Showing 1 - 10 of 61
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.
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.
X remains an influential platform
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/04/2024
» How influential is Twitter/X? Some will remember a while back when Elon Musk gave his opinion on Disney. I won't repeat it here but it was very direct. Up until recently, Disney hadn't posted anything on X but about a week before you read this, they were back with a gold checkmark. These cost about US$10,000 (368,000 baht), which while not expensive for Disney, indicates how they see X as a platform for communicating to all those potentially interested in all things Disney. Elon Musk is still supporting people like Gina Carano in suing Disney for what they did to her and others based allegedly on their political and religious views.
AI remains a beta tool for journalists
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/03/2024
» Unless stated otherwise, I do not use AI tools to write my articles. The main reason is that I enjoy the discovery and research process. I state this because apparently 45 finalists for this year's Pulitzer Prize in journalism disclosed their use of AI tools while developing their work to varying degrees. I tend to use examples from past work environments, articles on the latest technologies and other interesting reports that catch my eye. Given the latest revelations from the current crop of AI Large Language Models, if you use them without care, what you are reporting or writing about could be completely inaccurate. For the time being it's recommended you use such tools as a possible confirming source, rather than a primary one.
Rabbit R1's AI action intrigues
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/01/2024
» A new device out of CES 2024 in Las Vegas caught my eye. At first glance, the Rabbit R1 doesn't look all that interesting. It's a US$199 (in America), orange, handheld device that looks like an old-style gaming machine of some kind about the size of a stack of Post-It notes. It comes with a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a camera, a voice command button and a 4G LTE SIM card slot for connectivity beyond Wi-Fi. This is not a smartphone and won't replace it as there are no onboard apps, it won't pair with your smartphone and it doesn't talk to application APIs like cloud service gateways.
AI is the new marketing buzzword
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/11/2023
» Some readers will remember back a decade or three when the big term was "turbo". Everything was turbo something. Turbo speed, turbo clearing, turbo graphics and so on. Today, the equivalent term is AI. I saw an advertisement recently for glasses described as AI technology that adapts to your sight. It was a regular lens with some design elements, perhaps from an AI, perhaps not, with claims of predictive focus. Rubbish. There was no inherent active or dynamic AI technology in the lenses to back up this claim and I don't think such a technology at that level is even available at any price in the current time. The same goes for many other claims preceded or appended by the AI moniker. Like turbo, it is the current marketing buzzword and since many don't understand it and what the current engineering and technological limitations are in 2023, it has become part of the mindscape.
Apple sets sights on VR market
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/06/2023
» The biggest announcement of the past week or two was the Apple Vision Pro VR system. There has been so much on this recently. The quick summary is -- two 4K eyepieces, no controllers required and it can replace your TV and computer monitors. I was more interested in the battery life being two hours, or if you were using them, not enough for the full Apple presentation. The price is also an amazing US$3,500 in America so out of the range of most people. One argument is that by the time you don't need to pay for a TV upgrade or new monitors it is worth the investment. My counter is if you have a four-person household that price becomes $14,000, a lot more than the cost of a new TV. Oh, and you can mostly only use it with Apple kit which really limits options.
Fact-checking AI content... Is it possible?
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/04/2023
» Everywhere I turn these days, there is another comment or opinion on artificial intelligence or AI. Digging a little deeper, it would appear the concerns are for what comes after GPT-4.
Microsoft on the naughty list again
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/03/2023
» Some of you may have already noticed, Microsoft is getting very pushy about installing Windows 11. On one of my machines, it started the process under the guise of a standard update. Softwarekeep.com has an excellent article titled "How to Cancel Windows 11 Update and Stay on Windows 10" that covers many ways to handle this. One option is to revert back to Windows 10 within 10 days of Windows 11 being installed, found here: Start menu > Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options > Recovery > Previous version of Windows. After this arbitrary 10 days, you need to do a clean Windows 10 install. I also recommend the free Windows Update Blocker, currently at version 1.7, as a way to control your Windows updates.
YouTube ramps up ads, moderation
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/03/2023
» If this was a YouTube video you would have to sit through up to 30 seconds of ads before you could even start. YouTube seems to be stepping up its advertising while at the same time providing less service. I still use it because it has things I'm interested in, like Chinese martial arts series and info on music products I like. If I'd written this using ChatGPT you would not see some of the material because the trust and safety filters on the AI product have repeatedly been found to be biased towards the US political left in the content it will return. Some people associated with ChatGPT have acknowledged this but it remains to be seen if anything will change.