Teknovis

Here is an old news item (August 2008) that I came across today. Actually, it was emailed to me by somebody as an example of innovation!

The main function of the I am Rich application is to display a red jewel on the user’s screen. However, it cost $999.99! Yes, really! Apparently this is the maximum price allowed. So I guess that the application’s main purpose is to act as a wealth symbol!

For more information about this application, and a screenshot, see The First $1000 iPhone Application and Apple removes $1,000 featureless iPhone application. It is free to view the red jewel using your Internet browser :D

I am not really clear why Apple removed this application from the store. If it was unhappy with the price, and the fact that people were accidentally buying it, surely it should reduce the maximum price allowed for applications.

I presume that this application never made it back to the market place again, but I wonder if the people who bought it still receive support and upgrades :)

Furthermore, is there anything to prevent somebody stealing one of the screenshots and creating their own version of this application? This could even start a price war ;)

Tags: Apple, I am Rich

Earlier this week Google announced a new Gmail feature that lets you append your location to your email signature. This is in addition to the launch of Google Latitude last week. It seems that Google is trying to integrate location information into all of its applications!

Is anybody worried about the privacy implications of this? Not yet, but I am sure it is only a matter of time until some incident causes controversy!

Fore more details about this see New in Labs: Add your location to your signature.

Tags: Google

The Irish Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) published a report earlier this week covering the attitudes of Irish residential customers to ICT. The report is very easy to read, and it contains many interesting findings. My favourite findings are:

• 79% have Eircom as their fixed line supplier
• The average monthly fixed line spend is 48.04€
• The average monthly mobile spend has decreased from 45.64€ to 41.64€
• Vodafone‘s share continues to decline, O2‘s share has seen a marginal increase, Meteor’s share continues to grow, and Three‘s share remains relatively unchanged.
• 56% own either a PC or laptop, and 11% own both
• There has been a continued increase in Internet usage, and penetration now stands at 64%
• 43% think that speed is the most important factor when using the Internet
• 50% of home broadband users do not know their contracted downloaded speed
• 44% have heard of VoIP, 35% of these have used it, and72% of these people use Skype
• 82% believe that technology has improved their lives
• Technology is used for entertainment purposes by 36% for more than 20 hours per week

The full report can be downloaded from ComReg Residential ICT Services Survey Q4 2008.

Tags: ComReg, Eircom, Ireland, Meteor, Mobile Phone, O2, Skype, Three, Vodafone

This week Google launched a new version of Google Maps for Mobile that enables users to share their location information with their friends. So basically it realises a FriendFinder LBS! This is something that I worked on before, but neither the technology nor the market were ready at that time :(

The new software is known as Latitude, and there are both desktop and mobile versions. The privacy features seem fairly basic, so I am sure that it is only a matter of time until there is some controversial security breach!

I will try and install and review Latitude here soon! In the mean time, you can read more details about it in Google will tell your mates where you are, and you can download it from Introducing Google Latitude.

However, Latitude has been dismissed by Irish company Locle for not being social enough! Locle has an application that enables users to locate their friends. However, its application is intended to be significantly more social because it will integrate seamlessly with both Facebook and Twitter. For more details about this see Competitor to Google Latitude pitches to Facebook and Twitter.

Tags: Facebook, Google, Locle, Twitter

Like many people, I have a very large collection of MP3s on my computer. I diligently ripped most of them from the original CDs, and I ensured that the ID3 tags were set correctly. My ripping software automatically gets this information from a database on the Internet, and I am really only interested in the artist name, album name, song title, track number, genre, and cover art.

I share my MP3s with my family, so the MP3s get played on several different computers using different MP3 players, and they also get played on several different types of mobile devices. Everything works really sweetly because all of these MP3 players can read the ID3 tags.

When I bought my HTC P3600 PDA, which runs Windows Mobile 5.0, I also bought a large miniSD card to hold a selection of my MP3s. I was really annoyed the first time that I played an MP3 on it, because the default MP3 player does not use the cover art contained in the ID3 tags! This is another sad instance of Microsoft ignoring a well established standard!

After doing some searching on the Internet I found a simple hack that works if all of the MP3s that share a cover art are in the same directory.

1. Extract the cover art image from the MP3. This is easy to do using the MP3 player on my computer.
2. Save the image as Folder.jpg in the directory containing the MP3s that share this cover art. The image will usually be approximately 300px by 300px.

Unfortunately, this does require some effort every time that I want to add new MP3s to my PDA :(

I have since discovered that the MP3 player in Windows Mobile 6.0 does not use the cover art in the ID3 tags, but the same workaround described here enables it to display the cover art!

Tags: HTC, Microsoft, PDA, Windows Mobile 5.0, Windows Mobile 6.0

I just read TechCraver Review: BlackBerry Storm. Wow! The Blackberry Storm just seems to be getting more and more bad reviews! Actually, I do not think that I have seen or heard of a single review that was predominantly positive!

Blackberry Storm

The most common complaint seems to be that the touch-screen interface is far too slow, and that the text appearing on the screen while writing a message significantly lags behind the finger movements!

Perhaps this is best summarised by Stephen Fry in Gee, One Bold Storm coming up…

Watching someone writing an email on a Storm is like watching an antelope trying to open a packet of cigarettes.

The main idea of this PDA was to introduce touch-screen technology to Blackberry users who were looking longingly at the iPhone! I bet many of them will still buy this device, and then they will try not to be disapointed :o

Tags: Blackberry Storm, PDA

Last weekend I had to visit my local computer store. While I was there I had a look at the Netbooks. Although I am aware of what Netbooks are, this was my first time to actually play with one. Maybe I should be ashamed of being so slow to do this!

I was really impressed with the Netbooks that I saw. I focused mainly on the Windows XP ones. I think that the idea of using Linux from a performance view is great, and I love the idea of a solid state hard disk. However, I think that I still feel more comfortable with Windows. Also, there is always going to be some piece of must-have software that I need that will require Windows.

I can understand why so many people are choosing Netbooks instead of regular laptops. I know many people who do a lot of travelling for work with their laptops, but all of these people could replace their laptops with Netbooks. So I can understand why Intel is getting concerned that the Netbooks are reducing demand for its more powerful, and expensive, processors. For more about this read Here Come The 12 Inch Netbooks, And Intel Isn’t Happy About It, and the associated lively discussion.

I must admit that I am very tempted to buy one ;) I think that my biggest concern is that I already use my PDA for many of the tasks for which Netbooks are designed. Therefore, I might always choose to take my PDA with me and leave the Netbook behind. I need to think about this a bit more…

Tags: Intel, Linux, PDA, Windows XP

This is definitely going to be my last post about the US election in 2008! However, I am writing this because it highlights a serious security risk!

It appears that when the election campaign ended John McCain’s organisers sold everything associated with the campaign. I think that would be normal. Included in the sale was John McCain’s PDA. I do not really understand this, because I could not survive without my PDA! However, not everybody needs one! Significantly, this PDA was not wiped, reset, or formatted before it was sold! Luckily (or unluckily – depending on which way you look at it) the PDA was bought by a journalist! I guess that all of this gives new meaning to transparent politics :)

For more details about this see McCain campaign sells unwiped Blackberry for $20.

Tags: PDA, US Election 2008

I think that Google Maps is really powerful, and I love reading about, and viewing, some of its more interesting aspects (for example the high-resolution photos of a well in Chad).

I also think that Google Street View is a great extension to Google Maps, and the user interface (including Pegman) makes it really easy to use.

It is great to see that more cities in the EU are becoming available. The Spanish cities of Barcelona (or should this be the Catalan city), Madrid, Seville, and Valencia were recently added according to Spanish cities surrender to Street View. Google records the information using slightly modified cars, as seen in the Flickr group pool Google Street View Cars.

As Google Street View becomes more popular it is inevitable that people will be recorded doing unusual things. There were a few examples recently of unusual recordings that caught my attention. The system should automatically blur faces, but it does not always work.

• There was a lady in Madrid who needed to go to the toilet while on the street! Google has removed the close-up image of her from the system, so there is no longer a photo for the scene of the incident. However, you can still see her head from slightly further along the street. You can read more about this, and see the original photo, in Google scrubs urinating woman from Street View.
• Other people choose to make the most of their moments in the eye of the camera, such as a girl from Chicago who decided to flash her breasts. Her image has also been removed, but you can see her by moving along the street. You can see the original image, and read more about the incident, in Girl Flashes Chest at Street View Car.
• A girl, who was recently kidnapped by her grandmother, was located by the police with the help of Google Street view. You can read more about this in Google’s Street View Takes A Byte Out Of Crime or ‘Kidnapped’ child tracked by mobile phone and Street View.

I noticed while writing all of this there there is a new Google icon. It appears that I am not the only person who noticed this according to Google Gets A New Favicon, Again. It’s Uh.. Colorful.

For more information about Google Maps and Street View see the official Google Lat Long Blog.

Tags: Flickr, Google, Spain

I read a very interesting article about a new period tracking application for the iPhone. The application is called I am a Man, and it enables the user to keep track of the periods of several women. Its main features are described as:

• Trace your girlfriend’s periods
• Set a master password for the whole program
• Set personal passwords for every girl
• Make calls by simply tapping on her name

Here is a sample screenshot:

I am a Man Application Screenshot (courtesy of VentureBeat)

For more details about this application see An iPhone app to track the menstrual cycle of your girlfriend(s). (Yes, you read that right).

I think that the application seems to be quite useful! My only negative comment is that the application title is a bit sexist, because it seems to be very focused on male users. Surely more females track periods than males!

Unsurprisingly, the application is getting a lot of negative attention. For example, Pat Phelan expresses his opinion in Farts and periods, Apple finally reaches the bottom of the barrel, and many of his Irish readers agree with him.

I understand why people have these negative opinions. Furthermore, I think that most of my Irish friends (both male and female) would have similar opinions.

However, I think that this application will be viewed differently by people from different cultures and backgrounds. For example, I know females who feel that information regarding their periods is not particularly private (of course they do not make a public announcement about it either). It is just not a big deal to them, and it is certainly not taboo. Indeed, some of these females already track their periods using their computers or mobile devices. Finally, it is not uncommon for them to know when their colleagues are having theirs.

So are these friends all exceptional? I do not know, but perhaps their attitudes are influenced by the fact that they come from Spain and Italy :o

I will try and convince some of my female friends to post their opinions of this application here :)

Tags: I am a Man, Ireland, Italy, Pat Phelan, Spain