Some of you are probably surprised that I haven't mentioned Tiger yet despite that fact that, as I'm sure everyone knows by now, it was released today. However, unlike a lot of people I haven't gone Tiger crazy, I wasn't even hanging off the edge of my seat as Apple accidentally shipped Tiger early.
The entire 10.4 release has curiously left me unmoved. Perhaps it's the knowledge that I can't really justify the money to actually buy myself a copy. Perhaps it's the knowledge of the huge disruption it'll cause when I do upgrade, as all the applications I rely on break. I know, for instance, that Desktop Manager isn't yet Tiger compatible yet and I wouldn't want to try and get any work done on my 12" Powerbook without that. Or perhaps it's the knowledge that Apple have already scheduled the 10.4.1 release for May. No matter what it is, I'm not as excited as most people are expecting me to be...
This will probable change when I finally see Dashboard and Spotlight, my guess is that like Exposé or Rendezvous (sorry, I mean Bonjour) they may be one of those things that while it sounds like an okay idea, turns out to be a ground breaking UI improvement that I can't live without. With that in mind I'm planning my upgrade for August, after OSCON, I'm sure I'll see lots of Tiger boxes there.
Anyway for those of you desperate to see inside the box, Ars Technica has an excellent 21 page walk through of OSX 10.4, look there for perhaps the best review of the new release I've seen so far..
Also, presumably in an effort to get us all to switch to Tiger, Apple has announced that many of the newly improved features of their .Mac service will be exlusive to Tiger. As a .Mac user myself I'm not sure this makes me particularly happy, or more likely to upgrade. I don't like being leveraged (extorted), perhaps I'll just cancel my .Mac membership instead...
Update: There are of course other reviews, and predictably Slashdot has the story...
Update: Wired has more on the hype surrounding the Tiger launch.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Maiden flight for the A380
At 09:29 CET this morning the twin-deck Airbus A380 no. 1 test aircraft took off successfully on its maiden flight from Toulouse-Blagnac International Airport in France.
The first flight of the twin-deck A380
A comparison between the A380 and the Boeing 747
Update: Both Slashdot and the Register have picked up the story...
The first flight of the twin-deck A380
 |
| CREDIT: Airbus/Boeing via BBC News |
Update: Both Slashdot and the Register have picked up the story...
Monday, April 25, 2005
Rollout for the Airbus A380
The BBC is reporting that the first flight of the twin-deck Airbus A380 will probably be on Wednesday. It looks impressive, although I doubt anyone in cattle class will have access to the much publicised onboard shops and bars, and no matter how impressive the A380 appears, it's a poor replacement for Concorde. We've lost a piece of engineering elegance, and replaced it with a lumbering giant, all in the name of cost cutting.
In related news a £100 million redevelopment scheme has started at Heathrow airport to accommodate the new A380 super jumbo. I guess that explains all the construction work I noticed while I was going through Terminal 3 the week before last...
Update: A successful take off for the A380.
| ||
| The A380 no. 1 flight aircraft is transferred to Airbus' flight test centre at Toulouse-Blagnac International Airport, where the aircraft will be readied for its maiden takeoff on Wednesday. |
In related news a £100 million redevelopment scheme has started at Heathrow airport to accommodate the new A380 super jumbo. I guess that explains all the construction work I noticed while I was going through Terminal 3 the week before last...
Update: A successful take off for the A380.
The Submarine
Paul Graham has just published a new essay, called "The Submarine", where he talks about how the mainstream press and public relations companies interact, and how publicity works in practice. Before I started work on eSTAR I'd had little or no contact with the machinery behind the news stories you see every day, but after a couple of years dealing with the press, even at the very minimal level we do, you pretty much have to agree with him...
| Hackers & Painters: Essays on the Art of Programming by Paul Graham, ISBN 0596006624, 225 pages, £11.16 | |
Eric S. Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, writes in the foreword to Hackers & Painters: "Paul's writing is, as you'll soon learn from the rest of this book, wonderfully lucid stuff. Reading Paul's essays is like having a conversation with a genius who doesn't need to score any points by proving it to you, except that most geniuses aren't as articulate as he is. You get to share Paul's sense that the Universe is a fascinating place, and his knack for looking at it from an unusual angle." |  |
Friday, April 22, 2005
Google Maps UK
I've been busy this week, but for those of you who haven't spotted it already, on Monday the Google Blog announced the long awaited expansion of Google Maps to cover the UK. Along with this came UK branded versions of Google Local and Google SMS. Sadly, unlike the US version, there doesn't seem to be any matching satellite data. Yet?
Google Maps comes to town...
Update: Slashdot has the story...
Google Maps comes to town...
Update: Slashdot has the story...
Thursday, April 21, 2005
More Perl for Series 60
Following on from Monday's inital release of Perl for Series 60 Jarkko Hietaniemi has established a SourceForge project for the release.
While this is still just a release of the base language, and we still don't have a Series 60/Symbian framework as you do with the Python port, this goes a long way towards an "official" release from Nokia which presumably will have an application framework. In the meantime there are still a lot of fun stuff we can do with the bare language. I didn't have enough time to build my own binary release, but I've definitely got enough time to play with one now Jarkko has done the hard work for us...
Update: I've managed to successfully install and get the binary distribution working on my Nokia 6600.
Perl running on my Nokia 6600, it's been a long time coming...
I did have some initial trouble with the installation as one of the four SIS files needed by the installtion,
Since the binaries were compiled using SDK 2.6 I don't think they're going to work on my other Series 60 phone, a Nokia 3650, but I'll have a go later tonight and report back...
Currently it contains the patch as I sent it here few days ago and then a .zip containing the SIS files for the Symbian (compiled with Series 60 2.6 SDK). Read the "INSTALL" file contained in the .zip for details.
I think I better underline the fact that this is just the port of the base language, so one does not get to play with the Series 60 or phone specific APIs as one does with the "Python for Series 60" published through Forum Nokia.
While this is still just a release of the base language, and we still don't have a Series 60/Symbian framework as you do with the Python port, this goes a long way towards an "official" release from Nokia which presumably will have an application framework. In the meantime there are still a lot of fun stuff we can do with the bare language. I didn't have enough time to build my own binary release, but I've definitely got enough time to play with one now Jarkko has done the hard work for us...
Update: I've managed to successfully install and get the binary distribution working on my Nokia 6600.
Perl running on my Nokia 6600, it's been a long time coming...
I did have some initial trouble with the installation as one of the four SIS files needed by the installtion,
perlapp.sis, crashed the installer program. I also got a persistent General Error which meant I couldn't delete the file out of my inbox, and I had to go in with FExplorer and delete the message by hand from the C:\system\Mail\ directory. I've had this sort of problem before and I'm usure whether it is a memory issue, or is due to permissions problems. However, once I'd deleted the (corrupted?) first copy by hand, I transferred across a second copy and this installed just fine. So your milage may vary...Since the binaries were compiled using SDK 2.6 I don't think they're going to work on my other Series 60 phone, a Nokia 3650, but I'll have a go later tonight and report back...
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Perl for Series 60
While I was somewhere over the Atlantic, on the return leg from LA, a post from Jarkko Hietaniemi to the Perl 5 Porters list announced the long awaited release of Perl for Series 60.
Well, not exactly a release just yet...
Of course the nice thing about the Python for Series 60 release is the Symbian application framework. The framework Nokia released with the Python package makes it really is easy to rapidly develop Series 60 applications, without that we have something that isn't quite as useful as it could be...
None the less, I agree with Matt. It is good to see this out in the wild. It means there should be "unofficial" builds along real soon, I wish I had time to do one myself, and hopefully the official release from Nokia following fairly quickly.
Update: Jarkko has now established a SourceForge project which makes a binary build of the port available, I've just had a go a installing and running the binaries and after some initial teething troubles with the installer it all worked fine.
Update: Slashdot now has the story. But weirdly it doesn't seem to have made the front page or had raised much interest. I'm confused, this is big news..?
Well, not exactly a release just yet...
Note that the patches only implement a "base port", enabling one to run Perl on Symbian, the basic operating system platform. The patches do not implement any further Symbian OS or Series 60 (an application framework) bindings to Perl.
Of course the nice thing about the Python for Series 60 release is the Symbian application framework. The framework Nokia released with the Python package makes it really is easy to rapidly develop Series 60 applications, without that we have something that isn't quite as useful as it could be...
None the less, I agree with Matt. It is good to see this out in the wild. It means there should be "unofficial" builds along real soon, I wish I had time to do one myself, and hopefully the official release from Nokia following fairly quickly.
Update: Jarkko has now established a SourceForge project which makes a binary build of the port available, I've just had a go a installing and running the binaries and after some initial teething troubles with the installer it all worked fine.
Update: Slashdot now has the story. But weirdly it doesn't seem to have made the front page or had raised much interest. I'm confused, this is big news..?
Sunday, April 17, 2005
The return leg
Unlike the last time I went through LAX, this time I've actually got a direct flight home. Knowing how bad LA traffic can get I left plenty of slack between leaving the Athenaeum and check-in, predictably this meant I got stuck at the airport for much longer than necessary...
Another day, another Boeing 777...
Another day, another Boeing 777...
Saturday, April 16, 2005
The Apple Store
It might be considered slightly odd that I've now seen the inside of an Apple Store twice and both this time, and my previous visit, were to the store in Old Pasadena. It's not as if there isn't already a store in the UK, or another two more opening soon in late April.
You know, I think I've been here before...
So of course I almost bought myself an iPod Shuffle, but in the end I managed to resist the temptation. I also managed to resist the temptation of a Mac mini, and despite the difference in price, it was a lot harder to resist the Mac mini...
The iPod Shuffle...
...and the Mac mini.
You know, I think I've been here before...
So of course I almost bought myself an iPod Shuffle, but in the end I managed to resist the temptation. I also managed to resist the temptation of a Mac mini, and despite the difference in price, it was a lot harder to resist the Mac mini...
The iPod Shuffle...
...and the Mac mini.
Friday, April 15, 2005
A day in Pasadena
Due to the weird way in which the airline industry operates it turned out to be a lot cheaper (by a factor of more than ×4) for me to stay over in Pasadena for a couple of days rather than fly directly home from the VOEvent meeting. However this means that I'm currently stuck out in Caltech for a couple of days, so I'm off to the Apple Store in downtown Pasadena...
Directions from the Athenaeum to the Pasadena Apple Store
Directions from the Athenaeum to the Pasadena Apple Store
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Making some decisions
Coming back from lunch we started trying to bring things together and come to some sort of agreement about what we need to do from here. This isn't as simple as it sounds, but it's possible VOEvent documents might end up looking something like this...
Back Link: The talks that were given before lunch.
Back Link: The talks that were given before lunch.
After coffee
After coffee we kicked off with Rob Seaman talking about UTC, UT1 and leap seconds. Then Arnold Rots gave his presentation on STC and we again descended in a heated discussion of co-ordinate representation
More quick and dirty solution to what we should be doing
Eventually we managed to break for lunch without actual blood shed...
Back Link: The talks that were given before coffee.
Update: Back from lunch, we tried to actually make some decisions...
More quick and dirty solution to what we should be doing
Eventually we managed to break for lunch without actual blood shed...
Back Link: The talks that were given before coffee.
Update: Back from lunch, we tried to actually make some decisions...
Another day of VOEvent
The pre-meeting gathering for coffee turned into an extended and somewhat confused discussion about XML and where the angle brackets should go, presumably we had too much time to think about such things last night.
After Roy herded us back into a slightly more controlled state we sat down to listened to Szabolcs Márka talking about LIGO and gravitational wave detectors as consumers and producers of astronomical events.
LIGO and the GCN
Matthew Graham then talked about intricacies of XML schemas and the complexities of the VO Registry.
Following Matthew's talk we descended into the heated discussion about the balance between simplicity and complexity in the XML, and the plans for the forthcoming Kyoto meeting, fortunately coffee eventually interrupted things...
Back Link: Yesterday afternoon's talks...
Update: More talks after coffee...
After Roy herded us back into a slightly more controlled state we sat down to listened to Szabolcs Márka talking about LIGO and gravitational wave detectors as consumers and producers of astronomical events.
LIGO and the GCN
Matthew Graham then talked about intricacies of XML schemas and the complexities of the VO Registry.
Following Matthew's talk we descended into the heated discussion about the balance between simplicity and complexity in the XML, and the plans for the forthcoming Kyoto meeting, fortunately coffee eventually interrupted things...
Back Link: Yesterday afternoon's talks...
Update: More talks after coffee...
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
An afternoon of VOEvent
After lunch we started off with Paul Price talking about Pan-STARRS. We then had a tag team talk by Robert White and Tom Vestrand, from the RAPTOR project at Los Alamos, talking about the Thinking Telescope Project. Now this looks to be a really interesting one, and along with eSTAR, one of the few (only?) agent based projects in astronomy.
Tom Vestrand talking about machine learning
After the Los Alamos guys I gave my talk on agent architectures and event messaging, which predictably caused a lot of argument about co-ordinate representations. Funny that!
After a break for coffee, and we needed it after the discussions following my talk, Joshua Bloom talked about PAIRITEL and what he sees as the higher level issues about implementing a real-time event network. Although he used different names for virtually everything, I agreed with quite a lot of what he said!
The final talk of the day was given by Rick Hessman who talked about RTML, a "solution to a different agenda" as Rick puts it...
Back Link: The talks that were given this morning.
Update: Another day brings break out discussions and more talks...
Tom Vestrand talking about machine learning
After the Los Alamos guys I gave my talk on agent architectures and event messaging, which predictably caused a lot of argument about co-ordinate representations. Funny that!
After a break for coffee, and we needed it after the discussions following my talk, Joshua Bloom talked about PAIRITEL and what he sees as the higher level issues about implementing a real-time event network. Although he used different names for virtually everything, I agreed with quite a lot of what he said!
The final talk of the day was given by Rick Hessman who talked about RTML, a "solution to a different agenda" as Rick puts it...
Back Link: The talks that were given this morning.
Update: Another day brings break out discussions and more talks...
The VOEvent meeting
An early start for the workshop as we all straggled into the meeting room about 8 o'clock in the morning. Perhaps unsurprisingly the meeting is dominated by the Americans, apart from Rick it looks like I'm the only European here...
The day began with Roy Williams talking generally about VOEvent and the basic things necessary for the standard which, at least according to Roy, are; curation, when/where, how, what and the hypothesis.
Roy Williams talking about VOEvent
We then had Scott Barthelmy from NASA/GSFC talking about the GRB Co-ordinates Network (GCN) the "grandfather" of all the event notification systems who talked about the GCN and
Next up was Derek Fox talking about the astronomer's telegram which I must admit to not having heard of before. Interestingly, they offer distribution via several RSS feeds...
After a quick break for coffee George Djorgovski talked about the Palomar-Quest Survey and showed some of the actual plates illustrating the different types of transients, and the types of false alarms, that have been picked up during their survey work. Interesting stuff considering our plans for WFCAM.
The final talk before lunch was given by Tim Axelrod who discussed LSST.
Update: Back from lunch, and ready for some more talks...
The day began with Roy Williams talking generally about VOEvent and the basic things necessary for the standard which, at least according to Roy, are; curation, when/where, how, what and the hypothesis.
Roy Williams talking about VOEvent
We then had Scott Barthelmy from NASA/GSFC talking about the GRB Co-ordinates Network (GCN) the "grandfather" of all the event notification systems who talked about the GCN and
Next up was Derek Fox talking about the astronomer's telegram which I must admit to not having heard of before. Interestingly, they offer distribution via several RSS feeds...
After a quick break for coffee George Djorgovski talked about the Palomar-Quest Survey and showed some of the actual plates illustrating the different types of transients, and the types of false alarms, that have been picked up during their survey work. Interesting stuff considering our plans for WFCAM.
The final talk before lunch was given by Tim Axelrod who discussed LSST.
Update: Back from lunch, and ready for some more talks...
Arrived in Pasadena
We had heavy headwinds over the Atlantic, so I arrived last night into LAX about half an hour later than planned, and then headed out to Caltech. I must be getting old, as soon as I got the the Athenaeum where I'm staying I crashed almost immediately...
Dawn from the Caltech Athenaeum
Of course that meant that my jet lag hit with a vengeance and I ended up wide awake at about 4 o'clock in the morning. This was good, in a way, because it meant that I could work on my talk for the meeting.
Dawn from the Caltech Athenaeum
Of course that meant that my jet lag hit with a vengeance and I ended up wide awake at about 4 o'clock in the morning. This was good, in a way, because it meant that I could work on my talk for the meeting.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
In transit again...
I'm currently in transit to the VOEvent meeting in Pasadena, where no doubt I'll get into a very large argument about how light weight the message format needs to be if it wants to be generally accepted by the robotic telescope community.
Anyone noticed how many more code shares there are these days?
As usual I had a quick look around the Dixons in Terminal 3's departure lounge but, this time at least, I wasn't thrown out of the store. However, while I was in there, I spotted a bunch of Solio chargers. It turns out they are a lot smaller than I thought they were, about the size of an iPod if the box is anything to go by...
The Solio, a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be...
This post was brought to you via the T-Mobile HotSpot in Heathrow's Terminal 3 departure lounge, but annoyingly the T-Mobile account which I picked up when I was in the States didn't let me log me into the hotspot here in the UK. I had to go through the entire process of setting up yet another account. so much for roaming agreements...
Anyone noticed how many more code shares there are these days?
As usual I had a quick look around the Dixons in Terminal 3's departure lounge but, this time at least, I wasn't thrown out of the store. However, while I was in there, I spotted a bunch of Solio chargers. It turns out they are a lot smaller than I thought they were, about the size of an iPod if the box is anything to go by...
The Solio, a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be...
This post was brought to you via the T-Mobile HotSpot in Heathrow's Terminal 3 departure lounge, but annoyingly the T-Mobile account which I picked up when I was in the States didn't let me log me into the hotspot here in the UK. I had to go through the entire process of setting up yet another account. so much for roaming agreements...
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Blogger or bust?
I'm sure anyone using Blogger to publish their blog is just as fed up as I am with the recent problems we've all been experiencing. However for those of you fortunate enough to be using some other platform right now, Wired has an article about the current difficulties...
Update: Looks like the coverage of the recent problems has got a response, according to the Blogger status blog they're trying to do something about the performance problems we've been suffering.
Update: It also seems to have spurned the Blogger team have rolled out a new feature to help recover lost posts. This is something people have been desperate for, I know I've lost several posts recently due to Blogger flakeiness. It seems like they're using browser cookies to save the state of your post, which is a pretty neat solution to the problem...
Update: Looks like the coverage of the recent problems has got a response, according to the Blogger status blog they're trying to do something about the performance problems we've been suffering.
Update: It also seems to have spurned the Blogger team have rolled out a new feature to help recover lost posts. This is something people have been desperate for, I know I've lost several posts recently due to Blogger flakeiness. It seems like they're using browser cookies to save the state of your post, which is a pretty neat solution to the problem...
Back home
I'm back home from my two days at NAM after spending most of yesterday evening in the clutches of the remnants of British Rail on a train that ended up two hours late into Exeter St. Davids...
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Higher Order Perl
Mark Jason Dominus can usually be relied on to say something interesting about Perl. So I was excited to see that his new book Higher Order Perl, about how to write functions that manufacture or modify other functions, has just been published. This is something I do, somewhat, inside the eSTAR code base. But like a lot of people who came to Perl from C I don't have much background in functional languages like Lisp, so I'm going to be picking up a copy. After all, if Damian Conway says nice things about it, how badly can you loose...
Update: The Perl Review has an interview with Mark Jason Dominus about Higher Order Perl...
The second day at NAM 2005
We started the day with a plenary talk from Keith Horne discussing extra-solar planets and the three methods for discovery which are the Doppler wobble, transit lightcurves and micro-lensing.
The Doppler wobble method suggests that >6% of Sun-like planets host a (usually hot) Jupiter, usually with much more eccentric orbits than the Solar planets, however we don't yet know enough to tell whether this means that Solar system is unusal.
Keith talking about extra-solar planets
The second plenary talk of the day was given by Simon Conway Morris on the possibility of life in the Universe and evolutionary convergence. A bit off the wall for a NAM as he's a biologist, and has a very different approach to things than your average astronomer, but interesting stuff.
However I've now got a series of meetings scheduled for the rest of the day, this is the other side to NAM since it's one of the few times that the bulk of the UK's astronomical community is in the same place, so I doubt I'll get to go to any more talks...
The Doppler wobble method suggests that >6% of Sun-like planets host a (usually hot) Jupiter, usually with much more eccentric orbits than the Solar planets, however we don't yet know enough to tell whether this means that Solar system is unusal.
Keith talking about extra-solar planets
The second plenary talk of the day was given by Simon Conway Morris on the possibility of life in the Universe and evolutionary convergence. A bit off the wall for a NAM as he's a biologist, and has a very different approach to things than your average astronomer, but interesting stuff.
However I've now got a series of meetings scheduled for the rest of the day, this is the other side to NAM since it's one of the few times that the bulk of the UK's astronomical community is in the same place, so I doubt I'll get to go to any more talks...
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Google & satellite maps
Google has just announced that they have finally got round to doing something with the technology they got in their acquisition of Keyhole in October last year, and incorporated satellite imagery into Google Maps and Google Local. In response Dion Almaer makes some good comments about usability, but I must admit to being impressed with Google's new service...
However the guys over at O'Reilly's MAKE magazine had the same idea as me, this service, a mobile phone and a bluetooth GPS have the words "killer app" written all over it...
Update: Slashdot has also picked up the story...
However the guys over at O'Reilly's MAKE magazine had the same idea as me, this service, a mobile phone and a bluetooth GPS have the words "killer app" written all over it...
Update: Slashdot has also picked up the story...
The first day of NAM 2005
Today is the first day of the National Astronomy Meeting here in Birmingham, but while the conference runs till Friday I'm only here today and tomorrow. Unfortunately I don't have the time to hang around just for interests sake, as I'm off to the VOEvent Workshop in Pasadena next week, so I'm doing a hit and run on the relevant sessions.
Dave Giaretta talking about Starlink and the VO
Following plenary talks on AGN, by an old friend of mine Chris Done, and on LIGO by Peter Saulson I headed off to the Grid Applications & e-Science parallel session where I presented my talk on eSTAR and heterogeneous telescope networks. Unfortunately I hadn't really had enough time to spend thinking about what I was going to say, so it wasn't really the best talk I've ever given...
After a brief break for lunch, and to burn a copy of the Mac OS X port of the Starlink Classic software to DVD for someone, I ventured to the afternoon plenary session which kicked off with Alex Szalay from John Hopkins talking about the potential of the Virtual Observatory. The second plenary talk was by Ofer Lahav talking about data compression, classification and parameter estimation.
Alex Szlay talking about the Virtual Observatory
I must admit to being somewhat surprised that talks about the VO made it into the "mainstream" conference, although thinking about it the attendance at the e-Science parallel session was up on last year as well. Interesting!
I'm now heading off to the parallel session on novel algorithms for astronomy...
Dave Giaretta talking about Starlink and the VO
Following plenary talks on AGN, by an old friend of mine Chris Done, and on LIGO by Peter Saulson I headed off to the Grid Applications & e-Science parallel session where I presented my talk on eSTAR and heterogeneous telescope networks. Unfortunately I hadn't really had enough time to spend thinking about what I was going to say, so it wasn't really the best talk I've ever given...
After a brief break for lunch, and to burn a copy of the Mac OS X port of the Starlink Classic software to DVD for someone, I ventured to the afternoon plenary session which kicked off with Alex Szalay from John Hopkins talking about the potential of the Virtual Observatory. The second plenary talk was by Ofer Lahav talking about data compression, classification and parameter estimation.
Alex Szlay talking about the Virtual Observatory
I must admit to being somewhat surprised that talks about the VO made it into the "mainstream" conference, although thinking about it the attendance at the e-Science parallel session was up on last year as well. Interesting!
I'm now heading off to the parallel session on novel algorithms for astronomy...
Monday, April 04, 2005
In Transit
I'm currently holed up in a hotel in Birmingham's China Town, in transit to the UK's National Astronomy Meeting which is being held this year at the University of Birmingham.
Birmingham's China Town
I'll be talking tomorrow in the Grid session about heterogeneous telescope networks, that is, I will if I ever finish writing the talk...
Birmingham's China Town
I'll be talking tomorrow in the Grid session about heterogeneous telescope networks, that is, I will if I ever finish writing the talk...
Eye tracking Google search results
While looking for something entirely unrelated I just stumbled across an interesting press release, although that's an oxymoron if ever I heard one...
Eye tracking map for a sample Google search result
A eye tracking study jointly carried out by the marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it, along with the eye tracking firm Eyetools, on sample Google search results has shown that (perhaps unsurprisingly) your search ranking matters a lot if you're looking for traffic.
The results aren't startling, although I was surprised to see so little attention was paid to the AdSense adverts. However I realised that unless I'm trying to find somewhere to buy something really odd and don't even have a clue where to start looking, I rarely even glance at them myself. It is interesting to see that unless a company ends up as the top advert in the AdSense link column they're very unlikely to get any traffic.
However what was really interesting is that this study confirmed what I always figured, despite people's claims to read the search results and choose the most appropriate link, they rarely look past the top one or two. As Gord Hotchkiss said in the release "We see a marked difference in how people say they search and what they actually do. Previous research had indicated that people were considered searchers and spent some time before choosing a link".
 |
| CREDIT: Enquiro/Did-it/Eyetools |
A eye tracking study jointly carried out by the marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it, along with the eye tracking firm Eyetools, on sample Google search results has shown that (perhaps unsurprisingly) your search ranking matters a lot if you're looking for traffic.
The results aren't startling, although I was surprised to see so little attention was paid to the AdSense adverts. However I realised that unless I'm trying to find somewhere to buy something really odd and don't even have a clue where to start looking, I rarely even glance at them myself. It is interesting to see that unless a company ends up as the top advert in the AdSense link column they're very unlikely to get any traffic.
However what was really interesting is that this study confirmed what I always figured, despite people's claims to read the search results and choose the most appropriate link, they rarely look past the top one or two. As Gord Hotchkiss said in the release "We see a marked difference in how people say they search and what they actually do. Previous research had indicated that people were considered searchers and spent some time before choosing a link".
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Broken Jabra 250BT?
Does anyone know anything about the internals of a Jabra 250BT headset? After working just fine with my Nokia 6600 and Apple Powerbook for some time suddenly I'm not getting any audio to the headset, can't hear a thing, not even the beeps when it pairs itself up with the phone.
My defunct Jabra 250 BT
The volume controls still works, so my guess is that that I've got a hardware fault in the speaker rather than some sort of Bluetooth protocol problem.
I was sort of hoping that if I opened it up there would be a obvious broken wire, but there wasn't, and no, it's not still under warranty. While the headset is very comfortable, that flexible hook that goes round the ear has always looked really fragile to me, maybe I've finally sat on it one too many times...
My defunct Jabra 250 BT
The volume controls still works, so my guess is that that I've got a hardware fault in the speaker rather than some sort of Bluetooth protocol problem.
I was sort of hoping that if I opened it up there would be a obvious broken wire, but there wasn't, and no, it's not still under warranty. While the headset is very comfortable, that flexible hook that goes round the ear has always looked really fragile to me, maybe I've finally sat on it one too many times...
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