Keep Your Cables Together and Tidy

March 10, 2013 | Comment

Having multiple devices that need regularly charging and no universal agreement on a standard connector for doing so creates a problem of having to keep track of numerous differing cable types.

Now I know that there is a European agreement to have the micro-USB as the de facto charge cable standard but none of the three items I have to regularly charge conform to this: my iPhone, iPad and Pebble watch.

I’m not going to get into the debate of whether manufacturers should be compelled to meet the standard rather than charging an eye watering £15 for an adaptor that … Read the rest

My First Two Weeks with the Pebble Watch

March 7, 2013 | Comment

I decided to wait a couple of weeks before writing a review of my Pebble watch and passing any sort of judgement as I felt that would allow the dust to settle a bit. So now those weeks are up here are my thoughts.

The Pebble, for those that have missed it, is a “smart watch” that is connected to your phone. iPhone in my case but it is also compatible with Android. Pebble was a project on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter where it set out to raise $10,000 to fund its project and ended up raising $10,000,000. This … Read the rest

A Neat Idea to Stop you Standing on your Phone

March 4, 2013 | Comment

Here’s a neat little idea to stop you accidentally crushing your phone when it is left on the floor while charging.

This simple plastic device slips over your wall charger and has a platform that folds down onto which you can rest your phone – this is slightly angled upwards and rubberised to stop the phone slipping off if accidentally knocked.

Simple, cheap and effective.

… Read the rest

Adding a New Strap to a Pebble Watch

February 28, 2013 | 10 comments

Following on from yesterdays post about removing the strap from a Pebble we bring you the sequel… putting a new strap on a Pebble!

See the short video below to see just how easy it is:

… Read the rest

Removing the Strap from a Pebble Watch

February 27, 2013 | 1 comment

… Read the rest

What a 5 Inch iPhone Would Look Like

February 21, 2013 | Comment

There are all sorts of rumours swirling around at the moment about whether Apple is going to create a larger version of the iPhone. By which I don’t mean just a stretched version (yeah iPhone 5 I am looking at you) but a properly proportioned version.

The suggestion is that later this year Apple is going to release and iPhone with a 5 inch screen. Why that size? Because its dimensions would mean that they could do so without having to change the user interface. Which is exactly what they did for the iPad Mini only in reverse. Marco Arment … Read the rest

They Look the Same, Work the Same but…

February 9, 2013 | Comment

So these arrived in the post today – a Mini DisplayPort to VGA and a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI connector for use with my MacBook. Both have been packaged to look like their Apple equivalents and I can confirm that they certainly work like their Apple equivalents.

The difference? The Apple originals would have set me back £46.46 while these were £11.78, both prices included postage.

Pair this was a £1 HDMI cable from PoundLand and I am all set?

Is there anyone out there that could convince me that I would be better off buying the Apple originals?

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Sinclair ZX Spectrum Review

January 14, 2013 | 1 comment

Here’s one for all you computing history buffs out there. Two reviews of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum from PCW and Practical Computing magazines in July 1982. (Hey, hey, 16k)

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Slingshot

January 10, 2013 | 1 comment

At the end of last year a friend give me an early Christmas present in the form of a SlingShot.

As the picture left ably demonstrates the SlingShot is a device to hold your phone to aid stability. Hidden in the hand there is also a kickstand that additionally allows it to work as a mini tripod too.

As the name suggests SlingShot looks like a catapult but rather than firing your precious phone off into the distance it holds it securely. The SlingShot works with many phones due to its flexible design. It will even work if you … Read the rest

Roll your own Dropbox with a Raspberry Pi

January 7, 2013 | Comment

Following the success of hooking up my Raspberry Pi to my BT Home Hub the next step was to do something useful with it.

I am a very active user of cloud services, particularly Dropbox and Google Drive. Both work well but in order to gain additional space you have to pay but what if you could run your own service and add as much storage as you liked? Enter ownCloud a Dropbox lookalike that you run on your own server.

In my case the server is my Raspberry Pi and a 500gb harddrive attached providing the storage and it … Read the rest