Even some laptop manufacturers are playing around with it is an operating system for mini-notebooks - and before long I imagine we'll be seeing it on more powerful laptop machines. With any luck it could develop to much greater things and, I may be getting way ahead of myself here, it could be the dawn of the overtake of Microsoft Windows as the standard computer operating system, which would rid the world of dependency on hidden-source bug-ridden corporate systems and programs and give us the option to use (and develop) open source programs.

I've written about dozens of features of the phone but that's only a tiny proportion of what it can do. I honestly could have written twice that much again and still not touch the limits of the phone!

...Oh and I almost forgot - it makes and receives phone calls too!

Labels: Android, Featured, Google, Internet, Java, Programming

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:21

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Version 3 & Problems with IE

I decided I needed a new website template so I made one. Much better, don't you think?

It's compliant with W3C Web Standards (XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1) and I'm even using PHP to render it using Server Side Includes, as well as a PHP email form on the contact page. I've learned so much these last few months; a great resource for web developers (beginner/intermediate/expert) is W3Schools - it gives you all the information you need about every single tag, every single CSS style, how each browser renders each element, and which tags and attributes are permitted under each of the levels of markup (HTML/XHTML and Frameset/Transitional/Strict).

Version 3:
Versions 1 & 2:

(N.B. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the international standards organization for the World Wide Web, founded and headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA who invented the internet at CERN and is now a professor at MIT, probably the best institute for technology in the world)

Of all the people who converted to Firefox from Internet Explorer (IE), most of them know it's better but they don't really know why. One of the main reasons it's better is that IE does not comply with official W3C standards - it literally just ignores how things are supposed to work, and does it its own way. Firefox, Chrome and the other browsers all comply which means that when someone designs a website following the proper standards, as they're supposed to, it will look fine in Firefox, Chrome, or whatever they're using, but then they open it in IE, some of the elements will be displayed differently - something small like the spacing following a set of a bullet points - in the good browsers there will be a reasonable space immediately after a set of bullets, but in IE there will be no space. This can be resolved by adding the space manually using CSS, but that will double the space shown in the good browsers - and why should they suffer because of IE's incompetence? It should also be noted that if a website's code is valid, it will generally load faster, run smoother on all browsers and systems, and (along with other factors) increase a site's search engine optimisation.

One of the more famous bugs in IE is known as the Internet Explorer box model bug. This is a problem with the way IE interprets the markup and style differently to the W3C standards; when you set the width of an element, and then apply a margin, some padding and a border, IE will subtract the width of the border and padding and the content width will be whatever is left, whereas the W3C way is to declare the width, then add the padding, border and margin to it. IE's way means that if the sum of the margin, border and padding is greater than half of the width (half because it counts on both sides so can be doubled) then you are left with a negative width, which is impossible, so it just disappears! The diagram below should explain this clearer:

Labels: Computers, Featured, Firefox, Google, Internet, Web Design

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:00

Saturday, 28 March 2009

Google - Chrome Experiments, StreetView & Gmail

I've been blown away by so many things Google have done so far this year (and it's only March). They've done loads of work on Gmail which has incredibly made it even better; Gmail was already the best webmail service around, and it's been making life easier for millions of users all over the world for a few years now, and still they're constantly making small improvements (mostly based on the developers' own personal issues).

There is a section within Gmail called Labs which allows you to pick and choose which of their extra features you wish to use; this has been amazing for me recently - they've made such brilliant solutions to common problems with general email services. A good example is the 'forgotten attachment detector' - how many times have you sent an email to someone saying "...please find attached my (CV/Document/Presentation)..." and hit Send without remembering to actually attach it? Well this labs feature detects if you mention the word 'attach' or 'attachment' and prompts you if you haven't attached any files. Pure brilliance.

Another new feaure in Gmail is the ability to view all your email in your web browser while offline. If you're not connected to the internet (or you temporarily lose your wireless signal) it will just open your inbox where you can view all of your past emails and their attachments, and you can even send new emails (which will send as soon as a connection is found). Once your connection is back it will automatically download any new emails.

Next up, StreetView in Google Maps; it's been available in the US for a couple of years now and last week it was launched in the UK! You can now go to ground level in the major cities and actually look round 360° as if you were actually stood there. You can walk forward through a street, look round and pick a street to go down and just wander through. Not only can you spin round on the spot but also look 290° vertically, so you can look up at a tall building ahead.

I'm an avid reader of Dave Gorman's blog. Last week he posted about how when he heard that StreetView for UK was being released, it reminded him of "an incident from many moons ago" when he had been walking down Bethnal Green and saw a bizarre sight - a small car mounted with a huge nest of cameras - which he stopped to gawp at with curiousity, before seeing the Google logo on the side of the car, which made him realise that they were photographing for the StreetView project. He then realised that he would be shown in Bethnal Green looking stupid when they launched it. And he was right, except that they have blurred everyone's faces out, so until he announced it to the world, he would have been the only one to know it was him. You can view it here.

If you go to maps.google.co.uk and search for 462 Bethnal Green Rd, Tower Hamlets, London E2, UK and then select 'Street view' it'll show you a view of the Shakespeare pub. I'm on the other side of the road so scroll round and you'll see me leaning against the wall of the Quicksilver Gaming Centre (boy, do I live in a classy part of the world!) It's probably not obvious to anyone else that it's me. But it is you know...

Lastly, Chrome Experiments (I realise I talked about them in reverse order of the title). Google Chrome is a web browser made by Google, which they decided to make using ideas based as if from scratch, so ignoring the concept of current browsers (because they were created back when all we did on the internet was look at text and images, and now it's all about applications and very interactive stuff), they came up with a much more powerful engine to surfing the web. I started using it when it was launched in September, but a few months later I was back to Firefox because it was a bit too BETA, especially with the slow internet connection I'm on in halls. I decided to give it a try again when I heard about Chrome Experiments (they removed the BETA tag a couple of months ago).

Chrome Experiments is a project which aims to demonstrate the power of the new Javascript engine, V8, and allow outside innovation to do so. It just goes to show how the power of innovation is changing the internet and the useful things we can do with the internet. This may be the dawn of Web 3.0 - it's just being demonstrated for fun at the moment but it could lead to a better way of conveying information, which afterall is Google's world mission.

The experiments on the site include a page that renders the Google homepage and when anywhere is clicked, all the elements drop to the bottom of the screen and bounce (and you can still type and search, with all the elements laid out on each other at the bottom), another couple I've seen let you pick up a ball with a mouseclick and you can throw it about within the browser box (one lets you throw it between different browser boxes, the other has as many balls as you want, and they bounce against each other), another lets you play Tetris (built using Javascript and DOM), another shows a man's (or a pirate's) face and as you speak into your microphone, his mouth moves up and down as if he's talking.

Here's a video showing a few examples:

"Not your mother's Javascript"

I joined Twitter today. More to come on that in a new post on the next few days. Anyway, you can follow me here: twitter.com/Ben_Nuttall

Labels: Computers, Featured, Google, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:53

Monday, 27 October 2008

London, baby!

I'll try and be quick because I'm mega busy at the moment - got a massive week ahead of me and time is precious but I'm trying to keep up the whole 'frequent blog post' thing I've mentioned in the last few posts so here I am writing this from my brand new ASUS laptop which I set up last night. It's always interestingto know what the first thing a person does when they get onto a brand new computer; mine was to download Google Chrome (a new web browser made by Google - it's amazing - try it!) which since it was released last month has been my new primary browser, knocking Firefox down to second (followed by Safari then IE).

Anyway the laptop's fine. Oh and I'm now on Vista, which I was hesitant about swithing to, but I'm glad to say I'm very happy with it so far - it's not too different from XP other than its slick style and smooth design, and I've found that the only functional differences were things thatI felt were missing from XP so I'm really glad they've improved it on those parts. Things like the ability to select several photos in a folder and rotate them all in one go, which is an obvious function to include but was missing from XP which incurred the dubious task of manually viewing each picture and rotating each one separately (each rotation taking a good few seconds).

I digress. I had a great weekend in London with my parents, who I haven't seen since I moved out a month ago, so it was nice to let themknow what I've been up to and how my course lectures and my halls life are going. The trip was primarily arranged due to my invitation to London Zoo to be presented with my Queen's Scout Award but seeing as it was my parents' wedding anniversary that weekend, we decided to make a weekend trip out of it. I caught the train home after my computing lecture on Friday afternoon and spent the evening at home and we got the coach from Sheffield to London early Saturday morning, a lovely four hour journey, and checked in to our hotel and after a nap we spent the evening in London; we went on the London Eye which I took many many pictures of (and from).

Sunday morning we got up early to get ready for the presentation, headed out for the tube in the pouring rain and made our way to the Zoo! We checked in there and spent some time wandering about checking out the animals and exhibits, then when it was time we went over to the Mappin Pavilian which is where the presentation was held. I hadn't really any idea what the presentation was going to be like - I hadn't really thought about it; all I knew was that I would be being presented with my Queen's Scout Award certificate from Peter Duncan, the Chief Scout (head of the Scout Association) and former Blue Peter presenter. Despite being bang on time, I was the last to arrive (at this point I discover there were just four of us being presented at this time) and was immediately ushered into a sofa while having my coat removed by some sort of organising person, and before I had a chance to take in my surroundings I saw Peter Duncan just ahead of me, shuffling four creamish certificates in his hand to see who was to be first. "Ben Nuttall" he called out, and asked me to step up to join him at the front. I stood up and looked out at the dozens of people applauding - I'm still not really sure why they were all there.

I was put on the spot and suddenly asked by Peter Duncan what I did to achieve my Queen's Scout Award (for those that don't know, the Queen's Scout Award is the highest accomplishment in the Scout movement, and is patroned by the Queen (formerly King's Scout Award) and achievement involves completion of the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award as well as various other tasks). I completed mine over a year ago; with the most talkable bits happening over a year ad a half ago, so having to reel off a nice little speech about a four-day walking expedition I did in April 2007 was rather awkward but with it being such a memorable four days I managed to share a few entertaining short stories about the hike and mentioned what the purpose of the expedition was and how we ended up finishing it at the pub from ITV's Heartbeat while they were filming. Peter asked me a few more questions, and we had a good chat about Scouting and the future of the world and I was presented with my long-awaited and well-deserved certificate, photographed a few times, and I took a seat to listen to the next three people and their adventures. 

After this we got a chance for more photos and I had a good chat with Peter; I told him about my Grandfather (94 next month!) who met the very first Chief Scout, the founder of the worldwide movement, Lord Baden-Powell. We then talked about the media and their tendency to ruin good news stories with silly headlines and pictures that make the articles lose their point about what Scouting today is all about; outdoor pursuits, adventure, opportunities galore, making something of your youth, preparing for adulthood and showing future employees and such that you have made the most of your youthhood by getting out there and doing something.

We thanked Peter and the organisers for a great presentation and I was congratulated on my achievement once again by those present as we departed. We had a look round the rest of the zoo before heading back via tube to the coach station. Another four hour journey back to Sheffield and a couple of hours chilling out at home before having to get the train back to Manchester, only to find that it had been cancelled. I had to get a train out to Hope in the peak district, wait for a bus there which took me to Stockport, then waited for a train to take me to Manchester (an hour later than planned at quarter-past midnight). I had a maths test in uni at 9am this morning, so I had to do a spot of last minute revision on the train, but without any spare paper I had to take notes on the back of a bank statement I had in my bag!

So after my morning lectures and the maths test today I got my new laptop set up and here we are. I took many photos in London at the weekend, so check the London photoset out:

Labels: Google, Internet, Scouting, University

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 23:59

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

Connecting with Rev. Josh Through Aslan

The internet is such an extraordinary thing. While I was googling for a good picture of Aslan for the video I posted last night, I came across a blog post about a guy who had gotten himself an Aslan tattoo:

I left a comment on his blog, saying I thought the tattoo was cool and that I shared his admiration of Aslan. I tend to comment on blogs when I find them randomly, but never expect a reply - you never know when a blog is redundant or still in use. Anyway, today - I received a reply. He commented after me to thanks me for the positive comment and he wondered how I had come across his blog, so I told him I was looking for a picture of Aslan for my parkour video and linked him to my blog post with the video. He went on to comment on the video post on my blog to tell me that he had posted a new post about the random incident of connectivity between us. His post explained how I had found his blog, that he realised he can't have known me because I was from the UK (he's American), that he had never heard of parkour before he saw my video, and that he enjoyed my video (which he had embedded in the post) and compared it to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. He finished by warning blog-reading teens not to go out and try parkour, and explained that I referred to it as "training" and mentions the bail I talked about in the post.

This guy is called Rev. Josh, and his About Me says:

"I am an ordained UCC clergyperson serving as an Associate Pastor in the Connecticut Conference. I am also into fantasy, science fiction, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons... Contradictory? You'll have to decide for yourself!"

I love how the internet brings people together like this. Remember the time I was contacted by a guy who found my secret message from Danny Wood and Paul Maunder? And you know who are always at the heart of it all? Google! It was the same for Dave Gorman who ended up flying all over the world simply because someone had entered the words 'Francophile Namesakes' into Google. For more about this see this post. Speaking of Dave, I recently discovered he has a blog, which he updates regularly - it's worth a read (and even a subscribe if you like what you see). Also check out his awesome photography portfolio (again, which he regularly adds to) on Flickr.

If you were wondering why I have a fascination with Aslan, then I suggest you read the Chronicles of Narnia. I recently read them all (as you know if you read my Pyrenees post) and even though they're written for children they're really enjoyable and thought-provoking. They helped me understand my beliefs and opened my mind to new ways of getting my head round why things happen and what there is beyond the scope of the plain-thinking view of existence. It's hard to explain but the stories put situations into a different context and use analogies to explain things that most people fail to comprehend about faith. C.S. Lewis was a genius who gained a Triple First from Cambridge, and had a thorough understanding of theological concepts and a brilliant way of telling a story. I have to admit the books are, for the most part, rather dull as not a lot happens until the very end when Aslan the King of the Beasts and son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea comes and sorts everything out and explains everything. My favourite book was The Magician's Nephew which is where two children from Earth enter into an uninhabited world by means of magic rings made by the boy's Uncle, and they witness the creation of Narnia by Aslan. This tallies with the story of Genesis and even has a tree of forbidden fruit and shows the temptation in personal greed.

This has been a crazy post. I somehow managed to refer to four of my own blog posts, as well as four other people's blogs. Two of these people I have never met. I never plan my posts, so I tend to drift off the point and write way more than I intended. I'm working on cutting them down!

I had a great Bank Holiday Monday - I spent the day in the park with my Sister Kate and my four-year-old niece Olivia. Here are a couple of photos I took of Olivia:

With under four weeks left in Sheffield I have lots of people to see, so I need to arrange days to spend with friends I haven't seen in ages and those I won't be seeing much any more. If you didn't see yesterday's parkour video, you can watch it here. Oh and check out the new 'Post to Facebook' links which appear at the bottom and the sides of each post - click one of those to share that post on Facebook by either sending it as a link to one of your friends, or posting it directly to your profile feeds to share with anyone who visits your profile.

To close I would like to quote Rev. Josh:

"Be safe & be good to each other"

Labels: Computers, Faith, Featured, Google, Internet, Parkour, SPKD

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 00:01

Monday, 4 February 2008

Google vs. Microsoft & Yahoo! (The Future of the Internet)

Yesterday, Google made the following statement on their blog, regarding the potential takeover of Yahoo! by Microsoft, and I thought it was a great article contemplating the future of the Internet:

From The Official Google Blog: Permalink for post

Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
2/03/2008 11:45:00 AM
Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

The openness of the Internet is what made Google -- and Yahoo! -- possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It's what makes the Internet such an exciting place.

So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first -- and should come first -- as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

Permalink for post

And here's what I think of it all.

The Internet wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't such an open and innovative network of people with ideas. The very concept of anybody having the ability to share their idea by putting it together and letting people use it for free is an integral part of what the Internet is. By this I mean a programmer can think to himself "wouldn't it be good if I could have a portfolio of my photography and share it with others, let them give me comments, etc." and he can just write Flickr and invite people to use it for the same way he wants to use it, and the next thing you know it's a massive photo-sharing community with millions of users.

Similarly, that's how Google started; Larry Page and Sergey Brin simply wanted to make information available to users of the Internet, so they devised a new method of searching the web using their own special algorithms based on how they thought the right information would come up with any given search so that it would be a more useful search engine. The same for Facebook, which started as a one-person idea that it would be cool to keep in touch with fellow Harvard students online, then expanded to several other major Universities in the U.S., then all Higher Education institutes over the world, and as of September 2007, any person over the age of 13. Now there are over 60 million people using Facebook with over 65 billion pages viewed per month. I could also mention Wikipedia but I'm trying to keep this post short.

Note the use of Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) and Google of examples of the Internet at its best, along with Facebook and Wikipedia, which in my opinion are the four best things on the Internet today. Google expands to show Gmail, Blogger, Google Maps, YouTube, etc.)

So as Google says in the above article, this is not simply one company taking over another, it's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation. What would the Internet be like if it was controlled not by the everyday innovative programmer with an idea, but by the richest man in the world, out to make more money? We all know the situation with Windows, MS Office and every other Microsoft product or service; they strive to defeat competition, not allowing anyone to share their ideas, show how they would change it if they had the chance, unless they were in Bill's pocket. We all suffer the problems inherent in being forced to use certain software and paying the Earth for computers and upgrades for our old ones. We're having to put up with this influence from Microsoft with most of our computational pursuits as it is, but I fear that if the Internet fell into the hands of Mr. Gates it would no longer be open the way it is now. Google worries that Microsoft will do what it takes, exerting the same inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC market.

Google also mentions the fact that if you accumulate the number of email addresses controlled by Microsoft and Yahoo!, the two largest webmail and Instant Messenger services, just think about how many people's email accounts they have in their hands! Think about it, of all the people you know, how many have an @hotmail, @msn, @live, @yahoo address? They'll all be controlled by Microsoft if the takeover goes ahead as proposed. This means a heavy influence on everything inherent in the email process, and it doesn't get much more personal than a person's email inbox.

I hope reading this has made you think about how seriously some people take the choice, openness and innovation involved in using the Internet.

Google troubled by Microsoft move at BBC News: Link

Labels: Google, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:10

Friday, 18 January 2008

Googlewhacking!

Labels: Featured, Google, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 21:00

Tuesday, 16 October 2007

Lisses Google Quest

Labels: Featured, Google, Internet, Lisses, Parkour

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 21:51

Thursday, 23 August 2007

Secret Message from Lisses...

Labels: Featured, Google, Internet, Lisses, Parkour

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 02:29

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