Initially when I heard that Steve Jobs was to permanently resign from Apple due to ill-health, I thought it was simply retirement from one of the pillar companies of the personal-computing age.

Now, the man responsible for the Macintosh computing platform which commercialised and legitimised the “WIMP” (windows, icons, mouse, pointer) user-interface style and the iPhone and iPad devices which also did the same for touchscreen computing, has now passed away.

Many will remember his style of commercialising these technologies through a vertically-integrated method which requires the use of Apple products and services for full benefit, but this let the competitors implement systems that implemented these usage metaphors on their own platforms.

This was all from him and Steve Wozniak turning the proceeds from selling that VW Bus (Kombi-van) into capital for the Apple company. Here, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked on the development of the Apple II which became one of the beacons of the personal-computing age in the late 1970s.

A lot of commentators had said that Steve Jobs, through his efforts at Apple with the Apple II, the Macintosh and the iPhone and iPad devices had personalised computing. I have observed this through the demonstration software that came with Apple II computers in the 1980s, the boot sequence that was used in all the incarnations of the Macintosh platform and the design of computing products from the iMac onwards.

Whether its through the evolution of a computing technology or the passing of one of the people who influenced the direction of personal computing and communications; I would see this simply as a milestone to the connected lifestyle.

Articles

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple Chief Executive | SmartCompany.com.au

Steve Jobs steps down from Apple | CNet

Steve Jobs quits as Apple CEO | The Age (Australia)

My comments

There has been a lot of press about Steve Jobs intending to resign from Apple’s chief-executive position due to ill health. Now it had to happen that he is resigning. He is still able to maintain his position in Apple’s board of directors, both as a director and as the chairman of the board.

I see it as something that had to happen for another of personal-computing’s “old dogs”. These are the people who had founded companies that had been very instrumental to the development and marketing of commercially-viable personal computers. A few years ago, Bill Gates had resigned from Microsoft which he had founded.

This is more about a “change of the guard” at the top of these “pillar companies” as the technology behind these computers leads to highly-capable equipment for the home and business. This includes affordable mobile tablet computers that are operated by one’s touch and the smartphone which becomes a “jack of all trades”, working as a phone, personal stereo, handheld email terminal, handheld Web browser and more.

It is so easy to cast doubt over a company once a figurehead relinquishes the reins but I have seem may companies keep their same spirit alive and continue demonstrating their prowess at their core competencies.

As well, even though people may criticise him for how he manages the iTunes App Store and the Apple platforms, as in keeping them closed, Steve Jobs and Apple are in essence milestones to the connected lifestyle.

Articles

World Wide Web turns 20, finally shakes that acne problem | Engadget

The Web Is 20 Years Old Today | TechCrunch

My Comments

What happened in computing before the Web

Since the home computer came on the scene in the 1970s, there were previous efforts to present information on these computers in a navigable form. This was achieved through the use of dedicated computer programs that were written for this task. These programs became important when the modem, which facilitated computer-to-computer communications over the telephone, came on the scene through 1980.

The main examples of these were the bulletin-board systems and “videotex / viewdata” systems which used the computer as a terminal. They typically provided a forum functionality and an information display which allowed people to bring up pages of information. But they were often difficult to operate unless you were a diehard computer nerd.

Apple was one of many companies who tried to popularise the concept of hyperlinking information where one could click on an item of information and be led to another related item of information. They did this with a program called “HyperCard” which allowed the user to link between various “cards” of information, whether in the same deck or another deck.

There were even attempts to provide indexable information for computer systems, including networked computers by using indexing software like “Isys”. These programs crawled collections of word-processing documents, spreadsheets and the like and created an index which could be searchable and the results viewed in an elementary form.

The establishment of the Web

After 1991, various universities worked towards establishing two standards that were critical to the establishment of the Web. These were “HTTP” (HyperText Transport Protocol), an efficient file-transfer protocol which allowed text to be delivered as a stream suitable for hyperlinking; and “HTML” which was a way of marking up text files to permit formatting or hyperlinking of information.

These worked hand in glove with the Internet and there was a clear advantage that one could link to information using a standard “Uniform Resource Locator” or “URL”. This link could point to file on any computer in the world on the Internet. All it required was the use of a program called a “Web Browser” and the first of these was “Lynx” which worked with text-based terminals. With this one, users had to enter a number pointing to the desired link they wanted to follow.

But, as the Internet became popular, there was the rise of the graphical Web browser which was in the form of Netscape Navigator. This became more intense with Windows 95 having integrated Internet functionality and Microsoft releasing Internet Explorer for this platform.

The Web as an integral part of computing

This led the World Wide Web to become the Internet’s killer application in a similar vein to how pre-recorded video movies being available for hire through video stores became the video cassette recorder’s killer application in the 1980s. We now started to talk of home pages and of “surfing the Web” or “surfing the Net” as an activity.

The Web has also provided support for a universal interface for every sort of computer-driven activity, whether browsing and searching for information, managing one’s email or doing one’s banking and shopping online. It had then led to the boom-bust cycle that was known as the “dot-com” era where companies could set up behind a Web page with a “dot-com” name and make money out of the domain names or the goods and services they could sell online.

As the Web matured, the ability to provide snazzier presentation on the Web sites allowed media companies to work on snazzier home pages, which ended up becoming “portals” that featured news and other information. These became the jump points for people to start their Web-browsing sessions from and they ended up also offering task-specific features like Web-based mail and messaging.

It also led on to the growth of the “Social Web” which is driven by the end user. This is in the form of Web logs or “blogs” which are effectively micro-journals; or social networks like Facebook where one can interlink with other like-minded people.

Even the way the Web is viewed has changed from since it first started. Previously, it was viewed on a regular desktop or laptop computer. Now the last five years has seen the Web being viewed on mobile phones, especially smartphones like the Apple iPhone; tablet computers like the Apple iPad and now the television screen with the new generation of “smart TVs” and video peripherals like Blu-Ray players or games consoles.

Conclusion

The World Wide Web has become one of the major cornerstones for the connected lifestyle by popularising access to online information and commerce, and simply popularising the Internet iteself.

Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web

Article

GSM turns 20 today, still rocking the world — Engadget

My Comments

GSM Mobile telephony has now turned 20 this year and has become a technological milestone in itself as far as “on-the-go” mobile communication is concerned,

Here, this service had brought through a highly-reliable digital transmission system which could allow many users to use mobile phones in a given area. It had extended the mobile phone beyond voice towards data-driven activities like SMS text messaging and concurrent packet data transmission.

Infact SMS had even brought about a language of shorthand slang known as “textspeak” that ended up as part of email and instant-messaging culture as well and had made the pager redundant. Here, we now see teenagers and other young people working their phones to frantically tap out a message with one hand the moment they hear that phone beep to indicate a text had arrived. This technology had been taken further with MMS which allows photographs, audio or video clips to be sent this way.

The GPRS packet-data system has become the foundation stone of the mobile Internet, allowing for the phone to become an mobile email client and Web browser. This has been emphasised more with technologies like EDGE.

This technology has brought about cost-effective handsets and phone services with a sense of service portability through the use of SIM cards. Here, a person could upgrade to different handsets or “rope in” another handset like a loan phone to their service by transferring a SIM card between these handsets. It also allowed carriers in a competitive market to strut their stuff by offering service that is affordable to most people.

Infact GSM has mad the mobile phone become a mature ubiquitous technology that is available to all. It even has put the traditional landline phone and the payphone “on notice” as far as young users are concerned.

Therefore I would consider the GSM mobile telephone system a milestone to the connected lifestyle.

Happy 20th Birthday GSM Mobile Telephony

Article

BBC News – IBM at 100: From typewriters to the cloud

My Comments

When International Business Machines (IBM) had come on to the scene as an office technology company, there weren’t many technologies around that made office life more productive. Now this company has built up a steady path of innovation in this field and it has culminated with the development and refinement of the mainframe computer through the 1960s and 1970s; and the establishment of a highly-desirable office electric typewriter equipped with an interchangeable “golf-ball” typehead, known as the “Selectric”.

But this company had a strong hand in the personal-computing scene with the arrival of the IBM PC. This desktop computer, which was based on Intel electronics and a Microsoft operating system had set the benchmark for an affordable desktop computer for small businesses.  Through the 1980s, this computer was refined through the use of colour graphics, hard disks and faster processors. Australian readers may know that a lot of these computers sold in that market were built in a factory in Wangaratta, Victoria.

In a similar vein, another company called Lotus had developed the quintessential desktop spreadsheet application known as Lotus 1-2-3. Due to its flexibility and capability, this program became the preferred spreadsheet application to be run on an IBM PC.

But these computers had effectively brought the desktop computer out of the realms of the hobbyist and in to the hands of business. This was initially in to the hands of the bookkeepers and similar employees but, in the late 80s and early 90s with the arrival of cost-effective computer networks, ended up in the hands of most office workers from the top floor to the bottom.

The PS/2 era wa a markedly different era with an attempt by IBM to develop their own operating system and graphic user interface, which was known as OS/2. These computers also used a high-speed interface bus, known as the Micro Channel Bus, that was different from the EISA bus that was used by the rest of the industry. The main benefits that these computers had provided for the industry-standard Intel-based computing environment included the use of micro-DIN keyboard and mouse interface ports, including a standard interface for the mouse; a small power-supply reference design which allowed for the power switch to be located on the front panel; and the use of 1.44Mb 3.5” diskettes on the Intel-based PC platform.

Through the late 90s, IBM had shifted away from its hardware roots and moved towards its role as a hardware-software “solutions provider” for big business. This was evident with them devolving their main hardware lines to other companies; like Lexmark for printing and imaging, Hitachi for data storage, and Lenovo for personal computer systems. It was although they bought out Lotus and implemented Lotus, who had shifted to “Notes” as an information-management system,  in their solutions. Here, it has led to them being able to work on “cloud-based” computing projects that can help these businesses manage their information across many locations.

Infact, I would consider the existence of IBM to be a “milestone to the connected lifestyle” in itself due to its development and refinement of both “back-end” and desktop computing equipment central to this lifestyle.

Happy 100th Birthday, IBM

Articles

At 10, highlighting Wikipedia’s past and future | CNET News

Web site

http://en.wikipedia.org

My comments

Previously, an encyclopaedia was simply a multi-volume set of books which consolidated information on many different topics. The typical examples were the common 50-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica or even the more common twenty-volume sets like World Book Encyclopaedia that exist on many bookshelves. One main disadvantage with these sets was that they dated the moment they were printed and some of the publishes tried to get around this by publishing “yearbooks” which hand newer information in them every year.

In the 90s when “multimedia computing” started to take off, there were some so-called “multimedia encyclopaedias” like Microsoft Encarta. These were an electronic encyclopaedia which were issued on a CD-ROM and had various forms of rich media like animations, sound or video. Examples of this included various “how-it-works” animations; sounds of various animals; audio recordings of classic speeches or even news footage of historic events.

Now the Internet has enabled the existence of “Wikipedia” which is a free open-source user-revised encyclopaedia that is presented using a “wiki” content management system. This has allowed for always up-to-date content that can even stay fresh no matter what happens.

The user-revised model has advantages with extra facts being added or facts being revised as required. But it had its fair share of problems with poor-quality trivial matter, defaced articles and editing that was driven by personal, commercial or political agenda.  This reduced the quality and veracity of Wikipedia’s content and had people place doubts on it as a valid information resource.

There have been recent steps to improve the quality and veracity of content. These steps have been augmented by editors who have “teeth” and are ready to identify the content that goes against the standards. A common example of these steps included the requirement for facts to be cited to a real source.

Now there are smartphone apps and plug-in modules for browsers and other programs that integrate searching the whole of Wikipedia  These have become a way to take Wikipedia further as one of the main core electronic encyclopaedias.

But now Wikipedia has become a valuable resource for most people, whether for study or even the pub trivia nights. As well, this site is one of the top few Websites to be accessed from most home and small business networks when one is stuck for an answer to a question.

So here it is from HomeNetworking01.info —

Happy 10th Birthday Wikipedia!

During mid-1995, the Intel-based “IBM-PC” desktop computing platform had been given a major improvement with the arrival of a new operating system from Microsoft. This operating system, initially known as “Chicago” and was to be known as “Windows 4” and “MS-DOS 7” but became known as Windows 95 had yielded many improvements to this platform that it was made increasingly legitimate as an “all-round” general-purpose computing platform that was ready for the Internet.

This operating system was launched with a huge campaign which revolved around the new “Start” button on the desktop and this was enforced with the use of the Rolling Stones smash-hit song “Start Me Up”. The visual element that was also used was the clouds in the sky symbolising a new operating environment for your computer.

How did Windows 95 improve the Intel-based “IBM PC platform”

Computer-Management Improvements

Integration of Windows graphical user interface with MS-DOS operating system

Previously, a computer that worked on the “IBM PC platform” required the use of Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system or a similar operating system like Digital Research’s DR-DOS as its base operating system. These operating systems didn’t come with a graphical shell unless you paid extra for one and ran the shell as a distinct program.

This typically required users either to run a third-party menu program or graphical user-interface “shell” like Automenu, Microsoft Windows or one that was supplied with network software like Novell; or, if they had MS-DOS 4 or 5, start a DOSSHELL graphical user interface. IBM typically pushed their OS/2 graphical shell as one that was suitable for any of their PS/2 series computers.

Now, Windows 95 integrated the graphical user interface with the MS-DOS operating system and had this running as a default setup. It had led to avoiding the need to remember to run particular programs to use a graphical-user interface.

A lot less to run to add functionality to the computer.

Previously, if you wanted to run sound, advanced graphics or other multimedia, use peripherals like a mouse or a CD-ROM drive or use communications or computer networks, you had to make sure that you ran particular drivers or memory-resident programs. This typically required you to work with the CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT files to make sure these programs start.

If you wanted to increase memory for particular programs, you had to know how to stop a particular memory-resident program to free up the memory space. In the case of communications, you had to use communications programs which were effectively “terminal emulators” to work with bulletin boards and these programs were the only ones that could control the modem. Similarly, if you ran a network, you would need to run networking software to allow the computer to benefit from the network. Some of these situations even required the location to have a resident “geek” called a system administrator to set up these computers. Even the Internet on a Windows machine behind a dialup modem needed the user to run programs like Trumpet Winsock to establish the connection.

This improvement alone allowed a small organisation to share files or printers between computers that are connected on a network with minimal configuration effort and has opened up the path towards the home network.

With Windows 95, most of these functions were simply handled by the operating system rather than by extra software that had to be started.  This had taken away all of the extra requirements that the user needed to think of to run a highly-capable computer and do what they wanted to do.

Ready for the Internet

1995 was the year that the Internet came to the mainstream. Cyber-cafes had sprung up around town and new businesses called “Internet Service Providers” came on the scene. It was considered the “in thing” to have an email address where you could receive Internet-based email and you also had to know how to surf the Web. The old order of bulletin boards and online services with their “controlled media” had fallen away for this new “uncontrolled media” order that the Internet offered.

Windows 95 was capable of working with the Internet “out of the box” whether through a network or a dial-up service. This was because the operating system had an integrated TCP/IP stack with support for PPP-based dial-up protocols. There was even a basic email client provided with the operating system.

User-interface improvements

The Start Menu

This was a new take on the previous DOSSHELL programs, Windows Program Manager and the third-party menu programs as being a place to find and start programs. Here, the user clicked on the Start button at the bottom left of the screen and found a tree of program names which would represent to software found on their system.

It had been considered easier for most users to start working on whatever they wanted to work on and has become a standard motif for all of the Microsoft operating environments since this operating system.

Windows Explorer and the object-driven view

The file-management functionality was handed over to Windows Explorer which provided for a new way of managing files and objects. It allowed for programmatic views like a “My Computer” view that provided for a simplified shell or an “Explorer” view with a directory tree in a pane as well as an object-driven file view.

This collection-viewing concept had extended to the Control Panel and other operating-system components that used collections as they were introduced in to the Windows platform.

Larger file names

Previously in MS-DOS, you were limited to an 8-character file name with a 3-character extension that was used for defining the file type. Now, since Windows 95, you could create a meaningful file name of up to 32 characters long which allowed you then to identify your files more easily. Thee was a special truncated 8-character version of the file name for use with older programs that didn’t support the new file-name convention.

It became more important as digital cameras became popular because people could name their photos in a way that reflects the content of the picture and also was important as file-based audio storage came on to the scene.

The Registry configuration-data store

Microsoft introduced the Registry configuration-data store as a way of avoiding the need to maintain multiple configuration files across the system. Here, this store allowed for a centralised point of reference for holding this data that the operating system and applications needed for configuration-reference information that had to be persistent across sessions.

Under-the-hood improvements

Integration with the 32-bit computing world

This operating system was built from the ground up to be a true 32-bit operating system that was tuned to work with the 32-bit processors that emerged since the Intel 80386DX processor. This would then allow software developers to compile their programs to run their best in a 32-bit computing environment.

This was in contrast to programs like Microsoft Word 6.0 which were compiled for Intel-architecture 32-bit processors but in a manner that was to be compatible with 16-bit processors of the same architecture. As well, most of the MS-DOS operating systems were also compiled for use with the 8-bit “PC/XT” environments and/or the 16-bit “PC/AT” environments. The operating-system limitation then didn’t allow these programs to work at their best even if run on a computer with a 32-bit processor.

This had allowed for a variety of optimised computing setups like true multitasking and multithreading that these newer processors could cater for.

It is like Windows 7 where the operating system has been tuned for a 64-bit computing world and optimised for the newer multicore processors that are part of the Intel-based processor architecture.

Readiness for newer computing designs

Windows 95 had also catered for newer computing design principles such as the “soft-off” principle that was part of portable laptop computers and was to be part of the up-and-coming ATX desktop-computer design standard.  This principle catered for “one-touch” power-off and modem-based / network-based power-on practices which allowed for improved system management for example.

The operating system also allowed for support of various forms of extensability through use of standards, class drivers and similar practices that avoid the need to overload Windows with drivers.

Conclusion

Windows 95 wasn’t just an “ugly duckling” of an operating system but a major turning point for the evolution of the Windows platform. Happy Birthday Windows 95!

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Nobel honours ‘masters of light’

Fibre optic pioneers to share Nobel physics prize – The Local (Sweden)

My comments on these Nobel Prizes

These Nobel Prize awards have become a celebration of two major technologies that are part of our everyday IT and lives

Charge-Coupled Device image sensor

One award went to Willard Boyle and George Smith who had developed the charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensor which has become a watershed technology for image and movie capture to electronic media. Previously, video cameras were tube-based, which made them heavy, power-efficient beasts which were out of the financial reach of most of us and were more fragile. The chip-based solid-state image sensor had led initially to lightweight video cameras and camcorders that most of us could afford. This image sensor has also led to a cost-effective version based on a CMOS design allowing for cheaper digital and video cameras. It also led to the digital-camera revolution which allowed us to grab images on a reusable electronic media rather than film and also ushered in the webcam.

Now every video or digital camera that you encounter in your lives is based on that technology, whether it be the digital camera that you can take many snaps with, the closed-circuit camera in the shopping centre or freeway, or the TV cameras that bring us the vision that appear on the TV screens each day and night. This technology has assisted with astronomy in the form of the Hubble Space Telescope yielding the highly-detailed images of space and cameras sent out as part of the space missions to Mars.

Fibre Optics

The other award went to Charles Kao who had developed the concept of fibre optics, which is the transmission of light over a glass fibre. This technology initially was about decorative lighting but had yielded great advances in telecommunications and medicine.

In the medical field, this technology allowed for endoscopy which permitted improved diagnosis, especially of the digestive tract. It also allowed for “keyhole surgery” which allowed operations to be performed without the need to cut large incisions in the patient.

The telecommunications and IT sector benefited from the concept of using these fibres to transmit large data over long distances. This technology even is the backbone of the Internet and is becoming a solution for moving large amounts of data to the end-user’s home or business premises in the form of optical-fibre broadband services.

The technology is also being used in the AV sector to transmit digital audio between devices like DVD players and home-theatre receivers. It is because of the ability to avoid ground loops and other interference traps between the components.

Conclusion

At least the Nobel Prize is being used as a tool for recognizing these technologies that are part of the connected lifestyle.

 BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | 10 things you didn’t know about Ceefax

My comments on Ceefax, Austext (and teletext services) in relationship to the connected home

People, like myself, who watched what was happening with consumer technology through the 1970s and 1980s may have heard of “teletext”. This technology, which was launched by the BBC in 1974 and Channel 7 Australia in 1980, was a text-based information service that was delivered alongside the television picture in the vertical blanking part of the picture.

Typically, it required a suitably-equipped television set or regular television set used alongside a tuner-decoder box and users were able to bring up pages of information through the device’s remote control which had a numeric keypad. Infact, there have been some devices that connected to or were integrated in a computer that allowed the computer to pull off the information from a teletext service.

The common operating practice was, when you pressed the “Text” button, you saw a menu with a list of pages to go to. These typically had a number after them which you keyed in to the remote control when you want to view them. There was also an “up-down” button so you can “flip” through the pages. In a typical setup, you had a page like 101 or 120 as a “news index” with the stories listed like in the Web or on an RSS feed. Then you could key in the page number to view that story.

The system was primarily intended as a tool for providing user-optional text subtitles for hearing-impaired viewers (and people watching TV in noisy environments). But it has become a “preproduction”  showcase of what the Web concept was about. Most often, sports fanatics, especially horse-racing fanatics, used these services to find out what was happening with the sporting fixtures (and which runners to place bets on). In Australia, the Austext service was on televisions installed in TAB betting shops and sports bars. As well, a concept “connected home” in the early 1980s such as one that was established in Milton Keynes had to have a teletext-equipped TV set as part of the equipment that was provided.

One time, I had worked with some friends in helping them follow the New South Wales state election the Austext way. This was through me noting down page numbers for aggregate data and “desired electorates” where their relatives lived. When the TV showed up the pages, it had the latest counts up on the screen for the parties concerned. This was certainly a taste of things to come with following elections on the Web, where you could gain the latest results on Web pages established by media outlets or the state’s electoral offices, sometimes with graphs or coloured maps that reflect these results.

There had been improvements, mainly in the form of “fastext” where you navigate pages using the coloured buttons on the remote control or “TOPtext” where you navigate pages with a DVD menu page experience. But these worked if the TV set was tied in properly with the method of operation.

Some parts of the Web, like the use of RSS feeds and indexes, mimics the classic index pages; and even the news pages and the blogosphere provide the same kind of “fresh updates” that teletext had offered.

This certainly shows that some of the older technologies have laid the foundation for the connected lifestyle.

 BBC NEWS | Technology | Pioneer of cyberspace honoured

Video Interview with Professor Wendy Hall about Web Science

My Comments

One thing I have seen as a benefit from cyberspace and the World Wide Web is the ability to build a world-wide library of information. It had also given the Internet its breakthrough or “killer” application, in a similar vein to VHS videotape being given its breakthrough application in the form of video-movie rental in the ‘80s. This concept was talked about by Bill Gates in his first book, “The Road Ahead” (Amazon shortcut).

It has eventually led to the use of the HTML-based user interface for controlling network devices from PCs in the home and beyond and the ability to regard the Web browser as an “applications terminal”.