Sidingsound

The BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, has written a post for the BBC’s dot.life blog, titled “Who will ride Google’s Wave?“. Along with ZDNet UK’s “first look” at Google’s new baby, Rory’s article may well be the first one I’ve encountered which (IMHO) actually explains in simple yet non-patronising terms, what Google Wave is/does, and why it should be of any interest to the likes of yours truly.

And better still, now I’ve read it (and watched some of Google’s own demo video—embedded below), I can say that yes, I am interested.

ZDNet’s article describes Google Wave as “a cross between IM and a wiki”, and that’s as good a place as any to start. Google themselves put it a bit more prosaically:

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

I’m only judging from what I’ve read (and Google’s demo video), but assuming this is all what’s being worked on: imagine a wiki (say, Wikipedia), but a wiki which evolves, sprouts extra text, images, videos, embedded maps, and so on and so forth… all in real time as you are looking at the page. Text can be seen being entered, conversation threads appearing and developing as you watch… yes, basically like “a cross between IM and a wiki”, as ZDNet said. And all this is not a program you install on your computer—it takes place inside your Web browser (well, unless you’re using Internet Explorer, which as the ZDNet preview points out, isn’t quite up to the task).

At time of writing, Wave is a “limited beta”, meaning that you can only use it if you are one of a very select band who found the Golden Tickets inside the Wonka bars… or if you live in the real world, if you have been lucky enough to receive an invitation. This is apparently with good reason—Wave is reputed to be still rather buggy and unpredictable—but I have “signed up” for notification when the service is opened up to the wider Web in due course.

I hope Google Wave fulfils the promise it seems to be showing here, as I can think of all sorts of uses which it could be put to (real-time collaboration between workers, researchers, etc.; the “next level” of Web forums; another tool for customer service; and so on). I can’t help thinking that this is a first stab at what the Web could evolve towards over the next decade or so… or it could turn out to be a fascinating experiment which leads nowhere.

Only time will tell, but I’ll be keeping an eye on this one to see where it goes.

Steve Litchfield, the mobile technology journalist and creator/presenter of The Phones Show, made a somewhat poignant comment on his Twitter feed a few days back:

Kind of sad that in 2009, I choose my smartphone based on the premise of “Which one sucks the least” 8-(

I replied via Twitter that the net effect of finding out about the smartphones currently on the market, has been to strengthen my inclination to hang onto my venerable Nokia N95 “classic” until it falls utterly to pieces, expires in a puff of smoke or otherwise “goes to join the choir invisible”. (Obviously, I expressed that within the 140 characters allowed, but you catch my drift )

Whilst it’s no secret that I like my gadgets, I don’t feel the need to ensure that they are the “latest, greatest and up-to-datest”—put simply, if they do what I want them to do, they could look like a potato or run on clockwork as far as I care. The N95 is a case in point: it does many things, it does most of them very well, it is still working fine, the firmware (operating software) is now mature and reliable, and I am genuinely happy with it (and yes, I have watched the competition closely, as you’ll see).

I upgraded to my N95 in the summer of 2007, and whilst it has been superseded by seemingly countless models in the ensuing two years, there hasn’t been a single handset from any manufacturer in my view, which has matched the range of features (and competency at them) which the N95 offers, for a price which doesn’t leave me glancing nervously at the monthly household budget.

Oh, there have been a couple of phones which “came close”, and to name but three:

• the Nokia N82 offered most of the same features as the N95, and added a xenon flash to make it possibly the most capable cameraphone on the market;
• the Samsung i8910 packs HD (720p) video recording and a great screen, but is expensive and only available in the UK on Orange, who apparently “could’ve done better” with the software; and
• the new Nokia N900 “internet tablet” looks great, but again the price is likely to be eye-watering, and we’ll have to see if my network offers it (as I don’t want to switch).

When it comes down to basics, though: quite simply, I’m generally content with my N95, and even more so with the monthly tariff I’m on with my network, which is now really quite modest whilst suiting my needs nicely.

Of course, there’s the question of what I’d do if my N95 failed, broke beyond repair, suffered some nasty accident (dropped in the toilet, fell in a cement mixer, etc.), and I had to replace it. Assuming I couldn’t get a replacement N95 without going on eBay or the like, and I wanted a new phone, there’s only really one handset which I think would offer me similar features (though not all of them) at a fairly low cost, and that’s the Nokia E75. I would be sacrificing two megapixels of camera resolution (and the Carl Zeiss lens) and video editor of the N95, but I would be gaining a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and USB charging (and possibly more), and retaining many of the N95 features I use.

I don’t know if my network would offer the E75 at the time I would “need” it, or if there will be a better alternative by that stage. However, I’m hoping that my N95 has at least a year or two more in it, so I can make the most of possibly the best all-round smartphone Nokia has ever produced. And nearly three years on from its introduction, I think that’s no small achievement.

OK, perhaps this should be titled “Ten free programs…”—excepting 4 and 8, all of them are also open-source, and all of them are available for Linux, Mac and Windows, so it’s possible to install them on every computer I’m likely to own.

So, start the rundown (cue “Pick Of The Pops” theme tune ):

1. Firefox—yes, the Web browser comes preinstalled on almost every Linux distro, but you still have to add it to every Mac and Windows machine…
2. VLC—what this “Swiss army knife” of media players may lack in flashy looks, it more than makes up for in the sheer number of features it packs.
3. OpenOffice—see (1) (apart from the “Web browser” bit, everything else goes )
4. TweetDeck—my favourite Twitter application is morphing into a “one-stop” shop for social networking sites, recently adding Facebook and MySpace support, so you can see all your updates in one multi-column window. Requires the Adobe AIR runtime, which runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.
5. Inkscape—the leading open-source vector image creation application (similar to Adobe Illustrator). Great to have for creating captions for video, amongst other things.
6. The GIMP—as with (5), except for bitmap graphics instead of vector…
7. Audacity—audio editor (I do all the mixing and so-called “mastering” of my music recording in Audacity)
8. Skype—audio/video calls over the Internet, etc.
9. Miro—very useful video/audio podcast client
10. Stellarium—3D-rendered views of the night sky from where you are

What would go in your list?

Just to let you know that I’m going to try switching the automatic “lifestream digest” posts to a weekly schedule for a bit. I feel the daily digests are clogging up the blog (or at least, they look to me as if they are), and I’d like to find out if weekly updates would work “better” (whatever that may mean).

As always, please let me know via the comments (or the “contact” page, if you prefer) if you think one or the other approach works best for you. You can also follow my Twitter feed for other updates, and contact me via that route.

In the meantime: thanks for reading!

I’m a big fan of VLC, the open-source media player known to be able to play back almost every file format known to humanity (with one or two notable exceptions), audio and video CDs, DVDs, network audio/video “streams”, output from TV tuner cards/USB sticks, and more.

That is certainly all true, but VLC has a whole host of neat tricks up its sleeve, most of which are rarely found by its users. There’s another blog post or two right there, but I wanted to pass on a VLC feature which I think could be really useful for people who author DVDs (and quite possibly, people who just watch them…).

In short: as of version 1.0.1 (the latest at time of writing) and possibly earlier versions, VLC can open and read ISO disc images directly, as if they were an actual physical disc in the machine.

(What’s an ISO disc image? Put simply, it’s a computer file which is an exact digital copy of a disk volume, be that a CD, DVD, hard drive or whatever. For instance, Linux distributions are usually available as ISO image files, which you download and burn to disk for installing from. It is also a way to back up DVDs you own—creating ISOs from DVDs is not that difficult (but generally easier in Linux and Mac OS X than Windows), though you’ll have to find out for yourself how to do that.)

Opening an ISO image file in DVD is as easy as selecting File…/Open File from the VLC menu, and choosing the ISO image from the file list. From here, VLC will play and interact with the ISO as if it were an actual DVD disc—menus and all.

This is a useful feature for testing a DVD you have authored (using a program like Apple’s iDVD), as by writing the product to an ISO file and opening it in VLC, the player will give you access to the videos, the menus and other features, without you having to spend time burning a physical disc—very useful for ensuring everything is “just right” before you fire up the DVD burner. It’s also handy in case your computer doesn’t have an optical drive (e.g. “netbooks” or slimline laptops like the Apple MacBook Air).

One potential drawback is that ISO images of DVDs can be huge—one such image I made on the Mac for backup purposes weighed in at nearly 7Gb, which seems excessive since I thought DVDs could only hold about 4.8Gb. Not necessarily a problem if you have a hard drive with enough space, but if your storage capacity is limited, you might want to stick with converting your videos to H.264, DivX or whatever you prefer.

Anyway, hope that helps someone—if I come across any other useful tips, I’ll see if I can include them here.