Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category.
9th June 2010, 09:35 pm
News was coming from Google thick and fast last week as they enjoyed their annual developer conference Google IO.
One of the most significant announcements for me was Google Wave being opened up to the masses. I’ve been using Wave since it’s developer preview release in early 2009 and I seem to be one of very few people who’ve used it for a sustained period of time.
Google Wave caused much comment and generated a lot of curiosity on it’s public release in 2009 but that initial interest was not sustained. Sadly the one thing Google failed to do was translate the initial curiosity about Wave into usage scenarios the average user could comprehend.
Even attempting an explanation of what Wave is and what it can do is difficult as there is nothing similar with which to compare it. Worse still were early reports drawing parallels between Wave and social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook. Such comparisons are both inaccurate and unfair. Sadly though those comparisons struck a cord with a large part of the audience that could benefit from the wonders of Wave and it has yet to recover from the stigma of the unfair comparison.
Let’s be clear Wave is not Twitter, it’s not Facebook, it’s not LinkedIn and it’s probably not like anything you’ll have seen before.
So having ruled out what Wave isn’t the next step is trying to define exactly what it is.
Continue reading ‘Waving Hello’ »
13th May 2010, 06:00 pm
One of banes of a computer user’s life is installing software. In my Windows days building up a new machine was a complete nightmare with multiple reboots and update upon update.
Installing software on a Mac tends to be a less painful experience as a simple drag and drop of the application to the Applications folder is generally all that is required. However there are notable exceptions to this installation nirvana and the two application suites I find myself having to schedule the best part of a day to facilitate the installation of are Adobe’s Creative Suite and Apple’s Final Cut Studio.
Hence, you can imagine my dilemma when CS5 arrived. I wanted to install it straight away but the pain and duration of the CS4 installation process was still burnt into my consciousness. So time consuming was the CS4 installation that I hadn’t bothered installing it at all on my new (7 week old) iMac knowing CS5′s release was imminent. I couldn’t hold out much longer though!
Continue reading ‘Sweet Suite Installation’ »
26th February 2010, 05:00 am
Picture the scene it’s the Christmas gathering for all the local groups I’m involved in. All the guests either work in technology related areas or are keen technologists in their spare time. So imagine my surprise … no imagine my horror … when one of these folks came out with a declaration to the effect that; a phone’s a phone and a computer’s a computer, completely separate devices with separate functions and never should the twain meet!
His sentiments rendered me almost speechless.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse another guest supported the sentiments of the first and added to it. He explained that he’d bought a “hand held” device that proved to be an expensive waste of time as he’d never really used it.
So did they have a point? Have I been deluding myself for the last 18 months about the imperative that I believe my iPhone to be?
Continue reading ‘Tech Toy or Geek Gold Dust?’ »
