Archive for November, 2005
November 21, 2005 at 10:04 pm · Categorised under Blog
An interesting review in the Guardian Blog on the new upcoming Pro Evo 5 for the PSP (3 days remaining) . It discusses the technical problems of the game (since it is new for the PSP) but in general is quite positive. To quote the flaws that are highlighted: -
There are other flaws too - the widest camera angle doesn’t offer quite enough view to fully measure your through-balls, while loading times and occasional slowdown are a pain. Also, criminally, there isn’t a master league option, which will disappoint the die-hards.
But it’s the controls that annoy the most, with many promising situations thwarted by the stodgy controller or shoulder buttons rather than the opposition. [emphasis mine]
Not having a master league takes out a lot of the fun from this version in my opinion. This is one of the keys to PES’s success for single player mode. Since the PSP on the whole is more a single player console (its after all a handheld console) this may prove to be fatal for this version. Let’s hope they release a new version soon containing the master league too.
PES on the PS2 has proven time and time again how good it is both as a single player game (master-league + realistic CPU) and as a multi-player game (playing knockout cups etc). The one thing that brings in down slightly is the random player names (Orange 1, Orange 2, Orange 3…. rofl) and the lackluster commentary. They need to get in Motty and Gray. That would liven the thing up.
N e howz…will still prob buy after I get a PSP…since this is the game I can play multi-player over wireless with other people I know (Billy u ready for some action 
)
Billy = Bilal Dukandar ….lol let’s see if Google picks this one up
Update : GamesRadar says there is no commentary for the PSP?? That sure is strange…can you play music instead then?
· Posted by Utills
November 21, 2005 at 9:17 pm · Categorised under Blog
I am hoping to get a PSP soon…so that I can basically get an all in one device to play music, videos and games of course. You see I travel quite a lot and so something like this would be the best possible device to have. If I can use it as a RSS/email reader as well as a music and video device along with the ability to play games it means that rather than carrying multiple devices all I need is this one pocket sized PSP. I hope PSP Video 9 or the other video conversion software runs well enough to convert movies/tv shows very quickly(maybe a couple of hours) so that I can basically choose something to watch in the night and have it ready to watch in the morning.
The PSP to me looks like the ultimate portable media device but I guess Sony being uptight like they always are don’t want users to run away and do what they want with their hardware. I mean how can a company try to stifle innovation which in the long run would lead to more sales due to a greater amount of interest and a wider base of people’s needs/wants/lusts being met. If they don’t want people to run home-brew code that’s understandable since from there stems the root of piracy…but they should at the very least give developers some sort of API to play with so that useful (i.e. stuff that applies to non-hardcore gamers) applications can be written for it.
The way Apple have branded the iPod to basically appeal to non-hardcore music fans illustrates the point of how marketing can be done to change a geek need to a consumer want. Think about the iPod in the most basic terms…if I said to you 5 years ago that you will in 5 years time have a device in your pocket capable of storing 15,000 songs or 25,000 photos you would have laughed and said…why the hell would someone want to carry their entire collection with them. However, Apple have done their marketing right and now people seriously think they need 40gb or 60gb to carry round with them. Realistically 2-3 gb is more than fine for the amount of time between access to a computer. Sony need to learn…they have the technical prowess to take on any company…they lack the ability to collaborate between departments to create the necessary synergies to give the consumer what they want…or to create a want.
I will write a small review…when I manage to get hold of one. Until then, like the rest of the guys/gals I think I’ll just drool…
· Posted by Utills
November 21, 2005 at 9:12 pm · Categorised under Blog
Check these pictures of the new London Googleplex. Looks cool from inside…I like the way they create a balance between work and pleasure…trying to get their employees to basically chill out at work thus getting better productivity and less stress.
· Posted by Utills
November 19, 2005 at 8:58 pm · Categorised under Blog
I like this simple idea of changing pictures very quickly without any refresh and almost instant due to the small picture size. Click on any of the numbers and very quickly you see the whole gallery of photos disappear and reappear with new ones.
The main thing I like about it is the desktop feel you get when you click. Its almost like an instant change with no wait. I know lots of sites implement this but popular ones like Flickr still don’t do it. It would be good if the small preview of the next and previous items (highlighted below) could be done using javascript so that no refresh would be necessary to view say a photo 2-3 photos down.
Even more advanced stuff like only loading comments if a user wanted them…via AJAX of course…would also be quite cool. The fewer page refreshes that you need the more responsive the UI will feel and the greater the usability of the site will become.
· Posted by Utills
November 19, 2005 at 7:58 pm · Categorised under Blog
I was quite surprised when I went to the River Island site today and found that they now have a site designed completely in Flash. Most sites that offer some sort of commercial product often go through a lot of trouble to make sure that they offer a static page so that it is searchable by the big search engines. Often people will first go to a search engine, a generic one like Google or Yahoo, or perhaps a more specialist one such as technorati or kelkoo. Even the traditional database based sites now are searchable as they realise how much commerce they can generate through consumers looking for a good deal.
Companies need to make sure that their cheapest products appear in these search engines as this is how they will attract new customers to their site. By limiting your site to a Flash based solution you not only deny people the ability to link to any product, you more importantly deny search engines access to spidering your site. There are many alternatives to getting a similar degree of design by using the latest AJAX technologies. Most of the stuff out there that uses Flash can be done using AJAX.
My main concern here is not actually with the company themselves. I mean they are a clothes/retail company, what do they know about web technology. The concern is with their IT consultants who have designed them the new site. What objective did they design the site to? Have a beautiful looking alternative to their previous site? Increase sales?
If the objective was to increase sales then why would a key component to this objective (attracting the new customers through search engines) not have featured in the debate. At least the minimum they could do is provide a HTML alternative to the site so that a search engine can at least pick that up.
Companies in my view will learn a lot as consumers start to move online more and more often. Many major corporations have moved on from the “its cool to have a website” to a more supplementary approach to allow people to go and look at products/news stories/interesting things in more detail online after getting exposure through the companies main channel. In the next 4-5 years I believe that companies will wake up to the sheer amount of commerce taking place online and you’ll probably see even more powerful search engines than kelkoo coming out to meet consumer’s needs. At the moment most shopping sites are inadequately designed and therefore the shopping search engines have a hard time getting fresh up to date data.
· Posted by Utills
November 18, 2005 at 5:45 pm · Categorised under Blog
I find the notion that somehow Microsoft should suddenly start giving away their software (office) for free and replace their whole revenue stream through ads quite laughable. Even more amusing is the reasons presented by various commentators on the internet.
Some of the points made in the article I think are not very well thought out…like the following : -
Neutralizes piracy: Piracy exists for a simple reason: people want a product, and they don’t want to pay for it (or at least, don’t want to pay full price). By offering an ad-supported version of their leading products, Microsoft would give these people what they want AND make money from them
How about this…people who usually go down the piracy route will just download a crack removing the ads leaving Microsoft in a worse position than before since now they are giving away their product away for free. Business users don’t like ads…people who are working (read: office apps) don’t like ads…people who have a laptop and are mobile or don’t have a 24-7 connection can’t make Microsoft money.
The option of people paying for the software for an ad-free version doesn’t really work either since only larger companies would do this due to the massive difference in price between the two. All other businesses and individuals would probably just prevent the application from being able to access the net…since a desktop application like Word can be (and must be) able to be used offline denying access to ads would be easy and could not possibly be a requirement by Microsoft since users should be able to have access offline.
So what is the solution then? Well my suggestion would be to branch out their products to the usage of different people. What they need is a very simple package that is perhaps only 100Mb big…and caters for 80% of the users out there. Many of us only use the Word and Powerpoint application in MS Office for example…This sort of simplified version should cost no more than £10-15 to buy..andd be built around simplicity and speed.
Supporting this should be a system where MS allows users to store documents online and do simple but cool stuff like collaborate with other users and access documents from anywhere. Settings/Profiles etc should also be allowed to be stored online to allow users to be anywhere and access all their work.
Since users often need info from the net when doing work MS should release a research tool that acts as a browser/search engine but works specifically for finding statistics and “knowledge”. Here is where they need to enable context matching ads. Since people are actually looking for something, this is where users will be more likely to actually click on an ad. A bit like Google Scholar but with lots of added stuff like Textbooks (out of copyright??), novels (Gutenberg?), wikipedia, encarta articles, more info related sites, uni and school lecture notes, etc.
Some of their apps could be removed from the desktop and taken online, for example Microsoft Money is something that just begs for AI skills matched with context related ads. This is a service which could even work in the background on MS servers in that banks link to MS money online…giving users the ability to safely log into a site just to view their account info without the ability to spend from their account. This may be far safer than logging into a bank site where once you are in you could virtually do anything.
Just my thoughts…add yours!
· Posted by Utills
November 18, 2005 at 4:10 pm · Categorised under Blog
Today was the first time I actually used Google Books. Surprisingly it is very useful. You know when you are studying and you think to yourself…I wonder how this data structure works…or what does this algorithm do? Well as part of a databases homework…I was quickly scanning through Google to look for lecture notes from other universties on B+ Trees. Well I saw the small Google Link for Google Books…so I thought…lets give it a try.
Lo and behold it bought up a tonne of Database Management System books of which one was the recommended textbook for our course. I clicked on it and it gave me a list of pages where the search terms appear on. I read through a bunch of them looking for what I wanted and clicked on a page. Wow…it actually showed the exact page I was looking for allowing you to see 5 pages in total…2 before the page u found and 2 after…and of course the page you are looking at.
What I find amazing about this is that its such an amazing reference section for those of us who dont want to have a library of books at home and only ever need stuff to quote from or to look up small algorithms.
Amazon by the looks of it seem to be taking a slightly different approach trying to sell pages at a time as well as the ability to “upgrade” your purchase to view the entire book online. This may be more appealing to publishers since they are more likely to see this as being in their favour compared to what Google are doing in showing stuff online with no direct payments to any of the publishers (Although publishers will sell more books due to this service in the long run…if someone keeps finding a book useful).
· Posted by Utills
November 17, 2005 at 10:38 pm · Categorised under Blog
The most i can get at the moment is 1,003,285. The search query used is here, can anyone get a higher number using something else….btw this query was done at 10:37pm UK time…so dont count the small additions people keep making to Google Base.
On a more technical note….does Google Base make use of that BigTable technology built in-house by Google. Another article tries to explain the main details behind this. I think this is the sort of thing that Google excels at. Sorting out data…general computer science style architectures and algorithms…but scaled up like a million times.
Whats next for this technology…would small businesses trust Google enough to allow their complete business to be backed up into Google’s Database in exchange for perhaps free hosting and faster searches? Is this the moment that Google runs away from all its competing Search Engines by getting users to do the most important thing in search…identify context and relevance?
· Posted by Utills
November 17, 2005 at 7:52 pm · Categorised under Blog
One suggestion that I have about Firefox tabs is that coupled with my earlier suggestions about a sideways stacked tabbing experience, any tabs that have been opened in the background should be highlighted as being unread. This would help the user to understand their next move and remove any confusion in the moving about of tabs.
· Posted by Utills
November 17, 2005 at 6:13 pm · Categorised under Blog
I just accidentally discovered a trick in Firefox. If you hold down Ctrl and click a number then it will autoswitch to that tab. E.g. if I have 6 tabs open and I click Ctrl+4 then it will switch to the 4th tab. Neat!!
· Posted by Utills
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