Tech Stuff

January 29, 2009

iTunes Plus upgrades now à la carte

One of the big criticisms of the introduction of the widespread use of iTunes Plus on the iTunes Store (ie the removal of DRM) which was announced at MacWorld 2009 was the fact that you had to do an all or nothing upgrade.

That has now changed.

Upgrades now no longer have to be on a whole library basis they can be now done on an iTunes Plus upgrades now à la carte basis as seen in Apple’s FAQ (note opens in iTunes). You can now do single songs.

As a result I can upgrade my Prince songs, but not necessarily the Steps track I must have bought when I was not really with it!

January 26, 2009January 1, 2020

Installing Windows 7 on the Q1 Ultra

Though I initially had problems with the Samsung Q1 Ultra I have grown to like the UMPC, the main benefit being the five hour battery life (even longer with the powerbank).

Samsung Q1 Ultra

However the operating system has always been a bit of a pain, yup you’ve guessed it, it runs Windows Vista. Though the Q1 Ultra has 1GB of RAM, this really isn’t sufficient for Vista, and as a result boot times are too long, and there are performance lags which I blame on the OS.

I was seriously considering downgrading to Windows XP and to see if that would improve the performance. Now though I am thinking I might install the Windows 7 beta and see if that could improve the performance.

If all else fails, I will install Ubuntu!

January 25, 2009

Installed Windows 7, but not all is well…

Having downloaded the Windows 7 beta I installed it in a virtual machine (VM) using Parallels 3.0 running on my Mac.

Though the install worked fine, the installation of the Parallels Tools failed (either automatically or manually).

According to Downloadsquad it will work if you are running Parallels 4.0, build 3810.

So guess what I am downloading now?

January 24, 2009July 25, 2019

No BBC iPlayer with JokiuSpot on the iPod touch

If you have an iPhone and want to watch BBC programmes using BBC iPlayer, you need to be using a wifi connection, it’s not possible with a 3G (or EDGE) connection.

Of course the iPod touch only has wifi, so in theory you shouldn’t get that problem.

Oh look!

Hmmm.

So how did I manage to get that with the iPod touch?

Well I was using wifi, but I was using JoikuSpot. What JoikuSpot does is basically turn your 3G wifi mobile phone into a wireless hotspot. So the Nokia N95 connects to the internet via the 3G network and then allows wifi clients connect to it via the 802.11 wifi.

Well the BBC must know that I am accessing their server from a 3G connection and serve me up with that error message.

January 22, 2009

Dragging images into Keynote 08

One of the nice features of Keynote is the ability to drag a series of images in from Finder and for Keynote to add them as individual slides.

If you are dragging lots of images into Keynote, unless Finder is in column view, Keynote will “mess” with the order.

If you forget and Finder is in list view and you drag the images into Keynote, changing to column view doesn’t appear to fix it and your images will still be in the wrong order. As well as changing from list view to column view, change from the image folder to a different folder and then back to the column view. Now when you drag the images into Keynote, they will be in the correct order.

Don’t know if this dragging issue is still the case in Keynote 09 as I haven’t yet purchased a copy, but will check once I do.

January 18, 2009

EyeHome Replacement

Since my EyeHome stopped working, I am guessing it was the transformer again, I have been thinking about a possible replacement.

Choices are limited, Elgato no longer make the EyeHome or any type of replacement.

You can buy uPnP devices, however my experiences with the PS3 make me wary of purchasing a uPnP media streamer.

I am supposing the obvious choice is the Apple TV, however I am not sure if I can connect it to my TV. I don’t have an HDTV, so the connectors won’t really work with a SCART television.

So do I upgrade my television so that I can use an Apple TV?

Decisions.

Going to try and see if I can find an EyeHome power replacement.

January 13, 2009July 25, 2019

No joy with Sony PSP and JoikuSpot Premium

Last October I mentioned that I had tried to connect an Nokia N810 to the internet via JoikuSpot Lite running on my Nokia N95 with no luck.

Well, no I couldn’t. For some reason though it could connect to the JoikuSpot wireless network, it would not get to the JoikuSpot launch page and as a result no other internet access was possible.

I have since then upgraded to JoikuSpot Premium and have been very pleased with it in regard to using my laptops and the iPod touch.

The other day I tried to access the internet using a Nokia N810 with no luck.

I have now tried with Sony’s PSP and get a similar experience to the Nokia N810.

Basically it wouldn’t get an IP address from the N95.

As I said before I suspect that though the N95 is acting as a wireless router, it is still “seen” by other devices as an ad hoc wireless network rather than an infrastructure wireless network and for some reason the PSP like the N810 doesn’t like this and therefore does not get a valid IP address.

Just as an aside I also tried with a Windows Mobile PDA, and no luck, but then I always have real issues with connecting a Windows Mobile device to any wireless network!

January 7, 2009July 25, 2019

No joy with Nokia N810 and JoikuSpot Premium

Last October I mentioned that I had tried to connect to the internet via JoikuSpot Lite running on my Nokia N95 with no luck.

Well, no I couldn’t. For some reason though it could connect to the JoikuSpot wireless network, it would not get to the JoikuSpot launch page and as a result no other internet access was possible.

I have since then upgraded to JoikuSpot Premium and have been very pleased with it in regard to using my laptops and the iPod touch.

Today I tried to access the internet using a Nokia N810 with no luck.

Nokia N810

Hmmm.

Basically it wouldn’t get an IP address from the N95.

I suspect that though the N95 is acting as a wireless router, it is still “seen” by other devices as an ad hoc wireless network rather than an infrastructure wireless network and for some reason the N810 doesn’t like this and therefore does not get a valid IP address.

Of course I can use a Bluetooth connection to use the N95 as a modem and get on the internet that way with the N810, but without using JoikuSpot only the N810 can get online and I (and anyone else) can’t use the connection.

January 4, 2009