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

Online Icon Maker

April 27, 2009 | Comment

Occasionally I have the need to create an icon file – usually for use as a favourite icon for a website. Until recently I struggled to find a simple way of achieving this as the graphics programs I use, as good as they are, don’t seem to have support for *.ico files. Then I stumbled upon the Online Icon Maker which, as the name suggests, is a web-based system for creating icon files.

You can choose to either create your icon from scratch or upload an existing file. On screen you see a simple view of the icon on the … Read the rest

BT 1571 online

April 25, 2009 | Comment

BT customers will no doubt be familiar with the 1571 service which adds voicemail to a home phone line. Some might also know that you can setup to receive text alerts to your mobile when you receive a message. However, I suspect that very few realise that you can log into your online account and listen and save messages from your browser. Or, at least you could…

When I logged into my account while I was last away I was greeted by this message: “BT 1571 online is a service that is no longer available. From the 31 March 2009, … Read the rest

Crunch Time for Internet Browsing

April 24, 2009 | Comment

Browsing the web from my iPod Touch this morning I remembered the CrunchPad, Michael Arrington’s prototype connected device for web browsing. This is a flat, tablet like device, with only an on-screen keyboard and optimised for browsing the web.

Having checked my mail, gone through the rss feeds that had come in over night, checked Facebook and Twitter and browsed a few websites I was left asking the question “who needs a CrunchPad and what does it offer that that iPod Touch/iPhone don’t deliver already?”

Ok, so the Touch/iPhone have screens that require you to also have good … Read the rest

Pantsman confuses Twitter

April 23, 2009 | Comment

Sometimes technology has a way of surprising and Twitter did that last night.

I have been using Twitter for a while now and while I am still not a complete convert it is certainly getting much more mainstream acceptance with the likes of Obama, Oprah and Fry all tweeting away. In fact a recent mention on the Oprah show is said to have increased the subscribers by a further one million.

A lot of these new users, the majority I would suspect, are based in the US but there is clearly a strong band of users here … Read the rest

How to minimize iTunes to the Windows Taskbar

April 22, 2009 | Comment

I discovered something about iTunes today that I should have realised long ago must have existed – namely the ability to minimise it to the system tray. More than that it is also possible to put a little widget on the taskbar that allows you some simple control over the playing track and volume. It works perfectly and I wish I had found it years ago.

Full details on how to set this up can be found here.… Read the rest

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