Sailing with the 3 Cs

Technology has an important place in my life. Apart from the fact that I work for an Information Technology company, a lot of what I do when I’m not at work revolves around technology. Even when buying a car technology was a consideration, the car I bought had to allow me to connect my iPod or iPhone and my choice of engine was driven by my pointless knowledge of the unnecessary details of high pressure fuel systems and variable geometry turbo chargers. My TV is delivered through optic fibre, I listen to the radio via the Internet and not FM, my books are electronic and I almost always have access to the Internet in the palm of my hand.

But for the seven days a years my friends and I go sailing we enter a technology dead zone. We travel at a speed determined by the wind, sails are raised and lowered by hand and all communication is via two-way VHF radio. There is no Wi-Fi, there is no 3G, and there is most definitely no TV. We don’t go that fast, we don’t cover that much distance and we lose touch with the real world but with good weather and good friends it’s a great way to spend a week.

But where I’m involved there is always a way to cram technology into the equation, and being several miles off the Greek coast in a 37 foot yacht is not a limiting factor for me, it’s a challenge! So allow me to detail the technology that I will be cramming into my carry on luggage before I set off for Athens on Saturday morning.

There is the obligatory iPhone which will be used mainly as an MP3 player, an iPad will allow me to watch a film or two on the plane, read e-books in the cafe/bar at the start and end of each day and view photos taken during the day. And it's photography that provides the reason for most of the technology I’m taking on-board.

My trusty Nikon D200, a veteran of several previous sailing trips, has been replaced with the newer and more capable Nikon D300s. I did for the longest time contemplate taking both camera bodies with me, but as my bag had long since exceeded the carry on allowance, leaving the D200 and my rather large Nikkor 70-200mm lens at home reduced the weight by almost 3kg.

Along with the Nikon D300s and it’s battery grip, I’m packing a total of four lenses ranging from a wide angle zoom, to a very fast mid-range zoom, a slower image stabilised ‘super-zoom’ and I even packed a f/1.8 prime lens for my attempts to take photos at night. Throw in a few extras like the GPS receiver to supply latitude and longitude data to the camera, six spare batteries, two cable releases, several card readers, over 60GB of memory cards,  a Rode microphone and wind shield (for use when shooting video) and a compact Joby tripod and I’m happy that most situations can be taken care of.

Then we move onto the other side of the technology requirements, backing up those all important memory cards. In previous years I have dragged along a 15” MacBook Pro to use for backing up photographs. While this did the job, and had the benefit of allowing me to use all the photographic tools I usually use, the undeniable truth is that it was big, it weighted 3kg and I never did any editing while I was away. So I delved deep into my box of ‘stuff not thrown out as it might be useful some day’ and dug out my old Asus EeePc 701. For those who can’t recall the specifics of obscure technology product releases from 2007, this was the device that started the NetBook craze. With a small screen, slow processor and tiny storage it isn’t a speed demon, but it’s small, weighs less than 1kg and with an external hard drive it can easily cope with backing up all the photos and video I could take. Even with the iPad, the combined weight of NetBooks/Tablets was well under half what the MacBook Pro weighted and took up much less space.

The whole lot is then topped off with some battery chargers and European mains power cables to charge things while on shore. There is also an AC inverter thrown into my checked-in luggage in case we need AC power on the yacht, but the plan is not to use that unless really necessary.

And finally we come to the most crucial piece of technology that I will be bringing on board. The all important cafetiere. It became clear on the first morning of my first sailing trip to Greece that the Greeks and I have different ideas about what makes for a good cup of Coffee. In subsequent years I brought Coffee with me only to discover that a Yacht is a harsh environment for a cafetiere and that I couldn’t rely on the supplied cafetiere to still be functional, so this year I purchased a plastic cafetiere for the princely sum of £5.

No sailing trip can be complete without the 3 Cs, Camera, Computer and Coffee, and this year I think I have my packing perfected. With the space left over I may even bring some clothes.

How open is open?

Over the last 12 months battle lines have been drawn for an ideological war whose battleground is your local mobile phone store. This war is about religion, ideology and the one true way because this war is all about the wonderfully nebulous concept of open versus closed. To give our protagonists their full names, this is Google versus Apple. Ladies and gentlemen, these are the mobile operating systems wars!

Most consumers will pay no attention because the mobile phone market is still about consumer products. The vast majority of mobile phone users are sold on a specific product or tariff, very few of us choose a phone based on the freedom of developers to release applications for our chosen phone. In fact, developers and apps weren’t really part of the equation until the summer of 2008 when Apple updated the iPhone and iTunes to support the installation of third party apps.

Despite the underlying complexity of mobile phones we treat them essentially as a single function dumb device. Unlike our computers, we have an expectation that ours phones should just work, and from Apple’s perspective it was key for the success of the iPhone that they continue to just work. The list of features available on other smart phones but missing from the first iPhone was not short, but Apple believed that the iPhone should be relied on to work without crashing or leaving the user with a flat battery before lunch. When Apple announced app support with version 2 of the iPhone OS it enforced a closed experience and sales model to ensure that the phone would continue to work as a phone. Third party apps had to go through an approval process that could result in an app being denied access to iPhones. Nothing should be allowed to spoil the experience.

Google’s position with Android, their mobile operating system, was that anything goes. You had a very capable, always on and always connected computer in your pocket, and why shouldn’t you be able to run any application you wanted to on it. It was after all your phone. If you could write, find or buy an app then you could run it on your phone.

And so the lines were drawn. Apple would manage what you could add to your phone to ensure it couldn’t hurt you and Google would allow you to do anything you wanted with your phone. Closed Apple versus open Google.

Apple is fundmentally a hardware company, it makes money by selling iPhones, Macs and iPods. Google is an advertising company, it makes money by displaying adverts. In a world where computing is going mobile Apple wants hardware sales and a quality product will do that. Google wants you to see it’s web delivered adverts and having a quality operating system that supports Google adverts on phones ensures their business model succeeds. The battle is frequently billed as Apple versus Google despite that fact Apple doesn't need to sell ads to be successful and Google doesn’t need to sell hardware to be successful.

Apple is steadfastly sticking to it’s curated model. Apple owns the hardware and software, it has it’s own extremely successful retail channel and the market presence to force the network providers to offer the experience that Apple wants. Because Google’s Android operating system is open any hardware manufacturer or mobile network operator is free to use and alter it. And altering it they are, and as is frequently the case, what is good for the manufactures and network operators is not necessarily good for consumers.

Google’s Android is facing a fragmentation problem. There is no unified user experience. Some hardware manufactures add their own look and feel on the phone interface. Some network operators remove apps and replace others with versions that support their business models, some choose to remove features like Wi-Fi to force you use their metered networks. There were rumors that one US mobile network was removing Google search from it’s Android offerings and replacing it with Microsoft’s Bing thereby defeating the very purpose for Google creating Android. Network operators are deliberately slowing down the roll out of the latest versions of Android in an effort to push sales of new phones rather than add new features to old handsets.

The very openness of Android means that there are many interested parties who can us it for their own ends. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the belief held by some that Android is better because it is open is increasingly inaccurate as that openness is being eroded. Apple’s strategy offers an extremely focused and consistent product, Android is being pulled in many directions to serve it’s various masters. There are great Android phones out there but there are some very poor phones as well.

As the iPhone and Android OS took the smart phone market by storm over the last three years, one of the market’s previous pioneers to fall by the wayside was Palm. Their impending death had been written about as if it was only a matter of time. While no one was surprise by HP’s purchase of Palm, it seemed to many to be an odd move for HP at the time, but as Android starts to fragment and the openness that is at it’s very heart is threatened I’m beginning to think that a company with HP’s manufacturing experience and now with an excellent mobile operating system can offer an almost Apple like level of integration. They may be much better placed for the future then many think, especially as smart phones and tablet computers become key products in the mobile marketplace.

Despite what many are reading from the latest smart phone market share figures, Apple are here to stay, Android has not won anything yet and I really believe it’s too early to count HP/Palm out just yet.

Never mind the 3D, give me the content!

It doesn't matter whether you're plugged into the of world of technology or not, you can't have failed to notice that a revolution is coming. We are living in a world where 3D films and TV are now a reality. Again. We've had attempts to popularise 3D before but the requirement to ware oddly coloured glasses resulted in a number of issues, but don't worry, this time they've got it right. We don't have to worry about wearing silly red and blue glasses, this time the technology is much better as now we have cool dark glasses using either polarised spirals, or one of several incompatible systems of expensive active shutters. The screen may look darker, you may get headaches and you will be paying more, but just look how real the emperor's new clothes look!

I've only been to the Cinema to experience 3D on two occasions, the infamous Avatar and this year's England versus Ireland Six nations Rugby match. It was very impressive, but it's far from the immersive experience we were promised, and there's the small matter of the 100 years of cinematographic experience of working in 2D that doesn't translate well to 3D. Shallow Depth of field is great for focusing our attention in 2D but it doesn't work in 3D, and directors and cinematographers need to re-learn how to hold our attention in 3D. I'd rather see the film studios let directors learn how to tell stories in 3D than watch them attempt to cash in on 3D films by retro-fitting a 3D effect into films that were shot in 2D. 

But for all the focus and talk about 3D on the silver screen the Cinema isn't where the biggest 3D revolution is expected to happen. Film, TV studios and the hardware manufactures are betting big on 3D in your living room being the big sell for 3D, and live 3D sports broadcasts are expected to be the 'killer application' for 3D. And this is where they lose me. 

I'm a Rugby fan and there's very little live rugby to watch in plain old 2D never mind 3D. It seems that the broadcasters are excited about the next step in technology and how it might be used to increase average subscriber revenue, but why can't they work on getting the content sorted first before trying to sell me the next £1000+ device that won't show me what I want to watch?

The record companies are in serious trouble, but there is a lesson to be learnt from their past. They got rich reselling the White album every time there was a format change. The TV Networks and hardware companies seem to have moved on to selling the next new format before selling me the content I am happy to pay for today.

I cancelled my subscription to Sky Sports in June this year when 30 minutes into the South Africa versus Italy Rugby match, Sky switched coverage to a different channel. The problem for me was that Sky don't make the channel they moved the coverage to available to my Cable supplier. My monthly subscription to Sky Sports only allowed me 30 minutes of an 80 minute match. This isn't a technical limitation, it's a marketing limitation designed to differentiation the product Sky sells over their own Satellite network from the product they sell over third party cable networks. If you want all the sports you pay for, you need to pay Sky for a Satellite dish.

None of this has anything to do with providing customers with the content they want, it's about maximising revenue at the cost of your competitors. I understand the business principle but when, as a customer, I become a pawn in a game between Sky and other providers I'm just as likely to give up as I am to move suppliers. I don't want 3D, it doesn't need to be HD and I'm happy to pay, just give me the content.

A tale of two pictures

Every photographer experiences happiness or disappointment when looking for the first time at images they have captured. For me there have always been two extremes, the shot you never expected to get, and the shot you haven't got. By way of an explanation here are two shots I took in the past 7 days.

The first was taken at yesterday's 5 kilometre Parkrun in Bushy park. I had been stood in the middle of the course about 300 metres from the start line. As the race started I took several shots and with 800 runners heading towards me I made for the side line. I knew I wanted to take a shot from almost ground level, so using my second camera with a fast zoom lens, I sat down, placed the camera practically on the ground, pointed it towards the runners and pressed the shutter. I had no idea what I was shooting but I was curious to see what, if anything, I got. What I got was this.

24mm f/5 1/320sec ISO 200 - Nikon D200 Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 ED

There are a number of things I don't like about this shot. The face of the runner in the foreground isn't in focus, the composition isn't wonderful and there are large sections of the image that are blown out. But at communicating what was happening as hundreds of keen runners ran past me on a sunny Saturday morning in south west London, I think it works. 

The second shot was taken the previous Saturday evening. The previous day my sister had gotten married in Dublin, and on the Saturday evening family and friends met at a bar for a few post wedding drinks. On the wall of the bar was a large photograph of a young Bob Dylan. It made for a very interesting piece of artwork, and I though it would form a good backdrop for a photo. Looking at the shot below it's perhaps difficult to explain just how dark this bar was, the camera has done a remarkable job of soaking up what light was available, but it was very dark. For those who understand exposure, just look at the exposure details!

24mm f/2.8 1/6sec ISO 3200 - Nikon D300s Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 ED

A lot of what is wrong with this shot are down to the fact it was really too dark, but a flash would have spoiled the mood of the shot and probably the guests. This is the best of about 20 shots I took trying to realise the image I had in my head, but despite the effort I put in, this doesn't communicate how it felt to be in this bar in Dublin at that time. For me, it doesn't work.

These two shots represent the extremes of that feeling you get when looking at images you have just taken. One image was just point, shoot and hope, and I feel rewarded by the outcome. The other was the result of some planning and experiment (and to be honest, a pint of Guinness), but having seen the final images, I feel disappointed.

Many years ago I used to hand-load black and white film from bulk rolls into reusable 135 film cassettes for use in my old Olympus OM-2. It was cheaper then buying individual rolls and by using bulk film and loading the film into the camera in a darkroom you could get 40 exposures from a roll. It seems incredible that today I can shoot thousands of digital images onto a single memory card, it wasn't that long ago that I was content with getting 40 exposures out of a roll of film.  

Regardless of whether I shot 40 black and white exposures or thousands of digital images, I still get that brief moment of fear just before I look at new images for the first time, and as with many things, it's that fear that motivates me to try and take better shots.

Won't somebody please think of the buggy whip manufactures.

History is filled with example of technologies and products that have been rendered obsolete by the advancement of society and industry. Regardless of whether or not we want that advancement, it will happen, the only real choice we have is how we embrace that advancement. Will you cry foul that Henry Ford is destroying your buggy whip business, or will you switch you production line from whips to tyres?

While there is a certain purity to the capitalist ideal of your product living or dying at the hands of consumer choice, there is now a new option available to those who see their profits diminish. Legislation! Why leave product success to the whim of consumer demand when you can get the government to legislate your survival.

Article from Ars Technica

Radio, RIAA: mandatory FM radio in cell phones is the future

Music labels and radio broadcasters can't agree on much, including whether radio should be forced to turn over hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for the music it plays. But the two sides can agree on this: Congress should mandate that FM radio receivers be built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable electronics.

The essence of this story is that two industry associations, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) and musicFirst (a lobbying group of which the RIAA is a member) are involved in ‘discussions’ about performance rights for music played on the Radio. The two groups reached an agreement on the annual payment of rights fees that was dependant on them getting a new law in place that mandated the inclusion of FM radios in all portable devices. Time for a quick go on the spin machine, and out pops the following justification;

“this proposed legislation will give us improved consumer choice and better access to the population in the event of an emergency.”

There is a large whiff of hypocrisy about a move like this. Radio companies were happy to use the public airwaves with as little interference from government as possible while their business model was working. Never mind that Radio became a race to the lowest common denominator that offered little real choice to the consumer. As long as the audience listened and the advertisers paid up there was no real need to offer any actual choice. I mean, where were the consumers going to go?

And then the Internet happened, and as with so many businesses the broadcasters and record labels stuck their heads in the sand and loudly repeated the manta of the doomed “the Internet can’t do what we do, we bring all the value, we have all the customers, eventually the Internet will have to come to us”. And in a world with no innovation that plan may well have worked. But when technology results in a massive drop in the cost of production and allows you to market to tens of people rather than tens of thousands, then the ball game has changed. Now your business model is expensive and it turns out your audience chose your product not because it met their needs but because there was no real choice in the market.

Lets ignore the fact that as the world moves to digital radio broadcasting the National Association of Broadcasters is lobbying for laws requiring the use of outdated analogue receiver technology in new devices, but instead focus on the fact that Radio can be relevant in the Internet age. I don’t listen to the CD player or Radio in my car (unless I’m trying to work out why I'm stationary on the motorway). The stereo in my car is simply an interface for my MP3 player and what I actually listen to is podcasts from the TWiT Network, CNET and the BBC. TWiT is owned and run by a former US radio host, CNET is owned by CBS, and the BBC, well the BBC is the BBC. What I actually listen to is Radio shows that don’t use Radio waves as their broadcast medium, perhaps we should talk about distribution rather than broadcast.

The real irony here is that as Capitalism is showing us the holes in their business models, the Radio and Record companies are effectively arguing for socialism, they want the State to prop up their business models. As with so many things in the modern world, corporations want capitalism and free markets when their model’s generate profits, but government assistance when the housing market collapses or the advertising revenue dries up. How long before the newspaper publishers follow suit and propose a law that requires all tablets devices be sold with a newspaper subscription or the buggy whip manufactures want congress to mandate the inclusion of a whip with every new car?

The music, movie, TV and publishing industries have all been affected by the Internet and at some stage have all tried to prevent the rise of iTunes, Netflix, Amazon and any number of similar offerings. Now Radio is rather belatedly trying to stop the rise of Pandora, last.fm and rdio.com. And as for the suggestion that this proposal will improve communication in the event of an emergency, if that was really a concern we would see the proposal specifying AM and not FM receivers.

While the inclusion of an FM receiver will have little effect on my decision to buy my next MP3 player or mobile phone, what concerns me is that for the second time in a week we are seeing parties with clear commercial interests getting together to propose legislation that is anti-consumer.

Google and Verizon’s proposal to abandon net neutrality on wireless networks is born out of commercial greed. The Internet is well on the way towards becoming a public utility, in effect it is becoming the infrastructure we use to provide a range of services that we could only dream of twenty years ago. But the big money isn’t made by running the infrastructure. Electricity, Gas and Water companies don’t make money by hooking you up to the infrastructure they built, they make their money by changing you for the services delivered over those networks. AT&T, Verizon, BT, Vodafone and other large network providers don't want the infrastructure only model, they want the Cable TV model where they charge for value added services as well as the infrastructure. To ensure maximum revenue over their networks they need to be able to prioritise their traffic to add that extra value and getting rid of net neutrality is the first step on the road.

The issue for end users is that the development of new services like amazon, iTunes, Skype, Netflix, iPlayer, flickr, webmail, most of Google’s offerings and numerous other products was made possible by the universal and unrestricted infrastructure that the Internet provided. Most of the services I listed would not be permitted over a Cable or Satellite TV network because they shift the revenue from the network provider to the service provider. Were the Government to allow a gentleman's agreement to create a split Internet which offers all services over wired connections but only selected vendor specific services over wireless networks to become law, we would see the destruction of the fundamental and key underpinnings of the Internet that allowed so many services to be developed. Wireless access to the Internet is not just the future of the Internet for us, for some counties it is the only way to access the Internet. To this day there is very little wired network infrastructure in developing countries, large parts of Africa completely skipped the roll out of wired telephone networks and jumped straight to wireless technology and we can expect to see the Internet rolled out in the same way.

Had the network providers been allowed to successfully argue against net neutrality as we moved from dial-up to broadband connections, on the basis that broadband was a limited resource, we would not have seen the development of the services we have today, and it was those new services that drove demand for Internet access and the increase in Internet speeds to the level we have today.

There is no wired Internet, there is no wireless Internet, there is just the Internet, and that must be the case going forward.