Banana in public

Retouching fashion pics is a current area of controversy in the UK but labelling "Photoshopped" images is alien to US culture (or couture). However, American fashion website jezebel.com seems to be constantly watching online catalogues for blunders.

Jezebel found the aptly named Banana Republic doing a quick change when it published the latest men's slacks. It allowed casual viewers to vada the omi's kaffie basket in its un-shopped glory, as Polari-speakers might put it. Shortly afterwards, the website retouchers were hard-pressed to replace the image with a less outstanding example of their work.

Before                                      After

Security can be too secure

What a day. I'm reviewing a terabyte, encrypted, external disk and it's driving me crazy. After setting my security keys, I had to put some data on there. After about two hours, the drive locked up. Start again. After about two hours the drive locked up. Tried again and the same result. Tried yet again and accidentally pulled the USB plug from my laptop.

I'm persevering and a transfer is going on as I write but it's so difficult to type with your fingers crossed. (Guess what happened. It crashed again)

I found new challenges when the plug came out. I tried to log-in using my passcode on the drive's touch screen keyboard. I touch a number and an asterisk appears. I do it several times with the same result. I try the penultimate number and... nothing. I try again and it registers. I finish off the last number and press return. WRONG PASSWORD it tells me.

I try yet again with the same sticky response. Then, after another failed attempt, it comes up with a message to the effect that a hacking attempt has been detected and the data will be erased. The only on-screen response offered me is CONTINUE. I continue, switch off the drive again. Reconnect and find that the data is still there. What's going on?

Apple imitates Microsoft

Multitasking on the iPhone reminds me of Wolfpack, Microsoft's first dabble in the 'clustering' market. Wolfpack was a half-assed attempt that amounted to no more than failover. When one server blew, the other took over. There was no real load sharing - which I would class as part of the definition of clustering - and only two servers were involved. More of a marriage than a cluster. But marketed so well that few of the users realised that clustering had been 'redefined'.

The iPhone does at least show some elements of multitasking but only as far as music, GPS and VoIP apps are concerned but everything else freezes when a new app is selected. This is bad news for YouTube users. Switch away from YouTube and it stops working so you still have to stare at a blank screen until the video loads.

I would argue that this is not real multitasking because apps should continue to run in the background. Naturally, this would put a drain on the battery so, for real multitasking in a mobile phone, there should be the ability to chose  to freeze an app or run it in the background.

There is also the issue of apps not being modified for the new environment. Multitasking is not fully incorporated in the operating system so every app will have to be modified by the developers before freezing can be achieved.

The only hope is that, just as Wolfpack evolved to be a true clustering technology, iPhone multitasking will improve over time. As it stands, I would give Apple 2/10 for effort.

Legally blonde iPads

I was in a bar today and there was a gorgeous blonde drawing looks from just about every guy in there. Being the maladjusted geek that I am, I thought, "Let me compare thee to an Apple iPad."

She was indeed beautiful to look at, shapely and desirable. All the guys wanted her and could imagine running their fingers across her sunscreen. But she belonged to someone else... lucky sod.

However, when she spoke she was self-obsessed, shrill and shallow. Judging by the way she was dressed, she was probably high maintenance, too, needing all sorts of extra bits and pieces.

An object of desire, sexy and a source of envy, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Printers: the gift that keeps on taking

I went to see Hewlett-Packard in Paris to talk about the need to use HP-branded coloured water and carbon dust in their printers. Only to be told that these are hi-tech products more akin to magic water and fairy dust.

On the night before the meeting I went to find a local bijou bistro for a bite to eat and a glass of good wine. On my way an attempt was made to mug me at knife-point. Fortunately, some public-spirited locals came to my assistance and I only lost my watch and not my life. Such occurrences jolt the mind and scramble your thoughts as you try to make sense of the world.

After listening to HP argue that third-party consumables may harm their printers, I came to an interesting concept. When you buy a printer from HP, or any other mainstream manufacturer, it's like contracting a mugger to visit your house from time to time. Every so often you have to pay what they demand or suffer the consequences.

It's like drug dealing. Get 'em hooked at cost-price and keep bleeding them of cash.

Certainly, the printer manufacturers have a valid argument if you want optimum results and, where their laser products are concerned, toner is certainly a high-tech product. But I've never heard enough complaints about ink to make me doubt that the majority of ink-based printer users are happy with refilled cartridges and cheap supermarket paper.

Where colour fidelity is concerned I think most people consider close enough to be good enough. Let's face it, colour blindness affects 1 in 10 people so a lot of people, myself included, perceive colours differently. When it comes to colour fidelity "Frankly, my dear, I couldn't give a damn," as Rhett (or was it Ghreemm) Butler said.

But, argued HP, the image will last for at least 70 years if HP branded consumables are used. So what? The results are projected lab results and I'll be dead before real world tests are complete so I won't be suing them if they're wrong. Besides which, images are digital. If it fades, print another one.

Manifesto

Every day I wake up and something has changed in the IT world. It might just be a speck of dust has settled somewhere in the landscape or, on rare occasions, a brand new trail has been blazed to the horizon.

I've tracked these changes for 25 years and noticed that there are cyclical cadences. I started off writing about the home computer boom of the 80s, moved to the world of business technology and now find I am writing as much about consumer products as I ever did. What has changed is that these products are now being applied to business applications.

I started writing about mainframes and minicomputers. Common phrases would be glasshouses, time-sharing, bureau services, green screen, and disk arrays. In the 90s I wrote about distributed systems, data warehousing and the like. Today, it's data centres, cloud services, thin clients and disk farms.

The cycles all have different cadences. We have distributed systems, mixed with data centre technology, cloud and mobile phones. Like cast runes, the next throw gives a different configuration.

Even social change has an influence. The digital generation not only readily adopt new technologies but also expect to adapt their ever-changing personal skills to their working environment. It's the Lego-mentality where everything must click-fit or be discarded.

This blog will catalogue change but at heart will be the jottings of a freelance journalist trying to make sense of the technologies and influences. At times I will rave about the genius if what, in the end, turns out to be a dead-end technology. I will rail against inevitability. Sometimes, I may get it right.

In a world where marketing often holds sway, nothing is clear cut. Just as Betamax video tape was supplanted by the inferior VHS standard, we have seen great technology displaced by well-marketed mediocrity time after time. Price, perception or just a well-chosen product name are some of the influences that confound the prediction business.

Enough scene setting and back to a ramble through the metropoli, villages, and wild and windy spaces of the IT world.