We all know that technology never stands still. It's constantly evolving, expanding, changing and offering new features and new possibilities. So it's a good thing to occasionally catch up with what's happening in the world of familiar technologies, like mobiles phones and broadband. These areas have seen giant leaps in the past year or so.
Mobile phones
It's easy to get carried away with the style and design of mobile phone handsets and forget about what's happening underneath the bonnet.
I recently got to use Motorola's new RAZR V3i and was amazed to find what was packed into this compact, wafer-thin handset phone. First, it's quad-band, which means you can use it in five continents. It also has a web browser, which means you can connect to the internet. And it also offers an always-on internet connection and multimedia messaging for sending text or images.
Camera phones are pretty common these days, but what may surprise anyone who bought one a year ago is how much picture quality has improved. The first versions were more like gimmicks than useful tools for taking snapshots, but the RAZR V3i has a 1.23 megapixel camera, which takes surprisingly good quality shots. Now, it's no match for my dedicated 5-megapixel digital camera, but I wouldn't always carry it around, whereas a mobile phone is almost always in my pocket.
Also included is Apple iTunes software, allowing you to download music files from your PC and listen to them on a built-in MP3 player. Throw in Bluetooth wireless technology, the ability to play Java games and the facility for storing multimedia (including video clips) on a tiny MicroSD memory card and you have an amazing amount of computing power in your pocket.
A shame then, that most schools still see mobile phones as a threat rather than as an opportunity for extending the use of ICT. I know there are management and security issues, as well as questions about who pays for using many of the features. But it's sad that a personal computer which many students have in their pockets is being banned rather than used as a useful ICT tool in the classroom.
Broadband
On the few occasions when my broadband connection goes down, I suddenly realise what an essential facility it has become - it's now basically a utility like gas, water or electricity.
Most homes have a broadband speed of around 0.5 to 1Mbps per second, but this could rise to up to 8 megabits per second thanks to a major upgrade of 5300 BT telephone exchanges, which BT says will result in 99.6 per cent of homes and businesses having access to much faster broadband.
The good news is that the faster speeds shouldn't cost more, as BT is not charging internet service providers for the upgraded service. That said, don't expect to automatically get an 8 megabit connection as even BT admits that in a trial involving 16,000 broadband users, almost 40 per cent didn't even make the 6Mbps mark. Even so, the faster speed should mean that streaming media like audio and video looks even better on a PC screen - and it will be much faster to download large files.
Some IT watchers are forecasting a broadband price war now that Carphone Warehouse is promising "free broadband for life" to subscribers of its Talk Talk 3 landline service. The service costs £10 per month, plus £11 line rental and a one-connection charge of £30. So for roughly £30 per month you get free calls to all UK landline-to-landline numbers plus calls to 28 countries - and an 8Mbps broadband connection.
Orange is also about to launch a free broadband service. This all sounds very appealing but there's more to broadband than just cost. Issues such as good service, support, reliability of the connection and contention ratio (the number of users that share your broadband link - the more users, the slower the connection speed) are also important, so bear this in mind before you make the switch.
Finally, the electronics company ROK has launched an intriguing device that links broadband to a mobile phone. The ROK Black Box plugs into your TV and broadband connection. Once you've installed some software on your mobile phone handset, you can watch live TV programmes on your mobile phone whenever you're in a wi-fi wireless internet zone (many public places including cafes, railway stations and even trains have these). The Black Box costs £250.
