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When that American Airlines Airbus made its miraculous landing on the Hudson River last week, it delivered more than one amazing conclusion.
Primarily, of course, was the simple fact that a plane can come falling from the sky with no active engines, land on a freezing cold river and all but one passengers on board – who had the misfortune to break both legs – can literally walk away from it.
But secondly – and most importantly for a column dealing in technology – was the way that news and pictures of this incredible event were circulated around the world.
I have the feeling that my colleagues, the professional journalists of this fine publication, may not like what I’m about to suggest but, if it’s the job of journalism to get to the news first, on this particular occasion it was beaten by a bunch of regular Jo(e)s with mobile phones and Twitter accounts.
Twitter (twitter.com), in case you spent 2008 with your head in a bag, is the hugely successful ‘microblogging’ website that allows you to quickly publish mini articles including links to photographs.
Anybody who is following your account on Twitter will instantly receive your article. It’s a bit like text messaging to more than one person who has decided they want to get your texts.
The main and probably most dramatic picture taken of the plane event which showed the two wings of the floating aircraft jammed with people who had clambered out, was taken on a iPhone.
The person responsible had snapped the picture from onboard a ferry that was heading to the rescue and had immediately posted it to his Twitter account.
What is clearly happening is that we are becoming accustomed to two types of reporting and journalism.
The first, that of the citizen with a mobile phone or other means of instant communication who happens to be close (physically or emotionally) to the event or issue is usually written or photographed in a style that can best be described as ‘acceptable’ but is very quick to get out.
The second style of journalism is the more traditional type, written or photographed with skill and experience but which is only available some time later.
Both have the potential to be Earth shattering; both are incredibly important in this day and age and neither are going away any time soon.
It’s been some considerable time in the making but last week finally saw the official 1.0 release of Songbird (getsongbird.com), a media playing application clearly designed to snap at the ankles of the likes of iTunes, Windows Media Player and Winamp.
In a world awash with MP3 playing software, Songbird offers anticipation because of its open source foundation and the fact that it is built using Mozilla XULRunner, the same programming language that brings us Firefox.
In fact, the first thing you notice when you install and launch Songbird is that it does appear to be the offspring of an iTunes and Firefox liaison – something which brings both good and bad points to the table.
Early pre-release versions of Songbird looked so similar to iTunes that I was convinced Apple would be slapping down a lawsuit before too long The developers appear to have gone some way to giving it its own style but the inspiration is still there for all to see.
Indeed, with a couple of rejigs of the layout and the application of a new skin (as per Firefox, Songbird lets you apply different designs called ‘feathers’), it’s possible to reintroduce the striking similarity. Personally, I would like to see a little more innovation in a new product.
The Firefox family line comes into play with tabbed browsing within the player, the aforementioned ‘feathers’ and extensions – small add-ons to Songbird which perform specific tasks like adding iPod integration or video playback.
It’s these add-ons which excite me most because they offer limitless potential.
As the software stands at the moment, it’s hard to imagine embracing it over iTunes or, indeed, Winamp (just about anything is better than Windows Media Player so there’s no real challenge there).
Yes, it’s open source; yes, it includes concert and ticket information (did you know The Damned are playing in Oxford on the 19th?) and yes, it’s available on all platforms, but it can’t rip or burn CDs, there’s no support for Podcast subscriptions and the deal-breaker for me – it doesn’t recognise the iPhone.
Songbird’s similarity to iTunes causes inevitable comparisons at every step of the way and this is the product’s biggest hurdle.
Do I want it to succeed? Yes, I’d love it to.
Does it have a long way to go? Oh yes, miles. But it’s off to a good start and I’ll be waiting.
You can’t really call the EeePC from Asus a laptop unless you’re in possession of a particularly small lap.
This diminutive notebook computer isn’t much bigger than a paperback and yet manages to sport a solid, rugged build quality that could easily see it thrown in and out of a bag on a daily basis.
It’s all solid state so rather than a traditional hard disk drive it stores all its data on flash memory chips which helps allow it to boast a battery life of about three and a half hours.
Most incredibly of all, you can pick one up for about £200.
So is it worth it?
It comes with a preinstalled version of Linux, the free operating system. Not paying a fat fee to Microsoft certainly brings the price down and it’s easy enough to use but for the sake of my test I installed the familiar XP on it and handed it Mollie, my ten year old daughter, who put it through its paces for a week.
Here’s her personal verdict.
The EeePC’s keys are small so they are great for children but for people with bigger fingers it might be hard because they could press the wrong button.
When it is switched off the screen looks bigger than it actually is because of the black speakers either side of it and it can be hard to find a picture to use as wallpaper because of the odd rectangular shape of the screen.
On the start menu you cannot see all the icons because it doesn’t stretch as far as it does on a normal computer.
The style of this laptop is very uncomplicated with a white cover, plain keys, and a straightforward layout.
I took it to my friend’s house who thought it looked cool but found the keys hard to use because she is fast at typing, but for me I could imagine writing a long essay on it because I have small hands and don’t type as quickly.
In conclusion, the EeePC is interesting because it is so cheap, compact and light, making it very easy to carry around but I prefer my bigger laptop so I don’t want to swap!
Technical specifications:
The EeePC comes with a reasonably impressive set of specs, including:
A 900MHz Intel Celeron processor
512MB RAM
4GB Flash memory
It has three USB ports, a built in camera and microphone and is 802.11b/g wireless capable.
You’ll notice the lack of a hard drive. That’s because the EeePC stores everything (software, files and documents) on solid state memory – and it comes with a fixed 4GB – not exactly colossal by today’s standards. To make matters worse, almost half of that 4GB is already taken up by the operating system so if you’re planning to install a lot of software of save lots of files you will need to invest in extra storage – whether it be in the form of an external USB hard drive (which kind of defeats the portability point) or, more like, an SD memory card that can sit in the computers dedicated card reader.
SD cards have dropped dramatically in price over recent years so you could buy a 4GB card and double machine’s storage capacity for under £15.
Alternatively, of course, there are USB pen drives which are also cheap and plentiful.
Next to an Apple MacBook Pro, the EeePC shows off its diminutive dimensions
In order to make Mollie feel as comfortable with hers as I could, I sold my soul to the devil and installed Windows XP on my EeePC. As there’s no CD or DVD drive this requires using either an external disc drive or, as I did, copying all the files from the XP disc onto a USB drive. It’s a relatively simple process if you want to do this and the web is full of step by step guides.
All in all I like the EeePC as much for its novelty as anything else. XP is coming off and I shall be installing Ubuntu so that I’ve got something to tinker with. I can’t see myself actually using the thing in any real work or personal capacity as it’s just too small. But I shall be showing it off to anyone with a passing interest in technology because it gains plentiful wow points.
My job requires that I make the occasion trip to the company’s head office which is right in the heart of London.
It’s nice to get out the office and see some different faces once in a while but the time spent travelling to and fro really takes a chunk of productivity out of my day.
Some time ago I made the clearly sensible decision that getting to our nation’s capital during the week is easier conducted by coach.
Yes, the journey will take longer but at least I’m assured a seat and it’s far easier for me to leave my car at the Park and Ride before picking up the coach.
I also choose to take Oxford Bus Company’s espress service (that’s the green bus) rather than the red Oxford Tube because it stops at Baker Street thus saving me a slow crawl through the city traffic.
However, I always looked on enviously as Oxford Tube passengers sat inside a bus that boasted wifi connectivity – something lacking on the espress.
Until now.
It may have taken them a little while to catch up on their rivals but Oxford Bus Company says the interim period has allowed it to test various available networks and find the best one suitable for the job.
Providing mobile wifi is tricky because, by definition, you’re always on the move. The new espress service does its best to combat any signal dropouts by using two satellite dishes instead of the usual one. The claim is that this results in just one brief spell of a potential loss of signal around junction 6 due the lie of the land.
Given that a return trip to London can mean around four hours on the bus, the ability to work and stay connected for that time is of immeasurable benefit. I’ve tried the odd bit of offline work before but its invariably only minutes before I need access to the internet to continue.
The inclusion of on-board power sockets will also ensure that I don’t turn up at the London office frantically seeking the nearest plug.
By the time you read this I will have made my first trip on the espress since the service was in put in place so expect a brief review of it in next week’s column.
In my younger days I was an avid reader of books.
Then I discovered computers and later an invention called the internet and fated most of my unread books to stay that way – unread.
Over recent years I’ve managed claw back at least some of my spare time (usually the times when I’m not near a computer) to my enjoyment of books but that old internet is still more of a distraction that I would sometimes like it to be.
I was therefore interested in an idea behind the website Daily Lit (dailylit.com) which poses one simple question.
‘Too busy for books? Read them by email.”
Here’s how it works. You browse the site and find a book that you would like to read and then decide on the frequency of the emails you will receive from the site. For example, if you always take a lunch break at one o’clock, you can choose only weekdays at that time. Then it’s simply a case of providing your email address and you will immediately start to small chunks of your chosen book in your email inbox at the time you want them.
Given that many of us spend a large part of the day reading emails, adding one more to the daily deluge should be almost unnoticeable from a productivity point of view and eventually you will have digested a good book.
The only minor drawback is that the literature on offer is that which has gone out of copyright and can be legally distributed for free. Anyone who has dallied with ebooks on a computer, mobile phone or PDA will be familiar with the list of elderly classics that include the likes of Agatha Christie and Charles Dickens so don’t go expecting the latest Tom Clancy blockbuster.
