I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Category: Tech

Technology. We all use it, we all love it. We all hate it.

Barcodas page now up

Posted by on in Sounds, Stuff, TechLeave a comment

This will be of limited interest but I thought I’d post it anyway as its of interest to me. You can find my page of barcodes that play a nice little tune in Barcodas (an iOS app that plays barcodes), can be found here.

I’ll be adding to it over time, so if you are interested you’ll see more of them there, although I probably won’t post about adding new ones.

This is just silly I know

Posted by on in TechLeave a comment

Actually this doesn’t give you a sense of scale at all. This little cassette shaped MP3 player is about the size of a dictaphone cassette, if that means anything to you at all.

It has a headphone socket, USB for charging and a micro SD slot too. I’m going to see if it actually works, but I’m more interested in seeing what’s inside it.

Playing with PAW server

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, TechLeave a comment

Which is an interesting Android app for running your own web server on an Android device. So, why do it? Good question. Like a lot of technologies I tinker with, I end up asking myself just that. What’s the point of this? What useful function does it offer me? I may well end up with the same question with PAW server. I’m not sure what I can do with it that can’t be satisfied elsewhere. At least, not yet anyway. It may have one or two uses.

If I find them I’ll let you know about it.

So, I love the idea of modular phones and device, but I’m not sure it’s going in the right direction

Posted by on in TechLeave a comment

The whole idea of the modular phone is great. Not a new concept of course but a good application of the idea. I think that this stuff started with hardware like the Handspring Visor and its springboard modular hardware. I think that what’s happening now is a continuation of that. It’s a step in the right direction. But I do have issues with it.

So it appears that there are at least three different companies working on modular phones. That’s fine. It’s a good thing. But what I don’t like is that they’re all doing things in different ways and without a single central standard. So you won’t, as far as I’m aware, be able to swap modules from one type or brand of device to another. That doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I think it’s a lost opportunity.

My other problem is that these modular phones are all going to run Android. I can understand the reasons for this. I know it makes sense, but I’d really like to see some other operating systems available. In fact, more than that I’d like to see the ability to dual boot systems on modular phones, that would be consistent with having a modular phone. Makes sense doesn’t it? So why have only one OS? I don’t get it.

I hope that at least one of these companies can get it right and make a big step in the right direction, but at the moment I’m not convinced.