Perfect travel speakers – the x-mini

August 13, 2008 | 1 comment

image I was introduced to these speakers by a friend who, like me, has a keen interest in all things gadgety. I have tried a number of portable speakers in my time but most are either too big or the sound is too weak. The x-mini gets round both of these problems in a neat way.

The unit itself is tiny – certainly small enough to fit neatly in the palm of your hand and therefore in anyone’s travelling kit bag. The real neat bit though is how it gets more bass. By twisting the unit it opens out to reveal … Read the rest

Cuil Search

July 28, 2008 | Comment

A  new search engine (do we need another one?) has opened for business today. Cuil (pronounced Cool) is brought to us by a couple of ex-Googleites. I thought that I would give it a spin. Cuil reckons that it indexes three times the pages of Google and ten times that of Windows Live Search so my hopes were high to find some new pages.

First impressions were good – it looked slick and had a nice clean interface – though not as clean as Google. The acid test though is on search ability. Initially I searched for “Neil Thompson… Read the rest

Intel Predicts Positive Future for Mobile Web

July 25, 2008 | Comment

image A report from Intel today (via the BBC) predicts that mobile web is in for a bright future with 1.2 billion connected devices by 2012. This prediction was made at an event to highlight a range of Intel chips for web-enabled mobile devices.

Gadi SInger, head of Intel’s mobility group, made an interesting point that “The fact that people want to be on the internet all the time means they will be looking for the ability they have today say at their desk and to have that anytime and anywhere.”

What is significant about this statement is that at … Read the rest

Giving something back

July 25, 2008 | Comment

There’s an interesting post over at Web Worker Daily that asks the question “How do you give something back to those providing information on the web?” It’s a good question. Whenever I need information the web is the first place I turn whether it is for the parameters for an obscure function to who was in that movie and it very rarely lets me down. So how do I give back? I guess it is by adding to that pool of information either through this blog or, perhaps, more specific information on a topic such as the Williams F1 team… Read the rest

Project management – a beautiful thing!

July 18, 2008 | Comment

I was sent this today and thought that it deserved a wider audience as it is all so true…

  1. It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women.
  2. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.
  3. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
  4. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
  5. The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.
  6. A problem shared is
… Read the rest

Windows Virtualisation with Sun VirtualBox

July 4, 2008 | Comment

imageVirtualisation has become all the rage recently. Running multiple instances of a system on a single piece of hardware is a very compelling proposition as everyone try’s to get more out of their investments. While virtualisation is typically applied to server environments there is no reason why it cannot be used on a suitably specified desktop PC or laptop.

In the past I have tried out virtualisation using with Microsoft’s VirtualPC or VMWare’s offering but I wanted to give VirtualBox, principally because it is open source and I knew that it was available for Mac so if I move … Read the rest

Firefox Through a Prism

June 30, 2008 | Comment

image I have stated previously (here and here) that the main focus for my attention on my desktop and laptop these days is the browser as I have more and more of my key applications (email, calendar, documents etc.) in the cloud. This is all well and good but this has thrown up a number of issues namely: 15 years of working with Windows means I constantly press Alt-tab to switch applications only to find, now, that I didn’t want to do that as I wanted to remain in the browser; there is a large amount of wasted space … Read the rest

about:config

June 27, 2008 | Comment

image

The above screenshot is from Firefox 3 and is displayed when you go to the about:config configuration page. I like to see a bit of humour in development. This one has different messages too so you can enjoy time and time again and never get tired!… Read the rest

Xobni (L) LinkedIn

June 26, 2008 | Comment

image There has been a new update to the Outlook companion Xobni that adds information from LinkedIn. It can now import pictures from the business networking site and also provides (brief) details on the selected individual, typically their title and company. This clearly only works where the email address that they have corresponded with you matches the one recorded in LinkedIn, nevertheless it is still a useful addition.

The Xobni blog also suggests that future updates will provide further integration between the two services when you are logged in but stops short of saying what this will provide.… Read the rest