As I have previously pointed out, as part of my love of all things tech I read many technology blogs and sites.  Most of these provide information of real interest, albeit usually the same information repeated over a number of sites. And then there is John Gruber’s Daring Fireball.

Gruber’s site has some sort of cachet but I have yet to figure out exactly why. The vast majority of the posts are links to articles on other sites. Often this is accompanied by a direct quote from the article and maybe a short sentence from Gruber. His comments are frequently snide if the content of the article is about either Google, Microsoft or Amazon.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that this site is a shining example of what all technology blogs should be like but at least it contains original content rather than posts cut and pasted from elsewhere.

I also cannot explain why Daring Fireball annoys me so much. Nor can I explain why I continue to read it, but I do.

As part of my love of all things tech I subscribe to and read a lot of technology blogs and there are some exceptional ones on the web. The problem is that there are an awful lot of blogs chasing the same information and sometimes information is in short supply. This in turn leads to the publishing of some pretty questionable posts. 
Nowhere is this more evident than around mythical products and, in particular, those that Apple may or may not be releasing. Apple’s products are so in demand that there is a huge market for information on the next great release be it the iPhone 6S or the iPad 7 inch.
 
So you end up with stories such as this one on Boy Genius Report yesterday “Next-gen iPad may feature double the battery capacity of iPad 2” quoting “anonymous” sources. Of course the most important word in all of this is “MAY”. Yes, it may include a bigger battery but then again it might also include a teasmade. 
 
I understand why these reports get run – there’s a blog post to fill after all and people are clamouring for news but they are just vapourware that serve no purpose other than to drag a few readers towards their blog – and successfully too, as I read it!
 
I would like to propose a moritorium on reporting on anything that is not backup by a direct quote from the company in question until a month before the likely due date, which has to have been confirmed by a direct quote from the company in question.
 
In the meantime I am off to write an article on the new teasmade feature that may appear in the iPad 3.

I really like Evernote I really do. It is probably one of only a handful of apps that I use every single day without fail. But I just don’t get their new app Evernote Hello. I think this quote from a ReadWriteWeb article sums it up:

It’s completely awkward for any social encounter where you’re meeting two or more new people at the same time.

I just cannot imagine saying to someone “do you know I am really likely to forget who you are so do you mind if I take your picture?”. That’s going to kill the conversation right there. Maybe that’s a British thing but I suspect not. However, I do like ReadWriteWeb’s ideas for contact management in Evernote.

Everyone’s talking about iphonography –  taking pictures with your iphone rather than a standard camera. As the now well worn phrase goes “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You”.

The iPhone camera is pretty good for a phone, particularly on the 4S, and it is always in my pocket so available in a way that my “other” camera isn’t. That said there are times when I just want to do things other than point and shoot and that is where this little gadget comes in.

It’s serves two purposes as you can see from the pictures below. Firstly it has a slot on the top into which you can place your iPhone and on the bottom is a standard tripod thread allowing it to be attached to pretty much any tripod. The second role is as a simple iPhone stand. A groove in the base allows you to slot in the iPhone in a couple of ways. However, I am not convinced by this as the angles seem wrong to me.

My major concern was how well the iPhone would remain in the groove but it seems pretty secure, although I don’t think I would try using it upside down! Other than that it’s a great piece of kit, get yours here.

What I love about Google Chrome the most is that it has a vast number of really great extensions to do almost anything. Not only that there are also competing extensions so you get choice too.

One are where there is plenty of choice is in the personal profile space, in fact Google has it’s own extension for this too. In this context I am talking about the ability to display detailed personal information for a contact alongside an email that you receive from them. There are a number of players in this space including Xobni and Google themselves but my favourite is Rapportive (shown left).

All three work in a similar way by  displaying information about an individual to the right of an email in Google Mail. The information that you get depends on the extension that you are using. Google’s own has only very basic information while Xobni has lots of information about your interaction with the contact and is nicely presented but, to me Rapportive, just displays more useful information without you having to go hunting for it.

Rapportive has details about the contact including phone numbers, job title and even latest tweets and Facebook posts. All this information is culled from a variety of sources and to make the most of the service you need to hook up your Twitter/Facebook and LinkedIn accounts but once you do the richness of the information makes it well worth the effort.

What I particularly like is how easy it is to make use of the information shown in the panel. Clicking on a web address will open that site in a new tab. Clicking on the Facebook , LinkedIn or Twitter links will open the users profile in the appropriate social network. Not connected to that user? No problem. Just hit the connect button and an email request is sent. Easy.

And it’s free.

Check it out here.