TweetCloud

December 2, 2009 | Comment

I have covered word clouds before when I looked at the service Wordle. Another, similar, service has popped up over the last few days offering a similar service for your Tweets, tweet cloud. Having pointed it to my Twitter stream @spokenlikeageek (you are following me, right?) it produced the graphic on the left showing the most frequently used words over the last year. Oh and what a surprise! I love my iPhone!

The top six words were:

iphone
google
windows
apple
netbook
chrome

Does that scream geek to you? I would be interested to know what your top … Read the rest

2009’s Must-Have Device

November 30, 2009 | Comment

There has been a lot of talk in the press recently about Rupert Murdoch taking his news off the web and off Google in particular. Murdoch feels that content has a value and that we should be paying for that value. In a sense he is correct of course but unfortunately he is too late. If he puts News International’s content behind a paywall other free sources will still be available – the BBC for example, where I get 99% of my news from now anyway.

So it was nice to see this promotional video from the News International title … Read the rest

MacBook Pro

November 8, 2009 | 3 comments

One thing that I particularly like about the MacBook Pro is its grunt. Even though mine is the bottom of the range model it has far more processing power than my old Windows desktop allowing me to rip DVDs in minutes rather than hours. This processing power has led me to make the MacBook my main machine, something that is possible with its excellent battery life.

I had intended to try and go completely Mac to the extent that I bought a copy of Office for Mac to ease that transition but there was one program that I found there … Read the rest

Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard

November 5, 2009 | Comment

Well to date I have upgraded two machines to Windows 7 and I have to say that the whole thing has been a pleasurable experience. Not only has it breathed new life into a couple of old machines but also I am liking the improvements that have been made. I particularly like how you can drag a window to one side of the screen and it will automatically resize to fill 50% of the screen.

However, there is been a bit of a change at Thompson Manor with the addition of the first Apple Mac machine, a MacBook Pro to … Read the rest

Installing Windows 7

October 23, 2009 | Comment

Well I am still on Windows XP despite having had two copies of Windows 7 for a couple of days now. The problem stems from the fact that the version of Windows 7 I want to install on my XP machine has been downloaded (legally) but I need to run it from a DVD as a fresh install. You would think that this would be no problem but the files arrive from Microsoft as an exe and a couple of box files. This are expanded out into the disk contents on your hard drive but that is useless if you … Read the rest

Isn’t this due on Thursday?

October 19, 2009 | Comment

When I got home this evening there was a parcel awaiting for me. Much to my surprise it contained my copy of Windows 7. I had been told by the supplier (PC World) that they had been embargoed by Microsoft from delivering these before the official launch day of October 22nd. I’m not sure if this was a pre-emptive strike (every pun intended) to avoid any industrial action by the postal workers at the end of the week or just an act of kindness on the part of PC World. Either way it is gratefully accepted and expect me to … Read the rest

The Gadget Show Apps

October 15, 2009 | Comment

On the Gadget Show this week they had an interesting challenge. Suzy and Jason were pitted against each other to produce an application for a mobile device. The winner would be the one that got the most downloads.

After almost 30 seconds of deliberation they both chose to develop an application for the iPhone, simply because this was the most mature of all and was likely to give them the widest possible audience. And with a couple of billion downloads under its belt who can blame them for going this route?

Suzy elected to create a game while Jason wanted … Read the rest

So Now What?

October 14, 2009 | Comment

So I received my invitation to Google Wave today and for a full thirty seconds there was much excitement as if I’d had an invite to the party of the year. So I logged in and then the realisation hit me that I have no one to connect to on the service and not the first idea of how to use it.

I watched the introductory video of some mad Australian in a lab coat explaining what each area of the screen does and then decided that Wave is a lonely experience right now.

So I put out a message … Read the rest

WifiPhoto for iPhone

October 8, 2009 | Comment

Getting pictures off an iPhone can be a bind, particularly if you don’t have a sync cable to hand. The most reliable way is to email yourself the pictures but if you do this directly from the Photo app it reduces the size of your pictures. The only way round this is to cut and paste the image from Photos to the email which preserves the quality.

However, now there is another way with WifiPhoto which, as the name suggests, allows you to get access to your photos over a wifi connection.

The app is very simple to use. You … Read the rest

My “other” USB Key

October 7, 2009 | Comment

Following on from yesterdays post the above is what I carried around before the “Key” key.

While it did have the advantage of being credit card sized and so would fit into my pocket and did have some sort of geeky street cred (or so I like to think), it was when I pulled it out at a business meeting that eyebrows were raised.

I can’t quite give up my Tardis USB key just like it would be difficult to give up my Tardis 4-port hub…… Read the rest