I have been meaning to write this post for a long while, but following the recent negative press around one of the recruiters that is particularly active in the same space as the business I work for (not mentioning any names CONSOL PARTNERS), I thought now would be a good time to share some of my experiences of using the services of Consol and similar agencies.

But first a recap on the story of the moment, as reported here by The Kernal and discussed some more on The Recruiting Unblog –

Consol allegedly had a candidate that they arranged two interviews for, a couple of days apart. At the interview at the first company (the source for the original article) was informed by the candidate that they had received an offer from elsewhere. After the interview the source informed Consol that they wouldn’t be taking the candidate any further and asked for them to inform her/she so that they could accept their outstanding offer from elsewhere. This is when the foul play occurs – it is alleged that Consol then decided not to tell the candidate in order to provide themselves with a better chance of persuading them to attend their next interview. Long story short – the candidate ends up missing the deadline for their existing offer after a series of false messages were relayed to them telling how the first agency hadn’t provided any meaningful feedback.

This is obviously a terrible example of how working with recruitment agencies can go horribly wrong (for agencies and indeed candidates) but I have to be honest I am not at all surprised. At my place of work we regularly receive in excess of 10 calls in a day from various agencies, often insisting that they are not recruiters and many that lie in order to try and get through to individual members of our staff. There are certain agencies that we have asked not to call us at all based on our previous experience and those of our peers and we try to be open and honest about it and just ask them to mark us not to receive phone calls. One of these agencies actually resorted to sending snail mail to us this week, and have in the past sent embarrassing grovelling emails to various members of our team to try and get us back on side again. I’m still considering if I have the time / energy to return the mail to them and once again request that they don’t take any more of our time!

I completely understand the need for these legitimate businesses to go about their day to day activity, but when a potential customer is so put off by your nauseating sales tactics that they actually ask you to refrain from contacting them again, you really do need to pay attention to that and have some self respect. I understand that the staff turnover in this target driven environment is pretty rapid, but I don’t need to hear about you taking over the patch from the previous employee every 3 months when they inevitably fail to meet their probationary sales targets, and all about how you are better / the best / the best thing since sliced bread – I’m not terrifically interested.

The worst calls we get are generally from the non-specialist agencies – in many cases the callers are either aggressive to staff members who don’t allow them to be put through to decision makers, or so desperate that they decide to pepper our inboxes with unsolicited CVs from candidates that have no idea they are being sent to us – the recruiters are just hoping to strike it lucky. On more than one occasion in the last 12 months highly confidential emails from our competitors have been inadvertently forwarded to me (whenever this has happened I have immediately emailed the person whose privacy has been breached and then deleted the emails – often receiving hilarious yet irate responses directed at the recruiters with myself copied in).

I suppose the point I am rambling towards is that the issue of recruitment agencies and their benefits will always be individual to the agency in question, and to the recruiter as well. As an industry recruitment needs to improve … and fast. With an increased uptake in social media usage for job seeking and the culture for digital agencies to be very accessible, our reliance on recruiters (as an industry) for full time positions is at an all time low. Great candidates contact us direct every week, and we are very happy to hear from them. My own personal exception comes with contractors, particularly designers and developers – and working with recruiters for this type of hire is occasionally (but not always) less stressful and something I have had positive experiences from with a very select group of suppliers.

So, some tips for working with recruiters and getting the most out of the experience:

• Do your research! Ask any recruiter you are thinking of working with for an in-person meeting to discuss your needs and how you want to work with them. Confirm the process for selection and any relevant dates / times for how you want it to run.
• Ask for references from their existing clients – not only for the candidates, but for the recruiter themselves. Any good recruiters will be happy for you to talk to their clients and find out what they think of working with them.
• Make a decision as a business, and stick to it. Do we need the help of recruiters, if you don’t then make it a blanket decision across your team and ensure that everyone knows what to say if you receive prospecting calls. There is no point in wasting everyone’s time.
• Create a preferred supplier list with an expiry date. Work only with the guys who pass your research phase and don’t even entertain input from outside this list. Refresh your list annually or when a recruiter is no longer performing well for your business. Put the PSL in a visible spot in your office (we have ours written up on the whiteboard) and make sure that those who answer the phones regularly know to check the list before putting anyone through. Prepare a little message for those who argue about this and be calm, and efficient when dealing with persistent callers from outside the list.

Recruitment as an industry has a horrific public image (right up there with parking attendants and employees of HMRC), but if you pick a rogue recruiter without performing the same basic due diligence you would perform before working with any new organisation then you only have yourself to blame. The goal of this post isn’t to be sensationalist – or to pile more abuse onto Consol, who I am sure will have had enough of this by now – but rather to provide a public service announcement:

PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Please note: No recruitment consultants were harmed in the making of this post. The image is merely a terrible stock shot.

Many online communities are plagued with SPAM posts and contain a vast amount of unwanted content that becomes a real bind to monitor and take action against. In order to create efficiencies and ensure that moderator time is spent promoting content and starting conversations, rather than just deleting SPAM posts it is recommended that Mollom is used to automatically prevent this promotional / abusive content from ever making it onto the site.

Mollom is a web service that analyzes the quality of content posted to websites. This includes comments, contact-form messages, blogs, forum posts, etc. Mollom specifically tries to determine whether this content is unwanted – i.e. “spam” – or desirable – i.e. “ham.” Websites that allow visitors to contribute or post comments are constantly being flooded with inappropriate, distracting or even illegal commercial messages, many of which are uploaded by automatic “spambots.” Mollom screens all contributions before they are posted to participating websites.

Websites using Mollom send data they want checked to mollom.com, and Mollom replies with either a spam or ham classification. If Mollom is not certain, it will return an “unsure,” typically prompting websites to ask Mollom’s CAPTCHA server for an audio or visual CAPTCHA challenge to present to the user.

Benefits to organisations from using Mollom:

• Automatic moderation of user generated content based on text analysis reduces the amount of post moderation checking required by the moderation team.
• Ability to mark suspicious content for moderation automatically without allowing it to be published immediately, thus allowing suspect content to be checked at a later date when the moderator has time, rather than allowing it to be published and needing to remove it when it is discovered.
• Simple and quick to integrate with the existing set-up of the community site, including the private messaging module we are using, low overheads in terms of maintenance, the system looks after itself and is maintained by the providers leaving little or no overhead in terms of developer time.
• Allows simple management of blacklists and profanity all via the CMS – add your own words quickly and easily as they become an issue, without the need for a developer. This is all integrated into the moderation dashboard and can be easily accessed by any user with appropriate permissions.
• Can set permissions so that users can be excluded from the automatic moderation, for example admin / content editors don’t need to be checked. This ensures that content editors / moderators can enter content whenever required without needing to pass Mollom checks.
• 3 levels of checking – Spam, Ham or Unsure
  • Unsure produces a CAPTCHA for verification before allowing the post published
  • Spam can be sent directly for moderation, the user can see the content but nobody else can see it yet
  • Ham gets published to the site automatically
• Mollom allows site administrators to mark content as spam, allowing the automated spam filter to learn and protect the site against future abuse of the same nature.
• The pricing is based around real posts, you don’t pay for all of the SPAM posts so the package required initially can be lower during the beta phase and then upgraded as users switch to the new site.
• Mollom was created and is maintained by Dries Buytaert, the person that made Drupal. It integrated seamlessly with the Drupal framework and provides rock solid protection that feels like part to the system and not like a bolt-on module. As a consequence of this Mollom is bundled with Acquia Commons, the Drupal distribution recommended for community sites, and has been heavily tested by the Drupal developer community.
• It is likely that the cost of the subscription will be greatly outweighed by the anticipated savings in both time and cost v a more traditional moderation approach where staff members are required to continually patrol the site looking for “bad” content.

Find out more about Mollom here: http://mollom.com/

Technology blogs and news sites have struggled with the quality of their user generated content for almost as long as they have existed. The comments section at the bottom of any tech related post is often be a dangerous place to be, as users discuss their passions with their peers, often seeking to get one over on supporters of another games console, operating system or mobile ecosystem. Forums are traditionally segmented down to a specific user interest, with little opportunity for sharing of ideas outside a users immediate peer group, and are often frequented by users (referred to as trolls) who look to deliberately ruin the experience of others that they disagree with by posting abuse, off-topic comments or by attacking genuine users.

Engadget.com (a popular tech news site owned by AOL) has struggled for several years to improve the quality of the comments section at the bottom of posts. Various tactics have been employed, including complete removal of the commenting functionality for a nominated period of time, with the goal of reminding users that the ability to comment on their content is a privilege and not a right. The Editor in chief will post reminders about etiquette every few months, and new technologies such as Disqus have been rolled out in order to encourage the use of social network accounts in order to capture “real” identities and encourage them to behave more like human beings and less like feral animals hunting through the bins outside a busy restaurant.

“Hey guys, we know you like to have your fun, voice your opinions, and argue over your favorite gear, but over the past few days the tone in comments has really gotten out of hand. What is normally a charged — but fun — environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations… and that’s just not acceptable. Some of you out there in the world of anonymous grandstanding have gotten the impression that you run the place, but that’s simply not the case.” 

Feb 2010 – Engadget.com turns off commenting

These efforts have proven largely ineffective, and have done little to encourage user input of a higher quality. Users are used to being treated as children, subject to draconian moderation and deletion of comments, along with limited control over how their posts are presented on the site – and as such they often behave as children, becoming preoccupied with being the FIRST to comment on a new post, provoking arguments with other users and generally being a nuisance. All of this does little to encourage the cultivation of a new user base, with the vocal existing user group acting in a hostile fashion towards newcomers, generally making them feel unwelcome and treating them as outsiders.

A little further than just lively debate, often users on Engadget will use personal attacks via f.cl.ly

A new way of thinking about user generated content

Following the restructuring process undertaken by AOL in the wake of its acquisition of the Huffington Post, many of the editorial staff left the site to seek employment elsewhere. The former Editor in chief, Joshua Topolsky, and several of his ex-colleagues soon began working on a new site backed by the successful sports news and blogging network SB Nation and six months later the new site was launched to the world.

The new website, ‘The Verge’, has an entirely different approach to user generated content, pushing it to the fore and giving users similar controls and flexibility to the editors of the publication. There is no “secret sauce”, no magic ingredient that makes The Verge so successful in generating higher quality user generated content and vastly improved interactions, instead it takes advantage of a simple approach that gives users responsibility, encouraging greater thought about what is being written and released to the community.

via f.cl.ly

Examples of higher quality debate on The Verge – via f.cl.ly

The Verge allows users to produce content that looks almost as good as that created by the editors of the site and provides a place where community content is given the opportunity to shine. Editors are active in the discussions, sharing personal opinions and experiences, and users appear to receive this very well. Several posts from the community have been featured and highlighted by Verge staff members and even discussed in length during the weekly podcasts.

With the incentive of the above, combined with an intuitive design and the feeling of a clean start on a new website, it is simple to observe the vast improvement in the quality of user interaction, the reduction in trolling behaviour and other barriers to entry for new users. It is possible to comment on an existing editorial post, posts created by other users or to create your own new post, which others can then comment upon. Formatting controls are provided, allowing users to add images, links and videos, and soon more controls will be rolled out allowing even greater control over the way content looks, providing a further enhanced incentive to think carefully about what is being posted before hitting the submit button.

With the gradual, creeping and painful march towards decent broadband speeds in the UK now well underway, the innovative cloud based gaming service OnLive has finally made its UK debut.

“The OnLive Game Service is a groundbreaking on-demand video game platform capable of delivering the latest and most advanced games instantly over a broadband connection. You can play on your TV via the OnLive Game System or on virtually any PC or Mac via a small browser download. The OnLive Game Service creates an entirely new way to play, watch, share and demo premium games from the world’s leading publishers.”

“Founded by noted technology entrepreneur Steve Perlman (WebTV, QuickTime) and incubated within the Rearden media and technology incubator, OnLive spent seven years in stealth development before officially unveiling in March 2009.”

Drawbacks to Cloud gaming in general

The system works very well, however, there are some obvious drawbacks which can’t be avoided and are not in any way the fault of the OnLive service:

• If your Internet connection has a draconian traffic management policies applied to it – you are going to be out of luck. Initially, I had some problems with connectivity during the hours of 6pm – Midnight. Following a quick Google search I discovered that my useless ISP TalkTalk (soon to be changed when the contract runs out) was applying traffic management within those hours in order to cut down on the network stress caused by illegal file sharing traffic. As observed by some posts in another forum, this leads one to the assumption that OnLive uses a proportion of P2P (Peer to Peer) traffic in order to make the service work. Thankfully this situation has now been remedied following lots of abuse from myself and others directed at the official TalkTalk Facebook and Twitter profiles.
• If your internet connection is poor in terms of speed, or has an unusually high ping time, you are going to have serious problems maintaining a solid connection, and in turn a good user experience.
• If you are using the cheap wireless router that was supplied by your ISP, you may well struggle to maintain a solid connection over WiFi. Luckily there is a fix for this, simply use a cable and you will be back on the road to gaming nirvana before you know it.

This may be a common sight when connecting over WiFi

Playing via Mac

Playing OnLive games on a Mac provides an excellent user experience. The OnLive software is a free download which provides your point of entry for the cloud based service. The software also acts as a driver, allowing you to use an XBOX 360 controller, rather than the more traditional mouse and keyboard.

Simple shortcuts allow the user to switch between windowed and full screen modes, and there is easy access to the various menus for switching between games and accessing the options available.

If none of the above listed issues are likely to be a problem, chances are you will have an excellent experience playing on a Mac. Connecting controllers for a more console like experience is simple, with OnLive handling all drivers and configuration seamlessly and without fault every time I tested it. Performance over a decent Internet connection was excellent, with barely any noticeable lag, fantastic graphics and almost instant loading times for games.

The OnLive cloud servers do an excellent job of rendering the games on offer, and visually they look almost as good as running them on a well specified PC, sometimes even better. Certainly the visuals are far in excess of what you would hope to achieve on the lower hardware platforms supported by OnLive. For example, trying out the service on the Mac Mini on my desk at work, which only has minimal on-board graphics, was a breezy and enjoyable affair – once again with little or no lag and excellent overall performance.

Quick demo of the features when accessing via the Mac

Playing on TV using the OnLive Micro Console

The OnLive Micro Console is a cheap and simple way to get cloud gaming on your TV. OnLive describes the device as “delivering instant-play, high-end, new-release video games to TVs. Now players of all skill levels can enjoy games from the comfort of their living rooms—instantly and on-demand—without ever having to bother with discs, downloads or updates. Whether you are checking out a demo, joining a premium multiplayer game or watching live gameplay from around the world, with the OnLive Game System it’s as effortless and as fast as changing channels.”

The presentation of the console is excellent and not at all what I was expecting. I think somewhere along the line I had convinced myself that OnLive was a plucky upstart company looking to change the way we game by disrupting the industry norms – because of this I was expecting a hastily thrown together device with plain brown packaging and the bare minimum of time and effort spent on it. I could not have been more wrong!

Right from the moment of beginning the unboxing process it was apparent that this was a high quality, well thought out offering. The box itself appears like a presentation case for a high-end luxury device, the inset areas of the packaging are perfectly molded to hold everything securely in place, the product itself is fantastically well thought out and the fit and finish is perfect. Attention to detail continues with the supplied accessories, where, unlike many more traditional competitors (Sony, Microsoft) the bottom layer of the box was carefully and thoughtfully packed with everything a player is likely to need. Included in the box was a HDMI cable, Network Cable, UK power block, USB charging cable for the controller, a rechargeable battery pack for the wireless controller and even the fallback if you forget to charge your battery pack in the form of an XBOX 360 style AA battery pack and 2x AA batteries to fit inside it. Every angle is covered and carefully thought through, and this is a huge change of direction in an industry where costs and margins are so sensitive that you are lucky to receive a demo disc in the box with a new console these days, let alone a HDMI cable.

The console itself is exactly what I wish all consoles were like. Diminutive in size, silent in operation and low on energy consumption – the Micro Console is a revelation. In an industry where cooling fans roar and competitors seem to start huge and gradually refine their industrial design over the lifetime of their products, finally culminating with something that a mere mortal can lift without the help of someone else, the OnLive Micro Console achieves a simple (Apple-esque) elegance that has been missing from the games industry for a long time.

This is perhaps an unfair comparison to draw, as the vast majority of processing occurs miles away from your front room in the OnLive server room. This means that the MicroConsole has the simpler task of interpreting controls from the user and relaying them to OnLive, and receiving them back in return and displaying video, and passing rumble commands back to the users controller. It performs this job admirably, particularly when you consider that the console only retails for £69.99! I managed to get hold of it for even less than that as OnLive were running a promotion giving the console away for FREE (£6 postage) to those who pre-ordered Batman: Arkham City. The hardware really is excellent value whichever way you get hold of it.

The controller will be familiar to anyone who has used an XBOX 360 controller before (it really is a homage to the XBOX design), legally different and with a few extra buttons thrown in for controlling the OnLive experience and menus, I found it to be very comfortable to use for extended periods of play. It does its job simply and effectively and I couldn’t fault it during my testing phase.

Negative points for the Micro Console are few and far between, with the only drawback being the lack of WiFi connectivity (likely to be fixed in a future release). This isn’t so much of an inconvenience, unless you live somewhere that makes running a cable completely impossible, and the connection over a cable is hugely more reliable than connecting via WiFi.

Game Selection

There are various options for users to purchase games through OnLive. The first game purchased (at time of writing) is only £1 – I chose Batman: Arkham Asylum as my first game, one that I had truly enjoyed playing on the XBOX 360 (from start to finish), as I thought that it would allow me to compare the performance of the two systems more evenly.

Following your first game purchase there is a choice of approaches:

• Subscribe at a price of £6 per month and receive unlimited access to 100+ titles of various ages and qualities including the likes of Homefront, Borderlands, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Just Cause 2, BioShock and Deus Ex. This is a great deal, and something that is a lot easier to commit to for casual gamers than paying £50 per game for a traditional console. Subscribers also receive discounts on purchases from the store in return for their loyalty, bringing new releases under £30 in most cases.
• Purchasing games on a one-off basis may suit some users, and there are plenty of selections available in the store to keep most gamers happy. New releases often arrive a little after their PC counterparts, so fans of 0 day releases need not apply, however – with a little patience “normal” gamers will get their hot little hands on games within a short enough period of time.

Wrap-Up

The OnLive service is seemless, similar in approach to XBOX Live in a lot of ways, often better and more responsive, with easier access to configuration (not that it is ever really needed). You can genuinely open the box, sign in and play, no loading times, no updates to download to games – this is a refreshing and enjoyable service that simply must have a future in the industry.

Negatives are thin on the ground, with limited support for multiplayer chat (at the moment it is in Beta) and the lack of WiFi on the micro console currently top the list. These are massively outweighed by the innovation of the product and service, with unique features such as the ability to view other gamers whilst in play, combined with future developments such as iPad and Android apps for viewing and one day playing games.

The OnLive UK service is highly recommended and not to be missed. Get involved now at www.onlive.co.uk.

These days you can’t make a smartphone and expect it to sell (and perform well) without including a decent browser. The mobile web has come a long way since my first taste of it, the extremely limited WAP over GPRS as I had on my Nokia 6510, followed up by basic page rendering over 3G on handsets like the N95 and E61. Modern smartphones have a lot more to deal with in terms of complexity and content, and todays users expect a “proper” browsing experience, with all the features of a desktop browser available to them.

So after this trip down memory lane, discussing handsets of old, how does the N8 perform? The spec sheet seems to indicate that everything is in order claiming “Full web browsing of real web pages” and detailing support for HTML, XHTML MP, WML, CSS, Javascript and Flash Lite 4 and in my initial tests I was pleasantly surprised by the accurate approach to rendering pages from the N8. However, due to the comparatively low resolution of the screen, it can actually be quite difficult to “use” the browser with most pages initially rendering with only the top left corner of the content available without scrolling or zooming. This wouldn’t be a big problem if the experience of scrolling / zooming was more pleasant, but sadly the usually excellent capacitive display is slow to react to swipes when browsing complex pages and this leads to a less than pleasant overall experience.

Web standards compatibility

There is better news in terms of support for modern standards, with all of the standard pages I tested rendering correctly, and even some of the more advanced and complex pages rendering in a usable fashion. The currently in development jQuery Mobile is also compatible with the browser and has support at B-Grade level which the project describes as providing an “enhanced experience except without Ajax navigation features”. In reality this means that the N8 will be forward compatible (to an extent) with many of a new breed of websites and web apps that will support the fledgling standard as it grows in popularity, making it a safe bet for “normal users” (not me) who are likely to keep their handsets for the entire duration of an 18 or 24 month contract.

Speed

When considering the speed of browsing it is a bit of a mixed bag. Over 3G the handset performs OK, no better or worse than any other handset I have tested in terms of its radio performance and download speeds, but when you take the browser into consideration it becomes painfully slow rendering complex websites. Over WiFi the story is much the same, with the N8 getting to pages and starting to download quickly, but the rendering seemingly going on forever.

Nokia N8 v Apple iPhone 4 – Browser Speed Test

In a head to head with the Apple iPhone 4 (running iOS4) the N8 was decimated, blazing speeds from the iPhone4 meant that in some of the tests I ran the N8 still had a blank screen when the iPhone 4 had fully rendered the page. In the above video the N8 was defeated 3-0 by the iPhone and in terms of raw pace was left well behind.

Wrap-up

Overall the N8 web performance is a bit of a mixed bag to say the least. From a technical perspective the browser performs well, rendering the vast majority of pages successfully, however, whether or not you still care what the site you are looking for has to say when it eventually finishes rendering is another matter all together. For users that only use the web occasionally and mainly live in messaging and email the N8 would make a solid companion, but more demanding (power) users should look elsewhere to a more modern phone OS with a more robust browser and a handset with more horsepower. Flash support is a pleasant and welcome surprise, but this isn’t enough to let me feel confident recommending the N8 for anyone who intends to use the internet regularly on the move. A good effort, but one that feels a little left behind when compared with the current crop of modern smartphone browsers.

I get excited about technology pretty easily, Nokia World 2011 has me more excited than usual. Recently, things have been quiet at Nokia. There have been the usual releases of handsets aimed at the developing markets, but other than that there has been a pretty resolute silence coming from the Finnish manufacturer.

After spending two weeks in the company of the N8 I was left feeling like I was ready for more. More of the famous Nokia build quality and excellent industrial design. More innovation, thought and user focus like I experienced in the old days using everything from a 5110 to an N95-8GB.

I’m excited because we simply MUST be about to witness the unveiling of the next generation of Nokia Smartphones. With Windows Phone 7 (7.5?) platform the time has surely come for Nokia to re-enter the smartphone market with a bang. Nokia handsets empower people all over the world, give them their connections to the rest of the world, and help them get their message out. I simply hope that Nokia can make a barnstorming return to the premium handset market with something big.

Good luck Nokia.

After spending 2 weeks in September with the Nokia N8 I finally got around to editing some of the video that I took with this surprisingly powerful little handset. Navigating to and using the video recording mode is very simple, and the available controls provide enough flexibility to produce some pleasing results.

In the example included below, I was recording in bright sunlight, outdoors. The N8 produced very impressive video in these conditions, and the only time I really found it to struggle when indoors in low light conditions. However, this can be said of many smaller sensors found in mobile devices, and is a common problem with the technology, not so much with this particular device.

For those users looking for instant gratification, the N8 includes HDMI out, so freshly captured video can be played directly from the device onto a TV or monitor (via an optional HDMI cable). There are also options for wireless streaming over your home network to get your content moving about and displayed where you need it.

Overall I was VERY impressed with the video performance from the N8. It’s directly comparable to the quality that one would expect from a dedicated pocket video recorded such as one of the now discontinued Flip Cameras, with the added benefit that as it is also a phone, there is no need to carry an additional device. When compared with some lower end point and shoot cameras the N8 once again punches above its weight in terms of end result, and ease of use.

Nokia N8 v Apple iPhone 4
Video Performance Comparison

Nokia N8 v iPhone 4 Video Comparison from Jon Hume on Vimeo.

Above: Quick comparison movie to show the difference in quality between the Nokia N8 and the iPhone 4. The N8 produces fantastic realistic colours and overall provided a great video recording experience. The iPhone 4 could not be simpler to use and create basic clips on, but the unrealistic colours in the final product mean that the footage really only looks good when viewed back on the iPhone screen itself. The iPhone struggled to deal with the bright sunlight and the contrast between light and shade. A solid win for the N8 in this case.

N8 Video Specifications

• 12 megapixel with Carl Zeiss optics
• HD quality 720p resolution
• Shoot 16:9 videos in HD
• 3x digital zoom
• Video capture in 720p 25 fps with codecs H.264, MPEG-4

Recently there has been a lot of rumbling in the tech press about the latest operating system from Microsoft, Windows 8. It was announced and immediately released as a developer preview that anyone can download for free from the Microsoft website.

On the surface Windows 8 looks to be Windows 7 with their new Metro UI pasted on top. The press seem to be reacting to the news in a variety of ways – either total dismay, or a mediocre Luke-warm response to their new ideas.

I decided to download the preview and give it a try, but what is the safest way to test out this very early software on the Mac? By using a Virtual machine of course!

Getting up and running with the Windows 8 Developer Preview couldn’t be easier for Mac users. Here is a quick guide to get you up and running using my software of choice VMWare Fusion 4, the latest release of the excellent Fusion client. Leave a comment at the bottom of the post if you have any questions.

1. First off, you are going to need to download the Windows 8 Developer Preview from Microsoft. Visit their website and download it now. I chose the x64 version without the developer tools and it worked just fine. Download Windows 8 Preview.
2. Open VMWare Fusion 4 and create a new virtual machine by selecting ‘Create new virtual machine’ and hitting the ‘continue without disc’ button. On the next screen select ‘Use operating system installation disc or image’ and ‘choose a disc or disc image’ then select your newly downloaded .iso file. Select ‘Windows 7 x64′ from the list of operating systems and click continue. At this point you can make some changes to your resource allocation for the Virtual Machine, so feel free to tweak this based on what resources you have available. I recommend allowing at least 2GB of RAM.
   
3. Next up you can start the Virtual Machine and Windows 8 will begin installing. Work through the steps as you normally would, following the process shown in the images below.
   
4. Windows 8 begins to install …
   
5. Select the correct regional options for your location.
   
6. Read the terms and conditions if you are bored, or click accept like a normal human.
   
7. Select ‘custom’ from the available install options to perform a clean install.
   
8. Select the new blank partition created for the Virtual Machine.
   
9. Windows 8 will now install.
   
10. Complete the rest of the personalisation process.
    
11. Congratulations, you now have a working virtual machine for Windows 8!
    

This week I was lucky enough to receive a review handset from Nokia to try out for a few weeks and put through a barrage of tests. After using the phone for only a limited time, my initial impressions are:

• The N8 is well put together, and the design of the phone is rugged and high quality.
• It is a good size, fits well in the hand and all the controls can be easily reached during one handed operation
• The screen is only running at 640 x 360 pixels, however, the OLED display has excellent colour reproduction and the blacks are perfect
• Setting up email and calendar syncing was simple enough, however, not as easy as on the iPhone and with several extra steps required
• Having a physical camera button is a real bonus when it comes to taking better quality photos with the excellent 12MP camera, but only if you are using two hands to frame the shot
• Call quality and battery life are both excellent, turns out I had got used to having a phone that barely lasted a day and was no good for actually talking to people
• I’m not the first person to have this review unit, the back of the camera bump where it touches when you put it on any surface has got a bit battered over time and some of the bare metal has been exposed
• Symbian ^3 is not a modern smart phone OS and is severely lacking in many departments, also – some of the apps crash instantly on opening (the social app for example) and I can’t find any clues online as to why this might be

A more detailed review and some browser functionality and speed tests will be coming over the next 2 weeks.

Some comparison shots with the Apple iPhone4

The Nokia N8 review handset was kindly supplied by WOMWorld. The WOMWorld/Nokia is a Nokia sponsored resource providing latest news, comment and feedback on all things Nokia from the world of social media and beyond. Visit the site here.

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MySpace was a social networking pioneer but is now becoming less and less relevant by the day. When looking through search results to check I had updated all of my various profiles to include my new employer (and not the old one) I noticed that my MySpace profile was about 5 years out of date. I haven’t used the site for a long time and so I decided to delete my account. It is a long and painful process so if you too want to quit MySpace here is how.

How to quit MySpace in lots of annoying steps

1. Log in to your Myspace account.
2. Upgrade your MySpace account to the new profile. If you’ve done this already, skip this step.
3. Click on the Edit Profile button.
4. Under the Account Settings & Privacy heading, click Cancel Account.
5. Click ‘Cancel Account’.
6. Choose the button that best describes your reason for wanting to cancel the account. The 4 options are Bored, Spam, Privacy, and E-Mail. Once you have made your selection, you will proceed to the next step.
7. Press the cancel button again to continue.
8. Click the button that reads Cancel Account. Again.
9. Read the warning notification (if you can be bothered) and then leave a comment (again, if you can be bothered).
10. Now, once your comment has been entered, press ‘Cancel Account’ to continue.
11. You are informed that a confirmation e-mail is being sent to the account’s e-mail address. You must navigate to your e-mail and click that confirmation to complete the cancellation of your account.
12. Confirm your e-mail address and press Cancel Account.
13. You have now completed the process and in 48 hours your account will be deleted.
14. Leave me a comment below and let me know why you left MySpace

My favourite MySpace story

In April 2007, police in County Durham, United Kingdom, arrested a 17-year-old girl on charges of criminal damage following a party advertised on MySpace, held at her parents’ house without their consent. Over 200 teenagers came to the party from across the country, causing £20,000 of damage, such as cigarette butts, urine on clothing, and writing on the walls. The girl’s parents, who were away at the time, had to move out of the house.