Alx Klive's WorldTV Blog

An Introduction to Solid State Drives - A Speed Revolution

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:47:47 +0000

A new type of hard drive promises to revolutionize our interactions with computers in the very near future. The revolution is so dramatic, so different from what we are used to, that anyone who uses a computer is going to benefit in a profound way.

The biggest bottleneck in your computer right now is the hard drive. It's the only part of your computer that remembers anything when you turn it off, so it's kind of important, and unsurprisingly its something we use and rely on a lot. That's why most of us have had a painful experience with them in the past.

Well the good news is that a new type of hard drive promises to not only make them more reliable, but much much faster. So much faster in fact that a speed revolution in our interactions with computers is about to take place in 2010 and 2011.

Fixing an overheating Mac Pro - no expense required

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:46:58 +0000

Lately my Mac Pro has been crashing and freezing with greater regularity. From prior experience with computers crashing, and it being the summer (and a particularly hot one in London!), I had a hunch it was heat related.

Weird artifacts on the monitor display (strange green and pink blocks and lines) clued me in that it might be the Radeon X1900 display card that was the cause of the overheating, and a bit of searching around on the Internet showed that this card has something of a reputation for overheating. The solutions people talk about all seem to revolve around removing fluff from the fan ingest (did that), purchasing after market coolers (not cheap and quite complicated) or buying a new card (even more expensive). I wanted to find something else.

The first step was to confirm that it was heat related. I shut down the computer, opened the case, and let the computer cool down for an hour. When I started it up again the computer lasted longer before crashing than normal. A good clue.

I went looking for a way to see what the temperature actually was inside my Mac Pro. There are several methods for doing this but I found a wonderful free utility called Temperature Monitor. This shows you the temperature for many points within the machine and can graph them over time. A very useful tool indeed.

Although Temperature Monitor did not show a specific temperature reading for the graphics card itself, two readings in particular seemed high and are indeed physically close to the graphics card - the Northbridge and Memory Module B2. Both were up around 80 degrees C which is definitely a little hot.

I used another free utility, the brilliant SMCFanControl to adjust the speed of the fans within the computer. While running the history graph feature of Temperature Monitor I first turned all the fans up to full and immediately saw nearly all temperature readings within the Mac Pro go down. It was amazing to watch. After some fiddling I set the PCIe/HDD fan to a minimum speed of 1700 rpm which brought the Northbridge and Memory Module B2 temps consistently down under 70 degrees. I left the other fans in the end at their default settings.

Since then I haven't had a single crash and I've not spent a penny. I've created different profiles within SMCFanControl (Normal, 1/2 cool down, 3/4 cool down, full cool down) and can instantly change the speed of the fans at will, depending on the ambient temperature.

Now if only I could get a speed increase utility for my air conditioner...

The Weirdest 24 Hours

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:24:56 +0000

Just over a week ago my very close friend Ian Loveday (aka EON aka Binty aka many other monikers) passed away from a very rare reaction to Pneumonia. It was a total shock and nobody expected it. Only now am I beginning to come to terms with it. Only now can I begin to write about it.

I've never lost a close friend before and I've never organized a funeral before. It's all been very difficult, emotional and surreal.

One of the things we are going to do for our friend, who will be buried on Monday, is organize a grey/silver coffin. He liked silver and was a huge sci-fi fan - shows like Star Trek, The Outer Limits, Quatermass Experiment. The practicalities of this meant that yesterday lunchtime I found myself in the basement of the Funeral Directors, with Keith, a burly, tattooed man who looks like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. Keith is the man who does the stuff that the rest of us don't want to think about. We need people like Keith, and they're a very strange breed indeed.

Seeing Keith's 'workshop' was surreal. I was there to pick out fittings for my friend's coffin. I'm pretty sure the body under a blanket on a gurney a few feet away from me was my friend. Rows and rows of coffins lined the walls. Boxes of fittings, tools, and a coffin lift. I chose the fittings as quickly as I could, said my goodbye to Keith, who cheerily told me he would be a pall bearer on Monday (only wearing "different clothes") and I walked away, trying to make sense of the experience I'd just had.

The day had started emotionally, the most emotional since I'd learned my friend was in critical condition in hospital. In the morning I'd sat down to write my funeral speech. As I typed the last sentence I completely broke down. I broke down again a few moments later in the bathroom.

I spent the afternoon working on a presentation DVD that will be shown at the funeral with photos and quotes about Ian. Some of the quotes that have been flooding in are really remarkable. Ian was an underground music producer but had a dedicated fanbase. Going through those photos and quotes I broke down again. It was all beginning to sink in that my friend really was gone.

A get together with other close friends of Ian in the evening proved a welcome distraction. We were meeting with the lady who will conduct the ceremony, with the idea to recount stories about Ian for her benefit. It was a chance for us all to get together again and discuss final preparations for the funeral.

Later I was breaking down when I found myself chatting alone with Ian's girlfriend. I've been pretty solid the past week, but that strength and support for the people around me finally folded. I had to break the news to her about Ian's death, and his dad, and had picked up Jo - a broken woman - in the street on the way to hospital.

It was around this time last night that another very close friend of mine texted me to let me know he'd become a dad for the first time. Dan and I have been friends since school and live very close to one another. After the birth of my son we'd both really been looking forward to the day when our two kids could play together. This was a joyous moment in an otherwise depressing day.

Dan told me his child had been born at St Mary's - the same hospital that my friend died a week earlier. Life is definitely weird, and now the circle of life is complete. I went from sadness to joy very quickly.

Since his wife was staying over at the hospital and Dan couldn't stay overnight, I invited him round to join us. He could have steered clear of a 'funeral planning meeting' but he didn't. He's good like that. I picked up a bottle of Champagne and with Ian's friends we toasted a celebration in his honour.

Seconds later we learned that Michael Jackson had died...

It was all getting a bit much, and talk of Michael Jackson and the wall-to-wall coverage we were now seeing on CNN threatened to completely overshadow my friend's night. We bailed, and I took Dan down the pub where they wouldn't serve us. Last call had finished and despite the valiant efforts of some of the locals, we were left high... and dry.

We decided to head back to our neighbourhood to a pub we know well. Last orders had finished but this time we were successful. You can always rely on your local I guess. We found ourselves in a discussion with strangers about Michael Jackson.

We ended up back at my friend's flat, a flat in waiting for the new baby. It was the last night it would be a flat without a baby, and probably the last time I'll visit the place before my friends move house. This alone would usually have been surreal.

I woke up this morning and for the first time in days I didn't break down. The mornings have been the hardest. I had to persuade a council worker that... Monday, the day of the funeral, was a really bad day to be digging up the pavement outside my house rendering my parking spot inaccessible.

I drove to my office, and to top off the weirdest 24 hours I can remember, I arrived to find my dear old neighbour Ethel, who I regularly share tea with, fix her TV and stereo, and listen to stories about the really old days, had passed away. The funeral had been yesterday.

I guess I will have two graves to visit now.

It's all very numbing. Under normal circumstances I might actually care that Michael Jackson has died. Frankly right now I am only thinking about the people who've left me, and the people who are still with me.

It's a cliche, but... life is short, you must enjoy it. Because you never know when the great starship in the sky will come to take you away...

Top 5 Social Bookmarking Share Tools for Web Publishers

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:42:06 +0000

We've seen the little icons on web pages that let you bookmark and share content to the various popular social bookmarking and networking sites. But what if you are a web publisher and you want to add this type of functionality to your site? What if there were a webservice or plugin to do it easily?

I went looking today and it turns out there are a few. The most compelling feature for me was a hosted service that would ensure someone else is updating it as the various services change their access details or requirements. From prior experience this is a major 'make-work' project to keep up with dozens of different social bookmarking sites.

ShareThis.com - The most professional-looking of the five services and with big names using it like Huffington Post, Techcrunch, MTV and Wired. Offers Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger and 'any' website versions. Has a neat 'import addresses' feature that lets your site's users import and send something by e-mail to their Gmail, MSN, Yahoo contacts. You don't get the e-mail addresses, in case you're wondering.

AddThis.com - Another widely used and professional-looking service counting ReadWriteWeb, Time Magazine and Myspace among its users. A Compete.com analysis of this and ShareThis.com show very similar numbers of users. These are users accessing the sites of publishers who are using the service - in other words, a pretty good barometer.

AddToAny.com - Looks like a single person developing it but seems to offer some nice features. Quotes some big names using it but it is clear some of these are no longer doing so, if only because two services here both mention Mashable as one of their users. (Out of interest Mashable appears to be using neither ShareThis.com or AddToAny.com any more. They've created their own it seems).

Bookmark Me - A Wordpress Plugin for adding social bookmarking links to a blog or Wordpress powered site

Alex King's Share This - Another Wordpress Plugin. One of several this developer offers.

If you have any experience of these services consider writing a comment below to help others who might be comparing these services. As for our site? I'm going to be taking a closer look at sharethis.com but as our site is Flash based, we will probably have to roll our own as usual. :-(

UPDATE - I've just come across a 6th service that looks on a par with ShareThis.com. Tell a Friend seems polished and the user experience is very nice.

A Victory for Common Sense - My Car Clamping Saga

Fri, 08 May 2009 14:37:33 +0000

This morning I got word from my local councillor, Paul Dimoldenberg, that my recent car clamping drama had resulted in a likely future change in policy.

I'm still awaiting more details and will update this post, but basically it seems a new grace period will be introduced on my estate (and possibly others in Westminster) to avoid the situation where a resident has their car clamped within days of their permit expiring.

Regular readers of my Twitterings will know I had my car clamped on April 1st, just one day after my permit expired on March 31st. Incensed after a similar incident a year ago I went on a mission. As I pointed out to Paul...

I think it's easy to forget that the whole point of clamping is to ensure residents can have access to their parking spots. My car was in my parking spot, and was trapped, unable to go anywhere.

Fortunately I found a conscientious ally in the fight for common sense in Mr Dimoldenberg. He followed up the matter resulting in the following response from the contractor...

In trying to resolve this and taking on board your comments about the objective of parking control on the estate, we could take on board the grace period suggestion and look to implement for next year's renewal timetable

A rare victory for common sense!

Oprah - Future Queen of Twitter

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:34:00 +0000

Tomorrow, Ashton Kutcher will appear on Oprah talking about Twitter. Oprah has secured the @oprah address and already has 43k followers before she's sent one tweet.

This is huge.

Forget that Ashton Kutcher will be talking about his sparring with CNN to be the first to have 1 million followers. Forget as well that the act of appearing on Oprah talking about Twitter will drive huge numbers of new users to to the site. Forget that some silly people are already saying silly things like the inevitable crash of Twitter's servers will send people rushing to their competitors.

The huge event here is the possibility that Oprah herself will actually start to use Twitter. That she'll recognize the impact she could have with Twitter, and add it to her communications quiver.

If Oprah does start Tweeting, and assuming at least some of it is her doing it herself, the argument over who got to a million followers will be ancient history. Oprah will storm past both CNN and Ashton Kutcher within weeks and leave them in the dust. Neither of them will ever be in first place again, and nor will anyone else. She will cement her place as the person with the most followers on Twitter. Oprah - Queen of Twitter.

Good luck @ev and @jack and @biz the founders of Twitter for their own battle tomorrow.

Ta ra Facebook ...a footnote?

How to win Apple's 1 billionth app download

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:42:03 +0000

Apple is closing in on 1 billion app downloads and they're making it a public occasion by putting a counter on their website. They're offering a decent prize to the person who makes the 1 billionth download.

The prize includes a $10,000 iTunes gift card, a laptop, a time capsule and an iPod Touch. No doubt lots of people will be interested in this, this writer included, and many people will be trying to get the 1 billionth download.

Having dug under the hood of the counter I can tell you a bit of a secret that will put you at an advantage.

Where's that UK TV Series Shot?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:00:13 +0000

Ever wanted to know where Balamory really is? Or every TV show shot in London? Or all TV series that are set in Newcastle?

Question no more thanks to this great geographical map of UK TV series put together by Guardian Head of Communities Meg Pickard.

She's done a super job pulling it all together and has even gone way back to the likes of Hancock's Half Hour and the Good Life.

I asked her via Twitter why in fact there were two Balamory locations and she explained that it is set/filmed in Tobermory but one of the character's houses is in East Lothian. So there you have it.

The map was inspired by a map of US sitcoms put together by cartoonist Dan Meth who has one of the all-time best personal blog photos I've ever seen.

Call for non US based web publishers for Techcrunch article

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:45:57 +0000

Following on from an article on Techcrunch about encouraging first signs from Microsoft's new 'Adsense' style advertising platform, I've been asked to write a guest article for TCUK about the experience of non US based web publishers in their attempts to monetize their sites through contextual advertising.

The questions I'll be asking are...

What experiences have non US based web publishers had with Google Adsense?
What other platforms are out there and how do they compare?
What are your feelings about Microsoft getting into this space?
Has anyone outside the US had experience with Yahoo! Publisher Network?
What would you like to see in the 'perfect' contextual advertising product?
What would you like Google to change about theirs?

I'm interested in speaking, in confidence as appropriate, to any non US web publishers with an interest in this subject.

Please contact me in the first instance at alx [at] smashing [dot] com or phone me direct at 0845 686 2000 (UK office hours)

Something magical happened tonight

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:59:40 +0000

I don't usually get particularly emotional on my blog but something happened this evening that has fundamentally changed my outlook and enthusiasm for the future.

From a chance phone call with a friend, through a chance Tweet from someone in Australia, a sequence of events unfolded this evening that resulted in the most thrilling and exciting experience I've had in as long as I can remember.

Tonight on WorldTV we broadcast the only live Internet video coverage of U2's secret rooftop gig in London, to an audience around the world.

It wasn't planned, it wasn't scripted, it... just... happened.

Through the power of Twitter and the serendipitous events that followed, I was able, from my office in West London, to be swept along in a chain of events that resulted in something thrilling, a little anarchic, and tremendously exciting.

Secret of the Congestion Charge

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:10:47 +0000

Two days ago I had a meeting in central London, on Park Lane. This meant driving in from Queen's Park which is in Northish London and into the £8 a day Congestion Zone.

Now it's fairly well known that there is one road that goes right through the Congestion Zone which you don't have to pay for - this is a north-south route taking in Edgware Road, Park Lane, down through Victoria to Vauxhall Bridge. This is deliberate by the Government and is there to allow people a way to get from North to South London or vice-versa without having to go round the congestion zone. So long as you stay on that road, don't veer off in any direction, you're fine.

What I discovered though (and this is the brilliant bit) is that the underground Car Park on Park Lane, the one underneath Hyde Park and opposite the Dorcester Hotel is not in the congestion zone. There are no cameras on the approaches and the car park attendants confirmed this. So rather than using the north-south route as a through-way, you can use it to get to this Car Park, park your car and wander off into Central London without paying the charge. Providing of course you exit in the same way up or down the north-south route.

The Park Lane car park is actually superbly situated for many parts of Central London including Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Mayfair and Hyde Park itself and compared to many of the parking options in London is actually quite reasonable - £6 for 2 hours.

I'm going to be parking there much more often!

How to turn Twitter into your RSS Reader

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:02:45 +0000

Have you ever wished you could get all your favourite blogs and RSS feeds coming in via Twitter? I don't know about you but I'm increasingly getting the information I need from Twitter and turning less and less to RSS. There are still a few blogs that I would like to receive updates from though, and if I could get those coming in via Twitter, I could ditch my RSS reader once and for all.

I set about a way to bring all my favourite RSS feeds and blogs into my Twitter stream. Here's how I did it...

The Top 10 Web 2.0 Drupal Themes

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:48:40 +0000

You can spend a lot of time going through ThemeGarden looking for Drupal Themes. Many are just not very good, old fashioned or amateurish.

Here's my list of the top 10 professional looking, contemporary, web 2.0 style Drupal themes - in alphabetical order. (Drupal is a popular content management system for building websites)

If I have time later I'll add thumbnails but in the meantime you can hover over the little orange SnapShot icon to get a preview.

End of the End - A London club institution closes its doors

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:15:37 +0000

In 1986 I first postulated the idea of 'headphone raving'. Get a club, fill it with people, give them all wireless headphones and have no sound system at all. The sight of a crowd dancing without any music would be priceless.

In 1992 I shared this idea with friend and former Shamen frontman and DJ Mr C. Now tonight, for the first time I will get to see this idea in action.

The End Nightclub was co-founded by Mr C and partner Layo Paskin (of Layo and Bushwacka fame) back in 1996. A rare breed in clubland it managed to maintain its credibility throughout its 13 year history despite being a large venue. Tonight it closes its doors for the last time and to honour the occasion they are closing off the street outside and will extend the party outdoors. The headphone raving idea will be used, neatly sidestepping noise regulations. It's expected the party will go on all day Sunday.

Myself and some old friends are going for the final hurragh which includes sets by Mr C, Fatboy Slim and Laurent Garnier among others. If I remember (dubious), I will try to do some live video via Qik. If you follow me on Twitter you'll get the notifications of the live broadcasts.

I know Layo and C are in two minds as to whether they made the right decision to close the club, but it's had a far longer run than anyone would have expected, and that's a credit to them and the priceless procession of music luminaries that have passed through the door, consistently delivering superb music, kudos and vibes.

Long live the End...

Plane crash in the Hudson River - The impact on aviation and the World

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:54:33 +0000

Is the Miracle crash on the Hudson River the first truly good news story in a generation?

Frankly I'm still stunned at the gravity of what happened in this crash. I've had a curious fascination with air crashes since a young age, and this answered an age old question in my mind. Is it really possible for a plane to land safely on water?

We've all seen the safety cards in airplanes where they have a picture of a mammoth metal plane sitting perfectly flat and stable on a flat ocean. For me, I've always looked at that picture more than any other as the ultimate piece of ~~bullshit~~ propaganda. This same picture has inflatable escape chutes turning into life rafts which calmly move away from this floating metal plane. No way, no chance, it ain't gonna happen... Yet this is exactly what happened last Friday evening.

The elements to this story from a news perspective are fascinating. A hero pilot from the old school, not a single death, on a busy river in one of the World's top cities, no enemy except some unfortunate Canada Geese. No one is at fault, everyone survived, the equipment held up. The media can't find any one to fault or blame. It's a true, genuine, all happy miracle.

For me the accident leaves me with lots of questions. The most important of all is this... This single accident proves that a commercial airline CAN land safely on water. How can we learn from this to ensure every other landing on water can be the same?

This accident has already given hope and belief in the minds of millions that they too could survive an aircrash. Let's build on this. The earth is 2/3rds water. Most international flights pass over water. If the lessons could be learned from this such that all commercial airliners have a better than average chance of being able to land safely on water, with no loss of life, think what that would mean to all flyers around the world. You've got at least a 50/50 chance of surviving an air crash. I don't think anyone thinks that this is presently the case.

Here's the ingredients... A modern carbon fibre plane, a good pilot, a stretch of water, not fully fueled. A controlled (albeit without engines) glide in at around 10 degrees. Presumably the ditch switch (which closes off intakes that would fill with water) just before touch down.

What the authorities need to do is examine to the nth degree these and all the other factors that enabled this miracle to happen. Once they've worked this out, it can be replicated. The maneouver might even be possible to write into a computer macro so that in a future scenario, close to ditch time, a pilot could engage the script to do the exact same thing. Airbus planes support this.

It may be that the 'flukes' in this case could become standardized fittings and operating procedure. For example adding flotation to the wings in some way (in this flight it seems that not being fully fueled helped the plane stay afloat - presumably air in the tanks kept it bouyant).

How much tolerance is there for the angle the plane hit the water? We all know from a belly flop that surface tension on water can be like a stone, but 'dive' into the water, separating the water apart with your hands and your head can pass straight through. In this case the tail served the same function.

Did the river current going in the same direction as the plane make a crucial difference? It's clear that this crash was extremely close to the margins for the plane staying in one piece, or, disintegrating. Could a 5-10 mph current (my guess), bringing the impact speed down to maybe 120mph make all the difference?

For me the best thing that can come out of all of this is the relevant authorities standing up and saying "We've spent two years reviewing this crash. We now know why the plane stayed in one piece, why it stayed afloat, why the g-forces on the passengers were not damaging. We now know that any commercial plane can have a better than average chance of doing the same. These are the measures we are going to force airlines and manufacturers to introduce, to assure you that any 'control surface' landing into water has a very high chance of everyone surviving and standing on a wing holding their bags, on their phones, looking like they are walking on water".

Kudos to the pilot, kudos (never thought I'd say this) to Airbus. This is a really great and genuine good news story.