tech, news, productivity, views and stuff
Well my (old) UFO shaped 802.11g Airport Extreme seems to be not working despite the three lights on the front flickering and flashing away.
Despite power cycling the base station, it would not broadcast a wireless signal and even when connected by ethernet it only appeared sometimes in the Airport Utility.
I may do a full reset, but in the meantime I have replaced it with my spare Airport Express which I usually take away with me when staying in hotels or need to use at conferences.
I often post about how slow my ADSL connection is, however today after power cycling my router, I saw a nearly 100% increase in the download speed going from 1700Kbps to in excess of 3100Kbps (according to my router).
I am certainly noticing the difference when browsing and downloading files.
Fast!
Sometimes depsite all your planning, it all falls apart.
Not living in San Francisco, actually I don’t even live in the US, I knew it was going to be impossible to attend the MacWorld 2008 Keynote in person. Though I didn’t realise until listening to MacBreak Weekly that it’s like an iPhone launch if you want to actually get in there in person, it starts at 9am, but you really need to start queuing at 4am – now that’s dedication.
So I couldn’t be there in person, like I was ever going to get there!
I didn’t really want to “view” the keynote by watching the Macrumors’ feed, or refreshing Engadget on a regular basis, or watching multiple tweets on Twitter (which I believe went down during the Keynote). I do like watching the stream (as though it was “live”. I subscribed the Macrumors spoiler free link. However fifteen hours after the Keynote, no e-mail giving me the link, I thought to myself, either there is no stream (there had to be, it said it was going to be made available on the Apple website) or (more likely) the Macrumors e-mail service had failed! It hadn’t completely failed, the e-mail telling me about the steam eventually arrived eighteen hours after the start of the Keynote!
So I went to the Apple website, obviously saw the MacBook Air on the front page and thought ah well, and clicked the link for the Keynote stream.
Now maybe it was my connection or my computer, but could I get the Keynote to stream? No.
I tried on two different connections with no luck. I tried on about four computers with no luck.
Probably too many people trying to access the stream.
I am not a great fan of streaming, as too often (with long videos) I want to pause the video as real life gets in the way, you know phone calls, coffee, e-mails, etc… I have found with some streaming, if I pause the stream it never restarts, so I need to start the whole stream from the beginning.
I even tried to find online a place to download the Keynote with no luck.
I was resigned to the fact that I was not going to be able to watch the Keynote this year. Ah well I had found out what was released and I had seen the sixty second version.
So imagine my surprise when looking at the top podcasts in the (UK) iTunes Store when there was the MacWorld 2008 Expo Keynote.
Well I am downloading all 900MB of that then!
I am surprised that not only was it available, but that Apple hadn’t really mentioned it on their main website.
Still downloading, and you know about everything that was mentioned, so leave me to enjoy that distortion field which is Steve Jobs.
One more thing…
I have been thinking for a while about getting a 3G USB Modem.
My preference is to use a Bluetooth connection to my phone and use that as a modem, however this is very heavy on battery life for both the phone and the laptop and I am thinking that a USB modem will have less impact on the laptop and (obviously) no impact on the phone’s battery life.
I don’t want a card solution as I use different computers, some have CF slots, come have PC Card slots and another uses ExpressCard, so a card solution will be too limiting.
I am not overly happy with having a dongle hanging off my computer, but it is better than no internet connection.
So which one do I go for?
My initial choice was “3” which has the cheapest solution at £10 per month, however they do have a 1GB limit and will charge if you go over that limit. £15 gives you a 3GB allowance.
Speeds are suppose to be in the 2.8Mbps range, but that’s not the case across the whole country.
Having used Vodafone before and get very annoyed with their content control and the complexity of having to pay to turn it off, I am not keen on using Vodafone. Also at £25+VAT per month they are the most expensive. However at 7.2Mbps they are the fastest. Though that speed is not available around me, so is less inticing.
I am coming around to T-Mobile which is around £20 per month now. However it does appear to be the slowest of the lot. It has one advantage that the service also includes free access to T-Mobile wifi hotspots.
Still thinking.
What no 3G?
Though you may think I am talking about the lack of a second generation iPhone with 3G, no I am talking about the lack of 3G on the MacBook Air.
Yes it has 802.11n, but how many 802.11n wifi hotspots have you seen on your travels? Also from an internet perspective, 802.11n is a bit of overkill for a typical internet connection. Not everywhere has wifi hotspots, they never seem to be available when I am out and about or they fall over a lot from too many clients.
So there you are with this beautifully thin MacBook Air and either you need to use a Bluetooth to a 3G phone, which kills the battery both on the MacBook Air and the phone, and a lot of mobile phone providers in the UK now no longer allow you to use your 3G phone as a modem (or they charge you a fortune) they all now seem to want you to use a USB dongle.
Now an USB dongle though has less of an impact on battery life on your laptop (and no impact on your phone’s battery life) is a dongle and it dangles from the beautifully styled and thin laptop you just bought!
All of this could have been avoided if Apple had provided 3G functionality with their beautifully thin MacBook Air.
I’m not the only one thinking like this, as you can see here and here.
I think Apple missed the boat on this one, though maybe they didn’t want to get into bed with another phone provider!
Despite my previous post only one feature (the Coverflow enhancement) for the new EyeTV 3 would require Leopard.
All the other new features will work on 10.4.11 according to Elgato.
After a period of reflection, I quite like the idea of the enhanced editing, the current tools are the best I have worked with on any TV recording system, so have them even better will be great.
Wi-Fi Access is one of my favourite features of the current version of EyeTV, the enhanced version with version 3 sounds useful if you have a new wifi phone.
Overall there are some really good features in version 3, however with the way I use EyeTV on my iMac I can’t see myself upgrading, if I upgrade the Mac mini under my television then I will get the new version.
In amongst all the hype about the MacBook Air at MacWorld a lot of other announcements got a bit lost.
Elgato have released EyeTV 3.
This new version has quite a few enhancements compared to version 2, though it looks like many of them look like they will only work on a Mac running Leopard.
At this time I don’t think I will be upgrading.
Find out more.
Those who know me will know that I am a bit of a fan of Apple products, not exclusively, but I do like good design and stylish kit.
Yesterday in San Francisco at MacWorld Expo, Apple announced some new products and upgrades for the iPod touch and iPhone.
Key new product announced at the keynote was the MacBook Air, a small light MacBook.
I do like small computers, great fan of the 10″Sony VAIO laptops, however this is slightly bigger than I would like, and I can’t see how that would survive travelling by air or train.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s very stylish, well designed, but doesn’t meet my needs for a small portable computer for use at conferences, on the train and in coffee shops.
No rumoured touchscreen, nor a Blu-ray drive either (actually no optical drive, though cleverly you can use your other Mac’s drive wirelessly, which is a very clever piece of software and something I would like to use with Windows UMPCs).
Nor can you can carry a spare battery, actually you can’t even replace the battery, it has to be sent to Apple to be replaced if it goes faulty.
There was also upgrades for the iPhone and iPod touch announced which provide additional applications, annoyingly free on the iPhone and a £12.99 upgrade for the iPod touch.
Huh!
Probably worth it for the e-mail and notes applications which make the iPod touch a more useful.
Also announced was a new Airport Extreme base station which comes with a 500GB or 1TB drive for Time Machine backups.
On the Americans get the opportunity to rent films, here in the UK we don’t, well not for a while.
Excellent blog article on though Twitter is winning the battle in the numbers game, Jaiku will win the war once Android starts shipping.
What if Google where to build Jaiku into Android as the standard phone Address Book? As soon as Android devices started to ship, Jaiku (whatever form it takes in the future) would gain hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of users rapidly. This isn’t as crazy an idea as it sounds. As I’ve posted before, Jaiku was originally conceived as a location and status aware address book; many Nokia users who have the Jaiku S60 client application installed already use the service in this way.
Read the full blog entry, makes for interesting reading.
Personally I much prefer Jaiku over Twitter, the RSS and the comments allow for me a much deeper richer experience, more importantly as well it allows for interactivity much more easily than Twitter.
Of course I don’t like the 504 errors (who does) and that bird, but hopefully with a day off tomorrow (what am I going to do) Jaiku will get better and we’ll see less of them.
Follow me on Jaiku.