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nenslo

Listed below are comments made by nenslo between Tuesday, 12th May 2009 and Monday, 7th December 2009.

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Christmas shopping: Online v High Street 1:19pm on 07 Dec 2009 The high street shop won't die out anytime soon, people generally prefer to touch and see a physical item rather than a photo on a web page (especially when there's a disclaimer stating that it's for illustrative purposes only). I do about 90% of my Christmas shopping online, it saves time on the weekends as I can search at home during the week after work, it's generally cheaper than the high street stores (even with P&P) and personally I've rarely had any issues with returning products if faulty or not what I expected.

But there are some real hassles which need to be sorted if online shopping is to flourish, mainly around the delivery, I find Royal Mail/Parcel Force just seem to be awful each and every year, and (importantly at Christmas) up-to-date stock levels on the websites. In the last few years there has always been at least one company who say that they have an item in stock and able to deliver in time, only to find out a few days later that they're out of stock and the next delivery date will be well after the 25th.
The new tech start-up: US government 1:12pm on 21 Aug 2009 Oh if only the British government would do something like this, instead of spending thousands on a Second Life site or making a fool of yourself on YouTube.
Spinvox, we stand by our story 12:41pm on 05 Aug 2009 If anyone questions the validity of this story, TechCrunch have written an article following the Spinvox demo:

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/08/04/spinvox-secures-15m-more-but-the-demo-didnt-really-answer-the-big-questions/

Especially interesting is part where Milo sends in his own message.
Spinvox, we stand by our story 10:58pm on 29 Jul 2009 @ unbrokenman (#22): Spinvox aren't being vilified, they say that their business works in one way but it seems that in actuality that it isn't and they're being pressed on that fact. It's rather disingenuous that they say that a computer system does all (or most) of the work if the reality is that it's mainly down to an actual person.

I think the most telling argument is James Whatley's response to question 4. I understand the need for businesses to keep certain information confidential, but I'd like to know how letting us know the number (or percentage) of calls transferred to human operators is "business critical". Coca-Cola publishing their recipe is one thing as that is the basis for their entire company but a simple number from Spinvox wouldn't bring the company down, it's not like people are asking to see the source code to their software.
Spinvox, we stand by our story 7:46pm on 29 Jul 2009 Rory you are totally correct, below is a section from one of Spinvox's own patent applications (Publication Number: US 2008/0049908 A1) - which can be found freely on www.google.com/patents - basically what this says is that even Spinvox admits admits that a fully automated system is almost impossible.

[0321] 1. Given the large vocabulary and the varying audio quality, it seems impossible to achieve high enough speech recognition accuracy for fully automatic conversion for more than a tiny fraction of utterances. Reliably detecting this fraction, i.e. deciding that no human check is needed is a very interesting longer-term research problem but probably not a realistic option in the short term.
The Facebook fizzle 1:10pm on 28 Jul 2009 Maggie & Rory,

I think you guys should repost Paul Carr's first article on TechCrunch (more specifically, the Rules). I wonder how many people who complain understand the difference between a blog and a news article and the impetus behind them? My guess is not many.

Regarding this article, I kind of agree with ashdcuk (#4), there seems to be a 'critical mass' of the number of friends on Facebook you can effectively have. Once you go past that point, it's easier to use Twitter to mass broadcast without the hassle of dealing with friends/events/etc. Maybe Facebook should bring in a (possibly voluntary) friends limit as they had in the beginning?
Phorm's phlat product launch 10:53am on 04 Jun 2009 @ digital_elysium

The underlying concept behind Phorm's technology is not in anyone's interests except their own. It uses a system called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), this is a very intrusive system that looks at every packet of data that arrives and leaves your PC. Even the Police need legal agreement to use this but it seems that Phorm can use this against anyone who doesn't opt out. Imagine someone used a wire tap on your phone or mobile just so they can send you a better advert, would you be happy about that?

Time and time again experts (Richard Clayton and Tim Berners-Lee to name just two), the Government's own Information Commissoner's Office and the European Commisson have questioned the legality of Phorm.

If anyone thinks this is just a storm in a teacup, then they don't understand the issues behind it.
Phorm's phlat product launch 4:43pm on 03 Jun 2009 Normally I don't like seeing any business fail, but in Phorm's case I'm happy to make an exception. And you seriously have to question the survey results; I wonder how they were phrased, probably along the lines of "Would you rather (a) Have the Phorm widget on your PC, or (b) Be fed to lions?" I'd stick to answer b.

The sooner the EC court case comes down on the UK government and forces Phorm to stop (or at least change the software to an opt-in system), the better. Either that or every major website will block Phorm from scanning their site.
Growing appetite for mobile data 3:51pm on 14 May 2009 Darren, you said that the "architecture of 3G networks was never designed with the needs of millions of data-hungry users in mind"? Then what was the point of 3G in the first place? I thought the reason the big mobile operators spent literally billions of pounds was so that we all could make video calls, surf the internet and watch mobile TV?

I'm also surprised that Orange have such a strain on their 3G network anyway, in my eyes they seem to be falling behind in the innovation stakes, they're certainly the only major operator without a locked-in headlining 3G handset: Vodafone has the BlackBerry Storm, O2 has the iPhone and T-Mobile has the G1. When was the last time Orange actually did anything ground breaking?
Where is the almighty online film archive? 3:34pm on 12 May 2009 Whether it was through sheer arrogance or ignorance, the film industry has pretty much already walked into the same trap that the music industry did. They had several years to implement a better international rights management system for online distribution while the average users' internet connection speeds were still slow enough to make downloading a film close to impossible.

Well now they've missed the boat and a quick look online comparing legal sites with illegal sites shows that. Like the music industry, I believe film studios will be playing catch up with the P2P file sharers for many years to come.

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