Technology or Not

Just testing if embedded video works. This is a video I made myself. It's called: Rugby's Intercept Kings - Volume 1 - Jean de Villiers. It features one of the masters of the intercept Jean de Villiers showing off why he deserves that title. Enjoy.

Don't know how many of you guys are keen on aviation like me. The mystery and wonder of flight has baffled and awed man from very far back in history. It's probably this reason why i still have such a great passion for this field.

But let's be honest sometimes the magic of it all just gets lost when a plane comes down. But the fact is aviation is probably still statisticaly the safest means of transport. A big reason for this is how aviation authorities treat accidents. Every crash no matter how big or small gets thoroughly researched and improvements are then made as soon as possible to the industry. This is done to try and insure the same type of crash never repeat itself.

One of my favourite series is 'Air Crash Investigation' by National Geographic. It's really a great show and illustrates this process of investigation and solving from start to finish brilliantly. A large part of all these investigations involve the planes' black boxes and cockpit voice recordings.

These recordings contains the last 30 minutes of communications and sound in the cockpits before the incident. Understandably the recordings can sometimes be very disturbing but o so crucial to the solving of a crash.

A new website http://www.cockpitvoicerecordings.com recently launched opening up a large amount of these recordings to the public. I find this very interesting. But i know others might find it a bit more disturbing. The site will probably remain very controversial but it must be said that it captures a part of history in an extraordinary way.

YouTube today finally made all their videos available through their mobile site: http://m.youtube.com. This means that any video uploaded to YouTube can now be enjoyed from almost any new phone that has video playback plus a socket internet connection. Previously YouTube only offered a handful of clips to mobile viewers, but this has now all changed. The improved mobile site version now also allows users to log in with their normal YouTube ids and comment on and rate any clip just like on your desktop. They claim that a 3G or higher data transfer rate is needed to stream the data, but I found that it works just as well with just an EDGE connection if you have good reception.

At the same time YouTube also released a beta version of the much asked for J2ME and MIDP2 application. This is similar to applications that allow Symbian devices to watch YouTube clips. This allows users to an even faster way of searching and playing back videos and just makes things all around a bit easier than working with the WAP site. This beta is currently available as a free download for people with the following handsets: Sony Ericsson k800, w880; Nokia e65, n95, n73, 6110 navigator and the 6120 classic. If you have one of these handsets a download link would be given to you upon visiting the site from your phones pre-installed browser.

I was lucky to manage to get my hands on a direct link to the application. It all looks very well designed and works very sleek. But I was not able to fully test the applet since my phone is not one of those supported. I got an error saying that my screen size is not big enough. Strange considering that my Samsung Z400 has a 320x240 pixel screen, which is one of the largest available for a non-smartphone.

The WAP version however works really well and as I said before even EDGE users should give it a whirl. I spend my whole day watching hundreds of videos with no real meaning and loved it. But I may just have found a few practical uses apart from the novelty value of it already. Now when I’m in the shop and thinking of making a big purchase again I can simply go onto YouTube and see a video review of the product. This could save a few of us from making the wrong purchase again. Other than that just catching the highlights of the game also becomes a real possibility on the go.
Enjoy

I’ll start of this post just by saying Steal this film.

Now after your daily doses of copyright infringement back to the blog. I’ve always been a bit fence sitter when it comes to piracy. Sure I’ve downloaded my share of mp3’s. I was there when eDonkey and Kazaa was the Facebook of today and was part of to switchover to Bittorent.

Now copyright is wrong by law (Well at least in most countries) that we all know although we don’t all agree with it. But very few people actually know a lot about it or really get stopped by it. I can only compare it to speeding on the road everybody knows it’s wrong but did that ever stop anybody from doing it? Nope, not even the traffic cops always abide by that law.

A similar strange new double standard has now started appear in the world of copyright. Some big American television companies recently admitted to having a hand in “accidently” leaking pilots or pre-air episodes of new series to p2p networks. Then by looking at the number of downloads they can see how popular a series could become or if it should be scrapped. Although not directly releasing these videos the idea of using the same system that they are trying to make out as the biggest evil to increase their profits is not ethically all there.

And in the music side of things I’ve always been a firm believer that I would not have bought half of the albums I did if it wasn’t for piracy. I discover music I would have never previously come across this way and most of the time go out and buy the album because I like the music. That’s money that they would never have gotten. In fact it could be regarded as the best form of free advertising. And now they claim I’m stealing from them. The whole situation is just so double sided. It’s also a fact that a few of today’s superstars owe a whole lot of their fame to leaked first albums.

It’s clear that piracy has its good and bad side for both end user and now generators. The battle will go on for many years, but the war will probably never be won. The matter is just too diverse and let’s face it protecting digital media is not really possible.

Smartphones have their browsers and the debate is still wide open who has the best, but the true mobile web is catching up. That’s the mobile web for the average man on the average phone. With all new phones coming out today having at least an EDGE connection there is now no longer a concern about speed. First version GPRS combined with WAP has long been replaced. EDGE now has very good coverage while 3G is available where you need it.

As just explained the hardware is out there and ready, the browsers has evolved beyond recognition. Just look at how far Opera Mini has come in a year. Websites are ready. Well most of them at least. With advances in mobile browsers it is no longer needed to create special mobile version of websites. As long as you apply some logical and good site design methods, even web 2.0 sites could work without hassle on most mobile devices. Then why has the mobile not yet taken off? So many people have proclaimed the mobile web as the next best thing for years but still the uptake is at a snail’s pace. There is a simple answer.

The only real trouble the mobile web is still facing is the lack of uptake by the users. The users just do not know about it or still struggle to use it. According to Rethink Research only 12-13 percent of U.S. mobile users surf the Web on their phones. That figures are far below the 50 percent it was expected to be. The hard truth is the mobile we is the best next thing, in fact it has been the best thing and the best kept secret of the last 4 years. So how are we going to overcome this gap? The answer was released a few months back. As much as I don’t want to say it and for all that is wrong with the iPhone it may just fill this vital gap.

With the release of this device more users wanted to experience the true web on their mobile device. Not everybody can afford the iPhone and it is those people who will only now start to realize the ability of their so called “budget” phones. Combine this with Opera Mini 4’s clever marketing and release timing and the mobile web may just start to blossom very soon. In fact the new version of Opera Mini received more than a million downloads within ten days of its official release. Now as good as that may seem let’s face it 1 million is just not enough to start a revolution… yet. But the basis is there, curiosity has been created and now word of mouth is needed. This will take a few years more maybe at least two. But as long as we know it’s possible we can use it and share it with other.

Everything is in place; from here it’s just promotion and awaiting the uptake. From there it’s only upwards. The bigger the uptake and market becomes the more the software would improve. Other companies have already seen what is possible and started on software that could soon challenge Opera for domination of this major future market. I see the future in the palm of our hands.