All posts by James Clay

mobile

3G usage rises as prices fall

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So you lower the price of 3G data plans and what happens, the number of 3G users doubles!

Duh!

3G usage rises as prices fall

BBC reports on a survey which has found this out.

Price cuts and the popularity of 3G are prompting Europeans to use mobile data like never before, says a survey.

The GSM Association survey shows that European data roaming traffic grew by 75% between April 2007 and 2008.

Over the same period the numbers of 3G users doubled and the average price of data roaming services fell by 25%.

Read more.

When I first used 3G in June 2004, I was paying £100 per month for 1GB of data per month, this went down to £75 pretty quickly. A year later it was just £45 per month and by 2006 it was just £25 per month.

Now you can get 3G for just £10 per month with as much as a 3GB fair usage limit, and as part of a phone plan it can be as little as £5 per month!

Also we are seeing an explosion in speed (just don’t tell O2 who are still stuck on 128Kbps), back in 2004, I was lucky to get 384Kbps, today with my Vodafone 3G dongle I can achieve 7.2Mbps (well I can in London, less so in Gloucester).

These fast speeds and low prices start to make 3G a viable option for many people and as a result we are seeing an increase in demand and users.

As mentioned earlier on this blog 3G usage is increasing really fast.

Now for all the economists out there, does this mean that the demand for 3G is elastic or inelastic in demand?

Photo source.

apple, iphone, ipod touch, keynote

Apple announce new 3G iPhone

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Apple announce new 3G iPhone

Apple announced iPhone 3G yesterday in a keynote by Steve Jobs at the WWDC in San Francisco. It will be available in the UK on the 11th July.

New features include:

  • 3G-capable. 2.8 times faster than EDGE.
  • GPS built-in
  • Thinner
  • Better battery life – 300 hours of standby, 2G talk-time 10 hours (as opposed to 5), 5 hours of 3G talk-time (competition is 3 hour 3G talk time), 5 to 6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7 hours of video, 24 hours of audio.
  • Flush headphone jack

Other new features are:

  • contact searching
  • complete iWork document support
  • complete Office document support (now includes PowerPoint)
  • bulk delete and move for Mail
  • save images you receive
  • scientific calculator in landscape mode
  • parental controls
  • language

I wonder if the Keynote (iWork) and PowerPoint support also allows you to show the presentation via an AV cable in the same way you can do at the moment with video and images.

It will be interesting to see also if iWork (or even Office) support includes editing and creating support, or is it just going to be reading, I suspect the latter.

Of course there are also all the features announced when the iPhone SDK was released earlier this year which include:

  • Exchange and ActivSync support
  • Applications
  • VPN

I do like the fact that an educational institution can put apps on the iPhone (or the iPod touch) without needing to go through the Apple checking process and the iTunes App store.

Downside is that you now need to activate the phone in store, so now unlocking just became a lot more expensive as you will have to buy into a phone plan as well as the phone.

windows

Virtual Windows

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If you want to run Windows on your Mac, you have had up until now four main choices, Boot Camp, Parallels, VMware and Crossover.

Now there is a fifth (free) choice, Virtualbox from Sun.

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

I have downloaded it, but not yet installed it or tried to run Windows on it. Certainly looks like it could be useful for a whole range of virtualization solutions.

A lot of people say I can’t buy a Mac as I need to run Windows, well it’s never been easier to run Windows on a Mac these days, and with virtualization you can run both OS X and Windows XP (and Ubuntu. Vista, even Windows 3.1!) on a single computer.

learning

Learning from digital natives: Integrating formal and informal learning

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The HE Academy have published an interesting report into research into integrating formal and informal learning.

Formal and informal learning have been viewed as competing paradigms. However, students are increasingly adopting the tools and strategies for informal learning within formalised educational settings.

Potential affordances of this integration have been largely unexplored and there is little evidence base to draw upon. This project will address this issue by providing an educational rationale for integrating formal and informal learning supported by electronic tools.

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video

iPod nano on the big screen

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Now and again I will watch video on my iPod, but the iPod nano screen is rather on the small side for me, so prefer using other things for video (such as my Mac or my Archos device).

iPod nano on the big screen

However I have been experimenting with an AV cable for the iPod nano and it works well on my TV. Battery life is ample for a whole movie.

Only downside is pausing or rewinding the movie is a little more complicated than using the remote.

You can also connect the iPod nano to a projector, if the projector has a video input.

Though you can only show videos and images in this way.

stuff

Adobe launches Acrobat.com

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Though I mentioned Adobe’s ConnectNow earlier today, it is just one part of a larger community release based at Acrobat.com.

The BBC reports:

Adobe has made a move into online document sharing with the launch of the Acrobat.com community site.

It allows people to create, store and share documents online, and hold web conferences to discuss changes.

Whilst there is a nice review of all the services on the ReadWriteWeb blog:

Acrobat.com is the new entry point to Adobe’s suite of online services. Available now as a public beta, from here you can utilize the Adobe web office tools all from one cohesive and integrated suite that allows for anywhere access and online collaboration. At Acrobat.com, you have access to the following web office tools: Buzzword, ConnectNow, Share, My Files, and Create PDF.

This is another version of the online document collaboration services which have been springing up around the web.

Great for learners who want to work on documents at home, in college and/or at work.

Great for learners who want to work in groups of a group assignment.

Great for anyone who doesn’t own a computer, and wants to write stuff.