Easy Lies

There should be a special place in hell reserved for people who tell you lies on customer support just to get rid of you. I've just got a new portable media player, the Archos 504 (long story, but it is very nice). One of the reasons I bought it was because I want to load it up with music from my Napster account. It has the "Plays for sure logo" on it and everything so there should be no problem.

Of course it doesn't work. As soon it is connected it to the Napster program the device resets itself. I've emailed Archos customer support ("response in two business days"). At least they haven't told me any lies. In fact, after nearly a week, they've told me nothing.

So today I ring Napster support. Expensive, infuriating and ultimately pointless. I tell them my Napster doesn't work. They suggest a few things and press some buttons to no avail. The supervisor is fetched. He tells me that Napster doesn't work with Archos. I tell him I have another device made by Archos which works fine. He tells me it might not work now. It still does. After a while it occurs to me that I'm probably being told this information because it has the best chance of getting me off the line. In the end it does, because I ring off in disgust.

Then, after some internet digging I try Media Player 11 rather than the Napster program. It works fine.

Wiik Ending

We've been preparing for the launch next Friday of the Nintendo Wii. I (of course) have got one on order, and I'm planning on heading up town at midnight on Thursday.

We're going to open up the department to kids from local schools and do some demos of research level motion sensing technology in our Hive Virtual Environment. And some of our stalwart students are bringing in their Wii machines to help show them off.

Today we heard from Nintendo. We've been pestering them to let us have a machine to demonstrate, and they' promised to let us have one of their store demo pods. Today they said "We're terribly sorry, we can't get the pod to you next week. We have to send it tomorrow. Is that a problem?"

Hmmmmm. Somehow I don't think so. With a bit of luck we should have the device running in our open area for most of next wiik.

Marvelous.

Dragging down Vista

Well, today's the day. I've been involved in the Connect trials of various versions of Vista - even posted a bug report or two - and this morning I got my reward in the form of a free copy of the new operating system. All I had to do was haul my browser over to the download site and grab it. Just me and a few million other people.....

Well, after a few fits and starts during the day I've managed to get a whole DVD's worth of the new magic and I'm starting to install it. I've been generally impressed with the Vista experience and I've been looking forward to getting hold of the genuine article. I was a bit scared when the screen came up with "..this upgrade may take several hours." but as I write this my media PC is running the final version.

Just in time for me to go to bed....

In Search of Power

I'm going away tomorrow for TechED 2005. Cue frantic scurrying around and selection of bits and bobs to take with me. Today I bought some new re-chargeable batteries. I did this for two reasons:

1. I can spend money on a gadgety type thing and still feel good about saving the planet (which is apparently quite trendy at the moment).
2. Most re-chargeable batteries I get don't work properly.

I find that the name is very appropriate. You can re-charge them. However, this does not guarantee that they will actually do anything once the light on the charger goes green.

The only ones which really deliver the goods are the lithium-ion ones. All the other ones with scary sounding names, nickel-cadnium and nickel-metal hydride, absorb significant amounts of energy, get warm, and then go flat as soon as you try to get anything useful out of them.

 The only good news on the horizon is that the latest batteries have really impressive amp/hour numbers written on their sides and they seem to be getting cheaper. So I've got some.

But I'm taking some non-rechargeables just in case.

Web Tools to Ruin Your Life (and improve it)

One of the students put me onto something that is going to keep me amused during lunch hours for a while. It is called StumbleUpon, and it is an add-in for Firefox or IE which suggests funky web sites that you might be interested in. You assign a bunch of categories that you like and then press the Stumble! button. It then takes you somewhere you might find interesting. When you get there, you can rate what you see so that other people can find it later. Great fun and highly unproductive, in that I can see myself spending hours with this thing. Within minutes I had found this link. I'm sure there are thousands of others.

But if you want to use the interweb to improve your life productivity wise you should really take a look at del.ico.us. Stupid name not withstanding it is actually massively useful. Again, it installs buttons on your IE toolbar, but this time it lets you manage and tag web favourites that you find. When you find a site that you don't want to forget (perhaps one you Stumbled across) you press the "post to de.lico.us" button and it then lets you enter tags for the link. It also shows you a "cloud" of existing tags so that you can easily find related sites. Very useful. You can see my tags here.

Appliance of Science

Usually on a Saturday I go up town and think about buying things that I don't really need. Yesterday was slightly different, in that I actually bought something. Staples were getting rid of some external disk drives and stuff, and tucked away down the side they had a network storage device from Maxtor.

This is like an external disk drive, but rather than connecting it directly to your computer you plug it into your home network and it then presents network shares for you to browse to. The bad news is that it will work a bit more slowly than a directly connected device, the good news is that everybody on the network can see and use it at the same time, without a computer being switched on.

At only seventy quid for a 200GByte device I thought it was a reasonable deal. And so it has turned out. I've loaded all my pictures onto it and I'm going to use it as a media server for the house.  I can even plug in external drives (it has two USB sockets) and give myself around half a terabyte of storage. Wowzer. I can remember when 20MB was a lot...

Of course I've since found people on the web reporting that theirs lost all their work when the drives crashed, but so far it seems OK....

When someone rings me a penguin dances

One of my students very kindly sent me a Firebox.com voucher after I helped her debug her program (not sure how this figures in the scheme of things bribery + corruption wise, but since the voucher has a cash redemption value of 0.001 pence I don't think I necessarily have to inform the authorities).

Anyhoo, it was off down to the Firebox web site to see what goodies they had in store. I got the latest version of 20Q - which is even more impressive than the original - and a bunch of mopods for me and the ladies in my family (they won't work for number one son 'cos he is on 3G - but you can't have everything). Actually, the voucher only covered a small part of the total price - but since I was saving money I was quite happy about this....

Mopods are fun. They are a little figure in a tiny glass jar and when your phone rings they dance. I got the penguin one which is quite neat. In the unlikely event of someone ringing me up (although it did happen in a lecture today....) he spins on the spot and lights flash. For a fiver they are quite good value.  Actually, I get quite a bit of dance action because he also detects when my phone connects to ActiveSync email and does a little dance then too.

New York Times in WPF

If you want to read the New York Times for free, and in style, head off down here and download the Times Reader beta. This is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) program which lets you read the newspaper on your Windows XP or Windows Vista device.

For the moment they are offering open access to the service, and it really works quite well. The environment itself is super duper, and a splendid way to see what WPF can be made to deliver.

The XBOX 360 as a Media Center Extender

Number one son has been playing with an XBOX 360 as a Media Centre extender. He's also been using the latest version of Vista. Lucky fellow.

Anyhoo, turns out that an XBOX makes a very good extender. And it worked with Vista right out of the box. The experience is pretty much as if you were sat at the real computer, picking music, looking at pictures and watching live or recorded TV.

The network lights up like a christmas tree when you use it (although we are using a slow old style yellow wire one for some bits) but the pictures that come out of the other end are pretty darned good.

However, this is not helping my case to get a Media PC downstairs in the living room.....

Oblivion with Cars

One of the wonderful things about the XBOX 360 is the way that you can download demos of games. Actually, this is probably not wonderful, more like expensive. I've already bought a couple of games on the back of this "feature". Darn it.

In the old days I had to wait until a magazine with a coverdisk came out. Nowadays I just leave the machine chugging for a couple of hours whilst the next potential wallet buster comes down the wires.

And so, I downloaded the demo of Test Drive Unlimited. This is a driving game. Actually, game is probably a bit of an understatement. It is more like a better version of life. You start off with a massive house in Hawii and a few cars in the garage. You look a lot cooler than you really do (at least in my case), and you seem to have a lot more spare time.

So you go for a drive. You can drive anywhere on the island. Happen you'll meet up with another driver, who may or may not be a real person. Happen you'll have a race. Happen you'll go the wrong way round the track, get hopelessly lost and embarras yourself. Or you might be more lucky than me. Anyway, if you win, money changes hands and you can save up for a new, even shinier car.

And so it goes on. The weather changes, the time of day changes. The road goes on, seemingly for ever. There are no loading screens. There is no slowdown. You can use your GPS to find things of interest and you can also meet up with your chums for races. When you sit in the car, you sit in the car. You can even make the windows go up and down.  

The car handling is realistic enough to be annoying. You can crash into things and do damage to them, but not apparently to yourself. If you are sufficiently naughty the police might want to take you to task. If you are feeling brave you can get on a motorbike instead.

When I first played Oblivion, the massive XBOX 360 roleplaying game, I was impressed by the way that the world was totally believable, and massive. Test Drive Unlimited is like that, but with cars and no loading delays at all. Folks, this is proper next generation gaming. Not a flashier version of an existing game, but a whole new immersive experience. If you have an XBOX 360 you should at least get hold of the demo of this game. Then, like me, you can start saving for the real thing...

Carrying the Q1 UMPC

My Samsung Q1 is presently my bestest mate (this might change quickly, I'm very fickle). Wtih it's dinky keyboard and tiny size I keep getting it out and saying to myself  "Complete PC here you know, even running XP Professional". Now I've added extra memory it will let me do just about all the things I want it to. Lovely.

I got the little case and keyboard, but carrying it around was a problem, in that I wanted a bag for it. I got one but it was not quite right, so I've gone and got a Crumpler "McBaines Baby -M" which is a perfect (if rather snug) fit.

If you've not come across Crumpler bags they are worth investigating. I got one for number one daughter over a year ago when she got her first portable computer, and it has stood up amazingly well. She now uses it as her "everything" bag, just throwing in all the stuff she needs for lectures (including the PC) before she rushes out of her room.

Crumpler bags are tough, well made and have the most amazing things written on the labels. If you are after a nice bag for your shiny UMPC you could do a lot worse.

UMPC on the road

I said earlier that I was taking a Samsung Q1 Ultra Mobile PC to India, in place of my tablet PC. I also said that I would let folks know how I got on with it.

The answers is, very well. When using it the biggest problem is the small screen. This is a major irritation and, although it doesn't actually stop you from doing anything, it does slow you down a bit and make it a bit harder to get things done. However, I don't really think that this is a problem. The whole point of the UMPC is that you would have it with you in situations where you would not want to have to carry a laptop, so in reality it is competing with nothing, not a notebook.

As a general computing device it is absolutely fine. Rock solid. More than responsive enough for general work and watching films. The little fan turns on every now and then to keep things cool, and from a hardware point of view it is absolutely top notch.  I bought the case and keyboard with goes with it, which makes using it in the field a lot easier. The keyboard has one of those pointing things in the middle which you can use as a mouse, and this works very well. I've not had one of these before, but I'm kind of a convert now. The only problem was that for the first hour or so I kept hitting the mouse buttons below the space bar, but I learned not to after a while.

I was able to use mains for most of the trip, but when I couldn't I was easily getting 2 hours of battery life out of the machine. That was whilst using WIFI and with no particular powersaving options set.

One the way back I was forced to put the device into my suitcase rather than carry it onto the plane. I was much more relaxed about doing this with the Q1; the device weighs so little it would not really be able to damage itself if it moved around in the case. As it turned out I was right, no trouble at all.

I really like the Q1 very much. When I got back to the UK the RAM upgrade that I had ordered was in the pile of post and I have now upgraded it to 1GB of memory. This is very easy to do and makes a huge difference to performance. I would be quite happy to have this as my main computer. I have monitors and keyboards at work and home and carrying the Q1 between the two is much easier than transporting the tablet I usually lug around. Only the slightly small 40GB disk makes this a bit tricky, but at present I'm considering how I'm going to manage all the PCs I seem to own, and put into place some kind of file sharing/sycnchronisation technology to address storage anyway.

One thing I have not done much, but will in the future, is use the UMPC as a lifestyle type device. I've put the Slingplayer software on it, so I can use it to watch TV as a client to my Slingbox (this works a treat) and I'm loading it up with some videos and music.  I'm also going to try out the tablet nature of the device and play with the touch keyboard. Great stuf.

Samsung Q1 First Impressions

I'm going through a gadget frenzy at the moment. Only a few days after my first tiny PC (the Motion LS 800) arrived, now I have a second one to play with. This time it is a Samsung Q1. I must say I'm impressed. The Motion machine is very neat, made of aluminium alloy and has a screen that is visible in bright sunlight (and looks pretty amazing in the office). The Samsung is shiny black plastic, and is a proper realisation of the "Ultra Mobile PC" (UMPC), an evolution of the Tablet PC idea.

The Motion machine costs around twice the Samsung, and so you would think it was better. Well, it is and it isn't. It has the advantage of a proper touch screen, using a wireless stylus which lets you rest your hand on the screen as you write. The Samsung has the cheaper touch sensitive screen, which renders it is all but useless as a note taking device. The Motion also has a slightly higher resolution and physically larger display. But I don't like it as much as the Samsung, because of two things it hasn't got.

Firstly it has no fan. All the cooling is done by convection. Therefore it gets warm, very warm. So warm that if you give it something hard to do (charge the battery whilst installing Microsoft Office for example) it first complains it is too busy, and then it shuts down completely.  Using the wonderful Speedfan program I can watch the processor get hotter and hotter until things go pear shaped. I'd be very nervous about performing development work or playing with images on this device.  The Samsumg has a tiny fan which pumps warm air out of a vent in the back. Consequently I can be much more relaxed about giving it demanding things to do.

Secondly the Motion machine has no kickstand. This is a terrible omission. The Samsung has two, one which angles the machine slightly, and another which stands the machine at 80 degrees, the perfect angle for using it or watching DVDs. You can stand it up and use it, which is as it should be. For the Motion I had to buy a Bookchair (these are great by the way) so that I can use it on the desk.

The Samsung will be going with me to the Imagine Cup Finals in India as my main machine. I'm going to use it for photo processing, blogging, listening to music, watching movies and a bit of software development. I'm pretty sure that it will more than do the business.  The screen is  a bit tiny, but it has this amazing "Auto Scaler" button which squeezes down a 1024x600 screen onto the display with surprisingly useable results. It also works very well with an external monitor/dual desktop configuration. I'm writing this on a 1280x1024 monitor full screen, while the Samsumg shows me Outlook alongside on its smaller screen. Very nice.

I'll have a full report about life on the road with a Q1, and the usefulness of the UMPC in general, when I get back.

Today's Lessons

Over the years, as you grow older, you pick up bits of wisdom. Some are handed down by elders and betters, others you find out the hard way, through bitter experience. Today it was learn the hard way time. The lesson -  really cheap coaxial connectors are a really bad idea.

I didn't mean to buy the cheap ones,  it was just that they were the only ones in the shop at the time. And I figured that it wouldn't make much difference. It does. Having got a shiny new aerial on top of my house so I can get my TV into the digital age I found that picture actually got worse. Then better. Then worse again. Then better and worse on a three second cycle. Not good.

Having spent hot and unpleasnant minutes in the loft/sauna twiddling with plugs and sockets I find that chucking away all the cheap plastic connectors and replacing them with proper metal ones improved things no end.  I can now watch around twenty channels of drivel on my telly instead of just four or five. Wonderful.

The other thing I learned today, which was much more rewarding, is that the latest version of Vista makes a really good TV. My little media PC is not really powerful enough, and so I'm kind of surprised that it works at all. But it does, and the picture quality is very good, far better than any digibox I've seen.  I think this is because the LCD TV that I'm using really likes being driven at it's native resolution.  Whatever it is, the results are very good and the user interface is rather pretty too.

Unlimited Internet on the move. At last

When I first got a mobile phone that would work on the internet at first I was very impressed. Then I was annoyed. The problem was not that the phone didn't work very well, it was the cost. Getting hold of a few emails would not be cheap, and as for web pages and downloads,  they were out of the question.

And so it has remained over the years. Until now. T-Mobile, one of the phone operators in the UK, has just launched a new service which is just what I want. For an extra 7.50per month on top of a mobile contract I can now have unlimited network access. I can get my email, surf the web and talk to web services as much as I like.  So I can cancel my old contract, switch networks, have unlimited internet and pay around the same each month. Wonderful.

Better yet, when you sign up you can get a new phone (always nice).  For an extra ten pounds I managed to get hold of a thing called a Vario. It is a Windows Mobile 5.0 device made by Imate so I can use the lovely email synchronisation, write C# graphics games and, because it has a little slide out keyboard, actually do useful things with my network connection.

This is a simply wonderful deal on a lovely phone. You really should check it out if you are in a position to move your contract. Unlimited network access on the move is really liberating and will lead to me finding los of new ways to use the internet and my phone.  Great stuff.

Slingboxing Clever

I bought another gadget last week. I'm selling a few bits and bobs on Ebay as part of the process of gadget turnover and so I reckoned I could afford a different toy. This one is called a Slingbox.  These things are all the rage in the 'states at the moment and were launched recently in the UK.

The name is a kind of clue to what it does.  It takes your TV and slings the picture round the world And it is a box. A rather ugly (to my eyes), silver box with writing on the top. However, how it looks is not a problem, since you never need to see it. I've got mine hidden underneath the TV at home.

When you buy a Slingbox you get quite a few wires as well. There is one to link your Skybox to your TV aerial (it has a Freeview Digital TV tuner inside so it can receive terrestrial TV), another to link to your Satellite or cable box (I've got mine plugged into my Sky+ box), a third wire to some remote control emitters so the Slingbox can control the Sky+ box, a power lead and finally a cable to go into your home network. 

What the Slingbox does is take your home video and make it visible on a network. You run the Slingplayer program in a PC and if it can connect to the Slingbox it can view a video signal that the box sends. So you can take your notebook PC into the garden and watch the Paul O'Grady Show via WIFI.

Things get even more interesting if you have a broadband connection.  By careful tweaking of the settings in your network router you can make your Slingbox visible on the internet (the instructions tell you how to do this and there is also an automatic method which might work for you).  Then you can watch your telly from anywhere in the world with a network connection. Including (possibly) at work.  Lots of people have bought Slingboxes with a view to doing this. Be warned though, that it doesn't always work. If your employer has any kind of firewall in place then you might find that packets don't make it from your front room to your cubicle. There are some sneaky configuration options that you can try which might allow the data to tunnel in to the corporate network, but this is a bit of a grey area. As is watching the telly in company time I suppose.

I really got the box so that I can watch stuff anywhere in the house, and also when I go away (public networks and hotel networks should not be restricted in this way). I also discovered that they will be releasing a player for mobile phones and pocket PCs which would be sooo cool that I just can't resist it.  Being able to watch TV on my Imate Jasjar sounds like a lot of fun.

For what it does, I reckon the Slingbox is good value.  There are other ways that you can get a similar effect, but these involve much a larger investment in computers, TV tuner cards and the like. I don't think that my Slingbox will be apearing on Ebay any time soon...

Got me a bug

I have always envied Peter his bug. He got it a while back and he reckons it is very nice.  Yesterday in Tesco (is there a day when I don't go shopping?) they had one at a very nice price. So I now have my own bug.

It is a digital radio which can also record to memory card. I want to use it in the kitchen.  At the moment the kitchen radio only works properly if the dishwasher is open - no, I've no idea why this is - and I was looking to improve matters.  I was expecting to have to add a special aerial and stuff like that because we are in a kind of "Bermuda Triangle" where things like radios are concerned. However, it just works.  Very impressed. It pulls in a good signal and now I can listen to all the childrens programs on BBC Radio 7.  Great stuff.

He who Dares Loses

In an effort to stop my Archos AV500 from becoming a paperweight in a week or so when all the protected content stops working I today put the pedal to the metal and made it into a paperweight a bit early. The idea was that perhaps a complete formatting might make it work as a Windows Media device. I'd still have to retransfer all my protected content over, but at least I would know where I stood....

Wrong. My Archos just took the formatting in its stride, destroyed all my content and then refused to work anyway.  I feel like one of those high priests who have just despatched a couple of virgins to the gods and found that it is still raining. Blarst.

Archos technical support are adamant that it is a hardware problem and are suggesting I take it back to the shop. I think this is because they have a sadistic desire to see me tangle with Dixons customer support. Or perhaps they are rather cunningly inviting me to live with the problem.  Not sure what to do now.

Managed Code Archos

My portable media player thingy is misbehaving. It won't let me synchronise with Napster. This is a potentially serious problem, in that if it doesn't get to say Hi to mom every now and then all the protected content on the disk will stop working.  This is where the idea of renting access to music rather than actually buying it once and for all starts to come to bits.  I've surfed the internet and quite a few people have the same problem as me, but nobody knows how to fix it. I've been in contact with Archos technical support and they asked if the cable was plugged in correctly. Which was rather irritating.

Seems to me that every now and then a progam in the device goes loopy and tromps all over memory, corrupting things. Sometimes the machine will stop for no reason, or the screen will change colour without being asked. I can live with these problems, but if it won't play my music that is another matter. What they need is managed code. This is a layer between the vulnerable system and the program which is running. One of the jobs of a managed code environment is to stop a program from going bananas and writing into random areas of memory.  If this happens the managed bit just stops the program from doing any damage, like mum would stop you from putting your hand into the gas fire. 

It looks as if I will have to wipe the entire machine and start over. And then live in fear of it happening again with no guarantee that it won't. Or start buying records that I really like and stop renting.