Since the first iPhone, smartphones have come to challenge laptops for complexity and, in some cases, capability. Ten years ago, Windows on the desktop faced a small challenge from Linux and a larger (but still relatively small) one from Mac OS X. Now, despite the rise of the easy-to-install and use Ubuntu distribution, Linux is still very small on the desktop, but OS X is increasing strongly, up to about ten percent of total PC sales. But the interesting change is in the hardware: starting with the iPad, we are seeing devices using phone operating systems which are expanding into the space normally occupied by laptops. That’s a threat to Windows, not because of the iOS operating system, but because of Android – which is, of course, a version of Linux – becoming available in large numbers on slate-type devices and challenging Microsoft’s hold on the desktop and laptop operating system market. So, the question for Windows Phone 7 has got to be – not “is it good enough to sell?” but “is it good enough to keep Android out of the market, or at least out of the slate and tablet market?”.

Enough context. Microsoft lent me a review phone running Windows Phone 7. The phone is a HTC Trophy, and it comes in the “all screen, few buttons” format pioneered by the iPhone. Many sites have done in depth reviews of every aspect of the software and I’m not going to repeat that here – try this one if that’s what you’re after. I’m more concerned with the phone’s usability and its ability to grab mindshare from its competitors: iPhone and Android. (I’m also slightly hampered by not having a Vodafone SIM. The Trophy is Vodafone-only.)

The “out of the box experience” isn’t bad. Most of the accessories are in plastic bags that make it hard to figure out which is which; just open them all. There’s a few leaflets including quite a long software licensing agreement. I don’t know anyone, lawyers included, who reads these things, and I’ve often wondered what would happen if they said something truly outrageous. Maybe they do. As per usual with a new phone, I plugged it in for a few hours before trying it out.

The phone itself is quite good looking. It has a large, silky screen with three obvious buttons at the bottom – back, Windows and search. There’s a hardware power button on the top edge of the phone, a volume rocker on the left hand edge and a camera button on the right hand edge. The phone feels reasonably solid, but the rear cover is flimsy. You shouldn’t need to open that often, though.

As an aside, I’m really not convinced about the Microsoft advertising which implies that people spend longer than they want to on their iPhones, and will be able to get in and out of their Windows phones more quickly. It misses the point that the iPhone is seductive – people spend time on it because they want to. If Microsoft’s phone doesn’t have the same effect, Micrsooft will lose.

The first time you turn it on the phone runs a wizard for setting up email and presumably access points for data, messaging etc. Once through the wizard, the first thing to see is the phone’s main point of innovation – the main screen with “tiles” and “hubs”. These are rectangular areas of display, configurable, giving access to the various areas of the phones functions. Flicking this screen sideways gives you a more normal-looking menu with small icons and text. The tile effect is quite interesting and I could probably get used to it as a way of launching programs on the phone.

There’s a lot of eye candy in the interface. Items whizz in and out, often through an apparent third dimension. Some tiles are animated even when they aren’t in use. I find that all a bit off-putting, but maybe that’s just me.

There’s a marketplace-cum-app store, as you’d expect, with a lot of applications behind it. I’m happy to see that there’s now an official Twitter app, which looks much like Twitter on other platforms.

A really odd thing about the phone is that it doesn’t support “hidden” wi-fi networks, i.e. ones that don’t broadcast their names. Microsoft has said that that is is deliberate. That seems an odd decision to me, since the main user base you would expect for a Windows-based smartphone would be corporates, which often hide their wireless networks. Even some home networks are hidden – such as mine – and Microsoft’s answer to that is to reveal your network. Presumably Microsoft could fix this lack, and they’ll need to if they want to make serious headway with the phone. Or perhaps they will just try to get the world to reveal all its hidden networks, but, frankly, that isn’t going to work.

With Windows Phone 7 Microsoft has certainly proved that it can make a modern smartphone platform. Is it good enough to stem the flow to Android? Possibly; it’s at least a credible contender and many IT departments are more comfortable with anything Microsoft than alternatives. But the real question is whether it can prevent Android devices from leaping from smartphones to tablets in the enterprise. And it’s too early to say on that one.

It might. Email is critical to many of us on the Internet. It may be true that email is for old people, but I find it pretty much essential for a great deal of the Internet’s usefulness. I’m a heavy user, in case you hadn’t gathered. I want to be able receive and send wherever I am and I archive everything. That’s a couple of gigabytes per year.

I move around a lot, connecting to the Internet through two or three different routes every day. Getting and sending email though the day used to be a problem for me because ISPs’ email servers tend to assume that you are connecting through that ISP. In the early 2000s I went through a phase of having to reconfigure the email client on my laptop wherever I was. To get round that I tried putting all email through a server I owned – Qmail on a Mandrake box – running in my home, running on a DSL line with dynamic IP. It does work, but it cost me grief to support it that I just didn’t need. (Gmail was in its infancy and wasn’t allowing you your own domain name at the time. Besides, I don’t like my Gmail address.)

Winding the clock forward to a few years back, I found Fastmail.FM. They are a specialist email hosting provider. They offer IMAP and SMTP over SSL (SSL is important because otherwise passwords are exchanged in plaintext, which might be over public wi-fi) and an email web client. They don’t do much else, but they do provide their email service brilliantly. I’ve been very happy with Fastmail for over three years. All my machines sync to the server, I have a nice fat email archive which I can search instantly, and I send and receive email on the move wherever I am. It’s just one less thing to worry about.

Now, Fastmail is being acquired. By a company with a marginally-functional email service of its own. Hmm.

Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against Opera. They are another plucky David fighting the Goliath of Internet Explorer. They provide a credible browser which lots people like. They haven’t been as successful as Firefox, but then they haven’t had Google’s money behind them. I met their CE at the OOXML standards meeting in Geneva. He was saying some very sensible things.

But, I’m concerned that Fastmail might lose its service as a result. There are plenty of examples of companies getting acquired and effectively ruined. Will the acquisition of Fastmail cause it to lose focus in its email services? Opera says no, of course, and it’s encouraging that they say the Fastmail team will be kept on. Let’s hope that Opera means what it says and that Fastmail gets enhanced, not trashed.

In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out what it would take to move my mail archive and where I would move it to.

There were some highlights: listening to the people who have built New Zealand’s free software high school, Albany Senior High. Linux desktops and servers. A great saving for the taxpayer and more money left for educating the kids. Some very committed people showing the way.

Glyn Moody, a UK journalist and activist, talked about how a culture of sharing underlies science, technology and the arts. He’s a fascinating person and I was delighted to be able meet him. He also put my points about ACTA rather more eloquently than I could in my own presentation.

Jeremy Allison and Andrew Tridgell, the men behind Samba (the program which lets Linux servers talk to Windows desktops) both were there and did their own presentations. Andrew talked about teaching the community development model used by Free Software at university; Jeremy recounted some of his experiences in fighting for open standards and made some predictions.

As for the penguin? Tux is the Linux mascot. He was there as well.

All the presentations were captured on video. They’ll be available on the conference website soon.

I was really impressed by the efforts of the organizers. A bunch of volunteers put together an experience that was the equal of many professionally-organized events I’ve been to.

And it was a blast.

The event was held in the Westin Hotel in Auckland. Paul Reynolds, the Telecom CE, and Alan Goudie, Head of Retail, sat behind a coffee table and spoke reasonably informally to 30-40 media and technology types sitting on brightly coloured cubes. Telecom staffers in branded t-shirts hovered around the edges of the room, ready to show of their new wares. A couple of TV cameras were set up among the audience.

Reynolds and Goudie were slick – they knew what they were talking about and how much information they were prepared to release. At one stage they showed two upcoming Telecom ads – both with Richard Hammond, one featuring NZ stuntwoman Zoë Bell and the other a jetsprint driver. There were questions afterwards.

The main points from the event were:

Telecom believes its XT network is technically superior to Voda’s. They claim better coverage and much faster speeds. Most cell sites have fibre backhaul so there are no bottlenecks. A lot of emphasis was placed on this – it’s clearly a major selling point for Telecom. We were encouraged to test this for ourselves.

Rates and plans have been simplified down from 60 plans to 14. All plans have ‘one rate’ – the same price regardless of time of day and network called. Billing is per second after the first minute. Families and small businesses can aggregate up to ten handsets and numbers onto a single plan so they can get the best rates. Data prices weren’t released – and, let’s face it, the network is being sold on its ability to deliver fast data – but questioning elicited ‘from a dollar a day’. Data will be extra to voice and you get to select it on top of your calling plan.

There have been some significant changes to online content:

- Telecom’s mobile home page has had a lot of work so it now loads fast on a mobile device.

- Telecom has done an exclusive deal with Yahoo Onesearch to provide search for their mobile customers.

- Telecom will shortly have a larger online music store than Voda.

- Direct access to social networking sites has been enabled. There’s an exclusive deal with Bebo and even a Bebo phone. Presumably you need a data plan to take advantage of this.

They have a range of mobiles (of course!). To forestall questions, Reynolds front-footed that they don’t have the iPhone, although they are in negotiations for the next iPhone. Neither did they announce an Android phone. They do have a Blackberry, a Palm, several Nokias and some Sonys. They also have a couple of USB stick data devices.

In reponse to a question, Paul Reynolds said that all handsets will be unlocked. ‘We have no intention of locking them”.

I left the session with a Nokia 6120c and an XT sim card for evaluation. I’ll test them for the month Telecom are giving me free, then they’ll will go back.

Curiously, on the way out of the room, attendees walked through an honour guard of young women dressed in white crash helmets and white skintight lycra body suits. They were holding their arms in front of their them in an X shape. I have no idea what the point of that was.

I’ve some comments on the whole network and what I think is done right, and what is done wrong, but I’ll save them for a later post.

I put out a call for suggestions for this program by email and on my blog a few days ago. If you were one of the helpful people who replied – thanks. This program’s yours as much as mine. Don’t you love the Internet!

Listen live at 11:05 or download the audio as Ogg or MP3.

Q: Your main topic today – free things. What sort of thing do you mean?

A: Mostly software and services. Let’s start with the canonical example that most of use every day – Google search. We all know it, of course. That’s a free service supplied by a private company, and using the Internet is almost inconceivable without it.

Q: It’s supported by advertising.

A: Yes, it is. And a lot of free stuff is only free in the sense that the users aren’t paying but someone is.

Q: You’ve talked about free software before – that means something more than that you don’t have to pay for it, right?

A: Yes, there’s a definition of free software – Richard Stallman originated the term in this sense. And, by free software, Stallman means that the software itself is available for people to modify and pass on. It’s a strong form of open source. But that’s one meaning of free software. I thought to day I’d concentrate on the less idealogical meaning, the straightforward alternative meaning that it doesn’t cost you any money to use it.

Q: That’s not the same thing?

A: No – it’s possible to have free software in the Stallman sense of the word that you have to pay for, and quite a lot of software you don’t have to pay for is not free in the Stallman sense. The terms ‘libre’ and ‘gratis’ get used sometimes to make the distinction – both translate as ‘free’ in English, but one is about freedom and the other about cost.

The other thing we are not talking about here is software that’s been placed on sites for unlawful download. There’s no excuse for using pay for software without paying for it. It’s just wrong. And there’s so much legitimately free to use software and services out there that, if you don’t want to pay for some specific thing, there’s a high chance that there is a free to use alternative. Just use Google.

Q: OK – we’ve got that straight. So, what sort of thing is out there legitimately cost-free?

A: there’s a whole array of amazing stuff just waiting for you to use it!

Let’s start with OpenOffice, which is a free replacement for word processing and spreadsheet software. Lots of people have OpenOffice, and its often distributed on a new PC. If you want to do word processing – writing letters etc and you don’t have a program to do that – you can either buy one of get OpenOffice for absolutely nothing.

Q: Is it any good? And does it open the same files as the other programs?

A: Yes, OpenOffice opens files from all the main word processing packages including the ones you have to pay for. And it’s pretty good. Just go download it from OpenOffice.org.

And then there’s Ubuntu – or Linux in general, which can completely replace Windows on your computer if you want it to. If you do install that you find a huge list of free software in the menus. But you don’t have to be a fully piad-up Linux-loving tree-hugging hippie to like getting stuff for free. Assuming we are staying with Windows, there are some great things available just for the download.

Links

Web browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera

Mail software:Pegasus Mail, Thunderbird

Web-based mail: Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail

Notes and backup: Evernote, Dropbox

Applications online: Google Apps and Microsoft Office live

Word processing and spreadsheets for your computer.

Maps: Google Earth, Google Maps, Windows Live Maps, and for the stars: Stellarium, Celestia

Skype for free calls and inkstand messaging, also Microsoft’s and Google’s equivalents

Security software: AVG free edition. HijackThis for advanced security users trying to diagnose problems.

Play audio and video: VLC

Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, and Twitter clients Twitterrific, Tweetdeck

Air New Zealand’s superb mobile phone software – mPass

Doodle – meeting scheduling – if you have people around the world, check Time and Date

VirtualBox – for running several operating systems simultaneously.

Published materials – TV, NZ Onscreen, Radio

Books – TOR science fiction, Bantam DoubleDay Dell has some free stuff as well, so does O’Reilly technical publishers, and some books about open source software.

Tripit – trip planner, puts together an itinerary from all your tickets and bookings.

Swivel.com – stats and charts form your own data. See also Geocommons.com

Gapminder.org for analyzing statistics about world population, health, wealth etc.

I should start by saying that I’m not an opera buff. I go to the ones I’ve heard of, on the grounds that there must be something in their popularity. Usually I have a good time, but I’m very much on the outer of the opera crowd. I tend to think “use it or lose it” – I’m glad there is real opera performed in Wellington, so I should patronise it. And it was on this basis that I bought tickets for La Bohème.

I’ve seen Puccini operas before. Madame Butterfly, with Dame Malvina Major, for instance. If you only see one opera in your life, see Madame Butterfly. Hugely melodramatic, a gripping plot, everything that can go wrong for the eponymous heroine does go wrong, with fantastically memorable music. And I saw Turandot last year, which is the one with Nessun Dorma – if you know one male operatic aria, it’s Nessun Dorma. Yes, that one.

La Bohème is the story of a young woman in a group of other young, somewhat alternative, people – the “bohemians” of the title. She’s called Mimi, although she doesn’t know why because her name is Lucia. And I fell in love her from the first aria.

The whole opera, it seems to me, hinges around the contrast between the fake and the authentic. Mimi makes fake flowers for a living. The set, and most of the plot, is gritty realism. She dies, of course, at the end as you know she will, but instead of the great theatrical fireworks that you often get in opera, her passing is low key and even more dramatic for that.

Mimi was wonderfully played. She was sublime. I had tears in my eyes for most of the performance.

Experts assured me that the leading man was “dishy” as well. Even the scene changing between acts was a perfectly-executed drama in its own right.

And, just as a side comment – one of those little things which make Wellington the place in the world to live – our Governor General was there. He was about 12 seats from me. I might not even have noticed had it not been for a woman in military scrambled eggs. Yet, no-one got frisked and no-one got metal-detected. Don’t you love that?

A fantastic evening that I will remember for a long time. Thank you to all who helped make it happen. Especially Mimi.

1. Watching the sun set from a wild West Coast beach.

2. Blasting around on a Bush Buggy at National Park.

3. Building a fire on a beach over New Year’s night.

4. Listening to the birdsong from Angus and Maureen Scotland’s wonderful B&B in Golden Bay.

5. Buying a few bottles of the amazing Neudorf Chardonnay from the winery.

6. Buying my daughter some Pounamu.

7. Going to the Big Day Out. It’s like Kirkcaldie’s sale, but warmer. And there’s some great music, too.

8. Nearly doing the Tongariro Crossing (but not starting because of high winds on the day).

9. Eating whitebait at the Little Wanganui Hotel.

10. Seeing and hearing a wild Kaka in virgin native bush.

11. Walking along Wharariki Beach while dodging the surf.

12. Riding the Inter-Island ferry, both ways on good days.

13. Mountain biking the Rameka Track with my son.

14. Buying way too many books in the shops along Auckland’s High and Lorne Streets.

How things have changed! First Mandrake through the early noughties, and now Ubuntu are making wonderfully good and easy to install CDs of Linux. (Just a note to the side – Linux is just the kernel or core of an operating system, and you need a lot of other software to make it work. A lot of that software comes from the GNU project, so it’s more proper to refer to GNU/Linux. And that’s how the different flavours, or distributions of GNU/Linux differ – it’s all a matter of which additional programs are supplied with the kernel, and how it is packaged up for installation.)

Ubuntu was founded by Mark Shuttleworth, a South African man who made a lot of money in the dot com boom and has obviously decided to put something back. And with its latest release, Ubuntu has surpassed the ease of use of Windows in many respects – especially those annoying registrations and activiations, because Ubuntu is totally free.

The latest release of Ubuntu, which goes by the names 7.10 or Gutsy Gibbon, is very good indeed. It installs easily, and provides access to an ocean of free software, some of which is of the highest quality, through the menus. You can try Ubuntu without installing it on your computer, or you can install it side by side with Windows, or you can put Ubuntu on first, then virtual machine software from Virtualbox and re-install your Windows in a VM so it lives in a window under Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is a 700 megabyte download or a $15 CD purchase delivered from LinuxCDMall or Copyleft. Give it a go!

Until last night. The Royal Shakespeare Company played Lear at the Jimmy in Wellington. I’ve seen lots of RSC productions – yes, I’m a bit of a bard junkie – and I never miss the chance to see them in Wellington. Use it or lose it, after all. Remember a few Arts Festivals ago when the RSC came here to do A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Opera House? And it had Matthew MacFadden as (I think) Puck, in a wonderful performance in a trompe l’oeil set which appeared to recede into the distance. Of course MacFadden has gone on to higher things, although whether starring in Spooks, In My Father’s Den or marrying Keeley Hawes is the greatest I will leave to you.

Back to Lear. Sir Ian McKellen – yes, Gandalf – made me understand that play. I was with him as he made the disastrous judgement calls at the beginning – and I would have made them myself, such was the magnetism of his acting. I was with him when he refused to buckle under the injustice, the abuse, and when he lost his mind under the pressure. And I was with him as cradled the body of his daughter Cordelia (played by Romola Garai, Wilberforce’s wife in Amazing Grace) as the final tragedy unfolded.

Capsule plot: Lear is an ancient king of England, back in the times when the succession wasn’t fixed and the death of a king generally led to a civil war among princes. He has three daughters, two married to English nobles and the youngest being courted by two French dukes. Lear is old, and getting senile, but he realises this and wants to find a way for the kingdom to move ahead without strife. He declares that he will abdicate and divide his kingdom among his daughters.

Lear asks each daughter to declare how much she loves him. The two eldest deliver florid speeches trying to outdo each other in devotion. The third won’t play the game; she says she is her father’s daughter and loves him as a father. Lear flies into a rage, disinherits her and banishes her, and when his advisor tries to stop him, banishes him also.

The older two sisters rapidly turn on Lear. In what would now be called elder abuse, they turn him out of their homes and make it a crime to help him. There’s a sub-plot here with another retainer also making a bad call between his two sons, one of whom ends up as lover to both the king’s elder daughters. The word “machinations” is used, and aptly. The King’s last companion, his Fool, is hanged. The retainer is blinded.

Lear becomes completely unhinged. A fair proportion of the play covers this period, as he alternately realises how stupid he has been and retreats from the truth into madness. In his more lucid moments he now knows which of his daughters actually love him.

Eventually, the youngest daughter raises an army to fight the eldest two. She loses the battle and is cast in jail with Lear, and is assassinated there. In the final scene most of the players are dead (yes, this is Shakespeare), and Lear’s life slips away with his youngest daughter’s body in his arms.

They say that you need have some years under your belt to understand this play. I certainly have more of those since the last time I saw it, which was with Ian Mune in the role at Downstage in Wellington. And Mune acted it well indeed. But Sir Ian last night was a tour de force. The rest of the cast were pretty good, and the set was terrific, lighting and sound as well. The standing ovation went for an age.

I go to a reasonable amount of theatre. But seeing Sir Ian and the RSC play this was something I will never forget. And I pray that, in my own dotage, I don’t end up like Lear.

There’s a performance of this tomorrow, Monday 13th August. Don’t know if there are tickets. If you have any interest and can get to Wellington – go there. You won’t regret it.