USB Key Key

October 6, 2009 | Comment

Yes it looks like an ordinary house key (well if you don’t look too closely) but in fact it is a USB memory stick cleverly disguised to look like a house key.

I don’t often have call for a memory stick these days but when you need one they are invaluable and to have one always around without having to dig into your gadget bag only to find you have left it at home would be great.

In the past I have tried to attach memory sticks to my key ring but they always broke off due to having weedy … Read the rest

3 mifi Review

October 5, 2009 | 2 comments

For a number of years now I have been using mobile broadband with my laptop using a usb dongle. I have taken service from mobile provider 3 and it has been a pretty reliable and cost effective way of getting web access when I have been out and about. My current contract gives me 1gb of data for only £5 per month.

When I got back from holiday recently I noticed that 3 had released their “mifi” device. This is a small unit that allows you to share your mobile broadband connection with a number of local users over wifi. … Read the rest

Moving to Windows 7

October 4, 2009 | Comment

So I have slowly been getting my PC ready for the arrival of Windows 7.

I have had my existing machine for about four years now and it is beginning to show its age with it being slow to start and, at times, sluggish in operation. The underlying architecture of the machine is still fine (P4 3.4 GHz & 2GB Ram) and particularly when considering how my computing requirements have changed over the last four years. All of this has led me to believe a fresh install of Windows is going to give the machine a new lease of life … Read the rest

Querying the Skype SQL Database

October 2, 2009 | Comment

I discovered recently that the latest version of Skype (v4) now holds all users session data, such as your chats, in a SQL database. What’s more it is easy to write queries using standard SQL to query the database and extract data. Here I’ll show you how.

Skype uses SQLite as its database engine and you can get a free tool called SQLite Database Browser to query the data (see picture below) which is held (in Windows) at the following location:

%appdata%/Skype/<username>/main.db

It is important to note that Skype MUST be closed before you can open the database.

Skype presents … Read the rest

Datz All Folks

September 28, 2009 | Comment

Well, I can’t pretend that I am surprised – Datz have finally gone bust according to a story on MusicWeek. Having written about the problems with the service on a number of occasions (here and here) it seemed inevitable. Given that so many other companies have struggled with paying the fees to the music labels Datz were always going to struggle with their model – particularly as they couldn’t make deals with all the major labels meaning that there was only a limited catalogue available.

I have to say that the writing has been on the wall … Read the rest

Panoramic Pictures with Pano and iPhone

September 27, 2009 | Comment

Just got back from a long holiday, hence the lack of posts. However, while I was away I was able to road test a number of pieces of tech which I will be posting on over the next few days.

First up is Pano for iPhone which, as the name suggests, allows you to take panoramic pictures with your iPhone. As you can see from the shots below (Hong Kong, Cairns, Australia and Apollo Bay, Australia respectively) it produces some pretty impressive results.

Pano is simple to use and helpfully guides you through the process by showing a shadow of … Read the rest

Extracting Text from a Image

September 1, 2009 | 1 comment

On numerous occasions I have had a need to extract text from an image and have never found a way to be able to do so. Typically I want to get the text of an error message and while, sometimes, ctrl+c will copy the text to the clipboard, mostly it won’t.

I stumbled upon a neat solution the other day using a little know (to me) tool that comes as part of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Document Imaging is a tool to bring the paper and electronic worlds together by managing the scanning of documents. It also has another trick … Read the rest

Unfuddle for iPhone

August 28, 2009 | 1 comment

I have been using Unfuddle for a while now with a number of my clients. To quote Unfuddle themselves it is a “secure, hosted project management solution for software development teams.”

Depending on your level of membership, which start at free, you get ticketing, time tracking, messages, subversion or git hosting, notebooks and milestone tracking. It is a slick, cost effective, solution that works well and is great for distributed teams, such as those I am working with.

However, there aren’t any mobile optimised screen, so I decided to try and put something together to enable me to get a … Read the rest

Netbook Memory Upgrade

August 22, 2009 | Comment

I decided this week that I would make the only simple upgrade to my netbook and double the memory it has in it from 1gb to 2gb. For this I bought a stick of memory from the ever reliable Crucial for £12.64 delivered. It arrived within a couple of days of ordering and took less than 10 minutes to install (full instructions can be found here).

You can see in the picture on the left the memory in place between the fan and the hard drive. Since then I haven’t had much of an opportunity to have a … Read the rest

GPush for iPhone

August 17, 2009 | Comment

One of the things that iPhone has been missing for me is the ability to push my email to my device. For my business email I have a Google Apps account and it would be really useful to be able to get my emails pushed just as I already can for my calendar and contact entries. Well after a bit of a hiccup GPush is available from the Apps store to do exactly what it says on the tin and push Google mail to an iPhone.

GPush was supposed to be available about a week ago but problems with their … Read the rest