Boydo's Tech Talk

This has been in the mainstream news a bit but I thought I’d cover this off briefly here for the sake of awareness.

Wikipedia Goes Dark

Wikipedia, one of the most popular websites on the web has gone dark in opposition to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which is a bill that will be tabled in the United States House of Representatives. SOPA, like many pieces of legislation before it, attempts to stop online copyright infringement however it does so by placing the burden of policing content on website owners under the threat of blocking entire websites. This hands quite some heft  to the large media companies who can have other sites blacklisted quite easily which opens the door for abuse of power and potential suppression of competition.

While this is a US-specific piece of legislation I really do think it’s an important thing to get across particularly if similar proposals are raised in our own countries. If you want to read more about it you can check out this page at Wikipedia (which still works today despite the blackout).

One last thing, if you really need to access Wikipedia during the blackout you can still get to it from mobile devices or by disabling JavaScipt in your browser – if you need help doing this then read this page. Otherwise, just put “?banner=none” (without the quotation marks) at the end of the page you are trying to visit. However, all edits will be halted during the blackout (so you Wikipedia addicts out there will have to sit tight).

A few nights ago my wife turned on her Kindle only to find that the top half of the screen would remain stuck on what had been on the screensaver while the lower half would refresh (apart from some minor glitches).

Screen Saver on an Amazon Kindle with Screen Glitches

Password Unlock Screen on an Amazon Kindle with Screen Glitches

We both didn’t have a good feeling about it and numerous attempts to switch it on and off and even full reboots were unable to recover the screen back to its former state. I could only conclude that maybe the hardware that makes the screen work might have suffered a partial failure causing the garbled image.

There was a lament that this device had gone to heaven and a replacement device would have to be purchased. An anxious call to Amazon was placed to try and fix the problem but that didn’t work which seemingly left us the options of paying for a repair or buying a replacement device. As options were explored it became apparent that Amazon was happy to ship a replacement device at no extra charge so long as the sick/dying/dead device was sent back within thirty days.

Admittedly, the device still had a few days left on its warranty (as it was received on this day last year) so we probably didn’t have to be too worried but it seems like Amazon have been lenient even for devices outside of the warranty period. With Kindles becoming super cheap to buy it could perhaps be in their best interests to keep people happy with working hardware so that they can continue to read (and buy) new books.

The device took roughly two days to arrive and everything is back to normal (although we still need to return the old Kindle).

Anyway, this was pretty good support and fulfillment on the part of Amazon and perhaps something to bear in mind if you find that your Kindle has gone to heaven prematurely.

As more of us start using Windows 7 you’ll need to get to grips with the various features built into it. One of the prominent features carried forward from Windows Vista is search.

The Humble Search Box

Now, you’d think that you could find stuff by clicking in the box and typing the words of the file you are trying to locate and this does work. However, you might find that your search results are also populated with matches from inside documents, spreadsheets and e-mails. This “feature” cannot be disabled and can slow down your search if you’re just interested in searching by filename and not by file contents.

Anyway, there’s a way to refine your search to target filenames but it’s probably not the first thing that would come to mind.

Basically, you need to format your search as follows:

System.Filename:~=”<search term goes here>”

What this does is forces your search to target just the filename and ignore other attributes like contents or author for example. What is horrible though is that your regular user out there probably doesn’t  know about this requirement to get around the “feature” that searches everything by default nor is there a filter available to refine the search by filename from the user interface (while there is for file modification date and file size).

To be perfectly blunt for a moment, who even uses the tilde (“~”) symbol that much apart from coders and mathematicians? I reckon even these people would struggle to have worked that out without searching the help documentation.

Anyway, that’s how you can narrow down your search but there’s plenty of room for improvement on Microsoft’s part to make the search built into Windows more natural and less “programmy”.

Hi folks.

Another quick heads up for tonight.

Steam is having a sale with reduced prices on standalone and bundled games including:

• Portal 2 (reduced from US$29.99 to US$10.19 – a 66% saving),
• Call of Duty: Black Ops (reduced from US$89.99 to US$44.99 – a 50% saving),
• Half-Life Complete pack (reduced from US$39.99 to US$19.99 – a 50% saving).

Just a quick note tonight that at last I have my Zune Music Pass working on my Windows Phone as well as the music streaming. I had left it recharging wherever possible all day and late this afternoon the Marketplace. I’ve only had a brief play with it but plan on making full use of the two week trial.

In the meantime, here are some screenshots of Zune in action on Windows Phone.

Music in the Marketplace

Zune Marketplace on Windows Phone

Zune Marketplace - Genre List

Zune on Windows Phone

Music+Videos - History Screen

I don’t know how I missed this but I am really excited that Microsoft is releasing its Zune Music Pass in Australia for $11.99 a month starting on Wednesday 16th November, 2011. At long last, this missing piece of the Windows Phone ecosystem is enabled for us users down under so that we can have the full experience intended with these devices.

Disappointingly, the price is higher than what users in the USA are currently paying (which is US$9.99 a month) and we don’t get to keep ten songs a month either (which is available only to those on the grandfathered original Zune Pass subscription). Nonetheless, it’s better than nothing and being able to stream music certainly abates the problem I have with only 8GB in my Samsung Omnia 7.

At any rate, I’ll be signing up for sure and certainly gives iTunes a run for its money and leaves Google in the dust for the time being.

This is my second eBook pick courtesy of my Kindle DX and sheds some light on the internal operations of Google covering things from its genesis in a university right through to significant products such as Google Mail, Android and, of course, search.

“In The Plex” was written by Steven Levy who also wrote Hackers, another book I have read on my Kindle DX which gave a great background on the early enthusiastic adopters of computers who wanted to find other uses for these machines including music, practical jokes and games.

Anyway, “In The Plex” gives a great insight into Google which has traditionally played its cards very close to its chest from an outsider perspective. Reading about how Larry Page and Sergey Brin built up the company from scratch was fascinating and to learn about how they reacted in particular situations was also somewhat humourous. Also learning about how Eric Schmidt took on the tough role of CEO to attempt to keep the young co-founders under some control while trying to familiarise them with how to run a company as a CEO. The book even covers the recent transition of the company leadership from Eric Schmidt to Larry Page (however brief) making it quite a comprehensive corporate biography of sorts.

The book even covers tensions between Apple and Google which will no doubt be covered in the upcoming Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson (which is my next eBook). The tensions between the companies with the competing iPhone and Android products and the eventual resignation of Schmidt from the Apple board and the lead up to that event (including Schmidt leaving the board room when iPhone was being discussed) make a great read.

To put it simply, Google was and, to a degree still is, a master of keeping a lid on things unless absolutely necessary and the “don’t be evil” mantra is covered extensively throughout the whole book. The most interesting juxtaposition with this mantra includes the period in which Google maintained a presence in China whilst having to abide by the whims of the Chinese Government and “mysterious outages” while Baidu, the main player in search, seemed to coast along with minimal problems.

I think the book is a good read particularly for the geeks out there wanting to know more about what has happened behind that white page with the search box and the occasional interesting graphic in lieu of the Google logo. You can grab it at Amazon.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Samsung Music Hub which could be checked out at a popup shop in George Street in Sydney. Today, the general media have covered the fact that this popup shop was also offering ten Samasung Galaxy S II handsets per day until the end of the week for two dollars each. To boot, it’s pretty much next door to an Apple store with at least one person trying to convince people in the line for the iPhone 4S to stand in the Samsung line instead.

I guess one might wonder if such a move is a bit feisty or foolish given the relationship between Samsung and Apple at the present time.

Samsung is already under fire for its Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet with injunctions lodged by Apple preventing its sale in Australia and Germany while Apple is reportedly looking around for other suppliers for the CPUs and displays in its iOS devices.

Part of me thinks that Samsung really has nothing more to lose by waving another red flag at the bull and only customers to gain by being a bit bold and brash about its product. Certainly on paper the Samsung Galaxy S II is probably the pick of the crop of the current Android devices until the Nexus Prime arrives. However, the ecosystem has been the gaping hole plaguing the Android platform since its inception. Samsung now fills in the music side of things now with its Music Hub and Amazon with its seemingly comprehensive offering on its new tablet.

That said, perhaps component manufacturers might find the market more lucrative being a “complete device” manufacturer rather than a component manufacturer. Of course, the risk is then shifted towards successful sales of devices to realise a profit rather than selling components in bulk to other OEMs.

Is Samsung past the point of no return? Well, I don’t think the popup shop by itself would probably be the straw to break the camel’s back but I think we are seeing Samsung progressively come out of its shell in pursuit of a slice of the smartphone market. Their support could use a bit of attention (particularly their speed to release updates) though. That said, I like to see a bit of spirited competition in the market and this looks to be just what the doctor ordered in my opinion.

In what might seem a blow to Google, Microsoft and its Bing search engine will get a leg up with Facebook integration in the form of post and comment translation abilities. In a nutshell, if you come across a comment that is in a language other than your selected Facebook language then a “translate” button appears next to the “like” button.

At the moment, this will only work with users that have set their language to one of a selection of Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese as well as Russian. Users will also have the choice of having translation undertaken by machines alone or involvement from the community as well. Page administrators can also choose whether or not to enable translations on their pages as well as being able to handle abusive and spam translations as well (if community sourced).

However, machine translation can go awry and I wouldn’t be surprised if websites spring up to capture some of the terrible and hilarious translations that will probably occur

Is the world going to become that little bit smaller again?

Here’s a quick tip for tonight.

If you haven’t yet gotten into the fun physics game of Portal then you should go here now to get a copy for free through Steam. This offer lasts until tomorrow so don’t be caught napping!