I went to a fascinating talk last night about Assisted GPS as used in Location Bases Services on mobile phones. Japan has taken this on board and today has a few million subscribers paying for these services, helping navigate, find points of interest , monitoring children’s whereabouts via specially designed phones targeted at youngsters. The operators have greater control/say of the products in Japan and specify exactly what they want. They work ‘hand in glove’ with the content providers to produce advanced services. It’s not clear that this will take off in Europe in exactly the same way. The key question is whether people will pay for the services? AGPS uses cell/network information to enhance the effective speed of operation of the GPS service. In practice limited position information can be made available even in the absence of a satellite, say when in a building.
To obtain the LBS presentation simply go to the site www.i-report.biz and search for the term “location” you will then be able to download it free of charge.
My last distribution got wiped in my reported disk crash. Armed with a fresh hard disk I thought I’d reinstall. Favorable comments about PCLinux (http://www.pclinuxos.com/) prompted me to try something other than SimplyMepis. I installed and was immediately impressed with the fast boot time. But something appears to have gone wrong during the installation process. Access to my CD/DVD device caused a system reboot which obviously isn’t correct. Disappointed I’ve reinstated SimplyMepis which just seems to work. (Version 6.5) . I’ve even managed to get some form of printing via my Canon/Windows share. Might try the PCLinux again at some point as I’d like to give it a fair trial. Perhaps I selected a wrong option during the install process? Note that both of the aforementioned distributions are of the ‘Live’ type. This means you can load and run without making any changes to your existing installation. A quick and useful way of exploring their respective capabilities.
Don’t forget to check out distrowatch to see the latest charts in the Linux world!
http://distrowatch.com/
A client just reminded me about the very clever web site Pandora. I used this some time back when it cleverly suggested alternative artists of the same style or genre. Now however it plays the music too, you can order via Itunes or Amazon if you like. The basic service is free but you’ll need a US post code. Check it out here: http://www.pandora.com/
Spent a couple of pleasant hours mooching round the show yesterday. A mixed bunch of exhibitors and really very little in the form of 2 channel stereo. Emphasis by nearly every exhibitor was Video/DVD. Best sounds heard, Naim and Wilson Benesch. In truth I thought the entry price of £15 was a bit steep. A curious gesture of giving everybody a packet of Duracell AA batteries on entry as a gift. I know these cost pence in volume so not much of a bonus. I’d say reduce the price next time please. (£10 would be fine.) You can read about it here.
http://whathifi.com/home-cinema/archive/2007/11/04/how-the-show-looked-from-here.aspx
Sorry to any readers but the show was only on at the weekend.
