iPhone Tripod Adaptor

December 14, 2011 | Comment

Everyone’s talking about iphonography – taking pictures with your iphone rather than a standard camera. As the now well worn phrase goes “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You”.

The iPhone camera is pretty good for a phone, particularly on the 4S, and it is always in my pocket so available in a way that my “other” camera isn’t. That said there are times when I just want to do things other than point and shoot and that is where this little gadget comes in.

It’s serves two purposes as you can see from the pictures below. Firstly … Read the rest

iPad 2 and the smart cover

July 1, 2011 | Comment

So I have finally succumbed and swapped my iPad 1 for a sleek new iPad 2. The most noticeable change is the performance boost. My old iPad was beginning to get very sluggish and on apps that I use regularly, such as Pulse, it was becoming unusable. So it has become usable once again.

With it I also picked up a smart cover, the magnetised, folding cover come stand designed just for the iPad 2. And so far I just don’t know what I think about it. On the one hand it covers the screen offering protection, although only to … Read the rest

Top tech of 2010

January 16, 2011 | Comment

Last year, for the first time, I produced a list of my top tech for 2009. I thought that it would be interesting to do the same in 2010 to see how things have changed, if at all. So this is the technology that I used day-in, day-out in 2010 and could not do without.

Google Chrome

No change here and, in fact, I am more wedded to Chrome this year than I was last having used it for a full 12 months I still much prefer it to both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The addition of extensions has just … Read the rest

Now This is Getting Ridiculous

November 7, 2010 | Comment

I wrote a while back about the stupid amount of time my iPad backup was taking and moaned that it had taken a ridiculous three hours. My solution to this was to use BackOff to disable the automatic backups during sync. However, this means that if there is ever a problem you cannot do a restore so it is important to do the occasional backup, which is what I did yesterday afternoon and now, some, 16 hours later is still only 75% of the way through!

Let me repeat that…

My iPad backup is going to take a massive 21 … Read the rest

Orientation lock becomes mute button on iPad iOS 4.2

September 19, 2010 | Comment

There are lots of posts on the net right now about the first beta of Apples iOS 4.2 and you can read a Top 10 new features here.

One of the changes is to turn the orientation lock button on the iPad to be a mute button. Well hold on a minute who checked with me that was something I wanted? Where’s the friendly but terse email from Steve Jobs checking that was going to work for me? I use that button A LOT and if I need to mute I press the volume down for a second and guess … Read the rest

The Ultimate iPad Travel Kit

September 11, 2010 | Comment

I have found my ultimate iPad travel kit that consists of:

– An Apple wireless keyboard
– 3 mifi
– Portable, adjustable, folding stand from eBay

It’s like having a Macbook that you can break down into its constituent parts. I just sling them into my case and off I go. I am finding that I am using my laptop less and less and now never use my desktop at home. Who said the iPad was just a big iPhone?

… Read the rest

3 mifi with OLED screen

August 21, 2010 | Comment

Received my new 3 mifi dongle yesterday. This one is basically the same as the previous module with a few important differences:

1. It has an OLED screen giving much more information than before, including the amount of data this session.

2. It now has a web interface that allows you to both configure and monitor the device. This save you having to flash the device yourself with the worry that you will brick it.

3. There is now only a single button. You switch it on. It connects. You’re good to go. Much better

4. It’s now a trendy … Read the rest

Cheap and Cheerful iPad Stand

August 3, 2010 | Comment

Yes, another iPad post. I’m sure that I will get it out of my system eventually…

So I saw this post about a cheap and cheerful iPad stand a while back which suggested using a desktop business card holder. What a great idea, I thought! Except that it was only available from Office Depot in the States and no amount of searching either online or in bricks and mortar could turn one up. Then a colleague of mine went on vacation to Florida and so I asked her if she wouldn’t mind spending some of her precious holiday time in … Read the rest

iPad on Tour

July 24, 2010 | Comment

So I am away on annual leave in beautiful Tuscany but the big question before we left was what tech to bring? In the recent past I have always taken a laptop of some description but this time I decided to go with the iPad alone. That meant also taking Apple’s camera kit in order to get my pictures off my camera in order to do anything with them.

The camera kit is interesting as the name suggests it is for connecting cameras, which it is. However, I was also able to successfully attach both a USB headset and a … Read the rest

iPad Backing up – please wait.

July 20, 2010 | 1 comment

Is your iPad taking forever to backup? Mine is. After several aborted attempts I finally got a full backup done taking a massive three hours and that was after I had deleted off some large apps. Three hours for a device that is less than half full.

Feeling that there had to be a solution to this once again took me to the net and I quickly discovered that I was not the only one with an issue, but nobody had an answer. There is, however, what I consider to be a workaround and that is turning off backups altogether. … Read the rest