Gadget Show Live

April 21, 2009 | 1 comment

Gadget Show Live came to the NEC in Birmingham this last weekend and I went along with my youngest son for a look around. We are both fans of the show and of gadgets in general so we were looking forward to finding out what was on offer. What it turned out to be was, perhaps, more a collection of hi-tech retailers gathered together rather than a showing of gadgets. it seemed particularly heavy on gaming, an area I have no interest in, and light on up-and-coming gadgets.

It did offer Mat the opportunity to play on a number of … Read the rest

Travellers Kit

April 15, 2009 | Comment

Being away from home there is some kit that has proved to be essential while travelling, which you can see on the left here. What is also interesting is the software that I have come to rely on over the last couple of weeks while away.

The most useful item by far has been my Netbook which has performed admirably allowing me to stay in touch with those at home (via Skype, Messenger and blogging via Windows Live Writer), provided entertainment (Spotify and Hulu) and also dealing with all the picture and videos that we have … Read the rest

Solving Problems with Windows Live Writer

April 12, 2009 | Comment

I have long been a fan of Windows Live Writer. I tend to start blog posts and capture bits of information before creating a fully formed article to post to one of my WordPress blogs (here or here). WLW lets me do this easily and with a little setup I can also share the draft posts between all my machines ensuring that the latest changes are available wherever I want to work.

While most of the time it works without fault there have been a couple of persistent problems that have come up when posting.Having now found … Read the rest

One Billion Errors

April 10, 2009 | 4 comments

So Apple are running a competition at the moment to celebrate them (almost) reaching a billion downloads from the App Store. All you need do is download an application to be entered into a prize draw that would see you winning a $10,000 iTunes cards amongst other things.

For those that don’t have a compatible device (and for legal reasons I suspect) Apple have provided a page on their website where you can enter for free without downloading an app.

Being too lazy to go and get my Touch from the other room this is the route I chose to … Read the rest

ZumoDrive for iPhone

April 9, 2009 | Comment

I have spoken about ZumoDrive a couple of times already (here and here) but that has always been about the desktop app. Now there is an iPhone/iPod Touch client available that allows access when you don’t have you desktop/laptop access.

Zumodrive bills itself as a way of having additional storage available on devices that are traditionally limited, such as Netbooks. I guess that is true providing you have a deep enough wallet to be able to afford the storage – it wouldn’t take long to pay for a portable harddrive for example. However, that would be missing some … Read the rest

Errors with Google Docs Offline

April 2, 2009 | Comment

While doing some research for my post on Google Docs’ drawing feature I tried to enable the offline feature, something that had worked perfectly on my previous laptop. The process got right through to the very end before displaying the following error message:

“An error occurred while updating software.Failed to update software for the applications”

I re-tried a few times and even gave it a go on Internet Explorer rather than Firefox to see if that resolved the issue but with no luck. So in the end I did a search of the web see if anyone else had the … Read the rest

Drawings in Google Docs

March 31, 2009 | 1 comment

Google has added a drawing option to it’s Docs applications so now you can insert simple diagrams into documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

To insert a new drawing select Drawing from the Insert menu and a new window pops-up over the document (see left). This is the same for all application types.

You are then free to draw using any combination of lines (both straight and free form), text and a series of predefined shapes (see below). You can do all the sorts of things that you would expect to be able to do such as change the colour of the … Read the rest

WIRED – UK

March 28, 2009 | 2 comments

I have always been more of a magazine than book reader but these days there is only one magazine that I read on a regular basis and that is WIRED. It covers technology issues in an engaging and interesting way. All the articles are readable whether they are about green issues, gadgets or films.

For the last few years I have been picking up copies either when I have been stateside or from WH Smiths. Problem is that it is an expensive read costing about £4.50. I have toyed with subscribing but while it would cost only $10 if … Read the rest

Zumodrive and Windows Live Writer

March 26, 2009 | 2 comments

I have been using Windows Live Writer for blogging for quite a while now and really prefer it to the online interface provided by WordPress. Of course one of WLW’s strengths is that you can work on posts off line ready for posting when it is appropriate. In my case I have scraps of posts waiting for me to finish them off and post them.

Another thing that I need to be able to do is work on posts on both my home machine and my laptop. This implies being able to synchronise between both machines – something that … Read the rest

Mobile Madness

March 24, 2009 | Comment

Until very recently I had a mobile phone provided by the company that I worked for. When I left I reverted back to a personal phone I had with a t-mobile u-fix deal. Unfortunately this is a pay-as-you-go/contract hybrid and quickly proved to be costly as I was toping up every few days, No problem I thought, I will move on to a contract.

A call to t-mobile quickly showed that was going to be more difficult than I expected. If I wanted to move onto a contract from PAYG I would need to extend my existing u-fix contract by … Read the rest