Webonaut

It strikes me looking at the OnLive service (that allows you to play the most recent, amazing games remotely) that these guys will probably fail - due principally to the current shittiness of broadband connections. BUT - and this is a big but - the fact that they have proved that it is POSSIBLE says to me that in the future this will be completely do-able - in fact so commonplace as to be normal. Companies like Sky will eventually get in on the act, and your cable package will have a "games" option that lets you play anything - literally - without having any special hardware (other than the Sky box that will (irrelevantly) be beefier than anything around today). Sure, you'll buy games for 20 yrs or so but they will start to look antiquated - like DVDs in the face of NetFlix or CDs in the Spotify world. So what does this mean for us here in my little dev studio in Norwich? Well, immediately, I can see that the App Store is not long for this world in the same way - we need...

There's a big fight happening right now: Apple Vs. Adobe Round 1: Apple don't allow Flash in their portable browsers Round 2: Adobe get Flash CS5 (released this week) to build AppStore apps directly Round 3: Apple tighten the AppStore acceptance criteria to almost explicitely prevent Flash-originated apps Round 4: Adobe gets the arse and gets Flash CS5 to build (albeit basic) direct to HTML5 Canvas Now I am an evangelist for Apple products (because nothing touches a MacBook Pro as a hacker tool right now) but looks from here very much like Apple being the bully... This fight is not simply spectator sport - it affects all web-developers. What it means is that we can no longer produce a single content rich (i.e. with interactive animations) site/app that will serve all browsers. Until the masses upgrade to IE9, HTML5 Canvas is just not an option and Flash will not run on Apple portable gear. What about jQuery - I hear you cry! jQuery (or any raw javascript equivalent thereo...

I've just experienced two completely independent, unrelated servers with totally different web-applications reboot and unable to start the MySQL service, one on 1st April, second on 2nd April. Coincidence? Probably. Is there a Microsoft Windows 2003 server patch killing MySQL? Not found any other incidences being Googled... let's see if anyone finds this post also experiencing the same thing... UPDATE: This appears to have been triggered by a fire at BT on March 31st. Timeline: 31 March 2010 07:30 hrs fire crews attended the fire at BT Exchange in Paddington, caused by an electrical fault. According to Gradwell, a business ISP, 437 local exchanges and up to 37,500 Datastream circuits have been affected. It said the fire was having nationwide repercussions on communications - http://www.theregister.co.uk/ 2010/03/31/burne_house_burns/ It was speculated that the systems would not be back to normal until Tuesday the 6 th of April 2010. The...

Just a note for myself really (can't imagine anyone else here being interested in economics...) The Market Hypothesis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis ) is a cornerstone of Capitalism, but it's ideologically flawed. People are sheep - they follow each other. What's more, the ones who aren't sheep who should be asking "what is the true value" of some company or other, are actually asking "what are the sheep going to do". When bubbles form they are propelled even by those who can see it is a bubble. They buy even if they believe the stock to be already overvalued - if they believe others will be suckered into it for some time yet - it's all about getting out in time. The market is beginning to understand - the FT Weekend frontpage confirmed this in UK Hedge Funds Make Millions From Betting On Decline In Value Of Sterling where it says : "The 3 hedge funds - which are the 1st, 2nd and 4th largest in Europe... do no...

Two recent articles about Artificial Intelligence creating music caught my eye + ear : 1. T his one about software that emulates (mostly dead) performers : http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/virtual-musicians-real-performances 2. And this one about software that composes : The real Tin Man : http://bit.ly/cGunrQ Firstly, these are both impressive pieces of code - as a developer and a musician this is clear. But secondly, the doom-sayers predicting these replacing humans is garbage. Why? Let's look at each in turn. 1. This is amazing, modelling the characteristics of a performer from dusty old recordings - presumably how loose their timing was etc, and - given a decent quality midi file of a song - plays that song (on a real, MIDI'ed up instrument) in the style of that performer. You can never second guess what a real person is going to do. If I'm well pissed off one night, that will affect the performance. Similarly, when I'm chilled out, and different "me...

will Jobs stop trying to kill Flash? HTML5 is a poor substitute at present: 1. It's WAY slower . Javascript is interpretted and therefore slow. Alright, so Flash bytecode is also interpreted, but in it's half-pre-compiled state the optimised Flash player can crank out a much better frame rate. I made an HTML tester app here http://www.gktvs.com/html5/raycast/ to see how quickly it could handle a real simple 3D game. Not bad on my MacBook Pro, but try it on an iPhone... Can't wait to test this out on an iPad too 2. Source code cannot be hidden . With HTML 5 everything you do is open source, whether you like it or not. Therefore, if you're doing an expensive project there is no way of protecting your code from getting nicked. (note: I like Open Source, but some of my clients will not) 3. It's uncompressed . All of the code, pictures etc get delivered in their raw form, whereas flash compresses the heck out of everything 4. It has no sensible alternative toolkit . Th...

I have a web-site which breaks every first visit because a mysterious rogue flash app was appearing (and presumably it's creators intended to be hidden) that traced back to Clearspring.com. There was absolutely no reference in the code (or in any user entered CMS area) relating to clearspring so this was bamboozling until I nailed it down to the javascript call out for the supposedly reputable AddThis.com. I thought that I was getting a convenient way to add pages to facebook, myspace, twitter etc. but OH YES AND MORE it seems once installed on your page they feel at liberty to put any manner of junk on your site. Firstly, I don't want my pages broken. Secondly, I don't want me or my customers to be tracked (presuming that's what this flash app does) without my knowledge Thirdly, I don't know how well this (now trusted) intruder is written, and what potential security holes that entails. Hell, JUST RUNNING FLASH on a site that currently has none is a security risk i...