Skip to main content

Posts

The Fruit Watch - First day opinions

I've been a user of smart watches for the past 2-3 years, first backing the pebble on kickstarter, the cookoo , purchasing a sony smart watch one ,  purchasing a pebble steel , backing the pebble time  but always said on twitter I'd not get an apple watch, that it will be like a bracelet once the battery runs out and that pebble is really the one for me given the multi OS support (android and IOS). Well eating my own words I ordered the apple watch on 10/4 at 08:05 am and it was due to arrive on 26/5.  Another person I followed on twitter who lives within my area ordered there's at 08:02 and got it on the 24/4.  On Tuesday 5/5 I had an email to expect delivery on 6/5 and yesterday it arrived. So what changed my mind.... it was certainly nothing to do with apple as I think iOS 8 in its recent incarnation and the Iphone 6 plus are both aesthetically pleasing but are bug ridden hardware and software.  It was because it's apple given they have predominantly been my choi

Fruit phone again

The nexus 6 really needs to be a killer device. I've recently had a note 3, lg 3 and now z2. All hardware specs are great on paper but the android implementations are riddled with bugs and hardware that fails. Note 3 the gps borked by samsungs latest iupdate, g3 that overheats then you can't remove device administrators bug and now the z2 another device that overheats when using the camera and now the settings app fails to load to enable me to move apps to sd which did look like its a missing option.  To date I still have my nexus 4 as a spare, nexus 5 with my work sim which I still believe is underpowered and finally my xiaomi mi2sc.  I know tomorrow if i spend £700 on the high end fruit phone it will work, can run and store over 100s over apps and the hardware is good. Albeit the 5s with 1gb is not enough.  For android I can't find any decent comparison and am just disappointed because I love the vanilla os but somewhere along the line I find a reason not to keep it

State of podcast address on Windows Phone 8

I've recently purchased a Nokia Lumia 1020 running on Windows Phone 8. Quite scary really coming from iOS and Android as I like windows phone but found the experience one step up from a feature phone. Well the camera on the Lumia is the reason why I jumped ship and have decided to see if I can do better then just get by. One of the applications that is a must is a podcast client. After giving up on car radio and music whilst driving podcasts are there to entertain me all 35 of them. However whilst listening is the end result the journey of getting there is just as vital and with as minimal intervention from me. I can remember before iOS allowed background tasks to run the daily task of opening the podcatcher and waiting for them to come down. Equally being able to easily select what I play and especially remember where I left off or playing the next track automatically whilst driving are equally important. After 10 years of listening to podcasts I have set of minimum requirements

Galaxy Note 2 Bluetooth Woes

In a last ditch attempt to resurrect my note 2 before I get rid of it after only 3 weeks is anyone experiencing bluetooth issues either with phone or ad2p. I have 3 ad2p devices a car kit, a jabra Bt speaker for the car and a plantronics headset. All frequently lose Bt connection either for both the phone or media part for ad2p.  I have tried to use tasker and various plugins or apps that claim to fix reconnection issues but all have failed. I like the note 2 as an iphone replacement but like the note 1 this issue still exists.  I have found with tasker that I need to separately connect to the car kit first on ad2p, wait and then to the phone to establish a reliable connection. This is done using bluetooth auto Connect app.  Buy whilst playing podcasts with dogcatcher, beyond pod or pocket casts whilst running sat navigation software it can cope with the pause and resuming of the podcast when playing the routing instructions.  However it is randomly pausing the podcast or losing ad2p c

2012 My Year in a mini - review

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

The Return

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

InfoSec 2012 Caravan Exhibition

This year was my first time at InfoSec and it would be my last if it wasn't for the reason that attendance actually gets me CPE credit towards keeping my CISSP qualification. I booked the day from work with the intention of taking a casual visit to see what was on offer. I have ended up leaving the show believing it was really a pointless journey. The highlight of the trip was meeting a technical account manager with a company I will be doing business with in the near future, but that is really all I will remember. The layout of the exhibition, the facilities and free seminars are the better part of the exhibition but there was an overall sense of lacking any substance. All the major suppliers from Symantec, Qualys, Cisco, HP and IBM had a presence at the show and it left me with an air of sales, sales and more sales. There were quite a number of smaller companies offering their services and again the choice was wide but it was again pretty much the same. I coined the thought