Most recently I have been to Ahmedabad in India to meet up with a group of people at a company called Tatvasoft – they do a lot of outsourced development work and I am all too well aware of how UK developers tend to think about off shore and outsourcing. However, these people are not only competent and inventive coders with a high quality assessment profile, they are actually all really nice people too!

Ahmedabad is a city in Gujerat, north of Mumbai by an hour’s plane flight (about the same as London to Glasgow, then). The city is as you might expect any Indian city to be – full of colour, noise, activity and people from all walks of life. The biggest surprise came as I was being driven around – the roads are simply chaotic to anyone who is not from there! Cars, tuk-tuks, lorries, motorbikes, pedestrians, cattle, dogs all intermingle in a seemingly disordered way, with people simply driving where they want and in many cases heading the wrong way on the carriageway! Roundabouts seem optional.

However, whilst this felt amazingly dangerous, I didn’t see one mishap – not even a slight nudge. The rule seems to be if you get to the give way line first, you don’t give way. If you approach alongside a vehicle, sound your horn to get them to move left. In fact, sound it repeatedly. Eventually, they will move left, (and in doing so only just miss taking out a motorcyclist). Amazing!

However, my over riding memory is of a town with people who are helpful, friendly and dead keen to talk to you…

From the middle of Gujerat I returned to Heathrow and found instant order on the roads, calmness, orderly queues and absolutely no-one to talk to despite there being easily as many people around!

So what about the quality of the outsourced development work? Actually, I am sure it is as good as any done in the UK. There may be one or two things to fix – but all software has bugs when it is written – there may be some issues relating to scalability (in time we will see)… but no matter what we find I know that the team at Tatvasoft will fix it quickly, simply and without fuss… that’s the work ethic they have got over there. They are all keen to get things working correctly, and with the minimum amount of time spent doing it.

What we have done is manage the process with weekly Skype calls, visits to India, careful documentation, clear wire framing and being as unambiguous as we can be… then raising issues clearly and politely as we find them. If you can find a way to do those things then I’d heartily recommend outsourced work.

In the mean time, back in the UK the project which is using this revised software continues apace – lots of work with end users, training sessions, documentation, testing, more meetings, more demonstrations and more training. It’s full on (but I wouldn’t change it)!

I arranged a very last minute trip to the west country to try to find a relaxing space to do some thinking and a bit of work. The Country Ways web site came up with a late availability, and I thought it looked good. I was not mistaken – this is a collection of small cottage buildings within a farm that offer the visitor a really good standard of accommodation. The units are all converted out buildings, by the look of them, and inside they are very well appointed. My residence for the last few days has been the ‘Dray’ – big enough for two people, with one double bed a bathroom (en-suite) and a modest but very comfortable living area complete with kitchen.

The ‘resort’ (if you can call it that) also has a laundry facility, a gym, pool room (the table based game, not a swimming variety!) and a whole load of open space, swings and walkways, etc.

Located between Dartmoor and Exmoor, south of Barnstaple, it is ideally located for North Devon walking and trips to some of the best coastal resorts, such as Westward Ho! and Bude, amongst many others.

The units are self catering, so bring food! There is no supermarket nearby – the closest being in Torrington which is around 8 miles away. There is no nearby petrol station either – again, you go into Torrington. This suits me, but if you are hoping for all the mod cons of living in the London area, or any urban area for that matter, you’ll be left wanting! This is Devon, and life is different here!

Just to add, last night I was able to see more stars in the night sky than I can remember ever seeing – a truly awesome sight – no light pollution, just the outer spiralling arm of our galaxy. Wow….

It all started when NuevaSync wanted to charge money. I decided I didn’t want an account and started looking at alternatives. For a long time now I have been running my email through Google servers, and setting up an ‘MX’ record with my domain hosting company to send all company mail through GMail. This is brilliant – I get a domain based email address with all the power of Gmail behind it… and I can collect mail through IMAP on my phone, laptop, desktop or through a web browser. Lovely.

However, calendars have always been a bit of a problem. Until recently, NuevaSync took the hard work out of things, but I needed a new way of doing things.

When you use an iPhone to collect mail and link to calendars you have to add an account to the device. It is superbly easy to just go with the ‘Google’ option as it is already pre-defined and all you do is enter your username and password. It works a treat, but there are some drawbacks – for example, when you want to delete mail it only allows you to archive it instead. Calendars only gave you one main calendar, and I run several. SO what to do?

First of all, *don’t* set ‘Google’ as the new account. I choose the ‘Other’ option and fill in the details manually. It’s pretty simple stuff, but it only gives me Mail and Notes. In order to add a calendar I have to go through the same process a second time but select calendar account as the option. Apart from that small inconvenience, everything works really well.

I can now get my calendar through the iCal app on my phone or laptop, collect email through the mail app on either device, or of course use any computer and connect through the web.

Adding events on any device pushes them to all others within a few minutes, and as you’d expect, editing and deleting are just as easy.

So, no need for NuevaSync anymore… it’s all built right in.

New company, new logo

www.clsystems.co.uk

I am very sorry to lose Cleveratom – such a cool brand! I wish my former colleagues well in their new endeavours, and will look forward to carrying on doing some excellent learning based consultancy, learning space design and web application development with Matthew Eaves as a co-director.

Since we have no development team anymore, we will be looking for excellent individuals who have a lot of skills and want to work in a dynamic way. If you know of anyone, do send me their info (or send them mine!).

I like BETT, I always have. It’s a quirky venue that appeals to me, packed out with technology companies displaying their wares. I thoroughly enjoy walking around and seeing what’s new, how things are developing, the latest version of this or that. Today I was looking forward to catching up with old friends, and seeing some new things too.

Today was remarkably busy for a show that has been touted as being past it’s best. I would say there were as many people at the show as there ever has been, and whilst the organisers claim the reorganisation of the space at Olympia meant there were wider aisles, I couldn’t help feel there were less stands. For example, the gallery in the Grand Hall was not full all the way round as it has been in the past. The loss of all the ‘Policy’ stands from people like QCDA, Becta, NCSL, DfE and so on meant there must have been huge floorspace freed up. Perhaps it was a combination of these things.

Either way, the ‘feel’ of the show was as good as ever – crowds of like minded folk from all over the world converge on Olympia for four days of mayhem, and it still feels like a family event. Yes, it could be better, and yes there could be new things there (still loads of stuff for interactive whiteboards and similar ‘old’ technologies) but ultimately, it’s still the best education show in the UK, and probably Europe.

The Apple iPad

I’ve been a very lucky chap this Christmas, and after months of saying I don’t need one, I was given an iPad (32Gb WiFi only) ! What a brilliant gift to get, but I was a little sceptical about how useful it would be. After all, I have a decent Mac laptop, and I have long had an iPhone, so what could I possibly need an ‘inbetweener’ device like an iPad for?

It turns out that since opening it on the 25th, I haven’t actually put it down, which tells me something must be quite good.

First up, battery life. The iPhone is notorious for the need to re-charge every day, often before the whole day has finished. The thing is, using the phone as much as I do for work, it soon runs low – calls, emails, occasional browsing and the odd gam or two whilst on a train all take their toll. The device just doesn’t have the level of power I need. The Macbook, on the other hand, is amply blessed with power – running for about 4-5 hours between charges. Simply put, it’s not enough for a whole day on battery alone, and needs a charge at least once during the day. Now, the macbook is in use constantly, all day, every day whilst at work. It gets used for high level activities such as film editing, 3D design, DVD authoring and so on, as well as email, web browsing, presentations and such like. All in all it is the workhorse of the work place. The iPad has been charged once since I got it – it runs about 8-10 hours before needing more power, and this is pretty significant.

Screen size – as I get a little longer in the tooth, so I find things harder to read without adequate light, and distance. The iPhone is just about bearable, but I more often than not turn it to landscape and enlarge the images (especially web pages) just to be able to read things. So I need glasses… but not when I use the Macbook Pro – everything is dandy there. Lovely screen, everything perfectly sized for me. The iPad is also pretty well sized, and what I need to enlarge on the iPhone I don’t on the iPad. The screen is gorgeous.

Apps are available for iPhone and iPad – many simply transfer with no problems from phone to pad. Some do still run at the same size as the phone when on the iPad, but there is a handy ’2x’ button to enlarge the display. This is used more frequently than you can imagine. The Facebook app, for example, is not yet able to run natively at full size on an iPad. Others, such as the Twitter app are fine, and the BBC News app is simply brilliant on the iPad. It’s OK on the iPhone, but crashes from time to time.

Other apps, like those I use regularly on the macBook Pro are there too – ‘Keynote’ for presentations, ‘Numbers’ for spreadsheets and ‘Pages’ for word processing. They are pretty fully featured copies of the software for a fraction of the price of the main application, and well worth buying.

One or two things in the apps annoy me. When typing I find it very very easy to hit a command button, often located along the top edge of the keyboard layout area, which does me no good. More than once I’ve been typing a blog post to see it all disappear in an instant! Frustratingly, it is more my fault than the software, but I wish these sorts of buttons weren’t put so close to the typing area!

Now the bigger issue – connectivity. With just the wifi version I don’t have a simple way of connecting to the internet when out of range of a wifi hotspot. My phone has a 3G signal, and I have a 3G dongle for the macbook. the iPad without a 3G connection may prove to be infuriating, although I have a plan.

The iPad has no USB port (what?? I can’t quite understand why…) and so no way of attaching a broadband dongle. The Macbook has two USB ports, of course and so no such limitations exist. However, the broadband dongle is a pay as you go device, with 12Gb data to use over a 12 month period. That time is nearly up, so a new dongle will be needed. Rather than buy a straight replacement, I think a ‘MiFi’ device will be needed! These superb little gadgets connect to the internet using 3G as usual, but they act as a wireless hotspot as well, allowing up to five nearby devices to share the connection they make. Genius. With a strong password it should be fine to use in a public place, I think… I’ll let you know when I get one and try it out!

Smaller irritations include the fact there is no simple ‘video out’ – to do this I need to buy an adaptor which plugs in to the dock connector and converts to VGA. I would think it a considerable improvement to add this to the box with the iPad, but no, it’ll cost a further £20 to have this ability.

Finally, no cameras. Is this a disadvantage? personally, I think not. Whilst it would be nice to have the occasional video chat through an application like AIM, I am not distraught at not being able to. I have lots of other ways to take photos, after all, and if I need to video chat with folk I think I’d prefer to do so on the ‘workhorse’, not the iPad. As for connecting cameras to the iPad, or just connecting a memory card, or even a USB device to transfer images, this is a bigger cause of complaint. The iPad boasts the ability to display images like a digital photo frame. Wonderful. However, getting images onto the iPad is a bit of a performance, requiring iTunes to achieve it. How much simpler it would be to just insert an SD card, or a USB hard drive to transfer files directly.

In conclusion, the iPad is a superb piece of kit. I have been astonished at how often I use it when I was convinced there was no place for it in the line up of tools at my disposal. I can see now that it forges it’s own niche very easily, and is simply brilliant at doing the simple things that an iPhone makes tricky. In terms of processing power there is more than enough there, but I wouldn’t use it to edit video – it’s best placed for lightweight work -the occasional presentation, word processing or spreadsheet work, but ultimately it is brilliant at displaying web pages better than an iPhone ever will be. And better than getting the laptop out too – far less intrusive, lighter in weight and pretty well capable of doing most common tasks.

But by far the biggest advantage over either phone or laptop is the battery life. It is outrageously good at staying on! With the ability to run for 8 hours easily, it more than compensates for any shortcomings it may have.

Oh, and did I say it looks pretty snazzy too?

The iPad then is a rather good device. It is slightly overpriced (most Apple gadgets are, though) and has some features missing that you’d expect to be there. However, it is a very good device, and one which I am surprised to say I didn’t know I needed until I had one for about two hours. From then on it was obvious that I needed it!

Today was like most other Sundays for me – I go shopping. And like most shopping days I end up on Sainsburys where I go through the rows of shelves looking for items I need.

Tomatoes in tins were the amusing items today. Actually, the price of tinned tomatoes was the issue.

Look closely at the image – you’ll see two prices. On the left is the price for a single tin. On the right is the economy pack of four tins together. You think you know the big pack will be cheaper, but just check…

Yup. It really does cost much more! And this is one small example of dozens I could have pointed out today.

Should supermarkets be held to account for this? Probably. Will they? I very much doubt it.

The plan for the day included lunch at Jamie’s Italian – a small chain of restaurants run by Jamie Oliver. Now, I rather like the cheeky chappie and enjoy trying out his recipes. I was actually thinking the day would be rescued by a trip to a half decent lunch stop. I was not disappointed.

Jamie’s Italian is a stand-alone building on the south terrace at Westfield. It is quite similar internally to the ‘Fifteen’ restaurant in East London, but not quite as plush. The menu is ample, with plenty on there for all tastes and as it turns out the service is also rather good, too. We didn’t have to book, and just walked right in. We were shown to a table almost immediately, and I’m glad we got there when we did – the place certainly began to fill up around 1pm, with customers waiting for tables for around half an hour.

So it was I found myself ordering a pasta dish of prawn linguine. It was simply awesome. Plenty of flavours, texture was great, enough to fill a good sized bowl and amongst the best lunches I’ve ever had! I can’t really explain the balance of flavours in this meal, but suffice to say there was a great blend of garlic and chilli, some fennel, a rich tomato sauce and the most succulent prawns… pasta was freshly made and the entire dish was just fab.

So, if (like me) you are a little reluctant to go shopping, but you enjoy a nice plate of food, I can thoroughly recommend a trip to Shepherd’s Bush. Imagine the delight when you actually suggest a visit to a shopping centre… she’ll not know what’s come over you, but you will be making her very happy, I’m sure. I think I’ll certainly be suggesting it again soon, and heading for lunch at Jamie’s Italian once more.

The problem is that the system is far too obtuse. The basics are as follows…

An off-peak train into London is one that will not arrive before 10am. Thus, if your journey in is 45 minutes, a train departing before 09.15 will be peak time. If it’s after that it’ll be off-peak. It all depends on your journey time.

When leaving London, any train departing before 16.29 is off-peak. You then have a peak period until 18.34, after which it is off-peak again. There are some exceptions to this, depending on your route. I normally travel home from Liverpool street on the Cambridge/Stansted line. Those heading to Braintree don’t have the peak moment, apparently. Same goes for those in Hatfield Peverel.

So, if you are at Tottenham Hale, having travelled by tube to get there, and board a train at 18.40 to go north, it will be a peak time train. You need to wait 11 minutes after 18.34 to count as an off-peak train, because it takes a train 11 minutes to get from London Liverpool Street to Tottenham Hale… your earliest off-peak train is thus 18.45 from Tottenham Hale.

See? It’s not exactly simple is it! I thought there was a move to simplify this nonsense? Instead it just seems to have become ever more complex. And don’t start me on day ranger train tickets, advance single, or any other ridiculously complicated fare structures. It really shouldn’t be so difficult.

I am slightly disturbed by the whole thing. The emphasis seemed to be to make the boys able to succeed within the existing curriculum and assessment system. At no point did anyone consider that these are the things that need to change… and whilst the great outdoors seemed to be the preferred classroom area, little was said about the impact of the environment on learning. Nothing was said about the potential of virtual learning spaces and how they could be leveraged.

Finally, as yet I’ve not seen how any of this is to be made sustainable, which surely it needs to be if it is to be anything more than a small intervention.

hmm.