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It was way back last year that a guy called Andy Shiach came to my house and syringed a thick gloop into my ears. It was in a good cause. Andy is an ex musician who damaged his ears while playing. He has been an evangelist for protecting ears against noise damage ever since.

His company, Advanced Communication Solutions has been involved with earphone specialist Etymotic Research for a while now.

When Andy came to see me a year ago the purpose was to make custom moulds of my ear canals, and then use these to produce a pair of lasts from which personalised sleeves were made for a set of Etymotic ER-6i earphones.

I love my music and I want the listening experience to be as high quality as I can make it. But I’m not much of a geek when it comes to being able to define listening quality. Nevertheless I found the combination amazing, and am still using it a year on.

Recently Etymotic came up with a new set of headphones, the hf2. These are being sold via Apple online or in store for £99. They have an inline microphone so you can use them with an iPhone. They are very good indeed. I know because I’m listening to my iPod through them now.

And I’m wearing them with a new set of sleeves, made from the lasts that Andy produced a year ago. If you want a pair of sleeves too, you take the voucher you get when you buy the hf2s into a store to get moulds made. That'll cost a further £90. There are plenty of outlets offering the service.

Sleeves have about a five year lifespan, apparently. After that the ear canal will have changed shape enough to make the sleeves ineffective in their jobs. Which are: to be comfortable in the ear and to assist with noise isolation.

Achieving those two jobs means you get higher quality music output at a lower sound level. This means you don’t turn the volume up higher than is necessary, which in turn means you don’t risk damaging your ears.

Advanced Communication Solutions makes sleeves for a range of headphones – check their Web site out for more information.

After a teaser campaign that mentioned integrated Zoho web-based services and a 'popular Microsoft product', Zoho has unveiled Zoho Projects 2.0, which brings together Microsoft Project and a collection of Zoho's online collaboration services.



Billed as 'the social way to get things done', Zoho Projects claims to go beyond traditional project management by allowing teams to plan projects in Microsoft's application and use Zoho's services to manage them. Among the Zoho elements are a centralised file store, a project calendar, a wiki, chat rooms and forums, and the ability to create a project-based intranet.

If you want to try the system (and we'll be reporting further on it), you get one free project with unlimited users when you sign up.

I have been wanting to get my hands on an HP Mini 2140 netbook ever since I read the first announcement for it. I already own an HP 2133 Mini-Note (wouldn't it be nice if they would be more consistent about naming/numbering similar models?), and the packaging is nearly identical - in particular, it has the same sturdy case, and the same wonderful keyboard. There are crucial differences in the internals, though, the most significant of which is the Intel Atom 270 CPU, rather than the VIA C7-M, and their associated chips. Of course, in terms of avoiding headaches and difficulty, at the top of the "associated chips" list I would put the Intel GMA 950 display controller, rather than the VIA Chrome in the 2133. These differences should make installing Linux a LOT easier on the 2140 than it was on the 2133... SHOULD make...

Grrr. Sometimes things are easy. Sometimes not. This one is a definite NOT. Because the 2140 came with a relatively old SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 installed, I decided to just skip that and go straight for the throat - install Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and be done with it and ready to work in 30 minutes or less. Yeah, right... Unfortunately, it wouldn't boot UNR from a USB stick. No idea why, it just wouldn't. Fortunately, it would boot the same image from an SD card. Still no idea why, but at least it boots and I can run the UNR installation process. Very smooth, very fast, looks good... installation done, time to reboot... and CRASH! GRRR!

GRUB comes up, but as soon as the Linux kernel tries to boot, it crashes in a huge mess. Repeated tries, repeated failures, it looks like it's always the same crash, but there is way too much info dumped to the console for me to see it all go flying past. Maybe a BIOS problem... well, the BIOS in this (brand new) system is indeed one revision out of date. Download and install the new BIOS... no problems... try to boot... no dice, still crashes! Reinstall, just in case the BIOS change has some effect on installation (I know, I'm grasping at straws here)... nope, still crashes miserably on boot.

Now I'm getting irritated and desperate. Try booting the Ubuntu LiveCD, still crashes. Maybe it's something unique to Ubuntu... try booting the Mandriva LiveCD... still crashes. UGH. Go back and restore the original SLED distribution from the recovery DVD, to make sure this isn't simply a defective 2140. Restores fine, boots, loads and runs fine. On the positive side, that whole process didn't really take all that long. On the negative side, having seen and worked with UNR and Moblin for a while now, I wouldn't want to give this netbook to someone with the bare-bones SLED 10 distribution!

Ok, so this is something about the newer Linux distributions. No idea what. Search the web for 2140, Ubuntu, Netbook Remix and such, until I stumble onto this post from someone who had the same problem. They say it is because the 2140 BIOS is shipped with Dual Core support enabled, even though it only has a single Atom. Hmmm. That could be. Check the BIOS.. yup, Dual Core enabled. Change that, reboot... HOORAY! It works, and it looks as beautiful as I had expected it to a couple of hours ago when I started this!

There has to be more to this, though. Why was that option enabled in the BIOS, why are there so few notes about it on the web, what are the consequences of disabling it in the BIOS... Ok, I found an Ubuntu bug on launchpad about this. It seems the Dual Core option is enabled to support Hyperthreading in the Atom CPU. That sounds familiar, my Dual Atom nettop shows as having four CPUs because of Hyperthreading... The bug thread ends by saying this is fixed in Linux kernel 2.6.29, but that kernel is in Ubuntu 9.10 (currently in Alpha), not 9.04. I'm preparing this for a friend, so I am certainly not going to give it to her with either an Alpha distribution, or an updated non-standard kernel... sigh. I'll have to leave Dual Core disabled in the BIOS for now. It looks like there are relatively few reports of this on the web because it was not a problem with earlier Ubuntu releases (i.e. pre-2.6.28 Linux kernels). I suppose that I could have gotten around this by loading Ubuntu 8.10, but my enthusiasm for using an older distribution is not much higher than it is for using an Alpha of 9.10...

So, now I can continue with software installation and configuration. More on that, the 2140 in general, tomorrow.

jw 1/7/2009

First, a lengthy quote from the Mio Web site:

“Wherever you go, the V505 TV’s 4.7" widescreen helps you get the most out of navigation and also gives you Digital TV in sharp detail*. The V505 TV auto-tunes itself, so you can find what’s on quickly and easily. Brightness, volume and other controls are adjusted simply by using the touchscreen or the remote control* and the integral Programme Guide shows the date, time and channel of your favourite shows up to a week ahead.

…….. [more product description]………..

*The TV and video player feature must not be used in the front of the vehicle while driving or in any way that may distract the driver as this may cause an accident. Please make sure that you comply with this warning. Mio assumes no liability in this regard.”


This is all found here and you’ll find a similar text describing another product, the V735 which has a larger screen plus TV.

Now, I know satnav makers are trying to differentiate themselves by putting new and different features in their devices. But TV?

If we’ve made using a mobile while driving illegal and people still do it, what do we think is going to happen with this device?

The Moblin steering committee has announced the "release" of the Moblin 2.0 Beta for netbooks and nettops. I have a couple of questions and comments about that, before I get into the last few observations about the software.

First, what are they "releasing" with the announcement yesterday? The current download image has been available for nearly two weeks. I've noticed that several batches of updates came through in the past couple of days, so maybe there were some fixes implemented prior to this announcement. But if that is the case, then why not make a new build available for download, with all the latest updates? Seems a bit odd to me.

Also, I find the addition of "nettops" in the announcement interesting. Not only as the proud owner of one, but also as a sign that they are keeping an eye on their target users.

Ok, now for my last few comments about Moblin. I've already written about the Moblin desktop, so this time I just want to fill in some details about how specific things work. Right at the top of the list is the browser. Now, I know that they say the Moblin browser is based on "the latest Mozillabrowser technology", but is it really necessary to invent yet another browser which looks, feels and works completely differently than Firefox, Chrome, Safar, IE or whatever? Maybe it is - maybe they think that their target users are so different from traditional computer users that they really need to design a new and different browser. But for experienced users, or really anyone who has used a browser before, the Moblin browser is likely to be the source of a lot of confusion and frustration at first. It certainly was for me!

I like the idea of "Pinned pages", especially because of its consistency with "Pinning" applications to the Favorites area. But that brings up the thing that confuses me - what is the difference between "Pinned Pages" and "Favourite Pages", and how do things get moved between those two? I looked high and low for Bookmarks before I finally realized that pressing the push-pin in the address bar would add the current page to the "Pinned pages" list. How and why do pages get added to "Favourites", how long do they stay there, how could I add my own to that list, or remove unwanted ones from that list? It looks to me like recently visited pages automatically get added, but it doesn't take much thought to realize that isn't a very good idea at all - in fact, it is just the opposite of the "private browsing mode" that IE and Firefox have been working on recently. If I visit the American Greetings page to create a birthday card for someone, and I don't particularly want her to know about it until I give her the card, why would I want that page added to my Favourites? How would I get it out of there after it was automatically added? You get the idea...

Second, Moblin seems to have decided to minimize the number of mouse/button actions. There are no "Minimize/Maximize" buttons in the window title bars, and there are only the simplest of "Backward/Forward" buttons. Also, I haven't found anyplace where right-clicking the mouse does anything at all... it's almost like someone from the original Apple Lisa/Mac group was involved, the ones who said "An N-button mouse has N-1 too many buttons". Again, this is a significant problem for experienced users, but might not be so serious for users who were first starting with Moblin.

One thing Moblin does not do which UNR does is start every window full-screen. Most of the top menu items are full screen, such as myZone, Internet and Media; others start with less than that, but may expand depending on what you do with them, such as Status, People and Pasteboard. I think both Moblin and UNR are going to have to rethink this a bit if they are serious about adding nettops to their target list. Automatic full screen is probably good when you only have a tiny netbook screen, but with a 19" screen on a nettop, there's not much that I want to see full screen, thanks very much.

Finally, the entire concept of desktop management seems odd to me. No task bar or system tray, or any other kind of always (or automatically) visible display of active windows. I suppose you are supposed to do all window management (or desktop management) by going to the "Zones" menu item, but that seems rather tedious to me, and besides I once again don't understand what gets put into which zone or why. Experienced users want to click an icon to go directly to whatever window they need. It looks to me like the "Zones" display will get pretty cluttered and confusing very quickly - but then again, maybe you aren't supposed to have a lot of open windows simultaneously, so it shouldn't matter.

All of the comments above, and some that I have made previously, lead me back to the same conclusion about Moblin. It looks like they have chosen novice or inexperienced computer users as their target audience. The entire setup, organization, desktop layout and options of Moblin seem to be geared toward using it as the center of your "Social Networking" activities. I think this is significant because there is a big difference between concentrating on netbooks and the like which have limited hardware, both input (small keyboard and touchpad), output (small display) and processing power (Atom CPU), which is what the Ubuntu Netbook Remix has done, and developing for a totally different target user group.

As I have said before, Moblin may well turn out to be exactly right with their approach. The success of Social Networking so far makes it obvious that this target group is very large. If Moblin appeals to them, and the netbook/nettop market continues to grow rapidly, they might end up in a great position. It might well be that if your target hardware is netbooks and nettops, then specifically not targeting experienced users is a good idea. We have had several discussions here on ZDNet UK about the fact that experienced users are frequently dissatisfied with the inherent limitations of netbook hardware. But if my own experience is any indication, nettops might confuse that, because I really like my Dual Atom nettop, but I would never consider running Moblin on it for my own use.

Here's another metric. I think it would be interesting to give a netbook with Moblin to a novice user, and see how they get on with it. But I am so uncertain about Moblin myself that I would never risk it with anyone who came to me for help. As I've said recently, I just set up a neighbor with Ubuntun Netbook Remix on an old Eee PC, and she is very pleased with it. I was just asked for similar help by another friend, but this time she didn't have a netbook yet, so I have ordered a new HP Mini 2140 for her. I will load UNR on it as soon as it arrives - I wouldn't even consider giving it to her with Moblin on it. Has anyone else done just the opposite, perhaps? I know there have been one or two comments to my previous blog posts about Moblin from people who were considering using it, or setting it up for other family members or friends. If anyone actually did that, I'd love to hear how it worked out, and what the user comments, successes and failures were.

One last thing. I'm still very disturbed by the lack of a "Stop/Shutdown/Off" button on Moblin, and I don't think I am the only one bothered by that, especially with experienced users but also with novices. I can see the argument about other devices simply turning off with the switch, such as cell phones, smart phones, PDAs or whatever. I've also heard the arguments about how conceptually difficult or confusing designing such a button or menu can be - there was a fascinating article about the internal workings at Microsoft that focused on the design of the "Shutdown" menu for Vista. But would it be so difficult, or dangerous, or confusing, to put one more button on the menu bar? There are plenty of hieroglyphics on there already, adding one more isn't likely to suddenly put the confusion factor over the top, is it? Especially if it is one that simply looks a lot like a power switch, sort of like the Gnome or KDE Stop/Shutdown buttons do?

Maybe I'm wrong - if there is anyone out there who thinks the lack of a Shutdown option, and having to use only the computer power button to shut down Moblin, is a good idea, I'd love to hear from you, so speak up!

jw 30/6/2009

A Californian law firm is looking for potential plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit over laptop makers' battery life claims.

Girard Gibbs has put up a webpage referring to AMD's claims that "many laptop battery manufacturers calculate battery life based on a misleading test that is conducted by running computers at low energy levels, resulting in seemingly larger life span numbers".

"If you believe that your laptop battery has a shorter life span than what was advertised or represented to you, or if you would like to learn more about our investigation, please fill out the form on the right for a free consultation," the law firm urges.

Girard Gibbs says it has, in the past, achieved "significant recoveries" from companies including Apple, Sony BMG, MCI, AT&T, Mitsubishi, BMW, Whirlpool, America Online, and Paypal.

Nokia’s N97 hit my desk on Friday courtesy of Clove and I’ve been fiddling with it over the weekend.

Nokia is trying to pull off a clever trick with the N97. The handset is right out of the old Communicator line-up in that there is a qwerty keyboard here. OK, the design isn’t clamshell like the Communicator handsets. Instead it mimics the likes of HTC’s Touch Pro 2 by having a screen which slides and tilts so that it sits at a good viewing angle when the N97 is on the desk. I approve. That notwithstanding, Microsoft Exchange support helps make the case for this handset to business users.




But the user interface design and build – as well as the name - cry out that this is an N series handset aimed primarily at a more consumer centric group. The handset looks like other N series devices being black and silver and sporting lots of plastic.

Now, I am not saying that businesspeople aren’t consumers too. Not saying that both might like the BBC iPlayer, YouTube client, 5 megapixel camera, calendar, Ovi Store, FM radio, FM transmitter, 3.5mm top-mounted headset, Wi-Fi, GPS, etc, etc (Bonnie has written a detailed review and I’m not going to cover the same ground here).

What I am saying is that Nokia seems to have thrown everything at the N97, slapped a very hefty price tag on it, and then expects it to live up to the market leaders – i.e. the likes of HTC’s Hero and the iPhone 3G S, and capture users of Communicators when, in fact, it seems like a lesser handset to me.

For example, the touch screen. Not only does it lack pixels if it is to be considered leading edge (640 x 360 as opposed to the HTC Touch Pro 2’s 480 x 800, for example), but the touch screen is resistive (versus capacitive). Yes, HTC uses resistive screens too, but if you are going for leading edge, it is one of the things you need to consider.

The touch version of S60 gets its second outing here, having been first seen in the unashamedly consumer-facing 5800 XpressMusic. Its inconsistency on screen-press requirements (one, or two taps to select – it varies) doesn’t endear me, and it feels very much as if touch has been added on top of S60 rather than being made an integral feature.

What is probably going to stymie most business users, though, is the keyboard. Its three QWERTY rows are made up of smallish keys, fairly flush to the backing. I found it easier and faster to type than I’d expected, but there is no doubting the keyboard has been truncated to make space for a D-pad which could probably have been fitted onto the screen section.

Why is the space bar on the far right edge of the bottom row? And the one shift key at bottom left? There’s no room for dedicated keys for ‘@’, Wi-Fi activation, application shortcuts. It’ll take some users an age to acclimatise and anyone thinking of trading up from a Communicator would do well to compare their current device’s keyboard with what’s on offer here.

This all sounds incredibly negative, and I admit I have chosen just a few things to focus on which help make my point. Which is that Nokia should take a long, hard look at what the top end of the smartphone market is doing right now and think about innovating, and stealing the thunder of the current market leaders. The N97 is good, but it could have been great.

Although I have been mostly occupied with UNR and Moblin for the past week or two, I have managed to take a little time to look at the new Fedora release. The results have been decidedly mixed.

The first hurdle I had to get over was the installation quirk that I wrote about recently. Once I got that worked out, I was able to install Fedora 11 on both of my notebooks (Fujitsu S6510, Intel, and Fujitsu-Siemens S2110, AMD/ATI), and it works very well. Support for all of the various integrated devices and controllers is just fine, including the ATI display controller, Broadcom and Marvel wired network and Atheros and Intel wireless network. Speed seems good, although I have the feeling that it actually doesn't boot quite as fast as Ubuntu 9.04 - I haven't tried to time it yet to see if this is true, though.

I was also able to install it on the Dual Atom nettop system with no trouble, The performance seems much worse than on the laptops, though. The display in particular seems very sluggish; admittedly, that system only has an Intel 950 display controller, but Fedora is noticeably slower on screen updates and such than any of the other Linux distributions I have loaded on it. Two examples - when the login screen comes up, and I click on my name, it is very noticeably slow in changing the display to the "Password" prompt - I can actually watch most of the screen changes taking place; also, if I leave the system idle until the screen saver comes on, then touch the keyboard or mouse to wake it back up, it takes 5 seconds or more before it finally prompts me for the password. Now, to be fair, this is only an Atom-based system, but as it is a pretty well equipped dual CPU Atom system, I suppose this means that I wouldn't be rushing right out to put Fedora 11 on a netbook...

Which brings me to the last problem. I wasn't able to install it at all on my HP 2133 Mini-Note systems. It boots and starts the installation process just fine, but about halfway through it gets an "unexpected exception", and the installation process crashes. I've tried both the LiveCD and the Installation DVD, and both do the same thing. I've tried a few things to get around it, but I didn't really have much time to spend on it, so I gave up fairly quickly.

So, in summary, if you are a Fedora fan, and you have a more or less "standard" desktop or notebook, you will probably be able to install Fedora 11 without too much trouble, and you're very likely to be happy with the results. But if you have a netbook, with either an Atom or VIA CPU, I don't think you'll have much luck - I certainly didn't.

jw 28/6/2009

Update: After writing this (on Ant under Fedora 11), I let it install all the latest Fedora 11 updates. The display is clearly faster now. It's still not spectacularly fast, but the Intel 950 is not a spectacularly good display chip. It is certainly good enough now, though.

jw

It's been a week since I loaded my neighbor's Eee PC with UNR, and last night I had the chance to talk with her about her experience with it so far. The Reader's Digest version: she loves it. It works, it's does all that she wants (and more), and it's easy to use.

First, and most importantly, she didn't know or care that it was running Ubuntu, or Linux, or Not Windows, or anything else. She has, of course, noticed that the desktop and programs were different from what she has on her "normal" PC, which is running XP. But she was able to understand how to use the Eee PC, from what I had shown her and from discovering on her own (she had tried out Cheese and taken some pictures with the built-in camera, for example).

She has been using Firefox for web browsing, and was likewise not bothered by the differences between it and Internet Explorer, which she had been using on her XP system. She was particularly pleased that the Eee PC is so small and light, and connects quickly and reliably to WiFi, so she is able to use it all through the house, and even outside in the garden.

She also wanted to use Skype, to talk to family and friends in the U.S., but hadn't been able to get it going. I looked at it with her, and after the usual round of test calls and "Can you hear me now?", "Can you see me now?", I got the Skype settings properly adjusted, and it all works. Text chat (of course), audio calls both using the built-in microphone and speakers and using a headset connected to the audio jacks, and video calls using the built-in camera.

I discovered an SD card in the card reader slot, and she said oh yes, she had tried that, and it worked just fine. She has transferred the pictures to the Eee PC with no problem. I am honestly pleased and surprised by the things she has been able to discover and/or figure out on her own with UNR.

The only problems she has had are with the Eee PC hardware itself. The biggest of those is the no-button touchpad. Ugh. It's just awful to try to work with that thing, so she generally uses a USB mouse. The screen is also very small, which occasionally causes a problem when programs open a window that is not scaled properly and ends up being larger than the screen - with critical options or buttons missing off the bottom. I showed her how to Alt-Drag a window to get around that.

So, the first summary is, UNR on her Eee PC is a solid success. If there is such a thing as a "classic" netbook user and situation, she is it. She doesn't want much (at least yet), just web browsing, email, Skype, and basic digital photo manipulation. She wants to use it wherever she happens to be in the house, rather than being tied to her desk. She doesn't want it to crash, hang, ask questions that she doesn't even understand, much less know the answer to, or continually pop up windows informing, warning or asking for confirmation of something (all things that her desktop system has done). It just works, and she doesn't care how or why, or what is "under the hood", as long as it stays that way.

jw 25/6/2009

So, I spent some of yesterday taking a first quick look at HTC’s new Android handset, the Hero. You’ve got to admire the company’s chutzpah for coming up with a name like that.

Both T-Mobile and Orange are going to carry it. It’ll be T-Mobile’s second bite at the Android cherry, Orange’s first. And with Vodafone already sporting the HTC Magic (which I reviewed), it leaves O2 and 3 out in the cold as far as Android is concerned.

The Hero is the first non-Google branded Android handset and if you want to see what it looks like and learn a bit more about it, then check out David Meyer’s excellent photo story.

After my brief sojourn with the Hero I have to say I am very impressed with what I saw, and with HTC’s ongoing approach to smartphone development.




That approach is typified by the new user interface. Called HTC Sense this is all about bringing what the user wants to the foreground. So, for example, there are seven ‘home’ screens through which you flip using fingerpans.

You can drag application icons onto them, but more interestingly they can be populated with large widgets that aren’t just links to applications but that show content. So, for example, a Twitter fan can see recent tweets just by flipping to the relevant home screen. This is a feature that third party Android applications can exploit too.

Then there is stuff like being able to access email and texts direct from the contact data screen, so that you can see ‘conversations’ with individuals. And the rather obvious but extremely useful way in which the search button works as you’d expect it to in whatever application you are currently running.

Indeed, that is the point. HTC wants users to be able to get to what the Hero offers without having to think too much. It is all about ‘zero touch’, or at the minimum ‘one touch’ usabilty. And HTC Sense is an ethos that HTC will embed in all its devices going forward.

The smartphone wars are hotting up.