Thoughts on Apple Watch Battery Life

May 16, 2015 | Comment

I have been wrestling with the idea of an Apple Watch for a while and admit that it is beautifully made but what is really putting me off is the need to charge the thing every single day.

On reflection I can see that could be considered a positive thing. My existing Pebble has what can only be described as a variable battery life ranging from about 2 to 5 days. I have never been able to work out what makes it drain quicker sometimes more than others but it does mean that I need to keep an eye on … Read the rest

Casting a Presentation to Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV

May 9, 2015 | 2 comments

The last few years has seen the emergence of small devices that plug into the HDMI port of a TV, connect to your wifi, and allow you to stream from online services such as Netflix and Amazon.

What you also can do is “cast” content from a mobile device to the stick, content that includes movies, photos and music.

What isn’t currently possible is to cast documents to the stick and onto the screen which is a shame as it would be good to do so in situations where you might not have your laptop but do have the stick … Read the rest

Too Much Apple Watch

April 24, 2015 | Comment

I woke up this morning to find that Apple’s App Store has been overtaken by apps offering Apple Watch support. Nothing greatly surprising in that as it was officially launched today.

But does it really have to take up so much precious screen real estate? In fact given that I don’t have a watch and nor am I likely to be getting one anytime soon (due to this) can’t I make it go away altogether?

No, of course I can’t. That’s not allowed.… Read the rest

Belaycords Reversible USB Lightning Cable

April 6, 2015 | Comment

My Belaycords Reversible USB Lightning Cable arrived this morning and I’m pretty impressed and also left with the question why hasn’t this been done much, much sooner.

USB connectors have had one major problem (until the USB C arrived) in that they had to be inserted the right way round and when you were most likely to be doing that round the back of a PC in a dark corner it was bound to lead to frustration. It seemed that you had a 50/50 chance of getting it right but ended up always 100% wrong!

The Belaycord overcomes that … Read the rest

Hitting $1M in Pebble Time

February 25, 2015 | Comment

I waited a long long time for my Pebble to arrive after backing it on Kickstarter. But since the arrival of iOS8 and several updates to the watch firmware it was worked well and I really like the watch.

My only gripe would be that the font size is a bit small (even on the largest setting) and I wish that they would make it bigger. Apart from that it is just about perfect.

With all the news about the Apple Watch I had wondered what Pebble’s answer to it would be and yesterday we found out with the … Read the rest

Setting the Nest to Away

February 9, 2015 | Comment

I love the Nest learning thermostat now that it has built up a schedule but I feel that it could be doing more to help us save money.

One way to do this is set the Nest to away when I am, well, away. I currently have two ways of doing that:

1. via the standard Nest iPhone app, or
2. via the Nest Pebble app, Leaf.

Both these work well but you need to remember to actually do it and I never do. Worse than that if I do remember I then forget to turn it back on again.… Read the rest

Fitbit vs Misfit on the Pebble Smartwatch

December 10, 2014 | 2 comments

I’ve been a happy Fitbit Flex user for some 18 months now but when Pebble released an update that allowed activity tracking I thought that I would give it a go to see how the two compared.

The first thing to point out is that I am only interested in two things: accuracy and battery life. The second thing is that while I am happy with both the watch and fitness band on my (non-dominant) wrist I would prefer it all in one package.

I chose to run the test over a couple of weeks. The first when I would … Read the rest

Flic: The Wireless Smart Button

November 21, 2014 | Comment

There is something about the simplicity of Flic that I like. That it has no interface and is just a single button but can do so much really appeals to me. Example of what can be achieved with the Flic are:

play music
control lights and heating
take a picture
send a distress signal
notify someone of your location.

There are also a good number of integration partners:

Of course like other crowdfunding products what is delivered might not live up to the hype but this is sufficiently different to have a reasonable chance of delivering on its promises. Come … Read the rest

An iPhone Remote Shutter? It’s a Snap!

August 20, 2014 | Comment

For a while now it has been possible to take a picture with your iPhone using the volume controls on the phone and this also extends to the controls on the headphone mic too. But what if you need to be further away than the length of the headphone cable? Turns out that there is a cheap (under three quid) device for that.

This little two button widget works over bluetooth and emulates the keyboard for sending the command to trigger the camera shutter. It is incredibly simple to use in that you pair it with your device, start the … Read the rest

A Tale of Two Chromebooks

May 30, 2014 | Comment

A couple of years ago I spent weeks searching high and lo for a Samsung Series 3 Chromebook which was the first of the really affordable cloud laptops. I finally found one and paid £240 – nothing compared to the price of some Windows and especially Mac laptops.

Initially I was amazed at the start-up time of seconds and the fantastic battery life. I found that I could access my email and calendar through the browser (as I had been for a while since ditching Outlook) and do all my general web-browsing. I was hooked and decided that, away from … Read the rest