Sony Reader

February 15, 2010 | 2 comments

So I have joined the ranks of people that are ebook readers only in my case not Amazon’s Kindle but Sony’s Pocket Reader – you can see it in the picture on the left on the top of the pile showing MacBook, Netbook, eBook (can you see what I have done there?).

Anyway rather than give yet another review of the device (which I love) I thought that I would put down some of the things that I have discovered since getting the device at then end of last year. Some of these will be obvious, others not so, I … Read the rest

Clipping to Evernote from iPhone Safari Browser

January 17, 2010 | Comment

One of my favourite tools is Evernote, the note taking application. I regularly find snippets of information on the internet that I want to retain and come back to later. Evernote provides a number of tools that sit in the browser allowing you to clip directly to your account. This is enormously helpful and I have always wished that I could do the same from the browser of my iPhone. Well, I discovered this weekend that you can. Rather than repeat the tip you can go here to see what you need to do.

Perfect Evernote bliss has finally been … Read the rest

Rule 1: Don’t Call Your Product “Unbreakable” If It Is Not

January 12, 2010 | Comment

My advice is never give a live demonstration if you can possibly help it and never, never, never claim a property that the product doesn’t actually possess. Advice that Sonim would have done well to have heeded before handing over their “unbreakable” mobile phone to a reporter from the BBC.

The reporter, Dan Simmons, looked pretty embarrassed about having smashed the screen of the device and Somin’s CEO laughed about it and everyone is blogging about it but “unbreakable” it obviously isn’t.

You can see the video of destruction here.… Read the rest

Your Own URL Shortener

January 11, 2010 | Comment

URL Shorteners are all the rage these days what with bit.ly, tinyurl.com, flic.kr and the rest. They take the incredibly long URLs that are generated from tools such as WordPress and turn them into something shorter and more manageable. So, for example, the URL for my last post on my top tech of 2009 was http://www.spokenlikeageek.com/2010/01/07/top-tech-of-2009/ but sending it to bit.ly it becomes a more manageable http://bit.ly/7fozBD.

So why bother? Well Twitter is one driving force. With only 140 characters to play with a full length URL like that shown above would leave you very little to play with. … Read the rest

Top tech of 2009

January 7, 2010 | 3 comments

For the last few years Michael Arrington has been producing a list of the top tech that he has regularly used in each year and I thought this year I would give it a go. So this is the technology that I used day-in, day-out in 2009 and could not do without.

Google Chrome

A lot of my life is spent in a browser and this year I changed over from Firefox to using Google’s Chrome. Why? Because it is fast. In fact it is the faster browser I have used and speed is important to me. I don’t … Read the rest

TweetNotebook

December 24, 2009 | Comment

In what must be one of the greatest acts of egotistical self-indulgence a couple of weeks ago I ordered a TweetNotebook.

For those that aren’t familiar with it the TweetNotebook is a notebook with a random selection of your tweets printed at the bottom of each page and with your Twitter icon printed on the front along with a customisable quote. A selection of pictures of mine are left and below.

Well mine arrived this morning and I have to say it is just fantastic and much better than I expected it to be. Why? Well for a start … Read the rest

A Better Perspective

December 17, 2009 | Comment

I consider myself to be a power Googler. Not only can I bang in keywords but I can also use boolean operators and search operators, such as filetype: & site:. However, I discovered yesterday that this all counts for nothing if you don’t know what it is that you are searching for.

One of my clients is going through a website refresh and was looking to put some screenshots on the home page but they wanted them to appear to be disappearing into the distance, rather like that shown in the picture to the left.

No problem I thought. I … Read the rest

BBC iPlayer on Nintendo wii

December 14, 2009 | Comment

The BBC has been doing a sterling job with its iPlayer making it available in all sorts of places. I had an opportunity to try out the Nintendo wii implementation over the weekend and I was pretty impressed.

To date all my iPlayer watching has been done on a computer of some description or another (or very occasionally on my iPhone). What was great about the wii was that I was able to hook it up to the TV and get access to programmes on the device they were originally intended for.

While the picture wasn’t broadcast quality it was … Read the rest

Online EPS Viewer

December 11, 2009 | Comment

I love timesavers like this.

EPS files are great for high quality graphics and are essential for press ready artwork but viewing the files can be a real pain. Typically you need a high end Adobe product or a specialised viewer which I don’t want to have to install just for the odd occasion when I need to view EPS files.

Along comes 3M to the rescue with their online EPS viewer and it is just perfect. You locate and upload the file you want to view, press the button and seconds later you see it on screen. No fuss.… Read the rest

My Space? Your Space More Like

December 7, 2009 | Comment

Really interesting article in the FT yesterday about the rise and fall of MySpace drawing a (contrasting) comparison to the current web sensation Facebook.

I have to admit that while I really struggled with the point of Facebook but I have never got MySpace. Not at all. Ever.

Potentially I can see Facebook being a real drain on peoples time (you need Responsinet to deal with that). I find the mindless games and quizzes that appear to be a waste of space and I still fail to see the business benefit but least people have stopped poking me. That said … Read the rest