D-Link DIR-506L pocket cloud router

A useful little device for regular travellers, taking up very little space in your suitcase and using a widely available mini-USB charger. I took it with me on my recent tour of Vietnam. Every single hotel I stayed in, as well as some of the homestay places, had free (Western hotel chains please take note) wifi access. Where it came in useful was in a couple of the hotels where the wifi coverage was a bit on the weak side in my particular room. All was not lost, the hotel room had an ethernet point. So all I had to do was to connect the DIR 506L, and hey presto, my own wifi access point.

However, at the beginning I couldn't see the purpose of the unit's second function - a pocket cloud
It came to me when I wanted to use my tablet to view some videos I had on a USB stick. Like many of the modern tablets, mine (an ageing Danew D-Slide 701R now given a new lease of life since I installed Android 4) is a bit low on connectivity. In particular, it has no USB port.  All I had to do was plug the USB stick into the DIR and hey presto, I  watch the videos. At least that's the idea. However, I had to try a couple of times before I actually got it to work. This operation wasn't helped by the fact that the quick guide only gave the verbal url (dlinkrouter.local) which my tablet insisted on running through google. Firing up the CD to find the host's numeric address (192.168.0.1) solved that particular problem.However, using it in this mode was a little bit fiddly. No comparison with having a real USB port on the tablet.

Another useful feature: it can act as a wifi repeater/range extender. You connect to its admin page and log onto a suitable wifi network. It then re-radiates the wifi signal with the new SSID. I prefer this to the wifi repeaters that use the same SSID,  because then you can select which ssid you actually lock onto. But the unit also offers a repeater mode.
Other features include URL filtering, MAC address filtering, application rules, outbound filtering, inbound filtering, You can even decide on the wifi transmitting power level.

The unit is self-contained, with a removable Li-Ion battery that can be recharged using a mini-USB phone charger. I didn't get to test how long the battery lasts on one charge. It seemed to be a few hours.

Now I must go and check the sensitivity of the wifi for use in repeater and extender mode.  This kind of information is very rarely seen in manuals. The only way of gettting it is to try it on weak signals.

Youtube suspends copyright holder

Youtube has just suspended a friend's account for copyright violation.
The problem is: the person whose account was suspended actually owns the copyrght, being the exclusive producer of the DVDs in question.

What is particularly interesting is Youtube's procedure to correct the problem.
In this instance, Youtube sent a warning notice some months ago. The subscriber responding, filling in the appropriate online forms and got an automated response.
There the matter should have ended. Not so. A couple of days ago, his account was simply removed. Since the account is now closed, he no longer has access to the complaints resolution forms.

Impossible situations like this are becoming increasingly common with the growth of e-business. I had a couple of run-ins myself with Ebay a few years back, with a variety of issues like items removed, accounts and billing problems. What became clear was that it was impossible to deal with a single person. In the case of billing problems, although it was possible to send emails, each one went to a different person who had no knowledge of the previous correspondence. In the case of items removed, there was simply no way of informing anyone. that the items were entirely legitimate. I even tried resorting to including a statement in very large letters on the object description, stating that this was a legitimate item. But all to no avail.

All this is only symptomatic, a bit like the endless voice menus in automated calling systems. But there are already signs of public backlash. Companies may then respond and improve the situation. Of course this would be on purely business grounds. But I suspect the wait will be long indeed.

Update 10 March:
Youtube reinstated the account in mid  February with no explanation other than to say it had reconsidered the matter. But the traffic counter was down to zero and the channel had lost all of its subscribers.
Then in early March Youtube suspended another of the same person's channels.

What is clearly missing is some way for the user to communicate with Youtube. Ironic in this particular sector.

Coursera hits 2 million users

The MOOC site Coursera has just hit the two million mark, so I guess it's time to say something about it.
There's loads written on the MOOC phenomenon, so I won't go into any detailed explanations.

I'll just add my two cents-worth in a couple of points.

I've tried three different Coursera courses so far, all from renouned American universities (Princeton, Duke and Caltech). They are all very different in the ways they use technology. Obiously some teething problems to sort out. In one case the video of the lecture shows the whiteboard being written. The text appears on the screen in real time as if by magic (or at any rate, technology) while we are actually watching it. You can hear the marker moving over the board. I think it would have been nice to see the lecturer, but this is the world of high tech.
In another case, you see the lecturer on one corner, while the presentation slides accompanying the lecture as well as the web sites and other images are on the rest of the screen. Every now and again the video stops and an interactive multiple-choice questionnaire appears.  A big improvement on the first one, although that too had embedded multiple choice questionnaires.
In the third case, the professor's video image moves all around the screen, to complement the logic propositions the students are examining.

All this is very nifty. But for some reason it needs fairly up-to-date equipment to view the videos. Ironically, the lectures are also available on Youtube, where they can be viewed with much more mundane equipment. There even screen shots of the embedded questionnaires.

I asked about these technical quirks. The response was that the videos had been tested on a wide range of platforms. Ipads and workstations were mentioned, among others. Nothing like starting at the top!

Second point: textbooks.

Third point: certificates


Finally, I' ve just enrolled for a music improvisation course, to start next April. Can't wait to see how they do that on Coursera.

Kobo, shame about the web site

The early Kobo reader was a heap of junk. I picked one up during a trip to the UK and came across a branch of WH Smiths selling them off cheap. I didn't get round to writing a review of it at the time, but briefly my gripes are that it takes for ever to turn a page and the procedure to carry out a purchase is rather cumbersome. Added to that, it discharges in a couple of weeks, even if it's not used. Oh, and the fonts do not make for easy reading.

The new Kobo readers are much better from a hardware point of view, with a touch screen and pages that turn instantly. But my gripe is the system for buying ebooks. You can't buy a book directly on the reader, you must first install software on your computer (PC or Mac, no Linux version although you can copy files manually in Linux), create an account, shop on your computer and then transfer your purchase to the reader. A far cry from the Amazon Kindle method.

There's more. The localisation is badly done. Or rather, it's done in a way that leaves you no choice. I set up my purchase in London, created an account and downloaded a couple of books. Then when I got home to Paris and installed the client software on a PC there, I couldn't log onto my account. It turns out the software was trying to log onto the FNAC website, which is Kobo's French agent. I had to route via a UK VPN just so that I could log into my account and retrieve my books.

The poorly done localisation approach also shows if you just type kobo.com or kobobooks.com while in France. Although you can switch the site into English, it keeps reverting to French. More to the point - it tries to sell you books in French! Again, a far cry from other sites which let you browse between different language books. Or event that of its how power rival which has separate .uk, .fr, .de and .com sites. Better separate sites than one which is badly integrated.

Alt Minds, living the game

Alt Minds is a new kind of total immersion game. A joint venture between French game developer Lexis Numerique and Orange Valley, the innovation investment arm of the telecoms operator.

The starting point is video footage of five physicists being kidnapped from the university in Belgrade. Then the player has to investigate, or at least help the ongoing investigation. Linked to the game via all possible connected media, she follows the course of the game over an eight week period. For example, an investigator breaks into a suspect's appartment, which the gamer can watch online in real time. But the investigator needs to crack the password on the suspect's laptop; this is where the gamer can step in. And so on. Social networks, web streaming, android and i-phone apps, tablets, and laptops, all are called into play. The first session of Alt-Minds will start on 12 November, in various languages. It will be replayed early next year. The first "chapter" (week) will be free, the subsequent chapters €3 each or €15 for the whole game.


A massive amount of effort is involved. About 100 people working for four years and video shot in five countries. Let's hope it pays off.

Yasound, is this the future of web radio?

Yasound launched its French "platform to create your own web radio station"  web site last night at a painful press conference  - for one thing, we were all kept standing for three hours. The i-phone app should follow in a few days as soon as Apple has approved it. A preliminary version has been up since March. UK and US versions of the service are in the pipeline. The different country versions are all kept separate for rights reasons. As the system is closely tied with i-Tunes, I don't think there's much chance of seeing an Android version in the near future.

So, what is Yasound?  How does it let you "create your own web radio station" in just a few clicks. Entirely legally and at no cost. 

Basically, you upload the titles of your personal play-list to Yasound. Their server checks whether it already these songs on its database. If so, it just plays it out in sync with what you are listening to on your i-Phone. There is, naturally, a social networking aspect.


What the whole thing boils down to is that you can now chat with other people who are listening to the same piece of music as you at the same time.

But this is not radio as we know it, with interviews, phone-ins, reports, panel discussions and maybe even advertising.

Built-in laptop batteries: buyer beware

A worrying trend has hit recent ranges of laptops: the battery is built in, necessitating a return to the fatory in the event of a change being necessary. There are several culpits. The one that sticks to mind is Sony. The new laptops are sleek, thin and nicely streamlined. The use of ultra thin polymer batteries helps, as it enables the battery to be spread over the whole surface of the base. Great, until the time comes to replace the battery.
In my expeirence, typical battery lifetime is around three years. So, this effectively means that the ultra sleek, and expensive, laptops can now be expected to last just three years.