500 Words on Sunday at Noon

Impressions of Manila

2012-02-05T12:00:00.000Z

Having spent a grand total of thirty eight hours in Manila my observations are, by necessity, superficial. I visited the airport, a hotel, the offices of a customer, a shopping mall and, mostly by taxis, the routes between these four places. What can I say about Manila that is worth saying, or, perhaps more importantly, hearing?

Manila reminds me a little of Singapore because the climate and some of the city's most obvious features (overhead walkways for crossing wide roads, palm trees and tall buildings) are broadly similar. It doesn't take long to realise that, unlike it's much wealthier neighbour across the sea, Manila's people are mostly quite poor and many of them live in what appear to be crude, cramped and unpleasant slums.

The poor quality of housing is apparent during the journey from the airport to Makati City, where the rich live and the larger hotels are located. Shacks, badly maintained apartment blocks and rough dwellings made from corrugated iron are easily spotted, often occupied by people wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops or cheap sandals. It's difficult to be certain as you speed past in the hotel Mercedes but these people don't look wealthy.

And now that I've mentioned roads, what about the driving? Don't spare the horn and push through whatever gap you think you can see seem to be the rules for driving in Manila. Lane discipline is non-existent and gridlock is avoided only because huge numbers of traffic cops direct the flow and, miraculously, keep things moving (just). Small vans and minibuses crammed with passengers jostle with coaches, sidecar-equipped (multi-person carrying) motorcycles, private cars and battered taxis for space on the often wide but still crowded roads. Don't drive in Manila.

In Makati (but not in the poorer parts of Manila Metro) security theatre seems to be a major source of employment. Every office, shopping mall, hotel and private compound has armed guards (pistols, mostly, but also pump-action shotguns and automatic rifles) at the entrances who wave wands over visitors' bags and pretend to be looking for something. Arrive by car and guards with mirrors will "inspect" the underside of the vehicle, presumably looking for bombs. This is, without doubt, the most conspicuously armed city I've ever visited and it doesn't feel safe.

The few locals I met in the hotel, shops or offices spoke English and were polite and friendly. From that perspective, Manila is an easy place to visit. The airport is almost the opposite, seemingly designed to crush the spirit and discourage return visits. Don't plan to spend time in Manila airport, even if you have access to a business lounge.

There's probably more I could write but that will do for an introduction. Would I return for leisure? I don't think so, and certainly not without a list of things to do that would take me out of the city. Manila isn't really geared for tourists, it's just a residential metropolis; avoid if you can.

Pages v Word

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000Z

I use Apple’s Pages word processor a lot at home when I’m working on my laptop. At work (or at home when I’m at my PC) I use Microsoft Word. Apple are great at many things but Pages isn’t their best work. When compared to Word its flaws and weaknesses are many and varied. Here are the ones that most annoy me:

Adding hyperlinks is easy in Word - hit Ctrl-k and paste in the link - but a chore in Pages. There doesn’t appear to be a keyboard shortcut and, when you find the dialogue, you have to first delete the pre-inserted link (livepage.apple.com) before you can add your own. It’s worse if you want to add a second link, by which time the dialogue is probably already open and your workflow (highlight text, check Enable as a hyperlink, highlight default URL, replace with target) is even more complicated.
Many people are very rude about Microsoft’s Ribbon but it’s clear, when switching between the two programs, that it is a lot easier to find the commands you want to use in Word.
Text formatting keyboard shortcuts are the same in both programs, which makes life easier, but if you want to use an unusual format, like Strikethrough, you have to open the Styles Drawer or pull it from a tiny drop-down menu labelled “a” - not immediately obvious.
And speaking of styles, the range in Pages isn’t very good. Word’s large, friendly icons and readily navigable ribbons make it easy to find the commands you need, even if you’ve spent years acclimatising to Microsoft’s menus.
Styling in Word is also blindingly easy. Pages has only 8 text styles and they’re slightly hidden; Word has dozens (although you probably don’t need all that Word offers) and creating new ones is very straightforward.

There are some features that I like in Pages:

Full screen editing, which is built into Mac OS X Lion, is rather better than in Word (where it appears to be something of an afterthought). Without the distraction of icons, dashboard or other paraphernalia, text creation and editing proceeds more quickly.

Actually, full screen editing is the only feature I can only think of that I particularly like about Pages. In all other respects Word is at least the equal, and often rather superior, to Pages and, if I’m honest, I prefer Word, especially for long, complicated documents. It’s not that I dislike Pages, or that I have a particular fondness for Microsoft, it’s just that Word makes everything easy while with Pages you just have to work at it some more; it’s almost as if the software can do what you want but doesn’t quite see why it should bother.

My hope is that Microsoft bring Word (and Excel) to the App Store quickly and for a sensible (i.e. affordable) price. There are good reasons for Office’s commercial success and Microsoft’s monopoly is only a small part of it; in the end, the software’s just damn good.

My Favourite Places in London

2012-01-22T12:00:00.000Z

I’ve lived in London for just over a year and worked here for more than five so I have some idea of what is going on and where the good stuff can be found, especially if you are making a quick trip to the capital. Here are my favourites:

Park: all the royal parks are impressive but St James’s Park, as well as being close to other major attractions, has pelicans and therefore can’t be beaten. Go early to avoid the hordes.
Cinema for action movies: the IMAX at Waterloo on the south bank is, by far, the best place to see big action movies. Get there early, have a beer, then head into the enormous auditorium for a genuinely great move experience.
Theatre for Shakespeare: some people like Stratford-upon-Avon but for the best productions you need to visit Shakespeare’s Globe in Southwark. Pick a good weekend and you can stand in the yard for the Saturday matinee then sit in (relative) comfort for the evening show.
Restaurant for fancy breakfast: London is full of great places to eat but for breakfast in the centre of town you should try Indigo at One Aldwych. Not the cheapest place around but the food is great.
Cafe for everyday breakfast: if you don’t fancy a restaurant, how about a cafe for breakfast?Cafe on the Rye serves a really nice full English breakfast in a family-friendly setting in the middle of Peckham Rye Park.
Market for food: it’s where the tourists go but if you arrive early on a Saturday morningBorough Market should still be fairly empty and you can stock up on fine cheese, meat, bread, veg and other items before the rush.
Venue for afternoon tea: for afternoon tea you should really treat yourself. Go for a bit of luxury at the tea room in Fortnum and Mason. Booking is vital.
Museums for entertaining children: London has more museums than you can shake a stick at but the big two for entertaining the kids are the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, both in Kensington and both free.
Browse for antiques and luxury items: Burlington Arcade is stuffed full of small shops selling expensive luxury goods. It’s worth wandering through just to see the variety of things on offer.
Public square: Trafalgar Square is big, loud and often busy with some sort of activity. Splash in the fountains on a hot day or just take photos from the steps of the National Gallery on the north side. Beware pigeons.
Art gallery: like many of London’s major attractions, the art galleries are often free. Tate Modern is impressive even if you don’t like modern art.
Shopping and entertainment: if you have time to visit only one market, head for Covent Garden. Lots of entertainment, lots of places to shop, eat and drink, and lots more to do in the surrounding area.

That’s it for now but there’s loads to see and do in London - more later.

2012 Techno Resolutions

2012-01-15T12:00:00.000Z

This year, things are going to change. I don’t, as a rule, make New Year Resolutions (they never last past February) but for 2012 I’m breaking the rule, at least as far as technology goes. In fact, I’m not just breaking the rule, I’m completely disregarding it. Here are my 2012 tech resolutions:

Blogging - almost nobody reads my blogs, which isn’t hugely surprising, but this is something I want to change. I’m not paying for advertising so the only publicity they’ll get will be from Twitter and Facebook. I aim to post an average of one halfway interesting entry each day on my everyday blog and one 500-word rant (or review, or comment) on my other blog once a week (Sunday, 12:00 London time).
Twitter and LinkedIn - I’m going to grow my followers and contacts from the current 53 and 161 to 200 (both services) by the end of the year. That might not sound like a lot but I have no idea how I’ll do it.
Apple products - in the last thirteen months (explanation of my addiction) I’ve bought a MacBook Air, an iPhone 4S, an iPad 2 (birthday present for my parents), an iPod Touch (birthday present for my wife) and an Airport Extreme router (slightly strange present for me). I might have to buy an iPad 3 and and iPhone 6 (I don’t think it’s likely to be called a “5”, even though that seems to be the expectation of the blogosphere) but those are the only ones I’ll allow myself, whatever temptation Apple puts before me.
No other gadgets - in fact, I resolve only to buy replacements for gadgets that fail or are lost. No more upgrading to the latest thing (with the possible exception of the iPad 3, for which I’ll make an exemption) and no more punts on new technology (except for a Jawbone Up, which I may buy as a “fitness aid”). Anything I buy I’ll review.
Cameras - last year I bought a Canon EOS D600. It’s great but I haven’t published any photos; I’ll get some up on the web this year, either on Flickr or Picasa (although I’m not making specific commitments because I’ll probably miss them).
Gmail, iCloud and Exchange - I’m going to take control of my contact lists, notes and calendars. I’ll find a way to sync lists across all three service providers or, if that isn’t possible, I’ll work out how to manage the lists to avoid huge numbers of duplicates and I’ll post the solution as soon as I have it.
Finally, I’m going to try as many new web technologies and Kickstarter projects as I can over the next 12 months.

So there you have it. There should be loads of new stuff to test and review in 2012 and this time next year I’ll look back and see how I’ve done with my resolutions. If they go really badly, maybe I’ll resolve to join a gym and get into shape. Or maybe not.

MacBook Air - Genius in Aluminium

2012-01-08T12:00:00.000Z

What can I say about the MacBook Air? We have one of the late 2010 models, 13" screen, OS X Lion, 128Gb SSD, 2Gb RAM. It serves as our day-to-day computing device when we need to do something that can't easily be done on an iPad (this is a fairly short list of tasks but that's a story for another day). Mostly we use it in the living room, sitting on the sofa, watching the TV.
The most striking thing about the MacBook Air is its appearance. It isn't the thinnest or the lightest laptop around but it has the cleanest lines and the biggest trackpad of any I have seen. Here are the things I like most about the MBA:

Case - there's no argument, it is simply the most beautifully engineered laptop available. The finish is just superb.
Battery life - 7 hours is plenty for my purposes (it's not a work machine so my periods of use are normally only a few hours long) but more importantly it holds charge on standby for ages so it's always ready to go whenever I need to use it.
MagSafe power adapter - when I do have to tether the MBA to the wall the MagSafe power adapter is absolutely the best in the business. It is easy to connect or disconnect, won't pull the laptop onto the floor if you trip over the cable and has discreet LEDs to tell you that it's working. The cable is also long enough to be useful and thin enough to be easily coiled and packed.
OS X Lion - it has a few quirks but it does many things so well that you really notice the difference if you're a long-term Windows user. First, it doesn't restart very often and when it does the desktop is restored exactly as you left it when you stopped working. Doesn't sound like much but it saves so much time, especially when contrasted with Windows' habit of closing everything and restarting overnight. Second, full-screen applications and multiple desktops are fantastic productivity enhancements, especially if you don’t have an external monitor.
Mac App Store - it sounds like a gimmick but, like the iOS App Store, it's actually fantastically useful. Software is easy to find, install and update and, because all charges go to your Apple account, payment is a breeze.
Mouse pad and gestures - I was a little worried that the gestures would be tiresome or that the lack of mouse buttons would be a problem. In fact, the gestures work so well that I miss them when using a Windows machine and the pad’s features render buttons completely unnecessary.

The only part of the package that is even slightly annoying is the keyboard, which is not laid out in the standard UK pattern (the apostrophe and ampersand are reversed) and lacks a hash key. That aside (and it’s a very minor flaw) the MBA is undoubtedly the best laptop I’ve every used and is highly recommended.

Don't break my Back button

2012-01-01T12:00:00.000Z

And by "back button" I mean mouse gesture, two-finger trackpad swipe, keyboard shortcut and dedicated physical back button as well as the traditional back button in a browser. Whatever the means of execution, I want it to work reliably and predictably, every time I hit it, regardless of my current location, unless I have explicitly instructed the browser to break the convention, for example by opening a link in a new tab.

The issue is simple and is highlighted by the way the two-finger swipe works in Mac OS X Lion. If you swipe two fingers from left to right on the trackpad it triggers the back operation and returns you to the previous screen (with visual feedback via an elegant animation - it's as if you were brushing the current page out of the way to expose the page underneath). It's neat, easy and surprisingly noticeable once it doesn't work, which happens for a number of reasons:

Websites that open pages in new tabs when it isn't logical to expect them to do so. Ok, fine, if it's a link to a totally separate site from a catalogue page, then maybe a new tab is appropriate. In all other situations, reuse the existing tab so that you Don't Break My Back Button. Opening a completely new browser window is also out - it's so 2006.
Strange website behaviour and redirections. If I follow a link from the search results on your website I want to be able to return to the search results when I've finished looking at the page you've offered me. I don't want to have to start from scratch and re-enter my search criteria just because you've got some funky feature that breaks my back button and prevents me going back to my results.
Applications with “back” functions that insist on using buttons. Unfortunately Apple are one of the main culprits of this particular problem. iTunes and the Mac App Store both have forward and back functions that don’t respond to the two-finger slide; it’s surprising how quickly the absence of the two-finger slide becomes extremely annoying.
Any site that “returns” you to your current page, for reasons unknown, is either poorly designed or deliberately broken (or both). Blogger, I’m looking at you (try looking at a post in edit view, then swiping back to the list of posts).

One of the things that makes the web easy to use is the fact that there are conventions about how things are done - search boxes top right, home button top left, navigation at the top etc. - mess with these conventions and you make your website more difficult to use. Difficult websites discourage visitors by obscuring the information you want them to have. Broken or novel navigation features also trip users on their way to your content. The simple rule is to deploy new conventions only if you are absolutely certain that they will make life easier for your users. In all other cases, don’t.

Christmas, Again

2011-12-25T12:00:00.000Z

Christmas Day, the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton. Today should, before the Julian calendar drifted, fall on the winter solstice, 22nd December. Pope Gregory XIII, demonstrating that pontiffs aren’t all infallible, made a mistake when correcting the drift in 1582 so we are actually three days late. Not a problem unless you’re a calendar-nerd.

Midwinter should be a fun, light-filled festival to celebrate the passing of the longest night and the eventual return of spring. It's archaic, sure, but it's one of the traditions that binds us as a nation (or culture, depending on how you define these things) and it's a good excuse to indulge in things we enjoy; visiting friends and family, exchanging gifts, recovering from a long year's work and generally relaxing.

Everything would be great if Christmas wasn't attended by a host of unpleasant religious and cultural traditions and anxieties that conspire to take much or all of the fun from the holiday. From the weird Christian traditionalists claiming Christmas is about them and the sone of their psychopathic bronze-age god of war (ok, so the name "Christmas" superficially supports their case but really they've just hijacked the winter solstice of earlier traditions) to the insane commercial imperative to spend like there's no tomorrow, Christmas can be a stressful and difficult period.

Here are the traditions I wouldn't miss:

Decorated trees - call me Mr Picky but I like to see trees in the wild, not chopped down in their prime for a fortnight's reverence in the corner of the living room.
Present buying - giving a carefully-chosen gift and seeing the delight of the receiver is one of life's great joys but doing this year after year is tricky and stress accumulates quickly in the run-up to Christmas. Amazon's wish list feature helps you to avoid unwanted gifts but removes the personal touch and rather defeats the object of the exercise.
Logistical nightmares - spending time with family is great but sometimes the setup (which parents-in-law do you visit this year, which grandparents, will your visit coincide with a loved/detested cousin's etc.) is horribly complicated. Fitting visits around ritual meals, especially as family traditions vary hugely, adds further complexity.
Ritual and tradition - I know Christmas is one long sequence of little rituals and traditional activities but many of them are fantastically annoying. Let’s dump the bad, mix up the good and go with the flow.

Any situation where ritual restricts freedom of action is bound to strain relationships and generate stress, especially when mixed with alcohol, over-eating, screaming children and enforced jollity. My “solution” is to disengage as far as possible, which is generally interpreted as “grumpiness” or “awkwardness” even though it’s actually just an attempt to retrieve a little control over my life. I’ll join in with the bits of Christmas I enjoy and skip the rest, preferably behind a good book; if you do the same then we’ll all be happy and we’ll have a great holiday.

iBooks and Digital Media

2011-12-18T12:00:00.000Z

Last week’s post was originally to be titled “iBooks and Amazon Prime” and I was going to explain what it was that made me cancel my Amazon Prime subscription. I sort of did that but without really covering any of the details. In this post I want to outline my new media acquisition strategy (which is a pretentious way of saying “here’s how I buy books”).

For years I, like everyone else, bought paperbacks and hardbacks as they were published and whenever they looked like good value for money. It was only after the collapse of the Net Book Agreement in the mid-90s, which until then prevented supermarkets and other parties (Amazon, for example) from selling discounted books, that I could afford to buy a decent number of books. With hindsight it seems strange that competition in the book market could ever have been prohibited and that this might have been believed to be advantageous to consumers.

In these enlightened times, however, you can buy books pretty much anywhere and for far less than the normal cover price. For example, Steve Job’s biography has a cover price, in hardback, of £25 but Amazon are selling it for £11.97 and a Kindle (or iBooks) version costs £12.99 (you might expect e-books to be cheaper than their physical counterparts but, unlike “real” books, they aren’t exempt from VAT).

The major problem with traditional books is that they’re physically large; taking hardbacks on holiday, or reading a paperback on the train requires planning and effort (and frankly I’m too lazy). The size of books restricts the number you can carry and actively prevents spontaneous reading, for example when the wife is looking a clothes and you’re bored in the shopping centre. The solution to this is to stop buying physical books and instead to buy everything through either iBooks or Kindle (I prefer iBooks but Kindle isn’t significantly less convenient).

This has three major advantages:

Delivery is free and almost instantaneous - no waiting for the post or delivery van,
Many books can be carried on a single device so your entire library is available, wherever you are,
You are suddenly freed of the need to store and transport a load of bleached dead tree flesh which, except in a few cases, adds little to the reading experience.

These are, to me, pretty strong arguments. Many people like to have physical media but I honestly can’t see the appeal; books and bookshelves take up lots of space, can’t be easily searched and resist being backed-up. Every time you move house you have to pack everything up in boxes and carry them to and fro. Post-physical is definitely better.

So that’s it - I buy all my media in digital form, books from iBooks, music and film from iTunes. I now read more (on the bus, on the train, on holiday, at home) and I also listen to a wider range of music. And the house is less cluttered.

Amazon Prime; No Longer Required

2011-12-11T12:00:00.000Z

I was an Amazon Prime customer for three years, from July 2008 to July 2011. If you buy books, CDs or DVDs more than about once a month it’s enormously convenient and a great way to cut costs and I strongly recommend it. Why then, you might ask, did I cancel after three years of happy use? What went wrong? In a word, Apple; let me explain.

We have a stack of Apple products (iPhone, iPods, a couple of iPads and an Apple TV) designed to make discovery, acquisition and consumption of media (music, text, video) as quick and as easy as possible. The key word in the last sentence is “acquisition” because it is in the acquisition of new media that Apple have really changed the nature of the game. By delivering media products as a digital download Apple have cut a key strut from Amazon’s business model.

Amazon’s business is based on offering a large catalogue of physical objects that can be moved quickly from their warehouse to your living room. They have taken the very best 21st century logistics technology and honed the experience of finding and buying 20th century products to become, for many people, the default choice of vendor. Amazon Prime removes one more barrier (delivery charges), easing the decision to buy and locking out competitors.

My justification for subscribing to Amazon Prime was that I would save money on the regular orders I placed for books, CDs and DVDs and this was indeed my experience. I also found myself less resistant to impulse or low value purchases because delivery charges were no longer a factor. Apple’s role in changing this was to deliver a family of products (primarily the iPad) that offered both media shopping (through iTunes and iBooks) and immediate delivery of the desired items. Amazon’s “overnight and free” delivery was trumped by Apple’s “now and free” downloads.

Amazon must be aware of this problem. The development of the Kindle Fire wasn’t sparked by a burning desire at Amazon to provide the world with an alternative to the iPad; it happened, I believe, because Amazon could see their core market disappearing as people chose to download digital media rather than buy physical equivalents. Amazon are still able to sell jeans and shoes and blenders and TV sets and iPads but the high volume items that keep people returning to the site are migrating to digital downloads.

So is an Amazon Prime subscription worth the money? If you regularly buy physical media the answer is likely to be “yes”. If you don’t, you might find that you can live without it but it obviously depends what else you buy from Amazon, and how often.

Moving to an all-digital media purchase strategy has saved me time, effort and money. I no longer have to store or transport physical media and I can carry loads of books, music and video on my iDevices to enjoy at my convenience. I also no longer need Amazon Prime.

Alresford, Parking and Pedestrians

2011-12-04T12:00:00.000Z

Alresford is a nice town. The cafes are fun, the little shops are diverting and the restaurants and pubs are generally pretty good. Overall, I like it, but it’s slightly spoiled by the large numbers of cars that park along the edge of the main public areas.

Sitting about ten miles east of Winchester, it has a bypass (the A31) that carries most of the through traffic away from the town centre and a small station served only by the Watercress line (a steam train runs only to Alton - pleasant for tourists but of little practical use). As a small market town with nice pubs, cafes and shops it should be a pleasant place for pedestrians to wander. And it is, mostly, but the cars parked along Broad Street, the tree-lined avenue where the social scene is centred, make life just a little bit more difficult than it needs to be.

The really annoying thing is that there’s absolutely no need for it. A few modest changes to the top of Broad Street, as shown in the diagram below, would make all the difference. Sacrificing a few parking spaces and a little of the service road (shown in red) outside Tesco, the Chinese takeaway and the pub more room would be made for pedestrians.

How might this space be used? My suggestion would be to plant a few more trees, allow the cafes and pubs to site tables outside their premises on the newly widened pavements and generally encourage more pedestrian visitors to the town. Losing parking spaces is never popular with retailers but in this case it might actually bring more people to the town for longer visits.

It would also be nice it if were easier to cross the road; some sort of pedestrian crossing would be useful. And by “pedestrian crossing”, let’s be clear that I mean a crossing at which pedestrians have priority. A light-controlled crossing would be better than no crossing at all but if we’re trying to help pedestrians move easily around the town then a crossing that prevents them crossing the road most of the time isn’t really the answer.

How about somewhere to park bicycles? Alresford attracts large numbers of cyclists during the summer weekends and a vibrant street cafe culture would encourage more of them to stop rather than pass on through. They’d also stay longer if it were easier to secure a bike in the town. At the moment there are very few places to chain your bike and the addition of a few bike rails would make all the difference.

Finally, what about the poor old motorist, who’s lost parking and driving space just to make everyone else’s lives a bit more pleasant? Some of them will probably leave their cars at home, others will stay away. The remainder will find that there are still plenty of parking spaces and that their visit is now just a bit more pleasant. It’s a plan with no obvious flaws.

Shirts; Breast Pockets are a Must

2011-11-27T12:00:00.000Z

It is such a simple rule for shirt-makers: always include a breast pocket. That's it. Nothing fancy or complicated, no monograms or reinforcements, just a simple pocket for holding sunglasses, credit cards or a pair of in-ear headphones when you're not using them. Most retailers understand this rule but apply it inconsistently so here is my comprehensive guide to shirt suppliers.

Let’s start with the high-street brands. Marks and Spencers offer a breast pocket option in their Made To Measure range (they also offer monograms, which counts against them). Buy off-the-shelf from M&S, though, and you take a chance; many of their shirts lack pockets.

The Savile Row Company offer pockets on at least some of their shirts. Importantly, they also offer non-iron material (as do M&S) across part of their range. In our environmentally conscious age, it doesn't do to buy shirts that need to be ironed (and who wants to spend time ironing if it can possibly be avoided?).

TM Lewin have several non-iron button cuff shirts which all seem to have breast pockets. The range is small (is seven colours really enough?) but the shirts look good and seem to be excellent value for money (assuming you get them during a sale - a plain white shirt sounds good at £30 but isn’t quite as exciting at the normal price of £89).

For something a little more individual you could try Tailor Store, an online retailer of custom-made shirts. Their offering is basically the same as M&S’ Made to Measure service but with far more bells and whistles. You can not only choose fabric, cuff and collar style, you can have epaulettes, angled front plackets, elbow patches, contrasting cuff, collar or fronts and optional matching boxer shorts. This is the very definition of a comprehensive service but they don’t have non-iron material. The hunt goes on.

iTailor advertise non-iron custom shirts but their site requires Adobe Flash which I don’t use on my laptop (and I’m not installing it just to play with a shirt design website).

Charles Tyrwhitt has a fine selection of non-iron shirts. Pockets are an optional extra, bringing a basic shirt to about £42, but overall they look like a pretty good compromise between cost and features.

Finally, if you’re after something a little more exotic, or you just fancy taking a trip to visit your tailor, how about MySingaporeTailor.com. They’ve got just about every option you could want (except, as far as I can tell, non-iron) and you can use them as an excuse to visit Singapore.

Personally, I like Charles Tyrwhitt’s non-iron shirts with the optional breast pocket. All (or at least most) of the shirts I’ve seen on the sites listed above look good (some are clearly awful) so it comes down to ease of ordering, maintenance and use; Charles Tyrwhitt seem to offer all of this at a decent cost. Jackpot.

Questions you might ask Siri

2011-11-20T12:00:00.000Z

Asking for stock price updates or weather forecasts might be useful but it barely touches on what Siri, combined with the Wolfram Alpha, can do. The pairing of great voice recognition with a seriously impressive search engine allows Siri to answer all sorts of questions that, under normal circumstances, you might answer by first finding a specialist database on Google then trawling through said database for the information you need.

One I picked up from a site (questionsforsiri.com, or something similar) is "Who is Luke's father?" which Siri correctly answer through Wolfram Alpha (Google gets this one right as well). Spoiler - the correct answer, for anyone who hasn't seen The Empire Strikes Back, is Darth Vadar.

In a similar vein, Siri can tell you who shot JR (Google doesn't know the answer to this one but will offer links to several sites, some of which might have the information), although you may find that the younger generation hasn't the faintest idea why this might be important. Some of them haven't even heard of Dallas, let alone JR, which just goes to show how standards have slipped since the mid-80s (it could be argued that knowledge of ancient soap opera plots is less than entirely useful).

Fans of the late Douglas Adams (and who, in all honesty, could claim not to have been delighted by his writing?) can take comfort from the fact that Siri knows the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42 (anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about should read TheHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or ask a white mouse for help). Google pretty much gets this one as well but it's an awful lot of typing.

Obscure pieces of UK history are a bit more tricky. Siri wasn't able to tell me who the fifth man was (not surprising, really, since definitive identification has apparently never been made) or give me the location of Shergar or Lord Lucan (again, not totally surp rising). Siri did correctly capture each of these questions, however, so preparing a web search is child's play.

Siri can also be confused by non-specific references to historic events. "When was the civil war?" yields the correct answer for an American (Friday 22nd April 1861 to Sunday 9th April 1865) but, as I'm asking in British English, this answer is slightly disappointing. Asked "When was the War of the Roses?", Siri gave me details of the Danny De Vito film, including gross receipts and release date but of the epic struggle between York and Lancaster it (or more properly, Wolfram Alpha) knows nothing.

Overall Siri is hugely impressive. The voice recognition appears to be very accurate, correctly identifying almost all the words spoken to it; Siri's ability to answer questions is limited by the quality of the databases and search engines it uses, not its voice recognition. As Wolfram Alpha improves and more databases are made available to Siri, this feature can only improve. Looks like a winner for Apple.

Apple and TV Sets

2011-11-13T12:00:00.000Z

There has been a lot of speculation recently about Apple’s possible move into the TV set market, which seems like a nature next step after the iPod, iPad and Apple TV set-top box. I don’t doubt that Apple could launch a competitive TV but my suspicion is that they’ll continue to iterate the current product rather than launching a new display panel business. Here is my thinking.

All of Apple’s existing media consumption devices are self-contained, high-quality, tactile products (except the existing Apple TV, which is neither tactile nor self-contained). TVs are remote objects (poor user experience from traditional dumb remotes could be a differentiator for Apple), viewed from across a room; when was the last time you touched your TV? Often TVs work as part of a system with amplifiers, set-top boxes, DVD players and other specialist equipment. These devices are outside Apple’s control and I don’t think Apple will want to get into the amplifier business; consistent user experience differentiates Apple’s products from the competition but this is tricky to deliver if you don’t build everything in the system.

What about physically building the displays? Apple’s existing panels are well received as computer monitors and their legendary design team may well be able to deliver a stunning TV set. Apple’s supply chain management is superlative but even they might find it difficult to maintain margins while competing on price; at £899, Apple’s 27” displays are significantly smaller (although possibly of higher quality) than similarly priced Samsung TVs (John Lewis have a 40” Samsung LED TV for £849).

Branding could also be tricky. “iTV” would be the obvious name but that runs into a problem in the UK, where ITV is the name of a major broadcaster. John Gruber suggests that the situation is similar to that of the iPhone trademark, which was owned in 2007 by Cisco. He might be right but I think it would be a much bigger deal for ITV to give up their company name and established brand than it was for Cisco to surrender the almost unused iPhone trademark.

What about new features or use cases? Nobody could deny that Apple are technical innovators but TV has been around for a while and as The Economist points out, the killer app for televisions has turned out, so far, to be television. The obvious new feature is apps but TVs are social objects and single-user apps are unlikely to appeal in the same way they do on personal iDevices.

Finally, once these problems are solved and the new TV exists, what has been done that couldn’t have been done more easily with a set-top box connected to someone else’s display? What is it that Apple can do with once they control the entire user experience, from media sales to on-display delivery? My guess is that this is what Steve Jobs was referring to when he claimed to have cracked TV. We can only hope.

Traffic on Aldwych

2011-11-06T12:00:00.000Z

Aldwych and Kingsway in the centre of London are broad, tree-lined avenues whose buildings house embassies (the Indian embassy and the Australian High Commission), hotels, theatres, universities (the LSE and Kings College London), cafes, restaurants, offices, apartment and a radio broadcaster (the BBC World Service). People throng the pavements, frequent the eateries, queue outside the Indian embassy and generally navigate their way around the area. These avenues should be pleasant, friendly areas but they aren’t; they are noisy, traffic-laden nightmares.

Ok, so “nightmare” might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you should see them when the roads are closed to traffic, as they occasionally are when something goes wrong, to understand what I mean. It doesn’t take long on a traffic-free Aldwych to see how much better it is without taxis and buses. The reduction in noise alone is dramatic but the freedom associated with escaping the confines of the pavement is unexpectedly enjoyable. Along these roads the pavements are often quite wide but they still feel too narrow for the numbers of people using them. Simply wandering at will across the carriageways is a rather liberating experience.

The biggest improvement, at least in terms of quality of life for pedestrians, would come from re-routing all the traffic away from part or all of these roads but this is likely to be very difficult. Kingsway and Aldwych have between four and six lanes and at peak times they are often very busy. More achievable, maybe, would be a partial re-routing of buses and a discouragement of other traffic so that amenities for pedestrians (and cyclists - Aldwych at rush hour looks horrific for bikers) could be improved.

Here are a few suggestions that might make things better:

Removal of the bus park on the south side of Aldwych
Reduction in the number of motor vehicles lanes
Addition of cycle tracks along both roads
Widening of pavements on both roads, possibly with indented bus stops and new trees
Removal of traffic lights and light-controlled crossings; replacement with pedestrian crossings
Additional pedestrian crossings along both roads
Improved road-marking so that drivers have clear lane designations.

These changes would probably have wider effects; it would be necessary to review the layouts of Strand and Waterloo Bridge, both of which feed traffic to Aldwych and Kingsway. Adding cycle tracks to Aldwych and Kingsway might be difficult and could provoke calls for tracks on Strand, Fleet Street and Southampton Road - all roads that would benefit from having fewer cars (and if Strand had cycle tracks, Trafalgar Square would surely need them - it could be the start of something beautiful).

In short, what I’m asking for is nothing more than a wholesale re-working of the roads in central London. Four-lane highways have no place in the middle of our ancient, people-filled capital. It’s time to think the unthinkable, do the undoable, and make our city once again somewhere that people can walk safely and breathe cleanly.

Hotels; avoiding their horrendous wifi charges

2011-10-30T12:00:00.000Z

I know why business hotels (which I mainly use when overseas for work) charge for wifi access; guests need the service and are not paying with their own money. That explains how they are able to charge £20 a day but it doesn't really justify it, especially when the cost of providing the service is, on a day-to-day basis, as near to zero as makes no difference. In a world where train operators, publicans and cafe owners offer wifi for free, surely the world's major hotel brands can do the same?

And they could, of course, but they just don’t need to, they aren't feeling the pinch of serious competition and guests are “happy” to pay. As a result, hotel wifi networks are generally slow, intermittent, expensive and, if that weren't enough, often difficult to connect to and limited to one device per charge (“a phone, an iPad and a laptop? That’ll be £60 per day, please”). The answer is simple but not necessarily easy to implement; stop paying the charges.

The trick, of course, is to minimise the sacrifice of utility and make the process as painless as possible. The easiest way to do this is to choose a different hotel, one with wifi included in the room rate, but this is often a low quality solution; many hotels will advertise free wifi but charge for its use if you venture outside the public areas, like the bar or lobby. Work can sometime be completed in the bar but sooner or later you’ll need peace for a phonecall or to concentrate on something difficult or your laptop will need charging and you will be kicked offline as you head back to your room.

Another option is to find a local cafe or coffee shop that offers wifi to its customers. As with the hotel bar you lose a little privacy and a rather larger amount of convenience (you may not find a suitable venue in the immediate vicinity of your hotel) but at least you should be able to get a decent cup of coffee (the value of good coffee when you are far from home cannot be overstated).

You might be able to rent a mobile phone or a 3G card but the costs probably wouldn’t be much less than just paying the hotel fees even if you gain some flexibility. If you’re abroad, 3G roaming costs (£3-£6 per Mb on my plan, depending on destination) are prohibitive and even at home it isn’t always easy to share data plans between devices (ever tried that with an iPhone?).

If none of that appeals the only choice is to drop off the net when you travel, which isn’t very appealing, especially as mobile data in particular is most useful when in a foreign city. That’s why, when I can’t get a hotel with inclusive wifi, I end up paying the hotel’s charges; life is just too difficult without access to the web.

Banking Requirements - a Wishlist

2011-10-23T12:00:00.000+01:00

The Halifax are running TV adverts proclaiming their new policy of opening their every branch each Saturday. That may be impressive in terms of retail banking but it doesn't appeal to me as a customer because, to be frank, I never want to go anywhere near a bank branch. Here is the list of services I want from my bank:

Comprehensive online banking service - I want to see details of all my accounts; balances, payments, direct debits, standing orders and every other type of transaction.
All my banking in one place - I have various accounts (current, saving and ISA) plus pensions, mortgages and share trading services spread over several vendors. It would be nice to consolidate them so that one bank supplied them all, giving me an accurate picture of my financial health.
Access to competitive savings, mortgage and loan rates - the bank knows exactly what I have coming in to, and going out from, my accounts. They know how much I spend, how much I am paid and how much I save. They know which credit cards I have and how much I spend on them. They know how much is outstanding on my mortgage and how quickly it is being paid off. Strangely, they do not seem to use this information to tailor their offering - pretty much everyone gets access to the same basic set of products. It ought to be possible to examine my finances and offer me services that closely match my resources and requirements.
A menu of other benefits in return for my monthly fee - some accounts, like Barclays’ Premier Life account, offer a number of non-banking services in return for a monthly fee. The idea is that Barclays are able to deliver services more cheaply than could be obtained by a customer buying them individually. Great, but what if you don’t want the services? Barclays offer travel insurance, airport lounge access and phone insurance, which I would use, and RAC membership and 24/7 which I would not. I’d like to see a list of services with a variable set of charges so I could choose the things that would make my life easier.
Free access to transaction histories and other data - it’s my data, let’s set it free. I want to be able to download my transaction history into Excel, or grant access to my accounts to a specialised finance package, so that I can run my own analyses or otherwise keep track of my money. Granted, this is likely to be a rare use-case, but I would find it useful.

Taken together, I have described my ideal bank. It consists of a paid account (or, rather, a family of accounts and services paid for by a monthly fee) that takes into account both my lifestyle and my financial status. It offers me services I need and value, tailored to my requirements, at a cost I can afford. The bank, by delivering greater value, gets more of my business. Everybody wins.

Options to Combat Climate Change

2011-10-16T12:00:00.000+01:00

One of the aims of good government is to pass legislation that balances individual freedoms with wider concerns, allowing unpopular but beneficial policies to be implemented to the benefit of society as a whole. The basic rule is that Government should limit the ability of one person to exercise his rights at the expense of the rights of others.
This principal ought to govern environment policy. We know that we have to change if we are to avert catastrophic global warming but we also know that most of the actions we need to take will improve quality of our lives (once people adjust) and make our cities more pleasant. This ought to help make the greening of our cities more palatable but only if the Government emphasises the advantages and persuades people that lifestyle changes are both necessary and beneficial.
So what could be done? Many things require considerable expenditure but others could be quite simple (although they might consume political capital, which some politicians may be reluctant to expend). Here are a few ideas:

Reduce the speed limits on motorways and dual carriageways. Vehicle efficiency improves at lower speeds so this change would reduce fuel consumption and slow the release of carbon dioxide and air pollutants.
Improve building regulations. All new builds should be as close to carbon-neutral as possible and should make full use of current technologies to reduce their environmental impact.
Go nuclear. Despite Fukushima, nuclear power is still the best method of generating reliable carbon-free electricity; use the new capacity to phase out the coal and oil generators.
Plant more trees. There’s plenty of space at the side of roads, along the edges of parks and on otherwise derelict land; trees will help to reduce both airborne pollution and atmospheric CO2.
Extend the rail network. Bringing the railways to new towns or reopening old lines would encourage people and business to move away from the roads.
Build trams. The tram system in Croydon works and allows people to travel locally without using their cars.
Close roads or restrict access at certain times. Building new roads creates more traffic; it seems likely that closing roads or removing lanes will reduce traffic, eventually.
Change the airport charging structure to spread traffic around between the major London airports. Concentrating flights at Heathrow is neither efficient nor pleasant.

All of these measures will have a benefit but the timeframes are sometimes long and most of them incur either heavy costs or short-term pain as people adjust to the new realities. Reducing the number of roads may not be possible until improvements in public transport render them unnecessary but that will take a while; we’re probably looking at a 20-40 year transport plan and infrastructure plan. Planting trees, though, could start immediately. Revising building regulations ought to be a quick win as well.
In short, there are loads of things the Government could do that would move things in the right direction. Let’s hope they start soon.

Supporting an Increase in the Speed Limit to 80mph

2011-10-09T12:00:00.000+01:00

The UK Government is currently considering raising the speed limit on motorways from 70 to 80mph (source). This proposal has been criticised on grounds of safety and potential environmental damage (source and source) and seems to be no more than an attempt to win favour with motorists (perhaps to balance this proposal on fines for careless driving).

The argument is that a speed limit set in 1965 is out of date has been made redundant by improvements in the design of motor vehicles. An increase to 80mph makes sense in some respects - modern cars are undoubtedly much better able to copy with higher speeds - but it seems unlikely that improvements in driving have kept pace and it definitely isn’t a cost-free option.

One of the principles of good behaviour is that exercising one’s rights should not have a detrimental impact on the quality of life of other people (or, at least, that we should take all reasonable action to minimise the detrimental effects of our behaviour). As the environmental and safety risks of increased speed limits are non-trivial (additional CO2 emissions, for example, would have a negative impact on a very large number of people) it is necessary for the Government to take appropriate mitigating actions before increasing the speed limit.

Here are some ideas:

Improve driver training: require anyone wishing to drive at the new speed limit to complete an advanced training course, possibly with regular refreshers, to ensure that they have the necessary skills.
Enhanced MoT: greater speeds will increase wear on cars and this should be countered by more detailed annual vehicle inspections. The scope of the MoT could also be widened to cover any safety equipment not already included.
Tighter emission standards: fuel efficiency drops as speeds increase so vehicles should be restricted to speeds that ensure their emissions remain are below a per-kilometre limit. More efficient vehicles would thus be permitted to travel more quickly, encouraging investment in fuel-efficiency.
Variable speed limits: trialled for many years on the M25, variable speed limits should be rolled out nationally to allow speeds to be automatically restricted during peak hours.
Restrictions on older vehicles: if newer vehicles can handle higher speeds it is presumably true that older vehicles cannot. These older vehicles (pre-1985, maybe) should be restricted to slower roads or simply scrapped.

It seems unlikely that these policies would ever be enacted. They might represent a reasonable compromise, allowing drivers to achieve higher speeds without endangering the rest of the population, but delivery would be politically difficult. A Government enacting such policies would be hailed by road safety and environmental campaigners but would lose the support of the right-wing press, who would see these moves as an attack on the motorist.

The most likely outcome to the consultation is the retention of the current speed limit. Anything else would be controversial, difficult and distracting, diverting the Government’s attention from areas that are, we could argue, more worthy of our limited resources.

Answers for Inquisitive Managers

2011-10-02T12:00:00.000+01:00

I found via Reeder (my preferred RSS feed reading app) a post by Glen Alleman on Herding Cats about the four answers to a manager’s (Business or Project) question. He lists them (I have made minor changes to clarify answer 4) as:

Yes
No
A Number
I'll get back to you on [day] with the answer that is 1, 2, or 3

This is a good list but the author (Alleman cites an unnamed colleague) has assumed all questions can be answered and this assumption is false if we use only the above list of possible answers. To complete the list we need to add a fifth option: “Here is a detailed explanation” (we also need to enhance Answer 4 to include a variant of “I don’t know” but that doesn’t extend Alleman’s list).

It is easy to see why “Here is a detailed explanation” isn’t on the list; many managers act as if all questions can be answered with a simple yes/no/number, assuming that the provision of additional energy (usually in the form of sound waves generated by bellowing) can overcome any problem.

In many cases they are right (although asking questions like “why is that”, “how can we resolve that problem”, “where are your supporting data”, “have you considered [x]” or “can you explain that assumption” can also be very effective) but there are often questions whose answers do not fit into the above categories. Here are some examples:

When will the team be up to strength? Unanswerable - we only know the vacancies are filled when the last team member turns up to work.
When will the next milestone be reached? Normally answered by 3 or 4 but if you have team vacancies, see point a.
When will major problem [x] be resolved? Unknown - you could guess but sometimes (especially in my field, software development) you just need to let your people work on the problem until it has been resolved.
Why did major problem [x] occur and what have we done to avoid a recurrence? “Why” or “How” questions often require more than a yes/no/number answer.

It may be that a careful manager could phrase questions to provoke only the four answers listed above but it is likely that most managers would want to ask whatever they felt was necessary.

Taking this into account, I propose the following list of possible answers for management:

Yes
No
A number (integer range, date estimate etc.)
Detailed answer
I don’t know yet; I'll get back to you on [day] with an answer that is 1-4

I have two further comments. Firstly, investigation (see answer 5) will sometimes lead to a detailed answer like “we can’t answer this question”; this is a perfectly reasonable response (although it may lead to a “try again” response). Secondly, detailed answers should be as brief as possible (summarise your summary, then remove extraneous words) because many people will ignore long, complicated answers (especially if they aren’t the answers they want).

Skylon: the Future is About to Arrive

2011-09-25T12:00:00.000+01:00

You may never have heard of Skylon but if your age is greater than twice the sum of your shoe size and your hat size you have probably heard of Hotol (HOrizontal Take-Off and Landing), an idea from the 1980s that, it was hoped, would lead to cheap (relatively) space-travel and 2-hour flights from London to Sydney. The idea never took off (literally, as well as figuratively) due to the immense technical challenges involved but it seems that the engineers involved didn’t just give in; they have been working away at the problems ever since Hotol was cancelled.

The result of this persistence is Skylon, a 21st Century version of Hotol that seems to hold great promise. The key difference between Skylon and Hotol is technical feasibility. Where Hotol was a great idea held back by the engineering of the day, Skylon seems to be a lot closer to being feasible, to the point where the European Space Agency, charged by the UK Space Agency with evaluating the concept, has found no significant problems and have suggested that the project is ready to proceed to the next stage.

The company designing the system, Reaction Engines Limited, is conducting further tests through the summer. If all goes well they will soon be looking for investors to release a further £220m (which is a ludicrously small amount of money given both the possibilities and the other sums we’ve been spending recently) to fund a prototype of the revolutionary Sabre engine. It is still a hugely risky project - there are many things that could go wrong - but it is also enormously exciting.

The prize, of course, would be a world-beating technology, built and controlled by a UK company, giving the UK a serious advantage in space technology and, possibly, sparking a new phase in both the UK’s and the world’s development. Cutting the cost of launching satellites or other space-bound cargo could trigger all sorts of opportunities, from orbital manufacturing to power generation to tourism.

Is it fair to hang such huge ambitions on the outcome of a single product development project? Possibly not, but I would be willing to bet that this is exactly the aim of the engineers working on it. After all, if you are literally aiming to revolutionise near-space travel you might as well hope to achieve big things on the back of it.

So what can we do to help out? At the moment, probably nothing, but sooner or later the project is likely to need Government help, either as a customer, regulator or investor, and if this happens we should enthusiastically jump aboard.

The UK is already a major operator in the defence, aerospace and satellite manufacturing industries. Skylon might open new opportunities for the UK in space innovation, travel, satellite launching and next-generation industry, supporting our already significant activities in defence and aerospace. Whatever the costs and technical difficulties, that’s a huge prize and it’s definitely worth pursuing.

Visit Greenwich, get stuck in traffic

2011-09-18T12:00:00.000+01:00

Greenwich, as a tourist destination, is pretty good; in a day you can stroll through Greenwich Park, see the excellent Royal Observatory, visit the National Maritime Museum, view (what’s left of) the Cutty Sark (currently being restored after years of slow deterioration), sample the myriad wares of the covered market and explore various other bits and pieces that might be of interest. There are restaurants like The Old Brewery (which has the most fantastic selection of beers) and cafes like Royal Teas where hunger and thirst can be slaked.

But why would anyone return for a second visit? Greenwich has many fine features and it would be a nice place to visit occasionally except for the one thing; truly horrendous traffic.

The air pollution is unpleasant (although still nowhere near as bad as Oxford Street - a similarly blighted area of London) but the real problem is simply the volume of traffic trying to navigate the narrow streets of Greenwich. It is clear that efforts have been made to keep the traffic moving but the cost is to force pedestrians one to narrow, highly congested pavements from which the view of the opposite side of the street is about as close as they can hope to get without a life-risking dash across the tarmac.

The main problem is the A206, which splits the village in two. As you can see from the map above, there’s no obvious alternative to the road’s current routing (building bypasses in south London isn’t really an option; maybe a tunnel would do the trick?), which is a pity, because it blights the area and must surely reduce the residents’ quality of life.

The only answer I can see consists of enhancing the area for pedestrians and making the driving experience (which must already be fairly awful at peak times) even less pleasant, thus discouraging through-traffic from using the route. To do this we might:

Widen the pavements to ease pedestrian congestion
Add cycle lanes and racks to encourage the use of bikes instead of cars
Add regular pedestrian and cycle crossings to make the roads less of a barrier
Lower the speed limit to 20mph (although this may already be the speed limit - I didn’t check)

All of these changes could be done on the existing roads and would have positive benefits both for residents (assuming that they can limit their car use to off-peak times) and visitors. Making the general environment more pleasant is almost guaranteed to attract more tourists who will then be encouraged to stay longer and return sooner.

Could this be done? Probably not, because it disadvantages the one group that Transport for London really care about; motorists. Unfortunately, despite the likely benefits to residents, tourists, local business and the environment, anything which interrupts the smooth flow of traffic powered by the internal combustion engine is anathema, unlikely ever to see the light of day. Time for a change at TfL, maybe, or a re-balancing of their remit?

PlainText - iPad App Extraordinaire

2011-09-11T12:00:00.000+01:00

A while ago I wrote a post about my experiments with distraction-free writing, as supported by Apple's Pages app for OS X (I've since tried MS Word under similar conditions - Pages is better for my purposes). I was reasonably happy with the text but the blog-reading public, perhaps unaware of the brilliance of my prose, didn't visit in any great numbers (two people only, it seems).

Why am I mentioning the (entirely unsurprising) lack of public interest in my blog? Other than a slightly masochistic delight in exposing the utter lack of appeal of my writing, it gives me an opportunity to mention an app I have been using on my iPad to do essentially what Pages does on the Mac; PlainText.

There are two things that I particularly like about PlainText. First, it is, as the name suggests, very plain; when you are working in full-screen mode you will not be distracted by pop-ups, formatting tools, borders, rulers, menus or anything else. The three-quarter screen mode is also almost entirely clutter free, adding only a file list in the left-hand margin, which seems strange until you want to switch files, at which point it turns out to be rather useful and elegant.

Isn't it a bit wasteful to devote a quarter of the screen to the file list? Not really. There are so few controls (i.e. None) that you might as well make the file navigation control as easy to use as possible. It works really well, allowing you to move quickly through the folder structure to the file of choice.

Second, the app syncs with DropBox so that you never lose your files (if you are not already using DropBox as secure backup for your files, give it a go: dropbox.com). Unlike other apps that sync with remote file storage services, PlainText saves your files every few seconds, taking advantage of breaks in your typing to bung a copy up to the cloud. This makes it a very safe app; it's almost impossible to lose your work, even if the worst happens and the app crashes half-way through editing your magnum opus or your iPad is eaten by a cow.

Leaving aside concerns about bovine consumption of tablets, I think it is fair to say that PlainText's simplicity and security are enough to recommend the app for pretty much any notation exercise you might care to undertake. At some point, of course, you'll probably want to format the text, add pictures or insert hyperlinks and that's when you need to switch to Pages. By this point, however, you've done all the really tough work (capturing your thoughts as text) and you're on the home straight.

Any weaknesses? No, not really, unless you want to list the main features (lack of features, for example) as a "weakness". I don’t, so I can strongly recommend the app; it's fast, secure, easy to use and it does exactly what it says it will do.

Sources of News

2011-09-04T04:00:00.000+01:00

So where do you turn when you want to know what's going on in the world? For me the choice depends on the type of news I am looking for. For economics, business, politics and current affairs I turn, in order, to The Economist, BBC News and Reuters using a combination of iPhone, iPad and desktop browser (I used to watch the news on the TV but I stopped that long ago). For weather forecasts I use Google (if you search for "weather " Google presents not only the weather for your chosen city but also links to other sites with similar information) or, if I want more detail or a five-day view, BBC News.

These sources, although informative and interesting and full of well-constructed opinion (not the BBC, unfortunately - I'm mostly thinking here of The Economist) are a bit impersonal. Most of the news is of events happening far away to people I'm never likely to meet doing things in which I am only peripherally interested; what about the people I know and topics that fascinate me?

The answer, assuming you have an iPad, is that for personalised news you want two apps: FlipBoard and Reeder. Why? Read on.

One of the best ways to keep track of blogs is via an RSS feed reader. Google Reader is an excellent management system for your RSS subscriptions (although it's easy to overload by simply subscribing to, for example, BBC News) but the user interface could be better. That's where Reeder comes in, offering a great user experience in a simple, elegant and easy-to-use interface. Once you've given Reeder your Google Reader account credentials it syncs your feeds and presents them to you in a fast, easy-to-read format. I now skim through my feeds, read some of the stories in detail and throw longer articles at Instapaper for reading on the bus.

And for the other stuff, when an RSS feed is a bit too simple but you can't be bothered to read a dozen different websites (especially the interesting ones that generate lots of long, detailed stories or posts) there is FlipBoard. I feel comfortable describing FlipBoard as new and innovative because it really is. The premise is simple; you give it your FaceBook and Twitter details, choose your information sources (New Scientist, TreeHugger, BBC News etc.) and it aggregates your news into a magazine-style layout that you flip through or drill into depending on your level of interest in the article in question.

As an aside, Instapaper is great for reading long articles. If you've never tried it you're probably asking why you would need another reading app but, trust me, it's great. Instapaper takes your articles or web pages, strips out the adverts and other rubbish and presents back the text in an easy-to-read format. Try it, it's more useful than it sounds.

So that's it. You need Flipboard and Reeder. And Instapaper for longer articles. Nothing more.

Rules, Oldest Restaurant in London

2011-08-28T12:00:00.001+01:00

That would not normally be much of a boast - restaurants in London seem to have lifespans measured in months rather than years - but Rules opened in 1798 and is still going strong in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, 213 years later. Given the age of the restaurant I was expecting an intersecting atmosphere and a well-honed menu; both were delivered in style but, as the interior of the restaurant is (or should be) merely the background to the food, let us move straight to the meat of the issue - the meat.

And what meat it was! At my table we sampled the steak and kidney pudding, the steak, a fish dish of some sort (apparently very good, but fish doesn't really float my boat) and the pork. All were reported as absolutely top notch but the star was the steak and kidney pudding with summer beans; the blend and quality of the ingredients and the preparation made it rather special.

My previous experience of the old S&KP has been rather disappointing. The steak is often dry and of poor quality, the kidney scarce, the gravy weak, thin and heavily peppered (never a good sign - I can't help thinking that over-peppering a meal is a sign of a nervous chef). Rules, by contrast, serve a pudding that embarrasses the competition, delights the diner and suggests a serious risk to waistlines amongst regular patrons.

Accompanied by a bottle of red wine and a side order of chips, the main course barely touched the sides on the way down. It was, by any measure, spectacularly good and I look forward to many repeat visits.

And the deserts? Singling out a particular course for praise is often a sign that other courses, or maybe the service, were less than good, failing to meet the standards laid down by their illustrious compatriot. Don't be fooled. Our table took the plum trifle, lemon meringue pie, apple crumble and golden syrup pudding (both served with excellent traditional custard), all of which were epic (I don't like plum trifle, so I report instead the trifle experiences of a fellow diner).

The lemon was strong and tangy and paired with a thick crust of meringue over a nice pastry base. In a lesser restaurant, where quantity is not an important attribute in a meal, the lemon meringue would have served three or four people; in Rules my wife struggled, giving up halfway through (she had already consumed most of a vast steak, so can be forgiven).

My advice, if you plan to eat at Rules, is to skip lunch and take a light breakfast. We soldiered through our main courses (having skipped the first course) before being defeated by the deserts but better preparation may have allowed us to finish a great meal, possibly even with cheese and coffee. Instead, the following day was spent avoiding restaurants and exercise, remembering the puddings and searching for light, calorie-free salads.

Rules; we will return for a second attempt.

Rail vs Air - Travel Preferences

2011-08-21T12:00:00.005+01:00

For me, it's often air; for international business travel, flying remains the only practical option because most of my destinations (Estonia, Malta, Gibraltar) are not readily reached by rail from London.

That doesn't mean that I choose air travel when geography allows an alternative. The journey from Edinburgh to London, for example, takes 4 - 4.5 hours by rail with about 1.25 hours for transfers (both ends) for a total door-to-door travel time of about 5.75 hours. That sounds like a lot, especially compared to the 3 - 4 hours required for flying, but the train has a few advantages:

Comfort - the seats are generally more comfortable than those in aeroplanes, seatbelts are not required, you can move around whenever you like and even large bottles of water are allowed on the train
Luggage - there may be a practical limit to the amount of luggage you can take on a train but you won't be charged for taking a large suitcase or two
Ease - modern trains have power sockets, tables and wifi making it perfectly possible to work (or check Facebook) while you hurtle along
Simplicity - turn up at the station, collect your ticket from the machine and stroll onto the train; no need to pass through security (except, maybe, if when travelling internationally), check your luggage or spend hours waiting on the platform
Pollution - trains emit significantly less CO2 per passenger mile than aeroplanes and make far less noise
Convenience - railway stations are often more found in the centre of cities rather than on the outskirts; you might choose a hotel near the railway station and close to the city centre but you would think twice before staying near an airport.

All of these things make train travel, in my experience, far less stressful than air travel but if rail has all these advantages, why do people still fly so often? Ignoring those trips where rail simply isn't possible (London to New York by rail is going to be tricky, for example) and air is the only option, there are still a couple of reasons for flying:

Speed - you can go an awful long way by train in Europe but after a certain point flying is always going to be faster (which might be important if your schedule is tight)
Security - air travel is safe and, even if you had time to get to, say, Delhi, by rail, you probably wouldn't want to pass through all the slightly iffy countries between here and there - much better to fly over them and avoid all the hassles with border crossings and visas.

All things considered, I prefer to travel by rail, particularly if I can book in advance and get reasonably priced first-class seats. I'm resolved to travel by train whenever possible, shunning car and plane alike unless they really are the only options; unfortunately, my next trip is Almaty, Kazakhstan (or it was, when this article was first drafted); tricky by rail or road, so I will be flying.

iPads and Long Haul Flights

2011-08-14T16:31:00.000+01:00

I'm currently (at time of writing) flying from Almaty, Kazakhstan to London Heathrow, which is just under 3,500 miles and takes about eight hours. It's the second long haul flight I've done with the iPad (the first being the flight out to Almaty earlier in the week) and all I can say is that it is an absolutely epic piece of equipment.

One of the questions people ask is "what do you use your iPad for?" because although it is clearly an attractive piece of kit it is no immediately obvious, despite Apple's best efforts, why anyone might need one. After a flight like this, where the selection of entertainment chosen by the airline is not hugely interesting, it's a fairly easy question to answer because it is my only distraction. I have:

Watched a movie (The Expendables - not great, but somewhat diverting if you're into guns, explosions and ludicrous fight scenes)
Dealt with a load of email (reading and writing, both for work and home, although without an Internet connection it isn't going anywhere at the moment)
Read part of a book (Marcus Brigstocke's God Collar - entertaining but a little over the top and best consumed in modest chunks)
Updated Facebook (or not - I've prepared email responses to several comments made by other people but the aforementioned lack of internet means that the updates haven't yet happened)
Drafted a couple of boring blog updates (using PlainText and email) and some notes for work (via Evernote)
Listened to a load of a music
Caught up on some reading (mostly articles from New Scientist that I saved for later reading using Instapaper, another recommended app).

At time of writing, after about four hours of continuous use, the battery is down only 30% and I'm thinking about taking a break from writing to work through a couple of Sudoku puzzles. Be right back.

And we're back, with four Sudoku puzzles finished off in something more than record time (I blame a lack of sleep). I thought about playing some other games (I have a couple of tower defence games, some racing games and a version of Command and Conquer) but decided against it - too lazy.

Being locked in a tin tube over the middle of Europe reduces Internet access options somewhat. When there is an Internet connection (3G or Wi-fi) the range of possible activities increases to include shopping for books (I like to use iBooks), browsing the web, chatting using IM or Skype and any of a dozen other data-dependent tasks.

So if you wanted to know what I use my iPad for you now know. You might find a load of different things to do on an iPad but that's your problem. For me, it offers the opportunity to do a little work, consume a little entertainment media and, network allowing, communicate with friends, family and work colleagues. As a multi-purpose lightweight computer it is spectacularly good and it makes an invaluable companion for a long flight.

Caledonian Scotrail - the Sleeper to Edinburgh

2011-08-07T20:14:00.001+01:00

The most generous comment one might make about the cabins on Scotrail's Caledonian Sleeper service from London Euston is that they are "compact". The American students on our train were more critical, calling them "caves" and it is easy to see why; at a little over six feet long and about four feet wide they can hardly be described as luxurious.

To be frank, there were a couple of other problems that seemed more serious. Various parts of the train were basically broken, including the power sockets in the lounge (the only ones on the train at which phones could be charged), the door to the lounge (which worked, but only just, and only very slowly) and the toilet at one end of the carriage (whose door appeared to work but had malfunctioning lock status indicators). Breakfast was functional but not very good; it was standard airline fare, delivered a little later than requested.

It is also unfortunate that some of the staff seemed to have suffered fairly serious sense of humour failures. Their more polite colleagues, who made up maybe 50% of the crew, gave adequate service but were unable to save the reputation of Scotrail.

Even a cave can be more than just a cave but the fittings in Scotrail's cabins are extremely utilitarian, closely resembling the mass-produced, style-free cabins one finds on cross-channel ferries; the Orient Express this most definitely is not.

That said, the price is fairly low. The nine hour trip (which includes station time at both ends of the journey, during which you are on the train but stationary) cost £130 each (two travellers) in first-class, which gave us two standard cabins with a linking door - twice the space of a standard class cabin. Compared with the Orient Express, Scotrail are almost giving the service away.

And what about sleep? The bed was comfortably basic and the cabin was warm but the irregular noise and the unfamiliar movements as the train accelerated and cornered made sleeping somewhat tricky. In the end I gave up, dressed and took photos through the open windows of the carriage doors for a while before returning to the cabin to complete this post.

There were some good points, particularly when compared to flying. Firstly, it was completely stress-free - a big advantage - and the freedom to carry whatever luggage we wanted (including 200ml bottles of potentially "dangerous" liquid) was most welcome. Transit through the stations at both ends of the journey was quick and painless - markedly different to the major airports. The train left on time and arrived on schedule, and apart from the aforementioned acceleration the trip was completely turbulence free, delivering us straight into the centre of Edinburgh, a ten minute stroll from our hotel.

Would we use the service again? Yes, I think so, but we would probably go Standard class rather than First and we would skip breakfast. Overall, a viable alternative to air travel if you can spare the time.

Writing tools for Mac OS X

2011-06-05T14:48:00.000+01:00

I quite enjoy writing. At work I write emails, workflow descriptions, user guides, reports, technical texts, marketing brochures and a variety of other documents. At home I mostly write dreadfully boring blog entries while imagining that my prose is insightful, witty, entertaining and respected.

The tools I use to capture my thoughts and present them to my audience are amongst the most sophisticated ever constructed. The laptop computer, or any computer for that matter, is an exquisite piece of precision-engineered equipment that most people take for granted or curse as some aspect of its delicate interior (usually the installed software) performs less than perfectly.

The computer upon which I am drafting this article has been teased into existence through a bewilderingly complicated sequence of manufacturing processes. It has arrived in my home as an object of desire and beauty and will doubtless leave in several years having finally exhausted my patience and been replaced by a younger, faster, lighter, more beautiful alternative. Computers, like superheroes, die young or live to become the villain, hunted down and replaced by their more virile descendants.

And the software? It is easy to be rude about software or to underestimate the challenges facing programmers. Many people, myself included, are frustrated by faults, bugs, inconsistencies, poor design decisions or missing features that hinder their work or reduce their productivity. Building software is difficult; building great software that delights the user is particularly tricky.

I have been wondering this week about user-delighting, distraction-free writing software. Modern operating systems present a variety of distractions for the struggling writer. Email, Twitter, Facebook, BBC News and Google Reader compete for your attention. Instant messaging applications, alarms and task managers try to pull you from your task. Even the operating system tries to get in the way, updating, restarting or simply deciding that whatever you are doing must wait while it completes its own activities.

The idea of the distraction-free writing tool is that everything, including the controls of the application you are using, is hidden from view while you capture your prose. This leaves you looking at a page full of text, a word count and a page indicator. If you have a quiet environment in which to work, distractions should now be minimal.

My plan was to buy a dedicated application to facilitate distraction-free writing and, as ever, Google suggested several possibles. Byword (bywordapp.com) seemed to offer the right combination of features and price (£5.99, Mac App Store) but just before I bought I saw a recommendation for Pages (Apple’s word processor, £11.99, Mac App Store) in Full Screen mode and, as Pages already lives on my MacBook, experimentation was simple.

In conclusion, for distraction-free writing on the Mac I recommend Pages in Full Screen mode. Byword’s features are more specialised (paragraph focus, for example) but Pages offers a full suite of general-purpose word processing tools that you will need as soon as your text is ready for formatting.

Brasserie Blanc, Portsmouth

2009-11-29T12:37:00.001Z

In a previous post (link), and after a particularly good dinner, I suggested that Brasserie Blanc (link) might be Portsmouth’s best restaurant. Now, after a disappointing visit last Friday, I’m going to revise my opinion a little; Blanc probably serves the best food in Portsmouth (partly because the competition is somewhat limited) but as a place to dine with friends it is no longer at the top of my list (we’ll be at Greens in Wickham next time).

Why the change? Well mostly it is the menu, which is great for meat eaters or fish fans, but pretty awful for vegetarians. One of our party of four on Friday evening struggled to find anything she could eat as a main course, eventually settling, rather unsatisfactorily, for the Crispy goat’s cheese parcel from the Starters list. That wouldn’t have been too bad but it turned out to be deep fried and our friend dislikes deep fried cheese (to be fair, we might have been able to work this out by more closely inspecting the menu but a glass of wine at the end of a long week makes such diligence difficult).

To be fair, my slow cooked beef was excellent (although I should have asked for it without the parsnip puree, which turned out to be unavoidable once served) and the duck also looked pretty good. The French beans, served as a side order, were about as good as green beans can get.

The deserts, however, were not quite right. The steamed chocolate pudding, for example, tasted as much of steam as of chocolate and the lemon tart was truly tart; nicely made and well presented, but too tart for my taste.

On the plus side, the service was reasonably quick, friendly and polite, the bread served as we sat down was tasty and the atmosphere was fun; the arrival of a large party of birthday celebrators a slowed things down a little but that’s only to be expected and, to be honest, if you can’t find something to talk about while waiting for the waitress to take your drinks order you’re probably out with the wrong people.

So would we go back to Brasserie Blanc? I think the answer is likely to be “probably, yes”, but not until their vegetarian selection improves and not for a few months; good food is worth paying for but only if the whole experience is good and, unfortunately, this experience simply wasn’t worth the money. The food was generally good and it’s possible that a more careful inspection of the menu would have yielded better choices (for me, at least, if not for the vegetarian) and a move positive overall impression but that’s just too much work and I can’t be bothered to make the effort. I like to sit down, skim through the menu and pick a couple of dishes quickly without having to think too much. Brasserie Blanc failed the simplicity test; Greens next time for a smaller selection of better meals.

Quake Live

2009-03-01T16:23:00.003Z

Quake Live (link), which entered Open Beta on 24th February, is Id Software’s latest incarnation of their all-conquering 1996 game, Quake but, unlike its illustrious predecessors, Live is built from the ground up to be a web-based multiplayer kill-fest emphasizing speed, aggression and online fun; I love it.

Available as a free browser-based application, the game starts after registration with a short test of gaming competency where the player indicates his familiarity with the conventions of an FPS by first maneuvering across some simple obstacles before entering a one-on-one battle with a computer-controlled bot called Crash. Fifteen minutes of increasingly challenging play against Crash gives Id’s skill-assessment engine a pretty good idea of your abilities, after which it’s time to play against real opponents, and the game takes off.

Once past Crash (and when the game has finished downloading – browser-based it may be, but it still needs maps, sounds, textures and all the paraphernalia associated with a traditional FPS) you are presented with a choice of playing arenas and game types, all of which feature players at or close to your own skill level. By matching your skills to those of your opponents the system creates, with a reasonable degree of success, balanced and challenging matches without the high levels of frustration often inflicted on novices by games of this type.

Most arenas will be familiar to players of Quake 3 Arena or Team Arena, but there are also several new maps, all of which seem to work well. The weapons and game styles have also been copied from previous games but this largely reflects their earlier success rather than a lack of imagination on the part of the designers; anyone who has played similar FPS games (Unreal Tournament, for example) will quickly feel at home.

Given that this is a free game (funded by in-game advertising) the overall quality is high and it is easy to lose several hours chasing one more frag. The game collates performance information in nauseating detail, allowing players to see their (and anyone else’s) accuracy with each weapon, number of frags and deaths, number of matches won and lost etc. This feeds the inner geek but will make boasting more difficult since complete and accurate information is available to anyone interested in searching it out.

More importantly, this information highlights the extremes of player abilities. My own kill ratio is about 1-2 (kills to deaths) but the best players achieve around 4-1, a humbling eight-fold difference – it’s just as well that skill levels are matched.

So is it worth the effort? There is no expense with a free game so if you like the FPS genre then Quake Live is a no-brainer. The skill-matching engine is a huge advantage over other online games and the simplicity of the interface (weapons have only one fire mode and a “sniper” zoom) and the HUD make it readily accessible for casual gamers.

It’s fast, furious and fun; what more could anyone ask from a free online game?

Apple TV

2009-01-11T13:14:00.001Z

We have an Apple TV (link) at home which, despite its name, isn't a TV (it doesn't have any sort of display, not even the rather uninformative panels normally found on consumer electronics) and contains no vitamin C. It is not clear exactly how successful this product has been, but if the reactions of everyone I have spoken to are anything to go by then they probably have not sold very well because nobody seems to know what it is, what it does or why it exists; not good if you hope to pay your mortgage by shifting them.

In fact, the only people who seem to understand this product, and to have some idea of just how good it is, are the people who already own one. It isn't perfect, of course, and some people are not convinced of its brilliance even after spending a few hours playing with it, but we love it and we use it all the time.

“But what”, I hear you say, “is it for? Why bother with it if it isn’t actually a TV? What, when you get right down to it, does it do that you can’t do cheaper and better elsewhere?” Good question (or questions) and, after a long-term test (about six months), here are the three most common uses to which we put our Apple TV:

Watching movies - iTunes has a huge selection of movies to rent or buy and downloading them is really simple (although it can take a while, particularly for HD movies) and the films look great on an HD TV,
Listening to music - our entire music collection is synced to the Apple TV from our desktop; the CD player isn't even plugged-in anymore,
Looking at photos - the default screensaver when listening to music is a rolling display of randomly chosen photos from our collection - a great source of conversation when we have people over.

It has some other features, like a YouTube search tool, a TV show downloader, access to Flickr and other online services, but we use these only occasionally compared to the big three. More useful is the Remote application for iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing very slick remote access which is particularly useful when selecting music from a long list.

Could it be improved? Of course - more storage, more energy efficient operation, more sophisticated remote control, better integration into home audio systems, addition of a web browser etc. - but every product in existence could do something better and there is no point waiting for the Next Big Thing just because the you think you might want to froth milk while watching Saw IV.

Here's my advice - if you have digital music or photos, or if you like to watch movies or TV shows, and if you already have a decent TV and home theatre system, get an Apple TV (the 160Gb version), dump your CD player and jump-in - the apple tastes great.

iPhone App Store

2008-09-28T17:44:00.003+01:00

It matters not how good your computer hardware is; without software to run on it you have no product. A moderately good computer can be raised to greatness by desirable software; Sinclair's Spectrum and IBM's original PC being just two examples (although "Horace Goes Skiing" was arguably less Earth-shattering than VisiCalc).

The same has not always been true of mobile phones, where the killer app (the "telephone call") has always been present as part of the operating system; it is only with the latest generation of smart phones that 3rd-party software has a chance to influence hardware sales. The phone that has created the demand (or brought it to the mainstream) for 3rd-party software is the iPhone, for which software is obtained via Apple's proprietary, and highly regulated, App Store.

This is not a review of the iPhone - there are plenty of those around already and it is too big and too complex a product for a part-time reviewer to cover in any depth. Oh, ok, if you really want them, here are my comments on the iPhone:

For: spectacular internet device (Safari, the browser, is great), excellent user interface, stylish hardware, Visual Voicemail, ease-of-use, great display,
Against: poor-ish battery life (although version 2.1 software is a great improvement), so-so camera,
Verdict: superb in many respects (I love mine, and will not be replacing it anytime soon), but not quite suitable for heavy business use (if you make lots of calls then the battery life is just not good enough).

But what about the App Store? Accessed via iTunes, the App Store sells only those applications approved by Apple (around 4,000 at time of writing), which ensures that applications install and run without damaging the phone or stealing data (of course it also allows Apple to prevent competitive applications from entering the market, but that’s another story). Prices in the UK start at Free, with many apps costing no more than £0.59.

Purchasing apps directly through the iPhone UI is easy and quick – they download wirelessly, install automatically and are copied to your computer when you next sync. Payment is made via your iTunes account, receipts are emailed. Simple. Purchasing via iTunes is pretty much the same procedure and no more difficult.

In fact, there is only one real criticism of the App Store. The display of the applications within iTunes is dreadful, and the search and sort options don’t really help. iTunes offers no details beyond name, icon and category so if you need to know what the app actually does you have to click-through to the detailed page, which is a pain. On the plus side, you get user reviews, star ratings, screenshots and detailed comments from the developers, plus near-instant delivery.

On the whole, the App Store works well and is a positive point in the iPhone’s impressive feature list. It will be interesting to see how Google’s laissez-faire approach to software supply compares when the first Android phone launches later this year.

Scotland Yard, Tallinn

2008-09-04T08:49:00.001+01:00

Details: Mere pst 6, Tallinn. www.scotlandyard.ee

Apart from the slightly bizarre accessories (more of these later), Scotland Yard is an interesting but unchallenging pub that wouldn’t look out of place in the UK, where it would probably be termed a “family pub”. The ubiquitous Guinness compliments a modest selection of local beers but bitter is conspicuous by its absence – the English theme extends no further than the decoration – and once you look beyond the scenery this is really just a local bar with a few bits designed to entice tourists from the nearby port (where the cruise ships dock).

Accessories? The doorman is dressed in a facsimile of a 19^th century police sergeant’s uniform; the bar staff wear strange pseudo-uniforms that look rather like East-European secret police outfits. One wall is covered in bookshelves filled with hardback books; beneath it, red leather benches and dark wooden tables complete the picture. The other walls are displaying an assortment of items including flintlock muskets, small-calibre pistols, hand-cuffs and, for reasons that remain unclear, 25mm shells. To finish the illusion of an English pub, there is a very large fish tank above the optics running the length of the bar.

Should you visit? Certainly – the staff, decoration, menu and general layout are worth seeing for their comedy value, if nothing else. One drink ought to be enough (something short and alcoholic - the food is nothing special and the coffee is indescribable), after which you should abandon Scotland Yard for somewhere more atmospheric and less infested with tourists.

Google Chrome - 1 Hour Test

2008-09-02T21:07:00.001+01:00

Google's new browser, Chrome (download), launched today after the explanatory comic (link) was accidentally posted yesterday afternoon. First impressions (after only an hour of use) are that it is very fast, good-looking, easy to use and, so far, stable.

Installation was completely painless and Chrome successfully imported settings, history, account details and bookmarks from Mozilla. Performance does not appear to deteriorate as new tabs are opened - it just chews them up and renders them and there isn't even the slightest hint that the pages were designed in another browser (which may indicate that both pages and browser are sticking closely to the published standards).

As an application browser (by which I mean a browser that runs applications rather than one that simply displays web pages), it seems to do exactly what Google said it would do in the blog (link); unsurprisingly it seems to work extremely well with GMail and other Google products.

The internal Task Manager (shift-esc) details each tab's memory, network and CPU usage so it should be possible to identify and weed-out the resource hogs - it will be interesting to see if these figures become popular performance metrics for websites and developers. The "Stats for nerds" link on the Task Manager opens a tab with more detailed, developer-targeted, information.

In short, and without objectively testing the product's performance (my knowledge of the technologies employed is insufficient, not to say non-existent), it looks like Google have done a good job; Chrome has a useful and interesting set of features that will make it a strong contender in the browser market. Mozilla, Safari and Opera might be in trouble.

Recommendation - If you can accept the product's Beta status, install it now.

Dracula, Bram Stoker

2008-08-31T15:05:00.005+01:00

First published in 1897 at the end of the Victoria era, Dracula has spawned countless movies, books and television shows based on Stoker’s original plot (Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula - Prince Of Darkness) or using the characters and Vampire “lore” that he established (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman and Dracula: Red Rain). The cross, garlic and stake that Stoker’s heroes use to fight Dracula are staples of the genre but the book is more than just a reference work for future writers, it is a classic work of horror fiction and a master-class on the subjects of tension and suspense.

Written as an epistolary novel, the story is told through the letters, diaries and journals of the main characters with occasional elements from local newspapers and reports. This style of writing is rare in modern novels but Stoker has used it to construct a story that advances in threads; each character writes of their own experiences and drives forward their portion of the story until they reach a cliff-hanger, at which point another character takes over.

These intertwining threads combine to give the reader an overview of Dracula’s efforts which is hidden from the characters whilst at the same time presenting a first-hand account of the character’s development. While Van Helsing and Dr. Seward search with increasing despair for the cause of Lucy Westenra’s illness, the reader, knowing that Dracula has landed at Whitby, can only watch with mounting concern as every effort the good doctors make is thwarted by fate, family or the success of Dracula’s machinations.

Similarly, the reader's experience of modern thrillers and horror films will help them to recognise far sooner than Harker the reality of his imprisonment by Dracula, whose sinister instructions about not sleeping outside his rooms are not very subtle warnings about the dangers lurking within the castle. When Harker ignores these warnings the reader experiences a strong “uh oh” moment because he knows, or thinks he knows, what will happen next.

Dracula himself keeps no memoirs and features only when written about by the other characters. His intentions remain opaque until discerned and described by his enemies and thus the reader’s knowledge of his long-term aims progresses only as fast as the characters’, even while they might have leapt ahead of Van Helsing in diagnosing a vampiric cause to Lucy’s disease.

This is not a book without faults. In places it is slow and Stoker sometimes seems to take a long time advancing the plot. The language and style of writing are a little unfamiliar and it sits firmly within the late Victorian era in terms of its treatment of women and foreigners; a modern reader will occasionally find that Stoker’s writing jars against modern concepts of morality and ethics.

Dracula remains one of the best examples of the horror genre, setting the stage for numerous derivatives and copycats. Stoker creates believable characters and sets them loose in a self-consistent alternative reality that British readers in particular will find familiar. He explores (not always in great depth) evil, self-sacrifice and heroism, forcing his characters to undergo appalling horrors for the entertainment of his readers and his book is a must-read for anyone with even a peripheral interest in the genre.

Rating: 9/10.

Verdict: get the book today - Dracula