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* Posts by spacca

4 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2009

Leicester City councillors eye up iPad to save £90k a year

spacca
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hmmm

Well, I live in leicester and from where I am now I'm only a stones throw from the city offices.

Cutting down needless printing is a great idea but the real financial problem the city council has in leicester is the main council building is unfit for use near abouts. In fact it's got to the point where it would either cost them hundreds of thousands just to make the building safe and sound without any real improvements or xx millions to build a new one. A couple of iPads isn't really a big deal when you put it into perspective.

As for FAIL! posts - come on guys, do you really think hundreds of thousands of sheets of dormant paper is a good idea? You factor in all the costs of printing which includes the paper, the ink, the machines, the service costs of large printers and the re-prints because the documents have been updated (not to mention repair bills for large network printers which can cost thousands) and you begin to see why any way to reduce the tidal wave of paper in local councils would be a good idea.

Sour grapes or just jealousy? Maybe all the techies on this post are just luddites....who knows eh!

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'Suspicious' Android wallpaper app nabs user data

spacca

hmmm

Sure this will turn into a flamewar, but this does highlight the need for a closely observed and regulated marketplace when it comes to phones. Either that or someone will invariably produce a virus and malware protection programme to run on the phones to keep that vast majority of the normal, non geeky phone using public safe from their own technological shortcomings. Android will take over the market (I don't think that there is any question of that) but the hardware will have to run security just to make using it safe. Joy.

And, it's not like this is a minor issue, when phones are doing everything a computer does (loosely) but combine payment systems (already running in some parts of the world) and also tonnes of personal info that is in general unprotected, it's only a matter of time before the first big F'up happens. Be interesting to see who accepts the blame.

I for one am happy with Apple's take on how to control their market, it may not be perfect (far from it) but I do feel secure.

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Designers detail the cars of 2030

spacca

Car Designers

OK, so they spout out some nice shinny designs and come up with interesting propulsion units and use crazy new materials BUT there is something wrong with this picture as there is with a vast majority of conceptual stuff. The framework or environment these things need to work in.

It's like MS's Natal. A great idea and a good sound bite but unless you live in a house with masses of room it's a turkey. Same goes for many of the transport concepts wide-eyed designers produce. It's all well and good to come up with these new ideas but they still have to run on conventional roads. Do you really see any of these things dealing with a pothole? I hear expensive bits breaking off already.

Perhaps they ought to spend more time on actually designing things which answer real world problems rather than making up answers to questions nobody would ever really want to ask...

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MS exec gets shot down after 'inaccurate' Windows 7 spiel

spacca

What's so bad

in taking inspiration from one of your competitors or anything else for that matter. I'm a designer and the one thing I am aware of is that new stuff doesn't come from nowhere, it's an amalgam of old ideas, personal influences and customer requirements etc.

So 7 stole a bit from Mac OS (as did Vista and XP et al) So what? It's about time that Windows users got a better environment to work in. Not all PC users are nerdy boys - in fact I would say the vast majority of users are just normal people trying to do their thing, it's just that they unfortunately in many cases have to work on a window-box and that's their lot in life. Bout time things got better looking and easier to understand and if Apple was in part an inspiration for the change then that's a positive thing. Why M$ can't even admit a grudging admiration for Apple's UI design is beyond me.

BTW I am a mac user and always have been but I've got a PC (it makes me feel shitty just looking at it) and I don't enjoy using it as I do my mac. This is what MS needs to inject into their operating system ENJOYMENT and it's been missing for soooooooo long.

Also, if they could only get rid of that fat dancing monkey and but someone at the helm that was likable to top it all off they could really get things moving again.

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