Music wars ten years on

Take no prisoners, spare no-one

It was 10 years ago that Apple spied an impotent and vulnerable music industry and unleashed a bombardment that swiftly won them the war and made the rest of the music world their unwilling slaves.

Napster had shown big business the way forward by harnessing peer-to-peer file sharing services to distribute music to the world, albeit by using intellectual property without permission.

The incompetence of the big record labels is hard to fathom but they all failed to recognise the power of this technology that allowed music to be digitally distributed.  They had ample opportunity to embrace this new channel and to hold on to control of their intellectual property but they failed miserably.  Instead of understanding what digital services could do to save their debt-ridden companies they tried to stamp on it and pretend it wasn't there. If ever there was a side that deserved to be well and truly trounced, it was the music labels.

Apple was totally merciless in this war and they emerged as the undisputed conqueror.  There was no ceasefire, no clemency, no return of prisoners.  It was an unbridled massacre.  The white flags hoisted by the record industry were a pitiful site.  They had little choice but to let the victor enjoy the spoils - the right to distribute and take the lion's share of profits from the world's treasure trove of digital music.  Physical music media died on that battlefield.  The future was in digital, not physical distribution.

Streaming services offer hope

Now that memories of the carnage are fading into history and the smoke is finally clearing, there is some hope for a fairer digital future. New providers have emerged from the rubble,  prepared to provide a vast catalogue of music to subscribers, either for a very reasonable monthly charge or totally free if listeners are prepared to listen to few adverts.  Spotify, Rdio and Pandora, amongst others, are the bright lights of this new breed of streaming digital providers.  They have the potential to redress the balance and give consumers some modicum of choice in where they get their music fix.

I don't know if these companies will compensate the artists any more equitably than they are currently but they will surely provide the consumer with a much fairer way to enjoy music.

Losing ground to the streaming services (BusinessWeek)

Smart skin

Smart skin will give robots tactile sensitivity

Sensitive robots

Working out of the Georgia Institute of Technology, a joint US-Chinese team has created a material that may bring considerable benefits to the field of robotics - an artificial skin that has sensitivity akin to that of human skin.

The secret lies in a network of transistors capable of generating independent 'piezotronic' signals.  Each of these tiny transistors have a bundle of some 1,500 nanowires and can detect a change of pressure accurate to around 10 kilopascals - that's similar to what human skin can detect.

Potential applications are many and varied. They will provide robots with an adaptive sense of touch, allowing intricate movements to be applied based on 'tactile sensing'.  As a security measure this technology could be used for multidimensional signature recording where not only the pattern of the signature is detected but also the specific pressure applied to the writing of each letter. DARPA, the US Defence Agency, is interested enough in this to be one of the major sponsors.

This is one of those technologies that on its own seems limited but when partnered with other fields,such as robotics, the possibilities are very exciting indeed.

Links to the 'smart skin' story

Tactile Imaging (GeorgiaTech)

Smart skin hope for touch sensor (BBC)

Smart skin has the same sensitivity as human skin (Wired)

Smart skin allows robots to feel (Escapist)

Piezo-electronic taxel arrays (RedOrbit)

Fancy reading the full article about this technology, published in Science magazine under the catchy title of 'Taxel-Addressable Matrix of Vertical-Nanowire Piezotronic Transistors for Active/Adaptive Tactile Imaging'? (Full  abstract requires subscription for access.)

Death of the Netbook

       Is it death throes for the netbook in the age of tablets?      

According to this Stuff article, netbooks are on the brink of extinction. Most people may not be aware of this, I guess because they have long since stopped buying them.

What is a netbook?

Well, the term has always confused me and I doubt I'm alone in this.  When netbooks first became fashionable accessories they tended to have a maximum screen size of 10", 1 or  maybe 2GB of RAM, no optical drive and a pretty low resolution screen and graphics capability.  They often ran Windows XP (Vista was a dog so they fell back to the old faithful).  Some ran Linux but that I think was more to keep the price down.

They were popular because they gave people access to surf the web when away from home plus they had a keyboard that made elementary word processing and email tasks not too onerous.  No-one ever expected them to be your first or only choice of computer - they were very much a carry-around websurfer.

New kids on the block

All hail the conquering tablet

So what happened?  Well, the tablet came and blasted them out of the water.  Check the boxes of the netbook versus tablet and it's not hard to see why.  Both will let you surf the web, email, Skype, and store documents and pictures.  But consider what else the tablet can do and it's obvious why netbooks have had their day.

Is the chromebook a worthy successor?

If a tablet's not your thing, perhaps a worthy successor to the traditional netbook is the chromebook.  Like the netbook, this device is limited in power with a very basic hardware configuration.  It relies on its internet connectivity to use the Google Chrome operating system environment to provide all its applications and storage from the 'cloud'.

The market supports plenty of small portable notebooks that are considerably more capable than the netbook ever was. Indeed, some of today's ultrabooks have amazing specifications and a price to match.

Sleek sexy ultrabooks are a long way from the netbook

The netbook was a short love affair but one that I fear will soon be forgotten with just a very small entry in the annals of computing history.

Cheap netbook on the brink of extinction (Stuff)

Sayonara netbook (Guardian UK)

Death of the netbook (LoF)

The ASUS eeePC (Wikipedia)

The Netbook (Wikipedia)

Learning to walk again

       The ReWalk really does allow paraplegics to walk again         

I was totally blown away by watching the videos from Argo Medical Technologies for their amazing exoskeleton, the ReWalk.

This is advanced robotics for humans, transforming the user from a wheelchair-bound invalid into a bionic walker or even runner.

ReWalk has completed successful clinical trials in Israel and in Pennsylvania and has attracted considerable media interest and support from the community.


Sensors attached to the (non-paralysed) upper body detect the person's intention to move in a particular direction and translate this into motion controlled through the bionic joints in the legs.  Apparently it takes a bit of getting used to but once mastered the wearer can walk and run freely on the flat, up steps, over uneven terrain.

The ReWalk is now a commercial reality

Check out some of the videos at YouTube and be amazed.

ReWalk promotional website (included demonstration video)

Wheelchair bound no more (ABC)

ReWalk bionic walking assistance system (Wikipedia)

FAQ from Moss Rehab

Plasma Gasification

Turning rubbish into fuel

Not all technology is exciting or sexy but some of the duller bits are impressive all the same.  One such area is the plasma gasification process for turning rubbish into fuel.

The plasma gasification cycle

Traditional incineration of garbage does not find favour with environmentalists and our ever increasing demand for landfill sites is equally unpopular and ultimately unsustainable.

Plasma gasification uses a 6000 degree plasma arc operating in an oxygen-starved closed environment to transform materials to their basic molecular state.  In the process synthetic gas (syngas) is produced and this can be harvested for generating power.  The tremendous heat levels mean that all metals are liquified and can be collected from the base of the reactor.

Not clear on how this works?  Read this for a good, plain English description of the process of plasma gasification.

Expect to see a lot more interest in this technology as the world searches for solutions to our growing waste and fuel concerns.

Links to plasma gasification info

What is plasma gasification?

6000 degrees of plasma energy

How plasma converters work

Videos demonstrating the process (YouTube)

Clean renewable fuel

Plasma gasification finds favour with environmentalists

Advanced Plasma Power website

Advanced Plasma Power Ltd

Twitter Music

It seemed that not so long ago New Zealand was a forgotten group of islands in the South Pacific, at least as far as the big internet music services went.  As a music fan I was pretty miffed that streaming services like Pandora and Spotify were freely available in North America and Europe yet we had a few pitiful local offerings that don't cut the mustard.

Bricks and mortar records stores are all but gone in New Zealand, the commercial radio selection is frankly so awful I avoid them for fear that my brain may atrophy.

Twitter launches #music

Then all of sudden, Spotify arrived, and Pandora, Rdio too.  What a treat for music starved Kiwis.  There's been a flood of music possibilities recently.  We're no longer forgotten.  Now we also have Twitter launching their #music service.  It's not even like we're getting it later than the rest of the world - from what I can see it's launching in NZ at the same time as in the major markets.

I like the idea of Twitter music.  They've teamed up with Spotify, Rdio and iTunes to  help their followers find the music they like best.  It makes use of your Twitter profile to identify music artists that you follow - it's common for many Twitter fans to follow at least one music artist.  Although other outfits have tried to use social media for music Twitter has the vast established user base to actually make it work.  An instant audience in the hundreds of millions.

Currently Twitter #music is available through your favourite browser or on your smartphone (unfortunately only on iOS as a dedicated app, not Android yet).

With all of this great music waiting to be heard there's really no need to make do with the swill coming over the commercial airwaves, is there?


Spotify or iTunes for Twitter music followers? (TechRadar)

Early review of Twitter music (Telegraph UK)

Helping fans to find their favourite music (Guardian UK)

Top of the social media charts - who is most popular?

Reef repair

Swarms of Coralbots are coming

Here's a worthwhile project for the planet.

Coralbots is a group of projects to build a team of aquatic robots to patrol the coral reef.  Reefs around the world have suffered substantial damage through storms and through totally avoidable human abuse - bomb testing, destructive fishing, coral removed for tourist souvenirs, you name it.

Currently they're trying to raise the necessary cash by crowd-funding the project on Kickstarter.

Swarms of Coralbots will hopefully be deployed to patrol the reef looking for areas that have been depleted.  The bots will transplant healthy clumps of coral where it's needed most.  The best thing about all of this is that the bots are programmed to recognise the damage and to sort it out without relying on a human being to issue instructions.  I have visions of these aquatic robot gardeners tirelessly cruising the reef picking up a piece here and replacing it there . . . wonderful.

Deployment of these marine gardeners brings great hope for the fragile economies of many island nations.  Without the benefit of a healthy reef these often poor communities suffer severe impacts on their livelihood with heavily depleted fish stocks and reduced opportunities for tourism.  Bringing back the reef could have major benefits for such communities.

Nessie-4 will repair coral reef off Belize   

This is an area of robotics that's particularly exciting.  These bots will be operating in environments that are difficult and dangerous for humans and they will have much better endurance.

They've already done a lot of field testing with these robots so they are pretty confident that they have the reliability of the technology sorted.

No doubt this is just one example of where advanced robotics and artificial intelligence will be deployed in the near future.  Good luck to them and bon voyage!

Coral-bot robot

Stories about the Coralbots 

Coralbots with swarm intelligence (TheVerge)

Repairing Scottish reef (BBC)

A step closer to reality for Coralbots (Inhabitat)

Coralbots Facebook presence

Going through the motions

Leap Motion lets you drive your computer with finger gestures

There's a lot of focus on technology that makes access to computers more intuitive.  We're not expected to rely solely on a keyboard or a mouse now to make our devices respond to our commands.

Touchscreens made the keyboard redundant on tablets and smartphones.  Now gesture controlled operation is set to add more capability to the computer interface.

Using sensors to detect movement is nothing new.  We've been relying on this technology for many years in our motion detector alarm systems , in lighting systems that activate when you enter the room and in those floodlights you have to light up a dark path.  These systems are all fairly crude in that they are detecting heat and motion changes then triggering a single response - light a bulb or sound an alarm.

The new motion sensors for our computers are a bit smarter than that.  They are detecting intricate patterns of movement through Sudden Motion Sensor technology and using this to trigger one of many outcomes. Take a look at this technology from Hewlett-Packard in conjunction with San Francisco start-up, Leap Motion.  The sensors apparently detect movement  across all of your fingers with amazing precision.  HP has such confidence in Leap Motion that they will be initially shipping the sensor units packaged with some of their devices and then integrating them into new models.

Science fiction becomes science future (image from Minority Report)

What they need now is for the community to get behind this and for designers to build applications that deploy the Leap Motion technology.  The're off to a great start with some 50,000 developers already requesting toolkits.

How long will it be before we can drive our computers like Tom Cruise did so effectively in Minority Report?  With innovations like this, maybe not too long at all.  

Leap Motion logo

HP and Leap Motion innovation for gesture control (Stuff)

HP hopes gesture control will revitalise the PC market (Bloomberg)

Leap Motion-enabled devices shipping with Airspace (eWeek)

The Sudden Motion Sensor

Micro-battery breakthrough

I always get excited when I hear of improvements in battery technology.  We have so many great gadgets but  if they are to be portable then they need to be powered by a battery.

Batteries never give us the staying power we need and they have long been the Achilles Heel of portability.  Think about all of those smartphones, tablets and notebooks that don't last the distance.  You often need to find an AC socket to recharge your device at the most inopportune moment.

There are many projects trying to design the next generation of battery technology.  Here's one that shows
great promise.  The key appears to be in what they've done with the electrodes.  Traditionally the anode (positive) and cathode (negative) have poles that are solid.  Electrons flow through a barrier (the electrolyte) when a load (such as a bulb) is attached and hey presto, electricity.

3 dimensional electrodes are the key to the power gain

The radical change with this new technology is that the normally solid electrodes are swapped out for three dimensional micro-structures.  Increasing the effective surface area of the electrodes has a remarkable effect on the power density.  The batteries have around 2000 times more power generated than regular micro-batteries.  They also recharge around 1000 times faster, too.

At the moment they have some issues with the manufacturing process and some of the materials are too combustible to be safe but they have high hopes for sorting out these problems.  The improvements in the electrode structure and their effect on power gain will remain regardless of what materials they make these batteries out of.

The technology will allow for very powerful batteries that are much smaller than current ones or, alternatively, batteries of a similar size to today's units but many times more powerful.

I'll be watching this one with great anticipation.

Battery stories

Battery breakthrough (BBC)

Teeny tiny batteries (Cnet)

Boffins build high-power low-size battery (TheRegister)

If the title 'High-power lithium ion microbatteries from interdigitated three-dimensional bicontinuous nanoporous electrodes' doesn't phase you, then maybe you'd like to read the more detailed technical report about this technology.  (Warning: subscription service)

How does a battery work?

UFB is on its way

Good to see that Chorus has signed contracts to get the ultra fast broadband network underway in New
Zealand.  Downer and Visionstream are partners in this ambitious undertaking and it looks like they could be getting started as soon as July.

It hardly needs mentioning just how important a backbone of ultra fast broadband is going to be for the nation.  I can't wait to see it up and running.

New Zealand UFB plan

$1 billion contract for UFB (NZ Herald)

Keeping a lid on costs for UFB (Stuff)

Chorus

Informational site about UFB in New Zealand

3D printing on a budget

RepRap 'Mendel' 3D printer

Everyone seems to be talking about 3D printing.  Some good, some bad.  Lawmakers seem convinced that we are going to see unenforceable national borders and the bad buys 'printing' out weapons and making the next generation of illicit drugs.  Barack Obama waxed lyrical about 3D printing but worries about its potential misuse too.  The US is amending its Undetectable Firearms Act to prepare for these new gizmos.

Funnily enough some of us have little interest in the drug trade or preparing for the next Waco style siege.  What could you do instead that's fun and cheap?

For a start, you can source some building materials for next to nothing by feeding your empty plastic milk bottles into an extruding machine like the Filabot or the Filamaker. These gadgets will shred the plastics and produce filaments that serve as a base material for 3D printing.

Perhaps you want to build yourself a 3D printer like the RepRap 'Mendel' shown in the picture above.  RepRap is a community based project popular with people all over the world.

Filabot filament maker

Check out these projects for what you might do next to actually print something once you have the raw material.

Some home 3D printing links

3D printing basics

3D printer for the home (Smartplanet)

Personal portable 3D printer

Stepping up a notch or two

Another kind of home project in 3D is happening but this one is on an entirely different scale.  

Dutch architect, Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Universal Architecture, is working with inventor and roboticist, Enrico Dini, to build a 1,100 square metre townhouse in the Netherlands.  The entire structure will be fabricated using Dini's revolutionary D-Shape 3D printer technology.

The Landscape House - a 3D printed building

The printed house (Wired)

D Shaped 3D Printer (Gizmag)

UltraViolet

The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey

It's DRM but not as we know it

When The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey is released in NZ on May 1st (why did we have to wait longer yet again?) it will come with a new service called UltraViolet.  I say new but what I should say is new to New Zealand.  The rest of the world, or at least the parts that big business cares about, has had UltraViolet for quite some time.

So what is it and is it any good?  In short it's digital rights management (DRM) all over again and from what overseas consumers are saying it's about as popular as all other attempts to copy protect audio and video content.

The players

Most of the big studios and media distributors are signed up to UltraViolet through a consortium called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE).  Sony, NBCUniversal, Fox, Paramount, Warner, Dreamworks and Lionsgate are all in there.

Notable DECE absentees are a couple of companies who really don't play well with anyone else.  Disney spoiled the party by going with their own proprietary system called Keychest and Apple are sticking with their iCloud service.  Oh well, par for the course.

What is it?

UltraViolet is a well funded and industry supported technology that aims to provide consumers with a license to view copyrighted movies on a variety of devices.  It will work on your phone on your computer, your tablet, as long as you download and install all the correct applications and register for all the right accounts.  It should work with desktop TV boxes, DVD and Blu-Ray players, too.  If it doesn't work for you, well clearly you've done something wrong.  I hate it already.

This is not a technology for me - I loathe it just from writing that last paragraph.  Give me a physical disc and I'll be happy.  Why?  Well, the disc is mine (even if the content is not) and unless I lose it or sit on it it should last for as long as I could reasonably expect it to last.   If I want to show it somewhere other than at home I can put it in my bag and take it with me - marvellous, and not very complicated to use.

We've seen it before and we'll see it again

I've had a chuckle looking through some of the reader feedback at Amazon, I've checked out a few forums and I'm pretty certain that I'm not going to investigate this technology any further.  I detest DRM because it doesn't work smoothly, it's much too complicated for the average consumer to comprehend and life is too short to get upset about why a movie won't play, or stream or why it's started jumping and staggering to the point where it's unwatchable.  You can usually rest assured that if the movie industry thinks it's a good idea then the consumer is going to think the opposite.

In a data-capped environment like New Zealand bear in mind that that this technology is another way to rack up some high data traffic if you opt to stream UltraViolet movies from the web.

My choice

I will be buying the Hobbit on Blu-Ray.  Why?  Well it's a great film that will look great in 1080P Full HD, the discs will be packed full of the kind of extras that Peter Jackson is famous for and I've already reserved a space for it on my shelf, alongside the many other great movies that I feel compelled to own.

UltraViolet links

Expanding the Hobbit experience (Stuff)

What you need to know about UltraViolet (TechRadar)

Reviewers hate digital locker (Gigaom)

Why UltraViolet is frustrating (IGN)

UltraViolet can go to hell (Blog comment)

UltraViolet home page

An FAQ about Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet titles at WowHD

Google at Rose Cottage

Give your old accounts closure

Great to see that Google is trying to be a good corporate citizen by providing the ability to choose what happens to your accounts after your death (or after any extended period of inactivity).  All configurable through the Google Inactive Account Manager. People are already dubbing it Google Death.

Obsolete accounts clutter up vast arrays of storage and the problem can only get worse as more people go online.

I'm sure this is not just about customer needs.  Look at it from the provider's perspective.  Google has introduced any number of tools over the years and some of those have now been killed off.  There's been a good deal of spring cleaning of late at Googleplex, California, with the likes of Google Reader and Google Wave either retired or put on noticed.  Once the tools are gone then the accounts that used them are redundant, too.

I wonder if other giants, like Facebook will also come to the party and remove accounts that are no longer active. I fear that they will be less enthusiastic where their business revolves around having the biggest user base in the social media community, even if some of those accounts belong to people who have long since shuffled of this mortal coil.

Spring clean evolution

Managing the digital afterlife (NZ Herald)

Setting up the Google Inactive Account Manager (Cnet)

Google introduces the Inactive Account Manager (eWeek)

Facebook doesn't deactivate inactive accounts

Cleaning up a Facebook account to remove inactive friends (eHow)

Euphemisms for the inevitable end

MegaPhone

6.3" Mega

Just how big can a smartphone get?

Samsung may be stretching credibility with their latest offering, the 6.3" phablet, Galaxy Mega.  (There's also a 5.8" model but who wants to settle for second best?)

I reckon a device like this is going to look well cool, right up to the point where you put it against your ear.  From thereon in, call the dork patrol.

Let's hope that buyers will invest in a bluetooth headset to avoid the major faux pas of  using it like a regular phone.

Specs are currently quite sketchy but we know the screen has an 'HD' resolution of 1280 x 720.  Shipping with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the processor is a  1.7 GHz dual-core, manufacturer so far unknown.  8 GB and 16 GB models will be sold and the Mega has a microSD slot to allow a further 64 GB expansion of storage.

Pricing at this stage is really only a guess but don't expect this one to come cheap.

It's released hot on the heels of the Samsung Galaxy S-IV, which hits the world stage on April 27th.   The Mega starts shipping in larger markets in May 2013 but no indication yet when New Zealand will see this giant unleashed.

Announcements for the Galaxy Mega 

Try looking cool with a tablet sized phone

Samsung unveils the Galaxy Mega (Stuff)

Mega (PC Advisor)

Mega (Engadget)

Breaking the 6" barrier (IGN)

Mega (Mashable)

Mega (Heavy)

Samsung's Galaxy lineup - is it just too big? (Computerworld NZ)

Robot Convoy

Driverless road trains are in develoopment

Here's a great story from the BBC - robotic truck convoys.

I love the idea of these driverless road train chugging through the night.  Kinda spooky - what if they develop a mind of their own? (Images of 'Christine' come to mind.)

Google Car is an active project and we know what

Drone convoy

those guys can do when they put their collective minds to something.

BMW has already forecast that vehicles will be "highly automated" by 2015 and driverless by 2020.  That's food for thought.

Many of the world's big auto manufacturers are spending large on this holy grail of vehicle technology.  There will potentially be big wins for the people who get it right and can license the technology to the world.
Nissan, Lexus, Audi are all in the mix, as are Oxford University.

Exciting times indeed but let's hope that they do a lot of testing before they deploy these.  Question is, what are all the people going to do who insist on driving to break the monotony of travel?

BMW forecast driverless cars by 2020 

Driverless cars by 2015 possible (Stuff)

Has the time come for the driverless car? (Washington Post)

Google's trillion dollar car (Forbes)

XP exit

Comedy of errors with XP exit

Windows XP has less than 12 months before it it’s officially dead, unsupported, consigned to the history books.  Really, is that important?  Well, for the half million XP computers (yes 500,000) here in lil’ ol’ New Zealand that is important.  (What can the world population be if we still have half a million of the critters?)

How is it that an operating system removed from sale over 4 years ago still has such a large user base?  How can a computer last that long and still be worth booting up each day?  That’s the thing about the maturing computer market.  Step back 10 years and that wouldn’t have been the case.  Technology was changing so quickly and you really needed to keep upgrading just to stay in the game.  But for the last few years a Pentium 4 or above, partnered with a reasonable amount of RAM, a decent sized hard drive and just a budget graphics card is really all you need to surf the web in some style.  Sure, if you like blitzing aliens or want to run the latest first person shooter that spec is going to be wholly inadequate, but for many people, a reasonable web experience and the ability to process some words from time to time is really all that’s required from your workhorse.

A 3 or 4 year PC running Windows XP will tick those boxes.  There’s the rub.  It’s enough.  It represents a $1000+ that I don’t need to spend now because it’s enough.

So what are these XP users going to do come April next year when the evil empire stops supplying patches

All or nothing - I've given up on MSIE on all my machines

and security fixes?  Well, I guess they’ll do what they’ve already been forced to do regarding their web browser – since Microsoft stopped allowing XP users to run their latest IE browsers people have been looking elsewhere.  I tried Firefox and Chrome and was pleased with what I found so the loss of IE for me on my XP machine was no great trauma.  Actually, Microsoft lost me as surfing customer as I no longer run IE on any of my Windows 7 machines either as I'm now a born-again Chromer.

Microsoft are trying to tell the XP user base that they can, subject to some hardware constraints, purchase a copy of Windows 7 for the bargain basement price of $249.  Really?  Does that make any sense at all?

If I’m going to invest $250 in technology I’m not going to squander it on an OS that was never intended for my aging but dependable hardware.  By the time XP's imminent death rolls by I’ll be ready to put that money to good use on a new web surfing device.  And guess what, Microsoft, it may not necessarily be running your operating system.  If you want to lock me in as customer, make it worth my while but don’t wait too long.

Clock ticking for XP users (Stuff)

No more IE upgrades for Windows XP users (Cnet)

Bitcoin bubble

Rollercoaster ride for digital currency

News this week of great volatility in the value of the world's first digital currency, Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the hot digital currency

For those of us new to such things, Bitcoin is one of the modern marvels of the internet age - a currency accepted across the world and offering an unprecented level of security not possible with other payment methods.

It's become popular with commercial speculators, with music artists, with individuals - anyone who wants the ease of commerce without traditional banks, government agencies or other rogues getting in the way (at least for now).

Bitcoin is well protected against theft.  Each Bitcoin is 'owned' by an individual, cryptograhically insured and can't be spent by other people who may try to get loose with someone else's dosh.

Another curiosity of this digital currency world is Bitcoin mining, where smart mathematics is used to solve a problem.  The first person to crack the problem earns the right to mine some new Bitcoin currency.  The number of units earned is steadily falling as time goes by and when the Bitcoin supply hits 21 million units, no more will be available.  Wouldn't that be hard pill for many countries to swallow with their currencies?

 Bitcoin can't be destroyed, it seems so far immune from theft and it's becoming very popular.  It's traded like any other currency, it has a banking system and it increases or decreases in value, dependent on demand.  Recently there's been huge swings in the value - an all time high of $US266 was countered by a staggering 60% fall to $US105 before recovering to trade at US130 before falling back to $US120 on 11/04/2013.  Trading was halted until April 12th.

What's next for Bitcoin?  Will it weather this storm like it has previous assaults or is it poised to become another Cyprus?

Links for Bitcoin

Check out a 101 on Bitcoin trading and mining and make your choice on whether this kind of currency speculation is for you.

Future money's wild ride (Stuff)

$266 intraday high crashing 60% to $105

Bitcoin forum

What is Bitcoin?

Explaining Bitcoin (CNBC)

Intoduction to Bitcoin (YouTube video)

Basics of Bitcoin (video)

Introduction to Bitcoin mining (PDF)

Hackers eye Bitcoin

Don't get scammed by ads like this !

Perils of Bitcoin mining (Bloomberg)

Boom and bust cycles (Time)

Collectibles, not real money (Forbes)

Cryptographic engineering

Cryptoanarchists answer to cash

Bitcoin charts

I've got my eye on you

Is it just me or does anyone else find eye tracking technology just a bit too spooky?

Peek a boo - eye tracking technology is coming to a phone near you

There's been a rush to patent various eye tracking technologies recently.  Samsung is getting a lot of press about it and the new Samsung Galaxy S IV smartphone was rumoured to track your eye movements, although some reviewers are saying it's looking at your facial movement rather than tracking your eye position. Eye Pause and Eye Scroll are new buzz words we're going to have to get used to.

I'm wondering what this all means.  Once activated how long does the tracking sensor lock on to your eye?  What can it see?  Does it burrow  inside your head and detect your deepest, darkest thoughts?  How long do you need to close your eyes before it gives up trying to track you?

There you go - I've started thinking about where this could lead and I'm scared again.  Keep it away from me.

Galaxy S4 review (Cnet)

Galaxy S4 launch presentation (Mashable)

Eye tracking in the S4 (Wall Street Journal)

Does it work with games? (Guardian UK)

LG goes one up on Samsung (GottaBe Mobile)

Window rot

PC sales are sinking fast

They were staking so much on Windows 8.  It was going to turn Microsoft around but sales figures for Q1 2013 tell a different story.

Less people are buying PCs and laptops.  Instead they're turning to their tablets and their smartphones for the services they use most often - social media, email, texts, anything that keeps them in touch with their community.  You don't need a PC for that kind of activity.  In fact a PC is a hindrance to the always-on, always-connected generation since you can't lug it around everywhere you go.

It doesn't look the same

It's hardly surprising then that people are buying less traditional hardware.  What's exacerbating the decline is that Microsoft, the dominant supplier of operating systems for this gear, has radically changed its user interface.  Windows 8 looks very different to Windows 7 and the XP, 98, 95 interface that every knows and loves (kind of).  At a time when the Windows device is losing popularity, the need to learn a new interface was a bit of a disaster.

Some of the falls are staggering where ever upwards is the name of the game.  PC/laptop sales are down 11-14% compared to Q1 2012.  The world's biggest PC manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard, has seen a 24% drop - that's serious stuff.  Of course, it's not all down to Windows 8 - the PC as the dominant computing device has had its day.

You don't need a PC for Temple Run

Now I don't think everyone is going to be taking their PC hardware to the landfill just yet but it does show that user patterns are shifting markedly to small, handheld devices.   If you are into graphic design, if you build web sites, if you dwell in dark basements crunching large volumes of digital data then this change is not going to persuade you to dump the PC.  But, if you are primarily interested in staying in touch, taking snapshots of your day and playing Temple Run, then you really have little use for the PC or it's operating system.

Time for an industry to survey the market and make some serious adjustments.

World PC sales down as Windows 8 flops (NZ Herald)

PC slaes plunge (Stuff)

PC sales down 14% - biggest drop on record (NDTV)

Don't just blame Windows 8 (Mashable)

Windows 8 fails to excite (Telegraph UK)

Q1 2013 14% drop (IDC)

Worst ever PC shipment quarter (TthinkDigit)