Google O/S ? and my personal wish list ...

Firstly, what do they have against MS - it seems that everything they do seems to be aimed at the former monopoly of Microsoft, Google themselves have such a stranglehold on 'online' whilst they claim to "do no evil", or what ever the slogan is (Matt Cutts promises a post on the truth behind it, but as yet hasn't done it) ...

So Google are producing an operating system that will be designed around cloud computing - Great! But there are things that I want to do locally... even with a ligher o/s. I am hoping that apps will still work well enough - this includes:

1. Watch videos either locally, across a network with UPNP support (Media server) or over the internet, but I really do want the option of locally so when I go on the train, I can ...

2. As mentioned above, UPNP type support, for music, photos and video - for what I have in mind for this, it is required.

3. Offline editing - I spend two thirds of my time in front of Excel and Word - this I want at least to have a usable substitute...

I also want "coms" options including video, audio ...

Connectivity with Bluetooth (wifi is a given)

And this if Google brings out the O/S should be an awesome "home" always ready system, that can stay plugged into the TV ready to be switched over to a media centre, communications system that frankly an always on, power hungry system I am just not comfortable with ...

Who knows, android maybe the better system already for this...

Getting the UK out of debt.

Dear Mr Gordon Brown ...

This is how we could be out of debt ...

1. Politicians who seem to show outrage at greedy bankers should NOT claim for anything but the essentials, the UK is not a massive in profit corporation - where claiming a bit more to top up the salary is acceptable... Please ask all politicians to pay it back before they get 'fired' I would like to vote for the honest politician, but I don't think there are too many left!
Well, unsure how much this will save...

2. Google - stop leaching off the UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6122329.ece pay back the 100m tax you deliberately seem to avoid, it wouldn't be much more than a drop in the ocean...
100 million saved...

3. Reduce the number of nuclear weapons (particularly from abroad)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/25/nuclear.weaponstechnology
3bn saved.


4. Stop the ID card schema.
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1114013_id_cards_to_cost_5bn
5 billion saved

so thats 8.1 Billion saved!

On a quick calculation, is that over 10% of the national deficit ?

New car ? Or rent ...

OK - so I am basically thinking of buying a new car soon (if you read some of my previous posts you will see why), but on the other hand, moving to Leeds soon, is it worth me just renting one when I need it?

Renting - I get to drive NICE cars when I want, cheaper when I don't
One car = 1 grand, renting = about £100, without the bills
I do fancy a renting a Jaguar or something even nicer ... ferrari (anyone see the Apprentice?)

Owning - not needing to return it, cheaper ?

New (S/H) car = £3 grand. plus an annual maintenace and insurance of about £1200, renting a car for when I need it - £100 a weekend ... well, its almost six and two threes - if I could learn to live without the car a bit more ....

My guide to business and MoreCars in Luton

I recently bought a car (well about 3 months ago now) paid a bit extra for a warranty, turned out that the MoreCars Luton don't really understand that its not just a bit of paper, in fact they decided that it wasn't worth the paper, I discovered they had sold it to me with a faulty injector - it would stall regularly on the motorway. With a heavily pregnant wife I didn't want to take the risk and with the threat of legal action they decided to buy it back off me - I paid about 2,300 they gave me 1500 (plus an extra hundred if I returned some more paper work) ...

Oddly enough the guy was complaining because business wasn't good - not sure how to explain that if you treat customers like rubbish, they won't exactly promote you to their friends, and any business I have been in which has had customers has been built on "reccomendations", negative reccomendations will loose you more business than positive ones will build!

Well, I learnt three things -
1. never deal with More Cars Luton and to make sure everyone I know doesn't.
2. if you buy a warranty make sure its on paper and ideally third party from a company you are comfortable with.
3. bad customer experience = bad customer reccomendations / retention.

Guess what - the same goes for Three Mobile and TalkTalk both of who have probably lost a large number of customers because of the way they have dealt with me or people I know ...

(quick apoligy to all those people I said that Three and TalkTalk were a good deal - Threes customer service used to be excellent!!!)

BBC iPlayer - Air Version (beta labs)

So this is a followup from a previous post where I mentioned that I hated the Kontiki installation, where it had a serious negative impact on your computer and couldn't easily be removed ... since then I haven't downloaded iplayer programs, just watching them online - (on a side note, my laptop battery became seriously poor, so most of the time what was the point!)

However I recently noticed that they had produced an "Air" version, which was Mac and Linux compatible, being a PC user, this didn't really impact me. However it is now installed and I am downloading the programs I want to watch.

Notes:
Good -
- Not peer to peer (all downloaded straight from the Beeb)
- Light weight "Air"
- Controllable and needs to obey Airs rules
- Can minimize down to the system tray

Bad -
- Not HD!
- Just BBC - not 4od etc..
The single biggest annoyance for me at the moment is that I can't as yet play offline content from the Beeb on my iphone (legally)!

Off topic, I have heard that Sky are doing a Silverlight version of their player, that could be interesting ...

Web analytics Wednesday - on a monday, free beer WOOHOO

Just got back from a Web Analytics Wednesday - Mr Eric T Peterson presented a quick look into the future - more of an industry overview than a technological insight. Not sure if it was the American accent combined with the enthusiasm but it was a very entertaining presentation.

So conclusions
- Web analytics is hard (LOL see previous posts)
- The industry is still consolidating (keep an eye open Mr P hinted that their was still some movements happening
- Google Benchmarking isn't really worth it yet

I have to be honest I can't say too much more that isn't better expressed in his own blog so other stuff ...

Bumped into an old colleague from Directgov - we discussed analytics talked about career options analytics, Omniture, Speed-trap and Google Analytics - the one thing I think we agreed on was that an efficient interface is important as well as good reliable data.

Not a lot of info in this post, but I will hopefully fix that in the next one ...

Software running in the background ? BBC Iplayer, Kontiki and 4od Sky on demand etc...

OK - I loved 4od, sky on demand and BBC iplayer, they are all great services in principal and I have nothing against a P2P distribution system.

But this software is just wrong - I have just switched on my laptop and despite explicitly saying 'no I don't want it running when I start the computer' it's there in the background according to the software explorer.

I often use a mobile internet connection so my download / upload limits are pretty low at times and I want to be pretty in control of what services are running. I strongly object to any peice of software that insists that it should be run in the background every time you switch on your PC.

This includes Adobe Reader (I have switched to Foxit, much cleaner) and millions of other bits of invasive software - thanks to Microsoft for allowing us to see these clearly with their Software Explorer application (great for seeing whats running in the background). I am often surprised by how much quicker my laptop will switch on when I disable or remove these applications! Although Ashes to Ashes is a serie I was enjoying, it is more important to me, productivity.

So this is my message to BBC Iplayer, 4od and Sky - great service but allow people to have control over their computers if you want people to leave them installed.