Touching art with an iPod

Positively surprised to experience that the so-called audio guides have been replaced by iPod Touch at Tate Modern.

Advantages are:
- You can see movies and pictures together with the audio presentations
- Easier to use - no need to enter a number to select an argument
- Lighter

Disavantages:
- Even if you're a Tate member, and you're paying for the guide, you have to leave an ID...

e-readers and advertising on newspapers

Yesterday I wrote a quick note on Kindle DX, the new e-reader from Amazon, and today on The Independent I've found an article titled "Hold the front page: newspapers have a future" (see picture, taken this afternoon from Tate Modern).


Statistics say clearly that advertising in newspapers is going down rapidly (starting well before the 2008 internation crisis), so in this area, like on the web, there's more and more focus on context advertising. Less costs, higher conversion rates.

e-readers can be, more than just an interesting gadget, a tool to access "custom" advertising and ad-hoc contents. It would be nice to read your favorite magazine, select some additional content, find deals on what you're interested in and... buy it straigth away!

But I was also thinking: is an e-reader really needed? Or maybe manufacturer of mobile devices, already accessing Internet via WiFi and 3G, should just provide a big, plug&play screen, optimized for reading? Rather than spending 350P for the Kindle DX, I'd spend half of it for a portable screen to attach to an iPhone...

Kindle DX - Cool but expensive, and won't replace books (I hope)

The title says almost everything I wanted to write about the new Amazon e-reader.

A detailed article from BBC News.

When the prices will start dropping, I'll take it into serious account.

VoIP banned from MS MarketPlace (MS style)

That's the way MS wants to compete on the Mobile applications against the AppStore: banning VoIP from the allowed applications.

It's the 4th point in their Prohibited Application Types document.

Topic followed through VOIPBLOG.it and thestandard.com.

Where cloud computing is going

Just finished reading an interesting article by Paul Bennet on Cloud Computing.
It really looks like we're going in that direction, with security and data privacy as key points.
Furthermore, in UK as well you can get notebooks for free with a monthly data contract!
The OS is not a problem, however the availability of VPN clients will be extremely important.

MySQL - Last INSERT id

If you want to know which is the ID of the last INSERT been made from the current connection, when auto_increment is active, use this:

SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();


A few lines in non-optimized perl:

my $sel_last = "SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sel_last)
or die "Couldn't prepare statement: " . $dbh->errstr;

$sth->execute()
or die "Couldn't execute statement: " . $sth->errstr;

my @data;
while (@data = $sth->fetchrow_array())
{
print "Last ID was.... $data[0]";
}

More details here for the MySQL statement and here for the perl DBI.

MS and Verizon to fight the iPhone

'Pink' is the code name for a new mobile device aiming to compete with the iPhone.

Key points are:
- Touchscreen (surprise)
- More powerful OS (extending Windows Mobile)
- More applications (maybe with the same iPhone Apps approach?)
- An online store (Windows Marketplace for Mobile)
- WiFi (in collaboration with Verizon Wireless)

News from the Online Wall Street Journal, reported in Italian for IlSole24Ore.