Geoff's Random Thoughts

Anything which isn't a simple webpage is being branded with the buzzphrase of being 'in the cloud'. 5 years ago it was called Software as a service and 10 years ago it was a webpage. I'm seeing a heck of a lot of advertisements, articles and sales pitches for pushing applications into the cloud. The idea is that you use an application like Salesforce.com instead of an application installed on your computer. All of the articles are positive and sell cloud / Web based applications as the perfect solution, and they really can be. CRM, HR and Finance Systems can cost a heck of a lot of money for Small and Medium sized businesses. A lot of the articles I'm reading do not portray the flip side of the argument. Yes, there's a huge upside to Cloud based computing, but there are also some downsides which should be taken into account. The first thing you should always consider, is that you're trusting someone else with your data, be that your own company's files,

After Blogging about the iPad a few days ago Here , I need to bring up one of my biggest bugbears with the iPad. While the iPad is a good platform for basic research, it's not the tool to research and write from that research at the same time. Switching between safari tabs, safari and Email and anything else, evernote, dropbox, ibooks any few apps quickly becomes annoying as does the cutting and pasting. cut and paste works ok on the ipad for the odd operation, but as a regular thing, it's a pain. Blogger's 'create post' page does not work very well, failing to even scroll the main window and there are very few clients you can test. Yes, yes, I know it's for consumption, the iPad's not for creating, but why shouldn't it be. We don't all do what Steve Jobs tells us.

Back in August, I posted about my experience with the ipad after a Month. http://geoffsrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/08/ipad-week-in.html But I realised that I'd never followed up, so here's a longer term view. Do I use it much? I still take the iPad to lots of places, it's light, the battery life is great and with some of the apps, it's really, really useful What's the software keyboard like? Now I'm up to speed, I notice it more than I did previously, I frequently press C or V instead of space and click on shift instead of A.It's usable, but I go far to fast on it. How's safari for browsing? The experience is still very immersive, but I wish that other browsers were available, this would push Apple to improve Safari. Don't you miss Adobe Flash when browsing? No, I really don't. What's Ibooks like? My only reservation has been removed, but I don't use ibooks a lot. Is it heavy, how is it to handle? Occasionally

The Mac app store has made a splash this week for lots of good reasons, unfortunately one developer has dropped the ball in the transition and caused a huge problem both for herself and for her customers. Sophie of Sophiestication took the reasonable view that if she was going to move Coversutra over to the Mac App Store (MAS) she did not have the time and resources to maintain two separate code branches and would go exclusively to the MAS, She posted to her company blog at the start of this week that this was going to be the case and this is when the backlash started.  In the MAS, Cover Sutra costs $5 for version 2.5 therefore if anyone with an earlier version wants an upgrade, they have to buy the version from the MAS. Unfortunately, what sophie forgot (and I genuinely believe that she forgot) was that in the coversutra license agreement between Sophiestication and any customer who bought version 2, it promises free upgrades up until version 3.0 is released. So by releasing 2.5

I have various google alerts set up to keep me up to date with some of my favourite topics. Some of my current searches include Evernote, Dropbox and omnifocus, I use all three on a regular basis and am always looking for little hints of how others use them to see if I can get more out of them. Run a web search yourself though and as you get down the list, you start to see websites which offer you the chance to download Evernote for free, but not from the Evernote website, it's a generic webpage littered with adverts for click throughs. A couple of thoughts always occur to me 1) why would I download Evernote from anywhere but the Evernote website www.evernote.com? 2) what would I actually be downloading? My concern is that less savvy people than myself may encounter these sham sites and click the link unleashing goodness knows what onto their desktop computer. My advice, always download from source.

Android was bought by Google back in 2005 and verbally sold to handset makers as a flexible, upgradable mobile operating system. Google's (don't be evil) take on this was that they were bringing a mobile operating system based on a Linux kernel with their search technology to the masses, it would compete with Windows Mobile and Apple's iPhone operating system (now IOS) in the handset market. Since Android was unveiled to the general public it has found homes on many handsets from HTC, Samsung and the ill fated Dell Streak. With Google handing over operating system control to the handset makers though, Android has become increasingly fragmented with delays of months between a new version of Android being released and the hardware company adapting and offering that version for their handset. The news this week is that Android 3 (AKA Honeycomb) will be released soon which will provide better support for tablets. The rumour mill is buzzing with the news that Honeycomb c

All of my life I've loved maps, I remember drawing a map of Carr Clough (where I used to live) at Junior school, A - Zs which my Dad had, OS maps in Cubs and Scouts, route planners, road maps, all brilliant, all with different views of the world. It suddenly occurred to me the other day, kids born after 2000 are pretty much going to see the world the way that Google wants them to, yes there's Bing, but with Google Earth and maps being so accessible, they've started to become the defaults. A - Zs and Route planners are being rendered obsolete by Sat Navs and Mobile phones and for most other things people look on computers, not in books. The world belongs to geeks, but only how google want you to see it.