Archive for October, 2008
Shake it like a Polaroid picture
83 years ago
I found a fun little app for the Mac today which turns your digital photos into Polaroid-like pictures, called Poladroid. Here’s one I made earlier from one of my photos of my favourite bookstore in Newcastle upon Tyne…
Once you’ve downloaded the application you simply drag your photo onto the polaroid camera icon where it will make all those realistic noises, then spit out your photo and you can either wait a few minutes for the it to develop or you can even shake it as you would a real polaroid.
Poladroid have a Flickr group where you can upload your creations to.
Wouldn’t it be great…
8…if there was a Mac app out there which would show a notification on your computer screen when you’d missed a call to your iPhone while it’s docked?
I was just thinking this today when having to leave my iPhone docked after it completely ran out of juice during the night. I haven’t been at the computer much today but have occasionally popped up to have a look at the iPhone screen to see whether I’d missed any calls. How convenient would it be to come up and see a Growl-style notification message on your Mac (that stays there until you close it) letting you know.
I would pay good money for that.
Your site looks good on the iPhone
812 months ago I installed a plugin to Fruit Bytes which reformatted it for better viewing on the iPhone and iPod touch. Because there was no option to view the regular site it was unpopular with many and removed soon after. Now with a new plugin we have the best of both worlds.
WPtouch by BraveNewCode is a theme installed as a plugin on your WordPress blog or website that will format your content with this Apple-inspired, full-featured theme when your visitors are using an iPhone or iPod touch. If people don’t like viewing your site that way then there’s an option in the footer on WPtouch so that visitors can easily switch between the WPtouch view and your site’s regular appearance. Everyone’s happy!
To get your WordPress site looking good on the iPhone, download the plugin then upload the ‘wptouch’ folder to the ‘wp-content/plugins’ directory on your server. Next simply visit your WordPress admin panel in your web browser and navigate to the ‘Plugins’ tab, and activate the WPtouch plugin.
Go on, check out Fruit Bytes on your iPhone/iPod touch.
Overcome shyness with Twitter Celebs
143 years ago
I don’t think there’s anyone, anywhere that is as shy as I am. I tell that to people online and they don’t believe me as I have carved out an online life of being the Administrator of a busy message forum for nearly 6 years. That consists of me taking the lead, organising things (and people) so what’s a shy and retiring girl like me doing something that? Ah, I just love the internet for allowing me to be outgoing and nobody would guess until I blurt it out…like now.
A couple of months ago I found a celebrity on Twitter – Robert Llewellyn who played Kryten in British sitcom Red Dwarf. I love Robert Llewellyn. I can’t say I am a big Red Dwarf fan, but I am a big fan of Scrapheap Challenge – a show he presented for many years. I followed him and a couple of times he asked the Twitterverse a question. A question I could answer. But what did I do? I ran away. What if he personally replied to me saying thanks? I couldn’t take that chance so I sat quietly while I watched his other followers/my contacts answer him. I was so angry with myself for bottling it. He’s a normal down-to-earth bloke, no airs and graces so why was I putting him on this pedestal that he would no doubt be very embarrassed about? Because he’s on the telly, silly.
Since then I have actually got over that and have recently replied to a few of his tweets. I didn’t panic, I didn’t break out into a cold sweat and I didn’t prepare to hide under the desk if he replied (which he didn’t, btw). But wow, I have faced something head-on that has plagued me for 35 years and it’s all thanks to Twitter.
Just as I was feeling smug about overcoming that hurdle I found out that another British legend was now on Twitter, the gentleman that is Stephen Fry. I followed him on Friday and yesterday he started to follow me back. What a lovely man who seems to be following just about everyone who’s following him. I have had a bit of a soft spot for Stephen since watching his open and honest documentary about Bipolar Disorder a couple of years ago. As someone who has a Bipolar partner, it was invaluable viewing at a time when I was desperate to understand more about the illness. I thank Stephen for being so candid and open, particularly during those times when the last thing he wanted was to be followed around by a camera crew.
So, whether I will actually personally reply to @stephenfry is quite another matter, I have only just recovered from replying to @bobbyllew afterall!!
So, which celebrities* have you discovered on Twitter?
*Real celebrities from the Acting/TV/Music world, not internet celebrities nonebrities.
Black Mac Rims
11As someone who adores the design of the iMac with it’s black rim, I was pleased to see the MacBook, MacBook Pro and new LED Cinema Display all get rimmed at the Apple Event yesterday. I’d long hoped that we’d see sleek aluminum and black make their way across to the notebook range.
I’m more than happy with the set-up I have now and have absolutely no need for a notebook, but that doesn’t stop me fawning and drooling all over them. It’s agony being sensible. The new LED Cinema Display is exactly as I had been imagining a design refresh to look like. The iMac design and built-in iSight. However, since it’s no use to any machine other than the MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air then my money is safe, unfortunately!
Anyone out there tempted by the new range, or have you placed your order already? If money was no object and I needed a notebook then I think I’d go for the MacBook Pro 15″. I’ve never been tempted by the MacBook Air and now that it lacks the black rim that the others have it’s starting to look outdated (in my opinion)…just 10 months after it debuted, but I guess that’s technology.
A year with…o2 Broadband
193 years ago
In a couple of weeks time it’ll be 12 months since I switched to o2 Broadband. I was reminded of this today when I received a letter from my old provider, BT Broadband, begging me to go back to them and in return they’ll offer me some perks like the BT Home Hub and £7.95 for the first three months. What? And leave reliable o2 that I pay £7.50 to per month all the time? “No!” would be the short and polite answer to that.
During my 12 months with o2 Broadband I have been asked about the service and reliability from a lot of people who wanted to jump ship from their current ISP. Given that o2 is a broadband newcomer at barely 12 months old itself (I joined a week after it was introduced) people were naturally curious about whether it could deliver the goods given it’s low price (£7.50 per month to existing Pay Monthly and PAYG customers for the Standard 8MB unlimited package). So, after 12 months I thought I could give my thoughts and opinions.
I can’t fault o2 Broadband at all. It certainly hasn’t experienced any teething troubles. In 12 months the only time I can remember a significant downtime was earlier in the year when service was down for a few hours. I called customer support and after getting through extremely quickly I didn’t even have to explain what the issue was – they already knew and assured me they were working on it. This isn’t customer support I’m used to. My experiences with BT Broadband were abysmal and the support would have liked me to think the issue was with my own computer – yeeees, my computer was causing the broadband to be completely out at the exchange 
In the past year I have recommended o2 to a good few people – some joined, some didn’t. Those who didn’t decided to stay with their current ISP after they were promised better speeds, but are now mostly regretting their decision because their service has continued to decline. Of those that did join on my recommendation, the last time I spoke to some of them they’d just been turned on by o2 and were thrilled to be whizzing through the intertubes at a vast rate. To avoid repeating what I’ve already said, you can read my other posts on o2 Broadband here and here. Everything still stands.
So, to briefly sum things up…
Reliability of Service: I have had no connection issues. I get around 3Mbps which is double the speed I got with BT (which I was paying three times more for, incidentally). Unfortunately my line isn’t capable of much more than that and it does the job, until all the horrid old copper lines are finally replaced with fancy new ones by British Telecom!
Customer Support: Excellent, 10/10, outstanding…you get the idea. Call Centres based in the UK, swift answer, friendly, speedy resolution of any issues since they have full control of my o2 Wireless Box from their end. Brilliant support for Mac users. Faultless.
Router: I have the “old” o2 wireless box, a Thomson 780. I call it the ugly one since the new ones are smaller and white – much prettier. But, I haven’t had any problems with this and the Admin interface is very user-friendly and detailed.
If you’re thinking of switching to o2 Broadband and have any queries that I haven’t already covered then shoot me a question in the comments 
Do your Fring
33 years ago
As a infrequent IM user I haven’t felt the need to install any Instant Messaging apps to my iPhone. I did try the AIM app so that I could log-in to my iChat account, but uninstalled it soon after knowing I’d rarely use it.
I heard about a free app called fring for the iPhone/iPod touch last Friday, enabling you to make free calls to fellow fringsters or your Skype contacts over wi-fi. You can also access your buddies on MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM® via fring. I downloaded it from the iTunes App Store and got it up and running in no time. I made a test call to a Skype contact via fring and the sound quality was great. One thing I have noticed is after adding a new contact on Skype (using the desktop client) it has not updated in fring on my iPhone to show this new buddy. Not quite sure why that is but hopefully it will be addressed in a future update. Not a bug afterall, it turned up in my Fring list today.
Here’s a video showing how fring works on the iPhone.
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You may remember me writing a review for the Cyberphone W Mac handset for Skype some weeks back. Our time together was shortlived as unfortunately that piece of hardware started to give my iMac frequent Kernel Panics. It was uninstalled immediately. fring is going perfect for Skype VOIP calls for me now. Great logo too.
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