Unwired for Sound

OS 3.0 for the iPhone is out and is attracting more attention and blog-time than is seemly, so I thought I'd join the frenzy. I've been looking forward to it mainly because it promised to introduce stereo Bluetooth (A2DP), so that my long disused wireless headphones might finally get some use.

But predictably, Apple has not quite implemented A2DP fully. For some reason, they've skipped the AVRCP protocol which is normaly used with A2DP, because it allows Bluetooth devices to remotely control the iPhone. This means that the track-skip function on my headphones won't work. Not the end of the world, I'll grant you, but annoying.

Why does Apple delight in witholding functionality like this?

Maybe we'll see it in a future update. Or maybe we'll see some kind of proprietary protocol for this kind of thing, possibly in a pair of Apple-licensed wireless headphones.

Now I'm just interested to see how long the battery in my iPhone lasts when I'm listening to music using Bluetooth. I'm open to bets on this - will I make it through a whole session at the gym? Although if you turn off 3G, you get much better battery life. Because I'm with Telstra, I get to use their Edge network when 3G is off, which isn't that much slower than 3G for browsing, email or Facebook.

But however long it lasts, you can rest assured that there is NO Cliff Richard on my iPhone. Yet.

Do You Want WiFi With That?

It seems that WiFi hotspots have finally begun to apear in Australia - at least I only began to notice after I succumbed to the Cult and bought an iPhone. As you can imagine, my status in the Cult has been jeopardised by signing up with Telstra, which I did less out of a love for Australia's favourite corporate bully and more for the love of things like network coverage and reliability - all of which I failed to get from Vodafone in the preceding months.

One of the other advantages Telstra offers is free access to their network of WiFi hotspots throughout the city. Which sounds good on paper... until you try to use one on an iPhone.

Firstly, you can't help but notice when you've moved into range of a hotspot because your iPhone will constantly pop up invitations to join it. Hotspots like this are usually unsecured in the conventional sense so your iPhone goes ahead and joins the hotspot by default. The trouble is, joining the hotspot isn't enough - you're expected to log in first - something you'd only realise if you were in a browser, which is where the login page shows up. If you're in email or an app, all you get is a whole lot of little circly processing icon and nothing else. As a result, if you don't go to your browser and log in, you have to turn off your phone's WiFi to carry on with 3G - something a friend and fellow Cultist has to do all the time, as he works in the CBD .

A couple of times I've gone ahead and logged in (while my friend spluttered in frustration) because it's free for me. Let's overlook the fact that the login page is clearly not optimised for mobile - the process itself is simple lunacy. First, I have to enter my mobile number into the webpage after which I get an SMS back with a token, which I have to enter into the login page. Only then, do I get to browse.

Clearly the whole thing is intended for laptops and no doubt Telstra is working on a system optimised for mobile, although if they're after a little free consultancy, why can't they tell I'm a Telstra customer from my phone and just authenticate me?

Telstra normally charge for their hotspots, which helps explain the need for authentication (if not its poor execution). But why do places that offer "free" hotspots require you to login and cause the same problems if you don't? I'm talking about cafe chains or multi-national fastfood joints whose normal MO is to make you enter a token from your receipt or (worse) ask at the counter for one. The idea is obviously to make sure you bought something first, but wouldn't it be easier to shoo out people who are taking up a table (and wifi) without eating anything than to make your paying customers jump through hoops to use a supposedly free service?

I suppose that the hotspot might spill out onto the street, but it's just plain petty for the likes of Gloria McStarJacks to obsess over a few kilobytes of internet traffic snatched by passers-by or homeless people.

When is a door not a door?

I've been on a bit of a blogging break due to sheer workload. But here I am back again, and after a crazy month of work (and in anticipation of the summer to come) I decided to order another case of that wine I picked up on the way home from my safari.

Ordering the wine was relatively easy through the winery's website, and soon enough my wine was on the way. Except that all I received at my door was a little piece of cardboard, inviting me to go and collect my wine from the nearest post office.

To be fair, the card explained that someone had tried to deliver the wine, but that no-one was home. While I find it difficult to believe that a genuine attempt was made - at the time in question there were two people in the house along with a terrier keenly attuned to knocks on the door - I think there's a bigger issue here.

If you buy something online, chances are its going to need to be delivered to you. Almost without exception it seems, courier companies will try and deliver these items to you during office hours, when you're presumably in your own office. Which means that you'll be left with a piece of cardboard requiring you to make alternative arrangements to go and get your stuff. Even though you paid to have it delivered to your door, not the back door of the neighbourhood post office.

The convenience of shopping online is illusory if you end up having to get in your car and schlep down the road to pick up your purchases anyway. Granted, convenience is not the only advantage of online shopping - a far greater range or otherwise hard to get stuff is also generally available. However, if couriers are a significant beneficiary of the growth of online shopping, then they need to adjust the way they do to suit business-to-consumer transactions. Like delivering stuff when people are going to be home.

Otherwise they risk killing (or at least seriously maiming) the goose that's in the process of laying them a golden egg.

On Safari

If you'd noticed the tone of my last couple of posts was a little testy, you'd probably agree that it was about time I had a holiday. So I have!

In keeping with our ongoing efforts to see as much of our adopted country as possible, we took a roadtrip to Wentworth - which is a town built where the Murray and Darling Rivers meet. If nothing else, the trip was a great geography lesson. Based on what I'd seen about the river system on the news, I hadn't expected to find any water! Of course, I discovered the impressive weir system that had been built early last century, which keeps the water in reserve at the upper reaches of the river - enough to accommodate a lunch cruise, anyway!

The trip wasn't exactly a daring trek to the Red Centre or anything, although there are little patches of desert nearby that give you a taste of such an experience, without needing a Landcruiser (or even all-wheel drive, which I'd gladly have swapped at one point for a slightly softer ride).

The Wentworth Services Club is on quite an ambitious scale... it must take up about a quarter of the entire town's area. This is something to do with gambling laws traditionally being more liberal in NSW than just over the border in Victoria. Unfortunately, not long after the club was expanded to take advantage of Victoria's frustrated gamblers, the law was changed and Victorians got their own pokies. The result is an improbably large (but friendly) RSL and motel complex with odd Casino-inspired flourishes. We stayed in one of the 'Presidential Suites' - not a single piece of faux gilt furniture was to be found anywhere, however.

As safaris go, the kill wasn't particularly impressive - amounting a couple of cases of wine, in fact. We didn't even manage a coating of red dirt along the sides of the car.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Today, I'd like to postulate a set of common assumptions underlying many tech news articles:

1. Anything Microsoft does is evil and monopolistic and anyone who says otherwise is a corporate sellout;
2. Anything any other large software company does is mostly fine, even when it is exactly the same as was done in (1);
3. Anything Apple does is pretty and groundbreaking (even if the same as was done in (1)), although Apple people can be a bit much sometimes; and
4. Open Source is either a 'growing force' or 'about to take over the world' but we wouldn't let our daughters anywhere near Linux people.

By way of illustration, this article in the New York Times about NBC's use of Silverlight to provide online Olympics coverage. The observant reader will note that Silverlight is described as 'proprietary' technology while Flash is not. I bet Adobe are going to be surprised to hear they don't own Flash anymore.

Note to the author: if you feel you have to use pejorative adjectives like that (a need I'd question) at least use them consistently - otherwise you're just being being needlessly subjective.

Next, the article outlines Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies and then goes on to describe the advantages of the 99% penetration enjoyed by Flash, without obvious irony.

Those of you who have a copy of Flash might like to compare the ActionScript it uses with the AJAX used by Silverlight. If you don't have the Flash software, you won't be able to make such a comparison because you can't do anything with Flash content without purchasing it. Yet Silverlight is singled out in the article by a tame professor as "...a way to lock up the content, and it’s not enabling as much innovation as we would like to see." Perhaps the Professor also has a better grasp of irony than I give him credit for.

Geekier readers, meanwhile, will know that ActionScript is proprietary to Adobe while AJAX is a W3C standard - exactly the kind of standard described glowingly in the article as 'a growing economic force'.

By now you've probably decided I'm either a Microsoft stooge (see point 1 above) or something of a pedant - after all, most web users aren't geeks and don't care how the content they access is coded. On the latter I fully agree. I prefer to follow my Father's advice and choose the right tool for the right job and get on with things (though it has to be said he's had less luck with some of his other advice).

Which is why I'm frequently surprised by some of my correspondents when they present their views on such geek esoterica with the kind of blood-shot, spittle-flecked vehemence traditionally reserved for Spanish Inquisitors and Salem Witch-Hunters.

Neither of whom were known for their grasp of irony either.

Scrabble, anyone?

At some point, someone (no doubt with a beard) decided that because digital content could easily be copied, it should therefore be free.

The trouble is that content - good content, at least - costs money to produce. That's because producing content is hard work and people expect to be paid for their work... performers, technicians, musicians, writers... yes, even producers. But if no-one pays for the content, then those people can't get paid. And so they go and get other jobs. Which leaves the rest of us nothing to do on a Sunday night but drink or play scrabble.

And if anyone tries to cite YouTube one more time as an example of a free-content utopia, I will strap them to a chair and make them watch clips from it until their eyes bleed - which should take around 6 minutes. Tops.

The sort of people who push the free content agenda make a great deal of noise about how information should flow unrestricted and say that sharing clips of content in reviews or using content in "mashups" is a fundamental human right. Some can even keep a straight face as they say it (although it's hard to tell behind that beard). What they really mean is that they want to be able to download the content for free off BitTorrent.

I mean who seriously believes that people who won't pay for their operating systems will actually pay for content?

So, my cheapass friends, your manifesto will look a lot less implausible when you can explain why you should ever get paid for anything you ever do ever again when performers, technicians, writers and musicians can't.

In the meantime, stop pontificating about an industry you don't understand.

Although for me, pontificating gets 29 points with a triple letter score on the F...

Aunty's New Frock

I guess its a bit outrageous to kick off a blog and then not post for ages, but here's the reason why:


It's the ABC Commercial Media Player and it looks gorgeous, but of course this kind of media project should never be just a beauty contest. The real challenge was to integrate various media delivery technologies, in particular streaming, download, DRM and e-commerce. And still make it easy to use.

And it doesn't get much easier than buying downloads or DVDs (or both) inside the video player while you're watching the preview. Very smooth.

What's that, you say? iTunes? Well, its kinda clunky compared to this. But ohhh, aren't their devices gorgeous?

OK, yes... Aunty makes her content available there as well, but TV is a whole different ballgame to music - old media's transition online has created a complex, multi-faceted environment. On top of that, the Australian market adds its own challenges. Apple doesn't have all the answers.