Via xlearn
Chroming the iPad
I actually quite like Safari on the iPad, but was intrigued by what the new Google Chrome App had to offer.
I generally use Chrome more than Safari when using my desktop Mac, but until now there wasn’t that choice on the iPad.
After installing Chrome and starting the app you have the option of signing in with your Google account.
This to be honest is the only real reason for using Google Chrome so that you can sync with your desktop browser.
Trying out some of my usual sites I found it worked fine.
Of course there is no Flash support, but a lot more sites realise that and are offering their content in alternative formats. A lot more of the video on BBC News for example now works on the iPad, regardless whether you use Chrome or Safari.
Despite the fact that this is Google Chrome, it relies on the Safari WebKit as a result the performance is similar to mobile Safari. As a result I was disappointed when I tried Google+ on Chrome. I got the same “mobile” browser default that I do on Safari. I prefer the desktop browser version of Google+ over the Google+ App and really don’t like the mobile browser version of Google+.
If you really do like Chrome, alas you can’t using iOS change the default browser, clicking links in Twitter apps or Mail will result in Safari opening.
On the desktop I use multiple browsers, so for me it makes sense to have a similar capability on the iPad. So far I like the synchronisation with the desktop version of Chrome and I think that will be the key reason I will use it.
Nope, no fibre for me
I’ve had it confirmed to me by BT that the cabinet, my phone line is connected to, is not on the upgrade plan to FTTC. Nor are there any plans to upgrade it to FTTC in the near future. What I think this means is that BT either can’t or won’t upgrade the cabinet.
I don’t see them doing it anytime soon, so I will be stuck with a slow ADSL connection for the foreseeable and long term future.
There also doesn’t seem to be any real alternative either.
Ah well….
I need some fibre
As you may know if you read this blog post, I recently moved house and in doing so lost my FTTC connection and had to go back to a rather slow ADSL connection, slow as in less than 1Mb. I usually had 37Mb down with FTTC so you can imagine my annoyance.
One of the reasons I am more annoyed is that I am still on the same (enabled) exchange and we only moved less than half a mile down the road.
I am in the process of asking BT when I can expect the cabinet I am connected to, will be upgraded to FTTC, or even if it is possible to upgrade it to FTTC.
It seems surprisingly difficult to find out which specific cabinet I am connected to. From a postcode search of 2011 data it would appear that there is an 85% chance I am connected to a cabinet that isn’t part of the FTTC upgrade plan and may not even be able to be upgraded.
Using the BT checker (retail and wholesale) the answer is categorically that I can only have really slow ADSL.
Using SamKnows seems to indicate a yes to FTTC!
However as we took our phone number with us when we removed, I have a suspicion that they may be using old data.
I have put a support request into BT and am hoping for an answer on Monday. You never know I might be on fibre faster than I could hope, or (more likely) find out that I can never have fibre.
ADSL isn’t cutting it, I need more bandwidth. So if I can’t get fibre what options do I have for fast broadband then?
No more MobileMe
So today there is no more MobileMe.
Yesterday Apple shut down MobileMe and now your only choice is iCloud. There are big differences between iCloud and MobileMe and as a result many of the features that I found useful in MobileMe are now no longer available and won’t be replicated in iCloud.
It has to be said, MobileMe was not one of Apple’s best products and in many ways, compared to their hardware and OS, was plain awful.
When I compare what iDisk was to what Dropbox is, we can see why Apple needed to do a lot more to make MobileMe the service it was advertised to be. Dropbox, for those that use it, is a fantastic service that basically syncs a 2GB folder across your computers and integrates well with iOS apps and devices. Save a file to your Dropbox folder on your desktop Mac, it will then synchronise with the cloud and if your laptop is running, Dropbox will sync and the file will be available on your laptop. For me, with smaller files, I often found Dropbox faster and easier than trying to copy files across the network… that is saying something. On the other hand iDisk was a total waste of time. iDisk was launched in 2000 and was part of the free iTools, this evolved into .Mac and in 2008 became part of MobileMe. My own experience of iDisk was that it was slow, took ages to mount and if you tried to sync with the desktop it only resulted in lots of disk thrashing and unsynchronised files. I always thought it was just me and my slow ADSL connection. When I upgraded to fibre in 2010, with 40Mb down and 10Mb up I was gobsmacked on how slow iDisk was… These speed issues meant to me that iDisk was something I used now and again and wasn’t a service that could be relied on for a daily basis. I remember been initially sceptical of Dropbox, expecting to see similar performance issues to iDisk, so you can imagine my astonishment when using Dropbox, even with large files on how fast it was. More recently I’ve had similar speedy issues with Google Drive.
I did use homepage.mac.com from iDisk for a while as a web server as it was quite convenient for hosting images and videos, even with slow iDisk speeds. Alas with the end of MobileMe that means that server has been shut down!
This has actually caused me an issue with my eLearning Stuff podcast, as I used the rss.me.com server to host the podcast feed XML file. I did this as it gets hammered quite a bit by podcast clients and I wanted to avoid my own server getting this hammering and causing bandwith issues. I will now need to find a new place for the XML file. It’s not too bad in one respect as the main podcast feed actually fed into Feedburner. So that’s one thing I had forgotten about that I now need to fix.
One of the features of .Mac I really liked was that my bookmarks in Safari were not only synchronised across my Macs, but they were also available in the cloud, I could get them online. This was really useful when using a Windows PC. This “feature” was removed when .Mac became MobileMe and that annoyed me. However the synchronising of my bookmarks across my Macs did continue, which was better than nothing. Of course MobileMe as well as synchronising my bookmarks, also synchronised keychains and settings. Though iCloud does bookmarks, it has stopped doing keychains and some other things. I always found this useful when configuring a new Mac. Now I will need to do things differently.
I didn’t make a huge use of the MobileMe galleries, but feel less confident with the iCloud Photo Stream. My setting is “off” in the main as I do take photographs of family with my iPhone and iPad but don’t want them online straight off!
The one that has really put me off iCloud though was going through the upgrade process to Lion on my iMac. In attempting to upgrade to Lion I actually managed to kill the hard drive on the iMac. What I actually think happened was that there was an issue with the hard drive and the Lion upgrade process caused the drive to fail. The end result was, luckily in having Applecare, a replaced hard drive and an iMac running Lion.
As for Back to my Mac, I have never got that to work… but I think it’s probably an issue with my work network. One day I might try again.
Overall I am still not sure about iCloud. I still have to work out how best to use the iWork aspects, I normally use Dropbox for iWork on the Mac, but I quite like Pages and Keynote on the iPad, and it’s here that iCloud may be useful in synchronising files. I have concerns over synchronising, it made a mess up of my bookmarks and I would worry about files in case it did it with that.
So are you using iCloud? Are you happy with it? What am I missing?
Music, books, movies and tan slacks
After announcing their new 7″ Google Nexus 7 tablet at the Google I/O conference keynote, Google released a video talking about the device and the benefits it provides users. After clicking play, make sure you turn on closed captions by clicking the “cc” button.
It was pointed out to me that Google have used automatic closed captions on their video and let’s just say the transciption of speech to text was not perfect, and in some ways quite amusing.
Thank you to Ron Mitchell for pointing this out to me.
Lost my fibre…
Back in October 2010 I upgraded my broadband to FTTC and improved my internet speeds dramatically….
Finally had my broadband upgraded to FTTC and I am impressed. With 40Mb down and 10Mb up this is significantly faster than the 1.3 down and 0.6 up I had before.
It has already changed how I use the internet, whereas before I would probably not consider downloading a film from iTunes during the day, as it would soak up my bandwidth and would take hours to download; now it takes under five minutes to download! No problems with downloading large files and updates now.
This week I lost access to FTTC and dropped back down to those old slow ADSL speeds I thought I had left behind.
The reason was simple I moved house!
Though I only (really) moved down the road and even though I am still connected to the same enabled telephone exchange, it would appear that the cabinet I am connected to hasn’t been upgraded! So as a result no FTTC for me.
The first big issue was digging out an ADSL Modem to use, and alas the one I had, had probably been in the garage or a while, and didn’t work. You can’t use the modem that is provided with FTTC, hence the need for an ADSL Modem. Spent about an hour trying to work out why the old D-Link modem wasn’t working. Doing a hard reset didn’t work. So it was a quick trip to PC World to find a cheap ADSL Modem. In the end I got the Netgear N150 Wireless ADSL2+ Modem Router. I didn’t in fact need the wireless as I use Apple’s Airport Extreme for my wireless networking.
It was easy to configure via a web browser and it wasn’t long before I was connected and using the ADSL connection.
Back when I got fibre I wrote:
The other key advantage is streaming video, which was almost pointless before due to buffering, and like downloading, previous streaming would soak up my bandwidth, having 40Mb down means I can stream and do other stuff at the same time.
Now that I am back on ADSL (and slow ADSL at that) I am once again unable to stream video through my connection and do anything else. An experiment with BBC iPlayer resulted in a slow browsing experience and buffering video. Now that’s going to be annoying and frustrating. The first casualty looks like it will be my Netflix subscription… if I can’t stream video then what is the point? It will also become a hassle to download video files from iTunes too.
I also have concerns about webinars and Skype as I have a very poor upload speed.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love our new house, it’s great. I just hope that BT will get around to upgrading the cabinet soon so I can get FTTC. I also hope they can upgrade the cabinet…. would be doubly annoying if I could never get back on fibre.
Voice Dictation
Hello welcome to another blog post. I’m using voice dictation of this blog post which means I’m talking to my computer now I’m in a quiet environment so as a result this should be quite easy computer to pick up my voice and also to understand what I’m saying. I’m wondering whether I should go back and get it this text is quite pickup want to say that’s one of the problems with voice dictation is that while he doesn’t always pick up well. Planning to say was that the problem of voice dictation ethernet typing text that you want people to wind is not quite the same and somebody listening to a voice and speak you send me realise that you don’t speak properly be using is like a B and then you guys know what I’m talking about. So if you speak clearly and reasonably slowly then voice dictation will accurately turn your voice into text if you talk about your computer as though it was somebody in a coffee shop drinking coffee and new words and change things here are that I have the honesty using going to be very useful. So as a colour that last paragraph and did not turn out as expected if you speak clearly and reasonably slowly invoice dictation will Aquitaine voice into text if you decide to talk to your computer in a way in the same manner for example that you talk to somebody in a coffee shop and then your computer will convert your speech into text Blatchley somebody really your blog post. With somebody reading your blog posts and they will think were you drinking something else other than coffee when you wrote that you would not want to bring you were speaking and maybe they may be a little bit understandable voice dictation has some way to go before it becomes taintedness. That lasts sentence should’ve ended become totally useful rather then becomes taintedness I’m unsure what taintedness he’s having that were prices underlined in rates is from the real world anyway so there is going to be a lot speaking very slowly for the computer was slowly and clearly I think voice dictation has some way to go before it becomes useful and usable. I think you might need a good microphone too.
Podcast Choice #07 – This Week in Google
I have been asked a fair few times about the different podcasts I listen to. I not only have a lengthy commute to work, but also travel a fair bit for work, so it’s vital to me to have something to listen to. This series will discuss and review the different podcasts I listen to or have listened to. In a previous blog post I spoke about the why and how I listen to podcasts, now we look at the actual podcasts I listen to.
This week’s podcast is This Week in Google.
Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani, Jeff Jarvis and their guests talk about the latest Google and cloud computing news.
I have already mentioned in this series, This Week in Tech and MacBreak Weekly which come from the TWiT stable of podcasts. Whereas This Week in Tech covers the general tech news, MacBreak Weekly covers Apple, what you get with This Week in Google is, well you would think it would be Google, but it’s a lot more than just Google, it also covers the cloud, Facebook, Twitter and other social web services.
Though I listen to the audio version, it is also available as a video download too.
Initially the episodes did just cover the Googleplex, but soon it covered cloud computing in general. It also covers some general tech news, but with a slightly different slant due to the regular panel members.
There are three regulars on the show, Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis. They are all very different individuals with unique personalities. Together they work well covering the different viewpoints of the week’s news. They certainly speak their opinions and are critical of both the US and European governments in their “treatment” of the internet. The podcast can be somewhat geeky in nature, but this is not a criticism, more one of the things I like about it.
Some people I know will probably listen to a recent episode and might not enjoy it. As with many podcasts you need to listen for a few weeks to get a feel for it, as a single episode may not be a true reflection of what the podcast is like. For me a podcast is more than a single episode as in a one off radio style show, it is the series of shows that really make a podcast. The growing relationship between the presenters and the listener over time is for what makes you want to subscribe to a podcast and listen on a regular basis.
Cat Physics – Game Choice #08
If you like using your iPhone for games (in the main casual gaming) then you may be interested in the following games that I have enjoyed playing on my iPhone over the last few years.
What are cats up to at dawn, when nobody’s around?
Sneaking around the back alleys?
Probably!
Going through garbage cans?
Not likely!
Playing Donut Games? Most certainly!
Join the cats in their favorite midnight ball game: CAT PHYSICS!
The objective is simple — Pass the ball from one cat to another! Sounds too simple?
Oh, wait… did we mention flip boards, glass windows, trap doors and other obstacles?
This is a nice fun game that combines physics (in a way), puzzles, logic and cats!
As with lots of these games on the iPhone where it works well is as a casual game that can be played for a few minutes at a time. Some of the puzzles are relatively simple to complete, others take a fair few attempts to get right. Even if you manage to complete a level, you can go back and try and fine tune your attempt to get a better result.
I have enjoyed this game, as have my children, lots of fun for all ages. My original review of Cat Physics on e-Learning Stuff.
Get Cat Physics in the iTunes App Store.