This week, production was a challenge, as a family commitment meant that I was away from the office on Thursday and Friday. I was in a tent in the Oxfordshire, UK, countryside and, sadly, there was no power, Wi-fi or even mobile signal of any reliability. That meant something of a challenge, but a bit of local research meant that I managed to find a cafe (I had to eat a big breakfast, but that wasn’t too much of a problem) that had both Wi-fi and power. That was a relief and thanks to the team, we have been able to get the issues completed and sent out.
The problems highlighted a long term conflict between local and cloud storage. On one hand, having everything local is a relief at times like this. On the other hand, having things in the cloud means that you don’t have to rely on a specific device. Every morning we look around the web to find news articles for the Display Daily mailout and for our news process. All the articles get put on the website and then I go through them and decide if I think a reader might be interested or not, and allocate it to one of the team.
This is all done on the cloud and the interface is simple enough to allow me to use a smartphone. I often end up on my way to a trade show in a train or metro, working away using my smartphone. However, when there is no connectivity, the whole thing breaks down.
For many years, our whole system was based on Lotus Notes, and a very, very old version of the program. It was uniquely good at dealing with online and offline operation, with both possible from the same database and flagging up problems when it synchronised. However, when we took over Display Daily, everything really had to move to the web and we now struggle if we don’t have web access. The nearest I have found to Lotus Notes in dealing with local and remote operation is a program called Evernote. It does a good job of keeping local copies, but working just as well on the web. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to work out how to get it to link to the website. It works really well, otherwise, and allows access from Windows, Android and Macs. I’m using it now to write the editorial, which I’ll then paste into the web interface for publication.
I’ve found it is very risky to write long articles ‘live ‘ on the web, as a break in connectivity can cause everything to be lost. That’s the other downside of the web. It’s no surprise that although 5G wiresll has some immense promise for remote control in medicine and other applications, nobody yet has a way of absolutely guaranteeing a connection, which will make exploitation a real challenge.
The other issue is power. These days, as my PC doesn’t have a swappable battery, I have a big third party battery that can give me several hours of operation if I’m not able to get plugged in somewhere. The combination of that battery and careful management of the screen brightness can see me through a flight to the West Coast of the US, which is enough, although it is sometimes frustrating that I have an ultra-light PC that is weighed down by the spare battery! I’m not surprised that Samsung has highlighted the lifetime and battery of the Note 9 in its release, yesterday evening. Again, I have a reasonably slim (although not very new) smartphone, but I often end up with extra batteries and cables (as I’m writing this, my PC is also charging the phone and two extra batteries!)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the issue this week.
Bob
