Reilly2040's Blog

Been a while since I blogged about any techie stuff, but with Google+ now making big waves in the social media scene, I thought I’d put up a quick post about it. I’ve been a big twitter user for a while now, and like most people these days, I’ve used Facebook for years.  So when I got an invite to Google+ from a friend I was keen to check it out, especially after hearing some positive things about it online.  It sounded like Google had learned from the painful mistakes made with Buzz. I’ve been falling out of love with Facebook for some time.  I went through a while where I got into all the casual games, but I eventually fell out of them, and more and more I found myself more interested in just things like status updates and photo sharing.

I’m not going to go into the various privacy worries Facebook has caused over the last few years, but functionally speaking, there was a lot going on in Facebook that just wasn’t interesting me any more.  Especially with my feed being cluttered up with updates from various games and apps. In steps Google+ with its circles for organising people you’re following (to borrow the Twitter term).  This means by default you can easily filter what you’re looking at in your timeline, just picking a certain circle to view.   Not currently possible, although something I’d like to see added, would be the ability to define views that combine circles, and I’m sure that’s something that will come in time.

The thing I really love about Google+ is how it uses these circles to make it easy to define who sees whatever you post.  Whenever you share some text, a video or pictures, you have to define who you’re sharing it with. By default it remembers the last circle (or combination of circles and individuals) you used so a lot of the time its not an issue, but when you do want to restrict or open up a post, it means you’ve got a degree of freedom that neither Facebook or Twitter gives you. I’ve long felt the times on twitter where I’d want to rant about something, but felt it may not be appropriate on a public forum that prospective employers may check. Now (as long as I’m not applying to Google ) I can rant with my friends in freedom.

Another feature that’s really grabbed me is the image sharing (which was one of my main uses of Facebook).   Google have tied it into Picasa, so if you’ve got that installed on your desktop, its a cinch to upload photos to web albums and then tag them as shared in Google+.   Something I’ve found even more useful though has been the mobile client.  It adds an instant upload functionality to your mobile phone (which has options to customise whether its just photos or videos as well, and whether to upload over the mobile network, or wait for wifi), so every photo you take is automatically uploaded to a private Picasa folder.  You can then go into the app and you’ll have a notification about the newly uploaded photos, from where you can then share them on Google+.  I’ve found it really nice when taking photos of the recent film shoot and wanting to share them with my friends.  As long as you’ve got a decent 3G signal for the uploads, its a really easy system.

The group chat functions on offer are nice as well.  The huddle functionality brings a nice easy group text chat to mobile phones, although I’d like to see this linked into the web version as well.  The web version does however offer Hangouts, an easy to use group video chat system, that lets you and your friends video chat, but also share Youtube videos.  I really like the idea of being able to put on a new movie trailer and disect it over the chat at the same time.

So far, I’ve been massively impressed by Google+.  And its interesting to see aspects like the finer grain control of who sees individual posts appearing in Facebook.  But I’m definitely a convert to Google+.  The implementation of the circles, and the photo sharing has really grabbed me as exactly what I’m looking for in a social network.  Twitter will remain big with me for its immediacy and simplicity with its 140 characters, but Google+ is great for those more detailed conversations.

I’ve now had my trusty HTC Desire for around 6 months. In that time I’ve also upgraded it from Android 2.1 to Android 2.2. With Android phones becoming a major player in the market, and Android tablets starting to appear as alternatives to the iPad, I thought it might be interesting to put down a few thoughts.

I got my Desire on day of release in the UK. I’d previously had (and been very happy with) a Blackberry Bold, but I felt for my next phone I really wanted something with more of a consumer slant, with a better web browser and stronger app market than the Blackberry.  To my mind, the Blackberry was (and probably still is) the king for email, IM and that kind of thing, but the web browser (since replaced by a new WebKit based one I must point out), was never that brilliant, and despite being built on Java, and having had a third party developer community for years, the apps that were being created didn’t seem to tick the same entertainment boxes as those on the iPhone and Android.  I’ve always felt that the enterprise nature of Blackberry was very apparent in even their more consumer-oriented devices.  They’re by no means bad phones, and I was very happy with my Bold.  Its just that when I came to upgrade, the HTC Desire ticked more of the boxes in terms of what I wanted out of my smart phone.

I’ve been very happy with the device. And very interesting to me is just how many of them I’m seeing on the streets. Several of my friends now have the Desire as well as some of my work colleagues. Bit even on my daily commute they’re a common sight on the train. I guess this is, for me, because its been the first really sold competitor for the iPhone. It looks nice, the software is polished and, probably key to the mass adoption I’ve seen, unlike the iPhone it tends to come free on contracts.

Checking back through my blog, I discovered I’ve never really talked about my phone or Android since I got it.   Right from the word go, I was quickly won over by the phone and its OS.  The experience is slick and responsive.  The call quality was noticeably improved from my Bold and the Google integration was great for me, since I was already using Google Calendar and had Gmail storing all my contacts (and being synced to my Blackberry).  Granted, some people may dislike having to sign up to all the Google services in order to get the most out of the device, but if you’re one of the millions already using Gmail and the like, the phone just provides a more convenient way to access them on the go.

Of course, with these smart phones, the app store or marketplace is a big focus.  The Android takes a different approach to the Apple effort, by being much less regulated.  This has advantages and disadvantages (as some of the recent stories about malicious apps have proven), however I’ve been incredibly happy, and despite Apple’s app store having a larger array of apps to choose from, I don’t think I’ve ever struggled to find what I’m looking for.

What is really nice, is down to the more open nature of Android.  If there’s an element of the OS or its behaviour you’re not happy with, then its worth taking a look on the app store, as Android allows apps which hook right into the UI.  For example, by default, when text messages arrive, there’s a notification, and the “Messages” icon will get a number beside it displaying the number of unread messages.   Alternatively, by going to the app store, you could get SMS Popup, which brings up a nice popup dialogue when a new message is received that can display the message, a picture of the contact, and give you quick options for replying or deleting.

Another example would by the keyboard used for typing.  Again, if you’re not keen on the one that came with your phone, you can download a new one from the Marketplace.  I’m personally using Smart Keyboard Pro as it offered more customisability than the stock keyboard, however other keyboards, like Swype can completely change the way you input text into your phone, replacing the traditional typing.

Aside from those apps that change the UI of the phone, I’ve also downloaded various others.  From great mobile games like Gem Miner and iPhone-favourite Angry Birds to more practical (well, sort-of ) apps, like the official WordPress app, that lets me work on posts for this blog on the move, as well as view stats, approve comments etc.  Various Twitter clients let me keep up to date with those goings-on, and I’ve got c:geo, a geocaching application that pulls information from the geocaching.com website and combines it with maps, and the phone’s GPS and compass to help me find and record Geocaches.

It really has turned out to be a really handy device.  While I did have my email, IM and calendars syncing previously, sitting on the couch being able to quickly check websites through the web browser has been a breeze, and I find myself using the Google Maps and Navigate software quite a bit as well (Google Maps is great on a nice big touchscreen device).  Another great thing has been related to the uptake of Android I mentioned above.  As more of my friends start using Google Calendars through their phones, and sharing them, then I can pick up those other calendars through my phone, as well as sharing my own.  Very handy for making sure you’re keeping up with events and arrangements.

The only real downside I’ve found with Android has been its fragmentation.  I mentioned above that I’ve upgraded to 2.2, but its a downside to the Apple approach.  As Apple control everything, in general, when they announce a new version of iOS, you can jump straight onto iTunes and get it.  When Google released 2.2, there was then the wait for HTC to release their version of 2.2 (with their own SenseUI sitting on top of it), and then I had to wait for my network to release their version of the HTC release.  This can be frustrating when the other networks (and thus other people you know) get their releases sorted out faster and so you’re stuck waiting on it.   That being said, I was perfectly happy with Android 2.1 and it was ticking all my boxes, so even if I’d been stuck on it it wouldn’t have been a bad thing.  The only downside would be when Google releases version-specific applications (like Navigate which needed Android 2.1), if you’re stuck waiting for that latest release and can’t get the new software.

As you can probably gather I’m incredibly positive on Android.  I’ve been incredibly happy with my phone, however I know people who aren’t even as tech-saavy as I am who are similarly addicted to their Android smart phones in the same way I’ve described I use mine above.  And with sales of Android-based Smart Phones ever increasing, and Android-powered tablets now starting to appear, things look very rosy for the OS.

Being a version number junkie, the minute I see a new Ubuntu upgrade released, I’m always keen to upgrade.

Especially interesting with this release was the netbook edition with its new, much-vaunted Unity interface.   Regular readers will know that a few months back I finally decided to nuke the default Xandros install on my trusty EeePC 700 and install the 10.04 netbook remix, and boy was I happy with it.

So with 10.10 coming out, I was keen to upgrade and play with the new interface.  Unfortunately being an old EeePC 700, a default install fills my measly 4Gb hard disc to the point where a normal upgrade is impossible.  Thankfully I don’t keep any files on my EeePC (its just for web browsing anyway, so hard disc space isn’t much of an issue), so I decided it’d be easy to just wipe and install 10.10.

So I downloaded and setup a USB stick (as with 10.04, a superb and painless process, top marks to those that wrote the installer) and as I tend to do, I booted up to have a play with the new system prior to installing.

Oh dear.

I have to say, it took only about 5 minutes playing with it, before I decided I thought Unity was terrible and I’d be better sticking with 10.04.

The redesign of the interface, removes the various panels of launchers from the previous release, and instead you get an empty desktop with the new launcher panel down the left hand side.   Immediately brought to mind was Apple’s OSX.  The launcher panel I found very evocative of the panel found in Apple’s OS (albeit shifted from the bottom of the screen to the left.   You could also make easy comparisons with older Window Managers like AfterSTEP or WindowMaker, although the scrolling animation used by the launchers is more evocative of Apple’s.

However my first problem was: “where is everything?”  In 10.04 (see left) there were clear sections of applications laid out, with launchers in each section.  In Unity, its no where near as obvious.  For example, I thought I’d try and find the Administration section, and to be honest, I’m still not completely sure where it is.  Admittedly, I was running off of a USB stick, but the panel response was clunky (probably down to the USB stick to be fair), and within the 5 minutes I ran it, it completely crashed once.  Not a brilliant first impression.

Thinking I’d try clicking on the “Applications” button, I was presented with a panel (on the surface slightly similar to the panels in the old interface), however within it was what could only be desribed as a screen dump of all my apps.  It just looked like a mess, and there was no way I was going to find anything in it.  I’m not completely sure what I’d been expecting, but I guess at least the apps sorted into categories.

So far so bad.  Aside from the key apps that you can easily find at the top of the launchers, finding things seems difficult, and its crashed once.

To test out things, I decided to run Firefox, to see how the new interface handled the screen real estate.  I’d alway been quite pleased with how Ubuntu 10.04 combined the top menu bar and the top of the window decorations (such as the close button) in order to save a bit of screen space.

Oh dear.  Another disaster.  On running Firefox, the immediate killer issue was that the launcher panel remains fixed on the left hand side of the screen.  So even maximised, the browser couldn’t take up the full width of my screen.

Now, I’m on a EeePC 700.  That means I’ve only got an 800 wide display.  So losing any of the width at all is a major issue with the OS.  This was pretty much the final straw for me, and I decided to stick with Ubuntu 10.04, which I’ve been incredibly happy with.   Granted, it could be argued that I didn’t give Unity much time to grow on me, but then, the immediate reaction was so bad (and I’m especially including the crash in that), and I have to think about the fact I’m not the only one using this netbook.  So if I’m struggling to find things in Unity, how will the other users cope?  Nope, sorry Canonical, but I think I’ll give Unity some settling in time before it’s something I’ll adopt.

Fortunately 10.04 was an LTS release, so I’m good for the next 18 months at least.

Taking a quick look at Ubuntu Forums, and various news stories, I see that there seem to be quite a few users with similar complaints about 10.10 and Unity, so I hope Canonical take it all on board, and work out the issues for 11.04.  I’m not against a new interface, but I found Unity to be a step backwards in usability, however I’ll happily check out the 11.04 netbook release to see what its like there.  In the meantime maybe I’ll see if there’s any demonstration videos or something online that’ll convince me to give Unity another chance.

As for 10.10 itself?  I must admit I’ve not gotten around to upgrading my main laptop, so I’ll be doing that over the weekend to see what the desktop release has to offer.

Long time readers will know that a couple of years ago I became the proud owner of a EeePC.  It was the original netbook on the market, a EeePC 701, 7inch screen, 4Gb SSD and all.

And therein lay the problem.  The default Xandros installation provided a good frontend, but to be honest, the update mechanism wasn’t great, and the updates I had managed to install on getting the netbook had pretty much pushed the storage capacity to straining point.

That was fine at the time, but 2 years on, not having been able to install updates was a bit concerning. Not to mention some websites were starting to complain about the outdated version of Firefox.

So being the good little Ubuntu fanboy I am, I thought “sod it, lets give this Netbook remix a whirl”.

Wow. Was I impressed. Now, when it comes to installing on a netbook, you’re thrown an immediate problem. No CD drive. However, Ubuntu’s download page came with great, simple instructions. Download the iso image, insert a USB stick of sufficient size, then download and run a neat little utility that sets up the USB stick with the equivalent of a liveCD. From there, just use the USB stick on the netbook like you would a normal Ubuntu LiveCD to test and install the new OS.

I was really impressed by how painless the whole process was. Granted, I knew from my laptop what installing Ubuntu was like, but I’d been braced for the netbook install to be more complicated.

Once it was installed, the good experience continued.  Canonical really have done a brilliant job of converting Ubuntu to work within the confines of a netbook.   The launcher interface is clean and easy-to-use, and apps make the most of the available screen space, running maximised with the OS’s application menu bar doubling as the usual title bar for applications (and so containing things like the close button).  Software updates and installation are handled just the same as on the main version of Ubuntu, and getting Chromium installed was simple.

Given the tight confines of my netbook (the previously mentioned 7inch screen and 4Gb hard disc) it would’ve been easy for me to run into problems, given how quickly the netbook market evolved to use higher specced machines, but nope, Ubuntu Netbook Remix runs as easily as it installed.  All the hardware worked straight out of the box (so to speak) and I’ve now got the reassurance of knowing all my software is being kept up-to-date.

At Christmas I finally joined the next gen gaming crowd, by getting a Playstation 3.

Over the last few years my gaming has been largely PC-based, although I did get a Nintendo Wii when they were released, so this console’s been interesting to play around with properly.   The advantage of coming to the console fairly late on is that many of the big games are now available cheaply either on the Platinum range or second-hand, so I’ve been having a lot of fun playing Call of Duty World at War, Fallout 3 (previously played on my PC, but my PC struggled with it graphically and this is the Game of the Year edition with the extra content), Batman Arkham Asylum and others.

The graphics look stunning of course, even on my non-HD, non-flatscreen trustworthy 28″ CRT TV, although I will say I’ve noticed a problem whereby some text isn’t easily legible as its clearly meant to be read on a higher-resolution TV (the Playstation store is particularly guilty of this).

Outside of gaming, its been interesting to play with a console with online capabilities, and see how the line between PC and console gaming has blurred.  The dashboard which allows you to track your online friends is nice and sending messages back and forward is pretty painless.  Likewise getting online to play is a breeze as your Playstation ID is just used to manage things.  Of course, like PC gaming, the online option means that games can now have patches available. Its interesting to note that this isn’t necessarily a good thing.  On inserting a new game, if a new version is found you’ve then got to install the update.  Given some of them can be a couple of hundred MB that can mean that your console ends up tied up downloading content when you just wanted to try out your new game.  And on Christmas Day, when I was wanting to try out a bunch of new games I’d received, it could get old a bit quickly.

That said, the fact the online stuff also opens up new content for the games.  Downloadable content and micro-payments for games have become a big thing since being adopted by the console market, and while the micro-payments in particular may be controversial, I’m largely happy with things as long as it doesn’t feel like the user is being taken advantage of, and the downloadable content is genuinely extra material and not necessary to enjoy the game you’re already paid for.  I’ve picked up a few extras for the games I’ve got, most of which were free or only a couple of pounds, although so far I’ve found the £7.99 asking price for the Call of Duty map packs a bit too much.

The other aspect of the console that’s really grabbed me is its position as a media centre.  Now, amongst the people I know, most of them that have PS3s primarily bought them as a cheap Blueray player, so Sony targeting that market was a good move, however beyond that aspect of the console, it also supports various other media type stuff.

While I’ve not yet setup a proper media server, the ability, for example, to copy video files to a USB stick and play them on the big TV via the PS3 is a very welcome feature.  Of course, once I setup a media server on my main PC, the fact that I’ll be able to connect to it via the PS3 and stream all my videos to the big TV is great, but in the meantime using a USB stick is an easy temporary solution.  Likewise the (fairly recent) addition of the BBC iPlayer to the PS3 dashboard works well and delivers a great high-quality catchup service (very handy as I’m not on Virgin Media, who I know can get the iPlayer through their set-top boxes).  While I was pretty much expecting the games side of the console, the media centre functionality’s been a nice surprise, and a good bonus piece of functionality.

All in all, while I was originally quite critical of the PS3 launch, having used the console I have to say I’m extremely impressed by it.  The quality of the games I’ve got is very high, and the online and media centre capabilities of the console are well implemented.  Granted, I’ve never used the X-box 360, but I’m very happy with my PS3.

With the release of the new version of Ubuntu last Thursday, as usual I was quick to upgrade.  I’m always an early adopter of these things, probably helped by the fact that its free

As is normal, a new release of Ubuntu always captures a lot of attention, and with this release, it was nice not to just see a lot of fuss in the Linux community, but also in the wider media, such as the story here on the BBC News.  With all the fuss over Windows 7′s release the other week, and Snow Leopard a short while ago, it was nice to see Karmic picking up some attention as well in the mainstream press.

As for myself, the installation went pretty well (albeit slowly, the joys of upgrading on launch night).  Unlike the Jaunty upgrade, I did have a few issues post-reboot.  Firstly being that my wifi was knackered (eventually diagnosed to the return of an old DNS issue – instead of my router, I used the direct IPs of my ISP’s servers and it was sorted), and secondly that flash wasn’t working (uninstall, reinstall, sorted).   Fairly minor issues all in, and fixed pretty easily.

Aside from those teething problems, I’ve been pretty happy with Karmic so far.  The new boot screen is very nice indeed, and while only a purely cosmetic change, does help the product feel more professional and polished.  I’ve had a quick shot of the new software centre, and it seems to do the job nicely.  I had no real complaints with Synaptic, but if this makes it even easier to add new software to an Ubuntu installation, then that’s no bad thing (since software installation is always one of the hurdles that gets called out in reviews for people switching from Windows).

I’ve also been trying out Ubuntu One, the new cloud storage application.  I’ve found it really easy to setup and use, perhaps helped by my existing Launchpad account, meaning I had one less stage to contend with.  The web gateway lets me access my files on non-Ubuntu machines, and I’ve got some files and my Tomboy notes synchronising nicely.  Perhaps the only other thing I’d like to see is synchronisation with other mail applications.  While Evolution is the default mail and calendar tool in Ubuntu, I’ve always preferred Thunderbird (with the lightning plugin for calendar).  I’ve not yet tried out sharing files with other users, but if the rest of the system is anything to go by, I imagine it’ll be pretty painless.

Overall so far, I’m pretty happy with Karmic.   For me, much like Jaunty before it, it adds another level of polish to the distribution.  There’s perhaps been nothing Earth-shattering that’s impacted me with the upgrade, but then Jaunty had pretty much ticked all my boxes previously anyway.

Well, everyone else is talking about it, so I thought I’d copy and paste (seems appropriate ) a forum post I made elsewhere and tweak it a bit.

In short, confirmed new features include, 3.2Megapixel camera, cut/copy/paste, compass, some “find my phone” Mobile Me thingy, MMS, video recording and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember.

So, reactions?  Well, I don’t think it was an exciting new release by any stretch of the imagination, but I think its an important one, in that a lot of this functionality fills in critical (and in some cases embarrassing) gaps in the iPhone.  They’ve been coasting without things like MMS and video capture for ages when these are standard features in every other phone and have been for years.

From a smartphone point of view, no copy & paste has always been bad as well, but the iPhone still lacks multi-tasking, which to me is going to be a brick wall they’ll hit soon if they truely want to capture the Smartphone market.  I’ve owned my Blackberry for about 6 months now, and I’m always switching between apps.  For example, I’ll be looking at some tweets when I get a text, so I’ll switch to my messages, reply to the text, then flick back to my twitter client. 

Similarly with copy and paste. Multi-tasking makes copy and paste a lot more relevant as I’ll be reading something, find it interesting, copy the URL/text, switch to email or twitter, paste it in, send and then switch back to the original app I was looking at.

For me though, despite this new upgrade, I’m still not interested. As I say, I’m used to having multi-tasking now, and the big killer is still the touchscreen keyboard for me. I use my iPod Touch for twitter and the odd email, and I’m definitely a lot faster and more comfortable typing on my Bold’s physical keyboard. If you’re not a big typer though, then its less of an issue.   There’s no doubt in my mind that the iPhone’s a great device.  But it still doesn’t quite tick all the boxes for me personally in terms of being a communication device.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, there’s a huge fallout over O2′s suggestion that existing iPhone customers will have to wait till their contract is up before they upgrade (or pay an early upgrade fee).   Of course, this is completely standard practice for every mobile network I’ve ever been with, and I always except it as read whenever I sign on the dotted line (and thus I tend to make sure I’m going to like whatever phone I’m getting).  

However the iPhone customers seem to think they’re a special case.  Does this highlight the gadget versus phone mentality that the iPhone fosters?  Or does it indicate that a large portion of iPhone customers (or at least, those complaining) were Pay-as-you-go customers unused to what mobile contract terms actually meant when it came to upgrading?

Here’s a fairly good blog post I read on the matter: Why #O2Fail is really ‘iPhone customer Fail’

When I first got my Blackberry, one of the first orders of business was to get a Twitter client installed.

The obvious choice was Twitterberry. It had a nice GUI interface, and was easy to download and use. However, since then a couple of new clients have arrived on the market. SocialScope is currently in a closed beta, so I’ve not been able to try it, but everyone’s raving about it.

However, ÜberTwitter burst onto the scene a short while ago with a public beta of their new client. I wasn’t able to use the initial betas, as I’m on BIS, and applying different TCP settings would take me outwith my unlimited data tarrif.

However last week saw the release of the latest beta, which now supports BIS, meaning I can have a proper play.

To say I’m impressed would be an understatement.  I do feel some loyalty to Twitterberry, as it was the first client I used, and its completely free (once out of Beta, ÜberTwitter is planning free and paid-for editions), however there’s just no denying that ÜberTwitter’s feature set blows Twitterberry out of the water, even if you compare it to the latest Twitterberry Betas (which I’ve also got installed).

While I’m not big on the location updating services built into ÜberTwitter (its just not something I’m interested in), the rest of the features are great.  The timeline view is nice, sending new tweets is snappy (something that’s slowed down noticably in the latest Twitterberry betas), it supports clickable hashtags, has inline thumbnails for Twitpic (and various others) and it supports searching twitter from within the app.

The last one especially, I really love.  Previously I was doing all my Twitter searches from the website, but the ability to do them, or follow hashtags straight from my Twitter application I find incredibly useful.

Its not perfect.  Its pretty well known that if you leave ÜberTwitter running, constantly polling for new tweets, it suffers from memory leaks, and will happily munch through your battery, but then, it is only in beta.  

I can’t wait to see what else they add over the course of the beta, and I think its safe to say I’ll happily pay them for a pro version when they go for a final release.  There’s no doubt that this is a great, feature-rich, professional-looking client.

Now this is something I’m really keen to try out.   Its a theme for WordPress that effectively causes it to become like Twitter.  Only with the advantage that you can restrict it to registered users only.   It looks pretty cool.

Well, I took the plunge over the weekend and upgraded my laptop to the new Ubuntu 9.04.

Fortunately all seems to have gone smoothly. All the main stuff was working happily on reboot, even my wifi. I’m not sure what’s actually been changed in this release, so I’ll need to go through it more thoroughly at somepoint, but I really like the new theme on the login screen. The only downside is that I feel it makes the GTK theme used for the main desktop look a bit older by comparison. The darker theme now used for the login screen is a lot fresher.

The much-vaunted notification system is very nice indeed.  I’ve only had notifications relating to Pidgin so far, but the effect is really nice with a semi-transparent box in the top right of the screen appearing with the contact’s avatar and their status change or message.

My only comment is that it’d be nice to see other apps using it. Its not Ubuntu’s fault,and it is only a new system, so maybe it’ll be more heavily used as releases roll on, but having these nice pop-ups for Pidgin only draws attention to Skype and the like having pop ups appear on different parts of the screen and not looking as nice. It detracts from the integrated feel of the desktop, so I would like to see future versions of apps adopt it. That’s up to their developers though.