A survey by Comet has revealed that 48% of women now "feel more comfortable with technology than ever before". Does that make you wince, too? The statistic feels outdated, offensive and wrong for a whole heap of reasons.

Why should gadgetry have a gender? There's nothing masculine or feminine about a computer, phone, games console or operating system in the same way that there's nothing masculine or feminine about a door, bath, sofa or lampshade. They just exist.

Unfortunately, however, what does exist is bad design choices for all those things. Companies seem to go through a process a bit like this in the boardroom:

Executive 1: Surveys are showing that there aren't many women buying our mobile phones
Executive 2: Hmm. This is a problem. Women have money, and we want money.
Executive 3: What do women want from a phone?
Executive 2: A pink colour scheme! Flowery wallpaper! Frilly dangly bits! A compact mirror on the back!
Executive 1: Yes! That's it! Get that man a bigger office! Sod the recession, we're going to be quids in.

Don't misunderstand the point here - there's nothing inherently wrong with a phone, computer or USB drive that's pink, but make it pink because it looks good in pink. Or have a pink option among green, blue, black, white, indigo, burnt sienna, periwinkle and a host of other colours. Let people choose. Don't just make it pink because you want girls to buy it - they won't.

A completely unscientific survey we just conducted amongst six ladies revealed that amongst them, none have pink as their favourite colour. There were four greens, a red, and a blue, which suggests that female consumers aren't all that keen on pink anyway. And if they don't get a choice, it should be green - not pink.

Ir Stilma, Assistant Professor of Industrial Design Engineering at the University of Twente Enschede in the Netherlands, says: "gender should not be seen as men versus women, as different types of masculinity and femininity can be found in both women and men"

And female bloggers have written at length on how much they hate being treated differently. Priya Ganapati at Wired's Gadget Lab puts it well, saying: "Real women want stylish products. They want products that are fashionable, competitively priced and easy to use". They don't want special versions for their gender - they just want products that work.

It's no coincidence that the companies that get lauded most for their interface and design don't tailor them to a specific gender. There's a whole pile of examples we could take - Apple's minimalist white plastic and silver aluminium.?Spotify's dark grey and green. Google and Microsoft's friendly and accessible rainbows of colour.

It's not just colour, either. Rounded edges are appealing to both sexes. A nifty opening mechanism is awesome, whatever gender you are. Dyson's hoovers strike a blow for equality in managing to defeat the woman-doing-the-housework stereotype by being pretty much gender-neutral.

So here's what's wrong with Comet's survey. First of all, conducting surveys like the one it has is sexist, and reinforces stereotypes that are increasingly irrelevant, and offensive, in modern society. Second, products should be designed and built around functions - not target markets, gender or otherwise.

Thirdly, be imaginative with colour. Girls may like pink, but they might also like green, red, silver or black. Men might like pink too, and they might like brown, white, purple or gold. And lastly, remember that for some people, gender isn't just M or F. Homosexual, bisexual and transgendered consumers exist and need to be catered for too.

There's something that'll get Executives 1, 2 and 3 confused the next time they sit around the conference table.

Tags: Comment Gadgets Comet Features

Why should gadgets have a gender? originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:59:25 +0000

Pocket-lint has teamed up with video news site TechVi to bring you a weekly show analysing the biggest stories of the week.

Hosted by Randall Bennett and featuring members of the Pocket-lint team, this week Duncan gives us a lesson in all things Pirate Bay and shares his love of Spotify.

The Vodafone Pocket-lint Gadget Awards 2009 also gets a plug while the trio discuss the trend for "mini" versions of popular phones.

Hit the play button above, or for a more interactive video, where the web page jumps around the web as the stories are discussed, head over to TechVi.com.

Tags: Audio Video TechVi Comment Phones Software

Pocket-lint on TechVi: Mini phones, Pirate Bay changes and awards season originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:33:18 +0000

The latest episode of Pocket-lint's Tech Week In View has hit the small screen as a moustachioed Stuart Miles brings his unique take on the big tech stories of the last week or so.

Miles considers Rupert Murdoch's threat to build a pay-wall for News Corp's online content to stop everyone "stealing" it and there's the old faithful of the debate over violent video games as Modern Warfare 2 heads to the top of the charts.

Future tech also goes briefly under the microscope as Miles muses the technology he's seen of late and its implications for the near future.

Finally, has the Twitter bubble burst? An 8% dip in Twitter use in the States during October has seen nay-sayers suggesting that the micro-blogging site has peaked. Hit play on the video above to see Stuart's take on all this.

Tags: Audio Car And GPS Dad Gadgets Gaming Hardware Home And Kitchen Home Cinema Phones Cameras Software Sports Fitness Video Comment

VIDEO: Tech Week in View - Murdoch, violent games and the Twitter bubble bursting originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:18:15 +0000

The Prince of Persia film trailer has just hit the intertubes and with it our hearts both flutter and sink at the same time as we realise that it's going to be terrible. It may sound premature but anyone who knows anything about either games, films or ideally both, will know that out of countless console to silver screen conversions there has been a sum total of no good ones whatsoever. Yes, some have had brushes with the acceptable - Tomb Raider and Silent Hill at a push - but the fact remains that history just doesn't lie. Not here.

So, why are they so bad? What's the deal? First and foremost game plots just aren't up to it. At the best we get some lengthy cut scenes between gruff-talking men in over-sized armour between levels of dealing death to any creature that gets in the way of Player 1 and the next room/access key/elevator/bigger weapon/mushroom. They may contain over 200 hundred hours of gameplay but you could probably condense the storyline into around 20 minutes.

Even if these plots do have any staying power, then they're rarely as sophisticated as what hundreds of years experience of stage and screen writing can produce, and the results are laughable. We laugh, usually around an hour in, well after our hearts have been broken in two because our favourite title is being ridiculed in front of the world. The trouble is that video games aren't designed to be stories. They're games. They're about skill and puzzles rather than a meaningful narrative. There are narratives, more and more, and they're better than ever these days, but they're still tertiary to the structure of the game beneath both playability and graphical appeal.

Then there's characters who are largely two-dimensional. We don't really want to know about Ryu's anxiety when taking on Zangief and fortunately Capcom didn't bore us to death in case we did. Even more involved RPG or adventure pieces only ever get as far as overt emotions like fear or anger at current events and only at the most complex might we see a flashback from the character's past, and only then if it's germane to the plot. The point is that it's up to us, the players, to form the deeper reaction in response to a series of ruthless/kind/good/evil and if we're really lucky, traitorous characters. The added colour simply isn't written in for a very good reason - that of personal subjective involvement.

So, here's how the situation works given the already shaky starting materials. First, a game gets big enough and a movie producer gets bored enough to decide that they're going to make a film out of it. So, they plonk it down in front of an upcoming writer and director, most likely still learning their trade or they'd probably have an original or more worthy project on the slate. Faced with a thin plot and characters that no one's going to care about, they then do their level best to add some colour to the proceedings which is inevitably flawed, most likely because they won't be big players of the game, and what they fabricate will not be in the spirit of thing. Either that or they don't add enough and it's dull as ditch-water anyway.

They then present the project to similarly aspiring actors who take it on because, hey, it's work whereby a few months down the line and several million on special effects later we have one film destined to disappoint.? What's worse is that this film will make more money than it cost and so the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps the only good that's ever done is that the artists involved might have graduated to the higher echelons of film making by then. Good luck to them.

There are, of course, minor exceptions. Dennis Hopper was in Super Mario Bros, Angelina Jolie was Lara Croft and now Jake Gyllenhaal has taken the lead in the Prince of Persia, but these stars alone aren't going to be enough to fill all the gaps. Incidentally, if you want a real laugh, watch the DVD extras on Dungeons & Dragons for the out take where Jeremy Irons storms off the set. There's the look of an actor regretting the fact they got involved with it in the first place.

So, what of Prince of Persia then? Is it as doomed as we make out? Well, it's got a stronger plot than some. They've integrated the use of the Dagger of Time really nicely (I'm a sucker for films with time travel). They've got an excellent director in the shape of Mike Newell and a star studded cast with class acts like Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina supporting the adept and watchable Gyllenhaal, but a good game adaptation that's not necessarily going to make. What do they know about the Prince of Persia? Gyllenhaal has said himself that he's over-prepared for this movie by bulking up with five or six pounds in added muscle. Now, that doesn't sound like the right kind of training. How about a copy of the game, a dark room and bulking up with five or six pounds in added KFC?

Mercifully, the game's creator, Jordan Mechner, has been part of the team on the script, but time will only tell whether Jerry Bruckheimer listened to him or not. Still, most of you reading this will probably watch it, you'll probably hate it and you'll probably wonder why you fell for the same trick again. Thankfully, you'll probably have downloaded it for nothing too.

?

Tags: Gaming PS3 Xbox 360 PC games Prince of Persia Films Movies Comment

Why are game-inspired films so terrible? originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:38:52 +0000

Movember is upon us once more and that means plenty of talk about moustaches, moustache gadgets and of course not forgetting the main reason for the facial hair growth - helping raise awareness for?prostate Cancer.

Over the next 30 days the Pocket-lint team and others will be growing a moustache for charity. It's a tough job that from experience means we will be ridiculed, stared at, and worse still not get many kisses.

But fear not my hairless friends (that's you), it is not too late to join our hairy(ish) team.

We will be keeping a mo diary on the site so you can see our progress and expect plenty of related features exploring everything "Mo".

Men of tech! (that's you) join our brethren.

Read

Tags: Gadgets Bathroom gadgets Movember Comment Audio Car And GPS Dad Gaming Hardware Home And Kitchen Home Cinema Phones Cameras Software Sports Fitness

Gentlemen start your Mo originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:35:49 +0000

Another day, another industry in trouble, all because the company that promises to "do no evil" has entered its market.

The latest victims that are likely to fall foul of the search giant are the dedicated GPS makers. TomTom and Garmin both saw big drops in share prices on Wednesday (no doubt for TomTom on the back of poor Q3 results as well), however when someone with the cash of Google steps on your turf offering a product for free when you charge a premium, with no need to turn a profit in that division, surely its time to start panicking.

Google's presence in our lives is more prevalent that ever. Destroyer of industries, has Google become Skynet?

In the present

Searching

While companies like Alta Vista and Yahoo believed that search was just the start of a bigger media portal to entrap internet users, Google's clean "just search" mantra allowed it to steal the market, completely. Google is now the biggest search engine on the block and uses the cash it gets from placing ads next to those results to leapfrog into other sectors as well as fund the majority of its ventures.

Sending email

Why charge when you can give it away? Google's Gmail and subsequent Google Apps is slowly taking over the email space. Its free product here has signaled the death knell to email hosting companies across the world. In the Nineties, companies charged $1 for an email address, then they charged for storage. Now if you're paying for either you're considered behind the curve.

Watching video

Google bought its way into the online video market after its attempts with Google Video failed to gain traction against YouTube. A prime example of the need to control the space rather than actually making a profit, Google paid a $1 billion premium to claim the site as its own. In October it signed a landmark deal with Channel 4 in the UK to start screening on-demand TV shows. If the idea catches on and other TV stations sign up, could this signal the end of traditional television broadcasting?

Storing and selling photos

While Picasa doesn't have the clout of Flickr, it still allows you to manage your photos online. Add in the ability to sell those images, combine it with Google Images and you've got a competitor to services like Corbis, Getty and iStockPhoto. Google could theoretically then move to supply newspapers and magazines with the images it scours from its users and the Web - rewarding those users individually for their contributions.

Getting from A to B

It's already killed the online mapping industry (Multimap, Streetmap, et al) and now it's after the GPS sector with the launch of Google Maps Navigation. The new software app will be available on its mobile phone platform Android 2.0, and is likely to completely turn the GPS market on its head. Constantly up to date maps, live traffic, points of interest pulled from its search database and the usual Google price (free) means TomTom, Garmin, Navman, et al, are going to struggle to justify the premium price.

Reading news

Google's news service, be it via the Google News pages or Google Reader product, has had two effects. It has allowed many websites to gain exposure to a host of new readers, but it's also caused concern with old school media barons, like Rupert Murdoch, for destroying their readership and making people promiscuous readers. No longer does the Old Media have the power over the newsstand that they once had. With the flick of a switch Google has the power to stop the traffic dead, or allow it to flow.

Buying books

Google has digitised hundreds of thousands of books already and now the company is launching its own eBook store to challenge the booksellers of this world, like Barnes & Noble. Why would you pay for a book if you could get a digital copy for free on the proviso that you had to look at a couple of ads every 20 pages?

Buying physical music

Who needs to go into a HMV or Best Buy to buy your CD when you'll be able to search for the music and buy at the click of a button instead? iTunes might have empowered us to embrace digital music downloads, but the world moves fast. Why offer a dedicated piece of software you've got to open when clicking directly at the moment you search for it would be a more gratifying experience? The idea of buying a CD on the high street and then taking it home will be dead in 5 years.

Writing letters

Microsoft has already seen its Office market affected by the launch of Google Docs, Google's cloud based office suite. Those needing to write a letter to the bank manager no longer need to buy expensive software. They can just point their browser in the right direction, create a document and then promptly offer to share it with the bank manager instead. If he's your Google contact, anyway.

Making a call

Google Voice is Google's Skype, except that it's not content with you just chatting in a desktop client. It wants your voice calls and voice mail as well. While only available in the US at the moment, the system allows you to port your voicemail from the operators to their service. Add that to the ability to make free national calls and international calls for as little as 2 cents a minute and it's likely to be a blow to phone companies who are already suffering from mobile operators stealing their customers. When was the last time you made a call from your landline?

Tracking news

Once upon a time PR agencies used to hire tracking companies to monitor how they performed in the media. Google alerts and RSS feeds soon put an end to that. With the introduction of Twitter into the search stream, companies will soon be able to monitor the coverage they get even as they are making the announcement.

Making an appointment

When was the last time you wrote on or in a paper calendar? Aside from offerings with cute pictures of cats and puppies, naked firemen, or your favourite pop star, the paper calendar has been relegated to the cheap Christmas gift. Google's shareable electronic calendar means greater connectivity for all, but it's another industry on its way out thanks to the Goog.

Reading magazines

The decline of the magazine industry isn't entirely Google's to claim, but the power of products like Blogger that empowered a generation to write their own content has helped to slowly eat away at the power of the media. Now you don't have to wait a month to get the latest news and opinion - you can create it on your phone and let the world know there and then.

Stock prices

Remember when you used to get the share prices in the newspaper and that those pages dominated the business section? The prices are still there in some pages, but the news is out of date before you can even find what you are looking for. How long before that data is gone completely?

How do you spell...

Dictionaries are the lifeblood of our language, as are translators. Both of which are likely to be ditched, and out of work. Google's "Did you mean...?" search means you can guess at the word you don't know, while its translate service, while still rough around the edges, saves the need for you to learn another language. You speak English right?

Mobile operating systems

It's already taken Motorola's internal OS and it could soon take Symbian - the Open Source OS. That's right, Google's Android mobile phone operating system is, and will most likely over time destroy Nokia's OS. Android 2.0, due out on 6 November in the US, is light years ahead of anything coming out of other manufacturers (except perhaps Apple) at the moment. Will handset manufacturers have to embrace Google to succeed?

Desktop operating systems

Not content with the mobile space, Google is planning a desktop OS that will eradicate the need to pay for an operating system. Apple has already seen the price it charges for its OS cut down to $25, but how long will it be before the company has to give it away to entice consumers to stay with it rather than move to the Chrome OS? When consumers do flock to the new OS, Microsoft will have lost its foothold on the boot-up. It might control 90% of the market now, but what about in 10 years time?

Surfing the web

The company that exists only on the Web needs to make sure it has a route to entry and that's Chrome. Currently only taking around 6% of the browser market, it's one of the only areas in Google portfolio that is not about to destroy an industry, but Chome has won praise for its speed, functionality, and how it just gets out of the way of your web browsing experience.

Brainstorming meetings

MSN, Yahoo, iChat - you remember those don't you? Google has two products here that are hoping to destroy all others in their path. Google Talk is a straight up IM client, but the company's Google Wave product is something different. In the future, the chance to grab a meeting room and a company paid-for Danish will disappear thanks to the ability to follow the conversation online as it happens. Heck, why would you even need an office?

Taking a pill

Google Health is likely to swarm in and within a couple of years dominate the medical industry. Once it has enough data, imagine what it could tell you about pandemics, medicine and more importantly how that data could be sold and monetised. Google insurance anyone?

Saving you energy

Google PowerMeter smart metering system has launched in the US and will soon be arriving in the UK. It should allow users to monitor their power consumption and bring down electricity prices while saving the planet. In turn, that will cause chaos in the industry as the market is forced to offer lower and lower prices.

Posting a comment to a blog

Earlier in the year Google bought ReCaptcha, the way that virtually all comment systems on the internet clarify that you are a human rather than a robot trying to spam. What they plan to use this for isn't yet clear, but it wouldn't be hard to use the system to see who comments on what and whether they are a threat to the system. Google Wave could also hook into blog comment systems, providing real-time comments on articles.

The daily commute and the office

Using all of the above you won't need to venture into the office to work in the same building as your work mates. You can already see it happening now. I write this based in New York, before it goes to the rest of the team to read dotted around the UK and the world. Even better, some of the people who've read this before it's gone live I've never even met in person.

Who's next?

With Google in virtually every facet or your data life, there are still plenty of areas Google can go.

Education

Google has yet to tap up the education sector as well as it could. What about exam marking services, school report card systems so it can track your details from an early age and then Alumni services. It's a market ripe for the picking.

In-car entertainment

Google isn't, yet, fussed about hardware, but with a move into navigation, it could easily start offering music, radio and other information services like weather into the car. Or perhaps it'll access the car through its mobile OS. Either could prove fruitful.

Writing a note

Goodbye Mont Blanc, goodbye Biro. The more people that use Google Voice and its voice control offerings on Android the better - Google's computers will get more of an understanding of what we say and how we say it. Do you really think you'll be writing with a pen in 20 years time?

Watching television

We've already seen that Google's YouTube is stealing TV hours, but what if it launched a free EPG service that offered more social interaction with your TV as well as web access as standard? Goodbye EPG software makers. Android for the TV it is then.

When will Skynet, we mean Google, become aware?

Think about all the above examples and now think about all the data. Google is very quickly amassing a massive amount of data on its users, everything from what you read, what you email, what you search for, what you listen to, what you watch, where you go, who you call, what messages you've left for them, what pictures you store, what pills you are taking and even what you can't spell. Add that to the possibility of school records, job history, and for the first time in history a single company will be able to build a digital profile of you better than one that you probably could, given the same tools.

The question is, is that okay? For many it's not an issue. Google empowers its users to mine for data better than any other company on the planet, but when it becomes aware, what happens then?

?

Tags: Comment Software Online Google Features

29th August 2012: the date Google becomes "aware" originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:14:26 +0000

Stuart Miles brings us his customary comment from NYC with a look at the talking points from this week in tech.

Under the spotlight in this instalment is Apple's Magic Mouse and whether this is the beginning of the end for the button and the launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.

Miles also muses the rise of real-time search with the news that Google and Bing are due to integrate Twitter content into their search results as well as offering thoughts on Google's Social Search.

The fact that Nokia is suing Apple for patent infringement is the final topic under consideration - is the Finnish giant protecting its patents or looking for a quick cash injection? Hit play for more...

Tags: Audio Car And GPS Dad Gadgets Gaming Hardware Home And Kitchen Home Cinema Phones Cameras Software Sports Fitness Comment Video

VIDEO: Tech Week in View: Magic Mouse, Social Search and Nokia sues Apple originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:05:00 +0000

After a brief summer break, Megawhat is back on Pocket-lint with a brand new Tech Week in View episode for your viewing pleasure.

Pocket-lint's Stuart Miles talks tourists on Segways and tells us why he thinks the new Sonos S5 is a tidy bit of kit.

Miles also considers the Amazon Kindle's UK launch (was it a bit of a rush job?) and looks at what the? T-Mobile Sidekick data loss might mean for the cloud computing industry.

Watch the video above now to see it all play out, and stay tuned for more comment from Pocket-lint soon.

Tags: Audio Car And GPS Dad Gadgets Gaming Hardware Home And Kitchen Home Cinema Phones Cameras Software Sports Fitness events Comment Video

Tech week in view: Tourists on Segways, the Kindle in the UK and trouble in the cloud originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:42:19 +0100

The days of the mobile phone being just a device for making emergency calls are far behind us, but while most of us have handsets that can at least play music or download our email on the go, the biggest fear now facing mobile phone operators and carriers around the world is the ability to use the mobile Internet connection that we all feel is our right, to stream live television over the network.

They say you wait forever and then two buses come at once. And that's exactly what happened for the iPhone in the last seven days. Not one live streaming TV service, but two were launched. The result is that O2 in the UK has had to issue a warning over the?TVCatchup iPhone site, one of the services that if users use too much, means they could be cut off.

Meanwhile AT&T in the US had to move in to get a new app by TV tuner maker?Elgato?that allowed users to stream television from a TV tuner plugged into their Mac directly to their iPhone over the 3G network, changed.

While Apple has the power to force a change in the app, something they have?done, and O2 to block the streaming service, something they are threatening, other handset platforms, which are more open, like Android or Symbian, don't have as operator friendly approach and that's before you even start to address jailbroken apps that allow offerings like SlingPlayer Mobile to work on the 3G network.?

The problem of course isn't about you watching television, although it does raise questions about TV licensing laws in the UK, but about the strain on the network.

Strangely operators like O2 and AT&T are already struggling under the strain of supplying data requests to all it's smartphone users. Add in a constant stream of large amounts of data, i.e., from a popular streaming TV service, and I wouldn't be surprised if the networks around the globe buckle massively under the strain.

Forget the previous concerns of the operators in losing revenue over VoIP calls, thanks to services like Skype and Google Voice, think about the cost of managing a network that is now about data, rather than calls without the ability to charge SMS prices.

So what's the solution? In the short term I wouldn't be surprised if mobile operators moved to either ban them outright or move to create a tiered data system aimed at those who want to consume the larger data content over those that don't.

We might have moved into an "all you can eat" pricing model at the moment in the form of "unlimited" packages, but that is no longer beneficial for the operators for the admittedly minority users who are heavy consumers of data.

While I would love to believe that heavy data users will be able to continue as is, I just can't see that happening. A tiered system based on speed or data consumption would benefit virtually everyone just as it does in the fixed (landline) broadband market. Those who need to stream movies or games can do so with a service that fits their needs, and more importantly have the right to complain if it doesn't. Those who just need email or basic websurfing can do that too.

Whatever the handset or the app one thing is certain - the headache facing operators on how to manage the network, and therefore our expectations of it are only going to get worse.

Tags: Comment Phones AT and T O2 iPhone Elgato TVCatchup Mobile phone apps iPhone apps SlingPlayer Mobile SlingPlayer

TV streaming has mobile operators running scared originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:05:12 +0100