Friday, December 31, 2004

Alfie and Benson are home!

imageIf you follow the Daily Source Code you might know about Alfie and Benson. Well the good news is that they’re now back in the UK!

You need to know more (MP3 from Adam Curry’s podcast) about Alfie and Benson to appreciate what these two poor little Jack Russell terriers have been through.

Alfie & Benson’s home page…

Posted by Admin on 12/31 at 11:01 AM
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Thursday, December 30, 2004

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Only deadbeats use Firefox

I’ve been asked why my employer’s site still uses tables (albiet a mix of tables and css under php), and can be answered with 2 words: “5” and “banks”...

I won’t mention them by name here, but we’re a “stichting” - the dutch word for non-profit organization - we’re a collection of governmental agencies and large institutions. And because we’re built of the best and the brightest, we need to keep using tables.

You may be crying “Why?” and all I can say is: Improper degradation. We have to, primarily because of the lingering existence of Internet Explorer 5.0 in Dutch enterprise, primarily banking and telecom sectors. These groups are major backers in our non-profit and nigh it’s impossible to get them to change their policies on installed software. I’ve used degrading CSS in designs but either our external programmers or our internal reviews have resorted to css-flavoured tables. Feh.

Which isn’t the big question - the big question is why do some of the largest organizations in The Netherlands still rely on IE 5.x?

No clear answers have emerged from my inquiries, but it’s safe to say it’s a combination of security policy, existing custom Java applications and reticence or inability to switch up to newer system software. And if you knew how old and creaky some of the the Java code was running the operations, you’d be looking for a new bank somewhere in Mauritius.

The only way out is either an enterprise-wide system upgrade, which will cost too much, or switching to a *nix alternative, which is a hard sell with the MS Office crowd.

You can’t say this enough: No policy will survive if the Boss’s secretary isn’t behind it.

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All numbers are in thousands.

IE5 is a goliath, old and failing but still able to kill you when it decides to move and step on you. I’ve heard the some (sales?)people joke in one organization about stats—“Only deadbeats use Firefox,” one core person remarked. While our tracking shows ALL IE 5.x versions in a gradual decline, from over 70% in 2003 to less than 17% today, december 20, 2004, Firefox peaked at 7% a few months back and has also started declining to it’s current 3%. IE 6 has peaked in the summer and remains a steady 75%.

Was the Firefox blip just a test by our usergroup? Due to a seminar we held, did it perhaps represent a “different user” than normal? We’re looking through the logs now via Analog to see what component of the IE group is solely 5.0…it would make programming a little easier, but if we could upscale the entire group to open standards, we could offer better solutions. But that’s not going to happen for awhile yet.

It’s a weird dance - you zig when they want to zag, or just stand still. And face it - if we’re biased enough to support the 8-10% of Safari/Netscape/Firefox users, we should cut the same slack to the IE 5.x crowd.

But this much is sure - Firefox needs constant pushing. Pushing on your mother and father. Pushing into the corporate coffee clutches and gossip gaps that fill each hallway. It needs to occupy conversation, often and constantly, and needs to introduced to the bosses’ secretary personally. Don’t expect that one advert in the New York Times will change the world. Only continual education will.

If you want to bury old browsers this year, just do one thing: Be “tech support” for Firefox.

Posted by Admin on 12/30 at 02:56 PM
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Friday, December 17, 2004

Nintendo Media Player: Hurrah for Open Standards

imageThis is a great slap in the chops of the Sony PSP. “Sure we can do video, and we can do it with Open Standards AND the memory cards you already have…”  Some will call it a reaction to the media player aspect of the PSP, but third-party Nintendo players predates Sony by a few years. Nintendo even sell pre-recorded content in Japan, and now they’re directly in the hardware game.

As my niece in California would say, “it’s hekka cool” - you’ve got a Gameboy SP or a Nintendo DS and you’d like to take your music, yesterday’s podcast or last night’s big TV-of-the-Week movie along on your long, lonely bus trip to Minsk. What to do?

Well, Nintendo’s Media Player is a really decent implementation of a media player—Gizmodo has a nice note on it. There’s a link below—but the big news is that their hardware plays back un-DRM’d MP3 music and MPEG-4 video, at a decent 352 by 288 pixel resolution. You can get 4 hours of video or up to 15 hours of MP3s, depending on the size card you use.

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But there it is again - you don’t have to use the uber-expensive Sony Memory Stick Duo cards…you use SD ram, likely a memory card you already have for your camera or perhaps an older MP3 player. They’re certainly cheaper than the Sony memory; a quick Google finds 1GB for $75.00 US and you don’t have to worry about someone changing the cards specs later after you’ve bought your card.

For a historical example: I have a Sony Ericsson P800 phone - spent a chunk of change to buy it nearly 2 years ago - and over 100 euros to buy a 128MB Memory when you could buy easily twice that in SD ram for at least half the price. But lo and behold, larger cards came out - 256MB and 512MB - but I can’t use it on my little P800…have to buy a new P900.  Bah!

Sony still uses a razor-and-blades philsophy to push not only their media but also their standards. The problem is that there’s no reasonable competative reason to endorse their proprietary standards while efficient standards exist. Their ATRAC compression scheme is proof of this, and they’re learning their lesson slowly. But while the PSP has taken the first step by adding MP3 and MPEG4, they still use proprietary, expensive memory cards. This will limit how many people do this.

And to add insult to injury, Nintendo’s SD-based media players last twice as long for video. And it works on not only two million or so Nintendo DS systems, but the 21-million-plus Gameboy Advances out there. That is a HUGE existing platform for MPEG4 adoption! I could watch last night’s movie and dozens of songs or podcasts on my bus trip…all on one charge.

Carrying multiple SD cards sure beats carrying multiple batteries…
Wonderful. Hurrah for supporting existing technology so well.

Gizmodo::Official Nintendo Game Boy MPEG4 Player

Posted by Admin on 12/17 at 01:48 AM
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Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Nintendo DS Part 2

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There are certainly things to like and be annoyed by with the new Nintendo DS. So it’s time for a rundown…

High points:
- Great battery life - plays for about 10 hours, charges in only 4.
- Excellent visability within the first-person field of view.  Screen brightness is quite good.
- Tracking on the screen is highly accurate and fast, making it the perfect analog stick replacement.
- Sound processing is clear and the stereo image - especially for small speakers - is also quite good.  The headphone jack has the volume control placed in the front, just below the user’s viewpoint. You can easily find it if you’re using it, but otherwise it’s not visable and your fingers won’t trip over it.
- Directional pad and buttons are nicely placed for thumb-rocking action as well as direct pressing. Shoulder buttons are large and easily found.

Low Points:
- Less visibility on the screen at a wider angle, but it is a personal player.
- The thumb pad is awkward to orient and then slips in gameplay.
- Power button placed directly over the directional pad can be easy to hit.
The boxed demo of Metroid Prime does a good job of showing off the processing power of the system - it seems more than adequate for 3D animation. Textures shades and colors gradients are handled well but I’d like to see more used of edge filtering across contrast areas like edges. This is a design issue with the program, I believe, and not the hardware since it does filtering in hardware. This would give the impression of less-jaggies, a technique I believe is used in the PSP on its small screen, to give the impression of higher resoltion. (The screens are similar in native PPI across the area, and while the PSP’s single screen is larger, allowing object to be drawn larger in more detail, the number of points of colors across both platforms are similar. Of couorse, as I Google quickly for numbers and find nothing, this could be bollocks).

Posted by Admin on 12/15 at 05:57 AM
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Monday, December 13, 2004

Nintendo DS: Looking at device usebility…

I couldn’t wait once the postman arrived - I cracked-open the box of the DS and, running off the mains, gave it a run. There are some good things to note and some annoyances…

I like it - I do. It’s a fun little box…what I’ve basically always wanted from Nintendo. Sizewise it is *just* a little large, but not so much that an average male’s hands would cramp. I’m just thinking in terms of pocketing the device, which would currently necessitate the use of cargo pants - and I was happy to avoid that fad back in the 90s. Ain’t gonna happen now. But this is more about the usability of the device than an accessory guide.

I hope, very much hope, that Nintendo gets the knack of using the touch-screen wisely. I played that Metroid Prime-thingamajob, basically “the photo that came with the wallet”, and it certainly was fun once you spent some time mastering the controls. Right now this is the only game I have - I’m on backorder until January for Super Mario 64 - and if this is what I have to go by it might take a while before developers deliver the kind of gameplay I’m looking for.

I think many new applications will use the touch-screen in a simple, gimmicky manor. Obviously the touch control is very nice, very fine; in fact, better than any analog stick I’ve ever used. It’s such a natural extension of the experience, to just reach into the game and play, it’s amazing that it’s not been tried before. But if used cheaply, like..ahem, some driving games I could mention...then the touch screen concept will die a quick death.

Right now, my biggest gripe is the dumb thumb-pad on the wrist strap. I think it was some kind of afterthought due to the fact that the game lineup was somewhat weak at launch…it helps to make slightly clumsy game controls easier to maneuver. But for me the pad itself moves around my thumb too much. I have to pause the game occasionally to reposition the strap and thumb, which is not conducive to the maintaining the level of immersion in the experience.

I think the games and their controls will mature, to be sure. I would always argue for sensitivity adjustments to any game that requires the screen to track an “analog” response. Also, either a longer strap or revised curved thumb cap, matching the wrap of the thumb, would be preferential to the existing flat pad. Lastly, a battery indicator showing available charge would be logical too…

Still, it’s a good first-try. I’ll be keeping it a while.

Posted by Admin on 12/13 at 07:30 AM
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