byteblog

One of my pet hates, especially in today’s world of instant access to spell checkers and websites devoted to grammatical correctness (is that a word?), is the seeming increase in the use of the greengrocer’s apostrophe.

It’s one thing to see a scrawled sign on my way to work every day that says “lunch’s”, but quite another when one of the world’s largest companies, Dell Computers, makes a similar faux pas on its offers home page.

I don’t know what’s worse; that Dell don’t have a single person in their organisation who has spotted it, or has and then hasn’t reported it, or that the probable thousands who have seen it since haven’t contacted them to flag it immediately?

Of course I am included in that bunch. And at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I don’t want to be the one who tells them - I can imagine it wouldn’t be warmly received and I don’t want to be “one of those”.

So, instead, I will post up their mistake for everyone here to see and everyone else to potentially stumble across in year’s to come (geddit?).

Over the past few years, I have experimented periodically with trying to reduce my amount of exposure to all things electronic. I include under electronic basically anything with a chip - tv, laptop, PC, PDA etc.

The driver for this was never a fear of potential damage to my innards from stray electromagentic radiation, but a desire to try and avoid a potentially far more damaging end result - my ability to concentrate.

I find that trying to concentrate on any one thing - whether it be a book, an article, a quote or composing an email, is becoming increasingly harder the more devices and websites are running around me. The urge to check email on my tabbed browser or PDA is so strong that the only thing to do is to turn them off, and go and sit in the next room. But then when it isn’t close at hand, you spend probably every other paragraph thinking about what you might be missing. Sound familiar?

I’ve read about some people only reading emails between certain times of the day, or having one day a week off everything, so maybe I should try that. But I think unless someone physically removes the PDA, PC or tv from my immediate vicinity and then straps me down to the chair, I have a feeling I might struggle to stick to the new regime.

Check out - http://tinyurl.com/6zdzcf

We are pleased to announce that we are now able to offer clients an open-source option when choosing the platform for their web shop.

ZenCart has been around for 5 years or so, and is a full-featured e-commerce package that is entirely web-based. This means the shop can be run by multiple users in different locations, with no software installed on your local computer.

The launch of the new iPhone has seen a predictably hysterical reaction in the more media-friendly press. It promises much of the same as the original version launched last year, with the addition of 3G promising fast internet access, and a GPS receiver, allowing navigation software to run on the unit.

The software glitches that have blighted the launch of the new unit have been the focus this week, but I wanted to point out something that I think makes the whole thing more of a fashion accessory, rather than a useful tool.

It’s called the iPhone but, in reality, from the very beginning the phone seems to have been included almost as an afterthought, in order that it can be marketed as a genuine catch-all alternative to the already ubiquitous and ground-breaking iPod and your current handset.

I say this because the keyboard of the iPhone is still a problem in my eyes. The problem with most phones is that the keyboard does not lend itself very well to typing, simply due to its physical size. Compound that with the touchscreen technology, and you have a keyboard on the iPhone that is considerably slower and more error-prone than those with conventional keys.

In their haste to produce a thing of beauty (and in that respect, incidentally, I think they have succeeded), they have taken the iPhone down a cul-de-sac that has hamstrung its desirability as a useful communication tool. Sure, it looks great, will play music and apparently even makes phone calls, but try and use it to email, blog or compose a document, and you will find yourself yearning for an old-school keyboard that not only collects dust and crumbs, but means you can work faster. Surely that should be the point of these things?

No doubt Apple will shift orchard-sized piles of these things, in spite of my nit-picking, and good luck to them. But I will be sticking with the decidedly and resolutely old-school keyboard of my BlackBerry Curve, in all its crumby, dusty glory.

Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7501321.stm

Spell-checkers can be pretty handy. When you are staring at the same document for sometimes hours on end as it is being compiled, sometimes you can miss the simplest of typos, so it is useful to run it through a spell-checker or at least past another pair of eyes before you send it to the client.

However, we didn’t realise that spell-checkers can also pass comment on the policy of our friends and neighbours in the US.

After recently checking the spelling in a document we are putting together for a client, the US-centric spell-checker flagged up “healthcare”.

It said “word not found”…

The search giant Yahoo, amongst others, is experimenting with a new version of the internet called the “Semantic Web”. In other words, the aim is to try and get the internet to behave more like person, rather than just a collection of dumb terminals.

At the moment, when you do a web search for, say, “office equipment”, the search engines use the specific words in that search request, and try and match pages that they have previously indexed. This can sometimes throw up all sorts of anomalies and weird pages. Basically this is because people are still much better than computers at associating between words and phrases, and as people’s associations differ wildly between age groups, countries, races and so on, it is very difficult for a search engine to get it right every time, for everyone.

The solution, say the techies, is to have the web think for itself, and instead of just dumbly returning a list of pages, it should actively search for relevant content by understanding its meaning. Of course “understanding” is a relative term - we think it is doubtful whether a computer will ever pass the Turing test in our lifetime, as the meaning we as humans attach to information is vastly complex and, ultimately, any computer will have to be programmed by us, and we do not fully understand this relationship ourselves.

We all saw what happened in Terminator 2 when SkyNet started to think for itself (it fought back, apparently, when someone tried to unplug it), so maybe going as far as a fully self-aware internet wouldn’t be such a good idea. However, anything that makes our daily trawl through the internet a little easier and quicker is a good idea in our book.

Check out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7296056.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

No, not the strange processed meat that comes in tins and seems to be enjoying a revival, but its namesake, the ubiquitous emails that swamp our inboxes on a daily basis.

According to an experiment by McAfee the software security and backup company, the average email user would get around 70 spam messages a day if it went unchecked. One user apparently received 5,414 spam message in a one month period.

I have that beat. Looking at my spam box, in the past month I have received 6,254 junk emails, ranging from very generous offers of cash from previously unknown dead relatives, to offers of a very generous male appendage, all the way to genuine Rollex (sic) timepieces for only £2.50.

Don’t get me wrong, the internet and email are great tools, but as long as they are around and are free at the point of use, some people will take advantage of that and send out billions of these things every day.

A simple solution? Charge to send emails. I would quite happily pay a few pence to send a genuine email, in much the same way as I’m happy to buy a stamp to post a letter.

Although saying that, looking at the post this morning has revealed that even charging for sending something doesn’t necessarily stop spam coming through my letterbox. Oh well, it was just a thought….

Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7482991.stm

Kevin Lane & Company is a firm of solicitors based in South Wales, covering a broad range of work for both individuals and commercial clients.

In addition to the website, we created a brand new logo and stationery set, reflecting their dynamic and fresh approach.

We’ve put the Click Manageware website live. Specialising in live software streaming, their website outlines their services and allows customers to request a live online demo.

The website for Robust, manufacturer of decking, fencing and garden furniture from recycled polystyrene has gone live! Check out www.robustuk.com