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?

… Read the rest

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)

… Read the rest

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

Pi Powered

December 30, 2012 | 1 comment

The Christmas break has given me an opportunity to get leave aside the pie and get out the Pi. In doing so I have discovered a really neat way of being able to keep the device permanently powered and connected.

Our broadband is provided by BT and as part of the package you are supplied with a router called a “BT Home Hub”. I have always known that there was a USB port on the back of the hub but until yesterday it hadn’t occurred to me to plug in the Pi. Lo and behold it provides enough power to … Read the rest

Acoustic Speaker for iPhone

December 27, 2012 | Comment

Just a quick update with an interesting gadget received this Christmas, the odd looking object shown on the left. When I asked my Facebook friends what they thought it might be I received a few responses that I cannot reproduce here.

It is, however, an acoustic speaker for an iPhone or an unpowered speaker booster, if you prefer. As you can see from the picture below you shove your iPhone into the slot at the top and all sound get amplified as it is redirected out of the large hole in the front.

I can confirm that it works well … Read the rest

A Weekend Pi Project

November 8, 2012 | Comment

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pIO – microSD Adapter for Raspberry Pi

November 7, 2012 | 2 comments

The Raspberry Pi is a great little device – cheap enough that it can get into the hands of just about anyone and challenging enough to pique the curiosity of most. As a lifelong software developer and gadget freak I am fascinated with mine. I have decided though that it is pointless (for me) to use it for development as I have some many other outlets for that. I have decided therefore to use it to look at interfacing with hardware and have ordered a breadboard and other bits and pieces to do some simple tests. Nothing more challenging than … Read the rest

The HAND Stylus – the perfect stylus?

September 28, 2012 | Comment

I have written previously of my love of styluses. I thought that I had settled on the Kensington Virtuoso, which is a fine stylus, but it suffers from having a fat tip like every other stylus. This makes fine work, such as handwriting almost, but not quite, impossible. I had thought that the answer to this would be the Cregle iPen that uses a dongle plugged into the dock port to allow it to get much better accuracy. Unfortunately it was let down by having awful calibration and a dearth of apps.

Step forward the HAND Stylus (shown left). … Read the rest