Operating systems. They’re fairly integral now to our everyday lifestyles! Fiona brings us her opinions of the recent iOS7 from Apple…
Simple, suave, sophisticated. If you’ve got those three s’s right, you’ve got me sold. Anything too showy, too bold, or too colourful and I begin to feel that familiar tinge of “happiness nausea” I get when I spy the not-so-dulcet sounds of Glee on the box (no offence, fans).
It is for this reason that when I saw the first leaked images of Apple’s iOS7 upgrade that my heart instantly sank. Gone was the familiar business-style look I had coveted so dearly when making the decision to make the Android-Apple conversion, only to be replaced by something that wouldn’t look out of place aimed at the children’s toy market.
Perhaps I was being a tad cynical. Besides, I can always change the background, I reasoned. And so, with a more open mind, I made the jump and clicked “Install Now”, wondering why Apple had capitalised the “Now” – but hey ho.
Image Credit: Janitors
First impressions
Despite Apple’s claim that iOS7 constitutes a complete “overhaul” and brings a “fresh perspective”, it has to be said that aside from the loss of a few gradients and drop shadows, the familiar iOS experience remains intact. Grid menu – check, swipe left and right – check, but what’s this? Swipe up for “Control Centre”? Yes, Apple has finally corrected the minor bane of having to enter “settings” for WiFi, Bluetooth (if anyone still uses that), and Airplane Mode. This is most definitely a welcome addition, and it’s good to see that Apple’s software developers have finally cottoned on to the utility of this standard Android feature. Yet more useful, however, is the addition of a Flashlight button – finally we don’t have to rely on an app! – and the new additions of Airplay and Airdrop.
Airdrop
Technological dinosaurs will be reminded of the feature on the ultimate flop known as the Microsoft Zune. In short, Airdrop allows users to share content via WiFi. This is indeed helpful as it removes the faff of using email attachments or Bluetooth, though hardly seems worthy of acclaim by way of innovation. More disappointing however, is the fact that this feature is only available on the iPhone 5 and upwards. Though these iPhones do include a better WiFi card, it is hard to reason why this feature cannot be included on the 4 and 4S given that access to WiFi is the only real pre-requisite for its enabling.
Camera & Photos
It has to be said: the new camera is incredibly slick. Fiddly setting toggles are no longer an issue, as it takes but a swipe to change mode from video, to photo, to panorama, and to square – the square option being Apple’s answer to Instagram. Predictably, this also means filters. Though lacking the choice that Instagram provides, the option to place a filter on the photo before it is taken is a handy one.
After having taken the photo, you will be able to relocate it in the new album system of Collections (a trip abroad, for example), Moments (photos organised by location or time), and Years (you can probably work that one out). This is a breath of fresh air in terms of photo retrieval. No longer is it necessary to spend hours tracing that photo of a housemate disgracing themselves at Cheesey’s last year from the chaotic archives of the old Camera Roll. Just simply find “Arena” under the Moments tab, and there it will be, ready for diffusion into the Facebook world.
Siri
Our ever faithful friend, always there with a poem, joke, or consolatory comment when we’re lonely, bored, or – most probably – drunk, Siri has also seen a change. Luckily, this has been for the better. The audio waves are an elegant touch, and it is a relief not to be taken to an external Safari page only to be told that there are no search results.
Safari
Most web browsers had already adopted Chrome’s multifunctional address and search bar, so it is a wonder that Apple took so long to create its own. Nevertheless, this, the new self-hiding buttons and bars, and the aesthetically revamped tabs section serve to make the browsing experience all the more pleasant.
Image Credit: Janitors
Design
I am sure that I am not the only one who is glad to see the back of the previous “skeuomorphic” design (i.e. apps resembling what they represent). Though I had a certain sentimental attachment to the look of “Notes”, which has luckily maintained a slight grainy feel, Calendar and worst offender “Games” with its casino-esque vibe were frankly cringe-inducing. Nonetheless, cringe-inducing has been replaced with nausea-inducing thanks to the parallax backgrounds, which move as you do. In fact, many users have reported a feeling similar to sea sickness after continual usage. Not ideal.
It’s the little things
Whilst I may be cynical of Apple’s attempted branding of essentially banal features as innovative or technologically ground-breaking, there are various little things that do raise a small smile. The preview of open apps is a dream. Actually seeing that half-written email you had open is a reminder to finish it, rather than to unthinkingly close the app in an attempt to conserve battery. The way in which it is now possible to physically bounce up the camera from the lock screen instils within me a childlike excitement, whilst the transparency of the layered apps is, in my opinion, quite beautiful.
Overall, the predominant theme of the new iOS is echoes: echoes of Zune, of Instagram, of and of course, Android. It’s kind of like that one friend who goes through a teenage identity crisis and wants to be everything and everyone at once. It’s just not being true to itself. It just doesn’t feel “Apple”.
So whilst I can safely say that I am appreciative of the helpful yet subtle new additions to iOS7, I would be lying to say that I am genuinely impressed by the new features over which Apple has made such fanfare. Android users will probably express a certain smugness when confronted with Apple aficionados applauding new features with which they had already been long-time acquainted. As a result, they will likely remain firmly Team Android, while Apple users will be happy enough with the new innovations to remain loyal to Steve Jobs’ creation.
How did four Exeter undergraduates go from meeting each other over a drink to becoming the team that won $50k from Microsoft for coming up with the next world-dominating app? Alex Carden, Features Editor, finds out.
The trouble with Aaron Sorkin’s TV, as anyone who has ever watched The West Wing or The Newsroom will know, is that real life never lives up to the fast-talking, uber-competent, slick efficiency you see on the screen. It can leave one feeling a bit depressed, when you don’t have the energy or the time to even approach the higher, faster form of life that it feels like you should be aiming for. Now of course, The West Wing and The Newsroom are both fictional, both written in a hyper-real style. But even The Social Network, based on real events, still seems to exist in a realm of superhumans; of an elite doing things that most of us couldn’t even dream of.
But when I sat down with Ed Noel, and started to interview him about the story behind the headlines you might have seen about four Exeter students winning an entrepreneur competition in Russia, the story he told sounded as if it could have come straight out of The Social Network, superhumans and all. The guy who sat across from me was a regular third-year, like me, who, when we finished up, was busy worrying about his coursework, but the story of him and his mates spanned Exeter, London, St Petersburg, Atlanta and back again, into a world of Red Bull and patent law, of millionaires and actors and Exeter University.
The story started in February of this year, no more than five metres from where I’m interviewing Ed, in Exeter’s own A and V hub, at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Hackathon, a 48-hour challenge to create an app, and a business around it. Unlike the other teams, from Exeter and the other south-west universities involved in SETsquared, a partnership designed to promote entrepreneurial talent, Ed and his teammates went along separately, and for fairly low-key reasons, dragged along by friends, or rocking up because they were bored and had nothing else to do. They were also from very different backgrounds, in a competition dominated mainly by coders and software developers; Ed is a Mechanical Engineer, Rob Parker is a Maths and Computer Scientist, John Neumann studies History and is originally from France, and Alex Bochenski, from Hong Kong, was the only business student. They met, appropriately, because they all sat at the table nearest the bar. And while the other teams began planning immediately, they had a few drinks, and fell into a team together.
Although they dismissed it at the time, an augur of their future success came in the form of a program called ‘Saberr’, a team analysis tool based on psychological testing, developed by a Southampton student a few years older than the guys. The software tracks your responses to 42 questions (such as ‘would you sleep with someone you just met on a night out?’ – clearly aimed at Exeter students in particular) and measures them against your team-mates to produce a picture of how well your team will work together. To their surprise, the four of them, randomly thrown together by the placement of the bar, scored very highly indeed on the test.
At the time though, their pressing concern was to come up with a winning idea. The competition was certainly worth winning: the possibility of $50k if victorious in the international finals. But at 2am, midway through the competition, surrounded by crumpled Red Bull cans, dark outside, and trying to decide between an app for managing junior league football teams or one for a calendar function that turned out to be already offered by Outlook, it must have seemed quite a long way off. Trying to keep their spirits up, they tried to play music through a laptop speaker. And when that wasn’t loud enough, they started to try and play the sound through all their laptops, and all stopped and looked at one another. Idea.
Could you be seeing the new app on your phone soon? Image credits: Phil Roeder
And thus, SoundSYNK, an app to enable one track to be played simultaneously through several phones, was born. Next up was prototyping. I asked when they did this, assuming it would take a few months to work on the app in between university life. “No no,” Ed said, “it was the next morning, after some snatched sleep, that the prototype, website, and business plan had to be done, to be ready for the end of the competition a few hours later”. So they just got on with it, and got it all done, in a few short hours before presenting it to the panel of entrepreneurs judging the competition. And won.
Whilst many of us would be content to take our win and rest on our laurels, the guys headed straight for more funding, and to patent lawyers to get the legal side of things sorted out. The attitude of the judges (all entrepreneurs themselves) to the app had been unanimous; that their idea was a good one and they should run with it. Ignite, the Guild’s entrepreneur support unit, gave them £1000, which was crucial for the legal and material preparation for the second round, and another confidence booster. A couple of other competitions, which the team won again despite stiff competition from other Exeter and international teams, sometimes up to 200 of them, provided further funding to get their scheme off the ground, and prepare it for the national Imagine Cup final. There, again, they were incredibly successful, coming first and with another Exeter team coming in second.
Ed is quick to give the credit of the continuing success of their team to more than just their idea. Indeed speaking about it now, he’s quite quick to dismiss it. They’ve had hundreds ever since working together, have even taken another one, an image-sharing app, and run with it until it’s nearly ready to launch alongside SoundSYNK (which has since been renamed) early next year. He maintains that in fact the idea was very much second to the team, and it was more important how much the four of them clicked, as well as the different skills they brought to the table, whereas most of their opponents were teams of only developers, with less
business understanding. This and their ability to work together so effectively, as Saberr had predicted (indeed Saberr also predicted accurately the winners and runners up of every competition the guys went to), that really got people interested in the project. Interest in the team came from a combination of support from the University, the Ignite and Innovation Centre and through Setsquared. It was both finance and education based. Mentors at the Innovation Centre played devil’s advocate with their business plan until it was watertight, and SETsquared sent Rob and Jon to MIT, in the US, for a crash course in how to start a company. When Ed skyped them while they were over in the US, they said the guys in the dorm next to them were billionaires. This was the kind of world they were about to plunge into.
Before they headed to Russia came a period of intensive redeveloping of the app, of pivoting it from a ‘gimmick’ to a music-sharing system with far more of a social network feel. Despite how much he’s credited the support they received and the randomness of their success so far, it’s clear that Ed really knows his stuff. Coming out of what has the faint notes of a well-polished but very knowledgeable pitch, with discussions of inherent virality and pricing models, is a brief sentence on how Instagram and Twitter got huge, with a ‘tipping point’ when they reached a critical mass of users and really started to take off. I have to stop him. “Are you comparing your app with Instagram and Twitter?” I ask, “Oh yeah” he says, blandly. They’re looking for a million users by the end of year one, and thirty million by year two. This isn’t a boast, but part of a discussion of viral strategy. I’m stunned. I had imagined that this was an amusing project which had taken them further down this one competition than they’d expected. But actually, they are out to make the next big thing. This is not an idle distraction from University, or CV-fodder. These guys are out to change the world, Zuckerberg-style. I don’t use that particular phrase in front of Ed – frankly I’m still reeling a little. I’m not sure whether he’d appreciate it or not.
The judges in Russia were from the web giants that these four students were regarding as their competitors; Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and a couple of others had all sent senior guys to judge. “Walking around the giant venue”, Ed says, “was like a weird techy Disneyland; people dressed up in Imagine Cup gear, with a massive party going on while simultaneously hundreds of people hunched over their laptops coding away. It made us feel thick just walking around.” So they stopped walking, and crashed on beanbags after finding a drink. It seems, like their beginning, appropriate. When it came to presentation in front of the judges, it was their solid business savvy, thanks to drilling from the Innovation Centre, that played so well with judges that were more business that software-focused, as well as a confident polish and a fast tongue that Ed says “is the mark of a great many Exeter graduates”. Regardless of how laid-back they were about the whole affair, they still say that when they saw Matt Smith, who was giving away the prize (Doctor Who to anyone who doesn’t know), grin and do a silent fist-pump when he read the envelope, and realised that he was cheering a British team winning, and that they were the only British team there, they were really unable to believe it.
From there, it starts to get really Social Network-y. After handing over the cheque for $50k, Microsoft flew the guys to Atlanta, gave them enough spending money to deck themselves out in the latest Hollister gear, and invited them on stage in front of fifteen thousand Microsoft employees. It was when the wall of sound hit them that the guys really began to feel like rockstars. When you raise your arms and fifteen thousand cheering people cheer even louder, you’ve gone beyond being four Exeter students and seriously entered the big leagues.
The world they entered then, after coming offstage and being in the centre of a giant party in Atlanta’s Olympic park, where more people were interested in them than Pitbull performing on stage, begins to resemble a completely different level of human interaction. Maybe they didn’t see it that way, but to hear Ed describe it, it sounds like the world of professional entrepreneurs is an extraordinary one. They met guys who had made and lost small fortunes, who had received multi-million dollar offers for their companies and rejected them, only to watch their company collapse in front of them. Guys who were doing this because they refused to grow up, and didn’t want to work for anyone, who didn’t really care about the money and who bought peanut machines with their first million, because why not? They don’t have to be geniuses, in the conventional sense; many are dyslexic, like Ed himself. They don’t have to be genius coders either, who can always be brought in later. But they do need confidence; they need to go for it, and they need to lose the fear of failure, and sometimes, given Ed’s example of a woman he met who gained investment from confidence alone, is enough. For entrepreneurs, failure is something to laugh about, even show off about, but above all something to recover from nearly instantly and start again. If one in ten companies succeed, they say, then start ten companies. And when they suffer a setback, it’s their team that helps them get back up, not a new idea. The example they used was the firm behind ‘Angry Birds’, who made 49 failed apps, and kept going, before they hit the jackpot and became possibly the world’s favourite game. The offices they moved to after Atlanta in London, again courtesy of Microsoft, no strings attached, were open plan, with 20 companies sharing the same space, sharing problems and solutions and ideas, and then going to parties in Shoreditch full of more of these business jet-setters to talk about it some more. The contacts they made, senior personnel in some of the world’s largest companies, they could ring, whenever, to have a chat about problems they were stuck on.
Image credits: Life@Microsoft Australia
It’s the lack of contacts, not a lack of talent, which keeps young entrepreneurs back. And Ed is keen to share his success and his contacts in particular with others in Exeter. He’s already campaigning for a space for Exeter entrepreneurs on campus, where the shared atmosphere from Atlanta and Shoreditch can be replicated. If they make any money, or perhaps when they make money, he says a lot of it is already earmarked for Ignite and the Innovation centre, who can use it to help the next generation and create a cycle of talent and money that will keep feeding back into the university. Exeter, he says is perhaps one of the best universities for start-ups (although not because of the Business school, which he says is mainly for established business, and has a lot to learn about entrepreneurship, nor for the Career Zone). He talks, convincingly, of the belief shared by some companies in the area, that Exeter is well-positioned to become a European Silicon Valley thanks to its laid back atmosphere, and high quality of life, and that all that remains is for the University to be convinced of this. That is if Exeter wishes to be be the place in Europe for start-ups five years down the line.
The four of them still have a way to go before they launch, and a lot of technical details, which Ed can’t discuss, to work out before they do. We’ll have to watch and wait to see whether or not they are successful. But if they aren’t now, the impression I get is that they will keep picking themselves up, keep spurring each other on, and using their network in this new elite, this class of hyper-competent and energised and almost unbelievable young people, who don’t want to work for anyone else, who are doing what they love, and changing the face of business while they do it.
Online Features Columnist Fran Lowe kicks off her brand new column discussing the technology takeover.
We’ve all heard of the Industrial Revolution: a time when machinery transformed the ways in which we lived, made things and travelled around.
It could be said that the same sort of thing is happening again: a Technological Revolution. Computers, the internet, and the ability to cram huge quantities of data into something that will fit in your pocket have revolutionised the ways we stay in touch, shop, work, write, research, remember things, organise ourselves, meet people… need I go on?
Every now and then, we have those days when we go out without our phone. Or it’s out of battery. Or it got wet and you’ve left in in a bag of rice until it’s better. There is always a certain sense of loss, even nakedness, without our constantly being tuned into our networks of social media or being able to look anything up on Google maps at a moment’s notice. We have, it seems, become very technology-dependent.
What is at question here is whether or not this is a bad thing. Your gran might argue that ‘back in her day’ people didn’t need to constantly be contactable. Life back in your gran’s day was certainly simpler. You would be having a conversation with the person you were physically with, and that was it. Nowadays, we might be talking to someone in a café, while talking to someone else on Facebook, and planning to meet up with someone else later on. It all gets rather confusing, and perhaps the person that you’re actually with might feel a little neglected. But the fact is, they’re probably doing the exact same thing on their own phone.
Confusing as it is, our constantly being tuned in to what’s going on in the wider world means that we can get a hell of a lot more done with our day. For generations now people have moaned that there are ‘not enough hours in the day’; surely our ability to now do two things at once, with the handy help of an iPhone, can only be a move towards a solution? Modern technology, like smartphones and tablets, also mean we can make the most of what used to be ‘dead time’. Only last week I wrote an entire essay while on the train. It was an outrageously long, full-length-of-the-country style train ride, which otherwise would have been monotonous hours of me wasting time, reading Cosmo and staring out the window. But thanks to my laptop and some wifi, I was able to use the time productively.
However, some might argue that this is exactly what the problem is: as a society, we never allow ourselves any down-time anymore. I can’t be the only one who literally never switches my phone off. While this means I am always just a phone-call away, it also means that I can’t ever get away, or escape from the world, even if just for a couple of hours. Perhaps it might have done me some good, both physically and mentally, to just switch off for those hours it took me to travel the length of the country, to do nothing but sit there, read Cosmo, and stare out of the window.
Our constantly being ‘plugged-in’ largely means that we can never escape. That tiny iPhone in your back pocket is also your boss’s access to you, that reminder of that essay you haven’t written, the number of that girl you’re considering calling, your housemate nagging you to do your washing up… It’s as though all our baggage follows us around, all the time, in the format of a piece of technology that we are constantly reassured is a good idea.
Image Credits- AFP
Before transportable technology- like laptops, smartphones and the like- really hit the big time, perhaps this wasn’t all such a big issue. Nowadays, however, pretty much everyone in the developed world is permanently tuned in to some kind of technology: Apple alone announced sales of over 37 million iPhones in just the first quarter of 2012. That’s the equivalent of about half the population of the UK, all buying an iPhone within the same three months.
On the whole, this means that we always expect other people in our lives to be within reach. Personally, I get really irritated when people don’t text me back, simply because I know they have their phone on them, so they could reply if they made the effort. It could, therefore, be very easily argued that without our reliance on technology our lives would be a lot less stressful: when we walked away from somewhere or someone, we really would leave everything to do with them behind. That’s a lot less pressure to permanently stay in touch.
However, this multi-billion pound industry can’t all be for nothing. We must remember the ways in which technology helps to enhance our lives. If smartphones weren’t a force for good, they surely would never have taken off in the way they have. If an invention genuinely is rubbish, people just won’t take it seriously (segways, I’m looking at you). But smartphones, tablets, and all other forms of really really small computer have all been welcomed into our lives with open arms.
So why? What is it that we love about them so much? Firstly, we always love something new. Apple, especially, give us a chance to get something new and shiny at least once a year. Everyone always wants to be the first to get the latest gadget, and as a phone is pretty much always on display in your hand, it’s the perfect way to show off what you’ve got. I’m not all that familiar with the benefits of the iPhone 5S in comparison to its predecessors, but that doesn’t stop me from really wanting one. Essentially it’s the same as always wanting a new toy to play with when we were kids. I demanded California Barbie as soon as she came out, despite already having an enormous collection of Barbies. Fifteen years later, despite my fully functional 4S, I want a 5S so much it hurts. The only reason I haven’t yet is that the money for this new toy will come out of my bank account this time, rather than my mum’s.
Also, it can’t be denied, smartphones and tablets are just cool. The technology is outrageously impressive. Remember the first time you saw an advert for an iPhone?
It might look archaic nowadays, but that’s largely because we’ve got so used to how handy they are, it doesn’t impress us anymore. We’ve all become immune to what this technology can actually do for us. It’s amazingly useful to be able to find anything out, contact anyone, anywhere. Because of this we all make huge demands of our technology (iOS7 was trending on Twitter for days with everyone moaning about how long it took to download, essentially people complaining about the inconvenience of amazing software). Is there anything really wrong with us wanting to use the latest inventions and technology available to us for our advantage?
You could even extend this kind of question to include things like Kindles and eBooks- we take it for granted that we can read books, almost exactly as they would be on paper, on a little screen that you can carry around anywhere with you. You can fit an entire library in your handbag- if that’s not cool, I don’t know what is. As a hardcore English student myself, I’m determinedly clinging on to my trusty paperbacks, usually covered in my pencil scribblings, for as long as I can. But say for someone like my mum, who commutes into London on the train every morning, a Kindle would allow her to carry a hugely heavy, Dickensian novel to read on the train, barely weighing a thing and not taking up nearly the space in her handbag and getting in the way all day.
Kindles are, arguably, a whole different area of argument. A lot of literary nerds, myself very much included, argue about the textuality of piece of literature, the beauty of having a physical book, and the fact that you can do things with paper books that you just can’t achieve with a digital version. There’s a whole dissertation to be written here about the pros and cons of eBooks, but the truth does remain that the technology to be able to read anything, anywhere, is pretty impressive, and makes life a lot easier for a lot of people.
Generally, the idea of ‘making life easier’ is what technology is all about. People wouldn’t bother inventing things if they were going to make our lives more difficult. IPhones, tablets, laptops, and wireless internet for that matter, all go a huge way in allowing us to do things that twenty years ago would have been so much more of a challenge. The Technological Revolution, as I shall call it, is certainly a change, and some might argue that it’s not necessarily a change for good. But people said that when they invented the train.
Image Credits- Getty Images
Largely I think it comes down to people being scared of change, and scared to admit that the world today isn’t the same one as they grew up in- this even applies to your average undergraduate: think about how much has happened in the last twenty years. The world is almost unrecognisable as the one we were born into. Perhaps yes, we are over-reliant on modern technology, and perhaps we ought to be more careful with how much of our lives we allow it to take over. But these are perhaps nothing more than teething problems: after a while, things will settle down. It’s all still very new. You never know, one day you might even catch your gran playing Angry Birds on her iPad.
In a new fortnightly piece, Exeposé Features seeks to inform you about people and things about which you might never have heard, or those which are familiar but that you’ve never had time to explore.
This week, Online Features Editor Imogen Watson brings Phonebloks to the forefront of your technological minds.
Exeter is a university rife with smartphones.
I myself am very fond of my iPhone and, although I hate to admit it, when it is out of action it takes me a little while to adapt to life without it.
But out of action it does indeed go from time to time, and standing on the side of a dual carriageway (thank you Google Maps for such a successful walking route) in the middle of Normandy surrounded by ominous grey clouds and with a forty-five minute walk ahead are not the ideal circumstances for it to happen. Smartphones are temperamental objects, and are especially not designed for accidental water bottle leakages.
And when a phone is broken either seemingly or actually beyond repair, or if it is just too much effort, what do so many of us do? We throw it away.
As Phonebloks says, “Every year millions of mobile phones are thrown away because they are broken or obsolete. In most of these cases it is just one part that needs repairing or upgrading and all the other parts work fine. However, the entire phone will be thrown out because of one reason: mobile phones are not designed for repairs or upgrades.”
Although numerous companies exist for recycling old handsets and even sending unwanted ones to developing countries, a poll done for Orange in 2011 found that £2.7 billion’s worth of phones in the UK alone go un-recycled, and instead are either hoarded or binned. The British government estimates that we generate approximately 177 million tonnes of waste a year, and not only is technological waste – or e-waste – a problem here but also increasingly so in developing nations, where our old but working recycled mobile phones often get sent. It is truly a global problem.
Image credits: Phonebloks
The disposable way in which we and companies treat our technology is the kind of problem which Dave Hakkens (with a little help from friends Matt and Gawin) is looking to solve with Phonebloks. The idea is that, as the name suggests, phones are made up of individual components – the bloks – which are held together and connected by a central board so that it all, crucially, works. When a component breaks, instead of getting rid of the whole phone like so many of us would now, you can simply replace the broken blok. In doing so, you would be able to keep your old chargers and cases.
Before I was informed that iOS7 is not actually all it is cracked up to be, I spent a good hour deleting apps and photos from my phone to make room for it. So imagine, for example, you are the kind of person who adores photography. You use your actual camera to take your photos, and not your phone, but you need the storage to perhaps transport photos, and to listen to music to and from your photography opportunities. Posh camera phoneblok? Unnecessary. Bigger storage phoneblok? Perfect. You might, however, prefer using the Internet on your phone and save everything in the Cloud, but find 3G and Wi-Fi drain the battery. You can guess what I am going to say: abandon the storage blok and get a better battery.
Image credits: Phonebloks
The examples are endless, and the customisation appears to be, too. The idea behind sales is that companies of all sizes and third parties alike would be able to invent and sell their own bloks whilst users review them, in what Dave Hakkens describes as “like an app store for hardware”. By choosing the bloks you want, you can also choose to support the companies or individuals you want to support; but if assembling your own phone is not your idea of fun, you would theoretically be able to buy a ready-made phone.
Whilst it has yet to be taken on board by any business people, Phonebloks has managed to reach nearly 328 million people alone via social media at the time of writing. If companies manage to take it forward, it could be a step towards a real greener technology and an awful lot less waste, not just in physical landfills, but also in our attitudes too.
Described as a ‘super-material’, the anticipation over the new material graphene in the scientific and consumer world is escalating. Philip Thomas takes a look at what all the fuss is about and some of the more complex issues surrounding this incredible scientific breakthrough.
The most exciting material of our generation: graphene.All photo credits to United States Government Work.
Graphene is an allotrope of carbon that can be found right underneath our noses. When you write with a standard graphite pencil, a mixture of miniscule graphene flakes and coal are deposited on the piece of paper. This deposit is one of the few two-dimensional materials to have been discovered in physics which is fundamental to its extraordinary properties. Graphene is the thinnest, stiffest, most conductive and most impermeable material known to man. It is an excellent conductor of heat, highly transparent and as flexible as rubber. It is far stronger than diamond or, in other terms, it would take an elephant balanced on a pencil to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of cling film. Graphene truly is a substance of superlatives. The two scientists at the University of Manchester, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who were accredited with the discovery of graphene were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. That’s how scientifically important this material is.
Considering its breathtaking properties, the potential applications of the material are massive. To name but a few, graphene may be used in touch screens, lighting within walls, aircrafts, solar cells, flexible electronics, enhanced batteries, electronic payments, biosensors, DNA detectors and HD-TVs. Even if it fails to deliver in any of these fields, it could also be highly useful in the advancement of energy or medicine. Of course, the time and cost of converting to graphene must be financially viable for businesses but its alleged potential is nonetheless exciting. As Geim said, “No one can accurately predict what the future holds for us, but there are so many potential technologies that have already been suggested for graphene, even statistically the chances are sky-high that graphene will bring around some really important future technologies.
“Among everything I know graphene is my best bet for the next big thing technological breakthrough. Nevertheless, one needs to remember that it takes typically 40 years for a new material to move from academia to consumer shelves.”
Even in times of global economic uncertainty, politicians are finding the money to pump into research regarding the commercialisation of graphene. In December 2012, renowned for his tight fiscal policy, George Osborne gave £22 million to UK universities to develop graphene, taking the total he has granted to over £60 million. The National Graphene Institute is also to be built in Manchester at a cost of £61 million; Professor Novoselov declared himself, ‘delighted’ by the governments’ decision. Perhaps even more surprisingly given the economic woes across the continent, the European Commission, a part of the EU, in January 2013 chose Graphene to be the recipient of a ten-year £850 million Future Emerging Technology grant. They are hopeful that, “it will revolutionise multiple industries and create economic growth and new jobs in Europe”.
Groundbreaking research is being conducted all over the world.All photo credits to samsungtomorrow.
Although politicians in Europe are investing substantially in graphene, a growing fear is rising that it will not be enough to fight off global competition for patents. A report conducted by CambridgeIP on 15 Jan 2013 showed that since its discovery, the Chinese have 2,204 graphene patent publications, the US 1,754, South Korea 1,160, with the UK lagging far behind with just 54. UK science minister David Willetts simply outlined the problem: “we need to raise our game. It’s the classic problem of Britain inventing something and other countries developing it.” Europe’s struggle with stagnant growth and high unemployment may consequently reduce our ability to compete globally.
Another issue with the development of graphene is what could be labelled as the Concorde syndrome. Heightened by a shortage of public money, if money is pumped into a single project that appears beautiful but has few uses, a lot of time and taxpayers’ funds have been wasted. We can only be hopeful that this is proves to be untrue.
From a scientific perspective, graphene is arguably the most incredible material ever discovered. However, from a commercial perspective, there is still a lot of uncertainty over its future both in terms of development and the ability to compete with Asia.
Can you believe it has been a staggering seven years since the last generation of consoles were realised. Seven years ago when the hopes of a new generation gleamed in the eyes of game developers across the world. Now we have reached that unfortunate point when our beloved consoles are reaching the end of their lifespan. Game developers can no longer push the system any further in terms of graphics, gameplay and AI. Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot said this to the console creators, “We need new consoles. At the end of the cycle generally the market goes down because there are less new IPs, new properties, so that damaged the industry a little bit. I hope next time they will come more often.”
Most likely, next year Sony and Microsoft will be bringing their new consoles to market, whilst Nintendo has recently released their next-gen console, the Wii U, but the main question is how much has this harmed the market?. If you think about it, since 2005 a lot has happened. Blair was still PM, Call of Duty was still a Second World War shooter and I had blonde hair! (Seriously!) So it’s high time that developers should be given the technology they need to create ambitious projects that have been stored away in the darkest recesses of their minds since they first thought, “you know what I am a bit sick of sequels”
Photography by Fred Normal
That is not to say that the long break has been bad for gaming. Developers have had to make the most out of the console and it has in some respects kept them on their toes as they have had to make fresh ideas with limited technology. But keeping developers on a leash will only work for so long. One day you need to let go of the leash and let them run rampant through the fields of HD graphics and physics engines that sicken the mind in their realism. In reality game developers are working with technology that’s almost a decade old. EA has come right out and said they see no reason to release their best projects until they have some real and new technology to work with. My main fear is that game companies won’t have the incentive to do more than rehash traditional franchises that seem to sell *cough* *cough* Call of Duty.
Sony and Microsoft are clearly guilty of milking this generation as much as they possibly could and their adventures into the world of motion gaming have not attracted the hardcore following they had hoped. For game developers it is this transition period between generations that is the most exciting time for gaming. When you have a new world placed in front of you, you get hordes of adventurers jumping in anticipation of what they create. I see this as a positive, for if developers are complaining then it shows that they are not just satisfied to create the same trilogy of games and that they are positively salivating at the mouths at new technology and new toys to create their most ambitious and creative projects. The great journey is ahead we just need to make that first step!
Returning students can now benefit from the launch ‘iExeter, the “new app for everyday campus life”.
The free app for smart phones provides students with up-to-date personalized information and services, including PC availability and timetables.
The launch follows in the wake of numerous strategies to improve the visibility of the Students’ Guild on campus. The app includes full listings of Freshers Week events, as well as information about campus accommodation, the student health centre, libraries and key contacts. The app also features a ‘to do list’ for new students.
Students have reacted positively to the launch of the new app. Lewis Ireland, a third year Physics student, said: “Having iExeter on my iPhone allows me to finally have an up to date personalised timetable in my pocket; no more missing rescheduled lectures last minute!
“Also, the maps feature will come in handy when trying to find new lecture rooms this year. A fantastic push into the smartphone age by the university!”
iExeter also allows students to access their library accounts and search the library catalogue. Nick Davies, Guild President, says: “the app mobilises the ability for students to effectively study across campus. This would be without the need to carry a laptop, or needlessly heading to a PC cluster only to find it is full.”
“The Freshers events guide is extensive … if used alongside the ‘Map’ function, it is a quick way of finding out where the event is and how to get there.”
iExeter can be downloaded from most app stories and is available for iPhone, Blackberry and other smart phones.
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