Showing 1 - 10 of 16
Marketeers have simple choices
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/02/2026
» If you use a mobile phone for playing any games, then typically along with that comes all of the advertisements and marketing presentations. First however, there is the "free download", this means you can download it for free, install and run it. After that, things may not be free at all. This is to be expected as advertising is one of the few ways to make any income from the games being played by millions of people across the planet.
What to expect in the year ahead
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/12/2025
» The coming year will be full of artificial intelligence, robots and a Starlink communications experience that will have many moving from their current providers. Let's dig in with my predictions for 2026.
Microsoft's quantum conundrum
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/03/2025
» If you've been keeping up with quantum computer news, you will have seen the Microsoft Marketing announcement on topological q-bits and a potential quantum computer in a few years. I was planning to write about this in some detail, but it turns out the reality may not meet the marketing. Surprising, I know, but the announcement implying Microsoft has q-bit technology ready to go and scale is speculative. They don't have any physical models, just some tests and a theory that has already been challenged by the physics community. It will take a while to go through all the published data, but the Microsoft quantum computer could be decades, not years, in the future, if ever.
AI is causing concern again
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/12/2023
» There have been two big stories in the IT world over the past couple of weeks. The biggest one concerns OpenAI and its three-day boardroom drama. In a nutshell, the board voted Sam Altman and other members out of the company. The next day, Microsoft picked them up and anyone else who wanted to head over to a new division. That same day, 700-plus employees of OpenAI signed a letter saying they would go if a rogue board member did not quit and bring Sam Altman back. On the third day, Sam was back and three board members were gone.
YouTube hypocrisy deserves flagging
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/09/2023
» YouTube is behaving badly again. A prominent presenter I occasionally watch, who has millions of subscribers, has been demonetised, for some possible actions 20 years ago. This is not a commentary on potential innocence or guilt, but on YouTube's processes. There are people whose lives are supported by revenue from their presentations on YouTube. This ranges from small fries all the way up to the big fish like the one here. When an individual is demonetised they can lose the ability to support themselves. In this case allegations were made by the media, not the police or authorities, and at the time of writing there have been zero charges made. YouTube is essentially saying, bring us all your viewers so we can hit them with ads and we can make lots of money, but you will be getting nothing for your work.
Free speech and pedestrian blues
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/12/2022
» Let's take a look at my predictions for 2022, a mixed year for technology. How did I do? Virtual reality didn't advance as much as I'd hoped. Artificial intelligence made some incremental games including as I pointed out in an earlier article, for music producers. The Neuralink interface did improve this year, if indeed that is something you're interested in, but still not available for broad human use. I also was wrong on cryptocurrency. With the FTX exposure the private firms took a hit, but governments have started to get interested in the technology. The world is poised for a crypto explosion, but not this year.
EU demands Apple play fair
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/06/2022
» It looks like the Apple-specific charging cable may be a thing of the past with the European Union demanding that all smartphone makers use a universal USB-C port for wired charging by 2024. The same rule will be applied to many other electronic devices like tablets, cameras, headphones, handheld video game consoles and e-readers. In the future, laptops will need to follow the same rule.
The fight for a freer web continues
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/03/2021
» The social media platform Telegram has over 500 million users with over 55 million active every day. Unlike other platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others, you are free to express your opinion there without being cancelled, shadow banned or throttled in searches.
Big firms fuzzy on their AI thinking
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/10/2020
» Everything you see these days is AI enabled in some way, or according to the marketing they must be. Software, fridges, cancer detection and lots of other examples are all based on some kind of AI implementation. Google, Microsoft and all the big players are heavily invested in at least the buzzword, but the proof of delivery as promised is elusive.
Huawei facing tough time outside China
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/07/2020
» China, and in particular Huawei, is not winning these days. Huawei has some excellent hardware. Their latest phones are as good in many aspects as any other manufacturer. However, the fuzzy area is the company's links to the Chinese government. Huawei claims they are not directly linked to the government but many others say there are direct and nefarious links. Huawei recently lost their foothold in the United Kingdom as their 5G network has been disallowed or marginalised for the future. This leaves only Canada as part of the five eyes intelligence partners still supporting Huawei 5G. Other nations have also been hesitant to adopt the technology.