Accessibility....A feature Were Barely Aware Of

Before I begin let me just say that the content of this post is based solely on my opinion and has no input from any person with disabilities.... Let us begin.

How many of you have had that 'oh no' moment when you hear a cracking sound as your precious phone just slipped out of your hands or accidentally hit the phone against a hard surface? You pick up the phone fearing the worst and you find that its not so bad. Yeah,your screen is cracked but you can see who's calling you and maybe use a portion of the touch screen.

Such happened to me recently. I walking into a solid metal pillar with my Lumia 820 iny pocket, heard a sound and there it was when I pulled it out, a huge crack on the capacitive Bing search button. This not only did this render all the essential buttons non functional, so went 2/3 of my display. I was left with only limited input using touch then I realised that a small thing called accessibility and voice control.

Many of us are blessed with all working five senses, we do not know how not being able to hear your phone ring is or not being able to see what the message you receive says so we take some of the settings under accessibility on either our computers or phones for granted. I found that the screen magnifier made it possible to access parts I normally wouldn't because they're in a damaged portion of the screen and the text to speech functionality reads me the text out to me,even giving me the chance to dictate a response. Something that's missing is a screen reader, something that tells you what is on screen. This you most likely have to download separately. All these and many more custom app make phone and computer use a bit easier but not completely useful to those with disabilities.

Whats the reason behind this blog post, I think most people,especially those with visual or hearing impairments here in Zambia may not be aware of some of these things. Its purely an assumption. Even the able bodied probably skip accessibility on their phones not curious as to what its for.

Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4: Upcoming Consoles Compared

Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 are coming, and they will be facing off against each other in the newest generation of game consoles.

The next generation of game systems is finally upon us. The Sony PlayStation 4 arrives on November 15, while Microsoft's Xbox One is coming out November 22. This is what we know about both systems.

Price and Launch
The PlayStation 4 is a full $100 less expensive than the Xbox One, with a $399.99 price tag instead of $499.99. However, for this price the PlayStation 4 won't come with a camera, while the Xbox One will include the new Kinect and allow for voice and gesture control and video chat out of the box.

The PlayStation 4$59.96 at Amazon will have 16 games and the Xbox One 23 games at launch. Major titles include several cross-platform games like Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Battlefield 4, though Ubisoft's long-awaited Watch_Dogs has been postponed until next year, throwing a wrinkle into some PS4 launch bundles and gamers looking forward to both systems. The Xbox One  will get Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3, and Ryse: Son of Rome, and the Playstation 4 will get Killzone: Shadow Fall and Knack as respective launch exclusives. The PS4 was going to get Forza Motorsport 5 competitor Driveclub as a launch game, but it has been pushed back.

Even though the technology is exciting, system launches are almost always tepid for game releases, and with most major games available for both the PS4 and Xbox One as well as current-generation systems and PCs, don't expect a lot of excitement for the first few months of the new systems' availability. For a closer look at upcoming games for both systems, read our lists of the 10 hottest upcoming Xbox One and PS4 games.

Hardware
AMD pulled off a coup this console generation, with its GPUs powering all three major game systems. The Wii U already has an AMD Radeon "Latte" graphics processor, and both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will have AMD chips under their hood. The PS4 has an eight-core x86-64 AMD "Jaguar" CPU and an AMD Radeon Graphics Core Next engine GPU, both of which sit on one custom chip. Microsoft is less open about its hardware, but it was very clear that AMD is the main partner it worked with to develop the Xbox One's 8-core custom CPU.

Regardless, the question of which CPU and GPU are "faster" will likely remain a continuous discussion—not unlike what we saw with the Xbox 360 and PS3's processors, and the Xbox and the PS2, and the Super NES and the Sega Genesis. Different architectures and operating systems mean benchmarking the two consoles is effectively impossible, and like all game consoles, the Xbox One and PS4's graphical prowess will only be as good as developers can coax out of it. Expect graphics performance to stay neck and neck between the two systems for the start of this generation.

Both systems will pack 8GB of RAM, a modest amount for gaming computers, but four times the amount of RAM on the Wii U and 16 times the amount of RAM on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Of course, the amount of RAM isn't the only factor. The PS4 will have GDDR5 RAM while the Xbox One will use the more common and slower DDR3 RAM (the same kind found on the Wii U).

For storage, both systems have a confirmed 500GB internal hard drive, which could prove anemic for users who want to download or fully install all their games or use their system as a media server. Fortunately, both consoles support USB 3.0 external storage, so you can hook up an extra hard drive if either system's internal drives begin to get tight on free space.

The Controllers
Unlike Nintendo, which drastically remixes its controller designs every generation, Microsoft and Sony are sticking with what works, with relatively minor changes. The button layouts of both controllers are identical to their predecessors, and Sony even calls the PlayStation 4's controller the DualShock 4, an upgraded version of the PlayStation 3's DualShock 3. However, both gamepads add new features to their familiar designs.

The DualShock 4 features a capacitive touchpad to add a new way to control games. It also integrates a speaker and a headset jack into the controller, and a four-color light bar better displays which player is which controller, and can give other information based on the action. A dedicated Share button on the gamepad also lets players stream or record their games on the PlayStation 4.

The Xbox One controller doesn't have nearly as many new features, but it boasts force feedback in its triggers, which could make first-person shooters that much more immersive.

The Camera
The Kinect is back and upgraded, but the PlayStation Eye is missing in action. Sony has confirmed an updated PlayStation camera for some form of motion control and video chat, but it won't be integral to the PS4. Unlike the Kinect and the Xbox One, the camera won't come with the PlayStation 4, and will instead be a $59.99 accessory.

Microsoft has been very vocal about the Kinect, and initially made it a mandatory part of the Xbox One experience before backpedaling and announcing that users will be able to disable the camera. However, it will still listen to users, even when the Xbox One is turned off, ready to turn the system on at the "Xbox On" voice command.

The Kinect features a 1080p camera with an "active IR camera" that can see in the dark, and Microsoft claims it can track motion much better than the first Kinect. It also uses a multi-microphone array with noise isolation to better hear voice commands. Controlling the Xbox One with your voice was one of the biggest features Microsoft promoted during the system's announcement and we'll see if the new Kinect works better than the old Kinect for voice and gesture control. Skype will also be available on the Xbox One, and work with the Kinect for video chat.

The PlayStation 4 will eventually have its own camera, but Sony has been much less specific about what it will do and how useful it will be. It will use a two-lens system like the first Kinect for 3D video capture, and be able to record video at up to 1,280-by-800 pixels at 60 frames per second. It will work in tandem with the Dualshock 4 controller's lights to detect gamepad motion, supposedly making it much more accurate than the PlayStation 3's Sixaxis motion control. It also boasts a four-channel microphone array. The camera will be a major upgrade over the seldom-used PlayStation Eye, but it will still be a step down from the technical details of the Kinect, and it still won't be bundled with the PS4.

Media Features
Both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be fully featured media hubs. This time around, both systems will play Blu-ray discs, just like the PlayStation 3 did. They each have their own online libraries of movies and music to rent or buy, and they will access Netflix, Hulu Plus, and the usual gamut of online media services.

However, the Xbox One goes further, with its own program guide that will work with your cable or satellite provider. Thanks to this program guide and an HDMI passthrough, the Xbox One will bring live TV into the Xbox One experience by taking over your set-top box, changing the channel based on your voice commands and the Xbox One's recommendations. The Wii U offers a similar feature in TVii, which turns the Wii U gamepad into a universal remote, but this complete integration of TV watching is new for a game system.

Online Services
Microsoft has put Xbox Live at the center of the Xbox One, but it has backpedaled significantly since an outcry about the system requiring an Internet connection to play games. Microsoft will now let the Xbox One work and play games without an Internet connection after an initial connection to register the system. This has resulted in Microsoft also backpedaling on its much-vaunted cloud-based features. Cloud storage and server hosting will be available, but Microsoft hasn't been clear if the change will influence in-game cloud computing features mentioned at E3, and its promised digital game trading and sharing features have been downplayed for more conventional disc-based and downloadable game management systems. Like with the Xbox 360, the Xbox One will require an Xbox Live Gold membership at $50 per year to play games online and use streaming media services like Netflix.

Sony takes a step forward and a step back with PlayStation Network on the PlayStation 4. On one hand, users will be still be able to watch online media services like Netflix without a subscription, and will get the ability to capture and share gameplay footage with their friends online. On the other hand, the PlayStation 4 will require a PS Plus subscription at $50 per year to actually play non-free-to-play games online. This is a stark change from PSN on the PlayStation 3, which didn't require a PS Plus membership to play games online. The subscription starts to even out the disparity of concent and access between PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, but PS Plus has historically had much better selections of monthly free games than Microsoft's relatively new free games service.

By Will Greenwald for PCMag.com
November 5, 2013

Picking a Phone to Buy..The Simple Approach

Recently I was faced with the challenge of explaining to my aunts the difference between an iPad and Galaxy Tab. When I said that essentially its the operating systems they run I saw more confused faces than those that raised the question in the first place. For the very tech savvy, it would have been easy but I now realize that to tackle this question I should have watered down the terminologies a notch. The "what's the difference" question stems from the "what should I buy" and giving buyer advise  can be a sticky situation.

I tend to ask the simplest of questions when someone asks should I buy an iPhone or S4.and these are below in no order of significance.

1) Physical Keyboard

Some are terrified of touch screens and find the experience not worth their time. If this is you, sadly your choice is limited to BlackBerrys, 10 series or OS (operating system) 7. Samsung has one or two Android phones with physical keyboards but they do not rank anywhere close to the latest low spec BlackBerry. For touch screen lovers,the choice is infinite.

2) Big screen
How the fits in your hand squarely depends on the size of the screen aka the display. Big screen means more browser space and/or better reading. The Samsung Galaxy Note series, HTC One Max, Lumia 1520,Sony Xperia Z Ultra all fall in the larger than 5 inch display section. If you need something smaller read on.

3) Apps aka Applications
You want Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, fitness monitor,quick way to see stocks? Almost every platform has the essential apps but Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store are in a massive lead. The iPhone benefits from this advantage,be it the 4,4S,5,5C and 5. On Android you have the Galaxy S3,S4, the HTC One,LG G2,Nexus 4 etc.

4) Photos
If your phone is replacing your digital camera your best bet is purchasing one of the high end phones I have already mentioned.

5) Sharing
Big on Bluetooth sharing of music,photos? Remove any Apple product from your thoughts.

6) Storage
Some phone users like to carry a lot of files with them,making a phone a mini hard drive. iPhones don't support expandable storage using microSD cards but come in good capacity sizes if you can look beyond not having a file explorer where you can skim through all the files on your phone. 95% of Samsungs are expandable as are Sony Xperias,BlackBerrys. Not all Nokias have card slots for microSD.

7) Price
A high end phone is just that, high end. It won't come cheap especially in Zambia with sellers putting up ridiculous markups. Mid tier phones  like the iPhone 4, Samsung S3 mini, HTC One X, Nokia Lumia 720,625 are available if your don't want to hurt your pocket. Lets not forget Blackberry Q5 and older models like the 9790,9900. On the low end you have the Galaxy Ace,Lumia 520,Blackberry 9320 and some LGs.

8) Maintenance
When I say maintenance I mean how much it'll cost to keep you online and the winner here are the older model BlackBerrys with their BIS subscription package under most of the mobile network operators. For the rest you will need a data bundle or end up using your credit.
So based on the categories above,here are some phone models  and the groups they fall under:

K3000 >
iPhone 5c,5,5s - 2,3,4,6
Sony Xperia Z - 2,3,4,5,6
Nokia Lumia 1020,920,1520 - 2,3,4,5,6
Samsung Galaxy S3,S4 - 2,3,4,5,6
Blackberry Q10, Z10 - 1,2,5,6

K2999 - K2000
iPhone 4,4s - 3,4,6
Sony Xperia Z1 - 2,3,4,5,6
Nokia Lumia 820,625,720 - 2,3,4,5,6
Samsung Galaxy S3 mini,S4 mini - 3,4,5,6
Blackberry Q5 - 1,4,5,6

< K1999
iPhone 3GS - 3,4,6
Nokia Lumia 520 - 3,5,6,7,8
Samsung Galaxy Ace - 3,5,6,7,8
Blackberry 9900,9790 - 1,4,5,6,7,8

Support Your Local (Tech) Team

After celebrating 49 years of independence, it makes you look at how far you've come as a country and how far you've lagged behind your neighbors or the world in general. Everyone who comes from abroad obviously say we're light-years behind in almost every aspect but the saddening reports are those about the countries that surround us. From infrastructure to technology,it seems we focused on the wrong things in the 40 or so years. Even something as simple as graphics on our national broadcaster are from the 50's,blocky and boring. Lack of initiative if you ask me.

As far as technology goes, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is creating the technology we so crave, Zambia must be at 2 rising at the rate of 1 point every decade. We have the minds (and I say this all the time)  to push us up my ranking but don't have companies with either the means or guts to back development of our own technology,whether consumer electronics or software.

A mobile phone manufacturing plant was opened some time back,which is a good start but we need to start supporting this industry. I believe China can open up a doors for us creating our better mobile phones, make computers, laptops, TVs. Building components is not cheap, but the government can take the lead by offering tax incentives to those who set up plants that make/assemble consumer electronics which will in turn make their products cheaper than imports. We wonder why things are cheap in South Africa when the biggest reason is that most of them are assembled there.

It will then fall upon us to buy what we make, cast aside our Samsung phones, home theatre systems and buy 'Zed Tech'. Most wouldn't if the opportunity came, we have been ruined by choice. The demand is there for cheap handsets,its a matter of providing the supply.

The same goes for software, whether business solutions or mobile applications. The next big thing is sitting on someone's computer and is only known to a few because we'd rather buy a payroll system that developed outside Zambia because it looks fancier or download that mobile app from a rounded developer.

Lets make our own (tech) destiny, support our own!!!!

The Degree that Doesn't Prepare You For IT

From the very first time I sat worked a personal computer I knew my future was in computing. I pushed aside my ambitions of being an astrophysicist, NASA seemed a bridge too far and computers felt more at home. It's no surprise that when grade 12 results were out,the program I wanted to do was Computer Science. Computing from the ground up,that's what the program offered and the idea fascinated me.

It was only half way through my four degree program did we visit Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), mining giant that had a state of the art information technology infrastructure setup. While touring their IT rooms and talking to those employed there did it dawn on all of us that what we doing as part of the degree programme had little application in the real world. Things like computer architecture and design had no place at KCM neither did numerical analysis. The guys reassured us that we will find jobs after completing school but we expect a different world.

The university degree now just turned into a stepping stone,expected to open doors but not to keep them open. The modules in the latter stages of the degree had more relevance but were also outdated. The curriculum was formulated at a time when computers were for those who could afford them and not for everyone therefore all we studied was history and little of the future.
We learnt a lot about programming, object oriented programming but the programming jobs were and a still scarce in Zambia. Companies opted to purchase software than develop it in house and the purchased software was from a foreign developer. Their reasons for not going local were either we lacked the capabilities to design and develop or they just weren't able to take the risk.

Zambia has produced great programmers, the market or industry is too small to take them and they end up doing networking where they don't really come up with anything new because the technology is proprietary.  Those with ideas on building local hardware lack backers.

We end up in offices supporting Microsoft servers, Cisco routers or business systems when the stuff we learn can be updated to cover the evolving landscape, mobile computing, cloud computing, eCommerce etc.

I appreciate the degree as a foundation for the work I do now and understanding the underlying technology,I only hope that future generations will get revised degree programmes to reflect the current industry otherwise getting professional qualifications like Microsoft Certified Professional will be the better option.

Zambia has brilliant minds, universities steer us in the wrong direction only for job seeking to bring us back to REALITY!

Embracing The Digital Age.....

The internet, in a commercial sense, has been in existence since 1995 and despite the slow up take caught on in the developed world. Big companies made sure they had a presence on the world wide web, websites were for the elite as internet access was only for those that could afford it. In the developing world, personal computers were expensive, few had them and the net wasn't even a known factor. My first experience with one was in '96, a Compaq Presario belonging to my cousins with an Encarta encyclopedia disc that opened up the world to me. Safe to say most Zambian companies were only pushing for electronic mail at the time and having their own website was not a priority. At the time, website design  and hosting was expensive, very few people with knowledge on hypertext markup language (HTML) existed and they would charge top dollar to have one done so these companies could get away with not having a presence online.

Fast forward to 2013, we have the internet in our pockets and can literally make or break business deals on the go but Zambian companies still have a phobia about having a presence on the internet. I looked up the companies listed on the Lusaka Stock Exchange (LUSE) a while back and noticed that less than half had websites even the LUSE site was not very interactive or informative. At least now, the website has been improved and all the companies have one as well albeit under their multinational parent companies. These are serious people who want to be known and want to sell,the ones that surprise me are the ones termed medium scale businesses. Their focus is to get a Post office box and maybe an email address registered under free mail providers like Hotmail or Yahoo. Others would get one under a local ISP. They think of websites as a nice to have rather than a necessity.

Little do companies know what a powerful tool a website can be. A customer does not have to visit a premises or make a phone call to know what you are about,its as simple as performing a web search and going to the site. The visit would be reserved for the actual business dealings.

There are plenty of good web hosts and design has been made easier with content management system based websites so an organization's excuse for not having an online outlet is nothing but lack of forward thinking. At the minimum a company can open up a page on the world's largest social network, Facebook.

Gone are the days when social networks were frowned upon, now everyone who is anyone has a either a LinkedIn page,  Twitter account and a Facebook page or all three making access to information or news very easy for any and everyone.

Its time to embrace the digital age. Get a website made, a mobile app developed and a Facebook to make your company reach more people.

The Specs War: Are Phone Makers Giving Consumers The Best or is Quality Compromised In The 'Arms' Race...

Every year, phone  manufacturers (smartphones to be precise) release at least one new device which is an iterative update from the previous year's phone if a predecessor existed. Changes are made to at least 2 critical characteristics of the phone,either the processor is made faster, the display made sharper or larger. These improvements vary in size,from minor to quantum leaps. For example a single core processor married to 1 GB RAM being upgraded to dual core/4 GB RAM.

These guys making these phones are in the business to make money,new and improved products means the possibility of more revenue. The main question is whether these yearly updates a really worth your precious kwachas. Is the newer device that different in terms of performance and quality that you need to change it every year or are we consumers simply hoodwinked by the supposed superior spec sheet that we quickly rush to buy one?  Bear in mind, Zambia is new to the concept of contract phone so most of consumers get unlocked brand new phones for a pretty penny and the resale market is not so friendly, meaning you incur a lost when switching from your Galaxy S III to an S 4.

Undoubtedly, a good number of the people I have spoken to that have changed phones on a yearly basis in the last 3 years all claim it was worth it. Others say,"why get the iPhone 5 when i can wait for the 6?". The disciplined ones do wait,while others buckle under envy pressure.

Now taking a different direction, what happens when specs bottom out or reach their highest possible level? Will we now enter personal computer territory? Screens can't go beyond 5",that's a phablet. What comes after 1080p display?4K? Can a 4-5 inch screen accommodate that number of pixels? Unless all these OEMs have ways to keep pushing up specs,I expect a road block of sorts on the next 2 years. At that point,improvements will have to well thought and innovative.

Not being a journalist,means my train of thought gets derailed most of the time and I lose track of what I'm trying to put across....thoughts of the wonder consumer trying not to buy every new phone that is announced.

Time Travel...Only Time Will Tell

Nostalgia drove me to dig up one of my favorite movie franchises, Back to the Future. The Robert Zemeckis directed films from the late 1980’s starring the gifted Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd about their pairs’ time travelling exploits. Going back and forth from present to past to future to distant past, creating messes and attempting to fix them. Despite being an old set of movies, the concept is timeless and makes me wonder. Will man be able to someday toss the laws of physics out the DeLorean window and leap forward into the future or hold time and go backwards?

Stephen Hawking wrote that the fact no one has come from the future to visit this or a previous space in time points to the non-existence of time travel. Unless of course, these time tourist carefully conceal their presence so as not to cause a ripple in the space-time continuum. They would have to make sure they do not do a single thing while in the past because even the simple act of leaving a pen where it shouldn’t be, buying a drink in a shop, bumping into a person on the street alters the path of all the objects involved, which in turn affects objects around them…..and the dominos fall, CASUALTY. Maybe even changing the fact that time travel came to being.

Moving forward in time is the most theoretically possible but otherwise improbable due to lack of technology and is mostly to be supported because it is less like to violate causality. You tell a guy in the future that you’re from the past, you’ll have a laugh about it and you can proceed with things. It does change the course of time but that time is yet to be written so to speak. If you asked people which direction in time they would like to travel, most would say backwards. There’s always that one thing you wish you could change, that person you could see one more time, rarely forward. If only one directional travel was possible, back in time would be the answer. Who would want to go and get stuck in the future where things are strange?

Only time will tell if someone does manage to pull it off. As for now,wherever now is, science fiction will be the closest to time travel we'll get.

PS. Teleportation is not even being tried.