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Windows Technical Preview

November 9, 2014

I'm having a play with the new Windows Technical Preview / Windows 10 and find myself pleasantly impressed. I've installed it onto two machines, both machines around 8 years old. One a Pentium D based device, the other with an AMD Athlon processor, both of these computers originally came with XP. So we're not talking about modern hi-tech stuff but rather antiquated hardware somewhat on the wrong side of their 'best before' dates. From starting up the install process (via DVD) to having a running system took between 20 to 30 minutes. No crashes or hiccups, in fact these were…

4k video

September 20, 2014

I must confess I would quite like a 4k video camera. It's not that I have any intention in producing any 4k video for upload to the internet, but for two other specific reasons. Recording in 4k but downscaling to 1080 can give an improved picture by reducing the amount of noise, this is especially true for dark or low light recording. The other reason is the flexibility of being able to pan around or crop your 4k clip and so 'zoom in' down to 1080 level without any worry of reduced quality through pixilation. At the time of writing…

Too much Cloud

May 5, 2014

Here a cloud, there a cloud, everywhere a cloud! I guess my first experience of The Cloud (as we currently accept it) was with Dropbox and Evernote. Dropbox worked well for my files and Evernote for memos and the smaller documents. Pictures went up to Flickr, videos to YouTube. For chat, then text messaging when on the move or Skype when at my desk. Everything had its place. However as time went by I found myself using Google's services more and more. Having everything integrated together seemed to make sense. Google's docs and spread sheet offerings were more than powerful…

What do I want for a 4G phone.

March 1, 2014

The 3 network is about to bring fast 4G coverage to my area. Other networks already provide it, but at ridiculous prices and with some quite restrictive download limits. However 3 is offering 4G (that's 4G LTE to our colonial cousins) at their current 3G prices with sensible or even unlimited data usage. Currently I have some very nice smartphones but none are 4G capable, so it's time to be looking around for something to fill that gap. I'm not in a great rush as my current contract is not due for renewal for many months yet, but it's still…

New academic year for 2013.

August 31, 2013

It's getting near to the start of the new academic year. Time I kicked this blog back into life with a few student observed projects and some comments on anything technological that happens to catch my eye. I really used to like The Register as a source of information. The nice thing with it is that the .co.uk version highlighted a lot of the British and European technology stories where so many other web sites were totally American biased. However for reasons I'm not too sure of I seem to have gone off that site. I still do look at…

4K monitors

May 31, 2013

It appears ASUS is launching a new monitor with a 3840 by 2160 display; a 4K device with a screen the equivalent of four current HD displays. I assume this first one will be horribly expensive, however once one company has brought something to market the rest will soon follow and prices will tumble. So I guess we are now talking about 4K screens arriving for home consumption, yet much of the population is not yet HD! Perhaps they are the lucky ones in that those who have recently spent vast amounts of money on fancy HD 1920 x 1080…

Toilets not telephones

March 25, 2013

According to a U.N. report, of the 7 billion people who live on this planet, 6 billion have access to mobile phones but only 4.5 billion have access to toilets or latrines. That 2.5 billion without basic sanitation represents around 37% of the population, and of this 2.5 billion, over 1 billion still defecate out in the open. No surprise to learn that the countries with the higher levels of open defecation also have the highest number of under-five child deaths. A bit of a sad reflection on the world's priorities where phones come before even the most basic levels…

Future for Apple.

March 20, 2013

Noticed an interesting story on brg.com regarding where Apple's future may be. Apple has something like 500 million iTunes accounts linked to credit cards. So add a fingerprint reader to your future iPhone or other iTunes connected device and you have the potential for a secure mobile payment system with Apple / iTunes acting as a known, established intermediary between the purchaser and the credit card company. This would enable you to buy anything and pay for it through your iTunes account, obviously with Apple taking a small commission. If going through a fingerprint reader then iTunes could help to reduce credit card fraud,…

Microsoft price cut

March 11, 2013

It looks like Microsoft is cutting the price of Windows 8 and Office to PC makers, especially those doing small screen and touch screen devices. I assume they are deliberately targeting those devices competing against the iPad and hoping this software price reduction will be reflected in equivalent hardware price reduction. Also assume that it's to encourage more manufacturers to start producing Windows tablet devices. I actually quite like Windows 8 and run it on various (quite old) machines, however I do run it using the conventional Win XP type screen display, not the fancy what was called Metro style…

A new meaning to having (microprocessor) chips for tea!

February 27, 2013

The Kinetis KL02 is a fully working ARM microprocessor system on a chip which the chip-maker say is swallowable. If they can make a microprocessor system 2 mm square then I assume adding sensors to match this size should not be a problem, so suddenly seeing what’s going on inside you takes on a new meaning. Instead of an endoscope probe fed down your oesophagus just swallow a KL02 ‘pill’ with built in micro-cameras and light and see what’s happening (possibly on your mobile phone!) as it goes down. Have sensors on it (processor controlled) looking for specific conditions. If…