Netbook as a eReader

June 2, 2009 | Comment

Always on the lookout for ways to extract the most from my Netbook and having eyed up the Sony’s eReader in Waterstones I thought I would see whether the former could act as the latter.

eBooks are all the rage at the moment, particularly in the states where Amazon’s Kindle seems to be doing a roaring trade. I have to say that I am not a particularly big reader and so to have the ability to carry and number of books around and dip in and out what the mood takes me appeals to me. Also I carry my netbook … Read the rest

Owed Two a Spell Chequer

May 29, 2009 | Comment

I first published this poem on my personal blog back in December 2004 and was reminded of it again today when reading about Google’s Context-Sensitive Spell Checker.

A more intelligent spell checker is part of a new service to be launched later this year by Google called Wave. This takes a fresh look at communication and builds something brand new. What the creators have done is rather than build on what we already have (email and IM) they started with a clean sheet of paper designing something for the way we communicate today.

This is an interesting approach … Read the rest

Anagram for Gmail

May 28, 2009 | 1 comment

Anagram is one of those great little utilities that you just don’t know how you lived without it. It takes what can be quite unstructured text and converts it into either a contact record or calendar entry as appropriate. I had been using the Outlook version of Anagram for a couple of years but when I moved over to Gmail a year ago I lost the ability to use Anagram as it wasn’t supported. So I was delighted to find out recently that Anagram now works with Gmail and Google Calendar.

Anagram works as a Gmail Gadget which means it … Read the rest

Poundland to the Rescue!

May 26, 2009 | Comment

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

Carbonite Remote Access Revisited

May 21, 2009 | 1 comment

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

JoikuSpot

May 20, 2009 | 1 comment

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

Moleskine – My Favourite Low-tech Gadget

May 18, 2009 | 5 comments

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

O2 Broadband

May 11, 2009 | Comment

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

Datz Music Lounge

May 2, 2009 | 4 comments

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

Carbonite Remote Access

May 1, 2009 | 3 comments

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