Showing 11 - 15 of 15
Covid computing
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/05/2020
» Things are quiet on the IT front. Well, that's not necessarily true, as many are trying to come to grips with the whole working-from-home existence. Many, including myself, are spending a lot of time in front of a screen. Instead of getting up and conferring with a colleague at their desk, it is a Skype chat. Instead of a walk to the meeting room, often on another floor, it is a Skype meeting or similar. Many do not have a video camera at home so it is voice only. There are new collaboration technologies like Microsoft Teams to get used to. Instead of handing a report to someone, it is uploaded into a shared area for all to browse. I find that I am sharing my screen more often to go over a document or diagram. On the plus side I recently had an upgrade to my Internet speed. This has helped with downloads but not much else, as a chat takes up very little bandwidth.
Users won't flip for Samsung's new phone
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/02/2020
» There is a lot of interest in the new Samsung Galaxy flip phone. It's cheaper than the last model, not a difficult target. As mentioned previously it opens like the old flip phones, not like a book. The hinge is better, as is the dust protection, but with this design you will always be swiping your finger across the fold. It is no larger than a regular smartphone so that wow of a bigger screen is not there anymore. At the price point I just can't see how this is an attractive unit to get.
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.
The borders of security
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/05/2019
» It's becoming more common for agents at some borders to demand your device passwords so they can check what you have on them. Given the power of the modern smartphone, partially indicated by the cost of the top-end models, this makes sense, as they are basically mini notebook computers. If you really want to protect your data, keep it elsewhere.
AI-aided hope on the horizon
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/02/2019
» Despite some of my criticisms in the past there are some excellent examples of emerging artificial intelligence technologies. I've mentioned some of these from the medical world in earlier articles but a new one caught my eye this week, figuring out in which hotel a picture was taken. No, not to help people remember where holiday snaps were taken but to track down human trafficking where pics of women are taken to sell them for sex. The three groups behind this identification technology are from George Washington University, Temple University and Adobe, all in the US. Like many AI systems a large amount of source data is used and to help with this more than a million images have been collected from 50,000 hotels worldwide. Using all the room elements in backgrounds a neural network is being trained to identify a hotel chain and then a location.