At AppSwing we had an idea for an information and education website based around mobile applications, devices and peripherals. This required a new website design as we didn’t want it to look like the existing corporate site. While we have a very good designer that we use for the majority of our design requirements I was looking for a more cost effective way of achieving this.

During a previous net surfing session I had come across Template Kingdom who, as the name suggests, provide website templates. The twist here is that the designers are based in India and the price … Read the rest

I have long been frustrated by the Search capabilities of Windows XP. In particular I hate the multitude of hidden options, that stupid dog, so reminiscent of the hated paper clip, and most of all it’s seeming inability to search for something I know exists. The latter problem is exacerbated when trying to find text within a file. I have resorted in the past to opening each file by hand to find something that I know exists but Windows Search tells me is not there.
Today I decided enough was enough and did a search on a proper search engine … Read the rest

I just love these sorts of things – I needed to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a Flash equivalent and, as always, I didn’t want to spend any money on it as it was a one-off requirement.

My first port of call was Google which turned up a number of very fine looking packages that would carry out this function for me… at a cost. I was surprised at just how many products there were. I was just about to give up and put my hand in my pocket when tucked away at the bottom of a long article was … Read the rest

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