My Random Mumblings

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2009-08-11T14:06:00.001+01:00

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Ohhh nice :)

2009-07-12T00:44:00.001+01:00

This is a mosaic of my Twitter followers, I have seen them before, but never done one myself.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

ZTE MF 627 and Windows 7

2009-06-09T22:27:00.001+01:00

I spent a while trying to get my new ZTE MF 627 modem working on Windows 7, as each time I restarted, it would no longer work, and it was a very long winded process to uninstall, reboot, reinstall, update, reboot, then use it every single time.

Then I stumbled upon this link after much searching http://www.tomlodge.co.uk/blog/?tag=mf627-driver-with-windows-7

Basically Tom says "3 MTE627 USB with Windows7
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
Real problems making this work.
Finally - installed “normally” and found that the drivers weren’t installing.
Within the installation folder look for DriverInstaller.exe and run it in Compatibilty Mode of Windows 2000 - it still wouldnt close the dialog box (a restart got rid of it) but now it seems to connect at least - the device is recognised… I don’t seem to have a very good signal here - so can’t verify that all is as it should be - but it definitely connected which is a step forward"

My only comment to add is that the DriverInstaller.exe should be in c:\Program Files\3\3Connect\

Social overload

2009-06-07T15:09:00.002+01:00

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Plurk, the list goes on. It goes on a very long way!

As someone who looks upon these things with both a personal and professional interest, where do you start, and more importantly, where do you stop?

For me, I mainly use Twitter, Facebook is a secondary concern for me. I don’t post updates regularly, but I use it for the esoteric comments that wouldn’t fit in with the statements and banter I get on Twitter. I think most people use a very small subset of tools of those available for their social media needs.

Now Google is making waves with Google Wave (see what I did there?), which will combine IM, Email, and collaborative working to a certain extent but have they missed the boat?

Hardly anyone I know use email for much nowadays. It’s become a medium to share a private comment, photo, joke etc that they don’t post in public. Everyone I know who communicates online does so via Facebook, Twitter, or IM. Even getting people to move from MSN/WLM to Google Talk was impossible, so will people make the move to this new tool, there are already too many ways of communicating.

I know I will use Google Wave. It’s new, I will have to use it as I can’t resist the lure of playing with new tools. The problem I will face is finding people to make use of it with. If it’s “what email would be like if it was invented today”, then why not make it part of Gmail? Why make a new tool? C’mon Google, you have so many applications now, many of them could be integrated into one solution. iGoogle, Reader, Talk, Gmail, Calendar, Documents, Contacts, and many more, I would be happy to have these all on one dashboard app, it would be easier to see what I had, what I was sharing, my contacts etc. Is this where Wave is headed? Who knows?

Can we have some consolidation? Microsoft and Yahoo merged IM networks so that people could chat to each other, why can’t we have some more open standards and get people on Facebook chatting to people on Windows Live Messenger/Yahoo/MySpace/ICQ and so on. Yes, I know you can use clients such as Digsby, but that still requires an account on each, and you couldn’t have a conference chat between people on other networks.

While it’s good to have choice, and competition, there’s simply too much out there now, so what incentives are there for the average Joe to try something new, and persuade all of his friends to join in?

I agree that some communities benefit from having their own thing, something that caters for them more than another solution, but I have been part of these smaller groups, and they tend to stagnate faster, and become more cliquey, therefore alienating anyone else who wants to join very quickly.

Perhaps instead of spending so much time and resource in developing new social networks, we should find out how to make best use of the tools we already have, and improve upon them.

Do Twitter need to #fixreplies?

2009-05-16T18:09:00.002+01:00

For those still not in the know, Twitter is a micro blogging site where people can post 140 characters about anything. You can follow people, or be followed (provided you make your tweets public) by anyone. You can follow me here.

I’m sorry to anyone who loved being able to see every single @reply from everyone they followed, but I am one of the ones who hated it, so please, #dontfixreplies!

Twitter can be noisy at times, when friends are tweeting live about sporting events, when celebrities are getting chatty, when several people you follow start a conversation, and so on, these are comments posted by people you follow, and your choice of viewer can easily get filled with a hundred tweets in between views.

There used to be an option to follow all @replies, this meant you could look at replies from people you were following, to other people who you weren’t following. Then there was the “only people I follow” option, which was my preferred, and the default choice, then there was an option not to see any @replies, you had to choose to click on the @replies on the Twitter page.

I don’t know how people could cope following all @replies, the one sided comments quickly get out of hand, and unless you are a serial follower, nothing is in context, so you generally miss the point. I can only see this being of use to people who are trying to build their network by following people who chat to people you already follow. Surely #followfriday is all about building your network though?

Anyway, I was one of the people who was affected by a bug in Twitter, it meant I could see all @replies from everyone I followed, and I had to stop following several people and considered leaving Twitter because of it. It became a flood of useless information for me. I was not alone, and they received enough complaints about it to remove the setting.

One would hope that this was done with a little analysis, and they checked which setting the majority of people used, before making any changes, so that the most popular solution was implemented. I also assume they are working on a way to fix this option, but either way, I am happy. The tweets I read are not fractured conversations, they are either open statements, or directed at me, just how I like it.

Ahhh, peace at last.

New netbook

2009-05-16T13:54:00.005+01:00

Well, new to me...

I have owned the Asus Eee PC 701, and the Acer Aspire One previously, and I have a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for work, but I was missing the portability of a little device I could sling around and not worry too much about. My laptop is only a 12" widescreen format Samsung Q210, but it's also 3 times he price of a cheap laptop, so I don't want to put undue wear and tear on it if I can help it.

Anyway, yesterday lunchtime, a colleague and I went netbook shopping, just to have a look around. While I dearly loved the Samsung model, I couldn't possibly justify £300, so we went to look in another store. They had an "open box" HP Mini 2133 for £179. While I have always hated these because they are larger, and much more expensive than the two I owned previously, I simply could not ignore that price tag.

The CPU is slower than the Acer, but with a proper HDD, it's not as laggy on performance compared to the Acer's very slow SSD.

Anyway, I have installed Windows 7 on it with all the apps I need for day to day tasks, and designed a graphic for the lid which I had made today.

I really can't thank Asif from Fletchers Auto Parts in Birmingham enough!

Has Twitter replaced IM?

2009-05-10T14:21:00.001+01:00

I just went to look at Windows Live Messenger, and Google Talk, seeing who was about, and I have hardly anyone showing online.

Maybe I’m just Billy No Mates, but I am actively commenting on Twitter, and getting replies, and also sending emails.

Now corporations are just starting to roll out IM and presence on their networks, are they already obsolete?

It seems as though the status generation has abandoned IM, why talk to 1 person when you can put a comment out there for all of your network to reply to, and if you do need to message an individual, you can still direct message, sms, email, and so on.

Thinking about my usage nowadays, I would say there are only a handful of people I bother to chat with on IM now, and even then, the preferred method is VOIP, IM is if they are AFK or can’t talk, but showing online.

I have cleared out my online contacts many times over the past year or so, removing people who I never seem to chat to anymore, or have started chatting to on other mediums, how long before my list only includes those closest to me?

Strange times indeed folks.

How do you convince a business it needs Web 2.0 when you don’t believe in Web 2.0?

2009-05-10T10:06:00.003+01:00

I hate the phrase Web 2.0, I have never made a secret of that. Even the people I work with know I think it's simply a media buzzword that has no real meaning. Well now I will be leading a team of people to officially investigate what Web 2.0 can do for us, both internally, and externally.

Am I the right person to be doing this? Am I in the right part of the business? Possibly, and traditionally speaking, no. But isn’t that part of the equation here? All the things available to us now mean there’s no single right place for this to sit in an organisation, unless you have only just built a team recently.

For just over a year now I have been tasked with looking at technologies out in the big bad world, and how we could make use of them. There have been a few hardware solutions I have put forwards, a few applications which could help save money, but by far the most common proposals involved web technologies.

Many of these technologies aren’t new anymore. Some have only just become popular. Some are still wearing the beta tag. But this is my point. Web 2.0 is not new, it’s just highlighting that there’s loads of new things for the masses who haven’t been paying attention for the last 5 years. And even now, things are still progressing, moving forwards, and always looking to innovate.

My head of service made a very good point though “you have to call it Web 2.0, because people don’t have time to devote to incremental updates”. In a way this is true, and having lived with my head in the clouds of technology for so many years now, I forget that to the majority of people need help in understanding why they should take these new things seriously.

So now I will be banging the drum of Web 2.0 and cringing every time I utter the phrase, just so that people pay attention. Even if they go away thinking this is a new product from PC World that will save our web based efforts, surely that’s better than nobody being interested. My salvation will be that people have taken notice, agreed with proposals for change, and let us do what is right.

Come on people, Web 2.0 is the way! Ewwwww I feel dirty.

It's Star Trek Jim, but not as we know it!

2009-05-08T08:12:00.004+01:00

OK, so I am a bit of a fanboy, I went to see the new Star Trek last night.

I'm not a trekkie, I just love scifi in nearly all its guises.

That out of the way, what did I think? It was the best Trek ever! Seriously. I don't see how they could make it any better. It had the epic cinematography from the original films, the planet busting, Federation destroying threats that made the earlier ones so good, and you guessed it, the Enterprise and her crew were all that stood in the way.

Something was lost in the more recent films, they just came across as very long episodes of The Next Generation, and the last few of the original franchise were laughable, but JJ Abrams has not only managed to capture the spirit of the original series, and feel of the earlier films, he's managed to improve upon it. Sure, some of that is bound to be in the special effects available now, but even the interaction between the cast members had everyone in the audience, myself included, getting all nostalgic when you heard certain phrases, and saw mannerisms. The cast complimented this perfectly, and obviously a lot of hard work went into their parts.

The film obeyed the unwritten Star Trek rules too, with dilithium crystals, red ones die, McCoy being asked to do non docterly things, and so on. They even observed a few things that true nerds and geeks usually criticise in other films, like in space, you can't hear anything! I must be a real geek because when that happened, I immediately thought wow, realism!

Anyway, I could prattle on about this for ages, but I would likely give away too many spoilers, so for now, I suggest you go and watch this, even if you only have a mild attraction to scifi films. You don't have to have seen any of the other films, as this restarts the lot, and opens the door to a whole new franchise with this new, yet very familiar ship and crew.

Tagging meatspace

2009-05-04T23:31:00.010+01:00

Putting my twitter name on my laptop in meatspace has had me thinking about QR Codes and Microsoft Tags.

Things like this are very common in Japan, probably many other places, but I don't see them around the UK very often.

QR Codes will probably win, there are already more users, reader applications, and people who recognise them, but we'll see.

I think that it would be easier for someone to tag my twiter ID via a code with a mobile phone running a reader, than hoping they would see a text version, jot it down, and remember to look me up when they check twitter next.

If you're at an event, there's a chance your tags could be read from photos too. I think this is where the Microsoft tag is better, it seems to be a little simpler, and from a few experiments, can be read from more angles in lower resolution images.

The next experiment is to see the best way to make the labels, as my preferred cut vinyl graphics would not be suitable for either.

Here's my twitter address in the two competing formats:

Microsoft

QR Code

twitter branding

2009-05-03T10:45:00.005+01:00

I have seen many sites with customised links to twitter profiles, and so on, and a few people even put it on business cards, but on Friday I thought about having a logo made for my laptop.

The result is this...

From Blogger Pictures

I hate boring laptops, we customise so many things in our lives, why stop at wallpaper on your laptop?

The people who have seen it so far seem to like it, let's see how the unwashed masses take it, and if they even understand what it is. I think the people that matter will get it, if people still don't know about twitter, then it doesn't matter if they don't understand does it?

PSFBuzz

2009-04-30T13:05:00.001+01:00

Today was a very long, but fun day up in Manchester at the Public Sector Forums. Many people tweeting and blogging over the course of the day, as it was all about Web 2.0 (damn I hate that phrase) and social networking.

You can take a look at the buzz about it too, but all; in all it was a really useful day. Highlighted lots of reasons for local authorities to use social networks, the best comment that summed it all up was "use social networks, because that's where the people are".

I was interviewed too, so that should be on one of the websites in the next few days.

Why are we waiting...

2009-04-04T10:55:00.000+01:00

OK mixed reaction to the standard Google Apps so far.

I have seen some features on the Premier version that are not available to standard users, but I wonder if you get corporate iGoogle, I forgot to ask.

I'll be talking to Dave at Google UK again soon, so I will ask the question.

For now though, I have been playing around with sites, rather nice to be able to mess around with it all, and not worry about it being public.

Also, I have added several people from work, the other managers in ICT mainly, so hopefully we can see how useful it is for collabrative working and things like that. Will have to wait and see how well it's received.

Bad Google!

2009-03-28T15:57:00.000Z

OK, I know many things are still in beta, and I can't expect everything to work exactly how I want it to, but c'mon, no integration at all between iGoogle and Google Domains?

I can't use my domain login to greate an iGoogle page, so I have to create a new account. Once I have done this I can at least have an iGoogle homepage, but I can't use any of the mail or calendar links to take me to my domain mail or calendars.

What's the matter Google?

That then means I have to carry on using my old gmail address for things like Latitude, Reader, and so on, but the links on that iGoogle page then take me to my old mail, calendar etc.

Also, there's no easy way to migrate email from one account to another, although I found I could do that via POP access, so not all was lost.

How about some integration between apps guys?

Please?

Google Apps are cool

2009-03-20T13:31:00.000Z

OK I have been playing a little more with the full suite, such as how forms work with web pages, and create the collated spreadsheet for you.

I must say, it's all rather nice!

I really like how the private sites work too, ideal for sharing info or files to a controlled set of users. Just the thing an enterprise environment would need.

Google are coming in to present to my company in a few weeks, I thought I better see it in a little more detail myself, and I like!

chimerax.net goes live

2009-03-19T10:41:00.001Z

I don't really know why I bought this domain, $10 per year for the domain, and a front to Google Apps sounded interesting though.

I'm also interested in how we could use Google at work, so seeing how the whole package works on a domain level is good for me, as I can answer people's questions without having to research everything all the time.

Sites integration for sharing seems very good, especially how you can share to different people for different sites, keep them hidden from the public, or open it up for all.

Anyway, still working out what I will do with this now I have it, so check back from time to time to see how I'm getting on :)

(If you actually care of course)

http://www.chimerax.net

HTC Touch HD really does rock

2009-03-09T00:31:00.001Z

Well, I've been using my Touch HD for almost 2 weeks now and I must say, it's the best Windows Mobile device I've ever used.I should do a proper review comparing it too the devices I've used before and why this one hp so good!

I found my first geocache!

2009-03-02T23:18:00.000Z

OK, it turns out that one of the geocaches was about 5 minutes walk from where I work, so I went on a hunt after work to find it :)

It was a simple find, no puzzles to solve or anything, so I found the cache, signed the logbook, and took a little red car that was in the box, and put in a dragonfly fridge magnet :) I also left a little notepad as the logbook was full.

I think this might start to get quite addictive.

The view is from near the cache. The tree itself os off to the right, just in case I spoil it by too many people recognising it. There are a few thorny bushes to fight through to get to the tree itself, so I doubt someone would discover it by accident, but you never know.

Do you geocache?

2009-03-02T09:04:00.001Z

I saw a little utility last night called GCz from http//www.nicque.com/PQz which sounded like fun.I have heard of geocaching before, but never tried it, as it always sounded like I needed a cagoule, compass, and flask of weak lemon squash.This little app makes things seem like much more fun! You have to create an account on http://www.geocaching.com before you can use it, but that's fairly painless.Within minutes I had fired it up and found that there are several caches near me and my place of work.Some seem to be simple hidden boxes with a log book and some trinkets to swap, where others have puzzles you need to solve before you find the final cache.Anyway, it sounds more interesting than a boring walk, and means I can do something to start getting fit, and play with gadgets at the same time. Sounds like a win win situation to me.I'll see how it goes and post an update.

Just testing moBlog

2009-03-02T00:39:00.001Z

I'm guessing since it's taken me this far it's actually working :)

Windows 7 ftw!

2009-01-10T23:08:00.000Z

Well, after having tested Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One for a couple of weeks, I took the plunge and installed it on my laptop today, a Samsung Q210.

I must say, it runs very fast, and so far everything has installed, and worked that I need!

Not much else I can say for now, other than this OS rocks!