Something that has niggled me since I installed the first beta of IE7 was that while I could set the search provider box to something other than MSN I didn’t seem to be able to change to google.co.uk, which is what I really wanted. Why does this matter? Well notmally it doesn’t the search results from google.com will return what I am looking for quickly and easily. However, if I am looking for a product and, in particular, it’s price and availability then I want the results to be UK based – then it does matter. Actually, being English, I … Read the rest

If you have been excited by the previous post then you may like to know that AppSwing are currently looking for a web developer to work in our dedicated team delivering mobile solutions for a range of UK customers. It’s an opportunity to work within a small team working on industry leading technology with some great benefits. If you are interested then take a look at the outline job spec or drop a copy of your CV to jobs at appswing dot com.… Read the rest

It’s taken a while but AppSwing have finally got a video together of our product in action. The following short video will give you an introduction to the AppServer technology. Using a real-life mobile application you will see how it interacts with the original Windows application on the server in real-time without invasively attaching to the database. It’s all very cool and yes, those are my dulcet tones doing the voice over. Let me know what you think – of the video and of the voiceover, if you must!
To see this video full size please click here

standby=”Loading Microsoft … Read the rest

I have a new gadgety love in my life – a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). This just has to be the ultimate media centre device: movies, music, photos, web browsing and games, it does the lot. Hey, it even will run your business applications via AppSwing.:

I also just looove the rss feeds, although they are more a way of listening to podcasts than reading RSS text feeds. Nevertheless it is still great and seems to be rock solid.
As well as the unit itself I also purchased a 2gb memory stick and, after some playing around, have found … Read the rest

Over the last few days I have experienced both the good and bad sides of Microsoft Windows. My laptop runs Windows XP Pro and normally runs pretty smoothly. On Saturday I was doing some work and shut down without any problems. Next morning when I started up Windows went through all the normal process but instead of displaying the login dialog I got a message“lsass.exe failed to initialise” – very useful. I tried a few things but got no further. So off to Google for some answers and it didn’t look good. One suggestion was to replace lsass.exe from the … Read the rest

Here’s another things that pisses me off. Take a look at the screenshot below:

Now you might think that there is nothing much wrong with this. But not being American, nor being in the United States and being given the impression that there might be other options other than “English (United States) I stupidly clicked on the down arrow. This is what I got:

What’s the point in that? Where is the “English (United Kingdom)” or the “English (Australian)” or any of the other many variants? Why couldn’t the entry just have been “English” which would have sufficed? I’ll tell … Read the rest

Having just returned home from two weeks holiday I can now announce the death of the humble postcard. It has been killed off, like so many other things, by the internet. Now longer do family and friends have to make do with a quick “wish you were here” scrawled on the back of a card showing some generic views of your chosen holiday destination. Now they can be treated to regular updates via email and also personalised photos posted to online photo sharing services.

OK, all of this is only possible if you have a computer and broadband connection where … Read the rest

AppSwing currently have a student from the University of Reading working with us and as part of his course he has to do some research into the development environments that are in use throught the UK. In order to capture this information he has designed a short on-line questionnaire which will take 5-10 minutes to complete. If you could take the time to complete it that would be great. You can access the survey here: www.extra.rdg.ac.uk/devsurvey/survey/… Read the rest

By and large my job at AppSwing is one of management. Whether those that are “managed” (hello!) feel that it is a worthwhile exercise is open to debate and their own personal blogs. Anyway this week has been a strange one for me as I have spent 90% of it doing coding, something that I left behind some ten odd years ago. I have continued to dabble on and off over that period, my websites for example, with the exception of this one, have all pretty much been coded by hand in Perl and I have done bits and pieces … Read the rest

I’ve been an NTL customer for a number of years now and until six months ago it was a relatively painless experience. A good example of my NTL experience is when a contractor dig through the cable in our garden leading to our house. This caused a complete loss of telephone, TV and broadband and complete consternation from the boys who lost access to Runescape. However, one call to 150 and an engineer came out – once to put in a temporary fix and then to completely renew the wire a week later. No fuss, no quibbles and no charge.… Read the rest