Author: jamesclay

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Seadragon Mobile

In an interesting move, Microsoft Labs have released an application for the iPhone.

Seadragon

Seadragon is designed to provide next-generation visual experiences, regardless of the size of the screen, size of the file or speed of your network. It’s already available on a number of platforms, including Microsoft Surface, and in Photosynth and Silverlight. Now we’re bringing that same graphical smoothness right to the iPhone in your pocket.

Probably the best way to describe it, as a Google Maps but for any large scale image.

Find out more.

Download the app from the iTunes Store.

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New phone

Well my Nokia N73 is “broken” in the sense that it keeps turning itself off on a too regular basis. Upgrading the firmware hasn’t helped and as a result I am thinking about a new phone.

Obvious choice would be the Nokia N97, but it’s not out yet, so can I wait, or do I go for the E71.

Hmm. Decisions.

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Fixing Twitterfon

Twitterfon is one of my favourite applications for the iPhone (and iPod touch) however recently it has been crashing consistently everytime I start it up.

According to the Twitterfon website blog, the problem lies with Twitter.

Some users have been reporting me that TwitterFon crashes on launch. This has been happening since this afternoon. The root cause is that twitter has changed their JSON response which favorite status value is null instead of bool unexpectedly and randomly.

Not quite sure that that means as I am not really a techie, honestly!

However all is not lost.

If you apply this patch (and you may have to do it more than once) then it should fix the Twitterfon application until an update is released.

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Nokia N97 – Looking good!

Nokia’s new N97 phone is looking really good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O2Li74EYew

I hope it is as good as it appears to be.

Nokia’s press release on the Nokia N97:

The N97 isn’t a device that will trigger knee-jerk hysteria, but instead it should breed cool-headed excitement at the prospect of a new era of mobile experience.

It may be an Nseries handset, but the N97 carves a new space in the otherwise blurred realm between smartphone and laptop – a product built on a foundation of rock solid mobile principles, Nokia innovations, and tangible new technologies, pushed to the extreme and embodied in a slimline pocket shell.

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Amazon launch mp3 store in UK

It’s typical, I buy some tunes from the iTunes Store and then the very next day Amazon announce their new mp3 Store for the UK!

Though the songs I got from the iTunes Store were iTunes Plus (ie DRM free) the mp3 files from Amazon are encoded at 256 Kbps compared to the 128 Kbps at iTunes.

Hearing about the US version on MacBreak Weekly I am pleased to see we now have our own version here in the UK.

See what they have at the Amazon.co.uk MP3 Store including lots of albums for £3.

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iTunes Store

I have realised lately that I am downloading more video from the iTunes Store than in the past.  I am downloading films and TV series as well as renting films too.

I quite like the fact that I can get a TV series for £10 and downloaded Life on Mars. However that was a special offer and most series are if you buy every episode quite expensive as a result!

I still think renting is expensive at £3.49, but at least here in the UK we have 48 hours in which to watch the film, over in the USA it’s only 24 hours. Due to busy lifestyle sometimes I want to watch a movie over two evenings. I have watched a few of the 99p rentals which I think are value for money, and if there were more then I would probably rent more, but one a week!

Not tried HD, but as I don’t have an Apple TV or a HDTV not much use to me!

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Nokia N97

I see that the Nokia N97 has been announced. A very nice new phone which as well as a touchscreen also has a slide out keyboard.

Obviously designed to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s G1 it is Nokia’a answer to the new internet phone now being demanded by consumers.

There are some early reviews out now, CNET and ZDNet.

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N73 problems

My Nokia N73 is giving me a few headaches, basically it keeps crashing and turning itself off.

I thought a firmware update might help, well at least reset the device. This is not as simple as it could be as the software is Windows only. I thought I could run it in Parallels, well I could, but I couldn’t pick up the N73 through the USB cable. I could in OS X but not pass it through to Parallels.

So in the end I installed the software to a Windows computer. What I couldn’t quite understand was that I went to the Nokia site downloaded the PC Suite software. When I ran the installer it asked if I wanted to check for a newer version. Well there couldn’t be a newer version as I have just downloaded it could there.

Yes there was.

Huh!

So having just downloaded a 36MB installer filer, I have to download a new 36MB version!

Once that was installed, I then had to install the firmware updater.

Once all that was done I could update the phone.

This was done.

However I am not sure if it has fixed the problem.