Gaargh! Upgraded Ubuntu and simply upgraded my existing problem. For some reason which I cannot fathom, my desktop with it’s nice wired connection is not permitted to connect automatically. With the wonderful new GUI based tools I can’t simply tweak the boot scripts to fix it.

This is definitely more painful then needed, but this works (with thanks to the people over at the Ubuntu forum):

1) Setup /etc/network/interfaces to have an appropriate entry for the         
interface you use such as:

   1: auto eth0

   2: iface eth0 inet dhcp 

You may also wonder why that entry is not already there… I know I did!

2) Purge the Network manager:

   1: sudo aptitude purge network-manager network-manager-gnome 

3) KILL the remaining Network Manager processes (if you don’t; any DHCP sessions you try and create will not bind)

   1: root      5749     1  0 11:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/nm-system-settings   

   2: --config /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf

   3: xxxxx     6328  6086  0 11:59 ?        00:00:01 nm-applet --sm-disable 

4) Restart the networking:

   1: sudo /etc/init.d/network restart

The Pros of this approach ? There is now hopefully only one thing managing your network and it will no longer do it by creating merged config files in /run to do it. The Cons ? You lose your nice status icon. You may get over that.

It started as a question this morning as I made the usual coffee. The question being, why should I write documents instead of webpages or wiki articles ?

Over the course of a large number of projects, I’ve always had a Wiki around to document things in. I have to say I really like wikis although they do take up a lot more time then you would think.

When I’ve needed to actually distribute information, it’s always in a document. Be it .doc(x) or PDF.

The reasoning is pretty simple: ultimately a document is a solid tangible artefact that can be printed, signed, and filed. You don’t ask for your employment contract as a wiki article and when you buy a house you don’t sign into Google Docs to get the deeds!

So when are online tools good ? The cons for online articles are many:

• Wiki articles are constantly in flux and need an editor to keep them sane
• Pages move/get archived, become out of date
• Blogs are great as journals but no good for documents…
• Websites for wikis are often internal
• Easily edited documents aren’t always the best basis for agreement between disparate parties.

There is a possible future where all our documents are webpages constructed on the fly from some huge database, but for now, I think I prefer the old-fashioned document.

In a project I like doing the following:

• Day to day information (where is x, why do y etc), development, discourse, commenting etc – Wiki. This means you can keep it up to date (do you ?!)
• Blogs – team blogs – in place of reports ? maybe, but remember that people talk to each other so their use is limited if the audience is internal
• Design decisions/Contracts/Pitches/Version Controlled lifecycle documents – Document formats. While Wikis and so forth provide workflow and versioning, there is nothing quite as close or transparent to your organisation as having a document with a date and version on it. Everyone can see it, and everyone can reference (cite) it.

Now, there is one problem that electronic documents have that wikis do not. Where to store and search them… that is something I’m still trying to figure out. Maybe we can take some ideas from our older colleagues here, since paper file based systems seem to have had this figured out over time.

It had to happen, Google is releasing an OS. Their target is netbooks, small low-cost (and power) computers for those wanting something a bit bigger then a smartphone and smaller then a laptop.

Is this going to change my life ? Well probably not, much like Chrome, it will end up occupying the curiosity section at the back of the shop doomed to obscurity.

The key aspect of this OS is the idea that it will get you up and on the web in seconds, as “the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web” (Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, and Google’s engineering diector Linus Upson). We’ll leave the fact that an operating system has nothing whatsoever to do with the web.

Bear in mind that Google’s key plan is to get their grubby mitts on all your data, be it email, docs, video, contacts, whatever. Whatever is information, they want it. With it they can keep making money via AdSense/AdWords. If they know your hobbies then they’ll want you to know about people out there who can help you with them.

This has remarkably little to do with an OS and yet I feel deja-vu coming on. Remember IE4 anyone ? Or Windows 98 ? The Active Desktop ? The idea that we were always permanently connected to the ‘net ? Isn’t that a Sun marketing slogan ?

The idea isn’t new, so will it stick this time ?

The main thrust I can see from all this is that Google is building a better VNC, all your applications are in their house, and your netbook (with Chrome OS!) is just a gateway to them. But here is the question, on the eve of the launch of a service that has gathered millions of mobile numbers without notifying their “customers”, do you really want everything you have on the web, and then – in the hands of someone else ?

Even if that isn’t a primary concern to you, the other key challenges to Chrome are simply the technical ones, unless they are going to emulate Apple, they will have to support the myriad of devices and drivers out there. If they do manage this, they may then still have to persuade people to develop for them. I do wonder if we are about to see someone overreach themselves. In the commercial world, this isn’t going to make a dent. In the netbook market it’s still interesting to note the lack of impact of Linux, and the fact that XP was preferred simply because it was familiar and ran all the applications important to the users.

Where am I going with this ? Well here is the main problem, building a “new” desktop/netbook OS in this day and age is going to be a thankless and expensive task. You’ll need to cover: Hardware Support, and have Applications built for you. You’ll need testing, for all the devices that you do (or do not support). You need a user base, for whom you offer something that they either can’t get somewhere else, or that you do better. You can also produce yet another distribution of Linux, in an already fragmented market. Somewhere you’ll also need cash to build this platform and the willingness of people to invest in building for a new target platform. While Google ticks many of the boxes, it does strike me as more of an academic rather then a commercial exercise to do this. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Douglas Adams was right, the world is powered by ideas on the back of a napkin. In fact I wish people would do more of this.

I didn’t know that one of it’s main uses would be to stop the “I can do that in a weekend” point of view. But then estimation, is time and time again (pun not intentional) an issue raised by developers.

Maybe the best way to start a project is in a bistro, with a large supply of napkins and no computers…

Outlook 2010 is broken people! In what way ? Well it doesn’t render HTML… which is strange to me because it is an EMAIL client, not a web browser…

When did the idea of using a markup language that depends on server hosted artefacts become a sensible way of creating an email ? Unless you like being tracked in your inbox (yes this is why the images are not downloaded if your settings are smart) this is a really dumb idea. What exactly does HTML add to your words ?

So right now, 24,198 (at time of writing) want to Outlook to support “real” HTML, with “proper” CSS, and possibly… JavaScript. Can this nightmare get any worse ?!?

Well apparently it can’t, which is good. Not that I like RTF much either, I guess I’m an old-fashioned ASCII based luddite. Except nowadays I’m a UTF-8 based luddite.

It might be a little churlish to point out that approx 25,000 people is probably barely a fraction of the user base, and certainly not representative.

It has however demonstrated a couple of things: the idea of harnessing the community to provide news or trends is broken when it comes to twitter. You want to know what to fix when you have such a large and diverse user base ? The majority, not the noisy ones.

As you may have read I recently got Calendars working, and yay, for I was organised… well ok, not as well organised as I could be, but better anyway.

I could read mail and create and review events and all was good. I even made this work with my iPhone and all was good.

Except it wasn’t… I’d followed the instructions over at Get Started with CalDAV – Google Calendar Help unquestioningly which was my first mistake. On my shiny Vista x64 installation, Thunderbird proceeded to misfire, managing to connect properly only once in every 3 or 4 application starts, with the Calendar bringing it down.

It reached a head today with Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 having to have 10 restarts.

It has to be said I could find *NOTHING* about this on either Google or mozillaZine, and the few places I found a reference seemed to peter out… not sure why. Turning on the JavaScript console would only reveal that certain functions could not get access to data in local objects, rather then telling me about some more serious failure that had occurred in the connections.

Ok, enough, time to try a new approach. After creating a new profile for Thunderbird, I went for the instructions over at Lifehacker. I went through and noticed that rather then use the CalDAV option, a add-on that provided access to the Calendar data was preferred. And lo, installing the Provider for Google Calendar (0.5.1) add-on gave me a new option of “Google Calendar”. Following the instructions at the Mozilla Wiki (or the LifeHacker version since they are the same, although LifeHacker has pictures) it all works. Everytime…

Moral of this story ? Some better error reporting on network connections/data issues even if it is hidden under a details panel

Just in case you too are having a problem updating your iPhone 3G under Vista. The symptoms I had were that after downloading the update, the process stops with iTunes showing a dialog complaining about “network connection to  iTunes Store could not be made”. The phone will be displaying it’s activation image and only allowing emergency calls.

(from Apple Website)

If you can get to the Store by clicking on the “iTunes Store” link inside iTunes, then you’ll be pleased to know it’s probably nothing to do with your network. You probably need to do the following:

1. Shutdown iTunes
2. Find the iTunes application and run it as Administrator. On my (64Bit) install it is in: C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe. Right Click on it and select “Run as Administrator”.
3. If you have not done so already, unplug the iPhone and then re-attach it so iTunes picks it up. (I had to do this twice before it came up).
4. Select the device, if it does not do so automatically
5. Presto, it can now perform activation, and you should be greeted with “Sync in Progress” on the iPhone.

Most of the above is hidden in this help page at apple: Update and restore error messages on iPhone and iPod touch.

However – having to run applications as administrator to activate the iPhone – FAIL!

Good luck.

A long time ago the Romans realised that the biggest threat to power was a bunch of disillusioned citizens getting together and deciding to do something about it. This group was generally known as the “Mob”, or more theatrically the “Great Audience”. The main worry for the ruling powers was to keep the mob distracted. Note: distracted, not involved. The elite could afford to have their own little circles, but they would be small groups whose voices would be drowned out by the mob if the worst came to the worst.

This theme re-occurs throughout history and across the world and in various forms whether in peace or war. There are times when the Mob is one with the direction of the society, but most often it is seen as a disruptive influence.

The mob is best known to most people as “the general public” or “those not in my social/employment circle” but the most ready identifier of a mob is the anonymity of it. If people are subject to a large enough group to lose their sense of individualism and also cannot be readily identified, they often engage in behaviours that you would not attribute to them as individuals.

Even the size of the group can have some effect. Consider the behaviour of people from a small village where everyone is known to the behaviour of those in a city of millions where there is an unwritten thought “I’ll never see her/him/it again so why care about it ?”.

So what does this have to do with Social Media ? Right now I’m looking at Skype and noticing that of the 14,717,220 people online, I know 17. Those 17 I have elected to know and relate to for some reason. This blog on the other hand is public. Those 14,717,220 people can view and comment. Their actions may have an effect, be it spam, praise, criticism, ignorance (in action or by action), attention, linking and so on…. It is not as accessible in some ways as a message board but it is subject to the same problems. Let’s also remember email, who out there does not get spam ?

Those 14 million can become a very vocal “mob” for the minority in a medium which has no sanity checks. In some ways unlimited access to knowledge has also brought the same for ignorance.

Wikipedia and Twitter have managed to do something that years of meritocracy and and personal growth and development had railed against. They’ve made anonymity equal in status to experience and actual knowledge. People’s reputation now needs to be identified and managed within communities, which has added an element of measurement back into the process and some quantification of trust.

On one hand the Internet means that everyone has a voice. On the other hand, it has become the distraction of the Mob, and the sacrifices needed to keep the Mob going are people’s integrity, celebrity, and privacy.

Part of the motivation for this post was Trent Reznor’s account of why he is quitting the social media domain (also here).

After all, we don’t want to end up like this do we ?

The TV is not the Computer

I see this has cropped up again on the various roadmaps out there, and it’s high time I got my two pennies out there.

This is probably the 4 or 5th time in two (three) companies that this has come up as a user feature for a Digital TV (DTV) service… and nobody has built it yet, well they have, but I’ll come onto that.

The chief issue that I have with this idea is that no-one is entirely sure how it’s actually going to work!

Ok, hold up, from a technical viewpoint it’s entirely doable, with the emergence of technology that has it’s roots in the Internet world appearing on the DTV platform it’s perfectly possible to start having some form of user session to target content (and ads!)  to you.

If it’s that easy you ask, why haven’t we done it ? Well it comes down to something a bit more fundamental: How do people use a TV ?

That’s an obvious statement isn’t it ? When you use the computer or more accurately, sit down in front of the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, there is only one person using the computer. You. The websites you go to that you login into are all making the assumption (logically) that as you are the only person at the keyboard and screen, that you are indeed the person you say you are. I’m not planning on going into a treatise on security here, but it is a basic tenet of personalisation that you might have some token representing “you” that is then used to tie your content to “you”. When you then logoff and leave the keyboard, screen and wired rodent, the next person logs into “their” websites/accounts/etc and the user has changed to them.

When it comes to TV we behave differently, for a start, it’s an implied group activity, although it might  not be. The interaction from the user is less, much less, the TV delivers things to you, you don’t look for content. The searching you do is done in the EPG, with a view to finding something that you then watch for a period of time. The input is different, you don’t have a keyboard (with apologies to the 3 Sky subscribers who do… )

This is the basis of the “sit forward/lean back” model (the words appear interchangeable, sit back/lean forward is another name for it as is lean back/lean forward), it is broadly based on our interactions with the system in front of us and how they shape our experience and expectations.

But people have done personalisation on TV ?

They have, and two examples spring to mind, HomeChoice and BARB. Used for different purposes but with equal issues.

Ok, HomeChoice – which is now Tiscali – was a fairly novel idea, it was the first large commercial attempt in the UK to deliver TV and VoD over ADSL i.e. not on a traditional broadcast network. When you got the service, you logged in using your account details and you then set up a profile, you repeated this for every person in your house. In theory this means it can then “learn” about what you want and tailor its content (much like TiVO) however there was a subtle flaw…

…if the users are anything like the people I know who had it, one person logged their profile in and never logged out.

So we’re back to square one, a TV with n people in front of it and no idea who they are.

Why BARB ? Well they work on a similar principle, although slightly less sophisticated (or more depending on your viewpoint) model where each person in the household has to log their id into a box to indicate who is watching at any time. This is then fed into a system to interpolate the viewing figures.

The issues with this are fairly obvious and can be the subject of many posts, but they do indicate a need for some physical interaction between the user and the TV to say who is in the room.

This is not part of the current TV experience!

So how do you get personalisation to work ?

The first point is to recognise that this is not entirely a technical issue. First and foremost it’s a User Experience or Human Interaction challenge.

The solution to this will come when someone brings the kind of thinking that produced the iPhone to the TV. It will need a new way of interacting that uses a familiar interaction, but allows you to enable the new functionality.

The second point is that adding user ids to broadcast systems that are broadly ignorant of them is HARD. This is not something that can be bolted on, it will be a long and difficult project which will need some very clear direction on what personalisation means. Thankfully we can look to our brethren in the Enterprise sector who have had to do similar exercises before now.

The third is that this will open up a can of worms. Will you use User tracking ? Do you have sticky profiles ? how much data have you captured ? What the regulations around it ? What do you do about Adult content ? Targeted ads ? Who controls this ? Will you have targeted content with DRM ? How will you interact with third parties ?

The last point is that the UI challenge is also there for convergent platforms, where the idea of Live, Time-Shifted, On-Demand and Shared/User Generated content has come together, and this would have to also cope with these functions.

To take this forward, it’s time to see what people can do with the UI, it will need to be ambitiously creative and be a ubiquitous part of the TV. I’d really like to see people push this. Imagine your STB was more like the XBox or PS3 as a functional device (albeit without their quirks!), imagine what we might see ?

So, if you think you’re ‘ard enough, come make it happen!

Currently Listening to: Oakenfold – Ready, Steady, Go

As you may have noticed, most things these days like to upgrade themselves over the internet, which means for some products (or worse your box) an unexplained slowdown as they download that other bugfix/servicepack/upgrade.

It has to be said that for Architecture as a whole, together with the Source Control, Project Development/Delivery and Infrastructure Policies, this is one to sort out before the code is even started. While the Agile community may want to code from day one, the truth is that these type of activities, whilst not being coding, will save you much time, pain and money down the line if you get them “right”.

Well, I say “right”, let’s be honest, we aren’t perfect, but we should know our business, right ? In this sense our update/upgrade policy should match. If you want examples, there are plenty out there:

• Microsoft’s BITS system for Office and Windows
• Adobe’s background service
• Firefox who downloads while you run the browser (it’s really hard to find a proper link for that, anyone help me out ?)
• Steam – who acts as housekeeper for all the products on it’s delivery.
• iTunes – similar to Adobe
• etc…

For my money, my current model to follow would be Steam. It’s transparent enough so you know what is happening, granular enough to control it, and CONSISTENT.

That last point in particular, it’s annoying to find out about major updates to programs on systems that supposedly update, such as the “Live” products from Microsoft, via other routes; in the same way as it’s not much fun to find updates that are allowed to reboot your box without telling you.