Manchester says no to the con charge.

Enter Davina McCall:

The votes have been counted, verified and indepedently checked and I can reveal the next person to leave is.....

(Stupidly long pause)

The congestion charge!

To explain the formal process... the way the voting worked is that Manchester was split into 10 districts.  The result for each district was announced.  For the TIF proposal to carry, 7 of the 10 districts had to return a yes vote.  A yes vote would mean the proposal would be sent to the government for their consideration.  As was made clear at the Labour conference, even if it was submitted there was no guarantee it would actually happen.

EVERY SINGLE district returned a No.  And not just any no, but by a massive majority of approximately 20% for and 80% against in every district.

This referendum was being watched the world over as it is the first time this kind of proposal had been put to a public vote in the world.  A few reporters even dared declare the concept of congestion charging dead in the water.

So what are the implications?

1) Businesses can continue to locate themselves in central manchester and be able to attract the best talent.  With the charge these people would have moved offices, or got jobs away from the city centre.  I think it makes the city centre far more attractive.

2) Our leaders will have to look somewhere else to pay for the maintenance of our transport system, a large amount of which is essential and must be completed.  How they can charge such high fares for our trains and trams and not be self financing is beyond me?

3) My favourite politician - Gordon Brown - now has a bloody nose.  Westminster now know that they cannot blackmail local authorities into congestion charging in return for essential public transport funding.

4) As for congestion, the charge was only designed to change the time people travelled, not to reduce traffic in the city centre - as such pollution would not have changed if the charge was introduced, and will not change now it has been axed.

I will be raising a glass to our councillors for giving us the chance to have our say!  And Gordon no trying anything devious to sneak this in through a back door like you usually do - just give us the cash for our transport!

Chris

Google Chrome - web 2.0 starts today....

Back in April 2007 I wrote a blog post about all the hype around web 2.0. My opinion was "You can't call something Web version 2 without changing some infrastructure (Ie hardware), protocols (Ie http) and/or browsers."

Well today Google have launched a new browser, named Google Chrome!

If anyone knows anything about the Internet, where it is going and how to make it better this company does.

The browser is simple, well designed and has a new architechture to protect our computers from the nasties on the net. And I believe it (unlike when Microsoft make the same claim with every new release of their software).  Each web site and plugin is in a process of its own, which is a kind of virtual box. Whatever happens inside that box only affects the box.

This is my shortest post ever because the software has been released within the hour. Get this browser now. Today the internet has changed. I need to add this browser is still in testing and is classed as Beta, but Google always do this. I'll bet a Google beta works better than any Microsoft final release!

I have never been so excited about the future for computing. What with the Apple iPhone which will be expanded into a laptop form building on the success of the touch interface, and now Google evolving the web browser which could morph into a replacement for Microsoft Windows.

Chris

Update: I use this for normal surfing, but there are more than a few sites that are not properly compatible with this browser.  If you like a browser to store your logins for all the websites, Chrome is poor in this area.  Unfortunately one still needs to use Internet Explorer for some tasks.

BATTLE OF THE YEAR: Can HTC beat the iPhone??

I am referring to the HTC Touch range of new mobile phones. The Diamond is the consumer model which has a joystick, 4 buttons and a touch screen (no keypad). The Pro which will be out in the next couple of months has a sideways sliding full qwerty keyboard.

I have tried the HTC Touch Diamond as on paper it beats the iPhone, plus it runs Windows Mobile operating system which I have used before and really liked. The main benefit is full synchronisation with Outlook contacts and calendars.

The adverts all show off the screen with a selection of album covers to choose from to play your music, and some very nicely animated weather program.

I will cut to the point - it does not work. Trying to use this handset to make calls and text is next to impossible. Windows Mobile v6.1 cannot cope with a touch screen. There is one simple flaw that they have not addressed. If I am on the contact screen and flick the screen from the bottom to the top to scroll the list the phone will on about 30% occasions dial the contact on whom your finger first touches.

As for texts there is a nice HTC front end to the text inbox. However to view old texts or to compose a new text you have to revert to the standard Windows Mobile interface.

The album covers that are in the ad are only available within the playlist. This device has 4Gb internal storage so can hold a decent amount of music. This is impossible to flick through and select from the text list (and there is no other way). Lastly you have to buy a third party adapter if you wish to use anything other than the bundled hands-free kit to listen through.

When I said the HTC beat the iPhone the main point was the screen resolution. iPhone boasts 480x320 over 3.5". The HTC has a physically smaller 2.8" screen (allowing the handset to be much smaller than iPhone) but has twice as many pixels (640x480). The "minor" problem is that the processor in the phone can't process a movie anywhere near that resolution. I uploaded a 480 line mp4 and was lucky to see 1 frame per second. And it downsized that to view in portrait - couldn't get it to use landscape...

Which brings me on to my next issue. Not only is use of the accelerometer restricted to the flashy but useless album viewer and opera mobile, but most apps do not have a setting to tell them to put the screen in landscape. For example Windows Remote desktop took over my PC but with a screen res of 480 pixels across and 640 down!!

Lastly the internet experience - there are two browsers loaded. Opera was the easiest to use, but couldn't use the bookmarks sync-ed from your PC. IE could see the bookmarks but had problems rendering a lot of websites and had poor support for the touchscreen.

To sum up this phone has a lot of features and a large amount of apps are available to customise the phone with it being Windows based. I chose this phone thinking it was a cross between a phone and a laptop - against the iPhone which is a cross between a media player and a phone. But it simply doesn't work. There is no point having a phone if you feel like throwing it everytime you try to ring someone.

The last problem for HTC is simply that iPhone is "the iPhone". Doesn't matter what anyone else launches it will not BE an iPhone. The iPhone is from Apple. It has the press coverage. Everyone has heard of it just because it is!

Chris heads to the Apple store........

PS. When you go to the store to buy the iPhone the O2 website will not work in Mac OS. They boot their lovely Mac into Windows XP before they can process the order lol.