Category: Tech

Blog Clean Up

~ rbonini

If anyone has been looking for my previous posts and can’t find them, there’s a reason.

I’ve done a spring clean ( not that its really spring) and removed quite a few posts. As part of my aim to focus this blog on technology, all the politics stuff is gone. I did keep the Quotes and Bushisims as well as a few funny items. This’ll also apply to my Link blog.  

And to reflect this new change in direction, I’ve altered the tagline  to “Random Technology Musings”. If anyone thinks that its too random, suggestions are welcome.

HD versus Blu-Ray

~ rbonini

Note: I’m far from an expert on this subject, but have been watching from the sidelines

I was at ASDA yesterday (that’s Walmart here in the UK) and found a few titles in both HD and Blu-Ray formats. It was exceedingly modest compared to the huge “normal” DVD collection that surrounded it. It seems to drive home the point that a single, unified format that runs on all devices works.

My collection of DVD’s ( about 100) can be played on any capable device I can find. From my PC to the my laptop to the DVD player to the Playstation 2. The only thing that changes is the screen size and controller format. Simple – no thinking require, literally.

As far as I could tell (and I didn’t look that hard to be honest – I wasn’t planing to write this post), the only device capable of playing either format was the PS3 (of which there were only 4 on sale). The reason for the lack of a) players and B0 titles to choose from comes from the confusion over which title is going to make it to the big time. Its a rather chicken-and-egg problem. Do you take a risk and back one over the other and hope that it will make it with enough pushing? or do you sit it out and wait for it to make it to the big time.

The thing is that once a format dominates, both manufacturers studios and retailers stand to make huge amounts of money since all the confusion will have cleared up and consumers will feel much more comfortable spending large amounts of money. Its not just the disks, its the whole eco-system that surrounds it. I’ll have to buy a new CD-drive capable to playing the new format. I’ll have to by a new player for the TV. I’ll have to by a HD-TV ( already done). I could go a bit further an by a HD set top box. And then there’s the disks (both with movies on them and for burning stuff to )

Since there is so much to gain, I don’t get it when manufacturers are prepares to duke it out to the death (or one or the other does a repeat of VHS’s move against betamax)

The thing is,  a push is already happening:

On the one hand, it looks like Blockbuster is going all Blu-ray (in other words, no more discs that conform to the HD-DVD format). According to a story from the Associated Press as seen on Fox (there’s also a blog on News.com about it)

…

Could Blockbuster’s move mean the death knell for HD-DVD? Is Blockbuster even relevant in this market where people are getting their video on-demand and through outlets like Netflix?

…

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Net, questions are being raised about Blu-ray discs engineering. Via Engadget comes a report that certain Blu-ray discs are “rotting” to the point that they’re unplayable.

I watch with interest, while I save my pounds and penny’s to spend on the winner – to the victor, the spoils.

Scoble, Facebook and Zoho

~ rbonini

I’ve just been reading Scoble’s latest post. Its a long rant about Facebook (and maybe Social networking in general).

Now I don’t use any Social Network (Gasp!Say its not So! 🙂 )and its mainly because I prefer handling my friendships the old fashioned way – face to face. Any contacts go either on my phone, Outlook (Another gasp!! Outlook? OUTLOOK??? 🙂 )or Gmail.

But that’s not the point of the post.Its abut contacts in general. Outlook doesn’t do any sort of tagging. Gmail has tags. But not to the degree that Scoble suggests:

Let me define different behaviors for each tag. “LOVER” tag might go into one page with a password, for instance, that isn’t publicly available. That way Maryam and I could use a social network to send sweet nothings back and forth (I can’t use any of these networks for THAT kind of social networking). “BUSINESS ASSOCIATE” could have a form that includes why I care about that person, business wise. So I could put Fred Wilson there, add that he’s a VC, add his blog, add his Twitter account, etc.

Which is pretty clever.

They say genius is lightning across the brain. And as I read the above paragraph, a tool to do the job jumped instantly to mind –Zoho Creator.

Raffic Aslam, of Zoho, left this comment to my last Zoho post:

Dear User,

Thanks for your compliments )

I hope you would have checked out our scripting language – Deluge, which helps users to build powerful applications easily. I request you to try out Deluge Script and share your valuable thoughts.

Check out Deluge Scripting Video here –
http://static.zoho.com/creator/v2/collateral/delugescript/index.html

Thanks Again
~Raffic Aslam

 

The link is actually to a video of said scripting language in action, which you can view below (thanks to YouTube):

Its quite incredible. So this whole post is essentially a note to self reminding me to have a crack at this problem the next time I have a free afternoon. It’ll be more of a mashup than anything, but its a good idea to test Creator’s limits on.

Zoho Strikes Again

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

(via LifeHacker and Scoble’s link blog)

I’ve never seen something quite like this. I moonlight as an ASP.net Developer and this had me shaking my head in wonder:

Advice to Microsoft Corp. – buy Zoho before Google does (whatever the price, it’s worth it to beef up Microsoft’s web services). Imagine the power of Creator when merged with  SQL and Longhorn Server (err, Windows Server 2008), for example.

Life as a Beta

~ rbonini

Steve Rubel  is right on ( for the philosophically inclined):

From adolescence onwards, you’re in a perpetual beta mode. As an adult you’re constantly learning new skills and capabilities, even as you age. The best and brightest among us are constantly growing. As a human being, you really don’t “ship” (as the technology parlance goes) until you’re dead.

For the geeks among us :

This week Apple, a company that certainly strives for perfection, launched a new beta version of its Safari Web browser. It’s buggy on both the Mac and Windows and lots of people are grumpy. It even broke several of my Dashboard widgets.

Yet, Apple, as a technology company, seems to be allowed to make such mistakes. They are permitted to learn and grow out in the open by slapping the “beta” label on products and services. Everyone else, however, is expected to be perfect. That’s like asking Curt Schilling to pitch a perfect game every outing. It’s ludicrous.

 

And so, in a eureka moment, I figured out why  Google has  two thirds (maybe more) of its software with a Beta tag, even though the software works perfectly well.

Seriously, people ( or should we say beta testers??) are more forgiving with Beta software. I mean, that’s why we’re testing the software in the first place.

This’ll keep me warm  in the long hours ahead as I prepare my Windows Home Server for an upgrade to Release Candidate 1.

Safari for Windows Beta 3

~ rbonini

I must say I’m impressed with this addition to the browsers I have installed.  Along with Firefox and IE7, Safari rounds everything off in minimalist style. It invokes the Apple user in be to start clamoring for a Mac (or a Microsoft version of Boot Camp).

Its a Beta and an Apple App running on Windows, so crashes are de rigueur for this kind of thing ( forgive my french) .  And, yes, its crashed more than a few times since I switched to it full time last night (read: 24 hours ago).

As luck would have it, Safari crashed as I was reading this TUAW post. Specifically, it crashed as I read the line:

It has tons of new great features as well as the cursed instability issues…

The Unofficial Apple Weblog post has a nice rundown of the features, some of which I’ve never heard of.

In using any Apple app, you can expect the design ethic of His Steveness to permeate every aspect of the UI. Any Windows app feels like a chain saw in comparison ( that’s right, that goes for those toolbars).

I had one problem with regard to actually surfing. The booking process at easyjet.com broke down in Safari round about Step 4. The Safari team might want to look at their asp page support.

In the final analysis, Safari for Windows lives up to all the hype and is all that we’ve come to expect from Apple

Windows Home Server RC1 Install, part 1

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

Hmmm. What’s new in an install process that I can say?

 I’m still doing a little testing of beta 2 it seems, since this is the second time today I’m trying to remove one of my drives so that I can copy all my data off  to said drive to save said data being turned into random bytes by the uncontrollable, tyrannical Redmond installer. Ok, that was a bit theatrical, but you get my drift.

I downloaded said installer last night and set the server to remove the drive in question this morning. said drive still shows up as still being connected despite the wizard being left for “several hours” ( that’s the only time estimate given,which is useless).

I’ve now got to burn said installer to DVD while I wait. While I go and do that, you can look at the these installer screenshots, if you’re geeky enough.

Update: The Wizard has been running for 3 hours now, and the progress bar is less than a fifth of the the way across. I’m thinking of taking more radical action.

Update:Soon after posting the above update, I used remote desktop to bring up the Management Console, changed drive letters for my external hard drive so I could access it and started copying files over like mad. It took , oh, 6-7 hours to copy every thing across. I’ve actually got it installing now. Here’s to the install working first time.  

The Google PageRank

~ rbonini

This made me laugh:

Link Popularity vs. PageRank vs. Yoda

Not that I actually have an opinion on how to best rank webpages. To settle the debate, we’d have to see the actual algorithm that Google uses as well as gauge the ratio of legitimate links to pages (i.e. not from spam/link farms).

Not we’ll get to see the Google algorithm. The best idea is to come up with a comprehensive list of factors that influence a page’s popularity and usefulness that most people can reasonably agree on and write an open source version of the algorithm. As far as legitimate links are concerned, I haven’t the faintest.

What do you think?

The Shrek 3 Render Farm

~ rbonini

I just got sent this fascinating article on the Render Farm at Dreamworks Animation that they used for Shrek 3 (and others).

Its rather fascinating to see what massive amounts of computer power on tap can achieve and can’t wait to see the move when it comes out here in the UK.