Angus Thinks

Month: July 2004

  • Ringtone pricing vs Other Content

    David made an interesting point in a comment recently about the ridiculous prices people are paying for ring tones and how this may be encouraging news for more sophisticated content (like video). If people are willing to pay 50p or more for a few seconds of music in a ringtone, how much might they be willing to pay to see a key goal scored in a football match or an important news story?

    Of course Mazingo tried pocket video stories a while back using a system like avantgo. I think it worked by syncing a pocket pc or palm unit with a server somewhere. Then you got video clips pushed to the unit. The costs eventually got the better of them because the company isn’t really doing that anymore. I think the most likely reason for failure was because they had difficulty charging for a service that was extremely expensive to provide.

    Video over 3G networks has two crucial advantages over Mazingo. The first is that the people operating the system have a proven solid billing and payments system. Ring tone buyers have been useful guinea pigs for more sophisticated products and Vodafone has been running it’s Vodafone live service for some time now. So the payment side of things is working. The other key advantage is people seem willing to pay for services on mobile phones that they wouldn’t if they were buying the service via the internet and a regular PC (Or even to sync to a Pocket PC or Palm device). Somehow the networks have managed to convince users that their mobile phone is something different (and more expensive) and that they should expect to pay. Whether this view can be sustained is difficult to guess, but I suspect that it will probably last a little while yet.

    I don’t know whether this means that 3G services will be sucessful or not. I suspect that eventually people will realise that the wider internet offers more scope and lower prices. The mobile networks may have to accept that their product is really just a commodity.

    How long this takes is the key question though. It makes the difference between recovering the billions spent on 3G licenses and not. I suspect the networks will be paying very close attention to this indeed.

  • Parsing SQL in SQLEditor

    Good progress is being made again on the Cocoa version of SQLEditor. I have recently rewritten the parsing system to use javacc instead of my own home built parser. This allows for better, simpler and more reliable parsing. Writing my own parser was interesting but wasn’t really the best strategy. This new parser should make its way into the java version of SQLEditor eventually.
    A key new feature is that the import system can now report parsing errors to the user. Previously the whole thing just kind of gave up without any indication of what went wrong. BAD!
    Now you get a nice little window (actually a panel) that appears and gives a list of errors. The current development version always shows this window but I’m still trying to decide if it is better to show it on every import or just when something goes wrong.
    The new parser is also much easier to expand to support new features. The old version required a complicated system to add new tokens, the new one has a standard format and requires only a single line.
    The new version should also work reliably on Mac OS X 10.2 or Mac OS X 10.3. Which is a change over the previous version that crashed oddly on 10.3.

  • TV on 3G Mobiles

    According to this BBC Article there is a growing move towards tv programming on mobile phones. The key disadvantage is the amazingly high cost; one of the people interviewed paid $50 for 45 minutes. High pricing seems to be a problem as it so often is for mobile services.

    It does seem like a handy thing though. I suppose Three in the uk is doing something kind of similar, but in a much more limited way, with their streaming video services. It’s even possible that if the price was not unreasonable then I might even use the service myself. Although I would probably have to upgrade my phone to do so. I don’t think anyone is going to manage to offer streaming video on a nokia 6210 🙂

  • Cross Platform Applications

    With the announcement of Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4 Apple, like many other companies, seems to have gone for a standards based approach. Dashboard is said to be based on HTML, CSS and javascript. A webpage in all but location. Microsoft tried something similar of course back with windows 98. You could display bits of webpages or activeX controls or java applets on the desktop. It didn’t prove all that popular then, but those pagelets were slow and clumsy. I very much imagine that dashboard is neither slow nor clumsy.

    More importantly though, dashboard objects have two interesting features. The first is that they use interpreted, not compiled, languages. The second is that they are essentially cross platform. I know that there doesn’t seem to be any particular other platform that can they can actually be moved to at the moment, but I feel fairly confident that before next year’s release of Mac OS X 10.4 someone will develop a suitable runtime for linux and quite likely windows as well.

    The dashboard concept seems to fall very much into the current fashion for application development. You write the interface in html, xml or something like it; then write the code in javascript or some kind of interpreted language. Then you provide libraries written in C or Java that provide the core functionality to the system. Mozilla’s XUL and Microsoft Avalon (windows xp next generation user interface) both use this approach. The Apple iTunes store also uses xml to describe the interface.

    It’s easy to see why this approach is popular. Building user interfaces from xml makes it much quicker to produce interesting results than having to change C++ code and rebuild. Multiple tools can be written to access the format and the result can be modified without rebuilding the main application. (Given modern build times always an advantage).

    One possibility is that dashboard may be something more than just a widget system. I have no inside knowledge whatsoever, but what if in future you could write whole applications using the dashboard system. What if you could create windows that were written in html/css/javascript and then tied to cocoa applications, much as we currently tie interface builder nib files to cocoa applications?

    Alternatively there is this mysterious business with Mozilla, Apple and Opera. The three have decided to work together to improve plugins, but what if they are actually considering a future application development and deployment system to compete against Microsoft’s .net? Combine the open .net implementations with something like dashboard and you have a cross platform development system that might offer developers a good incentive to develop for.

    I have no knowledge of the future though, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see

  • Definitions in spellchecker?

    There have been lots of articles today in newspapers because the Oxford English Dictionary publishers have claimed that people are confused and choosing words incorrectly. For example “pouring” instead of “poring”. The problem being that people are basing the word choice on the sound and thus homonyms (or homophones if you prefer) are confused. There are quite a lot of words that sound the same but different meaning, for example caret (a typographical mark and the blinking insertion point in a text editor) and carrot (vegetable).

    However I offer a simple solution: Have a brief definition of the word in the spell checker. Visual Studio already does this for programming languages so adding it to word processors is hardly difficult. The only issue really is likely to be disk space. If this is really a concern maybe some kind of online system? But I really don’t think it’s much of an issue given the current size of word processor installations anyway.

    It would allow writers to check whether the word that they selected had the correct meaning. Multiple meanings could also be listed, either in a list or with some kind of rotating display.

    Possibly it might even improve the quality of written english online? Of course it may be that there is a word processor that already does this. In which case the idea isn’t as original as I thought… but I would definitely like this feature in my word processor and even more so in system wide spell checking. 🙂

    [Edited: Because I suggested that Caret and Carrot were spelt the same.]

  • SQLEditor (Java) Final Candidate

    I’ve decided to release a new version of SQLEditor (Java). The FC1 version is a final candidate version that hopefully incorporates fixes for the bugs that people have reported. There have been problems with users running Mac OS X 10.3 because of crashes in the Java Virtual Machine. These are problems that Apple has to deal with and hopefully any remaining crashes will be fixed in revisions to the Apple JVM.

    SQLEditorFC1.dmg

  • No Chopsticks?

    Despite being absolutely huge the Sainsbury’s at Cameron Toll in Edinburgh doesn’t sell Chopsticks. I even went so far as to ask! Not one chopstick to be found (although presumably I would need at least two to actually get anywhere with eating)

    I wonder that they don’t have a little stack of chopsticks next to the Chinese ready meal section. Buy meal, chopsticks and plate altogether.

    Perhaps it is no wonder that Sainsbury’s non-foods aren’t selling very well? I really liked the old layout more than the new layout. Especially the cookery section; I never seem to be able to find what I want now. The food section was improved though and I think it’s currently my favourite supermarket in absolute terms. In practice I probably shop most often at Safeway in Mordun because it is slightly closer than Sainsbury and it’s a downhill walk on the homeward journey (Sainsbury is uphill on the way back).

    I’m definitely curious to see how Morrisons is going to change it. The refurbishment date is thought to be in August.

    I wonder if Safeway sell chopsticks? I didn’t look last time I was there.

    I’ll probably go to one of the Chinese supermarkets as recommended by David to buy new chopsticks, or Edinburgh Bargain Stores which seems to sell almost everything (although probably not chopsticks)

  • Apple iMac EOL

    The Apple – iMac page has a really odd announcement on it (right, middle) stating that stocks of the old iMac have pretty much run out and the whole line will be replaced in September. The message also apologises to customers for not having a replacement ready.

    It’s a weird message. The assorted mac sites have jumped on the message and rumors are flying in all directions: processor shortages, new materials, late redesigns or manufacturing disasters have all been suggested.

    The real oddity with the whole thing is the fact that there has been no public announcement of the unit. It wasn’t introduced at the WWDC last week. Why not simply announce it and then explain that it won’t be ready until the end of August? Lots of stories about this too, however it does suggest that the Paris Apple Expo is the most likely candidate for the launch. However I make no prediction on this.

    The timescale is odd as well. What exactly can be achieved in 2 months? (or actually about a month and a bit. According to manufacturing sources about 3 weeks are needed to actually get the stuff to retailers). Major redesigns are probably out, processor shortages are hardly unexpected given the situation with IBM at their East Fishkill processor plant. (Is it just me or is there something ironic about a processor plant that uses lots of exotic chemicals having the word Fishkill in it’s title?)
    Is there some odd technology or design that can’t be announced until September? Who knows?

    It’s unfortunate that this happened now. I was very interested in buying a new iMac to run 10.3 on, but now I have to wait until September. Almost two months away. 🙁

    This means that the cocoa version of SQLEditor has been delayed again. Sorry to anyone looking forward to this. I may release a technology demo for anyone still running 10.2.8, but 10.3 will have to wait.