Will Mark Cavendish go to Team Sky?
Mark was on BBC Radio 5 Live on Tuesday morning and in the interview he was pressed heavily about his decision to potentially move teams. He confirmed that he has made a decision and that it will be made public in the next few weeks.
Despite the fact that going to Team Sky would reunite him with good friend Bradley Wiggins as well as put all of the British stars in a star studded “national team”, I still think it would be the wrong decision for him personally.
HTC Highroad is a team built around Cav and without him, they’ll have to have a complete reorganisation. He’s the face of the team and he’s been with them for his entire professional career. All of his successes have come in a High Road jersey.
As the old saying goes, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it and I definitely feel that this is the situation here. Reading this article in which Geraint Thomas expresses his desire to have Mark in his team next year does curb some of my reprehension towards such a move but I still feel that he may struggle to win as many stages in that team.
HTC riders all sacrifice themselves for Mark on each flat stage, sometimes even the hilly ones, just to keep him within the time limit. Tony Martin did win the individual time trial at the Tour de France this year but even so, he could have been capable of far more had he been allowed to show his true potential more often.
In Team Sky, he won’t have 8 guys working for him. Bradley Wiggins will continue to be a main focus of the team. Thomas seems willing to give up his own stage winning ambitions to work for either of those riders as well as potentially Edvald Boassen Hagen as he did in this year’s TdF. Boassen Hagen, as well as Ben Swift though may be the hardest hit because all sprinting duties will surely be handed over to Cav, even if they both stay with the team.
Will they be ok with the role of being Cav’s leadout men in the same way that Mark Renshaw, Tony Martin and co have been in the last few years? If they are, then it could be a good move for everyone, but it’s going to be a tough ask for those guys to give up the chance of individual glory, especially as Eddy had two stage wins, and probably should have had a third. It’s true that one of those was a brilliant breakaway attack rather than a sprint, and so that could still happen again in future, but the opportunity for sprint wins would look unlikely.
Imola 6 Hours and ILMC Becoming FIA Championship
When I heard that the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup was to become an official FIA sanctioned championship next year I was really pleased. Endurance racing deserves to be on par with the likes of F1 and WRC in my opinion, and from next season it will be. It’s a fantastic decision.
The official name of the new series will be the FIA World Endurance Championship, which sounds great to me. In terms of the races and the way it works though, not much will change from the current ILMC which is probably the best thing, though I wouldn’t say no to a few more races being added to the schedule.
Still, before that begins, there’s a small matter of this year’s ILMC to be decided. The first race since the headline 24 hour race happened this past weekend, the 6 hours of Imola. I didn’t manage to catch the whole thing, but from what I did see, Peugeot’s 908 seemed to have the raw pace at this race that they lacked at Le Mans. Anthony Davidson was driving extremely well and despite a late scare with a puncture while Seb Bourdais was in the car, the 7 Peugeot held on to win from the 8. The Audi’s struggled to keep up in traffic and finished third and fourth a lap down.
Despite the fact that a Peugeot 908 has won each of the 3 other races but Le Mans itself this year (1 for Team Oreca and 2 for the factory team), I’m sure they would trade them for that elusive 24 hour win, which hopefully they’ll get again in 2012. In the meantime, winning every other race in the ILMC will help ease the pain until next June I’m sure. This starts with the 1000km of Silverstone in August, which Peugeot also won last year.
Le Mans 2011
Image by Audi USA via Flickr
Le Mans 2011
This year wasn’t the first time I’ve been into the Le Mans 24 Hours, but it’s the first time I’ve obsessively watched the entire race from start to finish. I just felt that because I love it so much, and because I want to experience the entirety of Le Mans to its fullest at least once in my life, I might as well do it now while the opportunity is there. Plus, it’s only one weekend a year of complete sleep deprivation after all. I’d also like to visit the race at some point in time but there’s plenty of time for that.
I thought it was a fantastic race. Although Audi lost two of their cars to very scary accidents, they still somehow managed to win with their third car, probably the car with the least amount of stars in when the average person looks at the line-up and doesn’t see a Kristensen or a McNish.
Peugeot had a great car and it was a close battle, but in the end, Audi just barely had the edge on pure pace despite Peugeot having better economy on fuel and tyres. Despite not having to pit as often, the raw speed of the Audi R18 was able to keep the lone German car out in front of the three Peugeots.
It would have been great to see a 6 way fight to the flag, but there’s always next year, and the most important thing is that everyone was safe after those two horrific crashes. I really hope Peugeot and Anthony Davidson can get the Le Mans win finally next year as he’s definitely got the talent to do so. He’s been unlucky this time around with Alex Wurz crashing their no. 7 car out of a podium place which must have been desperately disappointing for everyone in the team.
Overall I think it’s fair to say that as much as I would have liked to see Peugeot avenge 2010′s emotional defeat, Audi had the slightly better car on the day and especially after the two crashes, it seemed appropriate that they would win the race. As bad as I felt the following day, I would do it all again next year without question. There’s just something about Le Mans that makes it the most special event in racing to me.
The 6 hours of Imola round of the ILMC was this past weekend and it’s the main reason I finally wrote this post. A post about that event will be next after this.
Can Google+ Compete with Facebook?
Google have a poor track record when it comes to social media. Just look at Buzz and how that didn’t give Twitter any competition whatsoever. This from the one of the first, and probably still biggest internet companies.
Google+ is another typical Google product from what I can tell. It looks good, has the best of intentions but will most likely end up being too geeky and not mainstream enough for the general public to get behind. Not only this, but Facebook is so deeply engrained in world culture by this point that I don’t see how anyone can compete with them, even someone as big and as powerful as Google. Even if Plus ends up being better than Facebook, which is unlikely to start with, they will struggle hugely to make a dent in Facebook’s humongous user base.
I’m also a bit concerned that the ‘+’ is going to become Google’s favourite thing and be overused throughout all of their products, in a similar way to Microsoft and ‘Live’ and Apple’s ‘i’.
Speaking of Google’s new found love of the plus, I should also mention the +1 sharing feature which is now visible on many websites. I like it so much more than the buttons to share things on Twitter and Facebook. This is simply useful and understated. If you like an article for example, simply +1 it and if and when that search result pops up in Google for your friends, they’ll see that you recommend it. The best part is that it doesn’t clog your friends news feed or twitter homepage. They’ll only see it at a time when it could actually be of use to them.
Marvel vs Capcom 3 Mini-Review
Image via Wikipedia
I recently rented Marvel vs Capcom 3. Fighting games normally don’t keep my interest for more than an hour or two usually, but this one separates itself from the pack in a number of ways for me.
I love the fact that they include a simple control mode. It meant that novice fighting fans like myself are able to execute all of the cool looking combo moves that otherwise would have been beyond my skill level to execute.
Obviously, you should also know if you’ve read my last post that I’m an on and off comic book fan, and so any fighting game with Marvel characters in it is more likely to peak my interest than any others. The gameplay is the same as previous entries in the series but it’s still a lot of fun tagging in and out team-mates and causing chaos by sending them in to interrupt proceedings.
Once someone more casual completes the single player experience and had a few fun battles with family and friends in the same room, there’s really not much else to do with the game. This is why it’s such a great rental title. I’m definitely glad I took the chance on a fighting game I would ordinarily have given a wide berth. I enjoyed my couple of hours with it a lot. I hope the developer gets a fairly decent share of the rental profit as they deserve it. I just can’t justify rewarding them with a full price game purchase.
DC Comics Make Huge Changes
Image via Wikipedia
I would say I’m a big comic book fan. That’s probably going overboard. I enjoy reading every now and again when I feel motivated to sit and pick up a book. I have a pretty big collection of trades, most of which I haven’t actually read yet, and I know that’s pretty silly but I will get around to it at some point.
When I do read, it generally ends up being the Invincible series in trade form. I love that book. The story is interesting and engaging and the art is just spectacular.
Rather than go into my on and off love of comics in further detail, I want to talk about the big changes that DC announced a month or so ago. Digital is clearly the future in practically everything, and the comics industry isn’t exempt from that.
Digital comics have been steadily growing for a while now, mainly thanks to apps like Comixology, Playstation Comics and the support of the publishers themselves. The problem up until now has been that the publishers, while they did show significant support, weren’t willing to take a risk on day-and-date print and digital comics. Instead, they’ve been releasing digital versions of library comics which are now out of print, and therefore not a risk at all. It simply gave them a chance to test the market and make more money off books which they generally wouldn’t have otherwise.
However, it was clear that the next step had to be made soon and DC have given fans what they have been clamouring for. Starting later in the year, they will be releasing comics on the same day in print and online. This is a watershed decision that will determine the future of the industry. Now we just need to get all publishers (especially Marvel) on board and we need to develop a standard format for comic publishing that will allow comics to be read on any device in the same vein as digital music and video, and to some extent, eBooks.
This is some way off, and is not going to be easy considering that most digital devices you can read comics on are often very different, and therefore standardising everything will be tough, but hopefully we see something along those lines in the near future. We don’t want to stay in a situation now where you’ll forget where one particular book is. I have some on my PSP, some on my iPod and it’s definitely going to get worse before it gets better.
The other news from DC is that they are re-launching all of their main series at the same time in a gigantic event which must be taking a gargantuan amount of time and coordination to achieve.
Practically everyone knows the basic origin stories of the famous superheroes thanks to the films, TV series and so on, but over the years, those stories in the books themselves just get so complex and confusing, that eventually it gets to a point where it’s hard to follow what has happened. DC have realised this and are resetting everything back to how it was in the beginning. They want to make the characters younger and more relatable to today’s audience. Whether or not they just end up having to do the same thing a number of years down the line is anyone’s guess, but I like the fact that they’re taking this chance now regardless.
They’re probably also hoping that all of the number 1 issues will entice collectors to buy a fair few copies up. Maybe some people will buy both the print and digital versions so they have one to read and one to keep pristine. As I’m not really a collector I’m not too worried but who knows.
I don’t know if Marvel will follow suit in both of these initiatives, but if they do only one then I hope they take the digital route for all of their comics. It’s the next logical step and they can’t afford to get left behind by their great rival and all of the independent guys like Image who are doing some great stuff at the moment.
I’m definitely excited to see how the digital transition pans out, and reading the amended origin stories for some of the most well loved characters in all of entertainment can’t be a bad thing either. It’s definitely going to be a great time to be a comic fan and a great time for kids and adults alike to get into it for the first time.
Firefox 5
Image via Wikipedia
I was planning to do a review of Firefox 4 when that came out a while back, but I just never got around to it. Thankfully, Mozilla have a new, far shorter release cycle for their browser so I can just skip 4 and move straight to 5.
Also thankfully, not much has changed from the previous version to this one, which is a bit of a shame really as we’ve become accustomed to long waits for big feature changes from the organisation.
Firefox 4 was quite a radical departure from the long standing version 3.5. They added their own version of Chrome‘s pioneering tabs-on-top feature, and changed the menus to make it far more sleek and minimal. It took a little adjusting to but it was definitely an improvement.
Along with the cosmetic change was the addition of HTML 5 support which in the future will prove essential as we move away from reliance on the proprietary flash format more and more. Another nice move was the addition of Firefox sync as an integral part of the application as opposed to an extension which in the past made it a fairly niche product. Now, everyone will be able to set up sync and enjoy having all of their bookmarks and other data on their mobile devices and other computers, which is a great thing.
For the real power users, they added app tabs, which in my view don’t really work out well in the end. I just kept having my gmail fail to update and cause issues. The same could be said about the new tab organising feature called panorama. This allows you to group your tabs into named sets which you can switch between. Most people will never need this and as someone who usually tries out everything new, I really think it’s going to be overkill for almost everyone. I just don’t see how it’s worth the effort for 95% of people.
Firefox 5 doesn’t do a lot of new stuff, at least not that you can see, which is in some ways a good thing. Security, standards compliance and performance are at the heart of this release’s improvements.
At the end of the day though, despite everything they’re doing, I just prefer Chrome. Every now and again I like to open Firefox just for a change of scenery so to speak, but I always go back to Chrome as my browser of choice. Everything that browser does just suits me perfectly. The new tab page just works, the way I can use the main search box to look things up on wikipedia just works and the clutter free design wastes no space.
As much as I appreciate what Mozilla do with open standards, supporting multiple devices including android among other things, I just like Google’s browser more.
WWDC 2011 – Part 3: iOS5
The main new features of iOS5 are the new notification centre, wi-fi syncing and the ability to be PC free and iMessage among others.
Notification centre is definitely the biggest and most significant update. I got my first smartphone a while back, a Sony Ericsson Android phone. It doesn’t run the most up to date version of Android but you can immediately see the difference in notifications between it and the iPhone. You swipe down from the top of the screen and see all of your notifications. Apple have clearly neglected this important area of the device for some time now but thankfully they look to have done a great job in updating it.
Now, instead of being greeted by one notification at a time, each in a big blue bubble, now you see a sleek list of individual notifications. Each of which you can swipe to go straight to the corresponding app. It’s so much more functional now especially if you get a lot of notifications that you don’t want to miss. Like android, you can access the list when the device is awake by sliding your finger down from the top of the screen. It’s far from revolutionary, but to be fair, they do implement it well even if they did copy from Google.
PC free and wi-fi syncing is also a great addition. It, combined with all of the iCloud features will finally stop the critics who say that the iPad is not a true tablet computer but an oversized iPod Touch. It can now plainly go head to head with any traditional tablet in terms of functionality. This also is available on iPhone and iPod Touch, where it’s welcome but not as necessary as it is for iPad.
The wi-fi syncing is also welcome. If you can plug it in to charge using any device or better yet unplugged, then this could be very useful for me, but regardless, it’s nice to see something people have been requesting for a long time now being added.
iMessage is an interesting one. On one hand, surely we already have enough methods of communcation. Texting, email, twitter, facebook etc. You would be forgiven for thinking “why do we need another one?” I’m struggling with this question myself. It would be nice to have a method of communication between iDevices, but how confusing will it be for iPhone users who already have an identical looking texting app? It takes away the simplicity and speed of texting, as you’re relying on 3G or wi-fi, both battery draining. The jury is out on this app I think. We’ll just have to see how it pans out when we get to use it.
News Stand is an interesting idea, and looks to be the fourth separate store Apple are starting, this time dedicated to all newspaper and magazine subscriptions. I like the idea of integrating it directly into the home screen. It makes you wonder why they didn’t do that with iBooks but are here. It’s a bit inconsistent. If it is built into the OS by default as opposed to a download like iBooks then it would be further adding to that inconsistency.
Other improvements of note include Safari, which now has an instapaper clone built in that syncs with iCloud, the reader feature that the desktop version has had for a while and tabbed browsing on iPad, all nice improvements but not earth shattering.
Reminders is pretty self explanatory and looks nice, although I’m so used to Google tasks by this point. You can now use the volume up key to take photos and it’s quicker to jump into the camera app which is a nice touch. The photos app allows simple editing such as cropping, red-eye removal and auto-enhance. Again, all welcome additions.
There are other new features, but most are not really worth talking about, especially Twitter, which seems a bit pointless from where I’m sitting, since you can do all of the things they advertise, albeit slightly less well integrated, by using the official Twitter app which many have already.
Overall though, I think iOS5 is a pretty impressive update and a step forward in many ways. WWDC in general was a triumph. I love iCloud and iOS5 especially and I don’t think they could have done much better with anything they showed on that day.
I’m keenly looking forward to the next Apple event to hear about new iPods, that new iPhone everyone’s speculating about and of course some new computers.
WWDC 2011 – Part 2: iCloud
I think iCloud is fantastic. When it was first announced, we assumed generally that it would be the name for a new iTunes streaming service but it ended up being so much more, and all of it great.
I’ve been saying for such a long time now that I thought Apple should compete with Google in cloud services. Mobile me simply did not make sense when compared to Google’s free services like Gmail, Google calendar and documents among others. Sure, they were good but they cost money they probably weren’t worth.
iCloud takes everything good that Mobile Me did, makes it free and adds more besides. Whether me.com email addresses can challenge the traditional heavyweights in email like hotmail, yahoo, aol and gmail is another question, but I suppose just the fact that the domain is only two characters should help its cause somewhat. Whether they actually gain substantial market share in all of these cloud services is beside the point, just the fact that it’s free is great and it makes them competitive at least.
iCloud also expands on Mobile Me’s original syncing concept and takes things a lot further and really puts them far ahead of anyone else in terms of mainstream cloud syncing services. Not only does in sync the usual things, contacts, calendars and mail, but also practically everything else you could think of. Your photos, videos, iWork documents, a complete backup of all of your device settings and data from your apps.
These things are all fantastic, but the real star of the show here is the automatic syncing and backup of your purchases from all three of Apple’s stores. All of your music, apps and books will automatically download to all of your devices. No more syncing and homesharing across numerous devices and computers, and no worrying about backing up your precious music. If in future you somehow lose your music on all of your devices, you can just download it again for no extra charge. Apple say that there’s no limit to how many times you can re-download purchases but I assume they’ll be fairly lenient as long as you don’t abuse the function.
For me, this will completely change my purchasing of music in the future. Recently, I’ve been going exclusively to Amazon MP3 for my music, as it’s generally quite a bit cheaper than iTunes for almost everything, and sometimes by a very significant amount. However, the extra value you get from not having to worry about syncing anything and keeping a library in perfect order, as well as the peace of mind of not having to back up purchases make it worth the extra money in my opinion.
At first, I was a bit surprised that Apple didn’t do something more elaborate with iTunes in the cloud in the same vein as Spotify or possibly a locker type arrangement like Amazon cloud player or Google Music. When I thought about it more, I understood why they went in the direction they did.
The reason why they didn’t go with a locker type arrangement is because it’s complex, involves uploading an entire library to the cloud which is far from ideal and wastes storage space with potentially a huge number of copies of the same song being uploaded. I think the Spotify streaming model would make more sense but Ap[ple have traditionally stayed away from the renting model for music as they like people to feel that they own the music they download. The iTunes Match service is essentially the happy medium between these two options. It scans your library for music that wasn’t downloaded on iTunes. AKA: from another online service, ripped from CDs or obtained in less than legal ways and looks for matches in Apple’s catalogue. You pay a flat fee and any music you have that is available in iTunes match is either upgraded to 256kbps if it’s lower quality, or if the music is not on iTunes, those select songs will be uploaded. Everything will then be treated as if you bought it from iTunes originally, and will be synced to all of your devices automatically. This is a nice idea and I’m sure Apple will make it as easy to understand as possible, but it remains to be seen what will happen if you don’t renew your subscription. Hopefully you’ll get to keep any music that was upgraded in the new form, and perhaps even still be able to keep uploaded music synced, but that’s a long shot.
Either way, I can’t wait to check out iCloud when it launches in the autumn. Just the small taster we’ve been given in the UK of being able to sync Apps and books but not not music has got me excited to check out the whole package.
WWDC 2011 – Part 1: Lion
Image via Wikipedia
Apple did something uncharacteristic this year in the lead up to WWDC, they announced what they were going to show at the conference. We knew they would be covering Mac OS Lion, iOS5 and iCloud at the event. Normally they have kept quiet even when the cover had all but been blown on an upcoming product.
Everything they announced was exciting in some way. I want to just go through each of them in turn now.
Mac OS Lion
In this era we’re in that people increasingly call the “post PC world”, you would think it would be tough to excite people with an update to a traditional desktop operating system.
If anyone could do it though, it’s Apple and they didn’t disappoint. The main new features in Lion which interest me are Launchpad, resume (includes auto save and versions) and full screen apps. All of these three new features are great additions for obvious reasons. Auto save is always going to be useful, and launchpad takes the best of iOS and brings it to the desktop.
In the past I’ve used several ways to launch my apps that weren’t in my dock. I’ve used quicksilver to type the first letter of an app to launch that way, by using a special launcher app I found, as well as what I do currently. This is to use the stacks feature of leopard to have an apps folder on the far right of my dock next to the downloads stack. Even though this works well, launchpad takes this further and really delivers the optimum app launching experience. It utilities the entire desktop and folders are a great way to organize desktop apps, just like I swear by them on my iPod Touch to keep me on top of my ridiculous number of apps.
If Launchpad becomes as successful as I think it could do, then we may see Apple make a change to the dock itself in future. They may make it restricted in how many icons can fit in it, just like on the iPhone, and then just give you a launchpad icon on the left to get to the rest of your apps. It would definitely tidy up the desktop and give it a more simplistic look, but I’m not sure if they would commit to this as it could upset some users who like their desktops to be a certain way.
Despite all of the great little changes that Apple have made in Lion, there are a few which I think may be overkill for most people. Most notably, mission control and the increased number of multi-touch gestures.
I’ve always loved the double finger scroll on my MacBook and I can certainly appreciate why gestures are useful for pinching, zooming and rotating for image manipulation. These are natural gestures and the work well. Where it gets to be overkill is with complex gestures involving up to three fingers. This isn’t really intuitive and I doubt many people will use these. I first realized this when Craig Federighi was demoing gestures at the back to the mac conference last year. He was struggling a bit with getting the gestures to work correctly. It may be true that he was doing it with a magic mouse, which isn’t so easy to manipulate as a track pad on a macbook, but I still don’t see it as a feature most people will make use of.
This brings me on to Mission Control. This feature seeks to combine expose, spaces, dashboard and full screen apps into one overview of your system. Personally, I really like expose so I hope they keep that as an option as well, as I don’t use spaces at all. With that said, it is still similar to that feature except that it groups windows of the same app together rather than spreading everything apart. You can spread open these groups but it’s not as easy as it used to be. I’ll have to reserve judgement until I can get to use it myself, but it definitely has potential for mainly power users I would assume.
It looks like Apple have done a good job here with Lion. It still looks a lot like Snow Leopard but looks can be deceiving. There’s definitely been a lot of good changes made. In the past, these upgrades have been on discs and cost around £80. This time, there are no discs, the price has been slashed by three quarters to just £20 and also gone are the family packs to enable the OS on all of your computers. Now, you just download it from the Mac App Store on every personal Mac you own.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to install it on my current MacBook as it’s 5 years old and isn’t fast enough to run it, which is a disappointment, but maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to upgrade to one of those new MacBook Airs that look great.
Come back for parts 2 and 3 where I’ll talk about iOS5 and iCloud.
