4G Arrives in Reading (sort of)

February 14, 2014 | Comment

I noticed this morning that my iPad was now showing a 4G notifier in the header rather than the usual 3G.

Three, my network provider, have been very good saying that they wouldn’t charge any more for this unlike other operators. Today I found out why – it doesn’t work, at least not in Reading where I am.Switching to 3G I immediately got a lovely fast signal whereas on 4G nothing.

I am hoping that this is a temporary thing and will quickly improve when more cells are rolled out. Here’s to super fast mobile access.… Read the rest

3 Things Evernote is Missing

January 30, 2014 | 1 comment

I an a keen and active user of Evernote paying for the service not just to gain access to the “pro” features but also because I want to repay Evernote for the use I derive from it.

That’s not to say that it is perfect though so here are three things that I would add to it from the normal to the whacky.

Better table support

Evernote has support for tables but it is pretty basic. Once created you cannot add new columns, change the width, add new rows anywhere but at the bottom and you cannot apply any styling … Read the rest

Textever Pro – a Quick and Beautiful Editor for Evernote on iOS

December 10, 2013 | Comment

Evernote is great but on iOS it is just too slow to start up when you want to add a quick text note which is a real disincentive to using it on the go. To get round this I have been using Squarespace Note on my iPhone as this is quick to start and has Evernote integration. This has worked well but I have lost notes a few time when I have been offline, which was frustrating.

Enter Textever Pro a well designed iOS app that was built specifically for this use case: getting text notes quickly into Evernote. One … Read the rest

Authorising 3rd Party Apps with Passcode Lock on in Evernote

October 10, 2013 | Comment

On iOS Evernote provides a useful facility to be able to protect your notes by adding a four digit passcode lock that you have to enter before you can see them. You can also choose how long before the code is asked for on subsequent opens, such as immediately, after one minute etc.

Once enabled this means that you will be initially be asked for your four digit code on opening and then on subsequent opens after the time out period has expired unless you have chosen “immediate” as your option in which case you will always be asked for … Read the rest

ASUS WL-33NUL Pocket Router Review

May 29, 2013 | Comment

The Asus Pocket Router was first announced at the beginning of year but has only just become available.

The box proudly announces that it is the “world’s smallest router”, which I don’t doubt that it is – it just also comes in a disproportionately large box, which seems a complete nonsense.

As you can see from the image left it really is small and portable with a usb cable that folds back into the case so, depending on how you intend to use it you might not need to carry anything else.

From the images that I had seen I … Read the rest

They Look the Same, Work the Same but…

February 9, 2013 | Comment

So these arrived in the post today – a Mini DisplayPort to VGA and a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI connector for use with my MacBook. Both have been packaged to look like their Apple equivalents and I can confirm that they certainly work like their Apple equivalents.

The difference? The Apple originals would have set me back £46.46 while these were £11.78, both prices included postage.

Pair this was a £1 HDMI cable from PoundLand and I am all set?

Is there anyone out there that could convince me that I would be better off buying the Apple originals?

… Read the rest

Google Authenticator Bug

February 1, 2013 | 1 comment

I am a big fan of Google’s Autheticator app which adds 2-factor authentication to a number of popular apps including Dropbox, WordPress, LastPass and, of course, Google accounts.

Since my mother-in-law’s GMail account was compromised and she wasn’t able to recover it I have considered the use of 2-factor authentication as mandatory rather than a nicety.

What this means in practice is that in order to access your account you need something that you know (the password) and something that you have (your phone). This should considerably increase your online security as if anyone does get your password they still … Read the rest

Embedding docs

January 17, 2013 | Comment

In my previous post I included a viewer that allowed you to page through PDF file. This used the Google Drive (nee Docs) Viewer.

You may already be familiar with this for viewing attachments in GMail and documents in Google Drive but you can also access it directly using the snippet of code shown below:


<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8p1gAHHCMytS3ZrazdoRWVZVmc/preview" width="640" height="480"></iframe>

According to the documentation Google Drive viewer allows you to preview over 16 different file types, listed below:

Image files (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, .TIFF, .BMP)
Video files (WebM, .MPEG4, .3GPP, .MOV, .AVI, .MPEGPS, .WMV, .FLV)
Text files (.TXT)
Markup/Code (.CSS, .HTML,

… Read the rest

Roll your own Dropbox with a Raspberry Pi

January 7, 2013 | Comment

Following the success of hooking up my Raspberry Pi to my BT Home Hub the next step was to do something useful with it.

I am a very active user of cloud services, particularly Dropbox and Google Drive. Both work well but in order to gain additional space you have to pay but what if you could run your own service and add as much storage as you liked? Enter ownCloud a Dropbox lookalike that you run on your own server.

In my case the server is my Raspberry Pi and a 500gb harddrive attached providing the storage and it … Read the rest

iOS Maps

September 21, 2012 | Comment

… Read the rest