Well, its not clever really, just Avesco Inc. who invented it. It’s a smart card with a display and buttons. This gives it lots of extra features. For example, us Londoners have oyster cards, which are smart cards. You put money on them via the Transport for London website, and then to pay for a ticket you just touch them onto a reader. Using a card like this, the display could show the balance on the card, and the buttons could be used to enter a password, to ensure that a stolen card would be useless. Apparently they will also be able to provide a One Time Password for use with ecommerce. This would greatly improve security as you would actually need the card to buy something, rather than the card number and some personal details of the person you intend to rip off.

I like clever ideas, and I think this definitely counts. Lets hope lots of financial services companies see the benefits and take this technology up.

[story and picture thanks to newlaunches.com]

The Million Dollar Homepage has been much covered in the media recently. Founded by skint British student Alex Tew as a way to fund his university education, it sold pixel space on the site for the rate of $1/pixel with a minimum purchase of 100 pixels. It worked, and Tew made his million dollars, selling pixels to companies such as The Times and Orange.

However, I have noticed that the Million Dollar Homepage has not been online of late. This could make some advertisers very angry, considering they have paid for their adverts to be on the site for at least three years. This could be just a temporary outage (although it was down yesterday as well) or it could be that Tew has made his quick buck and has now gone to do something else.

I admire him for the idea, but there could be an awful lot of trouble if he doesn’t manage to get the site back up and running.

They’re often hailed as a ‘revolution in radio’, but I just think they’re a good listen. I thought I’d put down the ones I listen to regularly, and it would be interesting to see what other people listen to as well.

Engadget Podcast
Really good analysis of the tech (particularly gadget world). My enjoyment of it is limited somewhat because I spend most of the podcast filled with immense jealousy that the US is about to get all of the technology being discussed, but that I’m going to have to wait for ages until a) its brought out in the UK and b) I can afford it!

The World Tech Podcast
This is probably my favourite podcast, for two reasons. The first is that it is a co-production of some US public radio stations and the BBC, and so it achieves a good balance of not being too US-centric. The second reason is that it has great variety, so one report might be on stem cells, the next on Web 2.0, the next on portable music players. All in all, very enjoyable.

BBC radio podcasts
I’ve lumped these together as I rarely listen to all of them, because there are so many. There are sometimes some very interesting programmes on, and they publish a major interview in the Today Programme every day. Other programmes include In Business, From our own correspondent, Go Digital and In our time.

NPR Technology
Quite an interesting set of reports on various different up-and-coming technologies, although not quite as good as the World Tech Podcast in my opinion.

ABC Science Show
Much more interested in science than technology, but it has some very interesting pieces on it sometimes. It is, inevitably, quite Austrialia-centric though. Good for Austrialians I guess!

The feeds for the podcasts are below:

From Our Own Correspondent
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio4/fromourowncorrespondent/rss.xml
In Our Time
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/mp3/podcast.xml
The Science Show
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/science.xml
Today
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio4/today/rss.xml
In Business
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio4/inbusiness/rss.xml
NPR: Technology
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=1019&uid=b3048293855c6e41fe4ab23856366ffe
Engadget Podcasts
http://podcasts.engadget.com/rss.xml
The World: Technology from BBC/PRI/WGBH
http://www.theworld.org/rss/tech.xml

Thanks to Google Blogoscoped I discovered a new, very interesting site today (always nice). Its called Goowy.com, and this is what the homepage says about it:

goowy (re) is a rich experience site which helps you manage your digital lifestyle. We provide you with a fresh and powerful environment for managing your webmail, contacts, calendar, rss, widgets (search, bookmarks, photos, weather, stocks, quotes, scores, etc.), and fun flash games.

Once you’ve signed in (and opted to import contacts from your Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! account), you are confronted with an entirely flash-based ‘virtual desktop’, with various widgets on it.

I chose some widgets to go on it, and set up some RSS feeds. I then had a pleasant surprise of noticing that they had provided me with a 2GB mail account! Again, the webmail interface turned out to be flash-based, equipped with a preview panel and some ready-set up folders.

The UI looks really nice, and works very well. When email arrives the page does not have to be reloaded. Fortunately it appears, present and correct, in the inbox.

I suppose the best comparison for this service is Google’s personalised homepage, although there are significant differences, given one is flash-based, and the other is a mishmash of different techniques such as AJAX which together create a very cool effect. The fact that Goowy is flash-based does give it an advantage over the Google service, as it allows for a smarter-looking and and more swish design. However, I do like Google’s relatively lightweight approach, and there is also a mobile version available, which I think is quite cool. I shall certainly give this Goowy service more than a cursory glance though in my quest to have all my information available at any computer.

PS: Microsoft has a Window’s Live service which is similar to Google’s, but I really don’t like it at all (especially because it doesn’t work properly with Firefox), which is why its not mentioned here!

Google has brought out two new products for mobiles in the past week, designed to make browsing the internet from mobiles easier and cooler.

First up, the mobile version of the google.com/ig personalised homepage. Same content available as on the computer version, except obviously without all the widgets. Google Blog had this to say about it:

Anyone who’s ever tried to browse the web on their cell phone knows that it isn’t always the best user experience. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about Google Mobile Personalized Home. We’ve designed a way for you to view the things that you really care about, from your Gmail inbox to news headlines, weather, stock quotes, and feeds (Atom or RSS). The interface is optimized for small screens, and we’ve arranged things so you don’t have to click on a bunch of links to locate what you’re after -– your personalized content appears on top, right where it should be. Give it a try, and let us know how you like it.

It looks quite good, and I reckon its quite useful to have all the feeds, particularly, as sometimes when I’m bored on the bus or something its nice to have something to read.

Next is a product that could have been around for a while, but I’ve certainly not seen it before. I heard about it on Google Blogoscoped. Its simply a proxy that converts any webpage into an optimized version for mobile. Just point your mobile’s browser to http://www.google.com/gwt/n and type in the web adress. It also gives the option to not download images, which will certainly help to curtail bandwith costs.

Google also have Google Local for Mobile beta running, although that’s only available to US users at the moment. They’ve obviously decided that their mission is not only to organise all the world’s information, but to make it available on mobiles as well! Obviously no matter how much great technology they develop, mobile web browsing will always be inherently limited because of the relatively tiny screens on which all the information has to be squeezed. Still, I’m certainly not complaining.

I just saw this on Real Tech News. It is a joke proposal by some civil servant at the Department for Trade and Industry about the proposed ID scheme. Apparently it could cost £500 for an ID card, including integration costs, so this guy has suggested giving everyyone an iPod Nano! At £139 they’re much cheaper, and it would reduce mugging, since there would be no point in stealing them, as everyone would already have one.

I think this is the solution the government has been looking for. If they adopted it, I think all those civil liberties concerns would go out the window pretty fast!!

Everyone was aware that it would be possible to run Windows on the new intel-based macs, unless Apple deliberately stopped them. Loads of people thought that they would stop windows being installed. But they haven’t!

Apple has confirmed that they have not added any security which means that anyone who wants to can install windows on a Mac. This is highly unexpected, and potentially could increase take-up of Macs drastically.

The question is, will it be possible to install Mac OS X on a PC, now that they both run on the same architecture. I guess this is very unlikely, as Microsoft would not appreciate that as an idea, and Mac rely on Microsoft’s goodwill to produce products for Mac such as Office, without which there would be very limited take-up of Macs because of compatibility issues.

I know it has become customary for all technology blogs to rant about how it is crucial that everyone switches to Firefox right away, to prevent their computer being rendered unusable by vast amounts of spyware flooding onto their computer, to stop supporting the evil monster of Redmond, and to experience the nirvana of tabbed browsing. However, I do believe there is a very strong case to justify switching to Firefox, even if only until we’ve all had a look at the new IE7, due to be released about the middle of this year.

The first reason is extensions. I think that they improve my web browsing experience and increase the things I can do drastically. The extensions I use include Mouse Gestures, which allows me to perform functions like going forward and back, opening new tabs and almost anything else by moving my mouse in a particular way. Providing another way to do something already possible can only increase browsing speed and the browser’s usability. Viamatic Foxpose is an extension that allows me to view all the tabs tiled on one screen, Mac OSX style. Other extensions include Google Suggest, Blogger Web Comments, GreaseMonkey and StumbeUpon. Together they provide a level of functionality one could only dream of on Internet Explorer. More importantly, Firefox’s ability to support extensions empowers users to create the functions they need, and if they don’t have the ability to do that, the chances are someone else has.

Critics of Firefox say that if Firefox is so usable, why does it need all these extensions to improve its usability? However, Firefox without extensions is still significantly more usable than IE6. It has tabs, which mean that a user can see all the websites they have open at once, and quickly choose which one they need, rather than being forced to struggle through the multiple instances of browser windows like those unfortunate IE users. Just recently I discovered another innovative feature in Firefox; caret browsing. If it exists in IE, I have never seen it, and it allows the user to easily select text onscreen without the use of a mouse by having a moving cursor controllable with arrow keys. It may sound simple, but it’s the accumulation of these many ideas of Firefox developers that makes it better, in my opinion, than any other.

A problem that Firefox users have to contend with regularly is websites that are designed badly, and that only work with IE. Although with the growing market share of Firefox, this problem will diminish rapidly, there is now a solution which means that there is no excuse at all not to switch to Firefox. It’s called IE Tab, and its an extension for Firefox that allows you to open any website using the IE rendering engine, but in a Firefox tab. Although this exposes you to all the security issues with IE6, it does allow you to take advantage of all the other features that Firefox has and IE does not.

Firefox can be downloaded by clicking the Firefox button on the sidebar of this blog. I urge you to do it, if you haven’t already, now. Go on – you know you want to!

Just a quick post to outline what was announced at this year’s expo.

FM radio remote control for the iPod
Fairly self explanatory - it is a remote control that adds FM radio to the 5G iPods. It is controlled via the screen of the iPod itself, and stations can be saved etc. This kind of functionality has actually been around for quite some time with third-party accessories.

MacBook Pro
Intel-based dual-core beast of a laptop. It looks amazing! It replaces the Powerbook G4, and is ‘up to 4 times the speed’ of it. The MacBook Pro also sports a built in iSight camera and the website talks about the use of an apple remote with Frontrow.

Intel iMacs
Much anticipated, and widely expected announcement. The iMacs are based on an intel processor, but otherwise remain much the same, costing from £929. They’re supposed to be twice as past as their predeccessors.

iLife 06 and iWork 06 released
Upgrades to the iLife creativity suite and iWork productivity suite were announced. iLife has a new addition - iWeb - designed to allow easy publishing of blogs. Garageband 3 also has features designed for podcasting. iWork has no particularly exciting additions, just a few extra features here and there, and general improvements.

Thats about your lot - no iPod Nano-esque ‘one more thing!’ announcement this time in Job’s keynote. Most of the stuff here was anticipated. However, there were still lots of interesting announcements though, and Mac fans seem quite happy.

According to BBC News, Google is considering creating an online digital bookshop, that would integrate with the existing Google Book Search. Book Search (formerly known as Google Print) has been very controversial, with many publishers starting class actions against Google in the US. This is a potentially very shrewd move, with the advent of devices such as Sony Reader using the E-ink technology developed by MIT. Providing the equivalent of iTunes or Napster for books could both give the technology a boost and create another growth area for Google to satisfy its shareholders, although Sony is already providing such a service.

In order to make it happen, Google would have to go on a charm offensive to persuade the publishers it has angered to cooperate with this idea, as copyright agreements would have to be signed before any store could start operating.