Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month, the big news is the launch of our new online shop. It’s a significant upgrade from our
previous virtual store and lays the foundation for a whole new web presence for Practical Electronics.
R
egular readers will be aware
that about a year ago your favourite hobby electronics magazine
came under the fine stewardship of a
new publisher; namely, our editor Matt
Pulzer. Matt works tirelessly to bring
readers and subscribers a monthly journal crammed with plenty of electronic
projects, theory and tutorials – enough
to keep the most industrious hobbyist very busy during the forthcoming
winter season!
Our website at https://www.epemag.
com is the place to go to learn more
about the current edition, or to download any source code files relating to
that month’s issue. The website has
served us well since its launch back
in 2012 but, as it was built purely on
‘static’ HTML, it presents challenges
in terms of navigation and scalability,
and there is the need to improve usability on portable devices like tablets and
Chromebooks too. Our online presence
is therefore receiving a well-overdue
makeover using modern web design,
navigation and hosting techniques.
This task has been under way for quite
some time under the tutelage of our
new web systems manager Kris Thain,
who is the latest addition to the PE
staff line-up.
New shop
A key stage of our website redevelopment was successfully reached last
November, when we launched a completely redesigned shopping cart to
introduce convenient new design features along with a fresh new look.
You can still buy back issues, books,
CDROMs and more, and we ship worldwide as usual. You can also phone
through an order or snail mail it to us
with a GBP cheque payable to ‘Practical Electronics’. Existing customers’
details have been migrated to the new
shopping cart, so regular users of the
PE Online Shop should be able to log
in as before. Details of our subscription
options (printed copy, PDF download
or Pocketmags edition) are provided
as well. Last, an important reminder:
subscribers to the print edition now
click through to our new subscription
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Work on redesigning and modernising the PE website and Online Shop is well under
way. Come and take a look!
service provider – Select – who can set
you up with a direct debit, so you don’t
need to remember to renew every year.
At the same time, we’re also modernising our downloads system with
a slick new service: monthly source
code .zip files will be hosted in the
Online Shop as a free download, though
you will need to create an online account if you don’t already have one.
Download histories are then stored and
accessible in your personal account,
enabling you to keep track of them in
the future. A limit of three downloads
of any one .zip file is allowed, but we
would like to re-assure readers that
we’ll always try to help out if another copy is needed later down the line.
Just drop me an email.
It’s an exciting time for Practical
Electronics as we endeavour to modernise our web presence. Everything is
being handled by the PE team in-house
and we’re working hard to provide
customer services, consolidate a new
online store, bring in legacy magazine
resources and more material under a
fresh new banner. For now, we’d like
to thank readers for being patient while
work on our web presence is ongoing.
We’re almost there – the occasional
missing image will be filled in, pages
will be duly populated and links to
legacy material will be updated.
Shop till you drop
After Black Friday and last November’s ‘Cyber Monday’ online shopping
binge, Amazon announced that its Cyber
Monday turnover had been the largest
single shopping day in its corporate
history. Amazon’s fashion arm did well
too, boasting record-breaking sales:
‘Best-sellers included Carhartt Men’s
Acrylic Watch Hat and Champion Men’s
Powerblend Fleece Pullover Hoodie,’
Amazon declared triumphantly (which
explains the Ed’s new attire). Independent traders selling in Amazon’s stores got
a slice of the cake too; they sold more
merchandise on Cyber Monday than in
any other 24-hour period in Amazon’s
history, the firm said.
One thing I must admit to, dear readers, is that I finally buckled under the
Black Friday pressure and found myself
enrolled in Amazon’s Prime package
at £7.99 a month. The ‘perks’ of Prime
membership have been drilled into
us and it must be said that Amazon’s
Practical Electronics | February | 2020
website, a Fire TV Stick and the Amazon
app on a smart TV all picked up my
Prime membership faultlessly.
It has been said that our behaviour
changes when we subscribe to services
this way: since we are now paying for
a subscription, we may as well use it,
though Amazon will refund fees (on
application) if Prime is not used in
any particular month. Although many
Amazon Prime movies are still rented
the normal way, several free videos, a
music track or two and a few next-day
parcels later (18-hour delivery, in one
case), I fear that I’m hooked.
The Western market for smart speakers such as Amazon’s Echo range
continues to explode, but Google’s
Nest range fared less well, according
to analysts Canalys in their survey of
Q3 2019 unit sales. Amazon grabbed
36% of the global market share with
sales of over ten million units, three
times more than Google sold in the same
period. Other brands and devices that
mainly serve the Asian markets included Alibaba’s Tmall Genie, plus Xiaomi
and Baidu brand speakers, which all
grew in sales volumes, while Google’s sales plunged by 40%. The global
market for smart displays (those with
an LCD screen) expanded five-fold, reports Canalys, showing where future
consumer interest is heading.
Not the case
A tech retailer disappointed the author
when he bought a Samsung A10 2019
tablet with a bundled ‘starter kit’ case
during the Black Friday period. The case
proved to be an obsolete ‘2018’ model
that does not fit Samsung’s 2019 tablet,
as if consumers should know the difference: the rear camera cut-out is in the
wrong place and the case is too large.
Another retailer had pulled the same
trick, judging by reviews. Surfing a few
days later, pop-up ads promised an even
cheaper price (darn!), but no stock was
readily available either for delivery or
for in-store collection (phew!). It’s time
retailers stopped such misleading advertising; under UK consumer protection
law, the practices of ‘bait advertising’
(where little or no stock is available)
and ‘bait and switch’ (dangling an offer
Google Cloud Print will close in December
2020, so home users will need to use the
hardware’s native services instead.
Practical Electronics | February | 2020
for unavailable merchandise, hoping to
switch interested
buyers onto something pricier), are
illegal abusive practices. Meanwhile,
Amazon listed a suitable tablet case by the
same vendor in two
different places, at
significantly different prices. It pays to
shop around.
And finally
Facebook’s Portal screens offer family friendly video calling on
smart devices or TVs. ‘User experience may vary,’ says Facebook.
Facebook is shipping
its second-generation ‘Portal’ smart LCD
screens, not seen in the UK before now.
It offers family friendly video chat with
webcam-style augmented reality (AR)
masks for fun and games. The standalone Portal screens range from 8-inch
to 15.6-inch and TV-connected devices enable video calls to be enjoyed on
a wide screen. They can access Alexa,
WhatsApp, Messenger, Amazon Prime
or act as a digital photo frame. Portal
will be ideal for many families, but some
early adopters have complained about
poor performance, claiming they need
superfast broadband. ‘User experience
may vary,’ says the caption in Facebook’s
jitter-free promo video. Learn more at:
https://portal.facebook.com
Google is giving up on Google Cloud
Print, its cloud-based printer driver. The
service, which has been in beta since
2010 (!), will close at the end of 2020.
Users who send print jobs or photos
over the web to their network printer
should switch to their printer’s own
cloud service [eg Epson Connect or HP
ePrint] instead, says Google. More details at http://bit.ly/pe-feb20-googend
and a shortlist of some affected printers
is at http://bit.ly/pe-feb20-print
One of the largest leaks of personal
data in history occurred in November 2019 when details of more than
1.2 billion individual users were left
wide open on a Google Cloud server.
Data included a wide range of personal information and LinkedIn profiles.
At the time of writing, the source of
the massive breach had largely been
narrowed down to servers connected
with the data aggregation company PDL
(People Data Labs). You can see if you’re
affected by entering your email address
in: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
Amid rows between the US, France,
the UK and the rest of the world about
digital service taxation, the OECD
has outlined proposals for a ‘unified approach’ to taxing the profits of
consumer-facing multinational corporations (MNCs) such as Facebook and
Google that shift digitally generated
profits to more tax-efficient havens.
The UK initially abandoned its efforts
to tax MNCs’ profits on ‘soft’ digital
services such as marketing or advertising fees.
Huawei battles onwards in the teeth
of a US trade embargo. The firm’s new
Mate 30 smartphone is said to contain
no US-made components at all, and
uses Huawei’s own app store; the lack
of any OEM-installed Google services
may not be an issue in Asian markets
in any case. In Russia, the pre-installation of Russian-origin software on
smartphones, TVs and tablets became
mandatory on 1 January.
In the UK, telecoms seller O2 has
switched on its first 5G network, promising users unlimited high-speed data
in 50 towns and cities by next summer.
O2 is focussing on commercial areas
and transport hubs first. A coverage
checker is at: http://bit.ly/pe-feb20-o2
Attention Windows users!
Some 27.5% of Windows desktop
users are still using Windows 7, and
PC makers hope for a mass exodus
onto Windows 10 once W7 support
finally ends on 14 January. About 5%
still use Windows 8 and 1.3% remain
committed to Windows XP, says Global
StatsCounter. The uptake of macOS
10.15 has climbed to 27% and is soon
set to overtake macOS Mojave.
Finally, I never did find out what
the mysterious Ethernet port on the
rear of a new LG Full HD TV (see Net
Work, December 2019) was for. It is
not a ‘smart’ TV and I suspect it only
fetches firmware downloads over the
web. Following on from my Freeview
item in the same issue, I hope to explore some other ways of receiving
Freeview over a network in the next
few columns. See you next month for
more Net Work!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
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