Build an app by all means, but please remember to support it

November 14, 2011 | Comment

Everyone is building mobile apps these days. They are the must have accessory for every company that wants to be seen to be leading edge and that includes my own company.

Apple seem to have managed to succeeded where I singularly failed a few years ago in persuading people that mobiles where it’s at. And that’s great, I really “get” mobile and applaud anyone who wants to be seen in the hands of every user. But, but, writing the app is only half the story.

Let me explain with a practical example.

On my iPad I have a great … Read the rest

Slideshare Participates in Rip-off Britain

November 8, 2011 | Comment

Slideshare is one of a number of online services that allow you to post and share presentations to a wide audience. We have been using it at work to promote some of our own presentations for a while now. It works well but has a major drawback on the free edition in that it looks ugly and is full of ads. That’s fine as I get something for free and if I want I can upgrade to get rid of the ads. So this is what I decided to do – upgrade our account and get a better looking page.… Read the rest

Business Card Reader Apps

November 3, 2011 | Comment

If you are anything like me then over the years you will have collected a vast number of business cards.

Originally these were held in special wallets and then when they became full stacked in a piles on the window sill!

Now they get put into either my contacts or my CRM system and despite there being huge advances in technology nothing seems to have replaced the good old business card (perhaps we need Apple to reinvent it!).

So I need a good way to quickly and accurately scan these cards without spending a fortune, so that ruled out a … Read the rest

Steve Wouldn’t LIke it (but I do!)

July 17, 2011 | 1 comment

It has always struck me that the iPad is just crying out for some form of alternative input device other than my finger. This is not a view that I share with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who famously asked the question “Who wants a stylus?” when launching the original iPhone. Of course, Steve’s dislike of styluses doesn’t stop people wanting them or companies making them. And to prove the point (no pun intended) I own not one but three of them.

In my search for the ultimate stylus I have shelled out £31 and now think that I … Read the rest

iPad 2 and the smart cover

July 1, 2011 | Comment

So I have finally succumbed and swapped my iPad 1 for a sleek new iPad 2. The most noticeable change is the performance boost. My old iPad was beginning to get very sluggish and on apps that I use regularly, such as Pulse, it was becoming unusable. So it has become usable once again.

With it I also picked up a smart cover, the magnetised, folding cover come stand designed just for the iPad 2. And so far I just don’t know what I think about it. On the one hand it covers the screen offering protection, although only to … Read the rest

My iPhone 5 Wish List (it’s probably not what you think)

June 5, 2011 | Comment


I am coming to the end of my iPhone 3GS contract in a couple of weeks. Normally this end of contract would coincide with the launch of Apple’s latest and greatest device but this year it looks like I am going to have to wait until September at the earliest for my latest fix.

Of course the interweb has been wild with rumours of what the new device will and won’t have. Bigger this, smaller that, faster this, shinier that etc. But none has covered what I want for any new iPhone. my requests are few and simple – a … Read the rest

Evernote Web Clipper now a Rival for Instapaper?

May 24, 2011 | Comment

One of my favourite tools has got to be Evernote, the service that allows you to upload pretty much anything and have it indexed and available to search and view pretty much anywhere.

Evernote have today upgraded their Chrome Extension to extend it to offer “smart clipping”. Previously when you clipped a webpage to Evernote unless you highlighted the bit you wanted stored you simply got the weblink. Now it automagically seeks out the body of the web article and stores that. The only other app that I have seen do this is Instapaper the read-it-later service. While it is … Read the rest

Mac Folder Action Scripts and Evernote

May 15, 2011 | Comment

For reasons that I have yet been able to fathom the functionality levels between the Mac and Windows Evernote clients is subtly different. For example on Windows there is the very useful ability to be able to add a watched folder that when anything gets added to this it automatically gets added to Evernote. This is not an option on the Mac version. However, all is not lost using Applescript and Folder Actions Scripts it is easy to replicate this action.

I say that it is easy but that is only the case if you are au fait with the … Read the rest

Top tech of 2010

January 16, 2011 | Comment

imageLast year, for the first time, I produced a list of my top tech for 2009. I thought that it would be interesting to do the same in 2010 to see how things have changed, if at all. So this is the technology that I used day-in, day-out in 2010 and could not do without.

Google Chrome

No change here and, in fact, I am more wedded to Chrome this year than I was last having used it for a full 12 months I still much prefer it to both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The addition of extensions has just … Read the rest