Prototype of a Person

Google Maps Mobile

Thanks to Noel, today I’ve mostly been abusing my data package to access the Internet using installed applications such as Google Maps Mobile (go to this site on your mobile to directly download the app).

Recently Google Local Business Center became open to Irish businesses. There hasn’t been a big uptake so far (I suppose it’s early days) - if my experience of searching random keywords in Google Maps is anything to go by. The maps application on my mobile currently doesn’t seem to support searching for local businesses or “my location” or “highway traffic” (these might be network dependent, I’ll have to get someone to try it out on Vodafone), which is a pity but I’m still planning on making my absolutely-no-sense-of-direction other half install this app. onto her N70.

Even on a small screen Google Maps looks and feels great and is very easy to use. I was surprised that you could use “satellite view” (similar to Google Earth, where you see satellite images rather than a simple map). A really nifty little feature in “directions” is that you can use shortcut buttons to jump from point to point on the route. Overall I’m impressed and looking forward to being able to (hopefully soon) access the local business search, you never know when you’re going to need to know where the nearest pub is.

Pain As You Go on the Three Network

Read the replies to the science week inspired question “What change would you make to an existing piece of technology” here and Johnny K’s here. If someone would like to keep the ball rolling please do. We all need inspiration at some point – I’m quite a sporadic Blogger, science week was the most I’ve ever written in such a short space of time, of course there was that extra piece of motivation too.

Speaking of changes to existing technology…

This was going to be is a long-winded post explaining how annoying it is being a pay-as-you-go customer on 3 Ireland - I mean come on, if a network can’t even get their basic pay-as-you-go service right then how can you trust them to get anything else right?. I’ve decided to condense these issues into bullet points so as to reduce the cognitive constraints on those from the network that might possibly end up reading this.

• Please make it easier to top-up my phone. O2, Vodafone and Meteor provide you with the ability to top-up by text message, by online/phone banking, on their individual websites and from ATM machines (you can probably top-up by homing pigeon too). 3 provides none of these services and to this day I still have difficulty getting 083 credit, especially from those automatic machines that are everywhere. You can call their customer service department in Mumbai where you can request to top-up by credit or laser card, but this process takes about 20 minutes as it requires the customer service person to call you back. Not everyone has a credit or laser card either, so this is a bit of a pain.
• Please offer free web text messages. This is probably the handiest service all the other networks offer to their customers. I can’t imagine any short of cash college/school student would give these up.
• Please sell your sim-cards by themselves. Self explanatory.
• Please provide me with the settings for my sim-free phone. 3 don’t offer any handsets with a qwerty keyboard, I’d love to be able to buy any phone I want.
• Please upgrade your coverage. I’ve heard this phrase “piggy backs” about 100 times from 3, this is the concept that when you move out of coverage you “piggy back” onto another network. In reality what actually happens is – your phone loses coverage but your handset tells you that you still have coverage, but in reality you’re not able to make or receive calls. This happens often (it’s not my phone, because it happens to Jen too). Anyone that works in the Jervis Centre in Dublin City Centre will tell you – you 100% cannot use your 3 Network phone anywhere in there, it’s rather bizarre actually.
• Please start selling upgrades to pay-as-you-go customers. If you’re already a pay-as-you-go customer and you want a new phone on Three all that lovely free credit is completely lost to you for loads of really boring reasons. If you’re on O2, Meteor and Vodafone they practically reward you for upgrading your phone.
• Please sort out your automated phone menus. When you call customer service you must first listen to about 1 minute full of recorded messages, there is no ability to skip through them, none at all. When you’re calling up to top-up you can’t skip through the recorded messages either. It’s very frustrating.
• Please reduce the cost of calls. Self explanatory.

For all of the above reasons I shall be moving to Vodafone in the New Year. The only reason I have stayed with the Three Network was because of the full Internet Access on my phone. Now Vodafone have this, but if I want to I can use any phone on their network (I could even get an unlocked HTC handset (a.k.a an XDA) and use it with lovely full Internet access, not that awful O2 imode). Although, if the Samsung F700 comes out anytime soon (why that advert in the Metro recently?!) I’ll be getting that on Vodafone bill… because, I’ll need to make sure it’s insured won’t I?

Related: Damien Mulley is currently testing the 3 Skypephone.

Update: The F700 didn’t launch soon enough for me and I ended up changing to Meteor and I’m actually saving a fortune, I’ve downgraded phone wise (no more mobile internet) which is a pity, but having mobile internet access is really not worth the really expensive call charges.

Science Week Winners

Congratulations to everyone. I hope you all put your Wii to good use over Christmas.

What was your favourite invention from your childhood? - Kevin Breathnach

What invention would you most like to see in the future - Brian

What is the next gadget you plan to buy? - Monscooch

What was the best invention of 2007? - Poetbloggs

What invention helps you most with your working life - Johnny Keyes

Special thanks go out to Martha Rotter from Microsoft for taking such an interest in my article on Hotmail.

What changes would you make to an existing piece of technology?

As inspired by the Science Week posts over on Mulley.net

What changes would you make to an existing piece of technology?

I’d love it my Sony Ericsson w850i had a QWERTY keyboard and a slightly larger screen, so I could write longer e-mails and not get frustrated with text message input limitations. Besides, most of the smart phones out there at the moment that have QWERTY keyboards are the size of bloody toasters. (No thank you!)

So… what changes would you make to an existing piece of technology?

In your opinion what was the best invention in 2007?

The last Science Week question, which is disappointing as I was quite enjoying it.

ZymeQuest Blood Simple Machine

Scientists from a biotech firm called ZymeQuest in Massachusetts developed a technique to change the blood type of a sample of blood back in 2003. Now they are in trials with a device (about the size of a dishwasher) that can change entire batches of blood that might be type A, B or AB into type O. This is important because type O blood can be transfused into practically anyone despite what their own blood type actually is.

I am not going to pretend to understand the biological and technological components and research that have gone into this machine, but I do understand what it does - which is something that would be of great benefit to hospitals all over the world. There is a wonderful article on this device over on Popsi.com.

You can read the other submissions to this competition here. (I very much hope no-one mentions the iPhone, otherwise I shall be shaking my fist at them - as it is not an invention, it’s a product!)

Which invention has helped you most with your working life?

Another Science Week submission…

The Filofax

I’ve given up searching for the perfect electronic organiser or PDA and rather than continue to struggle with my data being scattered across wall calendars, notebooks, post-it notes, smart-phones, my laptop, my desktop in work etc., What with going back to college and working full time I’ve had to make sure that I am very organised, so I’ve recently started using a Filofax. It is a godsend.

I don’t have to worry about charging or syncing my Filofax. I don’t have to worry about the screen cracking if I drop it. I didn’t have to spend hundreds of euro on a device that would only partially suit me and would be replaced in 6 months or so by a slicker and better value for money piece of kit. Really the only worry I have is that my writing might not be legible after jotting down notes on a speeding bus. Although, now that I think of it, I wouldn’t mind if I could put some kind of password or lock onto it, to stop a certain someone trying to figure out what she was getting for Christmas.

My favourite feature of my Filofax is that there are no constraints to what kind of data that I can enter. As I am writing this I realise that it’s strange to apply these types of observations to something that is, on the most basic level, really just paper and pen. No matter how advanced technology has become nothing can change how satisfying it is to quickly jot down notes and drawings or doodle stars and Santa Claus around your daily calendar entry for December 25th. Simply being able to do anything I want (if I can draw it, or stick it, it’ll end up in there) is very productive for me.

It is the built-in software constraints that are there to stop users making mistakes that have stopped me from really embracing any kind of electronic organiser. Nothing exists that can imitate the physical aspects, the tactile sensations and visual guides that I employ. For instance, multicoloured page markers (flags) - the different colours represent different important events. They are physically placed to open the appropriate page, and they also indicate when similar events are taking place over a certain time frame (importantly though, this information can be discerned without flicking through the pages). Even something so simple like being able to put an already written post-it note straight into the Filofax saves me time during my day (be it in college or work). Sometimes I like to jot down quick notes about a project I’m doing, these are usually really messy (but yet very organised at the same time) mind-maps and diagrams. I am a very visual person and I like my data to be visually appealing - I can’t use pink, green and blue highlighter pens in a PDA now can I?

A really great addition to my Filofax has been a template I created in Microsoft Word to print out pages of information (timetables etc.,) that will fit, and also a Filofax hole puncher so I can place the pages perfectly. So no, I haven’t turned my back on technology all together (as if!).

You can read the other submissions to this competition here.

What’s the next gadget that you want to buy?

Today’s Science Week submission… because I enjoyed writing one yesterday and if I have a chance I’ll do tomorrow’s (Which invention has helped you most with your working life?) and Saturday’s (In your opinion what was the best invention in 2007?) too.

An mp3 player that isn’t an iPod…

Ask anyone about MP3 players and obviously the iPod is perceived as the ubiquitous model. This is the work of incredible marketing on the part of Apple and despite masses of criticism (quick battery death, difficult repairs etc.,) the iPod has managed to outsell its competitors, even when the likes of Creative and Archos seem steps ahead of Apple in terms of quality, durability and innovative thinking. These are some of the reasons that the next gadget I want to buy will be the new Creative Zen.

The Creative Zen is a flash based mp3 player, similar to the iPod Nano, both of which are very different to the iPod Classic model which is a hard drive based player. There are some major differences between flash based players and hard drive based players, it’s not only price and size, durability is the key.

Hard Drive based mp3 players

A hard disk drive (HDD) stores your data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Picture the internal components of an iPod (or any other hard drive based player) as a small disk, spinning continuously as your songs load and play, quite similar to a CD spinning in a discman. You can even feel the slight vibrations of the disc when holding an iPod in your palm. These moving parts make the iPod quite fragile, especially if you drop the device while it is in use.

Flash Memory based mp3 players

Flash memory is a solid state storage drive (SSD), meaning that everything is electronic rather than mechanical like in a hard drive. This indicates that there are no actual moving parts, making flash based mp3 players more resilient to both dropping and everyday use. It is for this reason that flash based players are favoured by joggers and athletes.

The iPod Touch, Nano and Shuffle are all flash based players and in comparison to their more popular counterpart the price to storage space ratio is far higher. For example the 16gb Nano is €199 and the Classic 80gb is €249. Flash players might be more expensive than hard drive players, but they’ll certainly outlive any hard disk players on the market (this is especially true for iPods, having been criticised heavily for their seemingly built-in obsolesce).

This is where the Creative Zen comes back into consideration. It has an SD memory card slot which gives you unlimited media storage possibilities. The idea being that when your Zen becomes full you simply buy a memory card(s) for it. The latest SD memory cards are available in up to 32GB in size and although these are expensive at the moment, flash memory is following Moore’s law which indicates that the price should continue to drop at an exponential rate as the maximum capacity increases. What I really like about the Zen having an SD card slot is the fact that I already have SD cards from mobile phones and cameras, which I can re-use in the Zen.

The other huge selling point of the Zen is the 2.5inch screen – the same size screen as the iPod Classic but the Zen is a fraction of the size. Its size is comparable to a credit card and is a very slim 0.44-inch thick. Surprisingly though it actually feels very sturdy in the hand. The Zen also plays a wider variety of file types, so no need to convert your entire music collection or to use iTunes, you can even use Windows Media Player or Winamp to manage your music and video files. The Zen can also be used as a dictaphone as it has a built-in microphone and also has an FM Radio (a must for a PhantomFM fan like myself) – these are two features that you must purchase additional accessories for in order to have them on an iPod, accessories that cost over €50 each.

Overall the Zen represents, to me, a better investment than any other kind of mp3 player would, especially an iPod. I’m going to be a very happy music/video lover once I get my paws on one of these.

You can view other entries to today’s question over on Damien Mulley’s blog.

What was the favourite invention from your childhood?

This week is Science Week – which is hard not to notice if you’re a reader of any of the popular Irish Blogs. They’ve been running a blogging competition and my favourite entry so far has been by Roosta answering the “What invention do you want to see most in the future?” topic from today with his Giant Fighting Robots, it totally cracked me up. I’ve had visions of B-Movie type escapades on the moon ever since. Yesterday’s topic was “What was the favourite invention from your childhood?” and although the competition is closed for this topic I still feel an urge to write about it briefly.

HoTMaiL

Over 10 years ago my brother Dave brought home a dial-up modem for our home computer, opening up a mass of information and entertainment to us. Prior to this the only access that we had to any kind of Internet was from free CDs that came with computer magazines (they would sometimes put entire websites on these CDs!). Being teenagers and having little concern we proceeded to run up extraordinarily large home phone bills. Much to our dismay the Internet got banned from the house, but not before we both got completely hooked.

Luckily for us an Internet Café opened up nearby where we could get our fix. But the thing about the Internet way back then (which is actually exactly the same, now) is that you needed an e-mail address to sign-up to practically everything online. Not having your own internet service provider (ISP) at home meant no e-mail address and this closed off a large section of online content.

Independence Day 1996 - Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched the first webmail service on the Internet, they chose this day to symbolise freedom from ISP based e-mail and being able to access your e-mail from anywhere in the world. This service was called HoTMaiL and in December 1997, having reached over 8 million subscribers, it was bought by Microsoft and is now known as Windows Live Hotmail, though users still generally refer to it as simply Hotmail.

Thanks to Hotmail in the late 90’s a whole world of geeky goodness became privy to my curious mind. Having access to a web-based e-mail service meant that I could sign-up to all those wonderful geeky science fiction and technology newsletters and websites that I dreamed about being able to access and get involved with. It meant being able to make friends online in far off places like America that would happily spoil the latest season of Star Trek Voyager for you.

Most importantly though, it meant being able to share interesting websites, files and photos. It was a lot harder to find information (and any interesting content) online in the days before Google search and blogging. Also, not having access to an e-mail account meant being the last person online to find out about everything. Web based e-mail also meant you could access your e-mail from any computer, any time. Not knowing if your parents were ever going to let you get back online at home meant that you often had to use your initiative to access your e-mail, so being able to access your e-mail from any computer was very important.

Through my youth online I learned how to write, to think critically, and I was encrouaged by my peers to be opinionated and expressive. I was encouraged to learn new skills like web design, graphic design and typing skills. If it hadn’t been for my first e-mail address I probably wouldn’t have immersed myself so completely into the online world and to this day it is of benefit to me that I did.