Neil Turner's Blog

A long-running blog about technology and randomness

June 17, 2013
by Neil T
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Songbird is an ex-Parrot. It has ceased to be

Screenshot ain window of the Songbird User Preview, version 0.1It was back in 2005 that I first heard about the Songbird music player. It worked in the same way as iTunes, but used XUL, the user interface markup language used by Firefox and other Mozilla products. It wasn’t a Mozilla product, however, but was instead developed by a company called POTI – Pioneers of the Inevitable – made up of a number of ex-WinAMP folks.

I reviewed the first user preview in 2006, and kept up with the development of it for some time – maybe even as late as 2011. But it never became my main media player. On my Mac, it was always slower and less stable than iTunes, which may be a hard concept for Windows users to fathom, I admit. But at some point I got rid of it off my computer as I clearly wasn’t using it.

Evidently I wasn’t the only one. Songbird has announced the cessation of all development, both of its desktop music player and Android and iOS apps, as of next Friday (I didn’t even know there was a Songbird iOS app until I started writing this blog post).

It’s a shame, as Songbird showed a lot of promise in the early days, but understandable. iTunes is still the unstoppable behemoth of media players despite everyone apparently hating it. Windows Media Player is also a lot better than it used to be and is still shipped with (almost all) new Windows computers. And POTI recently ceased development of its Linux port, allowing the likes of Amarok and Tomahawk to become the default players of popular Linux distros like Ubuntu. Plus WinAMP is still going after all of these years.

Songbird’s open source nature means that its death needn’t be permanent. Whilst its original developers have abandoned it, at least one fork is already available in the form of Nightingale, which crucially still runs on Linux. The Songbird may be dead, but its song will hopefully live on.

June 15, 2013
by Neil T
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Links from Delicious for June 15, 2013

Here are the articles or web sites that I’ve found this week and linked to on my Delicious Bookmarks:

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June 14, 2013
by Neil T
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Is the Facebook app eating your iPhone’s battery?

Screenshot of the Facebook app on iPhoneHave you noticed that your iPhone’s battery life has got considerably worse of late? I have. And if this blog post on hagga_blog is to be believed, the blame lies with the Facebook app.

It would seem that, at regular intervals, the Facebook app ‘wakes up’ and does something for 10 seconds, which uses some of your phone’s processor power, and, in turn, wears the battery down a bit.

It probably has something to do with the chat feature, however, as the author of the article says, signing out of chat doesn’t make any difference. The problem also afflicts the separate Facebook Messenger app, so if you use both (like me) then the effect is even more pronounced. I also thought it might have something to do with the background photo uploader but disabling this doesn’t appear to have had much of an effect.

Whilst there may be some other factors here, I’m estimating that these two apps drain an additional 20-25% of my battery each day. Previously, by the end of the day my iPhone would have around 60-70% charge remaining – now it’s usually well below 50%.

iOS app drawer

The article does suggest a couple of workarounds. Firstly, when you’ve finished using the Facebook app, you need to kill the process. To do this, double-tap the home button, find the Facebook icon (you may need to swipe from right to left to find it), then do a long tap on the icon until the icon wiggles and a red ‘no entry’ icon appears (as shown in the screenshot above). Tap the red icon, and the Facebook process will stop – this will also stop it running in the background and will hopefully prevent the battery drain. However, you may be signed out of Facebook chat, and the process will start up again as soon as you re-open the app, so you’ll need to kill the process each time you close it again.

The other workaround is to get rid of the Facebook app from your phone, which is hardly optimal.

Hopefully Facebook will look into this and make improvements. I can’t see why it needs to use so much power whilst idle, especially if all its doing is maintaining a logged-in presence on Facebook chat. And there’s no way that an app in the top 100 free apps should be doing this, especially one that partners with Apple through its integration with iOS 6 and above.

June 13, 2013
by Neil T
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Giving Instagram another chance

Richard Oastler statue, Bradford

At the end of last year, I ‘quit’ Instagram in a huff over its new terms of service. I didn’t actually delete my account but I did stop posting new photos, and deleted the app off my iPhone.

Anyway, I’m back. I suppose I predicted that Instagram would go into meltdown after the announcement and everyone would stop using it. That didn’t happen and it’s seemingly still as popular as ever. Plus, it’s a really easy way to share your photos in multiple places at once – the acquisition by Facebook hasn’t resulted in the ability share photos on Flickr, Foursquare, Tumblr and Twitter yet which is good.

So I’m using it again, although I’m not seeing the same level of interaction with my photos – fewer likes and comments than before. Maybe I’m just not photographing enough interesting things?

June 11, 2013
by Neil T
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iOS 7 – did my wishes come true?

Screenshots of iOS 7 from Apple's web site

Last week, I wrote a wishlist of features that I wanted to see in iOS 7. These were five improvements that I hoped would be announced at Apple’s WWDC keynote.

The keynote was yesterday and so Apple has duly announced what’s new in iOS 7. So how did they do?

What they didn’t add

Three of the things I wanted do not appear to be in iOS 7 – these are the ability to change the default apps, remove default apps that I don’t use, and third-party intents (for example, sharing to social networks or apps other than those that ship with the phone). I suppose the first two of these are niche desires and if I was really bothered by them I could jailbreak my phone. I’m a little bit disappointed that third-party intents didn’t make it though, as this is one feature that Android does well.

And what they did add

Two items on my wishlist have been added to iOS 7.

I bemoaned the lack of password synchronisation in Safari – Apple announced iCloud Keychain which will synchronise passwords between Mac desktop and iOS devices. It’ll also do Wifi passwords as well, apparently. I’ll still be using 1Password though as iCloud Keychain apparently won’t work on Windows.

And while I was hoping for a visual refresh, I wasn’t expecting an almost complete ground-up re-imagining of the entire operating system. iOS 7 looks fantastic, in my opinion, and I’m really looking forward to the autumn when I get to try it for real. The new ‘control centre’ is very welcome for turning on airplane mode and Bluetooth, and I like the like of the new Notification Centre with larger text and buttons.

If Safari and Mail are sufficiently improved over their iOS 6 counterparts, then I’ll happily go back to using them, thus negating the issue of not being able to make third-party apps default. I’ll need to try them out first though.

Is iOS 7 just ripping off Android and Windows Phone?

I’ve heard a number of comments that iOS 7 introduces nothing new compared to Android and Windows Phone, and, if anything, its new design aesthetic is directly ripped off from these operating systems. Having never really used anything other than iOS I can’t really comment but there do seem to be more similarities than before. I suppose there are a limited number of ways that you can do things on a small screen and if one company finds a better way of doing things then others are bound to imitate it. I doubt it has been done maliciously.

I also agree with the point that Apple is probably less keen on attracting people away from other smartphone platforms, and instead ensuring its current users don’t switch away. Remember that Apple also makes money from every app, song, iBook and TV show that you buy from its stores, so Apple has a vested interest in keeping users within its ecosystem. They won’t want users switching to Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry and so will want to keep the grass green on their side of the fence.

June 10, 2013
by Neil T
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Bollywood Carmen Live in Bradford

Bollywood Carmen Live in Bradford

Last night Christine and I joined a few friends to be in the audience for Bollywood Carmen Live, a Bollywood-themed retelling of Bizet’s opera Carmen by BBC Three. It was broadcast live from Bradford city centre, in front of City Hall and in the adjacent City Park.

We managed to find a spot right in front of the main stage, where we got to see most of the dancing; a big screen behind us then showed the other bits (well, most of them). Admittedly the only person in it that I recognised was Meera Syal. It was great fun though. I didn’t take any photos during the broadcast but managed to snap the photo above about an hour beforehand.

Hopefully the show will show off the good side of Bradford – City Park is brilliant and still new to a lot of people. It’s also fitting that the BBC should choose to celebrate 100 years of Bollywood films in Bradford, which is the world’s first designated UNESCO City of Film.

It’s repeated on BBC Three tonight, and it’s also on the BBC iPlayer. You may be able to spot me in the audience.

Disclosure: My employer, the University of Bradford, was a partner in the production.

June 9, 2013
by Neil T
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A day out in Saltaire

Salts Mill in Saltaire

On Friday both Christine and I had the day off work, and as it was a warm, sunny day, we went to visit the Victorian model village of Saltaire. I probably end up here at least once a year for some reason or other. Mostly to visit Salts Mill – home of many of David Hockney‘s paintings and photographs, as well as some quirky shops. But the village itself is worthy of a stroll around. Saltaire was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001, and despite being built by Sir Titus Salt, an avid follower of the temperance movement, it now has several nice bars to spend time in.

There’s also Roberts Park, on the other side of the River Aire from the village, which is one of my favourite parks. A major restoration project was completed three years ago and the park now boasts a nice café. When the weather is like it was on Friday, it makes for a great place to sit with a cold drink.

In a rare example of organisation, I’ve already uploaded the photos that I took to Flickr for your perusal. At some point, I’ll get around to uploading the rest of the photos from Paris as well…

June 8, 2013
by Neil T
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Links from Delicious for June 8, 2013

Here are the articles or web sites that I’ve found this week and linked to on my Delicious Bookmarks:

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June 7, 2013
by Neil T
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Save the National Media Museum

National Media Museum
Photo by National Media Museum, CC licensed.

It’s not often that I ask you, dear readers of this blog, to sign a petition. But please can you take a few seconds of your time to sign a petition to Save the National Media Museum in Bradford.

The museum, along with the National Railway Museum in York, and the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester, are threatened with closure. Their parent company, Science Museum Group, cannot afford to run all three in addition to the Science Museum in London, due to cuts in funding from central government. It is therefore said that one of these will have to go.

I really, really hope that none of them close. As a child, I loved going to visit them and have also been recently as an adult, and enjoyed them all. Putting the museums against each other in a fight for survival is therefore not helpful.

But, I’m particularly keen for the National Media Museum to stay open. It’s the one big visitor attraction in Bradford city centre, with a strong reputation. Closing it would be an absolute disaster for a city which has fallen on hard times over recent years. Racial tension fuelled riots in the summer of 2001. In 2003, demolition work started on a new shopping centre, to be built by Westfield, but ten years on and there’s just a big hole in the ground. Meanwhile the recession has caused many of Bradford’s other shops to close, leaving even bigger gaps in the city centre.

Last year’s opening of the City Park, with its excellent mirror pool and fountains (a magnet for kids on hot sunny afternoons), was a big step in the right direction and shows that the city does have positive momentum. And, hopefully, work will start on our long-awaited shopping centre this year. But all the good work could be undone if the National Media Museum closes. Because people will stop coming to Bradford, and then more local shops and business will go under. It’s a horrible thing to even contemplate.

So please, sign the petition. And if you’re free tomorrow (Saturday), why not visit the museum? There’ll be a mass ‘visit’ of the museum at around 12pm. It’s free to get in, and it’ll show the powers that be that this museum is important, not just to Bradford but for the country as a whole. It is, after all, part of our national collection.

June 5, 2013
by Neil T
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My iOS 7 wishlist

Screenshot of picture sharing on iOSYesterday I wrote about the hit and miss features of iOS 6, ahead of Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) next week. With this in mind, I’d like to list some of the things that I hope Apple will announce for iOS 7.

Remove unused apps

In the two and a half years I’ve owned an iPhone, I have never, ever opened the ‘Stocks’ app. I don’t own any stock, nor do I know anyone who does – it’s not very common here in the UK. But because the Stocks app ships with the iPhone, I can’t get rid of it. The same applies to other under-used apps like Passbook (which I wrote about last year) and Newsstand.

In iOS 7, I’d like to see some of these less important apps become like the Find My Friends and Podcasts apps, which can be installed from the App Store by those who want them. Those that don’t, can delete them.

Change default apps

I suppose this leads on from my first point. In a number of cases, I use a third-party app rather than the one Apple provides – Chrome, instead of Safari; Evernote, instead of Notes; Sunrise instead of Calendar and Sparrow instead of Mail. But if I’m using, say Facebook, and want to open a link in an external browser, Facebook will only allow me to open that link in Safari and not Chrome. It would be nice if iOS 7 would allow me to set my default browser to Chrome, like I can on a desktop computer (and, probably, on Android).

Some third-party apps, like TweetBot, will let you use Chrome or 1Password as the browser, but these are an exception, and it’s a workaround to the bigger problem of not being able to change the default apps. Continue Reading →