Lex Ferenda

Macworld reports that the most recent iPhone software update includes code for an Irish network (it is, of course, O2). Does this mean that an announcement is imminent? (Hat tip, Colm, offblog).

Ramble ahead (skip if you’re just here for the happy geeky news): I have an iPod Touch that I got at Christmas (it’s great, I love it, although I don’t use its wifi functionality all that much as the academic network I use most of the time doesn’t - as of yet - support it); I used to have a mobile phone with O2, had once since 2000 when I sold phones (and other things) in an electronics store in Bray, finally gave in last summer and defected to 3, which is working out alright so far. Will O2 win me back with the promise of an iPhone, if I’m living in Ireland when it eventually arrives? Is it right that I’d have to go to a particular network to get the treasured little device at all? Will Damien taunt us for being six months behind the curve? Time - and Steve Jobs - will tell.

A very interesting morning here in Exchange Square, on the east side of central London (more on that later) - but a few miles (if even that) to the west, of course, the UK iPhone launch is taking place. I’ve been too absorbed in note-taking etc to watch much of the blow-by-blow coverage, but this - posted-all-at-once - version is great.

Very surprised at no 3G - everyone was saying that was going to be the key - but pleasantly surprised at the deal with The Cloud (using Cloud wifi hotspots, common in urban areas, will be included in the unlimited data plan, i.e. all the tariffs). But, we don’t have a similar service in Ireland, and the story of the last few months here is how a 3G modem will kill overpriced hotspots around the country (and maybe even have an impact on the home broadband market).

(By the way, I was on a GNER train again last week - wifi in all carriages. Irish Rail, what are you waiting for?)

UK price: £269, monthly plans from £35.

No word, at least so far, on Irish rollout. Over to you, readers-who-aren’t-multitasking-unsuccessfully-like-me. Do we like this?

Of course, there’s this and this, but I think it’s important to highlight this from the Free Software Foundation’s Defective By Design campaign:

This is really big news. We’ll be sending Steve the open letter with over six thousand signatures and a thank you note with a DefectiveByDesign.org T-Shirt in recognition of this step towards eliminating DRM. Thank you for signing the open letter and spreading the word these last few weeks.

In the coming days and weeks we will see how the rest of the music industry responds to EMI’s move. We’ll keep you updated on ways you can help eliminate DRM, not only in music, but also in operating systems, hardware and libraries.

The Defective By Design folks has kept the pressure up re: DRM for some time. They’ve done it from the free software perspective, which is very important. Although the Jobs ‘Thoughts On Music‘ letter was an indication of a shift, today’s news is confirmation of it. Three cheers. As an Apple user, it’s good to see this blemish disappear.

PS: “audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording”? I’ll believe it when I hear it.

I recently found myself wondering about the use of PowerPoint (or similar) presentations on the Web, and in particular in the context of academic conferences and e-learning projects.  At the VideoForum show in London, I had an opportunity to play with E-Lectern, an interesting system that (potentially) combines streaming video, slides and two-way text.  Apparently it hasn’t been used all that much in higher education, but a number of NHS programmes in the UK are using the system.

On my laptop, I have a copy of Keynote, Apple’s “non-powerpoint” application. It’s part of the iWork package well integrated with the rest of the Mac applications (e.g. iPhoto and the iLife suite).  It has a useful but not-well-advertised feature where presentations can be customised and exported as QuickTime videos.  (This is suitable for upload to YouTube and similar sites, too).  This is a surprisingly straightforward to add some good visuals to a Web project.  But any return path has to be separate (quite a few universities and conferences will webcast their seminars or conferences and use IRC (or similar) to take questions: Global Voices, Berkman (Harvard) and Vloggercon are examples), which has advantages and disadvantages.

Remembering, of course, that simply converting one file and throwing it on the Web is bad karma; some would even say it is evil, lazy, slothful and sinful!  Hmmb.

Know of any other good ways of doing this?  Would love to hear it.  I’m especially interested right now, as part of my research assistant job involves organising consultation meetings within the university, and attracting staff and students to the online versions/adaptations of what is dealt with at the ‘real world’ presentations is a challenge.  Especially given that we are talking about a very mixed user community (so anything like ‘oh, just put it in SecondLife’ won’t be taken seriously).

I rescued this from recycling. It’s running System 6, Microsoft Word 5, and has a satisfyingly loud hum alongside its 40 meg of hard drive space. It is the legendary Macintosh Classic, discontinued 1992 (yes kids that’s 15 years ago).

What a beauty.

Update: via transatlantic slow post comes a second-hand copy of Computer Law - a mammoth and out-of-print Canadian text on goldfish breeding. (Actually, it’s about computer law, funnily enough - just checking that you’re still reading). An update of one of the classic Canadian techielaw books, in fact. The author, George Takach, taught me computer law at Osgoode.

My eyes have just been opened to this eye-wrecking beauty - a fix for the Mac Terminal application that makes it look like an 80s-era screen (complete with green text and dodgy bulge and flicker).a

Get it here (make sure to follow the instruction re: Preferences, otherwise you’ll just get a white screen.  Not as bad as a Blue Screen of Death, but still unpleasant).

Thanks to a very bored Colin for sharing.

Blogged with Flock

1. How exactly, when cold weather is predicted well in advance, can Dublin Airport Authority and Ryanair manage to leave a plane - full of grumpy passengers - stuck on the tarmac for two hours “waiting for the de-icer”? At about the 90-minute mark, we were told that ‘the machine ran out of fluid’ and would be along shortly. You’d think this was the first cold snap in a generation.
   • Apparently, one of the machines broke down in the early morning. Pity they didn’t tell us that before putting us on a plane and saying that the machine ‘would be along shortly’.
2. Say you organise a conference that thousands of media-industry people (techies, managers, buyers, etc) are attending. And you promise free Wifi. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if, seemingly, no Mac users were able to connect to it?

Otherwise, though, my little field trip to Videoforum went well - I do have notes, having been foiled in my attempts at live blogging. They’ll come tomorrow.

The long-running dispute between Apple, Inc (formerly Apple Computer, Inc) and Apple Corps (check out the naff placeholder page!) has come to an unexpected end. Apple (the computer-and-lots-of-other-stuff people) will own the Apple trademark, and license it ‘back’ to Apple (the Beatles/music/etc people) for its use. This replaces the 1991 agreement (the result of the first serious battle over a prior (1981) agreement, triggered by Apple’s computers having the ability to play music; the 1981 agreement on who got to use which bits of the Apple mark/name was questioned, but the parties settled) and also brings the recent iTunes-related litigation (which I’m going to cite, just for fun, as Apple v Apple (link to full judgement).

Apparently this means that Beatles music might appear on iTunes soon. And it helps in explaining why Apple dropped the ‘computer’ tag earlier this year (although there were no remaining strong legal or marketing reasons for keeping it anyway). But still, it’s worth marking, as this issue has been around for 25 years.

Still, it’s nice to see a (happy) ending. Perhaps the ageing hippies in both companies have heeded Justice Alex Kozinski’s advice in Mattel v MCA, and have finally been advised … to chill.

(I don’t mean anything rude by imperfect, to me it’s potentially an asset).

Steven Levy (author of ‘Hackers’ and ‘Crypto’, among others) has a new book out, called “The Perfect Thing”. It’s about the iPod and related matters. In an interesting turn, though, the book has a random arrangement of chapters, in honour of the iPod Shuffle’s random selection mode.

Nice.

Do what you can (in a sustainable way, of course!); but An Inconvenient Truth is worth a few moments of your precious time. If you’re in the North American bit of the world, go to a theatre and see it. If you’re in Europe, start contacting your local cinema now and wonder whether they will list it in September when released. The more calls and emails they get, the more chance that this documentary will make it onto screens across Ireland and elsewhere.

It’s a strange concept of a movie alright. I’d say about 75% of it is the Gore slideshow (on Keynote, of course) broken up by personal and background information (from Gore, speaking either to himself or to a silent interviewer) - and not always that seamlessly. Basically it is a brilliant science/politics lecture taking the Trojan horse route into popcornland. There’s a really nice touch at the end where the credits are broken up by suggestions on things to do to work for better policies. This is no ordinary film; not even an ordinary documentary. See it.

If my pleas are not enough, aspoke.com, the clever little company designing laptop skins, will give you a free skin if you either link to their offer or send a ticket stub. I’m doing both (I don’t actually want the skin, though; shining iBook is pretty enough already) Consider linking to them anyway, even if you don’t want the skin. It’s a good idea.