Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • Using terminal.app in macOS

    Terminal.app is a way of getting to the Unix underpinnings of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. It is generally kept out of the way because an uneducated user could do a lot of damage. I have put together eight of my favourite life hacks using Terminal here. Your mileage will vary. Over time Apple has stopped supporting some commands and introduced others grep used to come in handy for finding and removing duplicate files.  A new command called ditto makes it really easy to make copies of folders.
    Check the weather

    Finger was originally used on Unix systems as a kind of directory system. You could see a person’s office address, their telephone number and the last time that they had logged on to mail (what we’d call email now). That last bit of data gave you an idea of if they were available online at the moment.
    Ping a website

    If there is one terminal.app function everyone should know, it would be how to ping as a basic way to check their net connection. Just be sure to switch your pings off once you know!
    Find the address of every device on your network

    This is very useful if you are trying to stop your neighbour piggybacking off your Wi-Fi connection.
    Get details about a domain name

    Usually I’d be going to a site like whois.com to get this information. But in terminal.app you get the most comprehensive data and don’t have to put up with adverts.
    Change the screenshot format
    Show hidden files in Finder
    Show path view in Finder
    Strip out unnecessary system animations
    I have put together each of these as a presentation as well. More on productivity and MacOS here. It is worthwhile also checking out ‘Learn Enough Unix for Your Resume‘ on Wired. Pamela Statz’ article originally featured on Wired’s ‘hotwired.com’ site during the dot.com boom in 1997. It was then moved on to their now redundant Web Monkey brand and now resides on Wired. Yet like Unix the article still remains useful :-). Also check out Jeffrey Paul’s Stupid Unix Tricks here, the Unix Toolbox is also good, but think carefully about what you’re doing before you do it. Interesting background reading on BSD (a real Unix) versus Linux (a Unix-like system). It also worthwhile checking out David Pogue’s books on macOS and O’Reilly Publishing’s books on Unix.

  • Yahoo takeover + more things

    Microsoft Could Help Finance a Yahoo Takeover | Vanity Fair – Despite the turmoil surrounding Yahoo, one tech giant has expressed its interest in maintaining relations with the struggling company. Microsoft has been in talks to finance bids – a Microsoft-financed Yahoo takeover is equivalent to burning a competitor down from the inside. More on Yahoo! here.

    The dark web is too slow and annoying for terrorists to even bother with, experts say  – Terrorists are skulking around the dark web, the bit of the internet that can only be accessed by specific software, propagating messages of hate and extremism, right? Not really, according to data – technology is only good as it is useful. The dark web offers an uncertain amount of privacy. That and the poor user experience makes it unattractive

    The sale of Boston Dynamics shows Alphabet is waking up to reality | ExtremeTech – so does this mean that Alphabet is just another blue-chip rather than a high growth stock?

    What your car isn’t telling you about driving | Macleans – Driver’s ed, she says, needs to “talk about how to cope with it all.” – automakers we have a user experience proble and its only getting worse with the likes of Tesla getting involved

    Daring Fireball: The Information: ‘Inside Tony Fadell’s Struggle to Build Nest’ – it’s like Fadell was channeling the inner demons of an early Steve Jobs. But the idea of Nest seems crazy, why does it need to be cloud based anyway. It seems like a very inefficient way of having a smart thermostat.

    Online Media Relations as an Information Subsidy: Quality of Fortune 500 Companies’ Websites and Relationships to Media Salience | Mass Communications & Society – paywall PDF – I have been struggling to find efficacy data for online news rooms. The benefits of newsroom probably increase as the quality of journalistic analysis declines. It relies on companies being truthful and honest, given the Chinese US-listed firms.

  • Woz + more things

    Woz

    Reddit have interviewed geek heroes. In each interview they discuss their formative moments for a series of videos on YouTube. The complete playlist is below. Steve Wozniak aka Woz is one of the geek heroes highlighted . It’s a a quality interview with the Woz on form on various topics. You can read more about Woz here.

  • Anti smoking + more news

    Why Is Vice Ditching Its Anti Smoking Past To Work For Philip Morris? | Co.Create – Vice has big marketing and media groups as shareholders including WPP. More tobacco related posts here. It will be interesting to see how the anti-smoking lobby reacts to it. There is something larger going on in the tobacco industry as it tried to push into vaping and heated tobacco products.

    Nielsen COO Steve Hasker on Total Audience Measurement and Snapchat Deal | Adweek – interesting article on TV measurement

    Vice Media Web Traffic Plunges 17% in February, Sunk by Risky Strategy | Variety – one month’s of comScore’s data doesn’t make a trend

    Vice CEO Shane Smith to agencies: ‘We like you.’ | Digiday – might have something to do with their dramatic drop in website traffic… Vice has lost its outsider positioning and become part of the mainstream that it kicked against for so long. Still Shane Smith has done well out of it

    More valuable brands in China | Shanghai Daily – Huawei ranks highly. Huawei is a client of WPP who own the company that created the brand ranking. As with many of things your mileage will vary considerably.

    The Laughing Cow explores the true value of family time | Marketing Interactive – interesting positioning of the Laughing Cow brand. It’s classic FMCG thinking but with a twist

    Gamasutra – Now’s the time to get into VR – but be realistic about its returns, says Palmer Luckey – the thing to keep an eye on is if e-sports athletes find an advantage in VR within a gaming environment. It will be interesting to see how various technology hurdles are handled. Making true VR content requires news processes, new approaches to narrative and storytelling. Will the cost of non-gaming content in VR be worthwhile? Lastly, lean back content is tremendously important as well, expect headsets to be used as ‘virtual screens’ for traditional content as a killer app. Not all that computing power will be needed. It will also work with small single person households were a 65 inch TV isn’t practical

  • Refreshed Kindles

    If You Want To Keep Using Your Kindle, You Might Need To Update It Immediately | Gizmodo – will this break the reflashed Kindles that were popular in China? It also shows the impermanence of cloud content and the constant battle that companies face like Amazon with reflashed Kindles being put on to rival e-book stores in China. More on Amazon here.

    Downloading MP3s From Spotify is Easy But Feels Dated | TorrentFreak – which brings us to the digital equivalent of recording from the radio and not buying a recording. Expect the record labels to go apeshit

    Xiaomi founder says time for world to copy Chinese innovation, Technology/Digital News – AsiaOne Digital – Compared with their US peers which are chiefly driven by tech advances, Chinese Internet enterprises place tons of emphasis on user experience, marketing and rapid solutions, which are helping us gain unique edges

    What Obama doesn’t get about encryption | The Kernel – not exclusively an Obama problem either

    Video ads: What works and doesn’t work with younger users | VentureBeat – the author seems surprised that young people would be skeptical towards branded content. It was the same with generation X. Why would it be any different now?

    The FT is launching a new analytics tool to make metrics more understandable for its newsroom » Nieman Journalism Lab

    More Devs Now Use OS X Than Linux, Says Survey – Slashdot – and less than half use Windows

    Half of China’s Ad Spending Will Go Toward the Internet This Year, GroupM Says | Ad Age – (paywall) but measurement still an issue. Partly because highly regulated TV is so boring to watch

    Yahoo, Facebook in Ad Partnership Talks Over Tumblr — The Information – (paywall) that’s a shockingly low figure, but then I guess Yahoo! sales team won’t be selling to brands that care about millennials

    Nokia Technologies announces OZO Pioneer Program for innovative virtual reality content | TelecomTV Insights

    Ariadne Capital takes legal action against PR firm over Wikipedia edits – Business Insider – breaks the terms of service