sxa's Technical Musings

[Short link to this article if you need it:http://goo.gl/sWOd] Everyone's using social networks these days. Well ok not everyone, the people that don't usually give one of two reasons. Either they don't have time or they think it's all about posting what you had for breakfast. If it replaces other information sources in your life (e.g. using social networking instead of reading news feeds) then it doesn't have to take any extra time. The second reason, well, possibly valid, so here are my tips on how to make your social networking activities worthwhile I often see updates that are of no interest to me whatsoever, or I see things that just don't make sense. So here are my top tips to avoid for 'status updates' on social networking services to avoid me disconnecting from you. Don't be an antisocial networker: Status updates that don't stand alone - If I need a whole bunch of background information that only exists in your head instead of o...

Having now used the N900 in variouos situations to perform voice and video calls over the net I can say that it's a great choice for VOIP. The current version of Maemo supports Video calling using Skype or GoogleTalk out of the box, and VOIP using various providers. in fact it works with the no-extra-charge VOIP account that my broadband ADSL provider gives me, which makes it an excellent replacement for the landline since it looks like a normal landline number (for CLID and inbound calls) The N900 is such a great device, and it was nice to see this stuff come to the N900 before other devices, and others are now catching up with some of their software features ...

I have F1 2010 working on my PC now. All very well except the first time you go into it you get asked for your name, team you want to drive for etc. and you get a couple of minutes of training in using the menus and hints on how the 'career' thing works from your agent 'Gabrielle'. Which is all great, except that you can't save anything by default. And what's the reason? Microsoft Windows Live... I initially installed F1 2010 on my laptop and just in case it 'phoned home' my access code I installed without being connected to the LAN. That way I could be sure of being able to reinstall on main PC without a 'duplicate installation' problem if it had registered my machine's details with an external server on the net somewhere. As a result of not being connected I had to go through the registration and training every time I start the hame. After installing onto my main PC I decided 'ok I'll let it register' with the XBox LIVE service ...

I'm not sure what to make of this week's announcement about AT&T and Verizon trying to push contactless technology in mobiles. They've teamed up with Discover (Fourth biggest behind Visa, Mastercard and Amex) with Barclays handling the accounts and are expected to begin trials in 3Q2011. T-Mobile is also involved. Now I don't know about you, but I'm not sure why I would want my telco provider involved in such a scheme. Admittedly I haven't seen what the involvement of them would actually be, but I don't particularly want another middleman (who would be taking a cut of sales - I believe the telcos probably went with Discover because of the percentages involved) getting in the way between me and my transactions, and potentially being bounced between more parties if there's a dispute. I'd rather deal more directly with the banks, and not have to risk a service which may potentially be dependent on my staying with a particular provider. For those of...

I'm sure that most people reading this will already have heard that recently Google have announced that wave will no longer be developed as-is and the expectation is that it will be removed as an offering by the end of the year. Now there are still a surprising number of people who never even saw wave, and who wouldn't recognise the name, and that's a shame because I genuinely believed in the potential that this tool had to offer. There were, however, a number of issues relating to it, and they were mainly related to marketing. Seeing how Google has done with GMail, Android, and probably GoogleTV in the future, it's a little surprising that it failed, but here's my take on why: Adoption - people weren't 'on it' Needing to have a google account got in the way, especially when it was restricted invite-only in the beginning (although given how buggy it was at the start, it's understandable). I used wave a number of times but many of the people I want...

I'm going to take a different approach from others on this subject. I'm not going to get into the legal debate on the UK Digital Economy bill (Henceforth DE Bill) since this is a technical blog, not a political one, but am going to give a common-sense view on the subject that I hope no-one can reasonably argue with, explaining how technically it won't work, and what the real solution to the problem should be. A shorter, redrafted version of this was sent to my MP. The proposed law (clause 18 specifically) that seems to have the general support of all UK political parties concerns me, and I'm not sure if we're really being given all the facts about how the conclusions have come to be put into effect. We're in the year 2010, and the way we have to deal with crimes related to technology and the internet has to be different from how we've dealt with crimes in the past. The companies who know and understand the internet (Various ISPs, Google etc) are opposed to t...

This is a blog I registered some time ago, but up until now I've never actually posted articles to it. Recently I decided to make an effort and tidy up some drafts and post them. This blog will be about various technology issues, and hopefully become a useful resource for sharing some things I'm working with, even if I'm the only person who makes use of it! I hope you find some of the articles interesting. Feedback and comments will always be welcome.