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HC2010 Conference: sitting uneasily?

Doubling the quality of thinking on the podium of the opening plenary session of HC 2010, veteran Professor Heinz Wolff arrived late and stole the show.

After listening to the platitudes and threadbare academic definitions of the three previous speakers, octagenarian Professor Wolff hobbled across the stage on crutches, followed at a respectful distance by a cushion for his rear carried by the session chair, and applied his razor sharp mind.

The UK's aging population would ensure healthcare became unaffordable, so it would be split into acute and community care, he suggested. Acute care, treating and operating on disease, would be the job of the NHS. Community care, watching out for your neighbours and helping to care for them, the job of the local community. To fund your own community care, you would acquire credits throughout your life by good deeds and community service. Agree or not, at least it was insightful and stimulating.

Which is more than can be said of Dr. Ben Goldacre's after dinner speech that evening. Delivered at the rate of the 36 barrel Metal Storm gun, his speech was too clever, too factual and too long. After 15 minutes I watched Blackberry ® smartphones (yes, I did look up the plural) being unsheathed and eyelids drooping.

But any who did drop off were galvanised to wakefulness by the first chord of Helter Skelter's set, so potent it immediately drove guests at the tables nearest the stage to the exit with the rest of us soon following. 'Was the enterainment no good?' asked one of the cloakroom staff as I left for my hotel 40 minutes later. 'About 200 people left all at once.' The band was very tight, I assured him, but their music inappropriate and too loud.

Though it has been relocated, recovered with go faster stripes and refitted with stereo headphones, the comfortable old chair that was the HC conference stands unsteadily.

iPad: genius?

BBC Breakfast hosted by Sian and Bill (my favourites) showed us the scruffily dressed but extremely rich and successful Steve Jobs launching Apple's iPad apparently the next monster to follow in the slipstream of iPod and iPhone.

Spencer Kelly (presenter of the BBC's gadget gorge Click) told us that the weighty iPad has a stand so you can use it sitting at a desk and comes with a QWERTY keyboard, which he described as "genius". Playing with too many toys has impaired your judgement, Spencer.

See previous discussion on FHIT about data entry and QWERTY keyboards.

iPhone not the One

Use IT now to help the people of Haiti.

I dismissed suggestions that I would become one. One of the spiral-eyed ring wraiths from Morden (and everywhere else) who ride the London Underground white stoppers in their ears and 6 inch square screens before their eyes through which they experience reality while reality passes by.

I was excited. My telecoms provider had called me to tell me that I could renew my contract and become a proud user of iPhone. I called a friend who enthused about its apps and gave me the impression it was the coolest thing since a morning dip in the Ford of Bruinen.

Almost convinced, I was passing a retail outlet and couldn’t resist taking a peek. What a shocker: the touch screen text entry system is one of the worst I have experienced. Even after a bit of practice my typing speed would have fallen by 25 percent at least.

One ring to rule them all? I’ll stick to my Blackberry. When it comes to a method of entering text which is quick, portable and unobtrusive we are still bound in darkness.

"One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings.

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