Flashback on BBC Radio Manchester: 1991

Over at the BBC this afternoon for Flashback with Becky Want, talking about the gadgets of years past. Listen live around Manchester on 95.1FM, or on the iPlayer if you're more digitally inclined.

Today's years are 1991 and 2002. The latter year I've already posted some notes on previously, so here's a few points on 1991 - not the most exciting year in technology...

• The World Wide Web went live, which is clearly huge, but I believe much of the work on it including its specification, was completed the previous year.
• Trevor Baylis introduced the wind-up radio, inspired by stories that safe sex messages weren't reaching rural parts of Africa because of the lack of mains power and the price of batteries. Baylis is the archetypal potting shed inventor, an eccentric ex-stuntman with a creative mind, and I think he probably did much to kickstart enthusiasm for inventing stuff in the UK.
• IBM exited the type-writer business as PCs made the devices increasingly obsolete.
• The first phones appeared on passenger planes that could make calls from anywhere in the skies. Weird to think that was almost two decades ago, when soon we'll have mobile phones working on flights.

100 years earlier there was a much more important gadget arriving on the scene. One that makes even the Web look unimportant (well, almost). The electric kettle first appeared in 1891.

Blog Evolution

Still not getting as much time as I would like to blog, but I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. However that light may be eclipsed by the impending arrival of my first kid...

In the meantime however I am switching the comments system for this blog over to Disqus. Seems to be the way to go these days, and since I'm considering an actual push to achieve greater readership on this blog (and a forthcoming work blog) I think I need to be prepared! Also a good chance to experiment with a platform we may be recommending to clients.

Digital Britain: Investing in the transport network

Popped down to the BBC this morning to talk with Alan Beswick about the Digital Britain report, unveiled yesterday. The papers have been full of news about the 'tax' to pay for the future of the UK's broadband infrastructure. The government has proposed a 50p per month levy on all copper lines to go towards a next generation fund for 'superfast' broadband - i.e. fibre to the home (FTTH).

Personally I'm all for this. Think of the internet as a transport mechanism, the successor to the motorway and the train line rather than an evolution of the phone. It performs the same functions: connecting people to their places of work and leisure, carrying products from the vendor to the consumer. Looking back, who would baulk at a small levy to pay for the trains or the motorways? (Apart from environmentalists with the latter)

The only problem for me with this report, is its lack of ambition. 2Mbps by 2012 is a noble target for universal access, but the risk is that it sets the bar a little low. Alongside this I would have liked to see a little more detail about what the stretch target should be for FTTH. This is a point I made in the consultation process for the report through the response from the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce's IT Committee (which I helped to draft).

It's a small gripe though: the report acknowledges that a lot of the drive towards FTTH is unlikely to come from massive investment from BT, and is more likely to be driven on a regional basis - good news for groups like our own Manchester Digital Development Agency, currently rolling out fibre in north Manchester. The phone line levy should provide them with a pot to keep pushing the rollout forward.

In all it's great to see the government taking a holistic view of the digital economy in the UK. If the only thing the papers can find to gripe about is a £6/year 'tax', then the report's authors should consider it a job well done.

Flashback: The top gadgets and tech stories of 1978

It has been an unbelievably hectic few weeks with the sale of my company (The Lever) to the mighty And Partners, and the formation of our new business under the And brand: And Digital. Have still found time for the occasional radio spot though, last week joining Becky Want on BBC Radio Manchester to talk about the tech stories of 1978.

Obviously 1978 was a fantastic year for the technology industry... I was born! But seriously, here are the big stories of the year:

• Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston created VisiCalc, the first visual spreadsheet system for personal computers. For such an apparently dull application it became a huge driving force for the sales of PCs and today people use spreadsheets for everything.

• Epson introduced the first dot-matrix printer to be a big success with home users. Its flexibility meant that dot-matrix printers quickly replaced those that could only print whole letters in the style of a typewriter.

• The first spam e-mail was sent by Gary Thuerk, then an employee at Digital (which became part of Compaq, which became part of HP). He used it to advertise the new DECSYSTEM-2020 on ARPAnet, the predecessor to the Internet.

• The 5.25-inch floppy disk became an industry standard.

• The first worm virus was developed by John Shoch and Jon Hupp at Xerox PARC - the incredible place that I am now thinking should be a world heritage site, or perhaps be named as the eighth wonder thanks to its incredible role in the history of computing.

• Korea Semiconductor was renamed Samsung Semiconductors - now one of the global giants of consumer electronics.

• NEC (Nippon Electricity Company) introduced the 'Voice Data Input Terminal' - the first computer with a voice interface. It could recognise a library of 120 different words spoken in groups of up to five.

Twitter Clients and Adobe Air for Ubuntu Netbook Remix

I confess I've gone from a convert to a zealot in 24 hours. Ubuntu Netbook Remix is cool.

OK, cool might be taking it a little far, but it is far and away the best option I've seen for a powerful, lightweight OS for netbooks. Latest evidence? Twitter clients.

More specifically, the ease with which you can install Adobe Air, the platform on which so many Twitter clients are based. Here are some modified instructions taken from Sizlopedia:

Download Adobe Air to your Home directory from http://get.adobe.com/air/

Open the terminal and run the following commands:

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

then

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Wait a while – it will look like it's not doing anything for a bit. Eventually though, the Adobe Air installer will appear and take you through the process.

Once you have Air installed, you can add sorts of cool apps, including the popular Twitter client, Twhirl. I've tried all the others and I'm fast coming to see what everyone's been raving about. Just download the file from the website, open up the appropriate directory, and double-click on it to install. It's that simple.

Now you can tweet to your heart's content.

CCTV Call Awakens Freedom Fears

Two years ago I wrote about CCTV. We are the most watched nation on earth, and my concern was that the police/government might try to automate the monitoring of CCTV images with some kind of computer system. I don't have too much of a problem with isolated cameras, monitored by human beings: you can argue (rightly or wrongly) that they have a preventative effect on crime and at worst provide evidence after the fact.

Link all the cameras together and apply some form of intelligence though, and a single person or agency can begin to monitor people's lives in great detail. That for me is an invasion of privacy, the downsides of which overwhelm any security arguments.

At a conference last week the director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers reported that officers are being overwhelmed by the volume of CCTV data available. One of his major concerns was that officers cannot track a car in real time using Automatic Number Plate Recognition.

This for me sounds very much like the top of a long and greasy slope. At the bottom of that slope is automatic facial recognition and real-time tracking of people.

Sure I can see the security benefits. But do they outweigh the risks?

However right-minded they might appear, you can't just hand powers over to a government and trust they will always be used responsibly. Look at the current government's record: rendition; torture; infiltration of protest groups; heavy-handed control of demonstrations; RIPA.

We live in a very safe, democratic society, but at the fringes our rights to privacy and freedom of expression are definitely being eroded. We all ought to be aware of further changes. You never know how future governments might use the powers we give them today.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix: Winner

This morning I finally got around to testing out the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my little Acer AspireOne. I'm writing this blog post on it now, and though I've had limited time for testing, so far I am really impressed.

For one thing, the Vodafone Mobile Broadband dongle just works: plug and play. That is a big plus point.

The whole interface is a massive improvement over the default too. A lot of thought has gone into creating a lightweight but attractive platform for small, low-power devices. Well done Canonical and all involved in the development effort.

If you want to try it out, you just need to download the IMG file from here and write it to a 1GB flash drive. I found that to be simpler on a Windows machine using Win32 Image Writer, though I'd appreciate anyone offering a guide to doing it in Linpus – the default Acer operating system.

Before you do anything else, I'd recommend backing your whole system up. Macles has kindly made that very straightforward: find instructions and software downloads on his/her blog.

Only downside I've found is that the WiFi switch no longer works. I can cope with that though.