dale lane

I was reading a book in bed tonight. My wife was curious about it, and asked questions about what I was reading. We talked about it for a bit, and it got her interest.

As with most of the books that I read at the moment, I read it as an e-book on my phone. So, I was able to go into ‘File Explorer’, select the book file, click on ‘Beam File…’, and choose my wife’s Treo from the list of nearby Bluetooth devices. After a brief pause, a prompt showed up on the Treo screen asking if she wanted to install it. She clicked ‘yes’ and a copy of the book opened on her phone.

I’m impressed – how cool is that? We have different OS’s (I use Windows Mobile 5, and my wife uses Palm OS), no cables, no need for having to get out of bed and connect our phones to a PC to swap files, no need to convert file formats, no setup… nothing. Just choose a file on one phone and send it, then receive it and open it on the other. This is how all our devices should work.

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I visited Hursley tonight.

As I work at Hursley, this might sound a little stupid – but I mean that I visited the Hursley island in Second Life. (Depends on your point of view how stupid that sounds, I suppose! Opinion seems divided about the whole Second Life thing…)

I’m still at the “wandering around trying to figure out what I should be doing” stage. Unlike a more traditional game, there isn’t a particular task or mission – and as I haven’t yet talked anyone else I know into trying it out yet, my previous two brief visits in-world consisted of aimlessly ambling about trying to get the hang of the controls and cursing how slow it runs on the four-year old PC I borrow to play it… (even with all the graphics settings turned all the way down!).

So, when Ian Hughes at work sent me an invite to the private ‘Hursley’ area of Second Life, I jumped at the chance. I’d heard of it before from a few places… even The Register, but this was my first time seeing it for myself.

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