What I learnt from my 2013 side project

January 3, 2014 | Comment

In 2013 I worked on a side project, The Chubby Challenge, which I continue to develop and move forward. This was built in response to another goal of mine – to lose some weight. I have found in the past that like so many other things in life it is far easier to reach a goal if you are working toward it with others. So the idea is that you challenge others to see who can lose the most weight over a given period.

The system works well and was a great opportunity for me to learn a whole … Read the rest

The Easiest T&Cs to Accept

December 19, 2013 | Comment

So I signed up for a trial of Adobe’s eSignature service Echosign today and was initially presented with the following screen asking me to accept their terms and conditions. I assume that the huge white space is where they were supposed to have been displayed. So I went right on and accepted.

The question now is where do I stand legally as I accepted a blank set of T&Cs can I be bound by the ones Adobe failed to display?

Discuss.
… Read the rest

Adverts used to Publicise AdPlus Service

December 6, 2013 | Comment

Really interesting advert in today’s Metro newspaper for the AdPlus service encouraging you to download their browser plugin that “optimises your web browsing so you see better, fewer ads.”.

There are a few things that are interesting about this service. Firstly it is highly ironic that they have to resort to advertising to promote a service designed to reduce the number of adverts. Secondly, unlike, say, AdBlock Plus, this service does not claim to get rid of all web-based adverts but shows you “only relevant, high-quality ads from advertisers who want a healthier relationship with you.”. Hummm.

My original … Read the rest

Want an Outliner with Evernote Support? Today’s your Day!

October 28, 2013 | Comment

If, like me, you want to use an outliner that is available across multiple platforms and syncs with Evernote then Xwavesoft’s Cloud Outliner could be for you. Especially as for today only it is available for free on iOS.

Available on Mac, iPhone and iPad the apps allow you to create structured lists which are synchronised between the devices and Evernote too if you wish.

Note that synchronisation is only available in the paid version of the apps and not the free “lite” version.

If this sounds like your sort of thing download the iOS version today as it … Read the rest

Odd Favicon appearing in Google Apps

September 17, 2013 | 3 comments

Something odd has happened to my Google Apps favicon. It is no longer the familiar Gmail envelope but some gear and spanner (wrench) combination. The image above shows the new and old icons and you can see the new icon better below.

This has only appeared in the last week and only seems to affect Google Apps mail and not Gmail itself, as you can see from above.

A quick search online shows that others are seeing this too with all sorts of speculation as to what it could be. Myself I think it is simply a mistake – what … Read the rest

Font from Your Own Handwriting

August 8, 2013 | Comment

Here’s a great one for all narcissists – a website that turns your handwriting into a font that you can use on your computer such as in Word documents.

Simply head over to myscriptfont.com, download and print the template. Then with a marker pen write out the alphabet in both upper and lower case where shown (see below). You’ll now need to scan this page in black and white at a resolution of 300dpi and upload it to myscriptfont.

Send the file and wait a few minutes and you are presented with a view of what your font will … Read the rest

Solving Bad Request Errors on Google’s Gmail

July 3, 2013 | 4 comments

If, like me, you have been seeing a lot of “Bad Request Error 400” messages or perhaps the yellow bad to the top of Gmail saying “Oops… the system encountered a problem (#400) – Retrying in” then, like me, you will be similarly frustrated.

This only seems to have been an issue in the last few months and I am not sure whether it is just an issue with Chrome but whatever it is a really time sapping problem.

The details that I outline below aren’t a permanent solution, I suspect that is only in the gift of Google but … Read the rest

The Death of RSS

June 25, 2013 | Comment

The tech press has recently been full of the demise of Google Reader and if you are going to transition to something else you now have less than a week.

If I’m honest I stopped using Reader some time ago preferring Twitter and iPad based apps such as Pulse and Zite and one suspects that this could well be the principal reason for Reader’s demise. However, RSS, the technology on which Reader is based, is dying a slow death anyway and these two images of emails I received recently prove that.

Both are from the service If This Then That … Read the rest

Netflix vs Lovefilm

May 13, 2013 | Comment

I can’t remember the last time that I bought a DVD having moved over to streaming a while ago so I thought I would take a look at the two biggest services in the UK to compare their content. I decided not to look at streaming quality, price or any factor other than catalogue.

I order to be a little bit objective I decided to look for the top films of 2010 and 2011 as chosen by Total Film Magazine. The results are shown in the table below.

As you can see, in this very small sample, there was no … Read the rest

Is Google Keep a Keeper?

March 22, 2013 | Comment

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So Google have released a new product roughly one week after axing a raft of others including Google Reader, much to the angst of the general tech public.

Google Keep is a note taking application allowing you to keep important information in your drive for searching and reviewing at a later date.

It is similar in thought to Evernote but without any of the usefulness of it. As it says in the image above Google Keep is just a bit too simplistic right now. All you can do is create a note with a title and some text content and … Read the rest