Location Aware Computing

The numbers of computing devices we all have access to has increased massively in recent years.  In "olden times" users either had a laptop or desktop, or if you were really lucky 1 or each.  These days, there are laptops, hybrids, tablets, smartphones, desktops, all-in-ones, consoles, smartwatches and very soon, what I like to call - faceputers (Microsoft Hololens, Sony SmartGlasses, Oculus Rift etc.).

As devices (mobile devices in particular) become more powerful, some clever people at the likes of Intel and ARM have decided that we could perhaps start to use some of these devices to replace the traditional desktop.  That presents a few problems, however.  Mobile devices are notorious clumsy when it comes to using them at the desk, for instance when connected to a larger monitor.  Problems with wires and physical connection, the issue around proprietary docking systems, and even the software you use all mean that using a mobile device at your desk like a normal PC is far from straight forward.

What Intel and ARM are suggesting is a new breed of device that is location aware.  It will "know" when you are at your desk and when you are not.  It will automatically connect wirelessly to a dedicated screen, and even change it's display and operating mode accordingly, to adapt to it's new surroundings.  It's a neat idea, and one that could indeed reduce on the number of devices we need in order to work, or learn.

Intel's Vision

Intel are obviously pushing their new WiDi Pro (Wireless Display technology), along with their new range of chipsets and processors.  As the following video shows, they foresee a wireless world where devices connect, sync, charge and display wirelessly.  Plus apparently it will make you fitter and more popular with your kids... ;)

Seamless ARMs

ARM are predicting similar technology, this time called "Seamless Computing" and along with technology like wireless charging and NFC, ARM suggest the smartphone could become even smarter.

They both present an exciting vision of the future when we no longer have to wade through pages of on-screen settings, or raid overcrowded desk drawers looking for cables, adaptors and chargers.  I wrote a previous blog post on the idea of a wireless nirvana.  It looks like it's getting closer to reality....

Rise Of The (small) Machines...

Ok, here goes.  A technology prediction for 2015.  Computers will get smaller.  OK, I admit, that's more Mystic Meg than Nostradamus, but it's clear from the current trend in new devices that are starting to appear, that interest is growing in er...making things smaller.

Now we're all used to having relatively powerful computing devices in our pockets, courtesy of the modern smartphone, but the devices I want to talk about are a bit more focused on doing the same jobs as your typical work-based desktop PC - but in a much smaller form factor.

These types of devices aren't new.  With the introduction of things like the Mac Mini and the Raspberry Pi, we're used to seeing small computers performing some very useful tasks.  But now the big boys are coming to play.  The likes of Dell, HP, Intel and others, all have devices now that are even smaller, easy to use, cheap and better supported than those before.

Dell Cloud Connect
Let's start off with the one that already available and (fairly) well developed.  The Dell Cloud Connect was originally conceived as a portable Thin Client (VDI) device, able to provide access to your work desktop through it's VDI receiver app.  It came about through Dell's purchase of Wyse (Thin Client technology company) back in 2012.  It's a very small, HDMI dongle, style device (think Google Chromecast) and runs a custom version of Android KitKat 4.2.  It's an ARM processor based device with 8GB of onboard storage and a MicroSD card slot currently supporting up to 32GB of additional space.

Dell Cloud Connect.  It's small...

Basically, once up and running it turns any TV or monitor into a massive Android tablet.  But the clever thing about it is the use-cases that Dell have dreamt up for it.  Apart from the VDI-in-your-pocket use cases that corporate banking IT departments would no doubt find useful, if you plug it into a compatible Dell touchscreen monitor you can use it as a locked down kiosk device.  And when you consider that the device itself currently sells for £75+VAT, and a 23" touchscreen monitor costs around £200+VAT, things start to get interesting.  Potentially, a 23" touchscreen kiosk for less than the price of a 10" iPad.  I've setup and tested it in this mode - it's pretty good and definitely worth considering if you're looking for a kiosk solution.

A 23" Android Touchscreen Kiosk - setup in just a few taps...

The other use-case worthy of note is that of digital signage.  Dell have partnered with a couple of digital signage software companies; Nanonation and Screenscape, to provide the means to stream digital media playlists and information to the devices, whilst controlling and managing the devices centrally.  Again, I've setup and tested it in this mode and again, it's pretty competent.  Pricing for the signage software subscriptions is still unknown, but with the hardware being so cheap, I would hope it would also turn out to be a relatively cheap way to deliver digital signage to pretty much any large format TV or display screen you like.

There is also the cloud based management solution for the device (Dell's Cloud Client Manager), to manage users, device settings etc.  It's not needed for the Nanonation digital signage mode, but it's not clear if it's a mandatory requirement in the kiosk use-case or not.

More details:

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/cloud-connect/pd
http://nanonation.net/
http://screenscape.com/

Intel Compute Stick
Similar to the Dell Cloud Connect, this is another mini HDMI dongle, but this time it's a fully-fledged Windows 8.1 PC. Using a CPU and chipset found in low end (but still good performing) tablets, this little device shows a lot of promise.  It comes with WiFi, Bluetooth, 2GB RAM, MicroSD and 32GB of onboard storage - all for $149 (potentially around £100).  Being able to run Windows apps and software puts it slightly ahead of the Dell device due to the flexibility that brings, and could potentially be used for similar use cases.  I'm hoping to get hold of one to test as soon as they are available.  ETA is sometime in Q1 2015.

Intel Compute Stick.  Great potential.  Rubbish name...

More details:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-compute-stick.html

The Hive Amplicity
OK - let's go oddball.  New startup company The Hive has announced it's releasing 2 devices based on a modular system of performance and storage options.  The first device simply called "The Amplicity" is a smartphone-sized PC running a modest Intel Core-M CPU, 4GB RAM and 128GB of on board storage.  Pretty unimpressive so far.  However, the party-trick for this device is that you can dock it with an optional larger unit to enable an external graphics card within that uni for a bit more grunt.  It scheduled to be released later in 2015 priced at around $400 for the device itself.  The second device called "The Amplicity Anywhere" is slightly lower on performance than the first model, in that it uses a Intel Atom CPU rather than the more powerful Core-M.  Other than that they are identical.  Again it can be docked to connect to external graphics and other options for both models include 4K monitors, kiosks and even furniture with built in docks.  The really interesting thing about the Amplicity Anywhere is the cost.  You lease it rather than buy it, for $99 every 6 months, after which you either renew, hand it back or upgrade to the other model.  Sounds expensive until you realise that their plan is to have both models ship with Windows, Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud Subscriptions built in.  And the Amplicity Anywhere also comes with 1TB of cloud storage included.  Overall it sounds an interesting concept of modular computing and the relatively low cost subscription could potentially appeal to budding web workers, graphics designers and other creative types.  Whether it finds a home in other work places is yet to be seen.

The Hive Amplicity.  The future's bright.  The future's (black and) orange?

More details:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2866077/the-hives-amplicity-is-a-modular-smartphone-sized-pc-with-a-graphics-card-dock.html

Eduserv Special Interest Group - Microsoft

25th November 2104.
After a very early start and a long train journey I arrived at University of York for a Eduserv Special Interest Group meeting with Microsoft.  Attended by technology and learning representatives from FE and HE institutions from across the UK, the event was a chance to get up to date on what announcements Microsoft have made recently and how they affect education institutions in the UK.

It came as no great shock that the majority of the day was taken up talking about the cloud.  Cloud hosting (Azure), cloud management (InTune), and cloud productivity (Office 365).  However some surprises were revealed as Simon Ibbitt, Microsoft Higher Education Business Manager, and his colleagues introduced a few new initiatives and announcements:

Showcase Classroom:

Microsoft have created a "Showcase Classroom", showing how they think that a classroom or lecture room of the future should look.  It showcases learning technology from multiple perspectives, from students to IT professionals.  The classroom itself is in their London offices and they are open to groups of staff to go and visit.  They'll also be taking the vision on the road in a number of road-show events later.

Linx Tablets:

Microsoft have apparently partnered with a Chinese tablet manufacturer to offer a number of VERY cheap Windows 8.x tablet devices to consumers and education.  The Linx 7, Linx 8 and Linx 10 are (on paper at least) decent spec tablet devices aimed at the casual user (meetings, emails, web browsing), have a range of accessories including keyboards and cases, and currently come with a 12 month subscription to Office 365.  What is remarkable about these devices is that the most expensive Linx 10 tablet, including the optional keyboard dock costs just £142+VAT !!

What their build quality and performance in real life is like, has yet to be seen, but the price alone has sparked a lot of interest.  It's clear that Microsoft have the Google Chromebooks and iPads firmly in their sight and aim to make their low-end offerings hard to beat.  I'm hoping to get an eval unit to try out very soon.

Office 365 Mobile, Student & Teacher Advantage, Friction-Free:

As outlined in my previous blog, Microsoft have taken an unusual step in make large chunks of their productivity products free to use - particularly in education.  Office products for IOS and Android are now free, and the Student Advantage has allowed students to download a full version of Office on up to 5 devices for almost a year now.  The new announcement was that faculty staff will also be entitled to the same Office freebies as students from the 1st December 2014, and that changes to the way that staff and students register for the scheme are also on the way, which Microsoft are calling "Friction-Free".  Those changes will make it far easier for students and staff to self-register and download the software without the need (for the most part) to involve the University IT department.  They will be able to manage their own licenses and add and remove them from devices as they see fit.  With these new announcement we are hoping that Keele will now allow it's students and staff to participate in the scheme once the changes to registration are launched in the UK.  Watch this space!

Microsoft and Moodle:

It seems Microsoft and Moodle have become pretty close just lately, with a few new announcements.  Firstly the news that Moodle is now one of the many support platforms for their Azure cloud hosting solutions, meaning you can very quickly acquire and fire up a fully supported Moodle server using Azure cloud.  Secondly, the news that Microsoft are now working with Moodle partners to look at new ways that Office 365 and Moodle can work seamlessly together.  See the two blog posts below for more info:

Moodle in Azure

Moodle & Office365

Licensing Update:

There were a few new licensing announcements.  Firstly the clarification that the MS Campus (EES) volume license covers institutions shared or owned devices only for faculty staff.  Devices that are given to named individual students (even on "long term loans") or sold to staff for personal use, are not covered in terms of the software volume licenses.

Next came the news that Microsoft are about to simplify the way in which VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) licenses work.  At the moment they are ridiculously confusing and can be very costly to license VDI for non-institution owned devices or even non-windows devices.  They have promised that the new licensing structure for VDI will be a lot simpler and cheaper for education.

Next was the news that the current educational volume licenses (Campus, EES, Select, MOSA) will be replaced by a new agreement called the MPSA (Microsoft Products and Services Agreement) from April 2015.  This is the agreement used for commercial markets, but it will be tailored in terms of discount and features to match the existing EES agreement.  Along with normal software purchases the MPSA will also allow the purchase of Windows 8/10 Apps and even hardware devices via the volume license route.

Dynamics CRM Online:

There was a live demo of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM system tailored for University and Education that tracked student engagement from initial contact, right through to final offer.  It included modules for marketing, recruitment events, assessment, review and offer related communications.

After a short closed meeting for members the date of the next meeting was indicated to be sometime in April/May 2015.

Free Office?! Have Microsoft Gone Mad!?

Microsoft earns a large proportion of it's vast revenue from the licensing and purchasing of it's Office software products.  It's an extremely big market for them.  Recent reports suggest they still have over 90% of the global productivity software market worldwide.  And it has been that way for some time.  However, recent decisions indicate that Microsoft are clearly worried by the threat from other software companies such as Google and Apple, who offer their productivity suites for free (Google Apps and Apple iWork apps).

Microsoft now offer free, fully-featured downloadable copies of Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus to students across the world as long as the educational institution has a volume license for it's academic staff (which is the case in the majority of medium-large educational institutions).  Not only do they get a license to download Office on upto 5 devices, those devices can be cross-platform - including Mac OSX, IOS and Android versions.  Needless to say the majority of institutions are signing up to this offer, allowing their students access to it.  Sadly, Keele has made the decision not to, until demand from students is quantified.

And just today, Microsoft have announced that the mobile versions of their Office apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices are now available to use free of charge.  Previously a subscription to Office 365 was needed to allow editing of documents on these devices, but in another apparent change of heart, Microsoft have now withdrawn that caveat and you now just need a Microsoft account (which is free).

In a similar strange move, Microsoft also signed a partnership agreement with Dropbox to allow their cloud storage apps direct access to its Office applications.  This means you can now store and load documents using Dropbox and not just Microsoft's OneDrive.

This is great news for PC users with an iPad.  Although Apple and Google apps are great, they do not play well with the traditional PC productivity platform of Windows and Microsoft Office documents.  Editing Office document on an iPad using Apple or Google apps is often a frustrating affair despite the promise of compatibility.  Google Docs app for iPad for instance is little more than a text editor, with the options for rich formatting or even the simplest of features (e.g. a table) noticeably missing.

So have Microsoft just handed their rivals a massive productivity boost by making the iPad more useful?  Yes.  Is that bad for business?  Not necessarily, as it allows fans of their software to continue to be fans when using non-windows devices.  That helps to keep that global market share looking very healthy...

Links: 

Free Office for Mobile Devices
Free Office for Students

A Cableless Nirvana

Something that a lot of presenters find annoying is the constant need to carry cables and adapters around with them just so they can plug in to the various displays and projectors that they may end up using.

We've tried to compound this problem by providing ready to use cables pre-fitted to a lot of our lecterns, but this doesn't help in non-teaching rooms and it doesn't exactly make the lecterns look great with lots of cables dangling around waiting to be used.

And don't get me started on display port standards.  VGA, HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, MiniHDMI, MiniDV, Apple Adapters etc.  All of which could be needed by the huge variety of devices that could appear in teaching rooms.

Of course it helps when you know what devices people are likely to have - again something we are working on here - and when you do know, you can provide the right cables and adapters accordingly.

But there's a new school of thought trying hard to ditch physical cables all together.  Wireless Display technology - or WiDi (to give it its inevitable acronym) - is a new set of technologies that aim to provide external display projection without the need for cables or adapters.  It's something we are beginning to see in the consumer market with the likes of Apple TV, Chromecast and others allowing smartphones, tablets and other devices to mirror their screen wirelessly over wifi.

Intel have been working on WiDi for a few years now and have a solution built into many current chipsets which allow Intel based laptops and tablets to connect their display's wirelessly to compatible receivers plugged into screens and projectors.  The latest iteration of Intel WiDi also supports the Miracast standard - a WiDi standard used by many Android based devices - so the Intel WiDi receivers could support Android as well as Windows devices (I've tested them - they work!).  Microsoft has also added their support by incorporating the drivers and software needed for WiDI, into Windows 8.x without the need for additional software.  Whereas Windows 7 requires additional software from Intel.

Of course Apple chose to go their own way, and their proprietary wireless display technology - AirPlay - needs it's own receivers (AppleTV) and IOS and OSX devices will not play with other technologies like Miracast or WiDi (at the time of writing).

Microsoft is also getting into the WiDi market with the announcement of it's own Wireless Display Adapter due out soon.  This is obviously support the WiDi and Miracast standards and works in a similar way to Intel's WiDi compatible receivers being simply peer-peer wifi rather than needing to connect to a wifi access point (which can be an issue for Google Chromecast for example).

Intel are also about to improve the WiDi offering to businesses with the impending launch of Intel Pro WiDi, which aims to make WiDi connection easier and more secure for larger organisations with multiple receivers in the same space.  Unfortunately this means that current WiDi compatible receivers won't work with the new standard, and costs are likely to be higher for the new equipment.

So is the wireless display nirvana finally here?  Can we ditch our cables and adapters?  Well not quite yet, but we are slowly making progress in the right direction and it is definitely something to keep a close eye on...

Links:

Intel WiDi & Pro WiDi
Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter

Apple lovers rejoice! (or do they?)

So, back again with the 2nd blog entry.  And this past couple of weeks have been pretty exciting in the tech world.  Apple launched their latest assault on the smartphone market, by launching 2 phones - the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.  They also announced their intention to join the smartwatch/wearables market with the Apple Watch.  And on top of all that was the release of IOS8.  Phew!

The iPhone 6 was initially well received with a host of newly announced improvements over last year's 5S, but since then early adopters have started to post a few problems with the new devices.  The most serious of these is perhaps the issue with the large iPhone 6 Plus bending whilst in people's pockets.  See the link below which includes several photos and a video that is starting to look a lot like Uri Geller's portfolio:

iPhone 6 customers complain about bending phones

It seems the usual Apple build quality has slipped slightly and the aluminium chassis of the iPhone 6 Plus is being bent and not returning to it's original shape.  Oh dear.  No doubt Apple boffins are slaving over new modifications and in the meantime the excellent Apple support will no doubt simply replace any that are bent, but it hints at areas within Apple product development that are just not testing things enough or simply cutting corners in manufacturing.  It sort of worries me about the release of Apple Watch next year...

Speaking of which, Apple finally confirmed it's entry into this market with the announcement that the Apple Watch will be coming in Early 2015.  The information and demos at the event were mainly to do with the design rather than the functionality which is understandably still being developed.  The "digital crown" (the twiddly knob on the side) will feature heavily no doubt with much being made of this unique feature in the blurb.  Great if you are a right-handed person.  Not so good if you wear your watch on your right wrist - like me, but then I've had that problem with watches for years.  However, I don't have to use the crown on a normal watch for everyday functionality.  I'll be interested to see if there is a "lefty Apple Watch revolt" in the coming months...

IOS8 has almost been overshadowed by the hardware launches of the Watch and iPhone products, but you should have had notification of the release of the update now.  Again, this hasn't gone as smoothly as normal with the update insisting on an incredible 6GB of free space being available before it will even install!  Now, on devices without expandable memory (SD card slot etc.) and with storage of just 16GB (but only around 13GB being usable), this means that Apple expect you to only keep your iDevices half full.  That's not gonna happen even for the most ruthless of digital minimalists.  When you do eventually free enough space and install the update, you'll probably be underwhelmed slightly as it looks almost identical to the previous version with only the notification system UI being noticeably different.  Other issues with battery draining and wifi slow down being reported, it seems Apple have some more work to do yet on perfecting this revision.

Could the old Apple motto of "It just works" be starting to slip...?

Welcome!

Well this is easy.  My first blog setup in a matter of seconds!  One of Google's more hidden features is Blogger.  I only noticed it myself due to the IOS app popping up when I was browsing the app store recently.  Curiosity got the better of me, and here I am.

I am hoping to use this as a means to share things of interest, technology news, maybe the occasional blog-rant?  Hopefully, like me, you'll learn a few things on the way...

Anyways, thanks for reading this and welcome :)

Now then...time for a brew...

Ooh look - pictures and everything!