Showing 21 - 30 of 119
Transpacific cable is cut, for now
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/09/2020
» In light of the problems between the USA and China, and that those in power in Beijing want to grab data from US networks, Google and Facebook have dropped plans to build an undersea cable between the US and Hong Kong. The new target limits the landing points to the Philippines and Taiwan and now excludes Hong Kong. The HK section of the cable is built but will not now be activated due to a national security agreement between the US and Google and Facebook. I will predict that if Joe Biden wins the next US election this decision will be revisited.
Edit your apps
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/07/2020
» - I've never been a Twitter user as I find that platform full of bullies and one-sided, poorly researched commentary. By comparison I am now active on Parler, which is a similar platform, but is not restricted to only those ideas that Twitter supports. It is populated by people whose ideas I enjoy reading. If you are bored with the Twits on Twitter then come on over to Parler as an alternative.
WFH causes a rethink of sales
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/06/2020
» - I love a good marketing vs predictive analysis battle. Lenovo is guessing the current work-from-home trend will be good for PC makers. This is on top of the orders for laptops that went through the roof as offices closed and staff were asked to work remotely. Sales in Western Europe for example jumped 55%. My organisation just had me take my PC home as they didn't have enough notebooks to go around. Lenovo are betting that if people are working from home on a more permanent basis that will mean more PC sales, predicting 25% to 30% growth in the next two to three years.
Got those work from home blues
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/05/2020
» Working from home is fine if everything is working. I use a two-monitor set-up with one for work and the other for home use. The work monitor reverts back to home use when the end of the day comes. Both monitors run off a Display Port connection from each of the graphics cards. Last week, one of the monitors decided to stop working. At first, I was thinking of a quick way to get a new monitor but after a bit of reflection, I plugged the non-working one into an HDMI port on my home computer and it worked just fine. Thinking it was the cable, I ordered a new one but when it arrived, the monitor still didn't work with the Display Port so it was obvious that port had stopped working.
Someone, somewhere still uses IE
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/02/2020
» A Microsoft engineer, Eric Lawrence, who worked on moving the Edge browser to a Google-driven open source base code, has suggested that people need to stop using the more traditional version of Internet Explorer. His plea was a personal one on his own blog but Microsoft cybersecurity chief Chris Jackson expressed the same sentiment a year earlier. IE still has a couple of percent of people using it -- probably those who had it installed on their machines -- that have yet to be upgraded. The technology is old and full of security holes but a number of organisations demand that it still be used.
More data, more problems
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/01/2020
» It's time to make some predictions for 2020. A number were made by others a while back, most of which did not eventuate, like a Japanese base on the Moon, flying cars and a Beijing to London rail link. I'll try for a bit more realism.
A tangled web
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/12/2019
» Yes, it is the time of year where we see how well I did at predictions for 2019.
Apple sours as rivals rise
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/12/2019
» Apple can't seem to win a trick these days. Overall phone sales in Europe picked up during the last quarter but iPhone sales did not follow the upswing and ended up 4% down on the same quarter last year. The problem is that the latest models are not giving many users a reason to upgrade. Their battery replacement programme and bad sales in China have not helped either. Overall market share worldwide has dropped from 20.8% to 18.6%. By comparison, Samsung has increased their share to over 35% in the same market. Huawei, in second place, sits about the same on 22.2%. Xiaomi is still in fourth place but well behind the others at 10.5%. The biggest impacts predicted going forward are 5G and Brexit though in reality I don't think the latter will have any real impact other than short term. The most popular Samsung models were the Galaxy A10, A20e, A40 and A50.
Finally, an iPod replacement
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/11/2019
» Those who have known me for a while know I'm a lover of new technology. Aside from computer- and guitar-related items, I also like to listen to good quality sound playback. To further that goal I recently picked up a few FiiO devices. The M5 is a small, square, HD music player. It supports all Bluetooth protocols and when they are available up to a 2TB microSD card. While the unit will play back MP3s the focus is on the high-end codecs including FLAC. I paired this with the new FH7 in-ear headphones, which provided the broadest soundscape I have ever listened to and allowed me to follow a single instrument through the entire song. The last item was their BD3, a small unit that plugs into a cable allowing the headphones to act as a Bluetooth unit that can be paired to the M5 if I decide to wear it like a watch. As I found out when researching, you can pay some very large sums for headphones and related equipment but this set seems to be a nice sweet spot of quality and flexibility without going crazy.
Diminishing returns
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/06/2019
» The first three months of 2019 saw Apple and Samsung collectively selling 17.5 million fewer smartphones globally compared to last year. As I've previously noted, we have market saturation and a lack of yearly upgrades for many users. I upgrade with roughly every third model, for example. The premium end of the market also continues to move out of the reach of many, meaning fewer people can upgrade as often. The innovation jump in successive models is also diminishing, so they lack the wow factor that drove earlier upgrades. These figures do not include the impact of the latest Samsung S10 range which shipped at the end of the quarter. The top three remain Samsung, Huawei and Apple. This may change with the recent US Huawei bans, or at least reduce any growth. Even after price cuts, Apple's sales fell 17.6% in the quarter leaving Samsung as the one least likely to lose their position in the next few months. Oppo and Viva rounded out the top five in sales with Xiaomi nibbling at their heels.