I like chrome, it’s a super fast little browser but it lacks one the most important features I have in Firefox, the Google toolbar. It even laughs at me when I go and try and install it from within the browser.
I can’t see the reason why Google wont release their own product for their browser. Maybe soon, until then I’m sticking with the Fox I know.
It’s been a strange day today, my first without an iPhone for about 5 months. My life of being always connected has taken a bit of a hit so my first task to do was to get hooked back up.
Now I knew I am getting a new phone with my new job so I didn’t want to spend too much cash. In fact it 
might be for about a month so any rolling contract was also out of the window. Fortunately I also have a stash of old windows mobile phones lying around, a S730 and a S710. So these can give me the basic functions I required. You might remember how much I loved the HTC S730 so there was no chance going back there. Actually it turns out that the HTC S710, apart from looking much nicer also seemingly was more upgradable. The people over at the XDA Development forums had cooked a number of nice 6.5 ROMS including an Official one that you can get here (although I have no idea how official it is). Which after a few hiccups I managed to flash onto the device. I was then in need of some sort of sim.
Now when I actually last had a phone of my own (about 10 years ago) contracts were expensive, the internet wasn’t very mobile and sim cards were seemingly made of gold dust. Today it seems that both sim cards and internet access are given away for nothing. Popping into the O2 store I managed to actually find a knowledgeable guy who pointed me at the the Text and Web tarrif, as I mainly browse the internet on the phone, for email, Twitter and Facebook for £10 for a month it’s a steal. This sim worked like a charm in the phone.
So for £10 and a recycled phone, I was back up and running. Sure it’s no iPhone, but I now feel like I’m back in 2007 and if I squint so does the rest of the world. Next I’m going to install a copy of Windows Vista and pretend that it’s good.
Between reading the Omnivores Dilema and watching Jamie Oliver talking about obesity, makes me really depressed about food. Anyway I’ve been ‘mostly’ vegetarian for 16 years, so I’m ok right 
Less falvoured milk in the world = good!
I had an email today giving me technology deals and one price caught my eye which you can see in the 
image to my right. I remember when these Palm devices were all the rage, I think I even had one for a period of time. It’s always a shock to see the prices of things you brought at possibly hundreds of pounds reduced to nothing more than proto junk.
In the past technological marvels like this would have been kept for years and functioning, but today last months technology is out of date and legacy. Whether the pace can be kept up for years to come, who knows, do I mind, well yes and no.
No because I like “shiney shiney”, yes because the relentless pace of change leads to more and more items like this being consigned to landfill. There lies the quandary, how to have all the new gadgets but to minimise the waste. With software you can remove the packaging all together but using digital distribution methods, with hardware hopefully people can come up with more modular devices, where you can reuse old components in new machines (which you can to a certain extent with PC’s).
At the current rate of land fill I hope someone makes a breakthrough soon before the planets full.
Whilst it is probably a glitch, even in these recession fuelled times there are some jobs that should not be advertised. I’m sure that there might be a catch, maybe this job comes with a lifetime supply of free gold or something, but it better be good as it’s not even close to minimum wage.
From an advertisement at the side of this page!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/07/googlephone_3g_frequencies/
Anyway it was slightly funny, well a little bit anyway.
It seems a while since I posted anything here, but I’m going to try and post at least once a month here about random stuff, if I’m good at anything it’s definitely random stuff! Anyway as I was a good boy last year I managed to get a bumper haul from Santa which is always nice, so I have lots of reviews to write up especially of the nice shiny digital Scalextric I purchased for my daughter, honest it’s for her I tell you.
Lots of fun has been had with this over the Christmas period, and don’t let anyone con you into buying a ‘kiddies’ version of the product for even a 4 year old as they are perfectly capable of racing on this track (although their ability to take being beaten is quiet limited!).
Anyway here are a few things I’ll put posts up about over the next few months:
Stay tuned…
I often see headlines on the BBC News website that allows my mind to get ahead of my eyes. Take this one for example:
I realised the John Barnes was recently released from Tranmere and that he was a free agent, but really did England have that much of a problem on the right wing, had Fabio Capello gone mad. Alas once again clicking the link lead to disappointment:
Somewhere though, in an alternate reality, John Barnes is getting ready for a comeback in South Africa 2010.
Visual Web Developer Express 2008 is a nice piece of software. It allows you to do free development of ASP.NET web applications in the same excellent environment as Visual Studio. I am confused though how it thinks my developments will progress when after install it adds the x64 bit Remote Debugger to my start menu, not a link to the IDE as you might think would be more useful. Maybe it thinks that I will spend most of my time there (I never have yet!). Odd, look here it is… waiting for me… lurking in my start bar… stalking my mouse!
I use TweetDeck for a number of reasons.
1) It’s good and does what I want.
2) It looks cool.
3) It’s British, go us!
What I didn’t know that it was also 1337 to use it. I found a link to the list of clients that use twitter today. It lists the percentage of users of the that use that client, I noticed a strange thing about the % of users of TweetDeck.
Link to list here. (It might change… so this post might be so yesterday tomorrow.)
Edit: It changed whilst I was writing this… thus I was only 1337 for a moment… it figures.
As part of any media setup the PS3 has always been one of the expensive toys that has dubious value especially in Europe with the lack of movie downloads. Whilst it has had DNLA playback from compatible devices (I have an excellent Buffalo Linkstation Mini) that alone has never quiet managed to push me into paying the £300+ pounds for the console and the added components.
This changed with the release of the latest console (PS3 Slim) and firmware upgrade (3.0). This dual release delivered a number of key elements that made me plonked down my hard earned cash:
1) Power and noise reduction.
2) iPlayer integration.
3) Movie downloads (not yet availible).
4) Price.
The reduction in the die size of processors has allowed Sony to reduce the size of the system, as an additional benefit the smaller processors are now cooler and the system is quieter than the previous model, which I’ve heard in all it’s ‘glory’, as well as consuming less power.
In the UK the BBC iPlayer is king of online programming and is becoming a must if you want to catch those missed programs. Whilst I’ve dabbled with kit from Shuttle (X200) the fact that the system actually was shoe-horned on top of windows and Microsoft has never done an official integration into media centre always left this solution lacking.
Now I know there will be many people saying that the PS3 iPlayer doesn’t really do HD or allow downloads 
and yes that is a limitation, but as the article in the latest Wired (September US) said, when something is good enough it only needs to provide the classic 80/20 rule and the you don’t need all the bells and whistles for it to be usable. In fact having the iPlayer available in under a minute on the TV downstairs and easily accessible with the controller (hopefully better remote support will come) was amazing. Hopefully the Movie downloads will be as easy to use and priced well, will have to see when they get rolled out in the UK as that will be the final element in my media empire .
