Category Archives: Thoughts on the World

Are There More Bricks or Photos?

Posted on 23 October 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

Recently on The Online Photographer, I saw that in 1976 a leading commentator on photography asserted that “the world now contains more photographs than bricks.”

While I hate to be contrary (no I don’t! :)), I’m not convinced that the assertion about photographs and bricks is correct, even today. Regular readers will know I can’t resist an estimating challenge, so here goes…

Most estimates of the number of photos taken each year comes out somewhere near (but typically a bit below) one trillion, 10^12. As this number is growing exponentially, to get a total number of all photographs ever taken we can focus on recent years, and something in the range 5-10 trillion would probably cover it. However, we don’t retain all our shots. I dump about 50%. I don’t know how typical this is, but let’s use it as an estimating basis. So this gives use a number of “existing photographs” of a few (2-5) trillion.

Now bricks. This is more tricky. I estimate the number of bricks in a typical British family home at around 15-20,000. That provides shelter for an average 4-5 people, but we also spend time in other brick buildings (work, hotels, communal buildings), so let’s say 10,000 bricks per person in a “brick rich” environment like the UK.

But not everyone lives in a “brick rich” environment: for all sorts of economic, environmental and cultural reasons many buildings use other materials. So let’s assume that 10% of the world’s buildings are brick.

10,000 (bricks per person) x 10% & 7 x 10^9 (people) = 7 x 10^12 bricks. That’s still a couple of times greater than my estimate of the number of photos…

Now obviously as the numbers are (surprisingly) so similar and the number of photos is growing exponentially, the roles will soon be reversed. But I don’t think it was true in 1976.

Posted in Photography, Thoughts on the World | Leave a comment

Action At A Distance

Posted on 5 October 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

I have just read three cracking thrillers: Nothing to Lose, written by Lee Child in 2008, Zero Day, written by Mark Russinovich in 2011, and Perishable Goods, written by Dornford Yates in 1928. All three are great yarns, and well worth a read. If you would not discover some or all of these any other way, please feel free to take this as a recommendation.
Each book is a child of its time. In Zero Day the heroes battle a devastating Al Quaeda cyber attack on the west. The plot of Nothing to Lose is also about religious extremism and 21st century geo-politics, although from a very different standpoint.
There’s a refreshing lack of religious extremism and geo-politics in Perishable Goods. Chandos & co have to rescue a kidnapped friend from villains who are motivated purely by money and personal revenge. The book wears its 80+ years very well, although some of the writing, attitudes and technology are now amusing. (My favourites, slightly paraphrased, “I was totally alone…, except of course for my manservant” and “after a few minutes the cars were started and ready to move”).
From this you might conclude that the two recent novels are similar, and Yates’ very different, but that’s not correct. It’s actually Zero Day which is the odd one out. The others are both personal battles, largely on a scale where all the protagonists physically interact with one another. Zero Day inhabits a much larger canvas, in which the key players have no such interaction, and portrays a frightening vision in which misfits in odd corners of the world working for small financial rewards can unwittingly create genuine weapons of mass destruction. This anonymous “action at a distance” is genuinely scary, not least because it could really happen, it might even be in progress today.
I enjoyed all three books, but Zero Day really made me think.

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Jon Lord RIP

Posted on 17 July 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google
The late Jon Lord and the very talented Anna Phoebe performing a spine-chilling version of Sarabande at Superjam in the Albert Hall, July 2012
Camera: Canon PowerShot S95 | Date: 08-07-2011 22:45 | ISO: 800 | Exp. bias: -1 EV | Exp. Time: 1/20s | Aperture: 4.9 | Focal Length: 22.5mm | Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

Since I was first old enough to take an interest in “real” (heavy/prog) rock music, my favourite band has been Deep Purple. I can honestly say I’ve studied their music (my relationship with it goes a long way past just listening), and seen them several times. Like the other great bands of the era their music has a unique “fingerprint”, unmistakeable for any other. In Purple’s case, it was the inclusion of a Hammond Organ, driven by a man who was both a great rocker and equally an orchestral composer. That was Jon Lord. I read sadly of his passing yesterday. He was a lovely man, and a great musician, and will be sorely missed.

I saw him in concert only twice, but both provide strong memories. The first time I saw Deep Purple, in 2002, he had already retired and handed the Hammond over to Don Airey. Half way through the first half of the concert, Airey did a long organ solo, which went at one point to a single note, while he was lit by a single lamp fading slowly to black. The note continued, and the lights came up, to reveal Jon Lord at the keyboard instead. The house erupted with admiration, possibly the greatest outpouring of emotion at a single musician’s appearance I have ever experienced.

Then just over a year ago, we attended the Superjam charity concert hosted by Deep Purple at the Royal Albert Hall (see here for my review). Pride of place in the first half was an appearance by Jon Lord. His set included an absolutely chilling rendition of Sarabande with the violinist Anna Phoebe, a couple of duets with Rick Wakeman, and a final ensemble where they were joined by two more keyboard players, including Gary Brooker of Procul Harum fame.

I will play his music tomorrow, and think of him with some sadness, but mainly with great thanks for how his music has enriched my life.

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Finally, Something Smaller

Posted on 28 June 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google
Detail from the side of Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon
Camera: Panasonic DMC-GH2 | Date: 27-06-2012 19:24 | ISO: 400 | Exp. bias: 0 EV | Exp. Time: 1/1300s | Aperture: 8.0 | Focal Length: 42.0mm | Lens: LUMIX G VARIO PZ 14-42/F3.5-5.6

First Impressions of the Panasonic GH2

Regular readers will know that technology miniaturisation has been on something of a negative trend chez Johnston. My most recent TV, desktop, main camera and most notably laptop purchases have all been significantly larger and heavier than their predecessors. Even my latest phone, purchased a few weeks ago, is rather larger than the previous one, although there’s no real weight penalty.

However, I’ve finally bucked the trend. Recovering from knee surgery (which limits my carrying ability), and thinking about my next holiday under the cloud of increasingly challenging airline luggage limits, I’ve taken the plunge and invested in an EVIL camera (“Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens”:) ), in the shape of a Panasonic GH2. It’s funny how several influences came together:

  • A very good Panasonic cinema advertising campaign featuring a professional taking great shots in Yosemite, using a Panasonic G3,
  • Rave reviews of the new OM-D,
  • A growing desire on my part to get a new toy and kick-start my slightly stuck photographic activities.

I had a look at the OM-D, but it just didn’t fit my hand. Oddly the Panasonic G3, almost identical in size, felt fine, but came up short on spec. A bit of research suggested that the GH2 would be a better match for my needs – a similar package, but closer to my Canons in capability. However, what really swung it was a review by Michael “Luminous Landscape” Reichmann, a man who apparently thinks nothing of spending £10k on the latest medium format wonder, who used a GH2 as his main camera for a six-month stay in Mexico last winter. Sold!

It’s been in my hands a few days now, and so far I’m very impressed. In terms of functionality, it’s closer to my Canon 7D than anything else in my fleet. There are proper knobs and switches for all the major functions, but also a comprehensive set of custom functions and buttons (the lack of which is one of the things which would make the Canon 60D a poor replacement for my much-loved 40D). Handling will take a little getting used to, but it all makes sense and with a bit of practice should work by feel with the camera up to the eye – very much my preferred mode. The electronic viewfinder is very clear, now I’ve got it focused at a point which works for my eyes with glasses either on or off!

The camera is rich in features with some, like the ability to change the aspect ratio in camera, potentially very useful. However, it has to be said that neither Canon nor Panasonic have made any progress against my list of enhancements we really need in DSLRs. Let’s hope the next generation do better, and in the meantime I’m off to investigate the growing phenomenon of GH2 “hacking”…

Image quality is really very good. Despite the smaller sensor noise levels are similar to my Canon 7D, certainly up to ISO 1600. I haven’t played with the really high ISOs yet. Beyond that is the performance of the 14-42mm “power zoom”. This comes in a package which when switched off looks like one of Panasonic’s tiny “pancake” primes, but extends when powered up to provide a useful zoom with 28-84mm range (in 35mm equivalent terms). It’s pretty sharp throughout its range, and chromatic and geometric aberrations seem to be almost absent. This conflicts sharply with the Canon EF-S mid-range zooms: the 17-85mm suffers very bad CA, the 15-85mm has very noticeable geometric distortion for a large part of the “wide” end, and neither is very sharp at the edges of the frame. Admittedly the Canon lenses have almost twice the zoom range, but I’d much rather have a really good 15-45mm “L” zoom, if only Canon made one… 🙁

All this comes in a tiny package. The camera is just about as small as it can be and fit my hands. Powered off, it’s about 3″ deep. And the body plus standard zoom is less than 500g. That’s about 40% of the weight of the Canon 7D + 15-85mm combo, or less than that lens alone. I suspect a “three zooms plus fast prime” lens set will probably still weigh less than the 7D and standard zoom lens, and not cost much more.

Now I don’t know how reliable it will be, or how it will stand up to regular use. The current version couldn’t compete with the 7D for fast action, or in very low light, although the gap is narrowing with each generation of these new mirrorless, smaller sensor cameras. Whether there’s a case for the 550D is more questionable. Will I dump my Canons for the GH2? Not yet, but it feels like the writing may be on the wall…

Update, September 2012

The apparent excellent performance of the tiny MFT lenses is due to in-camera correction of the JPG files. The RAW data shows the geometric challenges of such lenses in their full light. If you are prepared to use either SilkyPix or Adobe LightRoom as your RAW processor, then it will automatically read the correction data and re-apply it, but this is not available to users, like me, of other RAW processors. I’m becoming slightly obsessed by this problem, and now running a project to try and get to grips with it. However, I thought it worth updating my original post with this note. If you shoot JPG, then the MFT cameras are little short of amazing. If you shoot RAW, be prepared for a bit of a challenge…

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Posted in Micro Four Thirds, Photography, Thoughts on the World | Leave a comment

Did I Speak Too Soon?

Posted on 16 June 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

After pride comes the fall. My upbeat post yesterday about the Galaxy Note was slightly premature, as I suddenly ran slap bang into a problem with calendar synchronisation.

It turns out my phone was upgraded on Thursday to Android 4.0 (resplendent in the code name “Ice Cream Sandwich”) which has a serious bug causing calendar sync to fail if you have appointments which repeat indefinitely, like birthdays, not exactly an uncommon situation. How Google have released an OS with such a major and far-reaching bug is a real puzzle.

However, the good news is that armed with a copy of the log file viewer aLogcat, and a PC browser where you can quickly update the properties of your appointments, it’s fairly quickly resolved. If the equivalent problem arose on the iPad you’d be stuck.

I guess I just have to avoid tempting fate like that…

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Notes on the Note

Posted on 15 June 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

I have just taken delivery of my brand new Samsung Galaxy Note, and I must say so far I’m very pleased. After the rather aggravating experience of the iPad I was a bit wary of going to another new operating system, but Android is nowhere so “alien” as iOS.

In many ways this is a more direct successor to my much-loved HP iPaqs than a current Windows phone. First, you can drive it with a stylus, which I find dramatically more efficient and accurate on a small device. You can choose and customise input methods, and they then work everywhere. I’ve found an excellent keyboard with predictive text called Swiftkey, but the standard keyboard, Swype and voice dictation work as well. It has a proper file system, so file management is independent of the application, and both USB and cloud solutions work with minimal effort.

Getting my applications in order has also not been too painful. Many of my favourites from my Windows devices have Android equivalents, so I quickly implemented OneNote, TreNotes and several others. There’s an Android version of SoftMaker Office, so no repeat of the iPad problems with Office files, although I’m not convinced the Android version as mature as the Windows Mobile one. The “missing” sync function for Outlook was a bit puzzling, but I discovered that I already owned some software (Sync2) which syncs Outlook to Google, solving that problem.

The main “serious” app challenge was password management. CodeWallet Pro no longer exists, and while SafeWallet is a reasonable replacement transferring the data was not trivial. However an hour with a bunch of different text editors and manually converting a flat text export file into an XML import seems to have worked.

Sadly, my favourite games are a different matter. Very few seem to have made the transition to Android. Common choices like Sodoku will be fine, but I may have to bid farewell to others.

Downsides? Not many. Yes, it’s very big for a phone, but not big enough to displace the iPad, although it may relegate the Kindle to sunny day duty. Battery life may be poorer than either the iPad or HTC Touch HD2, but should still do a day of heavy use, or two days of lighter duties.

It’s going to take a little while to get completely to grips with a whole new OS, but so far I’m amazed how quickly and smoothly things have gone. Wish me luck!

Posted in Galaxy Note, iPad, Thoughts on the World | Leave a comment

Break Compatibility, Lose Loyalty

Posted on 7 May 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

For almost 20 years I have been a fan of, and borderline apologist for, Microsoft. One of the main reasons was their focus on software usability, backed up by a visible intention to preserve backwards compatibility wherever possible. While each new release of Windows, Office, IE and Visual Studio brought new features, these were by and large an extension to rather than a replacement for that which already worked. When a compatibility break was absolutely necessary, such as with the transition to VB.NET, it was well signposted and the option to parallel run the old version well supported.

Sometime around 2007-8, maybe by coincidence just when Bill Gates retired, this all went to hell in a handcart, and since then I’ve been cursing new Microsoft software versions as much as praising them. Each release has brought frustrations, and in many cases they have been sufficiently severe to drive me to adopt a competitor’s product, or at least a third party add-on.

XP SP 2 broke WMA format so it is incompatible with most third party players. My car was new in 2008, but I have to rip CDs using an XP SP1 virtual machine. Vista broke the reliable and flexible ntbackup. It took a bit of effort to get it working again, and it’s still part of my (more complex) backup strategy, but the “heavy lifting” is now done by Acronis rather than Windows.

The disruptive user interface and file format changes of Office 2007 have been widely discussed elsewhere. Suffice to say that I never used Office 2007, and run Office 2010 only with a third party add-on which restores the old menus. The compatibility-breaking changes to follow up flags in Outlook 2010 are extremely annoying, but as yet insufficient to drive me to an alternative product.

The same is not true of the changes to Virtual Machine support in Windows 7. Before that move, I used Mirosoft’s own Virtual PC extensively. However, the loss of compatibility, features and reliability were so severe that I now only use and recommend VMWare WorkStation/Player for this purpose. You can read about my experiences here.

The latest problem, and what has prompted this blog, is the appalling state of Internet Explorer 9. I have been a faithful user of IE since V1, and have lived, fairly happily, with its limitations through to IE8. However, since “upgrading” to IE9 I have become completely disillusioned, because it just isn’t reliable enough. Here are a sample of the things which just don’t work properly:

  • Downloading dynamically-generated PDF files, such as bills from BT,
  • MasterCard SecureCard authentication. This one’s a real pain if you’re at the end of a long online purchase, and you find your main credit card won’t work,
  • The combined address / Google search bar. If I type in a valid www…. address, I expect the browser to at least attempt to use it , not do a search!
  • Printing. Some long text pages, especially from typepad blogs, get mashed with the main font/character set replaced by something unreadable,
  • Rendering some web sites readably at all. Some of the worst offenders, ironically, are Microsoft’s own “support” forums.

By direct contrast, Google Chrome seems to do a decent job of all the above. I am hereby announcing my intention to make it my primary browser whenever I have a choice.

I’m now really scared about Windows 8, with it’s so far half-hearted changes to the desktop. What will that wreck?

Now in fairness, Microsoft are not the only, or maybe even the worst offenders in this space. For example Bibble/Corel have just pushed through a change to their AfterShot Pro software which no-one wanted and which breaks a plugin I’ve written, and I suspect in that community I have some influence to say “the new version is broken, don’t use it.”

I really don’t understand Microsoft’s behaviour here. Are all these compatibility wrecks conscious decisions? If so, do the conquest sales related to cool new features really outweigh the loss of loyalty from existing users? If not, have they just got lazy and complacent? Who knows?

Posted in Agile & Architecture, Thoughts on the World, VMWare | 1 Comment

Macs Are Really Easy? Ha!

Posted on 13 April 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

There is a myth. The myth goes “Windows is complicated. Macs are really easy – they just work.”

Like most myths this may have started from an original truth, but is now a lie. I am it’s latest, but I suspect far from only, victim.

Let me explain. For over a year now I have been developing a plugin for the RAW developer Bibble and it’s recent successor, Corel AfterShot. These plugins are developed using c++ and the Nokia QT framework, which theoretically allows the same code and user interface design to compile and run on Windows, Linux and Mac.

As a died in the wool Windows developer, that’s where I started. There’s a QT add-in to Visual Studio, so with a bit of juggling I managed to get one of the examples to load into VS, build, and run using Bibble as the target executable, and I was off. I was on a fairly steep learning curve in respect of the programming model, but I had very few problems compiling and running things.

When it got to the stage that I had something to share with the Bibble community I published the Windows version, and another member of the community kindly cross- compiled for the other platforms. There was another learning curve to make sure my code compiled cleanly on the other platforms, but nothing too drastic. For over a year I sent code updates to Jonathan, and got compiled Linux and Mac libraries back.

Although Jonathan still provides a very helpful service, it became apparent that if I wanted to have full control over the application versions I support, and be able to verify my plugin’s portability, I needed the ability to compile and run each version myself. I wasn’t prepared to buy and carry extra hardware around, but maybe VM technology would work.

I started with Linux. I had a couple of false starts but quickly found a site which has pre-built VMs for most Linux distributions (http://www.trendsigma.net/vmware/), and homed in on Lubuntu – based on Ubuntu but with a quite Windows-like shell. I downloaded and installed AfterShot and QT Creator, loaded up a copy of my code, and clicked “build”. And it worked first time! Getting a completely slick solution took a bit more effort, but it works so well I don’t now even copy the Windows code, I just open the same directory from my Linux VM and run the Linux builds in place.

So far so good. Now for the Mac. What could go wrong?

Continue reading

Posted in Code & Development, Thoughts on the World, VMWare | Leave a comment

Vernal Greetings

Posted on 30 March 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google
Butterfly at the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens, Wisley
Camera: Canon EOS 7D | Lens: EF-S15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM | Date: 04-02-2011 14:41 | ISO: 400 | Exp. bias: 0 EV | Exp. Time: 1/30s | Aperture: 7.1 | Focal Length: 85.0mm (~137.7mm) | Lens: Canon EF-S 15-85mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM

To celebrate the Vernal Equinox and the unseasonably pleasant weather we’ve had in the UK for the last two weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to post a nice Spring picture. By coincidence I’ve been processing some shots from a trip to the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens at Wisley, more or less a year ago. However, with the late Spring last year most of my best flower shots are of tropical orchids, which would be cheating, so instead here’s a butterfly!

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Mac OSX–A Third-Class OS?

Posted on 29 February 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

A recent post on The Online Photographer (More Planned Obsolescence: Evil Lion) really chimed with me. Apple’s implacable opposition to virtualisation is a significant opportunity lost.

I’m a Windows user, spending much of the working week away from home. I get a vast amount of value from virtualisation. It allows me to carry just one PC with multiple “client specific” images, and enables me to keep running legacy software almost indefinitely. My main client uses the same technology to provide legacy support for essential software, which in long-cycle engineering businesses can easily be 20-30 years old, as physical assets in such businesses age many times more slowly than the computing equipment around them.

I also develop plugins for the Bibble RAW processor. The same code should work on Windows, Mac and Linux, but you have to compile and test on each platform to confirm this. I’ve recently added a Linux Virtual Machine to my kit. This was remarkably painless, just a few hours work, and I can now rapidly cross-compile and test my Windows-based developments under Linux. If there’s an issue which means having to support more than one flavour or version of Linux adding it would be trivial.

I just can’t do this for the Mac. I don’t want to buy and carry another laptop (which would be useless for any other purpose), and you can’t get virtualised OSX, either as a VM or as a service, through any legal and “safe” route. The result: as far as I am concerned OSX is a “third-class” OS, almost a “technical ghetto”, and I have to rely on the good offices of other developers to deliver my plugins for it.

People will put up with a lot in the name of love. Maybe Mac users “love” their computers enough to tolerate this behaviour. But looking in from outside I find Apple’s attitude perplexing and very annoying.

See http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/02/more-planned-obsolescence-evil-lion.html
Posted in Code & Development, PCs/Laptops, Thoughts on the World, VMWare | 1 Comment

Tyranny of the Colour Blind

Posted on 28 February 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google
Shot at the Botanical Gardens near Chania, Crete. I don't know what this plant is, and judging from the four or five different colours for its fruit, I'm not sure it does either! However, the world is definitely richer for the splashes of colour...
Camera: Canon EOS 7D | Lens: EF-S17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | Date: 08-10-2010 09:02 | ISO: 200 | Exp. bias: 0 EV | Exp. Time: 1/80s | Aperture: 9.0 | Focal Length: 59.0mm (~95.6mm) | Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM

Or Have Microsoft Lost Their Mojo?

I like colour. I see in colour, dream in colour and have a rich colour vocabulary which drives much of my photographic style (see Seeing in Black and White). It’s also an important part of how I work – colour can be a powerful “dimension” in the visualisation of information. The human eye and brain are remarkably good at processing and using colour signals, whether it’s a highlighted line of text on screen, or a flashing blue light in traffic.

Now I acknowledge that this isn’t universal. As a designer you have to cater for a significant proportion of users (about 8% of males) who have poorer colour vision, and especially in mobile systems there will be times when ambient lighting conditions reduce effective colour saturation to a point where it doesn’t work. The traditional way to deal with this is to combine colour with another signal, such as shape – green tick vs red cross, for example. Then each user can use the signal which works best for them.

Microsoft used to get this. Their software was frequently a model of usability, and exploited colour, shape and shading to both guide the user, and allow the user to better manage their data. Icons could be rapidly located by colour as much as by detail. Data items of a particular status would “leap out” from a forest of those without the status marking. Office 2003 introduced follow-up flags for both OneNote and Outlook, which proved to be a great way to identify and retrieve key items in large lists. These supported both colour and shape or text as “identifying dimensions”.

Then sometime in the late noughties, Microsoft lost their way. Office 2010 has abandoned colour as a navigational tool. Tools, icons and the dividers between sections of the screen are all subtle shades or pale pastels, making them very difficult to visually distinguish, particularly in poor lighting conditions. Icons are no longer clearly distinguishable. However the worst regression is in respect of Outlook’s follow-up flags, which now actively disable the use of colour via a tyranically imposed colour scheme consisting of “multiple shades of puce”, rendering them completely useless for their original purpose.

This rant had been brewing for some time as I try to get to grips with Office 2010 and its inexplicable abandonment of many well-established user interface standards at the cost of enormous frustration for long-standing users. What tipped me over the edge was the announcement last week of Microsoft’s new Windows logo. Gone are the cheerful primary colours, and the careful shading which made later versions pop out of the screen with real depth. In their place is a plain white cross on a muddy blue background. Useless!

Now I suppose there might be people who think that this reduced colour palette is somehow “cool” or “elegant”. They’re probably the same group who think that it’s appropriate to model fashion on anorexic teenagers rather than real women. In both cases they’ve clearly lost track of who their real customers are, who has to get real utility from their work.

I’m not against change, and I accept that high-resolution graphics allows more subtle designs that we were previously used to. However, this rush to abandon colour in user interfaces and branding robs us of an important dimension. We absolutely do have to make sure that designs are also usable for users and in conditions where colour may not work, but we must not throw away or disable powerful tools which have real value to the majority of us. Microsoft should know better.

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Ten Ways to Make Your iPad Work Effectively With Windows – Update

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Posted on 16 January 2012 by Andrew - Please share: All Addthis servicesTweet thisFacebook thisLink thisYam thisShare on Google

Microsoft have released an arguably belated but nonetheless very welcome version of OneNote optimised for the iPad and with very good synchronisation to the PC. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough that I’ve updated my guidance on how to make your iPad work effectively with Windows.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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