Into The Unknown

Apple's made the stream of their Keynote presentation from the start of WWDC 2009 available to all and sundry. To stream it, just click on the link from this page on the Apple site.

For those who want the quick rundown, here's the key points:

• New MacBook Pro details and pricing
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.5.7) details, pricing and sneak peek
• New iPhone details, pricing and sneak peek (plus $99 iPhone 3G announcement)
• Plus a few goofs too! (It's always comforting to see that The Mighty Fruit's not immune to Sod's Law)

Quite a few other media outlets covered the Keynote (in some cases, even did a live show streaming over the web). The RDF was in full effect too, as per usual. Even if you're not a rabid Apple fan (like myself), you still have to acknowledge that sometimes they bring innovations to the table that push other developers and manufacturers to up their own game in response. What's really going to be interesting is how Palm do with their Pré announcement and first week sales now that the new iPhone details have been released.

Something I thought was a little arrogant was when Phil Schiller took a sly dig at Palm, the grandaddy of all portable mobile devices. When describing a table showing the amount of available apps on the iTunes App Store versus RIM, Nokia's Ovi and Palm's stores, he cheekily commented that he couldn't... "read the name of that last one... It's really small." In fairness, Palm only had about 1,000 apps versus Apple's 50,000, but I have a feeling the Pré will really shake things up once the device really builds up a head of steam in the dev community.

Nevertheless, all geeks and tech junkies should absorb the contents of the WWDC Keynote and make mental notes of the important stuff, because no doubt the contents will be talking points for a while to come yet. No sign of His Jobsiness either... Could this be the beginning of Steve Jobs' move away from the helm of the good ship Apple? We can only wait and see - there still remains the possibility that he'll make a surprise appearance at the end of the WWDC convention, so don't count your chickens just yet.

The US Military has taken it upon themselves to defend their national computing infrastructure on the grounds that it's a "national strategic asset". Perhaps that means they'll actually put passwords on their machines now? (...or perhaps the latest series of 24 got them thinking?)

A snippet of the press release, via the AF's web site:

5/29/2009 - WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- The nation's computer network infrastructure will be defended as a national strategic asset, President Barack Obama said here May 29.

In a White House announcement, President Obama said he will appoint a cyber security coordinator for the critical infrastructure that all Americans depend on. "We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient," he said. "We will deter, prevent, detect and defend against attacks, and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage."

Personnel in the cyber security office will orchestrate and integrate all cyber security policies for the government, the president said. They will work closely with Office of Management and Budget officials to ensure agency budgets reflect those priorities, and, in the event of major cyber incident or attack, will coordinate government response. The cyber security coordinator will be a member of the national security staff and will serve on the president's national economic council.

"To ensure that policies keep faith with our fundamental values, this office will also include an official with a portfolio specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people," President Obama said. "Clear milestones and performance metrics will measure progress."

Good luck with that Mr. O!

WordPress just announced their new video hosting service, VideoPress. (Primary URL at wordpress.tv, announcement and details currently on videopress.com). They've been working on this for a while, and initially announced this on the 11th with a post to their main blog.

'So,' you're thinking, 'WordPress are good at the text business, but what about video?' Well, if you're a content creator who has 1) more money than sense or 2) just can't be bothered to manage your own media hosting, this could be an ideal solution for you. Here's their announcement and introduction video (turn on HD in the top-right corner if you can afford the bandwidth and CPU cycles:

While it's shaping up to be really quite costly for the early adopters, they could be on to a good thing early here. How so? Well, they can leverage their existing grid computing setup to serve multimedia content and keep a tight rein on how it's delivered. Hopefully they can wrangle the carriage and peering costs down to manageable levels as the service scales. You also have the good karma that comes from having all of your multimedia hosted in the same place - so if you like easy, click-click-done solutions, it's a safe bet.

To add the VideoPress service, you just log into your WordPress.com account, go to your WP blog's dashboard, and add the service from the Upgrades category in the left-hand menu... And that's just about it.


Ok, so it's snappy to setup. What else? What about the technical features and costs? Let's dig a little deeper. While this is evidently an important first step for WP as they branch out and upgrade their service portfolio, there's room for improvement. They've developed most aspects very well, but there are a few caveats. Initial impressions are good; there's no framerate conversion of uploaded content, you can embed and enable HD playback if your content is high enough resolution - right from the embedded player - and they also support filesizes >1Gb, so yes, you can upload your 720p masterpiece if you really want to.

WP say it's quite simple to get going:

1. Get a blog on WordPress.com
2. Go to your upgrades page
3. PayPal your way to happiness.

However, when that final step involves coughing up 59.97 credits, at the princely sum of $1 per credit, it's certainly not the cheapest way to host your HD material. Plus, there are a number of rather good competitors in the market already:

• Blip.tv (great quality, an intuitive interface and a personal favourite)
• Vimeo (one of the prettiest, and has a great community spirit)
• DailyMotion (just plain ubiquitous and home to metric tons of content) and
• the photographer-oriented SmugMug.

Vimeo is probably the next best service in terms of mindspace, quality and good vibes from the user community, so it makes sense to compare their featuresets. The best way to compare these two new services is with a matrix, so let's get cracking. All costs are in their original currency (US Dollars) to make comparison easier.

Also, don't discount Blip's and Vimeo's respective free services. Blip's basic package only encodes to FLV, and overlays small text ads in the video window. Vimeo places ads on the page under the main video window, but the videos themselves remain untouched.

Vimeo's free service is also a great way to dip your toes in the water; you get 500Mb of storage, 1 HD video upload a week and all the other good stuff (minus HD embedding, reserved for their Plus customers), and it's a cinch to upgrade.

YouTube finally joined the 21st century late last year, with first HQ (I fondly refer to it as RQ, Regular Quality) and then proper HD - 1280x720 H.264 video making its formal debut earlier this year, after the softlaunch. (remember all that &fmt=18 nonsense?) Of course, YouTube has to be THE Number One video sharing web site, but Google is pumping money into it and still not turning a profit. Aside from the mass popularity (and huge amount of pisspoor quality content), you may decide that you'd like a little more panache, a little more style, for your multimedia content hosting.

Of course, there's nothing to stop you putting your content on every service around - and there are even some analytics companies who'll do that legwork for you, and also let you gather some useful viewer statistics for pretty good rates if you're planning on producing the next hit web video series.


Having weighed up the pros and cons of WordPress hosting, I'd say that it's a welcome progression from the WP team. They've obviously worked on this tech behind the scenes for a while, using their experience with their larger corporate clients to work the kinks out of the system before going public. However, I still personally prefer Vimeo and Blip.tv - they're better value for money and you can do just as much with them.

VideoPress has some nice automation (such as playlist generation for iTunes, Miro et al, and up to three definitions of video automatically prepared) but this is nothing standout on its own. Also, you pay a hefty premium for storage. Obviously Vimeo and the others are overselling to an extent, but given the sheer size of HD content, you'd be better off doing one of two things if you produce a lot of HD:

1. Buy a Vimeo Plus account and get 5Gb a week for your uploads
2. Buy your own web hosting, use one of the many free video encoder apps and stream your content with one of the several popular embedded Flash players
3. ... Download the VideoPress opensource framework, install it on your own server, and use that!

Yes, you read me right - the source code for VideoPress is open-source and freely available. However, there are caveats. WP themselves make it plain that "this plugin is different from other plugins because it cannot be used 'out of the box.' It is intended for self-hosted large scale WordPress MU sites that want to develop their own customized video solutions." Aside from that, it also requires one fileserver and one dedicated video transcoder, and 'considerable amounts of PHP coding and system admin skills (skillz?) to implement and deploy.'

Well, don't let that put you off. Where there's a will there's a way, and I suspect that before long, an ad-supported service using the VP framework might just surface and offer some of the VideoPress Premium features for gratis. Who knows?

I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow comparison of all the other mentioned HD video hosting services, because people with far more time and resources have already done just that. However, VideoPress aside, they all cost nothing to try out - and I strongly suggest you try each of them to see which one fits your needs. They all have premium services, and they all have their pros and cons. But when you see such achingly gorgeous design as can be found on the Vimeo web site (even their login page is a work of art), you'd have to be made of stone to not appreciate the work which has gone into that site.

I would always suggest trying out Vimeo as one of your first candidates, and its ability to offer one HD upload a week is the ideal way for most content producers to demo the service. However, for the person who desires full and seamless integration and consolidation above all else (including value for money at the moment), VideoPress might be just what they've been waiting for.

While digital sales are continuing in their year-on-year upward trend, it seems that customers still need a gentle push to buy digital music. Even one of the largest digital music retailers, Amazon.com, is having to effectively subsidise purchases with their latest promotion. I saw it sneak onto the web site for some items yesterday; the skinny's on their web site but here's the 10 second summary:

Add at least one qualifying CD, vinyl, cassette or DVD music item offered in the Amazon.com Music store to your Shopping Cart and complete the purchase or complete the purchase through 1-Click ordering. The music items that qualify are CD, vinyl, cassette and DVD music items offered in the Amazon.com Music store that display the offer message on their product information pages. Amazon MP3 music downloads and other music items not displaying the offer message, and all other types of items, fail to qualify for this promotional offer.

After completing your purchase, you will receive an email indicating that a $1 credit for Amazon MP3 music downloads has been applied to your account automatically.

There are some other T&Cs, but that's about the gist of it. The promotion's only valid on certain marked items (for example this DVD-Audio release of Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road), but it seems to apply to a good proportion of Universal's featured Motown releases as well as other popular stuff from other labels (the promo was also present on the SACD version of Dark Side Of The Moon).

So, maybe an excuse to do some shopping?

It seems that the Police may not have learnt anything after all from the Jean Charles de Menezes debacle. On the 1st of April, at around roughly 7pm, a local newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson, was viciously assaulted and knocked to the ground by a member of the Metropolitan Police. After being struck twice in the leg with a baton by a riot officer, he was then pushed with a great deal of force to the ground by the same officer. He had his hands in his pockets and therefore had no protection (or warning) prior to the assault.

Mr. Tomlinson was given no assistance from the riot officers, and received only cursory medical attention - he was subsequently helped up by bystanders, and The Guardian reports witnesses as saying that he stumbled away, "looking glazed." Mr. Tomlinson collapsed and died from a heart attack several minutes later.

(It seems that throughout the G20, the police's tactics usually defaulted to aggressiveness - see this Guardian article highlighting (with eye-witness videos) just how aggressive the police were against demonstrators, mostly peaceful ones at that. Very poignant viewing.)

The Met Police subsequently issued disingenuous press releases, falsely stating things such as how protesters prevented medics from giving Mr. Tomlinson medical attention. The Telegraph reports that,

"...the Metropolitan Police had released a statement last week after the death in which they said only that officers were pelted with bottles and other debris by protesters when they formed a circle as colleagues attempted to revive Mr Tomlinson.

"The IPCC said on Monday that Mr Tomlinson was blocked from passing through a police cordon as he attempted to walk home from work helping a newspaper vendor at Monument station."

In other circumstances, it is likely that not much attention would have been paid to this story. However, a New York fund manager who witnessed the events happened to videotape them as they unfolfed, almost entirely by chance (as well as a couple of photographers who captured the moments immediately after the assault).

The video clearly shows an unprovoked and vicious assault on an unarmed, non-threatening individual - who had his back turned to the riot officers and dog units, and was walking away from them. It also wholly discredits some of the misinformation the Police subsequently issued after news of the assault first came to light. (A local blogger, Hagley Road to Ladywood, has some comment and more insight into the events.)


The Guardian was supplied a videotape of the events, which it forwarded on to the IPCC - it has made both the footage and stills available on their web site. Please watch it, as the full force of the assault is not evident until you view the events in realtime (it really is quite astonishing). In a bit of cruel irony, on the Telegraph's web page detailing the Mr. Tomlinson's assault, there's a banner advert advertising the Home Office's "Justice Seen Justice Done" campaign. I'm not sure I want justice to be done if it results in innocent bystanders being assaulted.

Several witnesses, including a woman who was forcibly pushed away from Mr. Tomlinson after beginning to provide him with first aid, have spoken to IndyMedia and given detailed statements. Read them in full here: http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/1019. Peter Apps, a witness, had this to say:

Another demonstrator had already called 999 and was getting medical advice from the ambulance dispatcher. "Four police with two police medics came. They told her [the first aider] to 'move along'.", said Peter Apps.

"Then they pushed her forcibly away from him. They refused to listen to her [the first aider] when she tried to explain his condition."The first aider, who did not wish to be named, said "The police surrounded the collapsed man. I was standing with the person who'd called 999. The ambulance dispatcher wanted to talk to the police, the phone was being held out to them, but the police refused."

In the IPCC's latest press release, the IPCC Commissioner for London, Deborah Glass, has this to say:

“Initially we had accounts from independent witnesses who were on Cornhill, who told us that there had been no contact between the police and Mr Tomlinson when he collapsed. However, other witnesses who saw him in the Royal Exchange area have since told us that Mr Tomlinson did have contact with police officers. This would have been a few minutes before he collapsed. It is important that we are able to establish as far as possible whether that contact had anything to do with his death.”

The press release continues;

Just after 7pm on 1 April, Mr Tomlinson can be seen on CCTV walking up King William Street and approaching a police cordon opposite the Bank of England. It is believed he wanted to get through the cordon to continue his walk home from work. Police officers refused to let him through.

A short time later, Mr Tomlinson can be seen on CCTV walking around the corner into Royal Exchange Passage. A number of witnesses have described seeing him there, getting caught up in a crowd and being pushed back by police officers. This is the aspect of the incident that the IPCC is now investigating.

Minutes later he is seen on CCTV walking back onto Cornhill from Royal Exchange Passage. Mr Tomlinson walks for about three more minutes, before collapsing on Cornhill. The CCTV shows that Mr Tomlinson was not trapped inside a police cordon at any stage. Several members of the public state that they tried to help Mr Tomlinson. Others reported the incident to nearby police officers.

CCTV shows police officers forming a cordon around him near a group of protesters so that the police medics could give first aid. They then carried Mr Tomlinson on a stretcher through the Cornhill / Birchin Lane cordon and continued first aid. An ambulance then arrived and he was taken to hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Unfortunately, the IPCC has launched a "managed investigation" into the events, which some have likened to, "a pissing stage managed investigation to protect the thug cops and satisfy the sheep." I am a cautiously more optimistic about how the investigation will pan out, but I am deeply saddened by the conduct and impropriety of the police to this point. It is very worrying that it only took the media 24 hours to receive word of Mr. Tomlinson's death - but it's taken more than a week for accurate facts surrounding his assault to be released.

Jenny Jones MP, a member of the Green Party, the Metropolitan Police Authority and the London Assembly, has spoken out against the actions of the police involved in this assault, not long after criticising the actions of the police as a whole during the G20 protests. Another Green Party member was an eye-witness to the events, and she was quoted in the Green Party's statement surrounding the events:

Meanwhile reports have continued to come in to the Green Party's central office from party members who were at the demonstration - including a report from a Manchester Green who watched as Ian Tomlinson died.

Gayle O'Donovan said today: "The behaviour of the police was the worst I have seen on any demonstration. Late in the evening we got a call from a friend trapped in the police cordon outside the Bank of England. He had been there for several hours in the heat with no water after receiving a head injury. We were concerned for our friend and others trapped in these conditions. We wanted to bring them water but the police, for reasons best known to themselves, would not allow us to give it out.

"A few minutes later we crossed the road and saw several medics begin CPR on a man lying on the ground. We later found out this to be Mr Tomlinson, the man who died. I certainly didn't see any of the paramedics being pelted with bottles or stones, as was reported by the police. "It was later divulged that Mr Tomlinson was on his way home from work and probably not a protester.

I believe he most likely became trapped due to police tactics on the day. The police were indiscriminate about who they corraled. They shut off an area trapping everyone inside. Parents and children, the elderly and passers-by can often get caught up."

Ms O'Donovan concluded, "The tactic's known as 'kettling' because of the effect it has on those enclosed - basically it raises the temperature and makes an outbreak of anger far more likely. It is a dangerous tactic that I think must now be investigated."

Personally, I cannot decide whether to let apoplexy take over or whether I should focus my anger on making as many people aware of these events as possible. I am deeply concerned by what has happened, as it appears to be an example of fundamental failures on behalf of the police, who we as a nation entrust with our protection and security. I originally considered the de Menezes events to be a tragic but accidental occurrence. However, taking into account the contradictory reports issued by the police after the death of Ian Tomlinson, and the manner in which they behaved during the assault, I am inclined to reconsider my opinion of both this and the de Menezes shooting. We do not live in a police state - why should someone like Mr. Tomlinson be treated with such indignity?

As reasonable, law-abiding citizens, we expect in return to all be treated with the same basic human rights - which includes not being aggressively assaulted from behind by a riot police officer for no apparent reason. Is this just the tip of the iceberg, the beginning of a long downward spiral towards ever-increasingly aggressive police tactics? I am extremely worried. The officer in question, their Force, and indeed the very people at the top at both ACPO and the Home Office deserve to be brought in front of a court of law and held responsible for their endemic failures of procedure.


Please tell everyone you can about this to raise public awareness. Retweet, repeat, forward emails, write blog articles. Contact your MP. I hope that in time, a concerted effort can bring more key witnesses forward to help further clarify the events surrounding Mr. Tomlinson's assault and death - and hopefully to blame for these events will be held responsible to the fullest extent of all relevant laws.

PM Brown Announces the Permanent High Office of Hacking and Tinkering in the Chancellory of the Exchequer

EFF, April 1:
What with all the hubbub over President Barack Obama's DVD box set naff gift to Prime Minister Gordon Brown being region-coded and locked-out, Her Majesty's Government has responded with the announcement of the Permanent High Office of Hacking and Tinkering in the Chancellory of the Exchequer (hereby known as PHOHTCE). Brown warned that this was an urgent matter to be resolved by Thursday, at which time the G-20 movie night will take place, adding emphatically "and there's no need to bish bash bosh about it."

The controversy made the papers when it was revealed that "King Ralph," one of the classic American films included in the set, was not available in a Region 2 coded DVD, since none of the discs were readable with the UK DVD players available at 10 Downing Street. To avoid diplomatic embarrassment as transatlantic relations grew tense over differences in approach to economic stimulus, the Prime Minister's office simply purchased new UK copies of all the DVDs. Her Majesty the Queen's office, who had similarly inquired about the availability of the movie in British format when she was offered it as a gift from President George W. Bush in 2004, had subsequently received a VHS copy complementary from the London offices of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

Concerned about criticism over the narrow focus of the new office, Prime Minister Brown reminded the press corps that both Afghanistan and Iraq will be implementing anti-circumvention provisions in their copyright laws in the coming year as a priority of the United States Trade Representative for the region. "This is the time for the new generation to continue the heroic work of Bletchley Park," referring to the World War II British codebreakers.

For more, see the full EFF article. Don't forget to place tongue firmly in cheek beforehand.