Posts by Charlie Clark
1688 posts • joined Monday 16th April 2007 14:57 GMT
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The elephant in the room
Is possibly the Asus Transformer. What if it grows a 12" brother? That or something like it would be an Ipad-Pro or MacPad or something with premium components and design at premium price.
Sounds like Juniper trailing for the next report whenever Apple release an ARM-based device with keyboard.
I'd upvote you on this if it wasn't for the typos, spelling and grammar mistakes and rambling. Oh, and for calling Mr Asay a journalist: pundit, maybe; journalist, no way. But that's okay as his strapline tells us.
@Matt what is Twitter's business model again? Fill the interwebs with shit and get paid to clean it up? Invent "Green"? Or be bought out by the Coalition to Protect Internet Sanity and subsequently shut down?
And, even if Google didn't meet analysts forecasts, would you care to run those numbers by us again: vast increase on cashflow and profits. I bet Larry is inconsolable.
I think that Google + has a fundamentally different and long game approach to things so the usual Silicon Valley metrics of quarterly growth at all costs might not be applicable.
More interesting perhaps is also the resolution of the stuff being uploaded: HD (1080p) is becoming the norm. Google must have some seriously good network boffins to cope with that!
The point made by the poster was that if you want do to IOS then you must have a Mac. This is not the case for Android, ie. statistics favour Android. That said, previous reports have fingered as IOS as the platform from which to make money because fanbois like you are only too happy to hand it over.
As for support options - in many respects Apple is light years behind. Yes, it's great if you live close to an Apple store but otherwise you're fucked as I found out when I had to replace the fan on my MacBook. Twice. And, yes, I was using the machine for work.
Dearie me
"long-distance (320m) 24Mbps Bluetooth 3.0 streaming video"
It's known as Wi-Fi with Bluetooth functioning as the D-channel to set up and manage the connection as this is missing from the original specification.
Comes with ARM emulator
At least according to the Heise report (in German only) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intel-praesentiert-Referenz-Smartphone-mit-ARM-Emulation-1407118.html Interesting - it's an acknowledgement by Intel that existing apps won't be recompiled for x86 and a sop to manufacturers that their devices will run the most popular apps from the start. Of course, it also means more transistors draining the battery.
German data protection legislation will prevent such spamming - explicit consent is required - but will allow them to send SMS to customers inviting to sign up to the service. Though in Germany a tie-in with the Payback system would probably make more sense as Oyster would in the UK. More than enough morons prepared to sign up to such data guzzlers in the hope of some modest discount.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Does anyone still actually use Groupon? I know of one person who, like a good compulsive coupon collector, spends a load more money and time on all the discounts that they don't need.
LBS & deep understanding of a customer's preferences and disposable income is the way forward. Amazon is probably best placed to benefit from this with the Kindle series. Probably initially only on the tat it knows customers will buy from it, but in the future it will dispose of the low-margin warehouse and logistics business and co-operate with retailers - "have a customer who smokes (Marlboro) and drinks (Stella) a lot close to your shop, want to make them an offer?"
Most "app" code is written for virtual machines so native optimisation, apart from for iOS, is not such an issue. The compilers seem to be doing a good job of cross-compiling for the various ARM flavours when native is required.
I've never been a fan of Javascript but the work done by the various browser makers have turned it into a reasonable basis for cross-platform development which is what we consumers need if we are to benefit from a large choice of devices and software that "works" on all of them. If things continue to develop at their current pace, it wouldn't surprise me to see dedicated Javascript units on the ARM chips which should give the same kind of improvements that you get with hardware OpenGL over the software variant. This might be one of the reasons that Google bought Motorola for as a way to unify their Javascript / NaCl projects.
Not just marketing support
Even if Intel is filling their boots with money to start with how is this going to work long term? Intel's chips are not just hotter than ARM ones they are significantly more expensive, which is where Intel's massive profits come from. If for no other reason than they're, er, cheap as chips, ARM offers a compelling argument against x86 where you have only two vendors.
Posted in Samsung shows 55in OLED über-TV
Geek porn
Sorry but that screen makes me seriously hard - I think that's why it's 55". OLED for watching films? I don't think my mouth will stop watering!
Samsung - let me give you my money now!
Time for the "nega cent"?
Operators currently have a vested interest in maintaining high roaming charges and this is not just through reciprocity. This can be changed by borrowing a leaf from the energy conversation book and the concept of the "negawatt". The rules for wholesaling should be revised so that networks profit more when they save their customers more.
Dirty PR tricks
This trailing of unsubstantiatable rumours wouldn't have anything to do with Facebook's rumoured IPO next year would it? I really wish the SEC would learn to count, discover there are more than five hundred investors and enforce disclosure.
It's a EU-wide law and the European Commission is pretty good at enforcing such law even on "foreign" companies. Easily done when they almost always have EU-based subsidiaries in order to trade. The European courts, whilst not fast, are still faster and toothier than their US counterparts and increasingly uphold Commission findings. And, inasmuch as Google has already agreed to randomise the last octet for Google Analytics, you can seem them starting to fall into line.
You don't get the same detail or accuracy from log analysis that you do from javascript and session-based analysis. For a start session cookies help you separate distinct users using the same proxy. As this can happen anonymously - randomise the last octet of the address - there is little reason for it not to be used. One thing I'd like to see would be a "cookie manifest" for websites listing the name, purpose and duration of cookies as the BBC advocates (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/technical/cookies.shtml )
Of course, this is exactly advertisers don't want. But the law has been passed and the Commission will ensure it is enforced. It also sets a precedent for the next battle which will be the myriad bits of data requested and stored on mobile devices.
WTF
Did they hire Frank Bough's jumper designer for this?
"There are potentially so many positive benefits. It's an area we're looking at, and we'll be publishing something in the new year on the subject."
What are those benefits are who are they for? Surely general guidance on what can be said to whom is media independent? Which manager worth their salt has the time necessary as implied by Mr Jaeger to "familiarise" themselves with the media and attend relevant courses? "Social notworking" springs to mind.
Normally I would say thanks for that but having seen it I'm not so sure.
"Sales people selling to customers" - can't argue with insight like that.
From the clip "One spring morning there was a knock on the door and there was the president of the San Francisco Stock Exchange. And within about half-an-hour we were sitting down discussing my idea..."
Maybe it's true that the chairman of stock exchanges do stroll around London looking for fantastic startups. Though San Francisco's stock exchange isn't of great renown, but why did it take them half-an hour between opening the door and talking business? What happened in the meantime? Rough sex?
Seriously shit streaming performance
NFT
If you are going to explain you should probably add that Nathan only has paint in his hair because he is copying the hairstyle of his unfortunate (unfortunate because he is idolised without gain by Nathan and others) idol, Dan Ashcroft, who had an accident with a can of paint and had to leave the hairdresser's early... And, yes, Nathan the buffoon is more successful than Dan.
Mine's the one with the Salmon Latte and a copy of Rape magazine and tramp racing betting slip in the pocket.
15Peter20
Not that clothing really matters but is he auditioning for Dr Who?
Posted in British athlete puts self on eBay
The Olympic Spirit
What with the games very nearly coming within under the revised budget of £ 952 million, although some neerdowells over at the NAO think it's going to need more contingency funding, it's a pity there wasn't a enough for the athletes. But hang on - what's this about athletes being paid? What we need are more athletes with this kind of entrepreneurial spirit! Maybe the Big Issue could do a special Olympic edition for struggling athletes to sell before and after events?
Any bids from Astra Zeneca or Steroids-R-Us yet?
Bloody anal-ists
Android has had a poor start in tablets. This could initially be put down to hardware / software mismatch (Samsung and Toshiba's first efforts) then hardware delays (Motorola's Xoom, etc.) and incompatibilities - some apps, unfortunately, such as The Economist don't run on Honeycomb yet. So, while the hardware is now there, the developers are playing catch up. Maybe Android 4 will help sort this out as a unified release for phones and pads. Then there are the legal shenanigans designed to hold the competition back just long enough.
In the meantime it seems to me that the other manufacturers really have caught up on features and build quality - essential for this market - with Samsung definitely starting to look like a leader with the S II and the Nexus S - surely the phones to have this season? And the Note is definitely of, er, note.
Assuming Google can start looking after its developers and help the manufacturers to release updates a bit faster then I can see Android gaining pad market share in much the same way it did with the phones. Cheap but "good enough" devices from ZTE and Huawei, incidentally for whose Android phone there is an ad in this week's Economist, together with the Kindle Fire should do the rest. Of course, even if Apple's market share of new devices drops 30 % over the next twelve months they'll still be creaming it in.
False dichotomy
With things like the Asus Transformer already blurring the distinction between slate and notebook confusion, it's difficult to see that there will be any difference by 2015 with everything being pretty much dual mode and extensible by accessory. With next year's quad-core ARMs getting close to desktop performance and Android "Knickerbocker Glory"* spanning phones, pads and keyboards, Intel and Microsoft are both going to have to come up with something special to stay in the game.
* No idea what code name the next version of Android will have, if it has one at all.
Point of the report?
Given that FB is preparing for an IPO (before the SEC forces it to go public with its accounts) I suspect we're likely to see more and more of these kind of reports in the run up. Whether FB's PR department is involved or not - the media has a vested interest in hyping the IPO and, therefore, reporting every fucking rumour they can find.
Back to the numbers - what are the "referrals"? Are they real referrals or the tracking "like" shit? I increasingly think that Google isn't after the FB volume, preferring to see what "discerning" users are up to and the self-selection of Circles is very clever if you can see beyond the data warehouse aspect.
Just let the computer drive
Driving in modern cities is a nightmare waiting to happen. Expectations of getting from A to B are unrealisitic if there is any appreciable traffic density. This induces stress in drivers and increases the chances of accidents, even in those with lots of experience and training. I think there must be sufficient data from warehouse robots by now to be fairly sure that with fairly low max speed limits, they would be better drivers than *most* of us. When it comes to road safety you have to plan for the biggest fucking idiot out there.
So this is why they are sueing Samsung
As Apple have obviously given up on real technical innovation, opting instead for the low-floating esoteric float of shit, they need to initiate legal proceedings against any company that still has an R&D department worth the name! To paraphrase "Christopher Unborn": "Fanbois avatarise! You may not live better but you will live cooler!"
Unicorn farmers
Andrew, I am sure that if someone did come up with a way to farm unicorns it would be a fantastic investment. It would be a bit like butchering pigs: they could sell everything except the squeak. Except with unicorns there isn't even a squeak! ;-)
Good news for you?
Just taken delivery of my Wacom Bamboo Stylus - "desigined for the Ipad" but works just fine on my Galaxy 8.9.
Still shit
IE 10 preview was useful when you could install it on a running system. Having to install a whole VM *just* to play with the browser is such a hurdle that I think that many like me just won't bother. And, lo, IE is becoming increasingly irrelevant: there's already so many things that not even IE 9 does well that people are moving to other browsers and from where they are unlikely to move back. Lots of corporate are Windows 7 + IE 8 + A.N.Other browser. Stats from a large site I know of are: IE 9 is about 10 % worldwide but has hardly grown since the spring; IE 8 is still king of the heap at around 25 % worldwide but down around 10 % since the spring, most of whom seem to have gone to Chrome.
Initially MS indicated a release of IE 10 in the autumn of this year but since they decided to roll it into Windows 8 the fail whale has definitely arrived. The hardware acceleration in IE 10 is impressive only until you realise it is currently of very little relevance outside demo-space: sites are not going to go back to "works best in IE", because it would seriously fuck off influential tablet strokers, so hardware accelerated games (and ads) will have to wait for broad browser support. By the time IE 10 is released, no doubt with the stupid rider "works best with Windows 8" - why else would they be tying the development of the two together? - it will be available and good enough for Opera, Firefox and Chrome and maybe even Safari (I think it already is for the I-toys).
In the meantime, and independent of their version numbering schemes, Opera, Firefox and Chrome continue to trailblaze with interesting new extensions for HTML, CSS (paged media, yay!) and JS and are available in the real world for developers to work with. This is the only way to make sure that future standards are any use. Pity that MS still hasn't understood this.
Adobe makes money with tools
Adobe can charge oodles for Photoshop because it gets the job done. The file format is an afterthought. I suppose they're a bit less open with PDF, but again it's the infrastructure rather than the runtime from which they make their money.
FWIW the easiest way to copy & paste large bits of text from a paste bin actually requires Flash.
They could already be too late. Now that corporates have figured out how to lock down and, if necessary remote wipe, the tablets they are ordering them in large numbers. Sales reps need SAP/Salesforce/etc. not Office.
Lovely article, Lewis: informative, well-written and amusing. You're wasted on us and should be writing the next James Bond or something.
PS. is that video about LCITS genuine? The Medusa thing looks too barmy to have been made up in a satire.
Google is not full stack
What you suggest may suit Apple which wants complete control but not 100 % market share. They are simply not interested ARPU of less than USD 100 which is way above what you can expect from mobile phones at the moment - last check I made was about USD 30 and still falling.
Google wants to be on everyone's device all the time so one network just isn't enough. As it is they are on pretty much everyone's network for the relatively cheap investment of 4 years Android development. T-Mobile would cost around USD 30 thousand million just to purchase and requires extensive investment to remain competitive, which is why it's being sold in the first place.
Standard units
What's with all this "feet, metres, pounds of thrust" malarky? No one on the Reg can understand a word of what you mean! Please rephrase using standard units, ta.
"Extra levels"
Sounds good. Do you get special ammo and stuff? And what do we do with all our XP?
What limit? Or are you referring to the minimum required in order to be considered safe in charge of a vehicle.
As for the ISO designation - it has to be a Yeltsin memory of a toper of outstanding, er, qualities!
Why in China?
If the things are all made in machines then the cheapest source is that closes to the point of distribution. So, basically, I don't believe the assertion that all these factories are in China.
Totally misleading
Elsewhere El Reg has posted stats on needing to be in the Top 50 or 100 to make any cash. Quite a lot of those are developers for multiple platforms. Good luck to all those in niche markets able to make a buck!
Nevertheless, I think app pricing is an interesting example of the discovery of fair pricing in action. Quite obviously the fruitbats are extending their over spend on a physical device to its ornamentation much in the same way that people used to buy new covers or ringtones to, ahem, "personalise" their phone. I suspect that Android's sheer size and momentum will encourage a reversion to the mean.
Trading Standards
I just wonder whether she is entitled to sue Groupon for advising her on something that was obviously against her own self-interest, particularly if they helped her come up with the sale price.
That word
Don't trust anyone who says "incentivised".
The legal situation is fairly clear - the "supplier" is liable for any damages incurred as a result of failing to repair a known fault. It may take a couple of court cases to change attitudes. However, their is no onus on manufacturers to supply users with the latest and greatest version of their firmware.
Posted in Breaking news: Man lands on Moon!
Does anyone still care about Facebook?
El Reg seems have fallen to the same trick - so 2010.
Sid James Voiceover
Or the laugh at least for the reconstruction!
America is not the world
Anecdotally speaking and having just equipped myself with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 I can say that in Germany Apple's court room strategy has definitely increased awareness of the Samsung brand, at least among the tech crowd with whom I frequent - "is that the one that is banned?" and it is getting very appreciative comments regarding the screen and weight - I can hold it using an "untrained" wrist for more than two minutes! ;-) Reading books is about the only thing that doesn't work too well give the lack of height, everything else is very funky. Oh, and it has a file system! Having seen the hoops that fanbois have to go through to swap pictures and audio between devices I can see that becoming *the* stick with which to beat them.
Posted in Punctured Google+ leaks bored users
Signal to noise ratio
Is pretty good on Google and that might be what it needs for the long term. I think I log on a couple of times a week, mainly to check what some close friends have been up to. My home page is usually spammed by one or two people who I'd like to have as opt-in. I mainly read only friends and family which doesn't take long.
I suspect that treating the whole thing as a neural network as opposed to a data mine, where the distance between nodes and the frequency of communication, may be the way to monetise things, albeit indirectly. Let's not forget that Google's cash flow is extremely positive so unlike "the social network" it doesn't need to worry about ROI for a while*. Filling the site full of ads would be a instant turn-off and I like to flatter myself to think that I belong to a desirable target group for advertisers, well if the ads in The Economist are anything to go by.
* There is, of course, a whole industry with invested interest in a successful IPO for Facebook - journalists, ad execs, etc.
Firewire
IIRC Apple used to collect 1% or USD 1 for every Firewire chip sold.
As others have noted "fair" in this context is "about what the (cross-licencing) competition is paying". If Apple doesn't like it they should cross-licence. OTOH they can just stick another 10 % on the price and get the fanboys to pay for it - Iphone 4S = Iphone for Samsung.
No loophole required
Just picked up my Galaxy 8.9 from the post office bought legally as "EU goods" - anything imported anywhere in the EU can be (re)sold in any other member state. Noticeably lighter than the Ipad which is important to me, though I do think Apple probably has it right on the aspect ratio. Looks like accessories are going to be a bit of a faff.
LTS
Where's the LTS in Chrome's stealth auto-updating? FWIW Opera provides paid support and doesn't quite release at such breakneck speeds, though 11.6 beta includes a heap of new features and some UI changes in preparation for hardware acceleration in 12.
As for what the enterprise wants - we're rapidly entering the age of bring your own equipment and the migration to browser-based services (depends heavily on which your country you're in) so companies are going to have to come up with a better strategy than FF 3.6 and IE 8 as at one large company I know.
