There is a new game for Android mobile users called Ingress. It is from Google and based on their popular Google Maps. The game requires you to get out of the lounge and into the real world. It is already being played in Bangkok but is in closed beta mode until the end of April. You'll need a Google+ Community account, sensible shoes, patience and time. You play on one of the two sides doing battle for control and if you want to know more go to www.ingress.com. I'm playing on the side of the Enlightened that is doing well in Bangkok but as I write this the Resistance is currently winning worldwide. Watch out for spies!
I like the idea of a game that requires you to get out there. You can meet new people in the real world instead of some unknown person in the digital world. You get some exercise, or driving time, and it is a change from the usual static game playing experience found in the overwhelming majority of games where the most exercise you get is getting up from the chair to pay for the pizza.
PC sales are falling and according to IDC the problem could be Windows 8. I know many people who will be waiting for Windows 9 in the same way they skipped Vista for Windows 7. The changes were too vast for the average punter to make the move, leaving those who love tablets and those with no choice as the major takers. Even in Asia where they love new technology and new things, they have been tepid when it comes to Windows 8 adoption and across the board there has been a double-digit decline in PC sales for most of the big names. With PC CPUs growing in cores rather than speed and that wow factor lost, the big speed gains are now in the graphics market.
Do you dislike blinking tags on web forms? Good news, Firefox is the only browser that still supports it and before the year is out the tag will no longer be supported by any major browser. Internet Explorer has never supported them, but others like Opera once did. The original tag was put there as a joke, according to Netscape developer Lou Montulli that is. It was put in the code after a long drinking session and has never been part of the HTML spec. Come August it will be no more.
I've been trying to figure out what they are. The US air force has classified six cyber tools as weapons to help them get some more funding. There were no details so my mind has been active. A drone delivered computer virus? A brainwashed ex-virus writer's brain in a robot body? Whatever they are it means an extra 1,200 people to integrate cyber capabilities with other weapons, whatever that means. I know that one of them must be a virus-seeking missile of some kind.
I love Amazon and I am a regular user of their Kindle technology. I never really felt that they got it right with the Fire range of devices. The reason is simple: they made it a closed platform. Enter the latest Kobo Arc touchscreen e-reader device that runs native Android and so has free access to the Google Play store. They have worked out that open sells better than closed. The Kobo runs the Amazon Kindle app, in case you were wondering. With a 7-inch screen, good design and different price points, Amazon should be watching.
Physical music sales are starting to drop as digital sales increase. Sales of vinyl, however, have recovered back to 1990 levels, globally, so go figure. As I have been pointing out for years the music industry in general has never figured out the internet and probably never will.
Longtime reader and friend Dave Ercanbrack sent me a link to the new-look Gmail where the compose process has been changed. It took me a couple of goes to figure it out because things have been rearranged, new features added and the whole process is a lot more powerful. It took a couple of goes to work out what was going on because, you know, who reads the guide?
MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. These are high quality, online courses for free. Sure there have been training courses online in the past but they were generally simple, lacked a lot of detail and very basic. MOOCs are voluntary so motivation comes from the student and when you are finished there is no diploma or degree. So it must be no-name universities offering such education, right? Wrong. Try Stanford, UC Berkley, MIT, Duke, Harvard, UCLA, Yale and Carnegie Mellon for some that are offering this free education.
Just because it's really cool I'm ending this week's article with a story out of Austria. The plan is to send one of a pair of entangled photons up to the International Space Station (ISS). The experiment will check the synchronicity of the two photons over 500km apart and under different conditions of gravity. The speed of interaction will also be measured. They will also test quantum key distribution between Earth and the ISS for future quantum computing and encryption purposes.
James Hein is an IT professional of more than 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.