The card reader on my desktop PC has given up the ghost. To be honest it is not something that I use that often but it is useful to have for those odd occasions – one of which was this last weekend. So I needed to find a reader in a hurry and the answer came in the most unexpected place.
Poundland is not a place that I frequent on a regular basis but credit crunch being what it is I thought I would check it out. Turns out that they have a (small) tech section which included a SD … Read the rest
I recently wrote of my inability to get the new Carbonite Remote Access facility to work and my frustration with getting anything useful out of their support. Well shortly after I had made the post and put up a tweet about it I got a direct message from Carbonite saying that if I sent them my email address they would contact me and sort it all out. And do you know what? They did! (well sort of).
After a couple of calls from Paul in the States it seems that the reason I wasn’t seeing anything when I went to … Read the rest
I have been watching the coverage of the launch of Novatel Wireless’ Mifi device (left) with some interest over the last few days. This pocket sized device is a mini hotspot allowing you to connect up to five wifi enabled devices to a single 3G connection. This is such a great idea as it allows you to connect not only laptops and netbooks but also other portable devices such as the iPod Touch, Sony PSP etc.
So far the only people that have launched the mifi are Verizon in the US and there seems to be on carrier in the … Read the rest
Anyone who knows me will tell you of my love of gadgets: cameras, laptops, mobiles you name it I’m into it. However, there is still one low-tech solution that I could not live without and that is my Moleskine note books.
I have been using notebooks of various sizes all my working life and despite recently making more and more use of Evernote for capturing notes you still cannot beat pen and paper for accessibility and speed.
Moleskines come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours but I favour the classic ruled notebook as used by Hemingway, Picasso and … Read the rest
After many years with my previous provider I finally moved over to O2 broadband last Thursday. It was not without some trepidation that I did so as the existing broadband was pretty reliable and I have heard horror stories from others that have switched providers and been without access. In the end the fact that I could get a (slightly) quicker connection for £15 a month cheaper and have it uncapped was all the encouragement I needed. I need not have worried as the switchover went smoothly even if my previous provider did cut our connection the night before they … Read the rest
At the Gadget Show Live recently was a company called Datz who were offering unlimited music download for only £75 per year – discounted from £99 for the show. I love music and am a regular downloader and so this sounded like a great deal – it would pay for itself in less than 100 downloads at iTunes prices. It sounded like a deal that was too good to be true and so it turned out.
The way that the system works is that you are provided with a USB “dongle” and music can only be downloaded when this is … Read the rest
I’ve been using Carbonite as my online backup service of choice for about a year now and it works seamlessly in the background sending my important files to the cloud just in case. Until recently that was all it did. A one way upload of files from my machine to the cloud. You could see them but unless you wanted to restore them they were untouchable in a virtual vault somewhere.
That changed just recently when Carbonite Remote Access was launched. Remote Access, as the name suggests, allows you to get access to your archive from just about anywhere via … Read the rest
Occasionally I have the need to create an icon file – usually for use as a favourite icon for a website. Until recently I struggled to find a simple way of achieving this as the graphics programs I use, as good as they are, don’t seem to have support for *.ico files. Then I stumbled upon the Online Icon Maker which, as the name suggests, is a web-based system for creating icon files.
You can choose to either create your icon from scratch or upload an existing file. On screen you see a simple view of the icon on the … Read the rest
BT customers will no doubt be familiar with the 1571 service which adds voicemail to a home phone line. Some might also know that you can setup to receive text alerts to your mobile when you receive a message. However, I suspect that very few realise that you can log into your online account and listen and save messages from your browser. Or, at least you could…
When I logged into my account while I was last away I was greeted by this message: “BT 1571 online is a service that is no longer available. From the 31 March 2009, … Read the rest
Browsing the web from my iPod Touch this morning I remembered the CrunchPad, Michael Arrington’s prototype connected device for web browsing. This is a flat, tablet like device, with only an on-screen keyboard and optimised for browsing the web.
Having checked my mail, gone through the rss feeds that had come in over night, checked Facebook and Twitter and browsed a few websites I was left asking the question “who needs a CrunchPad and what does it offer that that iPod Touch/iPhone don’t deliver already?”
Ok, so the Touch/iPhone have screens that require you to also have good … Read the rest