Why the next iPhone Might have an Inbuilt Coffee Perculator

March 13, 2015 | Comment

No sooner had the iPhone 6 been released did the tech sites start wondering just what might be in the NEXT release. Would it be the iPhone 6S? Would it have inductive charging? Might it be made from a metal only found on Mars? Could there be room for a larger battery? (actually Jony Ive says we wouldn’t like a larger battery and what the fuck do we know as users?)

This speculation is almost always unattributed and lacks any credible sources and is accompanied by a title containing the word “may“, “could” or “might… Read the rest

Hitting $1M in Pebble Time

February 25, 2015 | Comment

I waited a long long time for my Pebble to arrive after backing it on Kickstarter. But since the arrival of iOS8 and several updates to the watch firmware it was worked well and I really like the watch.

My only gripe would be that the font size is a bit small (even on the largest setting) and I wish that they would make it bigger. Apart from that it is just about perfect.

With all the news about the Apple Watch I had wondered what Pebble’s answer to it would be and yesterday we found out with the … Read the rest

Setting the Nest to Away

February 9, 2015 | Comment

I love the Nest learning thermostat now that it has built up a schedule but I feel that it could be doing more to help us save money.

One way to do this is set the Nest to away when I am, well, away. I currently have two ways of doing that:

1. via the standard Nest iPhone app, or
2. via the Nest Pebble app, Leaf.

Both these work well but you need to remember to actually do it and I never do. Worse than that if I do remember I then forget to turn it back on again.… Read the rest

Twitter Cards Validation Error

January 26, 2015 | Comment

Twitter have had a neat feature for a while now that allows for additional information to be included with a tweet that is then displayed when you expand the tweet. This is how it looks:

And on a mobile client:

To enable these you need to set-up some meta data on your website (there is a good guide here) and then validate this information with Twitter here. When I did so I was greeted by the following message:

ERROR: FetchError:exceeded 4.seconds to Portal.Pink-constructor-safecore while waiting for a response for the request, including retries (if applicable) (Card error)

This … Read the rest

Adding New Fonts to iOS for use in Word, Drafts and other Apps

January 6, 2015 | Comment

I have long loved the font that is used in iA’s Writer app but while I love the app I really wanted to be able to use the font elsewhere and particularly in Drafts.

After a bit of searching it was clear that the font used in Writer wasn’t available but there was a free alternative as part of Google Fonts called Cousine. The rest of this post will show you how you can get this font onto your iOS device. Firstly download the font package from the Google site.

You will need a copy of a font … Read the rest

Postman Pat and the Blue Screen of Death

January 2, 2015 | 1 comment

We were watching Postman Pat: The Movie last night (don’t ask) when I noticed a really nice little touch. When the robot Pat gets fried the display on his chest shows the blue screen of death. Well played guys!… Read the rest

Why I can’t get my Head Around Evernote’s Work Chat Feature

December 23, 2014 | Comment

In the last major release of Evernote a new feature called Work Chat was introduced. It is described by Evernote as allowing you to “discuss your work in Evernote, in real time, with the people who help you get it done.”. So it is sort of like an inbuilt chat facility and as that it works as described.

The problem is that what is the most natural thing to want to do while chatting over a note? For me it is to update it with the other party and for both to see the updates but when you do that … Read the rest

Seeing Double – Duet Display for iPad

December 19, 2014 | Comment

There has been a lot of noise this week about a new iOS app called Duet Display. This allows you to turn your iPad into an extra display for your Mac. This has been done before but the difference with Duet Display is that it claims to have no lag as it is connected over the lightning/dock cable rather than using wifi.

Duet Display was release yesterday afternoon and I installed it on my iPad Mini and iPhone 6 along with the mandatory companion app on my iMac.

The good news is that it certainly works as described. I … Read the rest

Fitbit vs Misfit on the Pebble Smartwatch

December 10, 2014 | 2 comments

I’ve been a happy Fitbit Flex user for some 18 months now but when Pebble released an update that allowed activity tracking I thought that I would give it a go to see how the two compared.

The first thing to point out is that I am only interested in two things: accuracy and battery life. The second thing is that while I am happy with both the watch and fitness band on my (non-dominant) wrist I would prefer it all in one package.

I chose to run the test over a couple of weeks. The first when I would … Read the rest

Your Own Link Shortener (Yourls)

December 4, 2014 | Comment

I have written about the Yourls system previously that allows you to host your own link shortener. I have been using it for years now and it works incredibly well.

However, when I logged in last week I noticed that it had been flooded with spam entries. I immediately changed my api key and password but neither stopped the entries. I was confused until I read this post on the Yourls blog.

I removed all the sample-*.php.txt pages and all the spam went away so I strongly suggest that you do so too. I ave looked at the latest … Read the rest