Author: jamesclay

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How many adverts?

Broken Television

I’ve realised recently how little television I watch, but not only that how very little live television. If it wasn’t for the children watching Scooby Doo live then I would probably get rid of the TV licence!

In terms of pre-recorded stuff, the main avenues that I watch are BBC iPlayer, Netflix, iTunes and recorded television using my Elgato EyeTV tuner on the Mac. Reflecting I did note that I rarely watch ITVPlayer, 5 on Demand and 4OD.

4OD Logo

Watching 4OD on my iPad the other day I was slightly shocked, astounded and annoyed by the number of adverts. In one advert “break” there were seven adverts to “watch” before the programme continued.

Adverts on 4OD

As you might expect there was no way to “avoid” the adverts and as it was on my iPad I couldn’t switch to something else while they were playing.

I know really I shouldn’t be astounded, as 4OD is not funded by the licence fee, and when broadcast live there are also adverts. If I had recorded the programme then I could have fast forwarded through the adverts, or if I had bought the programme on iTunes then there would also have been no adverts.

I think my astonishment was more down to how rarely I watch advertisement supported television than the actual number of adverts.

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Tethering

Nexus One

One of the reasons I like and still use my Google Nexus One, despite it’s age, is that I can use it for tethering. I am also lucky to have a legacy mobile phone contract that means tethering is included as part of my monthly payment.

I actually thought that I had unlimited data, but when I was on holiday and I did a fair bit of video streaming over 3G I did for the first time ever get a text from my phone company telling me I was reaching my fair usage data limit. This actually surprised me as I didn’t think I had a data limit.

Generally the connection is very good with very little latency. I have encountered a couple of issues that happen enough to be annoying.

The first one is when the connection just seems to stop. I am assuming that this is something to do with the 3G connection, and usually very quickly it comes back. Can be annoying when streaming video or if you are in the middle of posting a blog post.

The second issue is that the 3G connection just dies and stops working. The only resolution is to reboot the phone and start all over again.

It is only a 3G connection and until there is a lot more 4G (and it is a lot cheaper) I think I will continue with my current solution. Battery life isn’t perfect, but it generally lasts me for my daily needs and when I need more juice I plug the phone via USB into my laptop.

I like tethering over a dongle as a dongle can only be used by a single laptop, whereas with my phone, my laptop and iPad can be used at the same time, really aids productivity for me.

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I don’t trust you….

Safari Not Connected

No not you, but my blogging platform… actually I do trust my blogging platform, what I don’t trust is my internet connection to remain stable and consistent as I write a blog post, so that when I click publish, my blog post is actually published and out there on the web and hasn’t just disappeared into the ether!

What happens is you write a blog post into your text field, click the publish button and you get a “you are not connected” error and all your hard work has vanished. Clicking the back button doesn’t resolve the issue. There is no draft saved and you are then faced with a choice, try to recall what you wrote, or saying stuff it and going out for a coffee.

As a result these days wherever possible I will avoid typing direct a blog post onto the web and will use my word processor of choice and then cut and paste into the blog post when finished.

It does remind in the past how word processors would often crash losing all your work and you were left with the same conundrum as above.

So remember save your work as you write.

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Keynote Tweetless

Loose Change

Today I was presenting a keynote at the RSC Wales Conference in Cardiff. I had finished my presentation, however on the train I took the decision that the audience probably would be on the Twitter and therefore this was an opportunity to engage with my audience and get them discussing through Twitter. It would also be an easy way to add value to my Keynote presentation with links to relevant blog posts, news items, wikipedia articles and images.

So I went through the presentation and added the [twitter][/twitter] comments in the presentation notes.

It was only after I had done all this that I wondered if the recent Twitter API change would make a difference, so I tested the process and it didn’t work.

It had worked seamlessly before, but wasn’t working now. The main difference between then and now was the change in the Twitter API.

I checked my settings and then went through the process I had used before that was outlined on this blog post. I checked, and went through the whole authorisation process, but to no avail.

As a result I didn’t have the time to set up another solution, so my presentation was in the end tweetless.

For the future I think I will need to find another solution, what I liked about Keynote Tweet was the seamless way it worked with Keynote allowing individual tweets to be “sent” from individual slides.

If you know of a possible solution let me know in the comments.

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Disappointed

Osfoora for Twitter

Over the last few years I have been using the Osfoora client on my iPhone and iPad to use the Twitter.

On June 11th, Twitter turned off their API 1 and developers were only allowed to use API 1.1

As a result (well I think as a result) Osfoora stopped working as a Twitter client.

What is disappointing is that there was no news from Osfoora and no updates to the apps available.

What is disappointing is that this wasn’t a free app, these were apps I paid for.

I am not sure who I am more disappointed with Osfoora or Twitter.

There was an update for the Osfoora client for the iPhone, that allegedly used the API 1.1. It though, required 6.1 (something I had been putting off), I did that, updated Osfoora, rebooted the phone and now the app doesn’t work at all…

The end result is that I am looking for a new iOS Twitter client, in the meantime I am using the official iOS Twitter client, which is okay, but not really my cup of tea.

Update: Deleting and then reinstalling the app has fixed the app. Of course this won’t work on the iPad I believe as Osfoora HD hasn’t been updated and is not available.

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…still not working!

I mentioned a week or so back the problems I was having with connecting a Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 HD video camera to a TV via HDMI so I could playback the videos I had taken with it on the big screen. I said I was going to try and use a different TV and see if that would make a difference.

Did it?

No it did not!

I even tried a different connection method, using component video, but that did not work either.

I still can’t work out why it would not work…

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…but it should work!

Sometimes technology frustrates me no end.

I have been playing with a Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 HD video camera and it comes with a docking station which has an HDMI connection.

Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 HD video camera

I thought if I docked the camera and connected the docking station via HDMI to my TV I could watch the video and see the photographs I had taken on my TV.

Well that’s what I thought what would happen.

Well no it didn’t, even though the cables were connected, the playback was still on the camera and not on the TV.

I then thought, it might be because the dock was not connected to a power supply, I did that and still the TV remained blank, though this time the camera went blank too!

So I went to read the manual, which was to be honest no use at all. It gave no additional information, as according to it, what I was doing was what I should be doing. As for the troubleshooting guide, well that was not very insightful.

Even the Google failed me with finding a solution.

Going to try with a different TV and see if that helps. However it shouldn’t be this complicated and this challenging, it should just work!