Having recently watched the film Surrogates staring Bruce Willis, based in a futuristic world where everyone stays at home and plugs themselves into a device that enables them to control a robotic clone (albeit better looking and flawless) representation of themselves. It really got me thinking on how people do more or less the same thing with social games such as Second Life and how far away we could possibly be from this happening in reality. Having one for everyday use in everything you do would be a bit creepy but having one as a representation of yourself in meetings in distant offices would be pretty cool. Especially if you were an engineer who was needed, say at a plant to fix something you could do it quickly using a surrogate.  So reading Scott's blog posting on Building an Embodied Social Proxy or Crazy Webcam Remote Cart Thing got me thinking, it probably won't be too long until we are using something similar in our offices. It will probably start with video conferencing and then move onto devices that can be controlled by a computer sitting on a robotic cart (laptop). Imagine Microsoft releasing software for this type of application and you had USB devices that were built to compliment it. Maybe they would be MS Social Proxy Certified devices? An MS Social Proxy Cart that carried a laptop that was plugged into it and could control its motors, robotic arms the list goes on... It could start off simple and then progress from there?

Googling a bit more I discovered doctors in some hospitals were already making use of such technology. Controlling six foot tall robots remotely with large plasma screens on the front to display their faces as they visited patients on wards in hospital. It seems as though this could possibly be the start of a new industry? Lets just hope it doesn't stop us from interacting with real people personally as it did in the film Surrogates.

Google Buzz yet another release by the search engine giant in an attempt to get a piece of the large social network and micro blogging platform pie Facebook and Twitter have carved up among themselves. What surprises me about Google Buzz is that Microsoft and Yahoo have implemented such functionality in their own offerings Hotmail and Yahoo Mail some time ago. Although as always Microsoft's marketing department seems far better with its software and OS offerings than anything to do with its email and social networking platforms. Yahoo on the other hand appears more interested in getting people to change their home page to Yahoo (we have all seen the TV ads) but they haven't really given us a reason why (or I have missed the reason). I have tried out Yahoo's offerings and can't quite understand why its better. They have added some nifty little gadgets such as the search pad and they have integrated their own form of "Buzz" (and they will probably cringe when I use that word), in the way of allowing people to see your updated status and enabling you to hook in YouTube, Twitter, Picasa, StumbleUpon (to mention a few) into your status updates.

I suppose Microsoft and Yahoo's approach to the whole subject has been well if we can't beat them we may as well come up with a way to compliment or to work with the flow. In this way Microsoft and Yahoo knew people wanted to keep using these networks and nothing they could offer would sway them from using them, so decided to make all these things easily accessible from their own platforms. "Hey guys you can access all your social networking from one site!"

I think Google have thought of much the same theme however Google has been a lot more vocal about it or maybe its just that we pay a lot more attention when Google says something than if Microsoft or Yahoo says something these days? Google unlike the others has given it a name, Microsoft now a days when they give something a name seem to confuse customers even more. First it was MSN, then Live, then live search became Bing and then there was something called Windows Live services and what happened to hotmail oh is that Windows Live Mail now? Google are very good at keeping what they offer clear and to the point. Googles' web pages are clean and you're not too confused on where to go. Yahoo and Microsoft's Live/hotmail/MSN (what ever they call it now). Is very much hidden away or not that easy to find on their busy and very advertising focused websites. I remember thinking a while back I would like to try out Microsoft's new search they kept on talking about it but I couldn't figure out what site to go to to find it. I eventually found it under www.live.com, however Microsoft rebranded it yet again and now are asking people who visit their home page to change it to www.bing.com. Maybe Microsoft would be more successful with their offerings which are pretty good if they were more consistent and didn't keep on changing their minds on what they were going to call themselves. Few people realise that they can access Microsoft's online version of Office (albeit in Beta) from their accounts as you can with Google Docs.

I read this article on ZDNet about Google pulling out of China because of security threats. What interested me was the evidence discovering that Google wasn't the only company being hacked in this way. There were several other top companies that were being hacked by sophisticated means originating in China.

One paragraph that interested me was how some corporates had been hacked using a vulnerability in Adobe Reader. People in these companies were sent emails that included PDF files that exploited this vulnerability. I suppose what annoys me the most is how easy programs can be exploited to hack or infect systems. Viewing PDF documents used to be a rather simple affair I double click on my PDF and it opens for me. Now a days Acrobat Reader takes so much longer to open and almost every time it has a brand new update to apply something that makes me as a user, furious. All I want to do is look at the contents of a document I do not want any clever bells and whistles and I most certainly am not interested in having Javascript running in my PDF document.

I think somewhere along the way Adobe changed what the PDF was for. It was never intended as an interactive way of displaying documents or filling in forms. It was supposed to be a way to transfer, view and print documents as they were intended. This seems to have changed through the life of the format something I think could lead to the odd security vulnerability every now and again.

In the old days it was pretty simple avoiding viruses. If someone sent you a program by email or you were asked to download and execute a program you were most probably likely to pick up a computer virus somewhere along the lines. Avoiding these kind of attacks were pretty simple, but as technology progressed avoiding viruses has become a bit of a nightmare. One attack that really had me worried the first time I had heard about it was a vulnerability in the JPEG format that could cause a buffer overflow error on Microsoft OS's at the time. This meant basically viewing an image on a webpage could give you a a virus! A JPEG is not an executable file just as a PDF is not an executable file in all rights I the user should feel perfectly safe viewing these files on my machine and not have to worry about viruses.

The problem has also become two fold. Anti Virus software vendors appear to be releasing never ending updates and their programs appear to be coming more and more bloated as a response to virus and hacking exploitations. Looking at the disk activity on your machine you will probably notice that most of it is the work of your virus scanner. If you are unlucky to have your virus scanner setup incorrectly or have a program such as Windows Defender and a Virus Scanner installed at the same time these program will inevitably scan what each other are doing which can lead your machine to grind to a halt as I have found.  I think the Operating System needs to make a change to accommodate the fact that a Virus Scanner will be running and that somehow this needs to address the issues with performance on machines and work in harmony with the OS. Long standing applications such as Adobe Reader need to stop introducing progress by bloating their software just as the very web browsers we use now a days have started to become more and more bloated (again). Applications should come with the minimum required and if you choose to use the other features, it should ask you if you want to use them when the need arises or when you install them. If your application is trying to do too much maybe you need a separate application?

Here is a list of actors I absolutely love as the baddies in films. Usually when I see these actors as the cast of a film (as the baddie) its enough to make me watch the film.

	Terence Stamp He doesn't always play the baddie in films, but when he does he's one of those baddies you love to hate.
	Jeremy Irons Excellent in Die Hard. He plays the highly intelligent baddy.
	Tim Curry A funny and evil villain. My best film with him in is The Three Musketeers as Cardinal Richelieu.
	Ben Kingsley One of the most unusual baddies.
	Ed Harris Usually in military style movies as the bad guy or the crooked cop.
	Luis Guzman He is usually one of the best baddie henchmen.
	Samuel L Jackson One of my favourite all time baddies and good guy in films.
	Robert Patrick The T-1000 in Terminator 2. Need I say more?
	Hug Weaving Agent Smith from the Matrix.

The BBC, ITV, BT, Five, Channel 4 and TalkTalk have been given then go ahead for Project Canvas a project to enable people to watch Internet based TV on set-top box's connected to their TV's. Its a brilliant idea and one we disgruntled customers have wanted for some time. Its great content guys but I'd love to watch it on my TV screen easily instead of having to watch it on my computer screen. Yes there have been alternatives for instance Sony's PS3 openly supports and advertises that you can watch BBC iPlayer on its games console and the same service is also available on the Wii. The Xbox 360 being somewhat of a walled garden has snuggled up to Sky who also have rather good content but charge and horrendous amounts for their subscriptions to watch their on demand content on the Xbox and not all of Sky's content is available on the Xbox as it is on the PC.

So why Project Canvas? Well not all of the content from the above mentioned broadcasters Internet content are easily available on a TV as the BBC iPlayer is. Even if you do plug a PC into your TV, the usability of it still isn't as easy and seamless as it should be. The way we want to watch TV is changing we want to watch show's when we want to and not when a schedule tells us we can and the industry has been a little late giving us what we want and how we want it. The way I see it, is that Canvas isn't any different to another method of delivering content to your TV. In the past we have made use of set-top box's, the only difference with Canvas is - this set-top box gets its content over a cable, but so does Virgin Media's cable service? Ahh but we have quite a selection of broadcasters and its all on demand. Virgin Media does this to? Yes but you need a cable subscription Canvas in theory should work on anyone's Internet connection ah!

In theory Canvas should do away with the subscription model to see this content and break us away from a technology walled garden. Its no wonder BSkyB is not happy with the idea, Canvas would (if it worked) be open to all and on demand which gives it more coverage than Virgin Media's service. This threatens Sky's service which is mainly delivered over a satellite dish. Or if you are willing to pay for it get yourself an Xbox 360 and a subscription to a limited amount of their content on demand.

What I like about this partnership is that the broadband providers such as BT and TalkTalk are part of the group and can make allowances for the extra content that is being sent over their networks. This will inevitably be paid for with some paid for content being provided on this new platform.

I recently purchased a Skype Online number and could not figure out for the life of me why I kept on getting the message "The number you have dialled has not been recognised.." when I tried to call it. It seems there is a Skype privacy setting that doesn't appear to be on the FAQ's on the Skype site. If it is a I must have missed it.

In the Skype client go to Tools > Options and then click on Privacy and then on Privacy Settings.

Ensure that Allow calls to my online number(s) from. is set to "anyone". In my case it has been set to "phone numbers in my Contact list only". After changing this setting I was able to receive calls. 

You've seen the adverts on TV and on the Internet we are in the middle of a home entertainment revolution. Games consoles are at the forefront of how we are going to consume movies and TV shows in our living rooms, no longer will we have to watch digitally available content in front of our PC screens. Multi media consoles such as the Xbox 360 and the PS3 will revolutionise this experience they are  marketed as being the centre of your entertainment universe.

Are they? Well lets take my Friday night experience into account. Having survived the week, treated ourselves to takeaway and and collapsing on the sofa in front of our TV talking about how exhausting the week had been. We decided it would be nice to watch a film, I pick up the Sky Plus remote control and press the box office button 2 minutes before 8pm. The laboriously slow menu system on the Sky Plus box isn't very forthcoming on the entertainment it has to offer me tonight as it sluggishly provides very poor information on each film. We as usual look up the films available on www.imdb.com to see if they are any good using one of our laptops, and as usual there's not much that grabs us. Next I decide to fire up the PS3 as I've heard someone mention there are some new entertainment features available and I might be able to start downloading or streaming films. On firing up the PS3 I realise I need to plug the HDMI cable in as it was used earlier for my PC. I'm then presented with a hard disk corruption message and told the system will attempt to restore the hard disk corrupted sectors. The task succeeds but I'm presented with a message telling me that I will need to run a System update. I ignore the message click on the Playstation store icon and am told before I can proceed I must do a system update. Fine I'll do the system update, I set the PS3 to do a system update and decide while I am waiting I may as well fire up the Xbox 360 to see if there is anything in Zune or Sky Player.

I log into my Xbox 360 and enter the Zune store. But there's not that much new content in the Zune store, the majority of the content is old films and there are not many of them. The newer films that have been released such as the new Star Trek film and Moon are not available. I like the idea of Zune because it enables me to stream content instead of having to wait for a large movie to download. Having not found anything I want to watch there I checkout Sky Player. There's a lot of movies here but unfortunately I need to subscribe to the movie channels on my Sky Movie package before I can get any of these movies on demand. I already have a multi room subscription and I have a package that includes the entertainment and documentary channels. Having multi room enables me to use the Sky Player on my Xbox 360, I had kept multi-room because I had been locked in a contract on it from my previous home and had planned on cancelling it and taking the movie channels but this means I couldn't use Sky Player on my Xbox 360. What a dilemma! I can't even watch Sky Movies on the Xbox 360 on Pay per view because its on my Sky account. I shake my head and wonder how the PS3 is doing, it looks as though the update failed something about a server connection problem. So I decide to fire up the Mac Mini connected to my TV and look at the iTunes movie store. It also requires an update so I get that running and am eventually able to browse the store and find the film I wanted to watch Star Trek! I set the Mac up to download it. Apparently its going to take an hour.great. We decide to play Rockband on the Xbox 360 while we wait. After 40 minutes the film has download and I get it to play on the Mac through the RGB cable on my TV. The quality I must say wasn't stunning, for some reason films still have the "letterbox" view even on wide screen TV's. Why? The letterbox view is a lot narrower than usual and you can tell by the full screen mode that pixels are slightly stretched every now and again the action scenes give this away. I probably wouldn't have noticed this if I had watched it on my laptop screen, which I kind of feel seems to have been he target of this format. What family watches films on their laptop or PC screens together?

So what's the problem? Well there is no doubt that services are now available for watching shows on demand through your TV. I have a Sky Plus box, Xbox 360, Wii, PS3 and Mac all connected to my TV. The problem is the Xbox 360 may provide a streaming high quality service which is brilliant for watching content on demand when you want it, but it lacks the content in Zune. The iTunes store has the content but it can't be streamed you have to download it and that's just as bad as having to wait for a film to come on at the right time on Sky Box Office. Besides the quality of the content on the iTunes store isn't as good, maybe I would have a better experience if I had bought the Apple TV box? (more money to spend and yet another box). The Sky Player service on the Xbox is prohibitively expensive, Sky appear to treat Sky Player content as though you were a completely new Sky TV subscriber. It doesn't work on the idea that you are a Sky TV subscriber already and just want another way of watching the same content on demand. It basically gives you that ability but it charges you for it in the way of multi room subscriptions.

What about the PS3? Well I eventually got the PS3 update to work and discovered it had a movie section which seemed to have the same content as the iTunes store. Great news I suppose, but it appears this content is not streamed content but has to be downloaded. Not so good..

Buying content to own is also another dilemma, what format do you purchase the content for? If I purchase the film on my PS3 I won't be able to play it on my Mac or my Xbox 360. I'm not a pirate all I want is the ability to play the media I bought on what ever platform I choose. Unfortunately content providers don't really understand or are unwilling to let their content be available on multiple channels even if it is watched by the same person who purchased it to begin with. Rights for content is distributed by channel not by who purchased the content to begin with. I believe we are going to face a big issue unless just like DVD and Blu-Ray, the industry comes up with a standard for the delivery of the same content across multiple platforms digitally.

The reason I signed up for the Xbox 360 version of Sky Player, was mainly because I was annoyed having to plug a laptop into my TV to watch missed episodes of shows from Sky One. I had naturally thought that any content that was available on the PC version of Sky Player would be available on the Xbox version of Sky Player right? No!

It looks as though Sky has to obtain separate broadcasting rights to broadcast most of the Sky One content on the Xbox version of their Sky Player service. It kind of makes you realise just how much production companies tie down their content. To me using Sky Player from an Xbox compared to a PC makes absolutely no difference its just a question of convenience to me. The only difference to me is one is mainly connected to my TV and the other isn't. To production companies it makes a big difference to them, there appears to be a distinction between providing the same content on a TV set as apposed to on a device that is not connected to a TV. Apparently this distinction is very important to production companies when it comes to revenues they can sell the online rights to one company for a region and the TV rights to another. In my case it looks as though Sky hasn't yet obtained those rights for the Xbox Sky Player. Its a shame there is such a distinction between the two, it can at times be infuriating when all you want to do is watch a show you missed on your TV screen instead of your PC screen.

Email from Sky below