The OS war between Apple IOS and Google Android has been raging from the get go.  And whilst so far Apple is still in the lead for global market share of mobile OS platform across devices, Google is gaining share every day.  As a matter of fact, if we count Smartphone devices only, Android based mobile phones have been topping the platform chart for a few months already.

Height256.7 mm241.2 mmThe Tab is slightly taller, naturally because it has a bigger screen Depth8.6 mm8.8 mmThe Tab is actually thinner

For more info, check out the YouTube page here and the Facebook page here.

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Viral video by ebuzzing

If you have been reading or watching the media (old and new), or just by being aware of your local surroundings, you probably would’ve felt that the human kind have been exhausting the Earth’s natural resources to the brink of extinction.  Not only that, we also have been polluting our habitat to the point of near destruction.  Maybe these catastrophes won’t come today, or in the next decade of two, but let’s face it, this planet is slowly but surely dying.  Unless we act today to prevent this, of course.  And on this basis, I suppose, the Open Planet Ideas idea was conceived.
The Open Planet Ideas is a place where you can collaborate to identify environmental issues and find ways to tackle them as a community.   This action was created by Sony in collaboration with WWF.
The basic premise, as a matter of fact, is not exactly looking for new ideas on creating environmentally friendly product, but rather to find new ways to leverage the existing technologies to solve these problems.  It’s a challenge to share inspiring, innovative and imaginative ideas on how we can make a better use of our already scarce natural resources.  Or on how we can actively change people behaviour and encourage more sustainable lifestyles.
The sharing part is the most important thing here, because unlike other actions, this searching of ideas, this brainstorming is done collaboratively, together, you – me and the whole world (well, the ones that have access to the internet anyway).
Everybody can contribute and is encourage to share their idea, others may show their support to any of these idea or comment on it, or even build yet another idea on top of an existing ones.

So, how does it work?
First of all, go and register yourself at the Open Planet Ideas website.  The collaboration process consist of several stages.  The first stage was the Inspiration stage where we could identify issues and find uses of technology that might help in solving these issues.  From these collective findings, then a panel of expert will sift through them and categorize them into popular themes.
The second stage is the Concept stage. This the stage where we can start sharing our ideas to tackle the above issues (grouped in several themes) using today’s technologies.  To give a start, Sony has provided a Technological Showcase, which comprises of some of Sony’s technology that we might be able to use as inspiration upon which we could build our solutions/ideas.
The best concepts will then move on the next stage, the Evaluation stage, where they will be rated and judged by the community and by the Expert Panel.
The last stage is where the final ideas get to turn into Proof of Concept or even Prototypes. Sony itself  will help this stage by investing in engineering and R&D resource to develop the idea but will not commercialise or make any profit out of it.  Instead the results will be released to the public domain and can be used by other parties for environmental good.

The stage one, Inspiration, had already completed now, Open Planet Ideas had shifted through 335 ideas and categorized them in 6 different themes.  The challenge now is to find solution to these environmental problems using technology that exists today.

On the last count, there are already 175 Concepts that have been submitted.  As described above, there are 6 Themes that you can use as reference.  These 6 themes are as follows:

1. Changing Behaviour
2. Cleaner By Design
3. More With Less
4. Make It Real
5. Waste Not
6. Recycling Revisited

Also as described above, Sony has provided some of its technologies that can be used as building blocks to create more ideas.

Open Planet Ideas Technology Showcase from Open Planet Ideas on Vimeo.

These Sony technologies are as follows:

• Wireless Microphone
• GPS
• Presence Sensing
• P2P Software
• Sweep Panorama
• PSP Go
• Remote Video Monitoring
• Dye Sensitized Solar Cell
• Felica

Even just by reading each page of the above technologies, my brain has already working trying to mix and match together to see if I could create something that might be useful.  I’m sure you are having the same sensation :)

To whet your appetite even more though, take a look of some concepts that I picked below that I thought pretty cool:

• A network of real-time wireless micro weather stations for micro-climate monitoring.
• Wise use of electricity using presence sense technology.
• Solar powered laptop battery recharger.
• Loyalty Card for Green Attitude.
• ICS – Intelligent Car Share.
• Measuring daily footprints.

Introducing ‘Smart Online Groceries’

So what is MY idea?  I’m glad you ask :)

Let me ask you .. How much time you spend every month doing your regular groceries shopping? Do you usually go to your local store by foot, by public transport, or by car? Have we ever thought about how much petrol we spent, how much time we wasted and how much carbon footprint we contribute to the environment just by doing our shopping? What if there is a way to do shopping in an easier, simple and more effective way, and also help to save the environment at the same time?

I won’t give you the answer here, you just have to read it at the Open Planet Ideas concepting site.  But I think this idea will catch on sooner than later.

Obviously you can also start to share your own idea, or if you haven’t got one, you can always participate in commenting or applauding (liking in Facebook speak) any of the existing ideas.
It is interesting to see Sony and WWF are using crowdsourcing, a social tool, to solve what fundamentally is a social problem.  As proven successfully by Wikipedia, provided with the freedom, place and means, the ‘hive minds’ can do wonderful things.
I am applauding (no pun intended) the effort that the Open Planet Ideas has made, and hope that this collaboration will bring a tangible and practical fruit that can be used by the mass and ultimately to save our planet.
Special note for Sony, I hope that they will stay true to their promise, especially in the part where they commit their resources into the realisation of these ideas.

So, go wild with your imagination, and do not hesitate to share your idea.  You never know what it might take you.
Join the challenge!

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As you sit there on you comfy chair, catching up with your email, updating your Facebook status, reading your favorite blogs, watching your YouTube playlist and tweeting all of these; have you ever wonder what your life would be like without this machine in front of you, have you ever wondered as a matter of fact how this machine, this computer, had first come to our life?

Well, if you haven’t already known, let me introduce you to the guy who started this all.  His name is Charles Babbage.  Charles, an English bloke, who was born on 1791 (died on 1871), sometimes regarded as the ‘Father of Computing‘.  He is a Mathematician and Mechanical Engineer, whose design was thought to be the origin of the concept of the modern programmable computer.

The Difference Engine – The first calculator

Charles’s first design was called the Difference Engine.  It was, in simplicity, the first automatic computing engine, a.k.a calculator, albeit a mechanical one. In the 1800′s, mathematical tables, such as Logarithms , were used extensively.  These tables were calculated ‘manually‘ by people who were called ‘computer‘, meaning ‘one who computes‘ :) Charles, witnessing the high error-rate of this manual process, set of to work on eliminate these errors by replacing these ‘computers‘ with a ‘mechanical‘ machine that was capable of doing these calculations automatically.  Charles managed to built some parts of a prototype for this Difference Engine and although he didn’t manage to finish it, some of these parts (pictured below) still survive and can be seen at the London Science Museum.  If this first Difference Engine had had been completed, it would had been consist of around 25000 parts, weighted 15 tons and been 2.4 metres tall!

In 1985, the London Science Museum began the construction of the Difference Engine no. 2.  This version of Difference Engine was built true to Charles’ original design, using historically accurate materials and to within historically accurate tolerances.  The construction finished in 1991 – 153 year after the original design – the working machine performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, more than the average modern pocket calculator.
The new machine composes of 8000 parts, weighs 5 tons, and measures 2.1m high, 3.4m long and 0.5m wide.  The associated printing mechanism was also built and completed 9 years later, in 2000.
Another identical machine was also built by a technology millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, which was completed in March 2008 and is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, USA.

The Analytical Engine – The design of a general-purpose computer

During the time when Charles was working on his attempt to build the Difference Engine, he thought up of an idea of a much more general purpose computing engine, which he then called the Analytical Engine.  The design of this engine had a very similar resemblance to the design of a modern computer.  In short, it had an input, a store (memory), an arithmetical unit (CPU) and a printer (output).  All of these components were supposed to be mechanical and ran on Steam Engine to power it :)
I don’t want to go to much into the detail design here, but if you understand how modern computer works (or you want to know how it really works), check out this Wikipedia entry on Analytical Engine, and I can assure you you will be amazed to learn that Charles was basically designing the a prototype of a computer, 100 years before the birth of the Digital Computing initiated by the Turing Machine in 1937.  It’s mind-blowing!
Unfortunately, the design was never even built.  Charles was practically spending the rest of his life tinkering with the design, ever-optimising it all that time, until he died in 1871.  Although you can see a ‘trial model‘ of a part of the Analytical Engine being displayed at the Science Museum London (pictured below).

Remembering Charles Babbage

This Monday, 18th of October it’s the 139th Anniversary of Charles Babbage death.  And to commemorate this, I would encourage you to read all information about him and his works.  If you live in London, or happen to be there, I urge you to visit the London Science Museum and admire these machines with your own eyes.  Of course you can also alternatively visit the Computer History Museum in California.

Personally I have known about Computer since I was young, had studied Software Engineering, and have been working in IT for half of my adult life.  My heart is filled with gratitude towards Babbage for his amazing vision, way beyond his time, that one way or another has shaped the world we are living in today.

While working on this design on the Analytical Machine, Charles wrote that “Another age must be the judge” of his inventions.  That Age is here, and now.  It’s our Age.

Resources:
Charles Babbage at the Wikipedia
Charles Babbage at the London Science Museum
Charles Babbage at the Computer History Museum
Charles Babbage Institute
The 100 Leap Year – an article by John Graham-Cumming at jgc.org (Thanks for the inspiration John!)

Back in June I wrote about the new MiFi from Three, and the fact that, kudos to Three, it has turned bads into goods.  I have now, for a couple of weeks, been trying out this new MiFi, and I am ready to share my experience with you all.  Let me say first though, in short, there have been indeed big improvements on this one since the first MiFi was unveiled back in February.

What’s In The Box

Let’s start with the box and what comes in it.  Obviously we have the MiFi itself, a mains charger, and 2 USB cables, one long one for the charger and the shorter one presumably for connecting the device to a computer.  And then there is the usual setup guide manual, but if I were you I would check the Cards.  This is something that Three has been doing with some of its signature devices, such as the the INQ, where they create nicely designed user guide cards, in place of the usual-boring manual.  These cards prove to be more attractive than the normal booklet that people seem to be more encouraged to read them.  The new MiFi comes also with one of these packs.  Last but not least is the most important information of all, i.e. the SSID name and the WiFi password.  This information, previously came in a tiny piece of sticker – easily displaced, now come in a small card that is easier to carry around.  All in all the box offers everything we need to start using the MiFi on the get go.

The Hardware

The first MiFi, while functional, it was hopelessly unusable.  It had so many button you had never remembered which one to to press first.  It had more LED than a traffic light, you had never remembered which one means what.  Battery life sucked, and you couldn’t even use it while you’re charging it.  It’s just useless.

I can tell you now that all of these problem are gone with the new MiFi :)

There is only, count … one button … yes one button to rule them all!  And not just that, gone were the myriad LEDs, they are all replaced by a smart LCD screen.  This new LCD screen shows, clearly,  many essential information, like signal strength, WiFi connection, internet connection, battery status, network speed and data used.

Battery life is now considerably longer, and you can use it will it’s charging!

By the way, as you see from the pictures, the unit’s body looks much sleeker than its predecessor, with its black front and gun-metal back.  It also feels sturdier compare to the previous model.

The Dashboard

In the first model of 3 MiFi, the only way you can get to administer the unit is via a clunky dashboard software, which you need to install into your PC.  Note the PC part, which means that if you have a Mac, you are out of luck!  Even if you had a Windows PC and managed to install it, it’s still unusable.  It reminds you of how unusable the hardware counterparts are (buttons, lights).

The new MiFi has a browser based dashboard, which means any device with a sufficiently modern browser can access the admin software and manage the whole thing from there.  You can even access it from your mobile device.

The improvement doesn’t stop there.  The new dashboard now include more advance and security settings, not found in the first one.  Now you can get more control of your MiFi down to the nitty-gritty.

What about Connection?

A mobile internet modem, can only function so far as the 3G connection is available.  Without signal reception, it’s just unusable.  And this problem is down to the network, in this case Three.  When I tried the first one, the signal was very patchy in London.  Since then though, Three has done many improvements on its infrastructure, from replacing their tower’s modem, to sharing towers with T-Mobile.  All in all, customers ‘should’ feel the difference, although since I’m not exactly Three customer, I can only speak to what I’ve experienced in a short while that I had the MiFi.

I did conduct a few speedtest, courtesy of our friend at speedtest.net.  In reality the result from these tests vary, depending on when you do it.  I can say that during my tests, I could get download speed of more than 2 Mb/s.  Whilst the upload speed were hovering 1 Mb/s mark.  This, while can be considered slow compare to the average ASDSL/Cable connection, it’s good enough from me to wathc YouTube videos, or catching-up with BBC iPlayer, even iPhone 4 Facetime.

So far, MiFi is getting no real competition in the Wireless Mobile Broadband area in the UK, so if you need a Mobile WiFi solution, MiFi is all you’ve got.  The first one was a disappointment, but this new one has managed to fix almost all the complaint that the user experienced.  And as I said before too, if you own an iPad or and iPod Touch.  This thing is a perfect companion.

Last words, I like the improvements, but the most important thing is that, these improvements were actually coming from complaints that users experienced.  Three has been listening to these opinions, and acted on it, which is quite rare among companies.

[Latest Updated]

Well, I just been told that the Online trading will indeed continue to be supported this weekend :)

If you have been waiting to get the iPhone 4 on the Three network, congratulations! Today is the day! Today Three has announced the sale of the iPhone 4 in the UK nationwide in Three stores and online.

As you’ve probably known, unlike other UK networks, although Three announced their pricing plan on time, they didn’t manage to sell the iPhone 4 on the launch date (as I’ve predicted).

But if you are one of the people who have been holding off buying iPhone 4 because of Three, rejoice! Because the wait is over :) And it would be worthwhile too, because as I mentioned before, Three has the cheapest plans (along with Vodafone but with more minutes and texts and lower cost of initial handset price) of all plans from the 4 networks that carry iPhone 4.

Now, I’ve been told that as per today’s sale date, you can only get the Black – 32GB – iPhone 4. The white iPhone 4, as you know, is not even out yet, and as for the availability of the 16GB iPhone 4, I will let you know when I know it.
A quick test at the Online Three Store confirm this. When I chose the 16GB iPhone 4, there is no ‘Buy this deal‘ button available like the 32GB has. Instead you will get a ‘poorly-worded’ message saying something about ‘White iPhone 4 is currently unavailable …‘?!

Breaking down of what Three is offering, basically you have 4 choices of plan. All plans are for 24-month contract and each will carry 5000 Texts, 5000 Three to Three Minutes and 1GB of Internet allowance. The difference will be in the number of cross-network minutes and the handset up-front cost, which are the followings:

1. Internet Texter 500: 500 minutes with up-front cost £189 and £30 monthly payment.
2. Internet Texter 900: 900 minutes with up-front cost £189 and £35 monthly payment.
3. The One Plan #1: 2000 minutes with £149 up-front cost and £40 monthly payment.
4. The One Plan #2: 2000 minutes with £89 up-front cost and £45 monthly payment.

If you look at the comparison spreadsheet I have, you will see that the tariff number 1, i.e. the Internet Texter 500, is the cheapest of all plans from all network, in term of Total Cost of Acquisition, which will be £909 for 24-month contract. Second only to the Vodafone £25 monthly contract, but with more minutes/texts and lower up-front cost.

If you still haven’t got the iPhone 4, and is still waiting to get one, Three is offering the best plan that you can get today. Provided that you don’t mind to be locked in a 24-month contract and really want the 32GB iPhone 4 (which to be honest, with all the HD video you are going to take, you will want all the space you need).

Following Steve Jobs’ promise at the Special Apple Press Conference last week, this morning iPhone 4 users woke up with an email from Apple in their inbox.  The email is confirming the eligibility of the user to get a free iPhone 4 Bumper (or a selected third-party case).  It’s also giving a further instruction to download the iPhone 4 Case Program App, where the user can pick and claim the Bumper/Case.

After downloading and running the iPhone Case Program App, you will be presented with a list of available Bumper and Cases.  At this moment, there is 1 Bumper from Apple and 7 third-party cases available cases to pick.  Selecting one of the item will take you to the detail page where you can read a more detail description and see some additional photos of the case, and finally you can select the one you want.

The choice of cases are not bad either, considering that they are free.  I still think that it’s a bit ‘daft‘ to have to use a bumper/case to fix this hardware problem.

One thing I noticed is that you probably won’t be able to get your hands on one of these very soon as a quick glance to the shipping time tells you that the quickest you can get it is in 3 weeks, or if you are unlucky, you might get it in 3 months!

To be honest I didn’t expect this thing would take form as an iPhone app as Steve said something about ‘checking’ it at the Apple Store, but thinking about it again, it does seem to be the most natural way of doing it.

So, have you get any experience with one of these?  I need some advise.

It seems that some ‘very lucky’ people has been allowed to play around with the iPhone 4 before the launch date on Thursday the 24th, and now that Apple’s embargo has been lifted up, we can read some of these reviews.

The reviewers seem to be divided into 2 camps, in one side are the tech-journalists from the mainstream media, and on the other side are the tech-bloggers.

It is interesting to read the each reviews from both camps, because they have different emphasis and depth.

Reviews from the tech-journalists, represented by Walt Mossberg from All Things Digital,  David Pogue from The New York Times and Ed Baig from USA Today, tend to touch on topics such as look and feel, the new IOS4 (Multitasking and App Folder) and most prominently the Facetime, which they seem to agree that it’s the iPhone’s killer feature.

It’s not the first phone with both a front and back camera. It’s not even the first one to make video calls. But the iPhone 4 is the first phone to make good video calls, reliably, with no sign-up or setup, with a single tap. The picture and audio are rock solid, with very little delay, and it works the first time and every time. – David Pogue

FaceTime video calling on the iPhone 4 is one of those cool “seeing is believing” features … – Ed Baig

Meanwhile, from the tech-bloggers, represented by Xeni Jardin from Boing-Boing and Joshua Topolsky from Engadget, we have a more thorough and in-depth hands-on review.

Xeni was particularly giving the new iPhone Camera a run, and was pleased with the quality of the pictures the iPhone took compare to the old versions (expectedly).  She also noticed that the shutter speed has become … speedier.

I brought my iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 to the Venice Beach skate park, to take shots of fast-moving skaters in those magical aerial moments, just before a swan-dive into the belly of the bowl. With earlier iPhones, man, just forget it. You’re using the wrong device. Response is too sluggish for good odds on getting good action shots. But with iPhone 4, I was able to tap-tap-tap in rapid succession, or tap once at just the right instant, and bring home some real trophy jpegs. – Xeni Jardin

As for Engadget review, as usual, they tested almost everything we want to know from this new piece of hardware and software.  I’m particularly impressed on this photo comparison between the new and the old iPhone display.  It really shows off how good the Retina Display is. [Photo courtesy of Engadget]

Marvelous!

Joshua’s last words sum up the whole thing:

We’re not going to beat around the bush — in our approximation, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely formidable package. Yes, there are still pain points that we want to see Apple fix, and yes, there are some amazing alternatives to the iPhone 4 out there. But when it comes to the total package — fit and finish in both software and hardware, performance, app selection, and all of the little details that make a device like this what it is — we think it’s the cream of the current crop.

Have you received your iPhone 4?  If you have, we would like to know how it is :)

It’s not too long until we can get our sweat palm on the new iPhone 4, and I must say here in the UK we are quite spoiled with choices.  For a start, you can go SIM-Free!  When you buy one of the handset from one of the Apple Store on a full price, you get it unlocked!  You are free to put any SIM card from any partner network you fancy.

Most of us though, will either already be having some kind of contract with our existing network provider, or to skint to fork for £599 :)  In which case we will be happy to go to one of these providers and get the contract there.

But just like blessing sometimes can be a curse, choices can often also be confusing.  With at least 3 networks offer a bewildering ranges of prices and tariffs, we can be forgiven to be utterly confused.

But don’t fret! With the help of Google Docs I managed to put together a spreadsheet with details of prices and tariffs from all 3 networks (O2, Orange, and Vodafone) 4 Networks (O2, Orange, Vodafone and Three) all in one place.  Here you can play around with the ‘filter’ and find the combination of price and tariff that most suit your situation and need.

As well as the usual data, I also added a column on the Total Cost of Acquisition. This is how much you would have to pay (at least) at the end of your contract.

One small fact that is actually making quite a big difference in the Total Cost of Acquisition and worth to think about is that most networks allow you to change tariff in the middle of your contract (on the 9th month of your 18M, or 12th month on your 24th), so I added 2 columns at the end of the spreadsheet to calculate this too.  For O2 (according to what the staff said), they will allow customers to change to ‘any’ iPhone tariff of their choice.  I’m not too sure how valid this statement was, because that means we could go from the highest tariff straight down to the lowest tariff.  As for the other 2 networks, they only allow customers to change to the tariff one step down.

[Updated]

I knew it’s too good to be true :(  So for O2 (I have confirmed), like Orange and Vodafone, you can only go down to one tariff directly below.  But here is the thing, you can do this ‘every month’.  The spreadsheet is updated with this information, but only with assumption that we are sticking with only one move.  I’ll leave you with the more elaborate calculation.  Also I haven’t done this calculation for Three, because I haven’t confirmed with them yet if they allow this or not.

Enjoy the spreadsheet, and please let me know if you spot any mistake so I can rectify it quickly.

Well … well … well … just right after I wrote my post about O2 UK pricing and plans for the new iPhone 4, I’ve got an email from O2, saying that only O2 customers will have their hands first on the new iPhone 4 at the launch day, and this preferential treatment will continue at least until the end of July.

Here is some excerpt from what O2 say at their site:

iPhone stock will be extremely limited in the UK at launch and not everybody who wants one will be able to get one straight away. We want to make sure that our existing customers get priority so until at least the end of July, only existing O2 customers will be able to get an iPhone 4 from us.

It seems that O2 has witnessed an outrageous demand for the new Apple iPhone 4, and realized that it won’t be able to cater for everybody.  So it decided to put its customers first and above non-customers.

This is a good news, of course for all O2 customers who has been waiting for this moment, and is thinking to get the new iPhone.   But for the non-customers it could be a bit disappointing.  The good thing is, O2 is not the only network in the UK that will carry the iPhone 4.  People still can get it from the other 3 Networks (Orange, Vodafone, 3).  So, maybe it can be seen as a mutually-beneficial situation for the networks, a way to even out the distribution.

So, who can be considered as O2 customers?  Because apparently there are some restrictions.  O2 explains:

This exclusive iPhone 4 offer is open to our mobile, mobile broadband, home broadband and home phone customers who have been with us since at least 24 May 2010.

Well, if you are one of the above, congratulations!  I’ll probably see you in the queue :)

From today (15th June), you can pre-order your iPhone 4 at the Apple Store online, which you can collect on the iPhone launch day on the 24th of June.

UPDATE!
It looks like Apple Store couldn’t take the onslaught of the first day of Pre-order, their online store is down, and replaced by “We’ll be back soon” message, and a list of Telesales numbers.

UPDATE!

Apple Store site is now back up!