Top tech of 2010

Top tech of 2010

January 16, 2011 | Comment

imageLast 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

Verizon iPhone, Who Cares?

Verizon iPhone, Who Cares?

January 7, 2011 | Comment

It seems that ever since Apple struck an exclusive deal with AT&T for the iPhone the whole of the US have been waiting for the holy grail in the form of the Verizon iPhone. And the blogsphere has been alive with it again this week. My question is this who cares and why?

Well in the US it seems that they care as the iPhone is not that great on AT&T and this gives them choice to what is perceived as a “better” network. This may or may not turn out to be the case.

But what about the rest … Read the rest

Now This is Getting Ridiculous

Now This is Getting Ridiculous

November 7, 2010 | Comment

iPad BackupI 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

Teaching Teenagers to Program

Teaching Teenagers to Program

October 31, 2010 | Comment


Had an interesting week teaching a couple of teenagers to program. In fact it wasn’t a week but only four days in which to impart some knowledge and get them to complete a small project so that they felt they had achieved something. For this I decided that they should create a form and then save the details entered on the form to a database. This meant teaching some HTML, SQL and PHP – in four days to two youngsters that had no prior experience of coding.

So the programme went something like this:

Day One: What is the internet … Read the rest

Small Scale Outsourcing

Small Scale Outsourcing

October 23, 2010 | 1 comment


Outsourcing is big business. I should know as I have been using it for over 10 years now to get access to some highly skilled and cost effective development and testing resources. But what happens if you don’t need a resource for a long term project or just want to get access to a skill that you don’t have in-house?

For example the business I work for often needs access to designers to do small scale work for our website. We can’t afford to retain the services of someone locally as we simply don’t have enough business to put their … Read the rest

2LS Expansion

2LS Expansion

September 20, 2010 | Comment

2LS Recruitment Software Specialists LogoIt is not often that I write about my work but occasionally something happens that I think is worth blogging about and this is one of those occasions.

The company that I work for, 2LS, are providers of recruitment software and, as I am sure you can imagine, this last year has been particularly tough for that sector as new jobs have been few and far between and recruitment agencies have been tightening their belts. Despite this challenging background 2LS has bucked the trend and grown over the last year. In fact we have tripled the number of customers … Read the rest

Orientation lock becomes mute button on iPad iOS 4.2

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

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