Jon Grant's Technorama

Business Rates councilscam

2010-04-06T22:29:00.002Z

In the UK each business has to pay Business Rates (National Non-Domestic Rates) tax to the local council. you would have expected it to be equivalent to council tax on a similar sized home, but actually it is vastly more.

A 3 bed house pays £1,400 per year council tax. A 5 room business pays £2,500. For that massive increase, they only get a single rubbish sack, no other services are provided!

GNU+Linux on mobile laggy

2010-04-06T21:49:00.002Z

Three years on, iphone still dominates the new media smartphone market. Nokia limps along after it's massive head start with Symbian.

GNU+Linux is nowhere near.. too many bugs, too little (if any) QA. GNU+Linux is may never get and succeed in the quality niche.

QA and UI consistency has to be massively improved, will it change? I hope so, but no company has managed it over the last 3 years.

International Domain Name mistake

2010-04-06T21:31:00.004Z

Bad news for the Internet recently, International Domain Names (IDN) were passed by ICANN.

If you think about IDN, imagine if this was allowed for telephone numbers too!?

ICANN should not have buckled under unreasonable force from China on this point. It's only going to adversely affect biz with other countries too, as none can now enter a companies email address, unless they know the encoded equivlent in latin text. All email clients also need to be updated, and while abroad no Chinese staff will be able to email their colleagues in "pin yin" or any other language.

Consider beijing.cn, ICANN had already made the mistake of allowing this to become 北京.cn, the latest mistake allows this to be http://北京.中国/ (That is, I hope they didn't opt for the whole middle people's republic country name: 中华人民共和国)

So if you want to access this beijing.cn site, and you don't have Chinese input, you have to write: http://www.xn--1lq90i.xn--fiqs8s/ likewise, if you wanted to email 胡錦濤, you'd have to write xn--0jx757a5xn@n--1lq90i.xn--fiqs8s, oops!!

While Latin characters are in such wide spread use and Arabic numerals, it does make sense to relly on these 36 characters for our domain identifiers!

Symbian two phase construction

2010-04-06T21:28:00.002Z

Saw this old announcement, but how long till Symbian drops the epoch past, ditches C++ manual two-phase construction push pop stack and let's us build and debug simply using GCC and eclipse without such a complicated build system!?

GNU+Linux on the mainstream?

2010-01-31T10:39:00.003Z

Apple Mac OS was always clear and simple, take a look at any GNU+Linux distribution and you'll see any number of overcomplicated messages for basic functions such the laptop battery indicator. Is decimal place really needed? does know the .2 in 34.2% make much difference?

Time to pay for email?

2010-01-28T23:13:00.002Z

Guardian has an interesting article The end of free email.

Like calling an organisation or person, I have to pay the cost of the
phone call! Likewise for sending them a letter (with the exception of
organisations offering FREEPOST addresses). Perhaps we should do the
same for email, 1p per email externally to start with?

"One of the best ways to deal with externalities is to create a market. This means we start respecting other people's inbox as their own property, and stop dumping into it without consideration. We create a system that forces people to bear more of the costs of their actions."

Interesting to consider the options to try cut back on both unnecessary email and spam email. Having authenticated SMTP servers on a white list would make it much eaier to see who was actually emailing too.

Missing weight in laptop adverts

2010-01-24T20:13:00.002Z

I'm amazed retailers get away with this, they advertise laptops in magaines and newspapers, even gadget specialist mags like T3 and Stuff.. and they miss out the weight! Vital info when considering a laptop etc

New puppy video

2010-01-21T23:20:00.008Z

Testing if this will work.. using the "video" tag in HTML5.

Your browser does not support the video element.

Alternatively, download the video directly: kaiya_garden.ogv. Oddly it only works if I name .ogg, the .ogv version does not work in video tag!

Brown the Incapable

2010-01-17T17:45:00.002Z

Been thinking how Gordon Brown will be known after his time in office? The King of England from 978 was Æthelred the Unready, that's was quite a good nickname. Actually a pun on the his name Æthelred, meaning "noble counsel", they changed to "unræd", meaning "bad counsel".

How about calling Gordon: "Brown the Incapable"? He's not exactly successful!

Nintendo Apple merge?

2010-01-09T23:08:00.001Z

Both Nintendo and Apple are niche innovators. My feeling is it could be a great US-Japan enterprise, bringing Nintendo design ideas to mobile computing and the web :)

Rip of UK

2010-01-09T23:05:00.001Z

Dell Zino HD, $249 in USA,
AMD Athlon 2650e (512K L2, 1.6GHz)

In EU we get slower CPU, AMD X2 3250E 1.5GHz 512k
and costs £329.. bargain!

Considering the exchange rate, should cost around the same price as Acer Revo 3600, £160

Political revival of Cornish

2010-01-09T21:35:00.002Z

Nationalist politicians in Cornwall are at it again.. like Scottish SNP. As a dead language, Cornish was revived to its current level of 3,500, started by Henry Jenner back in 1903

The Independent writes about the current state. Over 50 primary schools have been forced to become the politician buttress, and devote hours per week to teaching Cornish to pupils, what a waste of education time which could have been spent much better.

Comoditised mobile free software

2010-01-06T19:57:00.002Z

We've recently reached the point where free software such as GNU+Linux is finally making it's mark in the mobile handset space.

There is a trend, new technology niches need investment and so start off as binary only. When there is increased competition either an open source option will take hold (Apache) or one of the big players will open their source (Netscape, Sun OpenOffice, Trolltech Qt etc) to gain an advantage over their competitors. Also they gain the wisdom of all contributors they gain.

Now we're seeing this in the mobile space, the likes of OpenMoko and more successful Android. Palm also have their webOS distro. They all share a Linux kernel and are built with standard GCC tools.

Symbian is a special case, like Netscape, Sun and Troll they have now also opened up their source code. They've only done this because they are loosing market share like Netscape was. In effect this was something which landed in our lap! I think Symbian could stop the drift of its smartphone marketshare now, but they do need t move away from their own flavours of C++ and cleanup stack, and support a new standard API while deprecating old ones. Like Nokia's newly acquired Qt.. hopefully ;)

Web unified HOME folder and email

2010-01-06T19:31:00.002Z

Back in 2005 I had a great idea, only found time this evening to write about it due to the snow in UK :)

Essentially we have two folder hierarchies, HOME folder, and email Inbox etc when we only need one!

So currently I have in my HOME folder I have:
Documents
Music
Videos
Photos
Public
Deleted
Tosort

In my Email I have:
Inbox
Drafts
Sent
Deleted
Documents

Take the example of me quoting for some work. On a spreadsheet I calculate my costs, my fees and I email my total quote to client as my tender. Now in a conventional system I could not store that spreadsheet with the email. I need to keep two different directory structures.

So I'd like my email client to operate on the HOME folder, I even have "Tosort" which is basically an "Inbox" and of cause Deleted.

So this means we have:
Inbox
Drafts
Sent
Documents
Photos
Videos
Public
Deleted

This allows more flexibility, I can even save a document and photo in the same folder which contains my email about the same topic for future reference.

For true flexibility this unified HOME directory would be hosted on a server, so I can access from any of my netbooks, and weblogins.

500 gram GNU+Linux netbook - £70

2010-01-01T17:46:00.003Z

Disgo Net Browser 3000 is sells in China for £70 with Windows CE 5.0. With its 7 inch display (800 x 480) it would make an excellent GNU+Linux netbook coupled with Firefox. Buying whole sale would be even cheaper. When the average *new* netbook price is £200, this is an absolute bargain.

So why has no one done it already?

Needs an ARM distro (OpenZaurus, Maemo, openmoko or other embedded disro might make more sense than a regular Ubuntu distro).
Only 64MB RAM, bloated firefox would consume that immediately, so Fennec is probably the way to go.
Only 2GB NAND Flash, distro can fit in that, presumably it is also writable so can be partitioned for a HOME partition.

Simplify Charity Gift Aid

2009-12-20T13:26:00.004Z

Even charities want my bank details now; as the BBC highlights.

The problem is that because the UK tax system is so overly complicated, charities are not allowed to claim (GiftAid) the income tax back on personal donations they receive (those individuals have paid that income tax on their salary).

Likewise each person then has to keep records of all donations they make, to fill in the GiftAid section of the personal tax return they are obliged to then prepare, costing them around £50 for a fiantial advisor to help them fill in the form.

Shame the government doesn't just simplify the whole system and allow charities just to claim in good faith GiftAid on any money collected in street donations!

New netbook?

2009-12-13T17:27:00.003Z

Currently I'm running an HP Compaq Mini-Note 10" 702EA - bought used for £160. Amazing with Ubuntu Netbook Remix, the keyboard which is large enough to touch type on.

Mass of only 1.1KG is the best feature though!

What's the competition?

Sony Vaio X505 10" 1024x768. Needs RAM + HD. 0.8KG - used price £800.
Apple Macbook Air 1.86GHz 13", 1.3KG - £1,150.
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 12", 1.6KG - Used price £350
MSI X400 14", 1.5KG - £550
Dell Vostro V13 1.6KG - £400

M&S Christmas Shoppers Beware

2009-12-13T13:49:00.004Z

M&S are running a Christmas marketing scam, so beware if you too considered buying from their "Christmas & New Year Food To Order".

The small print on the order form explains they will use your personal info for:
* marketing of products, services, marketing research.
* anything else listed in online privacy policy.
* only possible to opt back out is to write to them, and allow 3 months for them to try and take your details of their lists.

Reminds me of the Phishing scam emails I get. Workaround is to cross through those terms before signing.

Southern Water are just as bad, last month to register for water at my new pad, they ask for my National Insurance number!

This is definitely something the UK should legislate against. Also something that M&S's Stewart Rose should have never let happen. Probably ORG would be good at lobbying for a change here.

Magazine subscriptions a treasure trove of personal data

2009-12-07T23:07:00.003Z

Just got one of those magazine subscription leaflets fall out of my paper, nothing new there. What was surprising was that their freepost piece of card asked for so much personal information, which would then be all plane to read as it made it through the postal system:

Name, Address, Daytime Tel, Mobile (aren't they the same?), email, year of birth, bank account, branch, signature.

If you must take up one of these offers, send it back in a brown envelope!

Standard light connector

2009-12-05T20:28:00.002Z

Anyone who does DIY and installs new lights will know as soon as you unscrew the old light fitting you'll see a mass of wires and a connection block. Often due to the way UK ring-main works (6 wires) and then if you have a spur then there are 9 in total. Quite a mess to then try and connect in 3 wires for the new light fitting.

Therefore, what I would like to see is a standard, compact in-line connector, as is common in car lighting. The design needs to be safe, and have different shaped plastic (curve on one side etc) so it can only be inserted with the Earth, Live, Neutral connected correctly.

Digital Subtitles for TV

2009-12-05T20:18:00.003Z

In the UK both Freesat and Freeview TV broadcast of BBC and other channels feature subtitles. However, I notice how poor the real-time subtitles are compared to the ones on pre-recorded programmes and films are.

Solution is for BBC and other life programs and news to insert a 10 sec delay from capture to broadcast of their live feed to give the subtitlers chance to write and send the text in real-time!

Like other countries have had for years (Japan since 2001 etc), films which on DVD come with subtitles and audio in multiple languages should also be available when broadcast on TV. The UK must be the only country with single audio/subtitle stream broadcasts.

Also I'd like the subtitles available as part of a revised iPlayer open offering, ditching the Microsoft/Adobe requirements.

Time for more HD channels?

2009-12-05T13:54:00.003Z

In the UK with our free, unrestricted digital satellite service freesat we get 1.5 HD channels. That is BBC HD and the Red Button on ITV1 to switch to ITV1 HD

What I'd like to see is a full ITV1 HD channel schedule, additionally BBC HD being replaced by three HD channels, BBC HD1, BBC HD2 and BBC HD3. During the 2012 Olympics BBC HD2/3 could be completely deadlined to the games, and BBC HD1 somewhat.

In addition the formats and protocols should all be patent and license free like ISO standards and Khronos standards. Ideally also source code of each TV should be published, we could then fix bugs and add new features. I'd like to fix the (Info) button bug on my Panasonic TX37LZD81.

Finally, I would like to see the +1 repeat of BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, ITV1 which currently do not feature on Freesat or Freeview for some reason.

Ubuntu Netbook Fixes for 2010

2009-12-02T22:09:00.003Z

I've been runing a recent Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my HP Compaq Mini-Note 10" laptop. A very good user experience.

What I'd like to see improved in 2010 is:

"Desktop" still exists as a folder, however, it isn't the Desktop! Replace the "Favourites" with the existing "Desktop". Favourite apps can still be copied into the Desktop.
Fix "Update Manager" display of "Reading package information" which comes up so often; even when it says before and after "Your system is up to date".
Fix "Update Manager", it often appears in the notification panel, open it up and there are no updates to install. Download and check for updates and there are still no updates to install!

That's all for now; will these issues be fixed in 2010?

Clear Product Origin Labeling

2009-12-01T20:03:00.002Z

Just bought from Tesco, Daily Care Toothpaste. What I didn't realise until I got home and read the small print was that it had come all the way from China!

My usual Colgate is made in the EU (Poland). I would rather buy UK materials+production, but there don't seem to be any left (we used to have a toothpaste and even Brillo pad down the road).

Therefore, I put out a call for legislation to have compulsory labeling of:

Product origin in country name in large letting, equal size to product name/description.
The origin must not be disguised ("Scottish" Salmon produced in Russia, packaged in Scotland etc)
Km from the top destinations (as a product made in Beijing is 3,700 Km from Tibet).

Apathetic Voters Elect BNP

2009-11-30T23:12:00.010Z

It's now four months since apathetic UK voters elected two BNP MEPs in the European Parliament Elections 2009 by not voting.

How did not voting bring in two MEPs you may ask?

Well, the math is is quite simple:

The electorate is 45M.
17M voted in 2004.
15.5M voted in 2009.
Due in a large part to various Government scandals, 7% of past labour supporters couldn't be bothered to vote in June 2009. (Overall 9% less people bothered to vote)
By not turning out they effectively increased BNP share by proxy.

Taking the North West region example, where Nick Griffin was selected as a topical the example, Griffin got 134,959 votes in 2004.
In 2009 Griffin got 132,094 votes, that is 2,865 votes less! Which is a 2% drop in support.
However, because of the massive drop in other parties votes, the BNP 6.4% vote share jumped up to 8%, a quarter increase simply due to those other voters.

If the apathetic 1.5M had turned out to vote, BNP share would not have risen and Griffin would not be now sitting in the European Parliament, and attending the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen representing the UK North West (he is a climate change denier).

How much is a vote "worth"? Well, it's relative to the population, electorate, and those who vote. Consider:

UK population is 61M.
Only 45M are eligible to vote (over 18)
Only 15M votes were cast in the 2009 European Parliament elections.
Each eligible voter represents 1.35 people in the populace.
Each person who actually voted represented 4 people

So your vote is very important, every vote casts currently represents 4 people. If one of those electorate doesn't vote, the electorate that do vote, represent more of the population, and, as with the BNP, their share grows.

A few factual references with the votes cast: Ref1, Ref2, Ref3