Boffin Bulletin Magazine

Issue 2 - Feb 2013

Boffin Bulletin Magazine

2012 Boffin Bulletin Awards
The technology awards of 2012 by Boffin Bulletin have
been released. These have been well thought through
by all he team. Continued on page 3.

History Spot - From

Acorns to Mighty Oaks
Page 5

Ubuntu For Phones

Ubuntu for Phones,
previewed at CES is in
the release, starting
with a beta release for
the Galaxy Nexus.
Continued on page 4.

Sony Ends 13 Year

Production of PS2
Page 6

GameStick Hits $100 000

Target in 24 Hours
Digital Sales for 2012
a Record High
Page 7

GameStick, the
Android-based gameconsole that fits in a
stick the size of a pen
drive, hit its $100 000
target, needed to gain
funding from Kick
Starter, in 24 hours,
and then doubled in 48.
Continued on page 7.

Little Box of Geek Tutorial

Page 6
And Much More

Page 1

Boffin Bulletin Magazine

Issue 2 - Feb 2013

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Page 2

Boffin Bulletin Magazine

Issue 2 - Feb 2013

Boffin Bulletin Awards 2012
Smartphone of the Year

Winner Motorola Razor I

There were 6 major contenders here, the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S3, the HTC One X,
the latest Google Nexus, the new Nokia Lumia and the underdog the Motorola Razor I. We
selected the Motorola Razor I above the others partially as it has a reasonable sized screen;
The Galaxy, HTC and the Nexus have screens that are too big for most scenarios. The iPhone 5
was ruled out as it costs twice as much as the others and the OS is not open enough. The Nokia
Lumia is a very well designed phone. We like the funky styling and the screen size very much. A
great phone! Then they put Windows on it. Oh dear. My personal advice is to hack it and put the
new Ubuntu for Phones in place of the old, frankly useless OS. The Motorola is also very well
designed. A virtually edge to edge display that isnt to big or too insensitive. It has one of the
best phone OSs, Android (the latest version), a decent sized processor (1GB of RAM), and we
love the way Motorola have set up the OS. An SD card can be added to boost memory. Ooh and
the way it locks like an old television is amazing. And all this for a decent price! However, it lacks
a HD screen, yet you dont really notice in most cases.

Technical Release of the Year

Winner Raspberry Pi

It has to be really. Windows 8 is a joke, Ultrabooks run Windows and the iPhone 5 is too
expensive, has a little i at the start which is a nightmare for writers and is numbered incorrectly
(its the sixth iPhone). The Raspberry Pi is a great technical achievement, backed by a great
charity to try to get kids back into coding. All this for 25! The foundation have also managed to
squeeze an extra 256mb of RAM in in the latest model b, giving it 512mb, the same as Apples
latest iPod Touch.

Computer OS of the Year

Winner Ubuntu 12.10

The contenders were Windows 8, Mac OS Mountain Lion and Ubuntu 12.10. No contest. As I
have said earlier, Windows 8 is a joke. Mac OS is too closed; It is only available on Macs and
they cannot run a different OS unless you use a virtual machine. Ubuntu however is prettier than
a Mac, more user-friendly than either of them and faster than Windows 8 (not hard to do). It also
will not wear, unlike Windows. An Ubuntu computer or a Mac will still be running well in 5 years
time, where you will have had to rebuild your Windows computer a countless number of times,
you may as well give up. The only bad point of Ubuntu is its lack of software, but you cannot say
that anymore. It has certainly changed in the last few years.

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Boffin Bulletin Magazine

Issue 2 - Feb 2013

Ubuntu for
Phones

Boffin Bulletin Awards

2012 - Continued

Tablet of the Year

Winner iPad Mini

This was a hard call. The iPad Mini is more

expensive than the contest and has a worse
screen. Its also bigger. But the iPad is so light! It is
designed beautifully, made of aluminium and glass
and I love the way the back just flows seamlessly
into the front. The camera is also very good.

Social Site of the Year

Winner Twitter

Games Console of the Year

Winner GameStick

OK I admit, GameStick is not out yet and it was

started on the 1st of January 2013. The
GameStick is a 40 Android powered games
console squeezed into a little pen-drive sized stick.
It connects into your TV through HDMI and you
control it with a rather slick retro-style controller.

Ubuntu, one of the most

popular Linux-based operating
systems, is launching its phone
system which is able to run
desktop applications; It can even
launch the Ubuntu desktop when
docked into a monitor.
It currently can be downloaded
onto Samsungs Galaxy Nexus,
replacing the standard Android
system.
When on the desktop, you may
still use the phones
functionalities, such as calling and
texting.
The system is backed by
Canonical, displaying the first
major partnership act between
Canonical and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu for Android is also prospected. It will run alongside Android, at the same time, all
made possible as they both use the same Kernel Linux.
Ubuntu for Phones has to be installed by the user, however Ubuntu look forward to seeing
phones being shipped with its OS, and I think I might just buy one.
There are certain specifications needed for the OS, the stripped-down version requires not
all that much space and RAM, however the full whammy, with the desktop, will only fit highend phones with quad-core processors. More requirements are on Ubuntu's main web site.

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Boffin Bulletin Magazine

Issue 2 - Feb 2013

History Spot: From Acorns to
Mighty Oaks

This weekend I helped my son build a Gertboard for his Raspberry Pi. He learnt much about
soldering techniques, and a little questionable language, as we wrestled with these modern
fangled surface mount components, but miraculously we plugged it in to find it worked. This
week 31 years ago was a very different story. Id scraped together my Xmas money along
with every other penny I owned to buy my first PC. However this still only ran to an Acorn
Atom in kit form, leaving two days of soldering ahead of me. Unfortunately a dodgy chip
killed it at birth, and it was to be another 2 weeks before it was repaired. But it was worth the
wait.

Although it was soon overshadowed, and largely forgotten behind, other early personal
computers, the Atom was truly the start of a revolution. Whereas its distant cousin, the
Sinclair ZX80 seemed like a pumped up arcade console, the Atom seemed like a
downscaled University workstation in terms of design philosophy. This is hardly surprising
given its close links to Cambridge University. It was built around the 6502 processor with
around 8K of ROM for the operating system, and 2K of Ram for programs (although I had a
beefed up 3.5K version). For those too young to comprehend K, this is between a million
and a billion times smaller in every dimension to a modern PC. Yet this still seemed huge at
the time. The memory disappeared with the off switch. In theory you could store data on a
cassette recorder (again Wikipeda can help the under thirties check out this technology). You
could write a half decent pong game, or even space invaders with this level of kit, although
the invaders would qualify for a motability grant so slow was the processor. For real
enthusiasts who wanted to squeeze out more performance, the Atom OS had an unusual but
really powerful feature the ability to embed assembler code in programmes. Assembler is
the raw instruction set for the processor chip. Barely anyone since the mid 1980s has
programmed this way, but it gave you a fantastic, if grinding, insight to the inner workings of
a computer.

The Atom was the platform from which Acorn created the BBC Micro a few months later,
quickly assuming omnipresent and legendary status. Yet its nemesis had already appeared
in the form of the IBM PC. This was initially obscured by the high price tag for the PC, but
once clones started to appeared around 1984 the emergence of a standard and
manufacturing scale economies all but wiped out the rest of the home PC field. Acorn later
moved beyond the 6502 with the Archimedes, based around their revolutionary RISC
processor, but the game was already lost. By the late 90s, Acorn as a computer
manufacturer was no more.

Page 5

Boffin Bulletin Magazine

Issue 2 - Feb 2013

History Spot:
From Acorns to
Mighty Oaks
Continued

Sony Ends
13 Year
Production
of PS2

Despite this, Acorn was, and

remains in my opinion the UKs
most important technology
company since the Industrial
Revolution. Their microprocessor
subsidiary took their RISC
techniques to form ARM, which
dominates portable processors to
this day. Meanwhile the PC arm
moved into embedded solutions
and digital signal processing
leading to Broadcom, also market
leaders. For those who have
looked carefully at their
Raspberry Pi, these are the very
companies whose products and
talent sit behind this attempt to
bring computing back to the
masses. Perhaps just as
important are the people behind
Acorn, who have continued to
exert huge influence over both
the science and commerce of
technology in their later journeys.

Sony have announced they are to end the 13

year long production of the PlayStation 2.
The PlayStation 2 was released in 2000, and
has sold over 150 million consoles. It was so
popular it continued to outsell its descendant,
the PlayStation 3, three years after the PS3s
release.
Now rumours are escalating about a
PlayStation 4 going into production.
Despite the end of production, games for the
PlayStation 2 will still be developed. For
example, another game in the Final Fantasy
series will be released March 2013.
Overall, around 11 000 games have been
made for the PS2.

By Dr Jon

I was roaming around on the internet, as you do,

and came across a great tutorial in the "Geek
Gurl Diaries".

Little Box of
Geek Tutorial

It consists of making a little box which prints out a geeky statement on a thermal printer. I
would recommend you at least read/watch this tutorial, it teaches you a lot about GPIO
Python coding. The author, Miss Philbin is perhaps the coolest teacher out there. Here
are some links, enjoy!
Part 1: http://goo.gl/KfsMC
Part 2: http://goo.gl/2ZmUo

Page 6

Boffin Bulletin Magazine

Issue 2 - Feb 2013

GameStick Hits
its $100K Target
in 24 Hours

Digital Sales
for 2012 a
Record High
1bn was spent on digital music, video and
video games, a record high, in 2012.

GameStick, an Android based

gaming console the size of a pen
drive, hit its $100K target in just
24 hours. It was launched onto
Kick Starter on Jan 1st, and had
1 month to reach $100K to win
funding from Kick Starter. The
console has now gained 4 times
as much as the target, with 5
days to go.
GameStick's vision is to put a
gaming console on every T.V.,
meeting a number of criteria. First
it had to be affordable. $79
dollars is the price for one during
fund raising. Secondly, it had to
be small; the actual console is
the size of a pen drive. It slots
into the HDMI port of your T.V..
The controller had to be amazing
too. A sleek, retro design does
the job perfectly. Lastly, it had to
be easy for developers, so they
used perhaps the most open
mobile operating system there is
out there today, Android, changed
the design and put it on.
Developers can now talk to
GameStick and get help putting
their game on the console. Go
over to http://www.gamestick.tv/
for more details.

Digital music sales was up by 15%, digital

video sales up by 20% and digital video games
sales were up by 7%. Physical sales were down
by 17%, yet more bad news for the high street.
This bad news has recently been shown, after
HMV went into administration, luckily they've
been bought out, and Blockbuster announcing
large scale store shutdown.
The world of gaming is not trying to help its
high street either, with more people playing on
smartphones and hand-held consoles with
internet capabilities. Nintendo is becoming ever
more digital, with its DS consoles gaining the
ability to download items from the internet.
The future of high-street physical media items,
sadly, looks bleak.

Microsoft Look to Close

Windows Live
Messenger
Microsoft has alerted the users of its Windows
Live Messenger that it is closing down.
Microsoft's newly bought Skype is replacing it.
From after the closure, users will have to sign
into Skype with their Windows Live Messenger
ID to get all their contacts. Previous users of
Skype shall not be affected.

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Boffin Bulletin Magazine

On The Watchlist

Minecraft: Pi Edition
Raspberry Pi Model A
Apple Maps Update
Google Maps for iPad
GameStick Release
PS4

Follow us on:

@BoffinBulletin

boffinbulletin.org.uk

Signed:

AJ
Boffin Bulletin Chairman

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Issue 2 - Feb 2013