Short cuts

Paul Stephens takes a sideways look at the world of IT.

Published: 06/04/2010 | Last Revision: 07/07/2010

Product of the month

Hands-down (or at least eyes-down) winner of this month’s prestigious Short cuts POTM Award is the Green Eyes EyeCatcher, the world’s first videophone system to let you maintain eye contact. Vaguely reminiscent of those periscope toys used by eager schoolboys at football matches, it uses a system of angled mirrors to let you look at the screen and camera simultaneously, enabling you to have, “a conversation as effective and personal as a face to face visit.”

Would you really want to make eye contact with this man?

The units are perhaps a touch pricey at around €5,000 (£3,700) each but for that you do get a ‘life-size, broadcast quality’ picture over a 0.5 Mbps DSL link, a technological feat which will have xVid fans crying into their codecs with envy. And of course you get to help save the planet by not making all those carbon-belching business trips to eyeball your colleagues in person. GreenEyes Director Paul Dickinson (who’s also CEO of the slightly scary-sounding Carbon Disclosure Project) is bullish about the EyeCatcher’s prospects. “Like the Model T Ford, it is not the biggest or the most expensive,” he says, “but it is by far the best design and we expect, like Ford, to sell millions.” The biggest order so far appears to be 50 units sold to Unilever, but even Henry Ford had to start somewhere. For more information, or if you’re a fan of European underground film, we strongly recommend visiting www.greeniii.com (green iiis – geddit?) and downloading the Flash presentation. This shows sales manager ‘Jerry’ having his life transformed by eye-to-eye over IP – some of it, it must be said, with characters who look as if this might not be the first time they’ve been filmed by a camera hidden behind a one-way mirror. And the expanding green brain sequence is the scariest thing we’ve seen since cult TV-turns-you-mad movie Videodrome. Unmissable.

Upstaged!

Bill bids to back Bono. Thankfully Bono does not look to impressed with the idea.

We like to do our own irreverently jokey (OK - disrespectful) coverage of senior industry figures here at Short cuts so it’s a bit annoying when the biggest name of all starts poking fun at himself, and rubs it in by doing it in a big-budget video filled with lots of other Big Names who almost certainly wouldn’t answer our calls even if we had their numbers. So it’s with a certain grumpiness that we watched Bill Gates’ Last Day, a spoof of his final day as a full-time employee at Microsoft in which he explores second career options including edging out The Edge as lead guitarist of U2, and gets blamed for inventing Microsoft’s ill-fated Bob UI. We have to admit that it’s funny though (would-be rapper ‘Billy G’ is well worth seeing), and that Bill certainly does have some A-list mates, or at least a very big chequebook: Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama don’t come cheap, one way or another. Watch out also for Short cuts hero Steve Ballmer in a rare non-comic role. You can catch the video itself on YouTube here.

PHP class of the month

What would Short cuts be without its regular dip into the ocean of excellence that is the PHP class library? (Better – Ed). This month we’ve arrived at the Astrology section (it was always going to happen) where our pick of the offerings is Complete Horoscope by Ashraf Gheith. Complete it is, too, offering no fewer than 22 different types of horoscope from ‘Daily Flirt’ to ‘Monthly Career’ and retrieving the actual readings from the astrology.com website using Ajax. The package is ultra-simple to deploy but we’re not entirely sure about the results. For example, its ‘Daily Baby Scope’ reading for Aquarius was, “Stop thinking, and just do it. Sure, you might want to ponder the social implications of hosting another tea party in this age of globalisation – but don’t fret. Just have the party!” We’re still trying to work out what that’s got to do with babies (or how tea parties impact on globalization) but in the meantime you can check out the code at www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/3500.html and see it in action at www.paulspages.co.uk/hardcopy/astrology.

Zero to hero

Jonathan Schwartz illustrates the strategic importance of Sun's acquisition of MySQL in his blog.

How quickly fortunes change. In November we reported the pasting Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz took from commenters to his blog following his decision to replace Sun’s SUNW stock ticker symbol with JAVA. Now he’s a hero again, following his $1 billion acquisition of everyone’s (except Bill’s and Larry’s) favourite database company, MySQL AB. Despite going on a bit (as usual) and having the characteristically vague title of ‘Helping Dolphins Fly’, Jonathan’s blog entry on the subject made a very good case for the acquisition. Readers loved it with comments ranging from an ecstatic, “Way to go Sun!” to the more measured, “Congratulations for pulling this together and making Sun more relevant in the Web facing opportunities.” (albeit accompanied by the plea, “please do not put JAVA in the name!”). We’re glad this one’s worked out for you, Jon (and that guy’s probably right about the JAVA thing).

Island life

We thought you’d want to know that November’s Virtual Job Fair held on Luxembourg’s Second Life Business Island was a ‘significant’ success. 2,000 visitors turned up, 300 got interviews, and ‘50+’ are going to Luxembourg (the real one) for face-to-face meetings. We think it’s a shame they aren’t using 50+ EyeCatchers for the last bit and helping to save the planet, but even so it’s progress, and the organisers are so pleased that they’re doing it again in May. Visit www.working-worlds.com for details.