Apple Tablet To Redefine Newspapers, Textbooks and Magazines

Steve Jobs said people don't read any more. But Apple is in talks with several media companies rooted in print, negotiating content for a "new device." And they're not just going for e-books and mags. They're aiming to redefine print.

via gizmodo.com

I've been highly sceptical about the rumoured Apple iPad (or iTablet), mainly because I just can't see a use for it that wouldn't be better satisfied by either a laptop or a phone. If this report is anything to go by, Apple have long recognised this as a problem for the product and are seriously trying to address it.

Would I be interested in multi-media news and information access device? Maybe, but I think I'd want 3G/Wifi access and/or some sort of auto-download feature so that I could use it on the train without having to worry about internet access or bandwidth constraints. It will be interesting to see what they come up with, and at what price.

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Vodafone to sell Apple's iPhone in UK, too

Vodafone has reached an agreement to sell the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in the U.K. and Ireland, an announcement that came just a day after Orange revealed it would also sell the handset.

via appleinsider.com

This isn't really news any more, but with Orange and Vodafone selling the iPhone I'm hoping that O2 will drop their prices or improve their 3G coverage in order to hold on to their existing customers. I have no plans to switch from O2, but that might change if Vodafone or Orange could offer a decent 3G connection along my route home.

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Google starts user testing of wave

GOOGLE IS TO BEGIN invitation-only trials of its Wave collaboration tool, which has been available as a closed developer test since its introduction in May.

via theinquirer.net

You're not familiar with Wave? It's worth looking at; very neat, potentially very useful.

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Wireless Motion-Detector Tracks Your Health Patterns

What do you get when you mix the old-style pedometer with the Wii and our modern obsession with health? The answer: the fitbit, a tiny wearable motion-detector providing you with a window into just how healthy (or not) are your days and nights.

via cultofmac.com

I'm a sucker for gadgets, especially if they produce allegedly interesting statistics in a simple, straightforward way. This looks like a really neat idea, a bit like the Nike+ thing on speed. Worth a little investigation, I think.

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New ARM chips offer glimpse of future Apple products

Chip designer ARM announced this week new dual core Cortex-A9 processors capable of breaking the 2GHz barrier, perhaps foreshadowing the muscle behind Apple's future mobile devices.

via appleinsider.com

A 2GHz multi-core chip in a phone? I'm pretty sure that was on my wish-list for the super phone of the future. If they can squeeze this beast into an iPhone case without roasting the hands of its user then things could get quite interesting.

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London Fashion Week; the Excitement Builds!

London Fashion Week begins tomorrow, running till 23rd September; is it coincidence that I will be on holiday and out of the capital, or is it a conspiracy? Are they trying to tell me something?

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Dessine moi un objet: iPhone and iPod Touch paper stand / dock

via dessinemoiunobjet.com

How neat is this? A very nice piece of design work.

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Really horrible weather in London; rain, then more rain

Today's walk from Aldwych to Waterloo wasn't as much fun as it could have been. The rain, which was merely annoying on Strand, was horizontal on the bridge; by the time I got to the train I was half-drowned (lower half, mostly, although I avoided bus-splash at the huge puddle halfway across the bridge). I am writing this on the train and the rain is still falling, the skies are increasingly dark, and autumn is definitely on the way. Time for a holiday.

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Miliband confident; "no danger" of mass power cuts

There is "no danger" of mass power cuts in the UK during the next decade, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has said.

via news.bbc.co.uk

The energy shortage has been averted, praise be, much relief all round. Except that the Governments own energy adviser seems to be concerned. And The Economist's analysis (http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14167834) makes pretty grim reading.

So who do we believe? I think I'd like the Government to make a more convincing case; list the power stations being built, their capacities and their completion dates. On the same page, list the current power stations, their capacities and their decommisioning dates. Graph electricity consumption predictions, publish the underlying data and methods of calculation, and explain exactly why Miliband is so confident.

From outside Government, it looks like Miliband is complacent because he knows it won't be his problem for much longer, but that's no comfort to the rest of us.

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BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | UK 'could face blackouts by 2016'

The government's new energy adviser says the UK could face blackouts by 2016 because green energy is not coming on stream fast enough.

via news.bbc.co.uk

More good news on the energy front. I wonder if now might be a good time to invest in the companies that build nuclear power plants and wind turbines? It's either that or turn off the lights and move to France.

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iPhone 3.1; First Impressions

Before I get to those enlightening First Impressions, a couple of notes about my upgrade experiences.

 The download (247Mb) took longer than I'd expected, so I went to bed. At 3am, having visited the bathroom, I stopped at the desktop, found the download complete, and triggered the update, then went back to bed. At 3:40, unable to sleep, I checked on the phone to find that it hadn't charged during the previous five hours (some weird USB conflict or problem) and the battery had expired halfway through the update. So, charge the phone (and install iTunes 9.0) then try again.

 Two more failed update attempts, and I'm getting a little testy. At about 4:20 I restarted the PC and, at last, the update went through. Back to bed.

 At 6:30, on my way to work, I stopped to collect the phone expecting to find it fully synced and ready to go. Instead, nothing was synced except the basic system settings (so I could get email and contacts) and after fifteen minutes of fiddling I gave up and left for work without Apps, music, movies or podcasts. Not ideal.

 Now, as I sit on the train, 3.1 definitely feels snappier than 3.0, but I can't really be sure without testing a few apps. It's surprising just how much additional functionality the third-party apps add, and how far the iPhone experience is degraded when they're suddenly unavailable; I really miss them.

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iPhone OS 3.1 Now Available

So for me, the big news from Apple's Rock and Roll event today is the release of OS 3.1 for the iPhone. The release notes in full:

• Improved syncing for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and photos
• iTunes U content organization
• Redeem iTunes Gift Cards, codes, and certificates in the App Store
• Display available iTunes account credits in the App Store and iTunes Store
• Save video from Mail and MMS into Camera Roll
• Option to Save as new clip when trimming a video on iPhone 3GS
• Better iPhone 3G Wi-Fi performance when Bluetooth is turned on
• Remotely lock iPhone with passcode via MobileMe
• Use Voice COntrol on iPhone 3GS with Bluetooth headsets
• Paste phone numbers into the keypad
• Option to use Home button to turn on accessibility features on iPhone 3GS
• Warn when visiting fraudulent websites in Safari (anti-phishing)
• Improved Exchange calendar syncing and invitation handling
• Fixes issue that cause some app icons to display incorrectly

Not a bad list of fixes but no mention of performance improvements and, to be frank, I'd happily sacrifice all of the above for a snappier performance. They may have slipped it in unannounced, of course; it's downloading now, so more comment tomorrow after installation and testing.

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New iPhone Configuration Utility

I've just logged on and opened iTunes, and what should I find but a iTunes 9.0 and an iPhone Configuration Utility:

iPhone Configuration Utility lets you easily create, maintain, encrypt, and install configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs.

Downloading now.

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The joy of taps; revenge of the stop cock

We have a problem with our stop cock; it leaks. Not quickly, but it sits in its cupboard in the dining room leaking just fast enough for a puddle to collect in the bowl deployed to catch the drips.

 Replacing it ought to be easy. Turn off at the water meter, remove the faulty stop cock, replace with a new one, turn the water back on. Very simple, very quick, no problem. Reality, of course, has other ideas and this allegedly easy job has now joined the list of "I'll do it next weekend" tasks that remain incomplete for a marriage-damaging amount of time.

 The problem is that I can't find a replacement part that fits the existing pipework and I'm now thinking that I'll have to get a plumber in to do it for me. That's a bit annoying, but sooner or later the wife will want the cupboard back and the water-catching bowl will have to move. Anyone know a decent tradesman?

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Floating wind turbines; a really neat idea

Statoil has constructed the world's first full-scale floating wind turbine a couple of hours by catamaran from the oil town Stavanger, in the hope that one day vast wind farms could be constructed far offshore in water depths of up to 700m.

via news.bbc.co.uk

One of the problems with the plan to build loads of offshore wind turbines is that there are very few ships capable of building the towers upon which they sit. Statoil have addressed this shortage (and the fact that seabed mounting is difficult and expensive) by developing a floating wind turbine. Interesting stuff, and very neat.

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Fitting new taps; joy!

Let me start with an admission; I don't like plumbing.

 Last weekend we decided that we really didn't want to live with the basin taps in our en-suite shower room any longer so we picked up a replacement pair at B&Q for me to fit, thus breaking my second DIY rule (thou shalt not plumb).

 It's a fiddly job, replacing taps, because everything happens in the restricted space behind the basin where you can't really see what's going on and there isn't enough space for either tools or hands. Wrapping PTFE tape around the threads of a pipe you can barely see without going barking mad through frustration is quite an achievement (although there is doubtless some super-easy method known only to plumbers and not passed beyond their elite ranks) although it seems to cost quite a lot in terms of knuckle skin. Having the right tools definitely makes life easier; being able to get the right tools into position behind the basin would have been even better.

 Anyway. It took a while, but it's done and the en-suite is now free of the tyranny of rubber tap washers forever. Tap-turning bliss.

 Just need to replace two pairs in the bathroom and the mixer tap in the kitchen for total washer-free operation.

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Creationists in Hampshire; a little outpost of insanity?

The creationist "museum" in Portsmouth isn't new (they've been going at least a couple of years) but I've ignored them, partly because I don't want to fund their faith by visiting their "museum", and partly because I think they're a bit strange. Nothing has really changed, except that I followed a link to their website from a blog I was reading and I couldn't help sniggering on the train. 

There site includes a few strange things, like:

Greeting the visitors in the entrance hall is "Boris", a giant 20 ft. long model of a dinosaur. 

"Boris", to judge from the photos, is a weird-looking dinosaur, reminiscent of Barney, the purple children's TV character; I think this is deliberate and says a lot about the curator's knowledge of paleontology.

One of the topics covered by the "museum's" displays is:

The impossibility of life forming from chemicals.

I imagine this relates to the origins of life, but it's hard to see what they might contribute to the debate, especially given their initial assumptions. I wonder if they know that water is a chemical? I'm tempted to drop in next time I'm in Portsmouth, but I know it would just make me angry.

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Brasserie Blanc, Portsmouth; the city's best restaurant?

That's not saying a lot, though. Located at the base of No 1 Gunwharf (an apartment block known locally as The Lipstick) the new Brasserie Blanc (http://www.brasserieblanc.com/locations/portsmouth.html) sits uncomfortably close to a couple of low-quality pubs and chain restaurants where, for only a modest sum, you can purchase some truly dreadful food (although they may have improved - I haven't dared return to check).

 Happily, BB seems to be pretty good and, five months after opening, seems to have established itself as one of, if not the, best restaurant in Portsmouth. We ate there on Sunday evening with friends, taking a window seat overlooking one of the larger pedestrian entrances to the Gunwharf complex. The food was tasty and imaginative (see photo below of fillet steak) without being extortionately expensive or weird, and we'll be going back at some point. Repeat business; can any restaurant ask for more?

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iPhone firmware 3.1; lost in the wilderness?

I've been waiting for release 3.1 since I installed 3.0. I'm not looking for features or bug fixes but for performance, particularly the quick snap of small features which was present before I upgraded to 3.0.

 Don't get me wrong; 3.0 is definitely better than 2.x, but I seem to remember that 2.0 suffered some performance issues (they were rather more serious) that were fixed, I think, in 2.2; I'm hoping that 3.1 will deliver similar snap and crackle.

 And when do we now expect to see 3.1? There hasn't been a new beta for a while, so I think it will appear either this week ahead of Apple's iPod event on September 9th, or shortly after, possibly because an earlier release would scoop new features yet to be announced.

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