Author: jamesclay

Posted on

Really fast…

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.

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.

My only concern is that all this speed I will probably exceed my bandwidth quite easily…

Posted on

Facebook unveils ‘groups’ feature and user controls

BBC News reports on new features on Facebook.

Facebook has introduced a raft of features aimed at giving users more control over their personal data.

A groups feature will allow users to specify circles of friends with whom they want to share different data.

For the first time, users will also be able to download all the data they have uploaded onto the site.

Read more

Posted on

Ministry of Defence warns service personnel over Facebook Places

Daily Telegraph reports on security issues over Facebook Places.

Security officials have warned members of the armed forces that geo-location services, such as Facebook Places, could be used by terrorists to track potential targets.

There are real security issues as far as the MoD are concerned, but I wonder if many learners have actually thought about the implications of “shouting” where they are all the time.

Posted on

Apple TV Soon…

According to the original announcement from Apple we should see the Apple TV before the end of September. The last time I went to my local Apple store they still had the old model and no news on the new one (nothing new there then).

Originally I was quite excited about it and nearly pre-ordered….

However since then I have become slightly less keen.

Will still probably buy one.

Posted on

FTTC

BT Infinity is BT’s new broadband product that makes use of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) to enable even faster speeds than available via normal DSL. In some cases 40Mbs download speeds are possible.

Of course if you are going to make best use of this and have a wireless network, if you use 802.11g then you may find this is not fast enough and want to get an 802.11n wireless router.

Another feature of FTTC is that unlike traditional UK ADSL that uses PPPoA, FTTC uses PPPoE so that a router like Apple’s Airport Extreme is now possible to use direct with the broadband connection. Before you would have needed to use a ADSL modem between your broadband connection and your wireless router.

My local exchange has just been upgraded to FTTC so looking forward to upgrading and trying it out.

There are also trials with FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) that can result in even faster 100Mb speeds. I can wish.

Posted on

Free TomTom adapter for iPhone 4

Back in July I wrote a blog post about the problems of using the then new iPhone 4G with the existing TomTom iPhone Car Kit.

My main concern now though is compatibility with the iPhone 4. It does click in, but you wouldn’t want to do it too often. However even if you do click it in, there is no connection made with the Car Kit, so no charging and I guess no enhanced GPS.

You can , according to the internet tubes, add some padding that will allow it to work, but not tried that yet.

I would like TomTom to offer upgrades to an iPhone 4 model or even free upgrades would be nice.

Well if you head on over to the TomTom website you can claim a free adapter for your iPhone 4G to allow it to work properly with the Car Kit.

Excellent and well done TomTom.

Posted on

Airport Extreme reliability failing

As mentioned before on the blog, my Airport Extreme is becoming less reliable. I am having to reboot it at least once a week now. There is no warning before it goes dodgy.

I am going to wait before replacing it, as we are getting BT Infinity later this month and I am not sure if I will need a new router. If I do need a specific type of router then I will get a new 802.11n router.

Posted on

£99 Apple TV

Yes!

Well nearly yes!

Apple today announced their new Apple TV. A quarter of the size of the original Apple TV, no hard drive and a much lower price.

£99 is a much nicer price than the £200+ of the older version.

The main downside is a lack of storage, however streaming is possible from both Macs and iOS devices so not too much of an issue. My experiences of 802.11n streaming is that it does work fine and is much better than 802.11g wifi. I am thinking though that the iPad and the iPhone use the slower 2.4GHz 802.11n and my 802.11n network runs at 5GHz I may need to add a third wireless network at home if I want to stream from my iPad.