Downloading content from the US iTunes Store, outside the United States

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I’m getting increasingly tired of seeing apps launched in the US iTunes Store and not here in the UK.  And the worst culprit seems to be, would you believe, Microsoft?!  For example, the Bing app – freely available in the US, but not here.  Sure, some of the content is US-specific but not all of it – and it’s been around in the States for ages now!

Then, I heard that OneNote has shipped on iOS.  Yes, OneNote. Microsoft’s fantastic note-taking app, on iOS. Further more, it’s currently free of charge (for a limited period). Ever since I bought an iPad, I thought that OneNote would be brillaint on that platform and, as good as Evernote is, it’s just not good enough.

Sadly, the OneNote Mobile app for iPhone is only available in the US iTunes Store but there is a workaround:

  1. Purchase a US iTunes gift card. If you have friends in the States, they might be able to help (they can e-mail you the code on the back of the card) or there are sites on the web that will sell you a code, usually for a hefty commission fee…
  2. Launch iTunes and sign out from the local iTunes Store.
  3. Switch to the US iTunes Store – for example attempt to buy some content that’s only available in the US (and iTunes will prompt you to switch stores) – it needs to be free content though (like a free iPhone app), in order to display a payment option of none in a later step.
  4. Redeem  the code from a US-issued iTunes gift card, creating a new iTunes account in the process.  You’ll need an e-mail address that’s not already associated with iTunes and a valid address in the States.  If you’re staying with friends, or at a hotel, that would work.
  5. Select the payment type of none, then continue the process to complete the account opening process and download the content.  Your new account will be credited with the value of the gift card.

I don’t know if this breaches terms and conditions on the Apple store (maybe if they were shorter, and written in plain English, I might actually read them…) but it works. As for legitimacy, I might be writing this from the United States, in which case using my hotel address and a gift card seems perfectly acceptable.  At least it does right now – Apple may try an tighten things up later but what’s in it for them? This way they can sell content in multiple regions from the same customer… and I’m talking about apps here, it’s not as though I’m advocating circumvention of media distribution rights for music/video. Of course, I’m not a lawyer – and I can’t be held responsible for anyone else’s actions based on the advice in this blog post.

Content not authorised in iTunesWhen you sync your device with iTunes, you will probably get an error indicating that the apps are not authorised on the computer.  Simply follow the instructions to authorise the computer for use with that iTunes Store (Authorize This Computer on the Store menu in iTunes).

Content syncing with a device in iTunesAfter doing so, the next device sync should copy the app (iTunes will have one library containing content from both the US and the local iTunes Stores) and you can freely switch back and forth between US and local iTunes accounts to make new purchases.

As it happens, OneNote Mobile for iPhone is exactly what it says – it’s an iPhone app and doesn’t make full use of the larger screen on the iPad.  This is a missed opportunity for Microsoft – the best iOS apps detect the device and present an appropriate view to make full use of the display capabilities – and they could have a knock-out app running on a competitor’s platform. Hey ho.

My Fit at 40 Challenge

Posted on By Mark Wilson

JustGiving - Sponsor me please!I’ve just launched the JustGiving page for my “Fit at 40” challenge.

“Fit at 40” is my challenge to lose weight, get fit, and raise money to fight Prostate Cancer, the most common cancer in men.

I’m asking my friends, family, colleagues, and everyone else to sponsor me, but it’s not for a single event.

This is what I’m doing, and why…

It’s about me

At the time of writing, I’m 38 years old, about 5 stone heavier than I’d like to be (I’m about 17st 10lbs – or 113kg), and I’ve been this way for a few years now.

I know the problem: I like food; I don’t do enough exercise; and I’m greedy. But I really want this to change – with your help…

Last year (2010), I ran the Harrold Pit Run, a 4.8Km race in a village a few miles away from where I live. In a few short weeks I worked hard to get from being unable to run to the end of the street, to running my first race, and I loved the experience.

I tried to keep up the running but I’ve struggled to keep going by pounding the pavements alone.  Like cutting out the poor diet, I need something to motivate me and, after I ran another 5Km race in Studland last summer, my wife came up with the idea of combining running, dieting, and fund-raising.

It’s for my Dad

On 6 May 2009, I received a phone call to tell me my Father was in hospital.  I knew he was receiving treatment for Prostate Cancer, but the doctors had thought everything was under control, telling him that he was more likely to die of something else before the cancer got him…

But the doctors were wrong – the cancer had spread, Dad was undergoing chemotherapy, and things were not looking good.

Dad died in the early hours of 9 May 2009. He was only 63.

It’s for every man

  • Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men.
  • Every year 36,000 men are told they have prostate cancer.
  • 96% of men don’t know where the prostate is.
  • In the early stages of the disease, you have no symptoms.
  • At 50 you have a 1 in 11 chance of developing prostate cancer.
  • Prostate cancer kills one man every hour in the UK.

There are several charities dedicated to prostate cancer research, support, information and campaigning but I’ve chosen to support The Prostate Cancer Charity because they work across all of these areas.

It’s about helping me, remembering my Dad, and potentially benefiting every other man

By sponsoring me, you can help me stay motivated to shift that weight, get fit, and run a number of races for charity. In return, I’ll donate all of the funds raised via this website to The Prostate Cancer Charity and, because I can’t support multiple charities through JustGiving, I’ll aim to support other charities working in this field, such as The Prostate Cancer Research Centre with some of the offline donations [Update February 2012: whilst it was a nice idea to support multiple charities in this way, it’s not been practical and all funds raised to date have been sent to The Prostate Cancer Charity].

I’m asking my friends, family, colleagues, and everyone else to sponsor me but, instead of me asking you to sponsor me for a single event, I’m going to keep going until my 40th birthday, in just over a years’ time.

Each time I lose another stone (that’s just over 6kg), I’ll ask you to come back and sponsor me some more. And each time I increase the distance or run in a major race, I’ll come calling again.

I hope to run at least one 5Km race over the winter months; and I’ve entered the BUPA London 10,000 next May too (where my running partner will be Eileen Brown). We’ll see how I go with the 5Km and 10Km runs, but it would be nice to think I might make it to a half-marathon before the end of my challenge in April 2012.

If my friends, family, colleagues and online contacts could sponsor me just one or two pounds each time I either run a race or lose a chunk of weight, I’ll be able to reach my goal of raising £2000 for prostate cancer charities.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe – JustGiving have pledged never to sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to The Prostate Cancer Charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – I raise more money, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Thank you for helping me to be Fit at 40.

What might “Windows 8” (or “Windows Next”) bring for tablets/slates?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Once upon a time, Microsoft used to share information about developments in new versions of Windows with customers and partners. Then came Windows Vista (codenamed Longhorn), a project fraught with difficulties, and there was much consternation about cancelled functionality.  So, for the next release (codenamed, and later released as, Windows 7, even though it’s only 6.1), Microsoft kept quiet, before shipping a very public beta and asking people for feedback, long after all the key decisions had been made!

“Windows 8” looks to continue in the same vein – except that Microsoft won’t even tell us a codename – only making vague references to “the next version of Windows” or “Windows Next”. So, it’s hardly surprising that the tech media is trying to glean information about what the next release of Windows may have in store.  And, as an MVP and an employee of a major global systems integrator (but speaking for myself of course – my views are personal and should not be interpreted as a statement on behalf of my employer), I can tell you it’s not just technology journalists and bloggers that want to know – I want to be able to talk to customers about roadmaps but Microsoft is keeping schtum.

So, when journalist, author, ZDNet blogger and long-time Microsoft commentator, Mary Jo Foley ran a webcast this afternoon looking at Microsoft’s strategy for tablets/slates “Windows 8”, I tuned in.  Of course, it was nothing that Mary Jo hadn’t already written about – and it was purely speculative (albeit based on some good sources) but it’s the best we have to go on right now about what might be coming – and a good summary of the current situation.

The following are my notes from the webcast.  I may well look back in a year or so and laugh at how wrong we were (as I did with my tweets about the iPad from late-January 2010!) but I have a feeling that most, if not all, of this will come true.

It was interesting to see what people think about the market for slates/tablets.  Based on a poll taken during the call: 13% think that Apple owns the market [as of now, they do – but that could still change]; 8% think it’s overrated and will slip away like netbooks [unlikely – have you seen the sales figures for the iPad?]; 22% think the market is in its infancy and will hurt PC sales [definitely nascent; but I generally see slates as additive, rather than alternatives to PCs]; and the vast majority (57%) think the market is in its infancy but that there is room for Android and Windows “pads”.  Based on those figures (which are far from scientific, and likely to be skewed in Microsoft’s favour given Mary Jo’s readership) Microsoft has not completely lost its chance to ship a decent tablet but it’s clear there is still a lot of work to do – and a lot of unknowns.

So what about Windows 7 slates? It’s difficult for me to comment on this, for professional reasons (although I have previously written about how Steve Ballmer told me what to do with my iPad) but Mary Jo Foley is not a fan. She sees some interesting designs, but considers them to be generally pricey, not portable enough, with poor battery life and not true iPad competitors. [For what it’s worth, I can’t argue with any of that.]

And what’s the difference between a slate and tablet? Not a lot.  Microsoft likes to talk about tablets – they see a stylus as a differentiator but the two terms are used interchangably by analysts and media – like notebooks and laptops (or twenty-eleven and two-thousand-and-eleven).

On Windows 8, Microsoft has said nothing – although they have spoken of “the next version of Windows”.  That could be Windows 8, or it could be something else (Windows Compact Embedded?) but is really likely to be a successor to Windows 7.

Microsoft has accidentally leaked information about “Windows Next” in job advertisements, blog posts, leaked slides from confidential presentations to OEMs. Some of the information gleaned includes references to identifying modern form factors to target and optimise for:

  • Lap PC
  • Workhorse PC
  • Family Hub PC

The second and third categories are familiar – and the first sounds/looks like a slate [albeit with a terrible lable].

There is a view that “Lap PCs” are about consumption (I think there is scope for some content creation – I certainly write on my iPad) but some differentiators might include more built in sensors (facial recognition to log in; ambient sensor to detect that the user is not there and hibernate/shutdown) as well as apps to integrate with home automation – but remember we’re likely to see at least one [maybe two] iteration(s) of the iPad before any of this comes to market.

Whilst we don’t know what “Windows Next” is, assuming it is a replacement for Windows 7, we can expect to see it within 24-36 months after Windows 7 shipped (so 2012) and it will run on x86, ARM and Intel/AMD system-on-a-chip (SoC) architectures.

Microsoft has said nothing official about RTM dates/betas, etc. but Mary Jo Foley believes milestone build 1 (M1) was released within Microsoft in September 2010 with M2 due this month and M3 around July/August.  After that, we might see A public test build in September (at PDC?) with a beta in 2012, and release in summer 2012?  There are some question marks around which architecture(s) may ship first, as well as whether it will be all 64-bit [I think it should be, but expect a 32-bit version to be available, at least for some SKUs].

It looks like there might be some interesting features for tablets/slates too:

  • Jupiter looks to be an application development model/framework that provides a XAML layer on top of Windows, maybe with its roots in version 5 of the Microsoft.NET Framework, for seamless creation of apps that are optimised for the tablet/slate experience.
  • MoSH may be a Modern SHell – an alternative user interface for Windows on slates/tablets – maybe using the Metro style we’ve seen in the Zune and Windows Phone software [let’s hope so].

Microsoft would like there to be “one Windows” but there isn’t and it’s only natural to ask if “Windows Next” will be the only slate operating system? We can expect to see version 7 of Windows Embedded Compact (definitely for data consumption only) released around April/May 2011, but there is also a chance of Windows Phone on tablets, despite Microsoft statements to the contrary [I think it could be be a great solution – although Mary Jo Foley notes that Windows is more mature and more stable than Windows Phone 7].

Can Microsoft win back iPad users? Well, maybe some of them – many of us are iPad users because there is simply nothing better in the market. Perhaps a Windows tablet could be good – but I for one would take some convincing – and it wouldn’t be running Windows 7 (and, from what I’ve seen of Google Android “Honeycomb”, it’s not really a step forward from current Apple iOS functionality either).  The real questions are around applications and access to data – and only time will tell what Microsoft has in store (excuse the pun) or what effect the revamped Android Marketplace will have.

For now, Mary Jo’s big unknowns are:

  • What will Windows slates do to address the issues of weight/cost/battery life? A tablet needs to be lightweight with a 10 hour battery life (as a minimum) [and to compete on value with the existing market leader].
  • Will Microsoft lock down the slate chassis specifications (as they did for Windows Phone 7), providing a common ground for applications?
  • Will the Metro user interface appear on a “WinPad”?
  • What about the Windows Application store? What apps will it have? Where from? Written by whom?
  • Will any of the Courier concepts re-emerge?

[Update 3 February 2011: Paul Thurrott also looks at Windows 8 rumours, among other things, prompting Jamie Thomson to ask another good question: Will Microsoft allow enterprises to run their own internal application stores?]

For now, we don’t really know the answers – I’m hopefully that things will fall into place towards the end of 2011 but the longer Microsoft has nothing, whilst Apple ships significant quantities of iPads (and “iPad 2″s), the larger the gap becomes, and the further Apple encroaches into Microsoft’s enterprise heartland.

Useful Links: January 2011

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A list of items I’ve come across recently that I found potentially useful, interesting, or just plain funny:

Also, these posts appeared on the Fujitsu UK and Ireland CTO Blog and were either written, or co-authored, by me:

With hindsight, it’s probably not a good idea to stand in front of a lorry…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Imagine the situation: you’re just stepping out onto a Zebra crossing (you have right of way) and you see a seven-and-a-half-ton truck, 10 or 20 metres away, still moving at around 30mph with the driver looking down as if he is reading a newspaper, a text message on his phone, or something similar; you shout a warning (“Oy!”) and step back, slapping your hand on the side of the truck as it drives past but it continues its journey, as if nothing had happened.

That’s what happened to me this morning and it made me angry. I’ve spent enough years driving cars (and developing a sixth sense when I was a motorcyclist) to watch out for things like this, but imagine if I had been an elderly person crossing the road, or a child. I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

A few seconds later, the truck stopped at a set of traffic lights so I ran down the road and challenged the driver. I may have used a few choice words (I almost certainly did) but he denied that I was on the crossing as he approached (how would he know – he wasn’t even looking ahead!). Standing in front of the truck, I got my phone out to take a picture of the registration plate and the driver actually drove the truck at me as if to push me out of the way! There was no way he would deliberately run me over but he jumped out of his cab and grabbed my phone, telling me he would give it back (throw it under the truck more like) when I moved. For the next few minutes he refused to give it back to me, driving the truck at me once more as I protested to get my phone back. At one point he got out of the cab again and grabbed me by my jacket collar to move me out of the way (I’m seventeen and a half stone – but he was taller than me, stronger than me, and bloody annoyed with me). Eventually, after calming down and noticing I was shaking (showing some humility at least) the truck driver returned my mobile phone and we agreed that we would go our separate ways. I was still shaking, and I didn’t manage to record the registration number of the truck but it belongs to Biffa, a waste management and recycling company, and I’m sure they will be able to track it, should they so desire…

Throughout the incident, which probably lasted at least five minutes and was right outside a busy London railway station, during the rush hour, people stood and watched. Some took pictures with their mobile phones but no-one called the police when I called out and asked them to, on at least two occasions. I may have been stupid to pick an argument with someone who was prepared to drive a lorry at me but really, London commuters, are you really that self-absorbed that you won’t help someone out after seeing them being subjected to threatening behaviour bordering on physical assault?  Even if you didn’t want to “get involved”, you could have asked me if I was alright after the truck was driven away.

After travelling a couple of stops on the tube, I saw some British Transport Police officers and I asked for advice. The officer I spoke to was very helpful, including giving me the number for the Metropolitan Police but, I honestly think that reporting the incident will be a waste of my time and theirs. I have no evidence (only a blurred, shaky camera phone picture of the truck driving away, in which there are no identifiable markings) and, despite the city being littered with CCTV, the police have much bigger priorities.

Looking back, with slightly less adrenalin being pumped around my system, I can see it was not wise to put myself in a dangerous position but there is no excuse for deliberately driving a lorry at me. I’m sure the driver is a decent guy, just as pumped up by the situation as I was but, more to the point, if Biffa’s operatives are driving without due care and attention, the next person to cross the road in front of them might not be so lucky. As one of my (female – i.e. not testosterone-fuelled) colleagues observed, hopefully the incident will make this truck driver think more carefully about his actions, even if he won’t openly admit that he made a mistake. And I should be grateful that the worst thing to come out of this for me, was needing to replace my damaged iPhone headphones.

London Bloggers Meetup (#LBM): January 2011 – 10 lessons and tips for blogging

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A couple of nights ago, I went along to the London Blogger’s Meetup – which is basically a big social event for bloggers! It’s wierd, most of the bloggers I meet normally are in tech but I’m never stopped to think that an event like this doesn’t just attract geeks like me (duh!).  I’m a bit shy at these things, but I did meet some great people – as well as lusting after the Dell Vostro V130 laptop that was given away.

The highlight of the evening though was Andy Bargery’s short presentation giving 10 lessons and tips for blogging.  Andy has shared the Prezi and I’ve embedded it below:

10 Lessons & Tips on Blogging on Prezi

Tablets: How will they impact your enterprise IT?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

It seems that last week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) can be summed up with one word:

“Tablet”.

Even though Steve Ballmer, CEO at Microsoft, demonstrated an HP “slate” running Windows in last year’s CES keynote, Apple managed to steal Microsoft’s thunder with the iPad and this year’s show saw just about every PC manufacturer (and Fujitsu is no exception) preparing to launch their own model(s).

Tablet computers aren’t new but Apple’s iPad has revitalised the market – I recently wrote about this when I examined the potential impact on desktop managed service – and one report I read suggested that there were over 80 tablets launched at CES!

For many years, CIOs have been standardising end-user computing environments on Intel x86 hardware and Windows operating systems, with appropriate levels of lockdown and control which makes it all the more interesting to see the variation in hardware, form factor and operating system in these new devices.

Our IT departments will struggle to support this plethora of devices yet IT consumerisation will force us to. But this isn’t a new phenomenon – ten years ago I was working in an organisation which was trying to standardise on Windows CE devices as they provided the best application support platform for the business, whilst the execs were asking for BlackBerrys so they could access e-mail on the move.

Guess what happened? We ended up with both.

And that’s what will happen with next-generation tablets, just as for smartphones. To some extent, it’s true for PCs too – the hardware and the operating system have become commoditised – and our task is to ensure that we can present the right data and the right applications to the right people, at the right time, on the right device.

Which brings back around me to my opening point: tablets featured heavily at CES but tablets are just one part of the IT mix. Will your organisation be supporting their use in the enterprise? And do you see them as serious business devices, or are they really just executive toys?

[This post originally appeared on the Fujitsu UK and Ireland CTO Blog.]

Hardware lineup for 2011

Posted on By Mark Wilson

This is a bit of a copycat post really but I saw Mike Taulty and Phil Winstanley‘s hardware lineups and thought it was a good idea. So, here it is, a summary of the technology I use pretty much every day and how I see that changing this year.

Car: Audi A4 Avant 2.0 TDI 170 S-Line

Audi A4 Avant 20 TDI 170 S-LineMy wife and I have been Volkswagen fans for a few years now (we find them to be good, solid, reliable cars that hold their value well) so, a couple of years ago, when I heard that Volkswagen and Audi were being added to our company car scheme, I held back on replacing my previous vehicle in order to take advantage. I did consider getting a Passat but the A4 (although smaller) had a newer generation of engine and lower emissions, so it didn’t actually cost much more in tax/monthly lease costs.

After a year or so, I’m normally bored/infuriated with my company cars but I still really enjoy my A4 – so much so that I will consider purchasing this one at the end of its lease next year. My only reservations are that I would really like something larger, sometimes a little more power would be nice (although this has 170PS, which is pretty good for a 2 litre diesel) and I do sometimes think that the money I contribute to the car might be better spent on reducing the mortgage (I add some of my salary to lease a better car than my grade entitles me to).

Either way, it’s on lease until I hit 3 years or 60,000 miles, so it’s a keeper for 2011.

Verdict 9/10. Hold.

Phone: Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB

Apple iPhone 3GSI actually have two phones (personal and work SIMs) but my personal needs are pretty basic (a feature phone with Bluetooth connectivity for hands free operation in the car) and I recycled my iPhone 3G when I was given a 3GS to use for work.

After having owned iPhones for a few years now (this is my third one), I don’t feel that the platform, which was once revolutionary, has kept pace and it now feels dated. As a result, I’m tempted by an Android or Windows Phone 7 device but neither of these platforms is currently supported for connection my corporate e-mail service.

The main advantages of this device for me are the apps and the Bluetooth connectivity to the car (although I needed to buy a cable for media access). I use Spotify and Runkeeper when I’m running but there are a whole host of apps to help me when I’m out and about with work (National Rail Enquiries, etc.) and, of course, it lets me triage my bulging mailbox and manage my calendar when I’m on the move. Unfortunately, the camera is awful and it’s not much use as a phone either, but it does the job.

I could get an iPhone 4 (or 5 this summer?) but I’d say it’s pretty unlikely, unless something happened to this one and I was forced to replace it.

Verdict 3/10. Not mine to sell!

Tablet: Apple iPad 3G 64GB

Apple iPadAfter several weeks (maybe months) of thinking “do I? don’t I?”, I bought an iPad last year and I use it extensively. Perhaps it’s a bit worrying that I take it to bed with me at night (I often catch up on Twitter before going to sleep, or use it as an e-book reader) but the “instant on” and long battery life make this device stand out from the competition when I’m out and about.

2011 will be an interesting year for tablets – at CES they were all over the place but I’ve been pretty vocal (both on this blog, and on Twitter) about my views on Windows as a tablet operating system and many of the Android devices are lacking something – Android 3 (Gingerbread [correction] Honeycomb) should change that. One possible alternative is Lenovo’s convertible notebook/tablet which runs Windows but features a slide out screen that functions as an Android tablet (very innovative).

I may upgrade to an iPad 2, if I can get a good resale price for my first generation iPad, but even Apple’s puritanical anti-Adobe Flash stand (which means many websites are unavailable to me) is not enough to make me move away from this device in 2011.

Verdict 8/10. Hold.

Everyday PC: Fujitsu Lifebook S7220 (Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB hard disk)

Fujitsu Lifebook S7220My personal preference for notebook PCs is a ThinkPad – I liked them when they were manufactured by IBM and Lenovo seem to have retained the overall quality associated with the brand – but, given who pays my salary, it’s no surprise that I use a Fujitsu notebook PC. Mine’s a couple of years old now and so it’s branded Fujitsu-Siemens but it’s the same model that was sold under the Fujitsu name outside Europe. It’s a solid, well-built notebook PC and I have enough CPU, memory and disk to run Windows 7 (x64) well.

Unfortunately it’s crippled with some awful full disk encryption software (I won’t name the vendor but I’d rather be using the built-in BitLocker capabilities which I feel are better integrated and less obtrusive) and, even though the chipset supports Intel vPro/AMT (to install the Citrix XenClient hypervisor), the BIOS won’t allow me to activate the VT-d features. As a result, I have to run separate machines for some of my technical testing (I’m doing far less of that at work anyway these days) and to meet my personal (i.e. non-work) computing requirements.

My hope is that we’ll introduce a bring your own computer (BYOC) scheme at work and I can rationalise things but, if not, it’ll be another two years before I can order a replacement and this will soldier on for a while yet.

Verdict 6/10. Holding out for a BYOC scheme at work.

Netbook: Lenovo S10e (Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard disk)

Lenovo IdeaPad S10In its day, my netbook was great. It’s small, light, can be used on the train when the seatback tables are too small for a normal laptop and I used mine extensively for personal computing whilst working away from home. It was a bit slow (on file transfers) but it does the job – and the small keyboard is ideal for my young children (although even they could do with a larger screen resolution).

Nowadays my netbook it sits on the shelf, unloved, replaced by my iPad. It was inexpensive and, ultimately, consumable.

Verdict 2/10. Sell, or more likely use it to geek out and play with Linux.

Digital Camera: Nikon D700

Nikon D700After a series of Minoltas in the 1980s and 1990s, I’ve had Nikon cameras for several years now, having owned an F90x, a D70 and now a D700. I also use my wife’s D40 from time to time and we have a Canon Ixus 70 too (my son has adopted that). With a sizeable investment in Nikon lenses, etc., I can’t see myself changing brands again – although some of my glass could do with an upgrade, and I’d like an external flash unit.

The D700 gives me a lot of flexibility and has a high enough pixel count, with minimal noise and good low-light performance. It’s a professional-grade DSLR and a bit heavy for some people (I like the weight). It’s also too valuable for some trips (which is when I use the D40) but I always miss the flexibility and functionality that the D700 body provides. Maybe sometimes I think some video capabilities would be nice but I won’t be changing it yet.

Verdict 9/10. Hold.

Photography PC: Apple MacBook MB062LL/B (Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard disk)

Apple Macbook White (late 2007)It’s been three years since I bought my MacBook and, much as I’d like one of the current range of MacBook Pros it’ll be a while before I replace it because they are so expensive! In fairness, it’s doing it’s job well – as soon as I bought it I ungraded the hard disk and memory, and whilst the the CPU is nt as fast as a modern Core i5 or i7, it’s not that slow either.

For a machine that was not exactly inexpensive, I’ve been disappointed with the build quality (it’s had two new keyboard top covers and a replacement battery) but Apple’s customer service meant that all were replaced under warranty (I wouldn’t fancy my chances at getting a new battery from many other PC OEMs).

I use this machine exclusively for photography and the Mac OS suits me well for this. It’s not “better” than Windows, just “different” and, whilst some people would consider me to be a Microsoft fanboi and an iHater, the list of kit on this page might say otherwise. I like to consider myself to have objective views that cut through the Redmond or Cupertino rhetoric!

So, back to the Mac – I may dive into Photoshop from time to time but Adobe Lightroom, Flickr Uploadr, VueScan and a few specialist utilities like Sofortbild are my main tools. I need to sweat this asset for a while longer before I can replace it.

Verdict 5/10. Hold.

Media: Apple Mac Mini MA206LL/A (Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz, 2GB RAM, 120GB hard disk)

(+ iPad, iPhone 3GS, various iPods, Altec Lansing iM7 iPod speakers)

Apple Mac MiniMy Mac Mini was the first Intel Mac I bought (I had one of the original iMacs but that’s long gone) and it’s proved to be a great little machine. It was replaced by the MacBook but has variously been used in Windows and Mac OS X forms as a home media PC. These days it’s just used for iTunes and Spotify, but I plan to buy a keyboard to have a play with Garage Band too.

It may not be the most powerful of my PCs, but it’s more than up to this kind of work and it takes up almost no space at all.

Verdict 6/10. Hold.

Gaming: Microsoft Xbox 360 S 250GB with Kinect Sensor

Microsoft Xbox 360sI’m not a gamer – I sold my Playstation a few years ago because the driving games that I enjoyed made me feel ill! Even so, I was blown away by the Xbox with Kinect when I saw it last month. I bought myself a 250GB model and now Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports have become family favourites (with a bit of Dance Central thrown in!). I can’t see myself getting into first person shooters, but I can see us doing more and more with the Xbox, particularly if I can use the Connect 360 application to hook into my media library. The final piece of the jigsaw would be BBC iPlayer on Xbox – but that looks unlikely to come to fruition.

Verdict 9/10. Hold.

Servers and Storage: Atom-based PC, Dell PowerEdge 840, 2x Netgear ReadyNAS Duo

As my work becomes less technical, I no longer run a full network infrastructure at home (I don’t find myself building quite so many virtual machines either) so I moved the main infrastructure roles (Active Directory, DHCP, DNS, TFTP, etc.) to a low-power server based on an Intel Atom CPU. I still have my PowerEdge 840 for the occasions when I do need to run up a test environment but it’s really just gathering dust. Storage is provided by a couple of Netgear ReadyNAS devices and it’s likely that I’ll upgrade the disks and then move one to a family member’s house, remote syncing to provide an off-site backup solution (instead of a variety of external USB drives).

Verdict 6/10. Hold (perhaps sell the server, but more likely to leave it under the desk…).

The generation game

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Creating innovative ways to align IT with business needs is one of the main functions of our office. Ever since the early days of computing, IT departments have been trying to close the gap between end user requirements and service provision. Now changing attitudes to work are a frequent topic of conversation and, whereas we’re often talking about technological change, a number of recent events have highlighted the wider social impact.

In the last 20 years, we’ve seen some pretty significant advancements – not only in terms of technology but in attitudes too:

  • Do you remember the typing pool? In 2011, the idea of a room full of secretarial staff employed to type memos dictated by management seems absurd!
  • There was a time when Microsoft’s vision of a computer on every desk and in every home seemed like science fiction but today we use a plethora of personal computing devices.
  • In the early 1990s, radio pagers were used for communications and only the duty manager had a mobile. Now our smartphones have more computing power than the PCs of that era.
  • Bulletin boards, accessed via modems, and Ceefax, accessed through television, have been replaced by the worldwide web, itself transformed beyond recognition into today’s massive content distribution system that is becoming embedded in many elements of our lives.

Even this blog post is an example of changing attitudes: it’s informal but written for a customer audience; unedited by the marketing department but with clear expectations as to what is acceptable to discuss in a public forum. It’s unthinkable that we would have been able to communicate like this more than a few years ago.

Generation Y, or the millennial generation, as we term those born between 1980 and 2000, is witnessing ever-increasing technological change and expects major social changes too. Horizontal silos are forming within organisations, loosely based around generations of employees who think and communicate in entirely different ways. Take these examples:

  • Formality. We work in a very informal society and it’s rare to refer to colleagues, senior management, or even customers, using their title and surname.
  • Speed. We expect results: faster; and accuracy is often less important than speed of access to information (we can refine the details later – but need to make decisions now!).
  • Quality. Whereas previous generations expected a device or product to last for years, younger generations are happy to replace it with a newer model much more quickly. This affects buying patterns, but also the standards to which goods and services are produced.
  • Communications. Whilst older generations will send a birthday card, generation Y is happy with a message on Facebook. Baby boomers and generation X may communicate by phone or e-mail but generation Y uses text messages, instant messaging and social networks.
  • Familiarity. Whereas baby boomers may like to see pages with detailed information about a given topic; generation Y is happy with snippets of information.
  • Deference. Previous generations were taught to defer to their elders but today’s young people are much more prepared to challenge and question.
  • Education. A degree is no longer an indicator of excellence; instead, it’s expected from almost everyone.
  • Recession. The generation entering the workplace now is the first that will, in all likelihood, earn less than their parents (and yet have higher expectations).

Every generation brings a new approach and some people find the resulting changes easier to adapt to than others. In a few years’ time, today’s graduate entrants will be running our businesses and it seems that, as we experience an accelerated pace of technological change, there’s also an accelerating gap in attitudes between generations.

For many years, we’ve been trying to align IT to business needs and it’s still a challenge at times. Perhaps now is the time to start thinking about the social needs of business end users, before that gap widens too?

[This post originally appeared on the Fujitsu UK and Ireland CTO Blog and was jointly authored with Ian Mitchell.]

Diagnosing connection issues on my ADSL line

Posted on By Mark Wilson

For months now, I’ve been complaining about my ADSL connection and I’m pleased to say that I think I’ve found the issue: it looks as though I had too many TCP/IP sessions open (multiple computers, browser tabs, etc.) and so some connections were getting dropped, so I increased the maximum on my router from the default 192 to the maximum 512.

In the course of my many months of investigation, I did find a lot of useful information though, so I thought it was worth sharing here, for future reference.

The first port of call is often the BT speedtester.  This requires Java to run but it’s likely your ISP will require you to run three separate tests at least one hour apart on this (which can be difficult when the tests don’t complete properly, as in my case) before they will even consider reporting an issue to BT.

Your ISP may have some tools that can help too – for example, mine (PlusNet) has a gateway checker (to see where my connection leaves their network and hits the Internet) and an exchange status checker. Using the exchange status checker, I could see there was an outstanding fault in the exchange and the ISP chased BT to investigate.  Sadly that fault was not related to my problem but it did at least let me know that BT’s infrastructure could have been part of the issue.

It does help to think about things logically – are the issues really speed related, or are you getting lots of disconnections but quite rapid response (as I was)? Does the issue occur on more than one operating system (e.g. Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android)? If you’re only having problems on one device, consider whether that device might have a configuration issue (e.g. incorrect DNS settings).

Get ready to put on your propeller head. There are a lot of factors that affect your ADSL connection speed and quality.  PlusNet has a support article to help explain some of the issues involved in diagnosing broadband speed faults and a broadband terminology guide (although it’s hard enough for me to follow, let alone the average consumer).  I found some really helpful people on my ISP’s support forums and one of the best resources they pointed me at was the Kitz ADSL information index.  Some of the information there was extremely technical but it helped me to understand some of the statistics on my line and to work out what speed my line should be able to support (around 6.5Mbps) in my case. It also gave me a much more detailed line check/exchange status check.

Some of the pointers that could have been useful, had I followed them up, included:

  • “Pairing” my ADSL router with the BT exchange equipment (i.e. making sure they both use the same chipset). For this you will need to know the local and remote vendor identifiers.  My router didn’t expose the remote end, so it was difficult for me to test that but, for example, if you know that the exchange equipment uses a Broadcom chipset then you can try and get hold of an ADSL router that uses that chipset too.
  • Some consumer ADSL routers can be modified with unofficial firmware to expose more settings.  Examples include the Linksys WRT54G (OpenWRT) and the Netgear DG834 (DGteam). Other routers cannot and have fairly basic user interfaces – even my ISP told me to avoid the Thomson router that they currently ship (mine is an elderly Solwise SAR110 and I can even configure it from a command line if necessary).
  • Signal to noise (SNR) ratio can affect a lot of lines and changing this might help.  I found that my SNR margin (basically the amount of tolerance to noise on my line) was quite low at 5.5 dB (I’ve seen as low as 3.5, although the actual noise is pretty constant at 32.5dB) and, had I worked out how to increase this, I could potentially have found a more stable connection (albeit at a slightly lower speed) and then worked back to find the optimum setting (thanks to Garry Martin for that advice).
  • Improving the physical connection by removing the ring/bell wire is a possibility, but probably not advisable since it requires interfering with the linebox (technically this is BT’s property). Another option (not suitable for all connections though – you need an NTE5 linebox although BT says 70% of homes have one of these) is to install a BT Broadband Accelerator/Iplate.  BT Total Broadband customers can get one of these for just the cost of postage (although PlusNet is a BT subsidiary, they don’t have the same offer) but they don’t cost much from the BT Shop.

So you can see that diagnosing ADSL connection issues is far from straightforward; however there are a few things to try that can yield significant results. I’m still trying to work out why my IP Profile has dropped in recent months to 5500Kbps (from 6500, which should be achievable based on the attenuation figure of 32.5), and why my line has interleaving enabled (again, based on the attenuation/loop loss, I’m only about 2.3km from the Exchange). I’ve also ordered an Iplate and it will be interesting to see what (if anything) the resulting speed increase is.