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o2 Home Phone
92 years ago
Whilst on the phone to o2 a couple of months ago to change my Broadband payment details, the chap asked me if I needed help with anything else. I said everything was fine and that I was so happy with o2 that I wish they did a home phone, enabling me to move away from BT and use o2 for everything: mobile, broadband and home phone. He said that they were looking into doing that, but I didn’t give it much thought until yesterday when I discovered that o2 are launching their Home Phone in March.
I’m absolutely delighted with this news. Being able to finally move away from BT is a dream come true, whom I pay in excess of £100 per quarter to for my home phone. With o2 I will pay just £20 per month for Home Phone *and* Broadband – a saving of £40 per quarter. They have two packages available, ‘Evening & Weekend’ for £9.50 per month and ‘Anytime’ for £12.50 per month – both package prices include line rental. I am opting for the latter as it gives me unlimited calls to UK landlines at any time. So, that together with the £7.50 per month I pay for o2 Broadband I will be paying just £20 per month. You can see details on the tariffs at this page and also register your interest, here.
Roll on March. It’s going to be a very sweet day when I can smile and wave bye bye to BT.
Twitter Mousepad
2On 11th December I placed an order with Meninos for a Twitter Mousepad. Choosing a mousepad can be harder than you think – the shinier plastic/rubber topped ones have been a real drag for every mouse I’ve used including the Mighty and Magic mice – and using it directly on my desktop was even worse. But, the description of the Twitter mousepad made me confident that this would be perfect.
It arrived today and I’m so delighted with it. The quality of the cloth material is excellent and it has a rubber backing to keep it in place on the desk. My Magic Mouse glides across it quietly and fluidly.
The Twitter Mousepad is $11.99 plus shipping – in British money the total was around £12.50. A great price for such a high quality mousepad. A Facebook version is also available for the same price or if you really want to go crazy then you can order the Twitter and Facebook Mousepads in a pack together for $17.99 – a saving of $6 over buying them individually.
After sampling the quality of the mousepad, I will have no hesitation about buying from Meninos again. They carry a range of great products for the discerning geek.
Challenge your friends with Plus+ Games
62 years ago
One of the things I love about many of the iPhone apps out there is the way you can interact with others via online multi-player with Cocoto Kart, for example, or games that have Plus+ built in. Plus+ is a social play network for the iPhone and iPod touch, bringing you, your friends and the rest of the world together so you can all challenge eachother.
One of my recently bought games, Skee-Ball by Freeverse Inc., has Plus+ built-in. Skee-Ball is super addictive – a game I used to love playing at the funfair as a child. It’s totally relived in this fantastic game which is just 59p/99c on iTunes. With Plus+ being a feature of this app, I can see what score my friends have on Skee-Ball and compete against them, aswell as check out their Awards and what other Plus+ enabled games they are playing…
With another Plus+ enabled game, Charadium, not only can I once again challenge my friends in a similar way as Skee-Ball, but I can also play against them (and the entire world) as it’s a pictionary multi-player game. If I choose to play against my Plus+ friends only then I can create a room…
…where I can then invite my friends to join me for a game of Charadium…
Charadium is priced 59p in the App Store. Other games that have the Plus+ feature are Rolando 1 & 2, Worms, Topple 2 and many more.
Feel free to add me to your Plus+ friends list: purplelime
Cocoto Kart Online
32 years ago
One of the first apps I bought in the App Store was Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D (iTunes link) and it provided hours of fun. I really enjoy driving games, but the fun karting ones not the serious souped-up sports car ones.
When I read a review of Cocoto Kart Online (iTunes/59p) at Touch Arcade yesterday, the words ‘online multi-player’ was the deal maker for me. At only 59p I felt I had nothing to lose. I played in single player mode and found it much more enjoyable than Krazy Kart Racing that I’d paid five times as much for recently.
Cocoto Kart Online really comes into it’s own in multi-player mode. To play against others, simply go to the games menu and select Play Multiplayer, then choose a character to represent you. Once you’re back in the menu, select Choose Table. This will show you various races, some in progress but some empty. You can join a race with others or create your own by pressing one of the empty available Race 0 Players cells as shown below…
And this is the message once you have entered yourself into a race…
I did this for the first time the evening and asked my good friend Tom to meet me in there. Less than a minute later Tom joined me and we were able to battle it out against eachother. This is the first time I have experienced online racing against a friend and it was terrific fun! I was delighted to be the victorious one in our first race against eachother, but of course I did let him win a couple after that 
For 59p, this game is an absolute bargain. What makes Cocoto Kart a winner for me is being able to race against people you know if you arrange a meet, rather than just random strangers you pick up in the race rooms! I hope Tom and I will be able to race against other friends if they decide to buy this game. If you have already bought Cocoto Kart then let me know your nickname and I’ll look out for you in the race table, or we can arrange a specific time to meet and do battle. I’ll be gentle, I promise.
My Cocoto Kart Online nickname is purplelime. See you there.
[rating:5/5]
Manage Multiple Gmail accounts with Notify
42 years ago
For a year or two I have been using Gmail’s Notifier app on my Mac to keep a check on new mail. It sat in my menu bar and would give me a Growl notification when new mail was awaiting me. Now I’ve found another menu bar app that does the same thing, but oh so nicer.
Notify is a beautiful free app that sits in your menu bar and auto-checks your mail accounts as often every 1 minute or up to 15 minutes. Notify also has Growl Integration and will handle up to four Gmail accounts, unlike many others out there.
This has completely replaced Google’s official Gmail notifier for me. Elegant and beautiful, Notify feels right at home on the Mac.
o2 and Twitter Team-Up
52 years ago
o2 UK have teamed up with Twitter so that come August 1st, every o2 customer will be able to turn on text notifications in Twitter to receive replies and direct messages absolutely free. Text updates to Twitter will be part of your normal text message bundle or the cost of a normal text. You can read more on this new partnership, here.
That’s great news. I don’t think I will be taking advantage of it as I receive @reply and DM notification to my iPhone through Tweetie’s Prowl/Growl integration currently and have also purchased Boxcar – Twitter Push Notifications over the weekend to give that a go.
Will you be enabling the free notifications come August 1st?
WWWish List
5With the WWDC 09 Apple event tomorrow, I am getting increasingly excited about what we will be seeing. I don’t follow the rumour sites intensively thesedays as I would rather like a surprise, although to be fair it does seem like the iPhone will be getting all of the attention. More about that in a moment.
My laptop needs have always been fairly low. My main machine is a 20in iMac which I use 95% of the time. I also have a 15in PowerBook G4 that is perfect for using in the garden, on the sofa or in bed. However, the 1hr 30min to 2hrs that the battery charge used to last me for is declining rapidly, meaning I’m lucky to squeeze half an hour out of it. Unless I want to trail the power supply around the house with me then it’s not really practical anymore and I feel will soon be redundant.
So, my thoughts turn to netbooks. A perfect alternative to my aging PowerBook. I know there are small machines out there which are capable of running OS X – the Hackintosh, but I want something legit. An Apple computer running OS X. I’m a stickler for the genuine article.
My needs, like with most people in the netbook market, are really quite basic and leisurely. The ability to check my e-mail in Apple Mail, surf the web in Safari, chat with iChat and mess around in Photo Booth with an integrated iSight (this for the younger family members, obviously!!). A small 10-incher which is light and portable would be perfect. I am not particularly bothered about touchscreen as that would just send the price up.
As for the price range, I think for a netbook I’d be more than happy to pay anything up to £500. When we’re talking basic and leisurely needs I think it needs to be aggressively priced otherwise you’ll have people thinking they may aswell just plump up a bit more cash and go for the MacBook. £449 would be a great price, I think.
Since there have been no rumours, to my knowledge, of an Apple Netbook imminent then I doubt we’ll see anything of the sort tomorrow. All the news seem to point towards the new iPhone and some of the rumours I have heard are pretty exciting, although how much of those will materialize remains to be seen. I think a front facing camera for video iChat would be very well received. I don’t so much do video chats, but I would love to see an iPhone Photo Booth app if we do get the front facing camera…again for the young family members to play with that I alluded to before Ahem.
So, let’s see what tomorrow brings. Aside from what I mentioned above, I would also love to see the unveiling of Steve Jobs back on stage as the ‘one more thing’, but that’s just a personal request that will unlikely be fulfulled!
What are you hoping for tomorrow?
Sold in 300 seconds
73 years ago
Yesterday Tweetie for Mac was released. It was the application many of us Twitterers-on-a-Mac fanatics have been ancitipating following the sneak-peek video posted on their site a few days ago. It didn’t disappoint and within 5 minutes of downloading and testing, I had purchased it for $14.95.
My requirements for a desktop Twitter client have always been pretty simple: the ability to quickly see @ replies and Direct Messages and search the public timeline within the app, the way one can in Tweetie for iPhone. I regularly miss @ replies in Twitterrific unless I scroll through the list of tweets. With Tweetie I’ll never miss an @ again thanks to the blue indicator shown in the left hand menu bar of the client window.
Of course, Tweetie for Mac comes with many more features. Things I never thought I’d need but of course now that I have them I’m wondering how I managed without them, such as the viewing of images without having to crank up Safari or leave the app itself, view my contacts credentials and see whether they are following me back, all by simply double clicking their icon…
I can even stop following that person within Tweetie, not that I’d ever want to stop following the lovely @chrisdejabet, mind you
There’s not much about Tweetie for Mac that needs improvement, in my eyes, apart from a refresh button without having to go to the menu bar > Twitter > Refresh. I’d also like to see what the current refresh rate is. I’m thinking 3 minutes but it’s a bit hard to tell and there’s no way of changing the default.
Tweetie for Mac is $14.95 for a 2 week introductory period, until May 4th. After that you’ll pay $19.95. You can, of course, download and use the app completely free, as long as you don’t mind ads. The great thing about purchasing Tweetie is the license which allows you to use the app for all your Twitter accounts on as many computers as you (personally) own. How awesome is that?
You can view all of the features on the Tweetie for Mac site. If you have any questions about the app before you buy then feel free to drop me a line in the comments section.
Tweetie for Mac
7I am very excited to hear that Tweetie, the best twitter client for the iPhone bar none, is coming to a Mac desktop near you. I have struggled to find a desktop client that I feel truly comfortable with other than Twitterrific. I can’t abide TweetDeck, Twhirl, EventBox or the other twitter clients which also incorporate feeds from Flickr/Facebook/RSS. Twitterrific is a very barebones app compared to the other clients around, but I do like the Mac only exclusivity and the fact that it isn’t a horrid AIR app.
I am hopeful that I can finally banish Twitterrific to the archives when Tweetie for Mac hits the tubes and I expect it will be every bit as elegant as the iPhone app.
Terminal Tip: Twitterrific
03 years ago
I love Twitter chatter, but sometimes there can be just too much noise, especially if there is an event being talked about heavily and people are using those annoying hashtags before the #word. If you couldn’t care less about hearing the chatter about these events, then you’ll be looking for a way of filtering them out – or considering closing your Twitter desktop client until the event is over!
My friend Nik posted a godsend last night, especially for the desktop Twitterrific users out there. It’s just one simple line to pop into Terminal (Applications > Terminal) to filter out certain tweets and hit enter. This is the line I’m using…
defaults write com.iconfactory.Twitterrific tweetTextFilter -string "(please RT|RT please|Facebook|Austin|[sS][xX][sS][wW]|#[sS][xX][sS][wW])"
From Nik’s blog;
The one above is one that I’m using on the desktop (apart from the SXSW mentions) and I’ve used it previously to hide annoying Twitter competitions and the like. To filter out tweets with other terms, simply manipulate the expression in brackets to your needs. You can enter URLs, hashtags and the like to you needs, but be sure to remember that for now, the terminal command will overwrite the existing expression instead of adding things to it so you’ll need to enter the entire thing once again. I remain hopeful that the Icon Factory will add a UI for this functionality (even if it’s just a basic ‘exclude’ list). There’s plenty more options to tinker with via the Terminal if you read the Twitterrific 3.2 Read Me included with the Twitterrific download.
I have a feeling that I will be updating terminal quite a bit. I considered filtering the hashtag altogether, but then that would probably make Twitterrific too quiet! Now, if only Tweetie had a built in filter…
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