Cragnet

2012 has now gone and we are officially in 2013 narrowly avoiding the end if the world on the 21st of December - End of the world – as it didn't happen | Science | guardian.co.uk I wrote this piece a month ago and thought I'd better post it. For technology in the Apple world we have seen the iPhone 5, IPad 4th generation and iPad mini and I expect to see Apple release the same products again with minor iterations in 2013. They will be billed with the usual hype that its the best thing ever, you need it and like sheep I will notably follow and but them. I tried the Galaxy note last year and it was a good experiment and whilst android had moved on with the number of applications available. I still found there were bugs with Bluetooth car kits, I needed to root the phone to use it to its full potential with Tasker and it was plagued with battery life issues. Whilst certain people sweat they can get a full day on a Note; I cannot and need two batteries. The iPhone

It was June 24th 2010 I had enough of Android due to lack of application and poor handset choice, symbian was a non starter due to lack of handset choice and longevity of the os, mameo; now meego hand disappointed with the n900-again due to lack of applications, Web os whilst a new and exciting os had poor device build quality, blackberry was never a contender and windows mobile had really died. On this day iphone 4 was launched where for myself the handset on offer had caught up with other devices in terms of specification and was finally an option for me to look at. My last venture in apple devices was when the original iphone launched in the UK in 2007. This was very short lived as the device was only 2g and there was little that could be done with it other than jail breaking. At the time I got rid of it apple has started their application store, but the specification of the iPhone didn't win me over as Nokia was still releasing decent devices that were 3g, so using a 2g device

I have been a subscriber to the Lovefilm DVD rental service since the beginning of the year and have thoroughly enjoyed getting the films and watching them. Another addition to the service has been their streaming service of which I originally ran via a mac mini under my TV but am now watching it via a Sony blueray player. The choice is limited and it's rare you will see a blockbuster that is recent but with over 5000 films to choose from there is always something to watch. Today, their iPad application has been released that leverages the streaming service but direct to your tablet. Being as the iPad doesn't use flash this is a welcome addition and means I can now drop my cloud browse application service of which I was using with an iPad app to attempt to stream films but didn't works as the servers are based in the USA. The restrictions to the service is only 2 devices so my Sony DVD player and my iPad are the only 2 devices I can have registered. It would have been n

My ipad2 finally arrived one week earlier than expected but really didn't have the opportunity to put it through its paces until the weekend that has just gone. A lot of people have said the iPad 2 is just an incremental upgrade with cameras, a5 processor and extra ram and would just miss this iteration for iPad3. The only issue I had with the original iPad was it was limited when using it's multitasking when wanting to switch between several applications. With only 256mb of ram there would be occasions when an application would just close and you would need to reopen it. Applications such as flipboard were notorious for this where i am assuming it was due to the fact it was using a lot of graphics. I have found the ipad2 to work a lot more smoothly and even switching between applications such as zite or flipboard whilst web browsing have been more responsive and not prone to closing as on the first generation. Even when connecting to Citrix server using the Citrix receiver

I have tried a galaxy tab and immediately wrote it off after have three other android tablets and figured I could get an iPad for the same price that was a more complete product. The problem I have with the tab is the phone version of android on a tablet that looks like an oversized kiddies toy. The ipad might have its limitations but has always felt a more complete product. I am still tempted by the galaxy as I like tinkering where this is something the ipad doesn't really allow me to do. However with the recent announcements of the galaxy tab 2 and the htc flyer combined with the price hike of £450 from a shop,o I figure the tab will either be reduced in price soon or will be left by the wayside. I have had samsung products before and they do not support a product when they deem it as obsolete. There has not been any concrete announcements from mwc 2011 that the tab 7" will get honeycomb or if samsung will continue to support it. Samsung have announced there will be no

I am currently away on training in London so made the drastic decision to travel light and only bring my Ipad and a mifi. Okay I did bring some more gadgets but settled that I only should require the Ipad. My thoughts will be blogged after the week is up. The mifi itself has been a god send as I put it in my back pack attached to a battery extender which gives me wifi for 8 hours. More than enough to get me through the day with my devices. I no longer subscribe to a contract for the mifi but have opted to purchase data sim cards from EBay or other outlets dependent on what best deal I can get. Recently I have been purchasing Vodafone sims from eBay at £8 for 3gb as the signal strength has been very good and the speeds acceptable. There has been a few reports in the Press that vodafone has been blocking Voip and I reported recently that Cydia had been blocked on my Ipad However I am finding that more sites are being blocked by vodafone content control for example Iplayer streaming,

I am away next week in London on training and I want to travel light instead of taking my mac book, work laptop and iPad. I figured the iPad will do all of the functions I need on trip. It's preloaded with media, my course material and can certainly cope with my Internet activities. However one thought came to mind what ignite crashes. The same with my iPhone what if it crashes. I am stumped as I need a PC or mac with iTunes to restore. Both devices are jailbroken and I use pkgbackup on both devices to backup and restore from Dropbox which works flawlessly. However if the devices die I cannot rejailbreak as I need a Pc or mac. I cannot restore as I need iTunes. I don't know what apps I have installed so I mentally need to keep a note. Anyone who follows me on twitter I have been an android and Symbian fan. Now I have found with psion, windows mobile, symbian on nokia and android I can take on device backups. This would either use built in functionality or a new application.

My first tablet computer was an Archos 5 Internet Tablet 5 towards the end of 2009  which ran android 1.5 and also played a variety of media due to the Archos's extensive codec library.  It was during the short time of me having this tablet that I could see the potential of having a hand held computer that was not windows based, could be instantly powered on, had a large screen and could take the place of laptop, desktop or even smart phone for my daily internet activities.  This story was short lived when the Archos 5 decided to die on me, reset itself and lose all of my files and settings.  This left a sour taste in my mouth if I  could rely on this device when at any minute it could potentially do this again. In January 2010 I saw the Ipad, laughed like other people at Apple's arrogance that they just invented the world again but still thought that it would be an android based table that I would end up with.   I purchased a cheap table from Hong Kong via Ebay for about £130

Two weeks ago I started Italian lessons which was organised via work and an external tutor. For the course we were following a book called Talk Italian by BBC Active. I found a very good deal on the book from Amazon for £7.44 which included the book and the 2 course CDs and free delivery. 3 lessons on and 2 weeks later I am still waiting on delivery for item which was expected to arrive on 16 December. I know that eventually it will be delivered and this blog post is not a rant about the UK, lack of infrastructure and being unable to cope with snow. But it got me thinking. I own several electronic devices such as an iPhone, iPad and MacBook and previously had an ebook reader. However I could not find for the life of me either a digital version of the course book or an mp3 download of the CDs as a legal purchase or torrent which I could have used on the course as I have all of the peripherals put them on. I can see christmas 2011 being different from this year as 2010 has shown one th

Over the past year I have jumped between mobile devices and various operating systems and have purchased a lot of software as I like to ensure consistency between my devices that I have the same if not similar applications on each one. One thing that I am doing more is using my device more for data and media consumption rather than making phone calls. This is why I am now looking for a data only tariff that will allow me to use voip for making outgoing calls but also allow incoming as I will have a sim in the device. Having being predominately a symbian user in the past using both s60, s80 and uiq in its former days I found that any application that I purchased could not easily be transferred to another device without having to make the purchase again. Whilst I can understand this for pc based os such as windows and Mac os x when I upgraded from s60v3 to s60v5 I found the same rule being applied by many software houses. More recently I have found this with meego/maemo with an applicat

It was good to see a recent jailbreak of the iphone 4 where all you had to do was go to a website, click on the jailbreak me switch and within a few minutes it was all done. However there are serious security implications of this jailbreak as all it required was to download a pay loaded pdf file which then allowed remote code to be executed which effectively compromised the phones security within seconds. Whilst apple believe a controlled environment can always ensure a more secure safer experience this is a prime example that this philosophy is not always true. I also believe that because apple cannot easily roll out an over the air update to fix this issue if there were several hundred iphones within an enterprise to update then hooking up to itunes via USB is just not practical. There are two distinct types of iphone users now the jailbreak has come along, Consumers and customisers. A consumer will use a phone how it has been designed and will not venture far from doing stock

I have had the iphone 4 since the launch on June 25 and have been happy with its performance overall. The only niggling thing that has been annoying me has been the poor performance over wifi. As I download a lot of podcasts over a month as I follow 16 separate shows this can usually mean over 2gb in downloads. Originally I used to do this over 3G but since getting broadband at home and wifi I have been attempting to use this instead and preserve my 3G data usage. Originally I was using podcaster and then drivecast to download the podcasts but was swapping forwards and backwards between the applications due to the poor performance of each application crashing or slowly downloading over wifi. It even got bad with some podcasts in that I elected to switch back to 3G which was totally defeating the object. Recently I have purchased an iPad. Again using the same drivecast application via the same access point I am getting expected download speeds over wifi. This in my eyes proves the issue

I have decided to put my nexus, n900 and android tablet on EBay to buy some new kit but to also remove the pain these devices are giving me at the moment. The Nexus with Froyo doesn't work for me because all of my apps aren't available in the App Store or just don't work. The N900 is still too rough around the edges 6 months on and I believe Nokia alately seem to be distancing themselves from it thus making it a niche product. The android table whilst cheap needs a higher specification to be of any use. @ gerrymoth on twitter asked well what phone next? To be honest the HTC Desire looks interesting but I am waiting to see what Apple delivers in the Iphone 4G. I am expecting my gadget sale to be able to fund an Ipad but I am still wary of Iphone OS. Maemo , Symbian and Android have meant I have been PC free for 2 years but the Iphone since the 2G doesn't seem to have moved on because it requires Itunes . So I am challenging anyone reading this to convert me