Category Archives: Technology

The Future is Technology? Don’t make me laugh.

by | 1 Comment

The future is technology. So goes the idealistic vision of the future theme of edcmooc and the happy dreams of those who dream of a digital utopia in which our lives are enhanced by amazing geekery and augmented reality.

My world is different. Mine is a world in which technology doesn’t work. It claims to work but forgets to mention the endless hours you will spend trying to get it do what you thought, foolishly, that it would do. Don’t even mention the word “GLOW” in my presence.

I bought a Sony Bravia TV because it had internet connectivity. It does, sort of, but not the way I understood it. It connects to a half-rokuassed clunky version of the internet. It doesn’t, after all, play stuff from the web. I doesn’t let me browse. At all. I discover that I can jigger about with things to make it do that, sort of. I bought a Roku Media Streamer so I can stream digital media from my network to the TV. It does, sort of, but not the way I understood it. It has an interface clunkier than a clunky thing from clunky-land in the far forgotten time of the early nineties. I took it back. boxeeI bought a Boxee Box which according to the manufacturers, does all the things I want it to do. It does, sort of, but not the way I understood it. It falls over a lot. The display is intermittently broken and it switches sound output on and off suddenly, threatening my lovely expensive speakers (which were made in the 1970′s by the way and still work when not rapidly switched on and off by a dodgy boxee). I took it back.

I got an Asus Nexus Google 7 tablet which has had a flickering display fault since the day it arrived and despite being returned to the manufacturer twice, still has the fault. The audio output has never worked. I’m sending it back. Again.

The future may be technology but don’t you rely on it doing what you think it will do. It will, sort of, but not the way you understood it.

week3

Google Nexus 7

by | Leave a comment

2012-11-06 09.29.42I’ve had my Google Nexus 7 tablet for a little over three months now. I had been looking at tablet computers for a little while but hadn’t quite got to the point of investing a squillion quid on the offchance that my life would be transformed by having one. I had seen plenty of people with iPads and most seemed very pleased with the convenience and usefulness of the device. Many people have been considering their application in education, not least Ollie Bray, who has published a series of posts recently on how to ensure their impact on teaching and learning.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I won a Nexus 7 in the Krystal Hosting Halloween draw (thank you!).

Hardware – display problems

Imagine my surprise and delight when the display started flickering erratically after three weeks. I called Google support. Not their problem. I called Asus support. They arranged courier collection and transport to Holland for repair. They sent it back by courier, “no fault found”. It still had the fault. It went back. Courier again. It came back, “no fault found”. It still has the fault but after all the shuggling about travelling around Europe, it’s infrequent. A few more trips should have it sorted out, but why didn’t they just replace the evidently faulty unit and save all the courier costs?

Software – The Google Play App Store

There are loads and loads of good apps available either free or for a few quid on the Google Android “Play” App Store. Not all of them are bug-free: I downloaded Infinite Design today, having tried the free version and been impressed by the beautiful interface and playfunctionality of this intuitive drawing app. The paid version (£3.22) includes the ability to export vector graphics, which I might use with Video Scribe software to produce digital artefacts for the mooc I’m enrolled in. Imagine my surprise and delight when the paid version of Infinite Design crashed frequently, to the point of being unusable. I checked the returns procedure and discovered that you have 15 minutes in which to return apps bought in the Google Store, after which it’s, “screw you, contact the author” (I’m paraphrasing here, obviously). Now, I’m no lawyer, but I think that’s not right under consumer rights legislation in the UK. It certainly not filling me with confidence as my finger hovers over the purchase button as I ponder my next killer app download. As I’m writing this, by the way (on my trusty never-gone-wrong-in-three-years-even-after-all-the-abuse-it’s-had Apple Mac), I’m using the Nexus to examine the Google App Store App, which has just crashed.

Conclusions

eyePadSo far, I’ve found that the tablet computer is a wonderful thing, allowing me, when in a wifi-zone, to do some pretty good things, be highly productive with maps, email, calendar and all the googly goodness of modern technophiliac living. I figured out how to fix the bug in the Infinite Design app – I just uninstalled and re-installed the program and it seems fine now, apart from the occasional flickering of the display. I will continue to use it because I still can’t afford an iPad mini and I’d rather have my flaky Nexus than a naePad.

If I were in the market for a tablet computer, would I buy the Nexus at £160 or the iPad mini for a hundred quid more? I think that because for me it is important for things to just work, I’d go for the Apple and consider the extra expense justified in the cost of the time I don’t have to spend pfaffing about with stuff that doesn’t.

A warning about Vuze

by | 5 Comments

novuzeI have been a long-time user of the torrent and DLNA sharing program Vuze, formerly known as Azureus. Not any more, I have removed it from my system after the upgrade program made unauthorised changes to my browser settings, default search engine and installed without my permission, extensions for Chrome and Safari which I would never use and did not give permission for. These alterations seem to be a paid service with the Vuze installer/upgrader program which silently modify the users computer to direct search traffic to Yahoo (who uses Yahoo by choice?) and send traffic to ebay via spigot, a nasty spammy marketing service I would never choose to use.

Apart from anything else, this is a breach of trust. I WILL NEVER AGAIN USE VUZE OR ANY OF ITS PRODUCTS and I advise you to consider the risks of unauthorised changes when using their products also, because if they’ll abuse your trust right in front of your eyes, you have wonder what they’ll do where you can’t see it happening.

Copyright

by | Leave a comment

I’ve been having a conversation with a couple of friends about things like moocs and blended learning and the future of education. In that dialogue, the issue of sharing content under the Creative Commons License arose – this being offered as a reasonable step to take to share resources for online learning without having somebody steal it and sell it on for profit.

My first blog was posted in 1997 and within a few months I realised that the images and content I so carefully created were being used by others to make money, either through aggregation or lazy theft of copyright material. Since that time, I have tried on a number of occasions to seek redress, either by having the content removed, or properly acknowledged and back-linked to the source, or by seeking some kind of royalty or compensation for the use of my intellectual property. Only once have I ever been successful in getting appropriate acknowledgement posted for my articles and images.

I’ve often defended against leeching by substituting another image – something a little less appropriate for the thief’s original purpose, usually. There’s not much you can do when your images or content are posted into someone else’s server space. Legal fees are prohibitively extortionate – £150 per hour is mate’s rates around here and it’s only lawyers that can afford that kind of expenditure.

Encouraged by my friends’ assertion that I have the law on my side, I’ve just billed a well-known Scottish University £200 for Royalties for an image (a drawing of mine) they have stolen from one of my sites which is clearly marked copyright. Ironically, on the site where they have posted the image, there is a notice for students which states: “Note: Don’t post other people’s pictures to your blog without permission” a few lines down from the infringement.

I’ll let you know how it goes. UPDATE 28 March 2013: They paid up.