After discovering about patent No. 7,479,949 which was approved on the 20th covering multi-touch devices that use heuristics, I said it would cause future devices some problems including the Palm Pre. This statement I stand by, I would however like to just point you towards an Engadget mobile article that they posted today going into much more detail about the subject.

It’s a long read so grab a cuppa (or a beer) before clicking!

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/

Enjoy

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Microsoft today released Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1.

Overview
Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of the familiar web browser you are most comfortable using, helping you get everything you want from the web faster, easier, more privately and securely than ever before.

• Faster Internet Explorer 8 is more responsive with new pages and tabs, opening up fast and reliably. You can now get to the information you care about most, in fewer steps; one click access to your webmail, favorite news sites or other online services.
• Easier Reduce the steps to accomplish many common tasks, and automate your access to real time information updates. You can keep track of your favorite sports team, news, weather with a single click.
• More Private Helps protect your privacy and confidential information where ever you go on the web.
• More Secure Helps protect and stop malicious software from reaching your PC, and makes it easier to detect when a website is an imposter.

I have just installed it and ran it for the 1st time. I thought I would do a but of testing. I cleared my Google Chrome cache and loaded my blog up which took 6.4 seconds, I then loaded it on IE8 and that took 7.3 seconds! I know it’s not a huge time difference but imagine that extra second on each site, assuming you visit 30 sites a day everyday, that’s 182 minutes per year wasted waiting for IE to load!!!

Yeah ok not exactly scientific or practical but still, it’s slower for me. Also when I loaded my blog it prompted me to open it in “compatibility mode”, this mode is so that sites not designed for IE8 are seen as they are supposed to be seen. WHY OH WHY should we need that, if something is an upgrade to a previous version then there surely has have  backwards compatibility? If every time I load a site I then have to click again to change to compatibility mode then that wastes more time waiting for it to reload.

I’m not seeing any major improvements! Sorry Microsoft.

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This was meant to be posted yesterday but I needed to to do a bit more research before I was happy to post it!

Microsoft announced that it is to cut 5000 jobs after it’s Q4 financial results were released on the 22nd. Overall, Microsoft’s revenue rose 2 percent for the quarter that ended Dec. 31, but net income fell 11 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

It seems that a lot of people are blaming Vista for a lot of Msfts problems;

"Windows Vista didn’t do well. Based on our data, a lot of clients are skipping Windows Vista," says Neil MacDonald, an analyst at Gartner. Indeed, nearly every other major analyst firm found a similar lack of Vista adoption, with Forrester Research likening the OS to the failed New Coke.

Info World

One of the biggest surprises and saddest bits of news (certainly for me anyway) was that in the 1st 1400 job cuts that occurred on the 23rd the WHOLE of the ACES studio who create and develop the Flight Simulator game. As a HUGE fan of flight sim this is hard news to hear, Flight Simulator is possibly the game industry’s longest-running continuous franchise and was 1st released in 1982.

It’s not all bad news though;

CEO Steve Ballmer says Microsoft won’t stop hiring entirely. He says the company could add 2,000 or 3,000 jobs in the next year-and-a-half in certain promising areas, such as Internet search technology.

MSNBC

Microsoft seems to be re-aligning and re-prioritising it’s business, shame the best product it ever made had to be out of line.

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Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

Washington Post

Looks like the new administration hit a few teething troubles on the 1st couple of days in office. The Obama team have, from the start wanted to remain as transparent as possible and are planning to use technology to do this. The White House website has undergone a total revamp with blogs, and weekly video addresses (all with RSS feeds) all built in. Also the robots.txt file has been rewritten. That file is the piece of information that search engine crawlers look for to see what they can and cannot index into their sites. When the Bush administration was in power this file was nearly 2000 lines of addresses that were not indexable, today however that file is 2 lines and those lines are there to say that, for the current time anything on the site is searchable!!!

In many ways, the move into the White House resembled a first day at school: Advisers wandered the halls, looking for their offices. Aides spent hours in orientation, learning such things as government ethics rules as well as how their paychecks will be delivered. And everyone filled out a seemingly endless pile of paperwork.

There were plenty of first-day glitches, too, as calls to many lines in the West Wing were met with a busy signal all morning and those to the main White House switchboard were greeted by a recording, redirecting callers to the presidential Web site. A number of reporters were also shut out of the White House because of lost security clearance lists.

Washington Post

On a techno plus side it appears that President Obama will get the item he has missed the most back after it was taken away from him before the swearing in began. His blackberry to which he firmly addicted to has been passed by the NSA who added a “super-encryption package” which will allow personal and routine messages to be sent from the device!

Looks like we have our first Blackberry President!!

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UPDATE: Just to clarify something, (after someone commented on how my post sounded) I am in no way trying to imply that the Bush administration was hiding things from the American public by using the robots.txt file inappropriately. Part of the definition of the robots.txt file says

There are two important considerations when using /robots.txt:

• robots can ignore your /robots.txt. Especially malware robots that scan the web for security vulnerabilities, and email address harvesters used by spammers will pay no attention.
• the /robots.txt file is a publicly available file. Anyone can see what sections of your server you don’t want robots to use.

So don’t try to use /robots.txt to hide information.

www.robotstxt.org

All I was trying to point out was that it is a good start to the administrations policy on being totally transparent.

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Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.

At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people, have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

 

This was just part of the opening remarks that Barack Obama made in his inauguration speech today on capitol hill. It is known that I have been a fan and supporter of the now President Obama since he announced his candidacy. So for me today is a very special day. Even as a UK citizen (and a Canadian one) this moment is special to me and to everyone, as it marks not only a major step forward for the United States but for the world as a whole. The worlds biggest superpower is now in the control of someone who, in my opinion has the best idea of where his country needs to go, the best idea in a long long while. His agenda is right, his view on the situation in Iraq is right, he is right for this role.

This historic day will go down in history books and I believe the next 8 years will show that, roll on 8 great years!

Congratulations President Obama.

On a slightly more sober note, during the inauguration dinner Senator Ted Kennedy has a seizure and collapsed and was taken to hospital. The Democratic Senator has been suffering with brain cancer for many months now and has recently undergone chemo and radiation treatment. My thoughts are with Senator Kennedy and his family at this time.

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Major apologies for the lack of text updating on this blog, sadly I have been afflicted with another bout of the bubonic plague I had over Christmas only this time, it brought along its friend T.B. for a party.

Ok it’s not actually TB but with the amount of coughing I am doing it might as well be.

Anyway I thought I would do a quick round up for you of this weeks news from the tech world;

1. Looks like after my post last week about Steve Jobs’ medical condition more news has developed. The big cheese over at “1 Infinite Loop” has taken 6 months medical leave after his condition was found to be “more complex” that initially thought. Links here and here for more info.

2. Circuit City announced on Friday that it was putting all its 530 stores across the US into liquidation and closing the shutters permanently. Yet another household name feels the pressure from the current economic climate. Links here and here

3. On the same train of thought AMD announced it was cutting 1,100 jobs and putting a temporary pay cut for ALL employees into action.

The chipmaker will also institute temporary salary cuts, with its CEO Dirk Meyer and Executive Chairman Hector Ruiz both taking a 20 percent cut. In the U.S. and Canada, executives that hold a rank of vice president or higher will receive a 15 percent pay cut and salaried workers a 10 percent cut. Hourly workers, meanwhile, will face a 5 percent wage reduction.

CNET News

4. By far the biggest mainstream news of the week was the US Airways Airbus A320 that had to land in the Hudson River shortly after take off because it was struck by a flock of birds. The flight that was at nearly 3,200 feet was somehow successfully landed on the river and all the passengers survived. This unprecedented feat was down to the captain of the plane Capt Chesley B "Sully" Sullenberger who with his many many years experience completed the impossible task of putting the plane down into the water without it rolling exploding or breaking up! Links here, here and here. Having flown planes solo in the past I have some idea of how hard this task must have been, that man should be thrown every honour going if you ask me!

5. Lastly we get onto Tuesdays events, Barack Obama will be officially inaugurated into the role of President of the United States of America. Obviously this momentous and historic event is going to be covered by every press and news syndicate in the world, but in days were citizen journalism is taking such a prominent role, where else can you find news on this day? Ustream.tv have written an iPhone app that will allow direct streaming of the event straight to the device, many political blogs such as Red State (right), DailyKos (left), Little Green Footballs (right), Instapundit (libertarian), Talking Points Memo (left), and others will be live blogging the whole thing and of course there are twitter users. Also CurrentTV has teamed up with the Twitter folks and will be providing real-time updates throughout the day! Amazing how the world and the way news is transmitted has changed in the last 8 years!!

That’s all for now, more posts tomorrow.

I am going to cough myself to sleep now!

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Rumours running around the nets at the moment have named Carol Bartz as the new Yahoo CEO. Kara Swisher of Boomtown was the 1st to break the news;

Bartz, 60, is certainly an experienced and very well-regarded tech exec, with the talent to turn things around. She served as chairman, president and CEO for 14 years at the San Rafael, Calif.-based Autodesk, which makes computer-aided design software for engineers.

While there, Bartz presided over huge growth at Autodesk (ADSK), stepping down in April of 2006 to spend more time with her family, and has since served as its executive chairman.

She also put in stints at other big tech companies, including Sun Microsystems (JAVA), Digital Equipment Corporation and 3M (MMM).

According to her resume on Autodesk’s Web site, Bartz holds an honors degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin.

Bartz is also on the boards of a blue chip list of tech companies and organizations, including Intel, Cisco Systems, NetApp (NTAP), and the Foundation for the National Medals of Science and Technology.

With Yahoo about to announce 4th quarter figures (which are said to be catastrophically bad) she is going to get a pretty short welcome party!

Let’s she if she can take Yahoo to, as Jerry Yang put it, “the next level”

Good luck Carol, you’ll need it.

UPDATE: This rumour has now been confirmed by Yahoo in a press release which can be read here

Last December’s retail figures were down 3.3% on the same time in 2007 a report from the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has announced today. This was the worst December since the survey (which is carried out annually) began in 1995.

The food retailers industry was nearly the only section to have in increase on sales in December but this was not enough to stop the Director-General of the British Retail Consortium (BRC) describing December as having “truly awful numbers”. The BCC report, based on a survey of almost 6,000 firms, revealed rapidly declining domestic demand and plummeting confidence in the last three months of 2008.

Quite frankly the last time I saw anything of this magnitude of decline was when I worked in the West Midlands in the early 1980s

David Frost
Director-general,
British Chamber of Commerce

Now I work in retail and without saying things I am not allowed to, the high street that my shop is on has been VERY quiet this week and as a result so has our shop.

I have spoken to some other retailers in the surrounding shops and they are noticing a very very quiet January so far as well. This I think is all pointing to January 23rd when official figures will be released that will show negative growth in the UK for 6 months and thus we will officially be classed as “in a recession”.

The BCC’s chief economist David Kern said that he now expected the UK economy to shrink by up to 2.4% in 2009, rather than the 2.2% he had earlier forecast.

"One must say that unfortunately in terms of GDP, this recession is worse than in the 1990s," he said.

But he added it was not worse than the 1980s, so it was still possible "to avoid a prolonged depression".

BBC News

The Bank of England has already cut the interest rates to 1.5% it’s lowest in the history of the bank but analysts feel more cuts will be needed as well as other actions to end this depression early.

Tough times ahead for all of us it seems.

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