Top tech of 2009

January 7, 2010 | 3 comments

For the last few years Michael Arrington has been producing a list of the top tech that he has regularly used in each year and I thought this year I would give it a go. So this is the technology that I used day-in, day-out in 2009 and could not do without.

Google Chrome

A lot of my life is spent in a browser and this year I changed over from Firefox to using Google’s Chrome. Why? Because it is fast. In fact it is the faster browser I have used and speed is important to me. I don’t … Read the rest

BBC iPlayer on Nintendo wii

December 14, 2009 | Comment

The BBC has been doing a sterling job with its iPlayer making it available in all sorts of places. I had an opportunity to try out the Nintendo wii implementation over the weekend and I was pretty impressed.

To date all my iPlayer watching has been done on a computer of some description or another (or very occasionally on my iPhone). What was great about the wii was that I was able to hook it up to the TV and get access to programmes on the device they were originally intended for.

While the picture wasn’t broadcast quality it was … Read the rest

Online EPS Viewer

December 11, 2009 | Comment

I love timesavers like this.

EPS files are great for high quality graphics and are essential for press ready artwork but viewing the files can be a real pain. Typically you need a high end Adobe product or a specialised viewer which I don’t want to have to install just for the odd occasion when I need to view EPS files.

Along comes 3M to the rescue with their online EPS viewer and it is just perfect. You locate and upload the file you want to view, press the button and seconds later you see it on screen. No fuss.… Read the rest

My Space? Your Space More Like

December 7, 2009 | Comment

Really interesting article in the FT yesterday about the rise and fall of MySpace drawing a (contrasting) comparison to the current web sensation Facebook.

I have to admit that while I really struggled with the point of Facebook but I have never got MySpace. Not at all. Ever.

Potentially I can see Facebook being a real drain on peoples time (you need Responsinet to deal with that). I find the mindless games and quizzes that appear to be a waste of space and I still fail to see the business benefit but least people have stopped poking me. That said … Read the rest

TweetCloud

December 2, 2009 | Comment

I have covered word clouds before when I looked at the service Wordle. Another, similar, service has popped up over the last few days offering a similar service for your Tweets, tweet cloud. Having pointed it to my Twitter stream @spokenlikeageek (you are following me, right?) it produced the graphic on the left showing the most frequently used words over the last year. Oh and what a surprise! I love my iPhone!

The top six words were:

iphone
google
windows
apple
netbook
chrome

Does that scream geek to you? I would be interested to know what your top … Read the rest

So Now What?

October 14, 2009 | Comment

So I received my invitation to Google Wave today and for a full thirty seconds there was much excitement as if I’d had an invite to the party of the year. So I logged in and then the realisation hit me that I have no one to connect to on the service and not the first idea of how to use it.

I watched the introductory video of some mad Australian in a lab coat explaining what each area of the screen does and then decided that Wave is a lonely experience right now.

So I put out a message … Read the rest

Unfuddle for iPhone

August 28, 2009 | 1 comment

I have been using Unfuddle for a while now with a number of my clients. To quote Unfuddle themselves it is a “secure, hosted project management solution for software development teams.”

Depending on your level of membership, which start at free, you get ticketing, time tracking, messages, subversion or git hosting, notebooks and milestone tracking. It is a slick, cost effective, solution that works well and is great for distributed teams, such as those I am working with.

However, there aren’t any mobile optimised screen, so I decided to try and put something together to enable me to get a … Read the rest

Simple Mind for the iPhone

July 21, 2009 | Comment

I attended an event today, hosted by the Thames Valley Innovation and Growth team, on developing iPhone applications. A couple of Apple employees were on hand to walk us through the process and answer any questions.

When I have attended these sort of events in the past I have tended to take notes in my notebook in the form of a mind map. I thought that this time I would try doing the same on my iPhone using the SimpleMind application.

SimpleMind is a mind mapping application that comes in two versions, free and paid. The only difference between the … Read the rest

You Have to be up Early to be a Neil Thompson

July 14, 2009 | Comment

If you are called “Ernest Bumblebee” you will never suffer from the problem I have – namely that there are simply lots of me. This was highlighted just recently when Neil Thompson was appointed by the UK government to oversee cyber crime. Another prominent Neil Thompson is Microsoft’s “Senior Regional Director, Northern Europe, Entertainment & Devices Division”. So, basically, he gets to play with XBoxes all day.

I have written about the other me a couple of times before (here and here) and for Thompsons it is a real issue as there are so many of us. … Read the rest

Services I use and Recommend

July 9, 2009 | 1 comment

In a previous post I talked about the freemium model and how it has affected my attitude to software purchases. I wanted to go through the services that I use regularly and pay for and highlight them.

This is obviously just a personal selection. Over the years I have tried out numerous applications that rival the one that finally made this list. In the end it is just personal preference as much as anything else. You may prefer something else but these are the ones that made me put my hand in my pocket and purchase a subscription

So in … Read the rest