Andrew's Inner Sanctum

I haven’t blogged for quite a while (although I’m constantly micro blogging on Twitter and Facebook), but I have been storing up a collection of links, stories, thoughts and other tidbits that I thought would be nice to share with all of you here who read my blog

Opera Talks Oprah

Oprah’s show finished up this week in the US and as their tribute to this, the browser company Opera (which is a common misspelling of Oprah because the words sound very similar) decided to post a blog featuring letters they had received from fans over the years, intended for Oprah but received by them instead. They’re very funny some of them (including the responses) and you can check them all out at: http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2011/05/25/oprah-winfrey-we-will-miss-you

Alan Jones & The National Broadband Network

Alan Jones is Sydney’s number 1 breakfast radio show on station 2GB and he’s always fired up on several issues. This week he spent some time talking about an advancement in Fibre-Optic technology. Apparently, “German scientists have broken a speed record, sending data contained on 700 DVDs over a single laser beam in one second, Seven hundred DVDs. In one second. The scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology said they’ve broken the world record by sending data at a speed of 26 terabits per second. Canberra wants us to believe that the technology we’re spending anything up to $60 billion on won’t be outdated by the time it’s rolled out.”

What Alan Jones did though, was unintentionally give his support to the NBN, because as he probably didn’t realise, the NBN is going to be a Fibre-Optic network and therefore the speed records these German scientists have come up with could be added into the NBN. This is the problem, the people who are generally in charge in this world (baby boomers) and who against this don’t understand the technology properly. The reason I think the NBN will take an extremely long time to be outdated (if ever) is that it sends data as light pulses down the wire and currently the speed of light is the fastest anything can travel, that’s just physics. So the bit that we can speed up in the future if needed is not the cabling, but the transmitters and receivers at each end that convert electrical pulses to light and back again. So all we would need to do theoretically is upgrade these transmitters at each end and we’re all good, replacing the copper cabling with Fibre-Optic cabling only needs to be done once.

You can read the whole Alan Jones & NBN story here: http://www.news.com.au/technology/shock-jock-impressed-by-laser-speed-breakthrough/story-e6frfro0-1226062824273

Windows Phone 7 Major Update (Codenamed: Mango) Announced, But Still A Few Concerns About It…

This week was a big week for Microsoft as they announced about a dozen out of the 500 new features coming to the Mango release of Windows Phone 7, which is due to hit phones in Spring here in Australia. Microsoft didn’t announce every feature though (they’re going to keep drip feeding features over the next few months to keep the excitement & momentum up between now and the actual release) and they left a number of questions remaining. Firstly they didn’t announce the version number this update would bring the phone up to. Some say it will bring the phone up to version 7.5, others say 7.1 (the beta tools they released are 7.1) and others say they will brand it as 7.5 but internally it will be 7.1. The much more important questions that Microsoft still haven’t answered are in relation to feature availability outside the US. In January (after visiting Leo Laporte in the TWiT cottage in California) I wrote an article talking about Windows Phone 7 feature availability in regions outside the US. This week Microsoft demoed some amazing technology called Bing Local Scout which allows you to see all the local attractions, shops and eating places in the location you’re currently at, all within Bing Search built into the phone. As I was watching this, I was thinking, wow this is great, but I don’t think this is coming to Australia. I was right, as in the promo graphics about it, there was fine print saying US & UK only. The same will probably occur for anything involving speech commands too. I’ll be getting around to writing a new article at some point which details the new markets for the App Marketplace and about what Australia now will and won’t have access to in Mango. We will get probably about 3/4 of the features they’ve announced so far, but as for the other 1/4 – we can only hope

My Goal To Become A Microsoft Student Partner

Talking of Microsoft, I am planning to try and become a Microsoft Student Partner. Now that’s not an easy thing to do, but I’m going to try it, because I simply love Microsoft products and want to try and become involved with the company and make some contacts. So over the next week I’ll probably try and plan a submission and hopefully I can get into that. If I do, it would be quite exciting

Mac Malware

This month is has been the one where Macs all around the world are about to lose their innocence and will have something installed on them that they’ve never had installed before: Malware. Yes, the Mac has finally come of age (thanks mainly to the success of the iPhone, iPod & iPad as well as Apple’s clever marketing during Microsoft’s stumble with Vista from 2006-2009) and they’ve become popular enough that they’ve just started to become a target for Malware authors. This article (http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/14/malware-macs-and-crying-wolf-doing-the-math/) is a great article on the topic. Essentially what it says now, is about 80% of people running Windows have working Malware on their systems and that 16% of computers now are Macs and essentially NONE of them run Anti-Virus or even think about Malware, thanks to this belief Apple has sold people on: “Macs Can’t Get Viruses”. Well – They Can! So essentially about 20% of the Windows PC market is easily susceptible to viruses and now the Mac is catching up to that very quickly with 16% of it’s users easily susceptible to viruses. So that explains the Malware. So Mac users, your time of innocence is over. Please – go and get yourself and Anti-Virus and install it and practise safe computing just like Windows users have had to do for years, don’t install strange software, turn off Safari’s featuring of automatically opening “Safe” files & be careful where you surf – no more ideas like “I’m going to buy a Mac so I can surf porn without getting viruses”. By the way, the two pieces of Malware are MacDefender (which shares the name of an actual legitimate piece of software just to confuse you), which is also being known as Mac Protector, Mac Security and Apple Security Center which requires the user to actually enter their administrator username and password to install the malware. The second new piece of malware that’s just been released by the same people is called MacGuard and the scary thing is: this one DOESN’T require the administrator username and password. So that’s that and hopefully I don’t start getting tech support calls from Mac users wondering what the heck is going on. Oh & this goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway – If it does get on your system: DON’T give it your credit card number!

Sony, Sony, Sony – What Are We Going To Do With You?

Sony has been hacked about 3-4 times in the last 7 days. They NEED to fix their security and QUICKLY. Nuff said!

End Of Semester 1 Near

It’s only 1 week left until Semester 1 of  my first year at uni is finished! It’s been such a fast semester. QUT was a great choice and I’m enjoying it immensely. Now I’ve gotten my core units out of the way, I can start to go study units I’m really interested in . The only thing I miss at Uni is not being to see some people every day that I used to see every day at OC, but that’s the way things go, at least I can still communicate with them on Facebook. It’s also allowed me to find some new friends too, which is probably good for me, especially since they’re all studying IT too! I’m nearly at 70 hours in my Learners logbook, so I’m well on the way to getting my P plates by September like I plan to!

Well I think that’s it for now. I hope lots of you get to read this blog post and leave your comments as you see fit! Also keep any eye out on www.andrewtechhelp.com. I have a few articles planned for the site coming up soon (within the next month or so), so follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/andrewtechhelp) or Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrew-Tech-Help/53742949428) and that will keep you up to date with any changes there!

I thought I’d spend some time talking about smartphones. In the smartphone OS market today we have 5 major players: Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, RIM’s Blackberry and Nokia’s Symbian. There are others who make OSes for smartphones, but I believe that they are so insignificant that I don’t need to mention them as contenders here. I also believe that 2 the above platforms are going to be disappearing soon. Nokia has not competed well with their Symbian OS. There is a lack of apps for the platform and it just seems old fashioned compared to iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7, which were all built from the ground up for capacitive touchscreen phones. I believe the same fate will occur for RIM’s Blackberry OS. Developers have not flocked to the Blackberry OS because it has been too difficult to develop on in the past and while they plan to improve this, I think it’s a bit too late. Everything the Blackberry OS used to be good at, iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 can also do just as well.

The reason I listed Windows Phone 7 as a major competitor, even though it’s only 2 weeks old is because it’s a great OS that consumers will love because it’s innovative and simple, but also because Microsoft has spent a lot of time, effort and money ensuring that developers will flock to the platform. To write apps for the Windows Phone 7 platform, you simply need to download the free Windows Phone Developer Tools which include Microsoft Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone which is a development environment focused on coding, Microsoft Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone which is a development environment focused on design and user interfaces. Also included is an emulator so that you can test your applications without having to have a phone. The language used to code a Windows Phone is mix of Silverlight XAML for user interface elements and properties and C# .NET for the actions that each user interface item performs. Also coming soon is the ability to program the actions in Visual Basic .NET instead of C# .NET. Games are programmed using the XNA Framework, the same language that is used to write games for the Xbox 360. So what this means for developers is that they can use the same tools they would normally use to write Windows applications and Xbox 360 games to write phone apps, without having to learn a new language or programming environment. Although currently the Windows Phone Marketplace doesn’t have a lot of apps, it has all the right apps. It has Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Messenger and plenty more coming soon. Microsoft is also working with developers who need special access to the OS (such as Skype and its need to use Sockets) so that their apps will be available soon.

The rest of the reason why I believe Windows Phone 7 will be a success is that it currently fills a void that is missing in the market. The iPhone was the first serious player in the smartphone market; in fact it defined the smartphone market. The problem is that it is a very tightly controlled platform. There is only one iPhone, it has one form factor, it is only made by one company, it only allows apps into its one App Store if they successfully make it through the strict application process and apps can often be rejected for the smallest reasons, you can only write apps for it if you own a Mac and you can only sync it using iTunes which is not a great program. It’s very controlled, which is a good thing in some ways because using it is consistent between iPhones and developers only have to target one OS and everyone generally is running the same version of the OS, but some of the control is just a bit over the top and anti-competitive.

Google Android on the other hand is extremely uncontrolled. There are multiple handsets with multiple form factors from multiple companies running different versions of the OS with different UI skins, multiple app stores (or manual install from a website if you don’t want to use an app store), you can write apps for it using Windows, OS X and Linux and do just about anything with it. Google simply writes the base OS and throws it out there to whoever wants to use it. This is good because it provides the user with choice, but it is also becoming the single biggest problem for the platform. Each model of Android phone these days seems to come with a different UI and also there are at least 4 different versions of the OS floating around that are still in use and even still available to buy. Lots of Android phones still on sale come with version 1.5 or 1.6 and many of these phones will never be able to upgrade to 2.1 or 2.2 which means they will always be inferior. Android users say, well just root the phone and install it yourself, but I can’t imagine my Mum or Dad rooting their phone anytime soon. There’s just too much choice for many consumers. The main reason that Android has taken off has been a lack of cheap competitor to the iPhone and also because there are many more models of Android phones available instead of the one iPhone. Having competition drives down the price of all Android Phones. What consumers really need is something in the middle. Something between the openness and chaos of Android and control and simplicity of the iPhone: That middle of the road is Windows Phone 7.

Windows Phone 7 will be available on a number of different handsets with different form factors (e.g. some with keyboards, some without) from a number of different phone carriers like Android is, but each handset must have the same minimum hardware requirements for CPU, memory, graphics capabilities and storage, plus they must have the same buttons on the phone (Back, Start, Search, Volume Up, Volume Down, Power and Camera) which ensures that every Windows Phone will have the same compatibility as the next one. This is a similar experience to what you get on the iPhone, every app designed for iPhone works on every iPhone. Windows Phone’s App Marketplace takes similar route to the Apple App Store in that you can’t install apps that don’t come from the store and apps that are in the store have to be approved first. Thankfully, unlike Apple, Microsoft’s App Marketplace rules aren’t draconian. Microsoft is also taking Apple’s route for updating the phone to new software versions. Unlike Android where it is the carrier’s responsibility to provide updates to the phone (and they very frequently don’t because they’d rather sell you a new handset), Microsoft will be the one controlling the updates and will make all updates available to all phones. Carriers can delay an update by one update cycle for testing if they wish (it is assumed that one update cycle will be about 1 month), but for the most part, updates will reach all phones as soon as they are released. This will mean that Windows Phone 7 will not become fragmented like Android and like Windows Mobile before it, they’ve learnt their lessons.

Finally, it’s important to address the problem of missing features. Windows Phone 7 is a version 1.0 platform (even though it has 7 in the name). It shares absolutely nothing in common with Windows Mobile. With nearly every version 1.0 platform, features will be missing initially. When the iPhone first came out, it was missing stacks of features. Many of the features most demanded didn’t appear until version 3.0 of the iPhone software. The difference between the way Apple and Microsoft have dealt with missing features is that Apple normally says, “You don’t need this feature, our device works fine without it and there are no plans to implement it” and then they’ll implement a stack of the missing features in a new version of the iPhone saying “brand new, you’ll find this experience just magical, so buy today”. Microsoft’s way of dealing with this is to say “We realise that this feature is missing, but we will add it as quickly as possible via a free software update and we’ll release each separate update as soon as it’s ready”. It’s a more honest approach and it means that you won’t have to wait for your new features once per year.

So all in all, I think Windows Phone 7 is a serious contender in the market because it provides the middle ground between Android and iOS and ultimately will be a win for customers. I plan to get one of these devices around Christmas and the New Year so I’ll be able to write more about the device then!

As you’d know just from reading this blog and especially if you actually know me, I’ve been immensely excited about Windows Phone 7 since it was first announced in February this year, but especially excited since the RTM was announced in September.

Well, the problem has been, Microsoft hasn’t exactly done a great job at promoting Windows Phone 7 in Australia and the Apple obsessed media has skipped over the release, because even though it’s better than the iPhone, the media seems to think any device that isn’t displayed on stage by Steve Jobs doesn’t deserve any attention at all, which is just rubbish and shows the problem with the way technology is being reported in Australia at the moment.

Update: Microsoft has just announced on Twitter they’re launching their Windows Phone 7 TV ads tonight! Here’s what it will look like (minus the coming soon part, since it’s here!)

Anyway, because of this, I thought I would be the first person that I know to actually get one of these phones, because of the lack of knowledge and buzz around them. Last night though I was given a pleasant surprise when one of my friends asked me on Facebook how to Sync their HTC Phone. I thought they were talking about the HTC Desire which is a Google Android based phone, but they were talking about a HTC 7 Mozart phone – the first Windows Phone 7 based device in Australia! Soooo Excited! The answer of course was to download the Zune PC Software 4.7 from www.zune.net but I was soo excited to hear that someone has a Windows Phone. They allowed me to take a few photos of it today so here they are

The other great thing was the reviews. I was asking different people who had seen it what they thought of it and there was so many “oh it’s so much better than the iPhone” comments. This just proves that it’s a great phone, that people would love if they knew about it. It’s true that there is a LOT of stuff missing from it at the moment, but nearly all of those can be fixed by software updates in the future, which Microsoft has promised will occur frequently throughout 2011 (and maybe late 2010). You have to remember though, that this is a v1 product, a complete rewrite from their previous Windows Mobile devices (they share absolutely nothing in common with each other) and so priorities had to be established. What Microsoft did get done is fantastic and is much better than the iPhone when it was at v1. I plan to get a Windows Phone 7 based device (when I buy there will be more handsets available, although the HTC 7 Mozart does look fantastic) by my 18th birthday in January next year and between now and then there will be plenty of content about it on my website!

Time to post again. A big sorry for my lack of posting during the school term, I decided to concentrate on other things so this blog kind of got forgotten. I’ll now give you a brief update of the last 9 weeks. Year 12 started off really well. I’ve posted 2 articles to my website in the last 9 weeks. One of them because I was annoyed at all the Vista bagging going on at school when I returned, and the other was my IPT assignment. The task was to write an argumentative  essay on whether or not Stephen Conroy’s internet filter was a good policy. I wrote a strongly worded essay arguing heavily against the policy and for that I got an A.

The rest of the term was just the standard types of assessments for year 12 students: reports, essays, exams and orals. I also have been keeping the minutes and agendas for the after school prefect meetings all under control and up to date. The term has turned out really tiring actually. It finished off with the QCS practise test, to see how much the in school tuition has improved our results. Personally I do not think setting an all day test on the last day of school is such a wonderful idea, but that’s what occurred. I also think that the Queensland education system and the way we examine and assess senior students across the state is fundamentally broken, because what everyone else in my subject or my school scores in a test, should not affect what my exit score should be. That gives schools with more resources and a better socioeconomic area a better advantage over schools who don’t have these positive factors, but that’s another story for another time. I also finished uploading all 419 podcasts to the Spoonman Fan Club. The Spoonman was an awesome late night talkback announcer on Triple M from 2005-2008  and when his show finished, KG and I decided to set up a central tribute/info website for him. It’s taken me nearly 1 and 1/2 years to upload all the podcasts, but they’re all there now.

I’ve also been following the developments in the tech industry, most of them by Microsoft. The Windows Phone looks absolutely fantastic and I cannot wait to get one next year. Good on Microsoft for starting afresh with their phones and trying something different, instead of just being an iPhone clone. The other big one for me is Windows Live Wave 4. I obtained a leaked copy of the Live Essentials for Wave 4 and so I may be writing an article about them soon. Here’s a sneak peak of  Windows Live Messenger 2010.

Windows Live Messenger 2010 Beta Milestone 2

These holidays I have a few things planned. It will be mainly relaxing, but I have a few tasks and little jobs to do that will keep me busy and also Sam and I plan to visit The Bryan Madigan of SeaFM 91.9 on the Sunshine Coast. He’s the guy who used to take the callers on the Spoonman show and also was one of the 3 announcers of the ATFS podcast. Lastly – on Wednesday when Windows Live Messenger had a bug in in when people were appearing offline when they were really online, I posted here the instructions on how you could get around that. I thank all of you who came here and read the post, I had nearly 3000 viewers in one night and so I’m really grateful and I hope you all stick around to see what I post and also for updates on my main website, which you can find at the top of this page.

Thanks for reading, leave comments as you wish and I’ll hopefully have holidays content to write here for you!!