This day 60 years ago, the first modern computer, nicknamed the Manchester “Baby” was switched on to run it’s first successful program. Baby was the first computer to store information digitally, using a Cathode Ray Tube (or CRT), and is the predecessor for how we store information in modern RAM chips.

The invention and concepts 60 years ago were monumental after people realised for the computer to be of any real use, the information would have to be stored permanently and electrically by the machine. Although the data was added by hand, the Baby would constantly read and refresh the bits on the CRT, it’s memory, electronically to keep them from decaying, and is a concept still in use by RAM today. By the time it was revealed this method was capable of storing 4096 bits.

The first program was run on the Baby, this day 60 years ago. One of the inventors, F.C. Williams, spoke of the monumental occasion, “A program was laboriously inserted and the start switch pressed. Immediately the spots on the display tube entered a mad dance. In early trials it was a dance of death leading to no useful result, and what was even worse, without yielding any clue as to what was wrong. But one day it stopped, and there, shining brightly in the expected place, was the expected answer. It was a moment to remember. This was in June 1948, and nothing was ever the same again.”

So here we are, with the second instalment of Apple’s global domination plan, and what difference is it making to our lives?

OK, firstly I must hold my hands up and say that I am not an iPhone owner or user. I haven’t gone out of my way to get one, because to be completely honest I have more important things to spend my money on. Not that I begrudge anyone who has a few extra notes to spare, to throw it in Apple’s direction. One question really does keep popping up in my mind though - and I’m struggling for the answer..

Does anyone actually care about the iPhone? I mean, I’m in the UK so obviously it’s not going to be as big as it is in America - and also there’s the whole “if I subscribe to a contract, I expect a phone for free” mentality in this country, but I don’t think that explains the whole deal here. When I look around at the average person, I see people who have Nokias, and Samsungs, and Sonys and any other mobile phone make you’d like to throw in there. I don’t see many iPhones though (Not even a handful, to be completely honest.)

So it lead me on to a question (I’m getting good at these). Who actually buys iPhones? With millions and millions of them sold, surely I would be able to see a few in the street when I walk about, without living in San Francisco? And with the new version coming out very soon, with 3G and GPS and all other good things like that, surely everyone would be talking about them, no? Well no, and I think I know the reason. Bloggers. People like me and others spend all our time talking about them, and buying them, that everyone else is quite content to read it and move on. I think the vast majority of people that have bought iPhones are either bloggers, people involved in the tech industry, people who want or associate themselves with the tech industry or people that are quite happy thinking they’re with the “in crowd” (iCrowd?) and also believe that having an iPhone is the reason people will think they’re “cool.” Don’t get me wrong - it’s a great piece of kit, with some really intuitive and useful features - but does that make it essential to your average Joe in the street?

Don’t worry - the Mission Impossible link is completely warranted here, as this idea was launched with Mission Impossible 3 in Japan last year. So the idea is Flexplay made a DVD with a certain air-reactive chemical on the surface, that when opened from it’s air-tight packaging makes the DVD useless in 48 hours.

So what’s the point? Why not just go to Blockbusters - why would the film studios think this is a good idea - other than as a gimmick? Then there’s the question of what happens to your DVD player if it’s playing one of these when the chemical goes off! Plus if you wanted to keep it, what’s stopping you making a copy like a regular DVD? I think I’m saying that I’m struggling to see the benefit (cost or otherwise) to this idea! Thankfully not available in the UK yet (if they ever will be).

No sooner do I mention small laptops, and in particular the Eee PC’s from Asus, than Tech Radar report the Ebox, their soon-to-be-released desktop version.

Completely different to the Xbox (which is what I keep saying as I read it), the Ebox is thought to be Linux based, supporting the same apps as the Eee PC, and is to be unveiled next week. The home user will probably not be able to get their hands on the Ebox for a few months yet unfortunately, but when you can it should make an excellent second PC, as it comes with 160Gb HDD and 2 Gig of RAM.

Well, you can’t actually buy an open source laptop from VIA, but you can download the specs and get the chips from VIA. The laptop itself, featured in a techcrunch article, is another one of those “small form-factor & cheap” deals that everyone seems to be jumping up and down about. Laptops like the OLPC, the Eee PC & Intel’s Classmate. I’ve always thought that if you want a laptop for surfing, get yourself on Ebay and buy a cheap Compaq and install Linux on it. A quick surf reveals one with Windows 98 on for just £10. Of course it won’t win any beauty contests like the others here, and will probably deduct cool points instead of adding them, but it can’t be beaten for surfing.

Spy equipment is within the reach of anyone now as technology has become cheaper and smaller, gone are the days when you would have to fork out £3,000 for a miniature video camera. Now you can simply visit our industrious friends in China to get your hands on some really cool gadgets.

The “Spy Tie”, featured to the right, comes complete with a video recorder you pop into your pocket to capture the images from the tiny camera hidden in the tie. Although, by the picture, why you would want to take video of two people messing about with shaving foam is beyond me - unless it was going to be aired after midnight. On board memory is 1Gb, which is expandable with a memory card too. Other examples from this company are a packet of chewing gum with an inbuilt video camera, spy “sunglasses” that shoot video of your peripheral vision and various wireless recording devices. I spent most of my time wondering why I would want any of these things, but still felt myself wanting them anyway!

Every now and again, two of my favourite subjects come together (No, not blackmail and hard discs) - Technology and Motorsports.

Formula 1 star of the McLaren-Mercedes team, Lewis Hamilton, has been the focus of a blackmail attempt by a man in Germany, named simply “Dieter.” Dieter somehow obtained a hard drive, that had supposedly been disposed of some months before, that contained documents and other personal information. For those who are unfamiliar with the McLaren-Mercedes scandal of last year, the team were found guilty of using secrets from another team to improve their own car - and this hard drive could possibly had more such evidence on it. Trying to sell the hard drive to the German motorsport magazine, “Bild”, Dieter was arrested by police after the magazine tipped off the authorities, as reported by the Daily Telegraph today.

So how do you properly and permanently remove sensitive information from your hard disc?

Remember - when you delete things in Windows the data is usually still there - just because you can’t access the information doesn’t mean somebody else won’t be able to. The very nature of deleting a file just means renaming the first character of the filename, to let the system know the space it takes up can be used for new files - and the data is still there until new files are written in the same place. And even if the space the file used to occupy is overwritten with different files, there are techniques that can be employed to find out what used to be on the surface of the disc. Once you know this, you need something a little better than the recycle bin in windows to remove your sensitive data, and there are three methods you can use to do it:

The first way is with a program that allows you to securely delete files - rather than by using the recycle bin in Windows, download Eraser. It has a drag and drop interface that allows you to do a multiple-pass wipe so that the bytes the file occupies get overwritten properly, making it practically impossible to retrieve the data that used to be your file. Amongst others, by default, it uses the “Gutmann” method of wiping that employees 35 separate passes of specially selected data to make sure nobody can retrieve the information, chemically, from the drive. This should be enough if you just need to remove the odd file that’s a bit sensitive. It is geared towards doing things in batches, so you could drag files you want to remove into the program and before you log out, process them all in one go. This takes care of single file deletes.

The second way is a little more abstract, and Eraser is up to the task of removing this type of data too. Remember when your files are removed, they aren’t actually erased, the space is allocated back to the system to write files into? Baring this in mind, all the files you’ve deleted previously, will have data scattered all over the drive, in places ready to be overwritten, but for whatever reason the system hasn’t got around to using yet. So the second method is to wipe your free space on the drive. Every byte that isn’t allocated to a file will be subjected to the same rigorous treatment, using the same methods.

When you’ve come to the point when you’re ready to throw the hard drive away and want to be sure there’s nothing left on it, the last method to remove data is to wipe the whole drive. And the best way to do this is to melt it down! Failing that, if you don’t have a kiln in your house, try DBAN (Darik’s Boot And Nuke). Download DBAN, burn it to a CD, boot from that CD and you will be able to wipe any drive in the system with multiple passes of random data. Eraser, above, also supports wiping whole drives and can create a “Nuke Disc” to boot from. DBAN, however is a personal favourite, and I’ve never had problems with using it. This should securely remove the data - although of course, nothing is as secure or cool as melting it - plus you get the added advantage of doing something cool to video and put on youtube!

An odd one, this one. Microsoft filed a patent on December 20th, 2006, for a device called the “Guardian Angel”. The idea is to have a device to detect the number of people in a room, single them out and recognise them. And then gather information on them, presumably from the net, about previous convictions and stuff.. Hmmm, not saying that people need to be safe, but two things come to mind straight away:

1) If there are dangerous people in the room, shouldn’t they be in another room, like, oh I dunno, a jail or something?

2) If the device flags someone as “dangerous” I guess it doesn’t matter if that person has already served his time, and probably gone through rehabilitation? The person could be completely different to his criminal record now.

So I think I’m saying this is a massive invasion of privacy, and straight away sets a machine up to pass judgement on someone else in the room. Surely this is wrong? The original article by slashdot can be found here. Another interesting feature of the Guardian Angel was a “heart monitor” like people need a machine to tell them they’re having a heart attack, or that they’re dead? Well I guess it hasn’t stopped Microsoft in the past for providing “features” to things that they think the buying public need - just look at Vista..!

Not technically “legal”, or at least according to Apple’s EULA, Psystar have been creating PCs for the last month with OSX pre-installed. So popular are they that they’re unable to fulfil their orders, with various credit card authorisers buckling under the pressure. And because of the suspension of orders on their website, and them moving to new premises, people were getting suspicious thinking maybe it was a big scam.

Well it’s not a scam and the proof is here! A Psystar created PC with Leopard pre-installed. Although, according to the guy who bought it, it won’t patch online, it’s cheaper than having an Apple-created Mac. I’m sure Steve Jobs will put an end to it fairly soon, so if you’re after a Mac, can’t afford the cost, then maybe you should give Psystar a visit.

A quick post - My wife sent this to me today, and I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s brilliant. It’s like a story from the computer’s point of view and what happens when a peripheral thinks it knows better than the user… Read it now!