Showing all posts tagged: technology
Artificial Intelligence, nothing to worry about, just yet anyway…
13 February 2015
Much is being said about artificial intelligence, or AI, and how AI powered entities stand ready to take over the world. Well, this might be be a concern in the future.
But right now? Maybe not. That’s if Twitter page INTERESTING.JPG, “a smart computer looking at popular human images”, and the commentary it offers of the photos it sees, is anything to go by.
According to INTERESTING.JPG, this image is of a number of birds flying through the sky in front of a cliff. Mind you, INTERESTING.JPG can sometimes be on the mark, but not too often by the looks of it.
For now, at least, there’s not a whole lot to worry about…
Originally published Friday 13 February 2015.
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artificial intelligence, technology, trends
Babies’ names are not carried far and wide by the internet
3 July 2009
Interesting premise, the rise of the internet, and even globalisation, has not quite created the global village that many people predicted it would.
At least this is the opinion of two researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, after studying names given to babies since 1995. They found naming trends tended to remain local rather global, despite the rise of email and the ability to spread ideas, and share information, quickly online.
The two researchers’ study of the spread of new names was prompted by their discovery that the relationship between the number of private e-mails sent in America and the distance between sender and recipient falls off far more steeply than they expected. People are overwhelmingly e-mailing others in the same city, rather than those far away.
Originally published Friday 3 July 2009.
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Presenting Injader: content management for everyone
29 September 2008
Sydney IT manager and software developer Ben Barden is the creator of Injader, an open source content management system (CMS) for websites and blogs, and an Australian made alternative for the likes of WordPress or Movable Type.
Update: Injader is no longer available.
Originally published Monday 29 September 2008.
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blogs, design, legacy, technology
A review of the Sony Ericsson C902 Cyber-shot phone
27 September 2008
The crew at Sony Ericsson recently gave me one of their newest mobile phones, the C902 Cyber-shot to call my own for a couple of months.
Given my love of taking photos, I’ve been waiting for a chance to try out the phone’s five mega-pixel camera up at the nearby UNSW campus (where I have a stack of shots from my digital camera to base comparisons on), but to date Sydney’s topsy-turvy weather has thwarted me.
August is statistically Sydney’s driest month, but a clear sunny day, ideal for the outdoor shots I want, continues to elude me whenever I plan to be on the uni campus. Never mind, maybe next week.
Back to the C902. Mobile phones have continued to evolve far beyond being a simple telephone, and the C902 is the latest in this line of development. I have more than the means to simply phone or text home to say I’m running late, sitting comfortably and unobtrusively, in my shirt pocket.
I can send and receive email. Surf the net (reminding me that I need to create a dedicated mobile device stylesheet for disassociated), participate in conference calls, organise my calendar and tasks (I’ve long since dispensed with a paper diary), film and view video clips, listen to the radio or MP3s, and of course take photos.
It’s certainly a stylish piece of equipment, and the black finish complete with the silver-grey trim, makes for a uber-appealing tool that permits me to take off into the wide blue yonder for days at a time without having to worry about being out of the loop.
Anyway a few observations to date:
Battery life
So far I have no qualms with the C902 battery. Mobile phone battery life is truly a case of “your mileage may vary” with any phone though. Some weeks my usage has been higher than others, and I’ve needed to recharge the battery after three days.
Another week passed before a recharge was required, with only a few short calls, but the phone was on stand-by the whole time.
Reception
I’ve found reception to be very clear, and even if I’m walking alongside a busy road, or in an area where reception is not so strong, I can still hear a caller’s voice quite clearly.
Mind you I haven’t used the phone away from inner Sydney yet, so can’t comment on reception in rural, or more remote, areas.
Keypad
The keypad is rather compact, and sometimes I press the wrong key. My current phone is a Motorola MOTOKRZR K1 and I find its keypad easier to use. I do have oversize hands though so this may not be a problem for everyone.
I also appreciate that that “clam shell” type phones do have a little more handset real estate, or room, to allow for slightly wider keypad buttons, as opposed to “candy bar” type phones such as the C902.
Text messaging
Despite my fat fingers text messaging with the C902 is simple and straightforward. I especially like what I call the “multi-choice predictive text function”. The C902 will offer several suggestions as to which word, or part of, you wish to use, as you are typing. This took some getting used to, but now I am finding it quite useful.
Screen Icons
I was a little confused by some of the icons appearing on the phone’s screen display, particularly a U-shaped like red arrow. Was it some sort of warning?
A browse of the phone’s manual failed to turn up a legend, or explanation, of screen icons. I have since deduced however that the icon is a “withheld”, or missed call, indicator.
Another initial puzzle was an “H” icon 1 which was present on some occasions but not others. I noticed it would vanish from the screen if I stepped into a lift, or was in an underground car park, so I assume it is a “strong signal” indicator.
Security
One little gripe I have is with phone security, or lack of.
While the C902 does feature a keypad lock, this really only guards against accidentally dialling a number while the phone is in your pocket or bag. In comparison the MOTOKRZR K1 has a PIN activated phone lock, meaning I can’t do anything with the phone until I tap in a PIN code.
It’s an extra layer of security I appreciate. If the C902 does have such a phone lock, its activation eludes me.
Computer synchronisation
I was quickly and easily able to synchronise the phone to my laptop by way of the C902’s “PC Suite” software, which is included on the DVD that comes with the phone.
I can transfer photos and videos from the phone to my local drive, manage my contacts/phone book, appointments, and task lists, and best of all, send SMS text messages via the computer keyboard, something I appreciate no matter how big a phone’s keypad is.
Summary to date
Aside from the points I make about understanding screen icons and security, I am enjoying using this phone.
A “quick reference” page in the operating manual addressing points such as screen icons and phone security would be useful, as I consider these primary to the phone’s use, as opposed to, say, the camera, which strikes me as being a secondary function, and something I would expect to have to read more about before using.
Further reading and reviews
A few other Australian bloggers are also trying out the phone, Jen, Ben Barren, and Neerav Bhatt, so between us you’ll end up pretty clued-up on the C902.
- 1. I later learned the “H” stands for HSDPA, being High Speed Downlink Packet Access, which is sometimes called “turbo-3G”. ↩
Originally published Saturday 27 September 2008.
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legacy, mobile phones, technology
Where are all the girls in IT?
8 August 2008
IT consultancy Thoughtworks Australia has launched a new initiative aimed at encouraging more girls and young women to pursue careers in technology, Girls in IT (website no longer online).
The big questions are, why are girls not interested in studying technology subjects at school, and, what can be done to motivate them to do so?
Women account for less than 15% of the people working in technology in Australia, and 52% of the total population. Girls are just not choosing to study technology-related subjects. Findings from a study conducted by the NSW Department of Women reveal that 35% of Year 8 girls choose ICT subjects compared to only 17% of girls in Year 10, a 50% decline in take up.
Girls in IT also aims to “influence the influencers” through getting parents, teachers, and careers advisers, excited about IT careers.
Originally published Friday 8 August 2008. Updated Sunday 8 May 2022.
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Arthur C Clarke’s Newspad RSS news aggregator
30 May 2008
Author and futurist Arthur C Clarke is credited with predicting the emergence of a number of technologies, including a tablet-like device called a “Newspad”, which could serve the latest news stories from electronic versions of newspapers.
So far more has been said about comparing the Newspad to PDAs or Tablet PCs, but the Newpad also worked in a very similar way to today’s news aggregators, or RSS feed readers.
In the novelised version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, (chapter title “Moon Shuttle”, pg 66-67) Dr Heywood Floyd, chairman of the US National Council of Astronautics, spends time reading on his Newspad, while traveling to the Moon.
Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.
Not only did Arthur C. Clarke predict PDAs and Tablet PCs, he also foresaw the emergence of news aggregators, and RSS technology.
Originally published Friday 30 May 2008.
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2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke, film, legacy, science fiction, technology
Progress? Coming soon, the disassociated WordPress blog
13 May 2007
The wordpressing (my new favourite word) of disassociated is well under way. It’ll be a while before anything happens though, as I’m trying to convert four years of static HTML file blog entries into a format I can upload to a WordPress database.
It’s not all cut and paste work. There’s quite a bit of formatting still to do. Redundant CSS styles and HTML tags need to be removed (to say nothing of dead links, but later for those), and there’s still the risk it won’t work. It should though.
As part of the redesign I have created (and uploaded) photos to a new-ish Flickr page, so go check it out. More photos will be added as I go. Bye for now…
Originally published Sunday 13 May 2007.
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blogs, design, history, legacy, technology
Vale Windows NT4, you were the best
4 August 2003
My days of working with the Window’s operating system NT4 are all but over. It seems ironic that this outcome was brought about while I was trying to install some updated security patches for NT4, from the Microsoft website.
After the updates had been installed, I was unable to dial back onto the net. When I investigated, I discovered that all the dial-up networking protocols had somehow corrupted, presumably during the installation of the new security patches.
Then I noticed something else. Various icons on my desktop where jumping around, or sometimes vanishing completely when I clicked on them. I ran a virus check, and discovered the presence of some sort of hack tool in the NT systems folder.
There has been an increasing incidence of hack attacks on PCs in recent months, which has partly been caused by security vulnerabilities in some versions of Internet Explorer, which allow would be hackers relatively easy access to susceptible computers.
Possibly hackers had tried to access my PC while I was in the process of downloading the security updates. Talk about ironic.
To complicate matters, my anti-virus programme wasn’t able to remove the offending item. It turns out this particular hack tool is a rather tricky number, as it attaches itself to various computer ports and cannot be deleted easily because NT4 considers it a running or in use process.
It was enough to make me reconsider my PC situation though. My current “home” computer is now over six years old, and in more recent times has been developing an increasing number of small, though irritating, problems.
While it is nothing that a full system rebuild couldn’t resolve, I have decided that since I am doing more work from home now, it is well and truly time to upgrade my computer system.
I have a philosophy of running things into the ground before I replace them, and since I have had, up until now, access to more modern and powerful PCs at work, I had not been too worried about replacing my aging home computer.
All going well, I should be up and running using Windows XP, on a new super chunky PC by early next week. I am now waiting to see how XP compares to NT4, as XP is based on NT4. Obviously there will be a few degrees of difference in terms of technology advances between the two operating systems, but it is stability I am more interested in.
In the almost four years I was running NT4, the system only crashed two times. I consider that an exemplary track record, given the OS (Windows 95) I used prior to migrating to NT4 used to crash at least two times a day.
Originally published Monday 4 August 2003.
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