RHFtech Help Desk (and more)

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% from the beginning of 2010, with one in 10 contract handsets sold in the UK now running Google’s mobile operating system.

Android’s share of the UK mobile contract market grew by 10.2 percentage points from the first quarter of 2010 to the second quarter, from 3% to 13.2%, new figures from retail watcher GfK show.

From the beginning of 2010, most of the UK’s major mobile operators have started selling a number of hotly-anticipated mobile devices running Google’s Linux-based software. The HTC Desire and HTC Legend are among other devices lauded by critics.

Just last week, Samsung launched a direct marketing challenge to the Apple iPhone with its Android-powered Galaxy S device.

Many mobile operators were unable to keep up with demand for the HTC Desire when it launched in the UK in April this year. HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of many devices running Android, posted a 41% global sales increase for the first six months of 2010, with figures from April, May and June reflecting record sales, according to the company.

In the same period, mobile devices running “advanced” operating systems – defined as those able to run independent compatible applications – grew in the contract market from 55% to 66.7%. Figures available from June show mobiles with advanced operating systems now representing 73.5% of the contract market.

“The figures suggest an increasing number of consumers are now asking for Android handsets by name,” said GfK analyst Megan Baldock. “Operating systems are no longer simply a by-product but a key selling point in their own right.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Are you overwhelmed with the minutiae of modern life? Who isn’t? reQall is a service that helps us deal with the deluge of things we have to remember and attend to.

You use it by typing text into the application or speaking into your telephone. The speech-to-text facility is surprisingly accurate in my testing. It has been almost letter perfect in every one of my trials. It puts a similar feature in Google Voice to shame.

A moment ago I spoke the following to the reQall automated telephone attendant, “To-Do Sunday July 25th at 3:30 check reQall see if it transcribed this message.”

I got an email a few minutes later that read, “Reminder for 3:30 PM: To-Do: Sunday, July 25th at 3:30 PM, check reQall see if it transcribed this message.”

I am impressed.

reQall has both free and paid versions (AKA reQall Standard and reQall Pro). Pro costs $24.99 per year or $2.99 per month, and has several additional features compared to the free Standard version.  They provide a free 15 day trial of the Pro version so you can test the service before paying them.

You can use it to set up appointments, tasks, reminders, and shopping lists. The Pro version has location awareness so that if you tell it you want to buy fruit at Costco it will remind you when you are near Costco.

reQall works on Windows and Mac computers. It can be accessed via a web browser. They provide free apps for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone cell phones. You can also set up several landlines to work with the service as well.

reQall integrates with Outlook (both versions), Google Calendar (both versions) and Evernote (Pro version only). If you want reQall will send you text message (Pro version only) and email reminders (both versions). They even provide an RSS feed for your reQall items. You can share your reQall items with people in your BlackBerry or iPhone contact list.

Everything isn’t perfect though. The iPhone app is a bit clunky and the web descriptions and tutorials do not do justice to the elegance of the service. They also do a mediocre job of explaining what the service is or how to use it. I suspect the folks at reQall are engineers and not marketers.

I like what I see. My testing indicates that this service is useful and probably worth paying for the Pro version. I suggest you try it out. I think you will agree.

This article was written by Richard Lea, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 23rd July 2010 09.30 UTC

Publishers came face to face with their own vision of apocalypse yesterday, as Andrew Wylie announced that he and his authors would be cutting publishing houses out of the future and teaming up with Amazon to sell their own electronic editions.

Grinning down from the saddle beside him in the first wave of horsemen is a fearsome collection of riders, including Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and John Updike. “As the market for ebooks grows, it will be important for readers to have access in ebook format to the best contemporary literature the world has to offer,” the agent popularly known as “the Jackal” said, cackling diabolically (I imagine). “This publishing programme is designed to address that need, and to help ebook readers build a digital library of classic contemporary literature.”

Odyssey Editions may be launching with just 20 titles, but publishers are hitting back as if their eternal souls depended on it, and you can see why. Slice off the biggest names, the most valuable backlist items from any publisher’s list and the business model is up in flames.

This may be nothing but an Armageddon-style negotiating ploy, as Wylie delivers on a warning he gave publishers late last year when Random House claimed existing contracts already gave them control over authors’ electronic rights. But if Wylie and his lawyers can make this a success – and you only need to glance at his client list to imagine how – then others are sure to follow. Random House, which publishes Roth, Rushdie and Amis in the UK, has written to Amazon already “disputing their rights to legally sell these titles”. It declared Wylie a “direct competitor” and ruled out “entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved”.

It’s the latest battle in a multi-dimensional war over the future of literature as authors, agents and publishers face a horde of technology companies, retailers and libraries, not to mention the pirates, with constantly shifting alliances. As electronic reading devices – the Kindles, the Readers, the iPads, your phone – finally begin to take off, all the old certainties are in flux. Do authors need publishers to take on the might of the retailers, or are publishers part of the problem? Should writers keep their copyrights safely under lock and key, or will that rob them of the chance to take wing?

Once upon a time publishers were the only ones who could find authors, edit manuscripts, print books and distribute them, but new technology from desktop computers to the internet has thrown the doors wide open. As marketing departments have gained the ascendancy over editorial, agents have moved centre stage, filtering submissions and polishing manuscripts. With the messy business of ink and trees and Transit vans receding, Wylie’s latest move is simply the logical next step. None of this will worry those publishers who have made a business out of finding the voices others haven’t spotted, but in the week when Amazon claimed that ebook sales passed those of hardbacks the questions are unavoidable: who needs big publishers? Are the interests of writers and readers best served by big publishers, or the Jackal?

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

This article was written by Tim Lusher, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 20th July 2010 11.15 UTC

He’s used to people hanging on his every erudite word. Now Stephen Fry – actor, author, quizmaster of QI, enthusiastic tweeter and celebrated brainbox – has announced that he is to make a series for BBC2 about language.

“It’s a bit of a secret but the BBC have commissioned me to do a five-part series on language, called Planet Word,” he said. “Language is my real passion. So, I’m going to Beijing to interview the man who invented Pinyin, a phonetic version of the Chinese language. He’s 105 years old … if he dies on me I’m going to be so annoyed.”

Last month, after delivering the Bafta annual television lecture in London, Fry, 52, complained to the audience about the “infantilism” of British TV. He revealed details of his highbrow new project to 14-year-old Eden Parris in an interview for a Radio Times feature that enabled young readers to meet their TV heroes. In a conversation that ranged from Harry Potter to Wagner, darts and porridge oats, he said: “I haven’t seen a good documentary about language, where it comes from, how we speak it, the variations of it, whether languages are dying, whether we are better at speaking than we were. There are so many questions.”

Fry – voted most intelligent man on TV in 2006 by RT readers – said his favourite words were Anglo-Saxon “like bundle – what a lovely word”, although followers of his Twitter feed are used to a livelier, more playful turn of phrase – last week he used “wowser”, “brokenated” and “selfspank”. A devotee of Oscar Wilde, he has presented two series of Fry’s English Delight on Radio 4, discussing grammar and idiom.

He warned Parris that language could shape and limit people’s ambitions: “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” It will have been a powerful message for his young interviewer to conjugate with.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

The personal computer (PC) revolution began in the 1970s. It altered our lives. None of us ever wanted a mainframe or mini-computer in our houses but a PC was different. First it changed how we wrote, with rudimentary word processors, like WordStar, and how we calculated, with the early spreadsheet programs like VisiCalc. PCs changed how we communicated, as they became connected, first by telephone networks like CompuServe and later on the Internet. Telephone calls and written mail gave way to email, instant messaging, chat, and VoIP (e.g. Skype). The Internet would not have been possible without PCs. Today, we use still and video cameras differently than in pre-PC days. We rarely print photos, instead we share them digitally. We listen to music and watch Internet-streamed video that would have not been possible without PCs.

I could go on at length comparing the pre-PC and post-PC periods, but this article is about the next era, an evolution more than a revolution—the rise of the personal appliance (PA). The word appliance is defined as, “A device that is very useful for a particular job.” These are devices like smartphones—Android cellphones, BlackBerrys, iPhones—and tablet PAs, i.e., iPads. Today the tablet-form PA is only available from Apple since there are not yet any iPad competitors. This will change before year-end. Soon there will be lots of alternatives to the iPad. Many of these will be Android devices. HP is supposedly developing a webOS-based tablet since their recent acquisition of Palm, and Microsoft has stated that its equipment partners will have Windows 7 tablets available soon.

What differentiates the PC and the PA? PC devices are general purpose. They can do almost anything. Personal appliances cannot. PA devices are limited in function and feature set. They do a few things very well, some things okay, some things poorly, and some things not at all. For example, you can’t print from an iPad. PAs are primarily communications or consumption devices. They are not designed for producing. I can imagine trying to compose this article on an iPad or a smartphone. I would not want to.

Personal appliances appeal to the general population. PCs, including Macs, are frightfully complex devices. It is amazing to me that people put up with this complexity so that they can surf the Internet and read email. The iPad does away with that complexity. There is only one physical button for navigating the user interface (UI). Contrast that with a PC that has special navigation keys on the keyboard and pointing devices like a mouse or touchpad. Smartphones and the iPad UIs are designed for one finger navigation. Your other nine fingers are superfluous.

One disadvantage to PAs is that we will end up collecting a lot of them. PAs, unlike PCs, are rarely shared. We will end up with cellphones and PA tablets. You may also own a gaming device like the PSP (PlayStation Portable). Many of you have ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle. And you may still want a media player device like an iPod. All these devices come with power adapters and cables to connect them to our PCs. Our future is one of even greater technology clutter than today, more unidentifiable cables and power adapters, and discarded out-of-date PAs.

Curiously, we are not happy with our devices. We complain about their shortcomings. We forget how fantastic they are and all the marvelous things they do. Remember using a rotary phone? Today I can tell my cell phone to, “Phone home.” I don’t even have to remember the phone number. That is real convenience. Incidentally, convenience is a synonym for appliance.

I ran into an unresolvable problem with Google Chrome on a client’s XP machine this week. They use Chrome as their browser, on my recommendation. The computer was an underpowered eMachines T3120 model. Chrome is faster and less of a memory hog than other options so it made sense to me to use it on this slow box.

The error presented as a Google Chrome 104 error, "Chrome is unable to load the requested webpage." We couldn’t access any webpage. Oddly, other browsers—IE6, IE8, Firefox 3.6.6 and AOL 9.1—could access the Internet while Chrome would not.

Although new to me, this is not a new issue for Chrome. See http://bit.ly/bkU4xc . None of the various solutions that worked for others beset with this issue worked here. After wasting several hours trying to fix it, I gave up.

I reinstalled Windows XP and the applications. Fortunately, there weren’t many. I discovered on the reinstall that the Windows XP product key, which had been in use on the machine, failed the Windows Genuine Advantage tests and differed from the product key on the sticker affixed to the computer.

I wasted almost an hour of my time dealing with the product key problem. This reminded me that I NEVER have to waste time with this issue when reinstalling the operating system on a Mac. There are many reasons that consumers are moving away from Microsoft. This is one of them.

That solved the problem. I added Firefox to the reinstalled Windows XP applications list, in case the Chrome problem recurs. I also added 1GB of RAM, which made for a huge improvement in the computer’s usability.

The chart below has been prepared for my talk on disaster planning for small businesses, to the FINE Business Network July 15, 2010, 9am-11am at the Westport Country Playhouse, Westport CT. 

You can find out more general information about disaster planning at FEMA’s Continuity Of Operations Planning pages.

(Click on the chart to see it in a larger, more readable format.)

This article was written by Johnny Dee, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 3rd July 2010 08.42 UTC

The benefits of Twitter are legion. You can tell random strangers that you’ve just purchased a new phone or keep your friends abreast of your latest bowel movements. Alternatively users can join forces with stand-up comedians in exciting witch hunts against homophobic columnists. Celebrities meanwhile can use the service to reveal how normal they are by telling us they’ve just purchased some hummus. From a real shop.

Not that any of this was relevant to a 28-year-old comedy writer from San Diego called Justin Halpern who, after being dumped by his girlfriend several years ago, had to face the hipster lifestyle catastrophe of returning home to live with his parents.

The arrangement did have one particular upside. It allowed him to spend more time with his then 73-year-old father, Sam, a man who – not always deliberately – happened to be one of the funniest and simultaneously rudest men ever. Justin didn’t realise his dad was hilarious when he was a kid; his father’s preference to wander around the house naked and use phrases before dinner such as “let’s just shut the fuck up and eat” were the source of embarrassment rather than fun. But then as a teenager he began writing down his father’s quips, foul-mouthed pearls of wisdom and blunt advice in notebooks.

Years later, returning home as an adult, he found a whole new use for the 140 characters or less on Twitter and began posting his father’s philosophies and TV-watching asides for the amusement of family and friends.

Going from zero to a million followers in nine months, Shit My Dad Says become the first viral Twitter success story. The site has spawned a book and a sitcom which begins airing in the US this autumn and stars Star Trek legend William Shatner as the cantankerous lead. The book shows Justin inherited his father’s comedy genes and, as well as being very funny, also paints a great story of regular American family life – albeit with added swearing and an obsession with bowel movements. Halpern Sr’s quotes, though, remain the main attraction. Here, are some of our favourites; and feel free to add any Shit Your Dad Says below …

PARENTING “A parent’s only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed.”

NATURE “Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor.”

CHRISTMAS “Everybody’s broke, so here’s the rule for Christmas this year; if you still shit your pants, you get a present. Otherwise tough shit.”

TECHNOLOGY “Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.”

KIDS’ HAIR “Does anyone your age know how to comb their fucking hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their head and started fucking.”

VOICEMAIL “Why would i want to check a voicemail on my cell phone? People want to talk to me, call again. If i want to talk to you, I’ll answer.”

MUSIC “What are you listening to?…I know who Hall & Oates are goddammit. It’s the moustache guy and the gay man.”

EVIL “The worst thing you can be is a liar … OK fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then, number two is liar. Nazi 1, Liar 2″

THE X FILES “So, the woman and the dopey-looking guy screw, and then look for aliens – or they just screw and sometimes aliens follow them?”

FEAR “When its asshole-tightening time, that’s when you see what people are made of. or at least what their asshole is made of.”

BULLIES “You’re gonna run into jerk offs. But remember, it’s not the size of the asshole you worry about, it’s how much shit comes out of it.”

WATER SLIDES “You go on ahead. I’d rather not be shot out of a tube into a pool filled with a bunch of nine-year-olds’ urine.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

The glacial change from analog TV to all-digital is confusing and maddening for most people. We are whipsawed by a continuing flow of abrupt changes to our decades-old habits. All we want to do is watch television. Is that too much to ask for? Although these changes are announced long before the implementation dates, the proclamations are often ignored due to our overly busy lives. We are inundated with information. Today, there is too much information to absorb much less act upon until we have no choice.

Recent changes to the Cablevision system have a lot people in a dither about needing to add cable boxes to TVs that previously did not need them. Many of these TVs are in spare bedrooms, in playrooms or basements and are infrequently used.

Cablevision wants you to add cable boxes to all your televisions. It is in their interest. Though many of the newly installed cable boxes are free for the first year or two they will eventually result in increases to your monthly cable bill. Cablevision is not interested in providing you with options that do not require a cable box. Cablevision does not want you to switch to the Internet for video. It is harder for them to charge a premium for Internet-delivered shows. They do not want you to think you have choices.

There are alternatives, if you have an HDTV with a built-in QAM tuner.

I recently wrote Do you need a cable box from Cablevision?

• NO, if you have an HDTV with a QAM tuner.
• YES, if you have standard definition TV or an older HDTV without a QAM tuner.

Most HDTVs sold in the last 3-4 years have QAM tuners. They can display the digital over-the-air (OTA) broadcast station signals sent out from Cablevision. These are stations like WCBS HD or WNBC USPORTS, channels 2-1 and 4-4 respectively. I can receive more than 20 of these stations on my HDTV in Weston without a cable box, including Cablevision News 12 Connecticut (105-12). (See Do you need a cable box from Cablevision? for more information.)

This got me thinking,

“What would I add to an HDTV that is connected to Cablevision without a cable box in order to provide a more complete viewing experience?

If the HDTV is Internet-capable, the answer is as simple as connecting it to your Internet connection via Ethernet wire or a WiFi adapter. Most Internet-capable TVs provide connections to Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video-On-Demand, Blockbuster On Demand, Flickr and a variety of other services.

If you have a Netflix subscription you can watch lots of movies and TV shows streamed over the Internet directly to your HDTV. Similarly, Amazon Video-On-Demand lets you buy or rent the video you want to watch streamed to your television. You may also be able to watch television shows via Hulu. This makes far more economic sense for seldom-watched TVs than paying a monthly fee to rent equipment from Cablevision.

Another alternative if your HDTV is not Internet-capable is an Internet-capable Blu-ray player. Many moderately priced players have Internet features like the HDTVs described above. These players let you watch video and other material from the Internet. They also play Blu-ray, DVD and CD optical discs.

A third alternative is to attach one of the major gaming consoles—the Nintendo Wii, the Microsoft Xbox, or the Sony PlayStation 3—to your HDTV. They all connect to the Internet and deliver video content similar to the alternatives mentioned above. Netflix and other services’ video can be shown using these gaming consoles. The also play optical discs and the PlayStation 3 includes a built-in Blu-ray player.

You might not need a cable box and end up saving money.

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http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-guardian-news-feed/

This article was written by Mark Sweney, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 2nd July 2010 11.38 UTC

Tim Kevan, who quit the Times last month before its online content went behind a paywall, is to publish his BabyBarista blog on the Guardian’s law website from today.

Kevan published his fictional blog about a junior barrister on the Times website for three years before he resigned in May, arguing that BabyBarista was not designed to be “the exclusive preserve of a limited few subscribers”.

Guardian News & Media, publisher of the guardian.co.uk website network, including guardian.co.uk/law and MediaGuardian.co.uk, has struck a deal with Kevan., as part of which his blog will appear on the guardian.co.uk/law website and continue to be published at babybarista.com.

“This is a great example of how we are pioneering digital innovation and openness, working both commercially and editorially with the online community through our Open Platform, rather than shutting them out,” said Janine Gibson, editor, guardian.co.uk. “This is just the first step towards working in new ways with talented writers, bloggers and creators.”

Kevan added: “Not only does the Guardian have what I consider to be the most vibrant and innovative online presence of any of the national newspapers but also what is now the very best law section freely available to all.

“I’m particularly impressed by the way they have introduced the idea of partnering with bloggers such as myself, allowing me to retain my own website and identity.”

Kevan is the first partner signed for GNM’s new WordPress plug-in, which will enable bloggers to publish content from guardian.co.uk on their own sites free.

“Bloggers will be able to browse through our articles on the WordPress platform, choosing which articles they wish to publish on their blogs,” said Matt McAlister, head of the Guardian development network.

“We will embed ads within the articles in order to build a global ad network for the Guardian, yet the bloggers will be able to keep any associated revenue that they earn on their own sites.”

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010