Showing 91-100 of 135 results
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Happy birthday, Gmail
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/04/2014
» This month Gmail turned 10. According to legend, it was created in the free time of Google engineers, who were allocated 20% of their time for personal projects. In those days there was Microsoft (who managed to lose all of my Hotmail emails one year; I’ve never touched it since), Yahoo! and AOL, making Gmail’s rise from nothing quite an achievement. Gmail introduced threaded mail, more data storage and allowed users to send larger emails. They also introduced an “undo send” option, long-term storage of emails, better searching and didn’t delete your account if you remained inactive for a while. It handled spam decently and worked on almost every browser. Microsoft responded by charging for extra space. No wonder it is now the top free email service, at least according to some measures.
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It’s now or never
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/03/2014
» I was having coffee with my son recently and he became frustrated because Facebook wasn’t providing the answer he was looking for fast enough. The new generation wants their information now, not in five minutes, but now. This also supports my theory that in general they are willing to accept the first answer that is provided rather than cross check the facts. This dependency on instant information means that manipulation by the media and other groups becomes a lot easier. Not sure where this is all going to end up.
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How safe is your data?
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/02/2014
» Researchers from Rutgers University have developed a smartphone tool that tracks how often applications track them. The app essentially monitors other applications and logs when they get location data and transmits it. The results indicated that lots of applications, sometimes those where it was not expected, grabbed location data and passed it along. Some apps will notify the user but the research found that others are not so forthcoming. The researchers concluded that Android permissions are not an effective method for disclosing and consenting for location data access. They also found that the flashing GPS icon is largely ignored or not registered by users. You have been warned. You can find the full report here: http://bit.ly/NrTyQN
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A sexy new way to pay
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/02/2014
» Forget PayPal, what you really need is at least as The Register in the UK quaintly puts it "pay by bonk". Using the system, you knock your smartphone against another smartphone or device in a store to transfer funds from one account to another. A new payment system is also being planned at Apple, who wants to lead the near field communications (NFC) race. It will no doubt heavily feature the iTunes store (i.e. you pay money into your iTunes account and then use that to purchase items in the real world). This could essentially work like an iTunes-based debit card. Remember, however, that these NFC payment systems are also subject to those of a more unsavoury nature passing close to you and grabbing some cash for themselves. It is early days yet, but I expect that this will turn into a real issue. As for me, I bought myself a woven stainless steel wallet that acts as a Faraday cage. You could also just wrap it in tin foil, I suppose.
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Don't bank on security of websites
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/01/2014
» In more hacking news this week, the names, home and email addresses, phone numbers and other personal information of around 70 million Target shoppers were grabbed in yet another a database raid that included 40 million credit card details. One of the reasons I use PayPal is because I only have to give my credit card details to one provider. I try to minimise who gets access to my credit card and banking details and PayPal is one way to do that.
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Smartphone makers throw a curve
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/10/2013
» The internet is an amazing resource. Boasting around 40 billion pages and with exabytes of data, it contains a huge amount of information provided by a multitude of sources. One problem is that a lot of this information is unverified or consists of personal observations and opinions. Despite this, there appears to be a growing trend that the first result received when performing a Web search is the one used to find the answer to a question.
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Connecting becomes hard work in China
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/09/2013
» I was recently on a trip in China and while I was there I bought myself a SIMM with a data plan to use Skype and to play the game Ingress. As a technologically advanced and well-developed nation I expected that the communications system and technology in general would be advanced, stable and ubiquitous. I was wrong.
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Flash in the pan
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/08/2013
» As you might imagine, companies that make flash drives are working on making them faster, have them last longer and keeping the prices down. At a recent Flash Memory Summit in California a Facebook representative was urging them to "just make it dense and cheap". His reasoning is that there are some types of information that don't need fast access speeds such as logs, usage metrics and even some user data that they hardly ever access. How many photos have people uploaded that they looked at once and are now stored in memory bytes somewhere? "Write-once, read-never is probably the spec for a lot of this," the rep suggested. In other news, there is such a thing as a Flash Memory Summit.
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Microsoft and devices? Time to call it quits?
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/08/2013
» Things are starting to slow down in the IT marketplace generally, but specifically with tablets. We'll start off with Microsoft, whose Surface RT devices are just not selling. Total revenue to date is US$853 million (26.5 billion baht); that might sound like a lot, but it's at least a billion dollars less than expected. When you factor in the estimated $900 million in advertising costs, you can see what the problems are. So far the proceeds from sales haven't even covered the launch costs. During the same period, Apple sold 57 million iPads. Taking a retrospective view, Microsoft has never done that well in selling devices, whether they be phones, music players or tablets; so perhaps in future the firm should just stick to software.
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Sympathy for the old devils
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/07/2013
» If you are below the age of 30 you were born into a world with global connectivity on your phone, at home and in your office. You probably grew up using mobile devices and social networking applications like Facebook to keep in contact with all your family, friends and business associates. In some countries you are doing most of your shopping online, doing your business with the government online and you probably don't have a fixed-line connection in your home or apartment. In short, you are connected everywhere you go.
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