Rule 1: Don’t Call Your Product “Unbreakable” If It Is Not

January 12, 2010 | Comment

My advice is never give a live demonstration if you can possibly help it and never, never, never claim a property that the product doesn’t actually possess. Advice that Sonim would have done well to have heeded before handing over their “unbreakable” mobile phone to a reporter from the BBC.

The reporter, Dan Simmons, looked pretty embarrassed about having smashed the screen of the device and Somin’s CEO laughed about it and everyone is blogging about it but “unbreakable” it obviously isn’t.

You can see the video of destruction here.… Read the rest

Business Card Reader for iPhone

December 3, 2009 | Comment

Like so many people I still get plenty of business cards and despite many attempts to replace them with something a little more up-to-date nothing has succeeded so far (and won’t in my opinion until there is a common standard). Actually I like business cards but entering the details from them into my contacts can be a bit of a drag.

In the past I have used a service called ScanR and, in fact, it made the services I use and recommend list a while back, however, that could be about to change with the release of Business Card Reader … Read the rest

2009’s Must-Have Device

November 30, 2009 | Comment

There has been a lot of talk in the press recently about Rupert Murdoch taking his news off the web and off Google in particular. Murdoch feels that content has a value and that we should be paying for that value. In a sense he is correct of course but unfortunately he is too late. If he puts News International’s content behind a paywall other free sources will still be available – the BBC for example, where I get 99% of my news from now anyway.

So it was nice to see this promotional video from the News International title … Read the rest

WifiPhoto for iPhone

October 8, 2009 | Comment

Getting pictures off an iPhone can be a bind, particularly if you don’t have a sync cable to hand. The most reliable way is to email yourself the pictures but if you do this directly from the Photo app it reduces the size of your pictures. The only way round this is to cut and paste the image from Photos to the email which preserves the quality.

However, now there is another way with WifiPhoto which, as the name suggests, allows you to get access to your photos over a wifi connection.

The app is very simple to use. You … Read the rest

3 mifi Review

October 5, 2009 | 2 comments

For a number of years now I have been using mobile broadband with my laptop using a usb dongle. I have taken service from mobile provider 3 and it has been a pretty reliable and cost effective way of getting web access when I have been out and about. My current contract gives me 1gb of data for only £5 per month.

When I got back from holiday recently I noticed that 3 had released their “mifi” device. This is a small unit that allows you to share your mobile broadband connection with a number of local users over wifi. … Read the rest

Netbook Memory Upgrade

August 22, 2009 | Comment

I decided this week that I would make the only simple upgrade to my netbook and double the memory it has in it from 1gb to 2gb. For this I bought a stick of memory from the ever reliable Crucial for £12.64 delivered. It arrived within a couple of days of ordering and took less than 10 minutes to install (full instructions can be found here).

You can see in the picture on the left the memory in place between the fan and the hard drive. Since then I haven’t had much of an opportunity to have a … Read the rest

Simple Mind for the iPhone

July 21, 2009 | Comment

I attended an event today, hosted by the Thames Valley Innovation and Growth team, on developing iPhone applications. A couple of Apple employees were on hand to walk us through the process and answer any questions.

When I have attended these sort of events in the past I have tended to take notes in my notebook in the form of a mind map. I thought that this time I would try doing the same on my iPhone using the SimpleMind application.

SimpleMind is a mind mapping application that comes in two versions, free and paid. The only difference between the … Read the rest

iPhone 3.1 Software

July 1, 2009 | Comment

Well that was quick. The iPhone 3.0 OS has been out less than a month and already the next version is released to beta testers. There is a slew of changes that have been identified so far and to be honest pretty much all of them are of only passing interest. With the exception of being able to access Voice Control via Bluetooth.

Voice Control was introduced in the latest version of the software and was a nice little addition that not only let you make calls by barking instructions to your phone but also to control the music player. … Read the rest

Netbook v3

June 29, 2009 | Comment

So I am in the market for a new Netbook (some would ask when am I not in the market for a new gadget). This would be my third, therefore I think that you can safely say that I am a convert to the form factor.

There have already been two iterations of Netbooks. Version 1 was the original Asus Eee PC 701 device that introduced the Netbook to the world. This had a 7" screen and ran a specially customised Linux OS. I had one of these and loved it but found Linux to be hard work.

The … Read the rest

UK Folding Plug

June 26, 2009 | Comment

UK Folding Plug Concept Those people that live in the UK or have ever travelled here will know that we can proudly boast one thing that is bigger than anything offered by the USA and that is our plug – it is huge! If you have travelled with any electrical equipment that requires the UK adaptor then you will know how much space it takes up. That’s why I have invested in so many local cables that I can swap out for the UK equivalent when I travel.

Now, however, someone (it is not clear who) has come up with a neat design for … Read the rest