Internet in the UK – now ahead of Germany!

November 21, 2008 By 2 Comments

There were times when I felt that the internet technology in Germany was far more superior to that in the UK.

Whilst many households in Germany have ISDN lines, the technology is widely unknown in the UK – even for many small businesses.

Broadband arrived earlier in Germany than the UK.  Whilst I was going online with almost 1MBit, most UK internet surfers were still using 56k modems.  By the time 1MBit was on offer in the UK, German providers were offering 6MBit.

For a long time now I have been able to listen and watch selected TV and radio programmes from German public service broadcasters, and more recently some private ones, yet the BBC iPlayer has only been out since the end of last year.

Now, it seems, the UK has not caught up, but has overtaken Germany!

A report in the Telegraph states that the average person in the UK spends just over 4 hours per week longer online that the average German.  Working so much on websites I would probably buck that trend, but does the average Brit really spend 14 hours per week online?  Do they really spend 3 times as many SMSes per month?

But then, what counts as online?  Surfing the web is probably obvious, but does sending an E-mail count?  Am I really online at that point?  Surely that depends on the type of E-mail that I use.  Webmail is online, but how about IMAP accounts that synchronise with their servers?  Or company Exchange servers that are online even when their users are not?

What about Skype?  I know that my computer is online when I use Skype to make a telephone call, whether it be to another Skype user or to a landline, but surely that’s different type of ‘online’?

The gap may be about to widen even more, with the announcement that BBC 1 and BBC2 are to be streamed online.  Unfortunately this will only be available to viewers in the UK (why can’t they allow us ex-pats to subscribe to them as well?!)  But although there are similar services for some channels in Germany, they are not directly from the broadcaster themselves.

This is, of course, wonderful news for students with broadband access.  Now they no longer need to fit a television set and computer into their rooms (do they still have those 2 amp sockets?) but can watch online.  Online?  Are they really ‘online’ when they are only watching their favourite soaps?  That should push up the online statistics a bit more.

Which just leaves the question of whether those same students will still need to buy a television license to watch the channels on their laptops.  In Germany they would…

Filed Under: Computers, Cymeradwyo, Television Tagged With: , ,

How I use Google Maps

November 21, 2008 By 2 Comments

It was this article in the Telegraph that got me thinking about the way in which I use Google Maps.
The article itself is actually about Google Earth – a programme that can be installed on a computer to view Google’s aerial photos of the World.  I first came into contact with it a few years ago on a customer’s computer, but I have, as yet, never installed it on a computer of my own.  Instead, I use Google Maps.
Now, I am aware that Google Earth offers more features, such as being able to tilt the map and get a sort of 3D representation of the area that I am viewing, but for my daily purposes the Maps version is sufficient.
So how do I use it?  Well, the most obvious way is to look up addresses on the maps.  Whenever I have a new address to go to (usually to visit a new customer) then I look it up on Google Maps.  Knowing the area so well, that is usually sufficient for me to know where a particular street is.  Otherwise, I can print off the map of the area around the street that I have to go to, and that will normally be enough.
But if I don’t know the area that I am going to at all, such as some areas of Frankfurt, then will often take a look at the aerial view to see what the roads there are like.  For example, are there parking spaces near where I going to?  It can also be helpful to zoom in the road markings to see if there are any “no left turn” type of junctions on my route.
However, there are many more features to Google Maps that I occasionally use.  There is the ability to view photos that have been taken by other people at specific locations on the maps, so it is interesting to see pictures of places that I have visited, sometimes many years ago.  Of course, I can also look at places that I hear or read about, but will probably never get the chance to visit, such as Tristan da Cuhna in the South Atlantic.
Recently Google have been adding their “Street View” feature to a number of places that I have been to, most recently I was able to look at areas of Madrid that I visited in April.
Finally, there is a more serious side to how I use Google Maps.  Not only can I embed maps in blog posts to show where a particular place is that I have written about, but I can also place advertising on the map for the customers who’s websites I either create or optimise.
All in all, I may not be addicted to Google Maps as the Telegraph article suggested, but I certainly make good use of it.

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, Internet Tagged With: , , ,

News from Photokina

September 28, 2008 By 1 Comment

As a viewer of geekbrief.tv, I was interested to hear Germany get a mention this week.  The reason was the Photokina trade fair taking place in Cologne.

For some reason, their presenter Cali doesn’t feel that there is anything new on the news feeds from the fair – I beg to differ and took a look at the news coming out of Cologne.  I also went to the Photokina part of another show taking place in Gießen at the same time to see some things for myself.

New versions of Adobe Products

Adobe showed CS4 versions of their products Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro. They use OpenGL2.0 to speed up zooming, turning the desktop, moving images, anti-aliasing and some 3D effects. They require a PC with at minimum of 128MB graphics memory. The Premiere Pro utilises NVIDIA Quatro graphics cards to make video effects quicker to calculate. It also allows more than one HD-stream to edited at a time.

GPS camera add-on

There are some high-end cameras on the market that have the ability to ‘tag’ pictures with the GPS co-ordinates of the location that the photo was taken.  These tend to be expensive and GPS is normally not a reason to buy a new camera.

A company called Jobo have invented a GPS receiver that sits on top of your camera and records the co-ordinates separately.  The data is later converged with the photos back on the PC rather than in the camera intself.

37.5 Megapixels

A single-lens-reflex-camera from Leica offering 37.5 megapixels was being shown.  It is expected to be released in Summer 2009. It has a 3 inch display and is waterproof and dustproof – two vital elements for taking it hiking with me.  But do I really need 37.5 megapixels?

The digital camera testcard

Visitors to Photokina received a free digital camera testcard (in A0 format: 841×1189mm) with which they can check out features of their camera. See it at http://6mpixel.org/?p=351 – non visitors can order it within Germany for 20EUR+VAT.

Make your own TV show

As much as I like the idea of a GPS tagger and the testcard, this one has to be my favourite of the week: make.tv. The site offer flash-based video editing, which at the moment is free.  What I particularly like is the fact that cameras can be at different locations but the output is mixed from a single computer.  The finished video podcast can then be streamed from the make.tv server.

It’s something that I’d like to try out in a future project!

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, Photography Tagged With: , ,

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