Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Who is suing who in the mobile phone industry?

GigaOm links to an excellent visualization of smartphone patents’ legal battles.  It’s interesting how different is the representation of Apple and Google on this graph.  However, one needs to remember, that Google has acquired Motorola’s mobile division.

 

This seems to be a nice update to another graph that I’ve posted a couple of years ago.  Some of the lawsuits from the old chart are still here.  And there is a whole bunch of new ones.  I like this new updated one better than the old one, because company logos make it more readable. And this one also has references to the actual lawsuits, in case someone wants to follow.

Infinite scrolling : no go!

Jeffro of WP Tavern fame asks an interesting question about infinite scrolling:

Thanks to Pinterest, many websites think it’s cool to provide the ability to infinitely scroll down a page. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a variety of tutorials that explain how you can add this functionality to WordPress themes. However, I’m wondering if this is just one of those trends that will go away once Pinterest dies off. For sites such as Pinterest where it makes sense to have an infinite scroll, does it make sense to have that functionality on a regular blog or any other type of website?

There is also a poll attached to that post, which currently shows 60% (133 votes) consider infinite scrolling bad, 23% (52 votes) consider it good, and 17% (38 votes) have no preference.

I joined the “This is bad!” crowd.  I think that’s because I belong to the old generation of onliners, who at least had the time to think things over, and see how it was before and after.  I think that everything on the web should have it’s own URL, which shouldn’t change once published.  The content of the page should also remain pretty much the same.  If done so, searching for things and sharing things becomes so much easier.

Just think about it for a second.  Look at the archives of this blog. If I found something useful on the second page of February 2005 archives three years ago, it would still be there today.  I can bookmark a specific page of archives, I can send that URL to someone else, and it would still work years later.

Infinite scrolling page would give you only a single URL and bookmarking or sharing that would be totally useless, as its content would change and scroll away after a few updates.

Even for things like a blog stream, which presents newest items on top, pushing older updates into archives, pagination makes a lot of sense.  Once you know how many items per page there are, and an average number of posts per period of time, you can fast forward into an arbitrary date much faster.  For example, if I post approximately 4 posts per week, and I display 10 posts per page for the front page stream, all I need to do is get the URL of the first archive page – https://mamchenkov.net/wordpress/page/2/ – by pressing Next link on the front page, then do a quick calculation, and replace “2” with the calculated page number to quick jump back into history.  (I’ve used this technique quite a few times, when I needed to find something that I didn’t know how to search for, but new roughly the publishing date of. And I know I’m not alone.)

With infinite scrolling, you’d have to scroll and scroll for hours or days.

There are also other issues to consider – time control on the user’s side, increased CPU and memory resources required to handle bigger pages, browser cross-compatibility, and so on and so forth.

Having said that, I understand that most people probably don’t care about these things and find infinite scrolling very much a convenience.  Good for them…

P.S.: One place where I think infinite scrolling makes sense is in the image search results (like Google Images).  There, it helps to scroll through a whole lot of images in shorter time.

Reduction of roaming prices in EU

Cyprus Mail shares some good news:

CYPRIOTS and other EU nationals on the move will now enjoy cheaper roaming charges under a deal struck yesterday by the European Commission and its lawmakers.

[…]

Under the new deal, charges on calls made while travelling in other EU countries cannot exceed 29 cents per minute and calls received while outside the home country should cost no more than 8 cents per minute.

Sending a text message while away has a ceiling charge of 9 cents per minute and accessing the internet, 70 cents per megabyte.

Currently under Cyta’s monthly-pay plan, roaming charges within the EU cost 41 cents per minute for an outgoing call, 12 cents per minute for a received call, 12 cents per text message, and 73 cents per megabyte for internet access. The new charges should reduce the cost of a call significantly for people using their mobile phones within the bloc. On outgoing calls alone users will save 12 cents per minute with the charge dropping from 41 cents to 29 cents.
By 2014 yesterday’s newly-agreed caps should go down by almost another third except internet costs, which would drop to 20 cents per megabyte, reports from Brussels said.

Ignoring the actual numbers, that’s music to my ears.  I hope mobile Internet will go cheaper faster than that.

Morse Code for Android

Gmail team celebrated this year’s April Fools day with Gmail Tap.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KhZKNZO8mQ]

That, of course, made me smile.  But it also made me think.  It’s been a long while since I wanted to learn Morse Code.  I knew bits and pieces for years, and I could probably transmit my SOS if nobody was shouting in panic.  But I’ve always wanted to allocate the time and learn not only how to send out the full alphabet, but also get some receiving practice.

A few seconds, I’ve downloaded two Android apps to my phone:

  1. Morse Code Trainer that I hope will help me learn the alphabet, and
  2. Morse Code Keyboard that I hopefully will use to get some practice.

All that obviously can’t guarantee that I’ll learn anything at all. But at least I’m trying to get myself started…