Just a quick mention that you can now buy episodes of BBC’s Robin Hood on iTunes, well in the UK you can.
Hold your breath…
Generally upgrades and updates go smoothly, but not always.
As jonmul posted recently on Jaiku, sometimes if not always you hold your breath.
Although Apple have made firmware upgrades a painless process I still hold my breath every time. Bricked to many devices in the past…
He’s not the only one who holds their breath…
I do it quite often, especially with firmware upgrades.
Having said that, I actually now rarely upgrade unless I am “forced” to. Sometimes I have been “forced” into an OS X upgrade as a piece of software I want to use is only compatible with a newer version.
If it works I generally leave it well alone. In the main as updates sometimes just do weird things.
Good example, I upgraded the iPod touch to 1.1.3, but I ain’t upgrading to 1.1.4 just yet.
Phone Tossing Pictures
You know that annoying delay when you try and take your picture with a mobile phone camera, well you can use it to good effect.
Update: image removed from remote server…
UX1XN Typing
I have always liked the Sony VAIO UX1XN.
I have always been disappointed with the battery life. My original intention was to use the UX1XN as my main conference computer, it’s small enough to be unintrusive, unlike a laptop which can be a bit of a barrier, it has two cameras which enable me to send images to Flickr or take short video clips, and the keyboard is usable unlike the fiddly mobile phone type split keyboard of the Q1 Ultra. You can also use it without needing to put it on the table or on your lap which makes it ideal in the conference hall or break-out room environment.
However as I said at the beginning the battery life is the downer, I only really get about an hour and half from it, and this means that it won’t last the day at a conference.
So recently I ordered the extended battery for it, which should make it usable and hopefully last the day at a meeting or a conference.
I have therefore been practicing using the keyboard, which is quite thumbs orientated, and have managed to get a reasonable speed using it.
I wouldn’t want to write a long blog entry (like this one) on it, but for entering URLs or posting tweets or jaiku postings, I think it will work just fine.
ALT-C Submission
Am I going to jinx my ALT-C submission by stating on this blog that I have submitted a workshop for ALT-C entitled Hood 2.0.
It’s as you might expect a workshop on Web 2.0 and hopefully (if accepted) be a lot of fun as well as illuminating.
Watch this space.
Vodafone Nightmare
Well it seems I am not the only one who suffers nightmare customer service from Vodafone.
Back in June 2004 I had a nightmare trying to order a 3G datacard from Vodafone, so much so that I basically nearly gave up even trying.
Well it seems four years later, customer service at Vodafone still leaves a lot to be desired.
James Whatley of SMSTextNews found his Nokia N95 wasn’t working, so he called Vodafone customer service, his phone was still under guarantee and he had insurance, so it should have been a simpe process, shouldn’t it…
What follows is an account of two hours of my life from the early evening of last night (Thursday).
Vodafone have pissed me off. Their insurance company more so – they are CLEARLY a 3rd party with nothing to do with Vodafone and as such, let them down on an almost spectacular level.
That aside – VF’s CS has seen better days.
If this issue is not resolved by the weekend, I am off to 3.
You heard it here first.
Read the whole story on the full blog entry.
To be honest reading that story doesn’t surprise me one bit, like James, when you are use to good customer service, when you have a bad experience, it really throws you and you can’t understand why they don’t just “get it”.
Hopefully Vodafone may realise that one bad experience for a customer results in lost sales or transfers to another network.
In case you are wondering, who do I use as my mobile phone provider, well it’s T-Mobile.
Bill on Twitter
BBC News’ Bill Thompson gives a nice overview of Twitter and the impact it had for him with SxSW.
Unlike many of my friends and colleagues I wasn’t able to make it to Austin, Texas for this year’s SXSW interactive, the four-day technology conference and festival that is currently firing the imagination of the technology world.
So I wasn’t in the ballroom when the keynote address by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went awry under the less-than-forensic questioning of technology journalist Sarah Lacy.
I didn’t see the crowd start to get restless and heckle Zuckerberg about the deeply-unpopular Beacon advertising system, or get a chance to grab the microphone and ask questions when Lacy threw the conversation open to the floor.
And yet I was there in another way, listening to and even interacting with some of my friends in the audience, picking up on the vibe in the room and even tuning in later as Sarah Lacy loudly defended herself.
I was there because I was plugged into Twitter, the instant messaging service that lets users send short text messages to anyone who cares to tune in, online or on their mobile phone.
Really nice article which demonstrates how Twitter is changing the face of communication and the web (to be honest mainly in the geek/tech world, but still causing change).
I do Twitter however I much prefer Jaiku, in the main as there is more of a community with Jaiku and Twitter is much more about the audience.
Twitter though is simple and tidy, whilst Jaiku has the functionality that allows much deeper discussion and the integration of RSS feeds.
They are similar, but they are also different. Though I use both I generally do not post exactly the same stuff to both. I do feed my Twitter feed into Jaiku, but my friends can choose to ignore it if they so wish
Downloaded iPhone SDK
I have managed to download the iPhone SDK, but so far have left it alone. It does require an Intel Mac running Leopard and my iMac is still running Tiger (for a while).
My Mac mini is running Leopard, but it’s a G4 PPC Mac so no luck there.
Ah well out with the external Leopard drive and boot up the iMac.
Ouch, it’s hot!
After not using it for a while, I decided that I would move my Mac mini from under the TV and move it to another room and use it as a web server.
I never really got round to using it as a TV computer, or media centre or anything really. An old CRT television is never much cop for showing a computer screen so was always using VNC to control it and if I am doing that I might as well use the laptop I am using to control the mini to do my computer stuff.
As a media centre it failed, as the Mac mini could not cope with the streams that the USB EyeTV device provided. The EyeTV relied on the mini for encoding and could it do it, no, not very well.
I also found that I rarely watched TV which I wanted to pause if I got interrupted, for things I did care about I had already recorded it already on the iMac and was watching it through the EyeHome.
However after I moved it I realised I must have turned the Airport off, so I connected it back to the 802.11n Airport Extreme by ethernet and VNC’d back in.
Now here’s my advice, if you leave a Mac mini on top of an 802.11n Airport Extreme, be aware that both will get too hot to handle! The Mac mini’s fans were going like they were going to take off.
It’s incredible how hot the 802.11n Airport Extreme gets, what does it do which means it get’s so hot?
Well the Mac mini is now in a cooler place acting as a temporary web server.
Hey, watch BBC iPlayer on your iPhone and iPod touch
The BBC launches a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.
The BBC has launched a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. It is the first time the software has been available on portable devices. The software, which allows users to download programmes from the last seven days, will work over a wi-fi connection but not over the mobile network.
Read more.
I am really pleased to see this happen. I do use the (flash version) of the iPlayer on my Macs now and again to catch up with the odd BBC TV programme either I miss or my EyeTV misses.