Archive for July, 2008
Here, take my money
Jul 17th
That line is directed towards o2. I have £159 happily sitting in my bank account ready to rub itself all over a black 16GB iPhone 3G…only they are in such short supply and I’m not even able to upgrade online or pick one up from a store near me. I’m sure that sounds familiar to a lot of people.
I have been going back and forth over the idea of buying an iPhone for weeks and I even put my head down a little last week when the 3G was released, keen not to get carried away and buy something just because there was a lot of talk about it. I’m sometimes sensible like that, much to my annoyance! Now since the iPhone talk has died down a little I have had time to think more now that it’s here and yes, I want one. One of the reasons (there are many, haha) is just being able to take one device out with me, rather than a phone and iPod. Plus, my current phone (a horribly bulky o2 XDA Mini S) is a couple of years old now so I’d be considering an upgrade to a sexier handset soon anyway, so I may aswell bring that forward. I’m on a £15 per month o2 SIMplicity contract with a 1 month duration, so I’m ready to rock when they get their stock 
Since the June 9th announcement of the iPhone 3G I have saved quite a bit of money. Sometimes intentionally, but mostly because there’s nothing else that I really need or want, so it’s just been mounting up waiting for something special. I’d like Apple TV at some stage but to be honest that can wait as right now I’m having way too much fun playing with the apps bought through iTunes on my iPod touch to even think about watching television 
The frustrating downside to this newfound “want one” is the lack of them in o2 stores or the online store itself. They have limited stock of the 8GB’s at a couple of o2 stores near me, but I’d much rather hold out for the 16GB as I can really go to town with my music library, videos, apps and info without worrying about the space being eaten up – and since it’s just £60 more for twice the capacity then it’s a no-brainer for me.
So, hopefully in the next few weeks there will be some good stock levels of the 16GB building up at the o2 online store. Their website states that they are expecting considerably more stock in their retail stores including a limited amount of 16GB’s from Friday 25th July (two days after my 35th birthday *shush*) and soon after that they will be opening up their online upgrade shop for existing and new customers.
One thing I am wondering about is this: I have bought around 4 games from the App Store in iTunes and installed them on my iPod touch, so when I get an iPhone does this mean I can simply install them on there or will I have to buy them again?
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Loading ...I’m Pushy and Touchy
Jul 13th
After an agonising wait all day Friday, I was finally able to download the iPod touch 2.0 software update yesterday for £5-99 which enables me to download lovely shiny apps from the App Store in iTunes to my iPod touch, aswell as benefit from the MobileMe features.
Friday was a long and painful day as iTunes frequently informed me that the 2.0 software update was available, but as soon as I clicked on ‘learn more’ I’d get an error saying the iTunes store was unavailable. So, I went to bed in the hope that it would be fine by the morning, which it was. I have purchased three apps so far: Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart for £5-99, Super Monkey Ball which was also £5-99 and Air Hockey which was 59p. The latter is quite boring and not nearly as much fun as the air hockey tables at the amusement arcade, haha. Crash Bandicoot on the other hand is a lot of fun and the graphics are superb. I bought Super Monkey Ball on a whim but it is going to take some mastering as it’s very sensitive indeed, so I haven’t succeeded in getting very far with that.
I have downloaded just a few of the free apps so far including Twitterrific, Facebook, Exposure, iPint, NetNewsWire and Remote. I won’t link to these in iTunes as I know it’s a bit annoying to have all that pop up at you and they’re easy enough to find in the App Store. Twitterrific would be great if it didn’t repeatedly ask me if I wanted to share my location. By repeatedly I mean every single time I access the app and sometimes even if I’ve been on it for a minute or two. I’d like to see an option in preferences to disable that rather than me having to switch off Location entirely in the device Settings which I have unfortunately had to do for the time being so that this pop-up doesn’t annoy the hell out of me.
With all the fun of looking through the App Store and playing Crash Bandicoot, I haven’t played too much with the ‘push’ services in MobileMe on my iPod touch yet although I do know this updates marvellously and instantly having put a date into my Calendar which showed up on my other devices like that *clicks fingers*. MobileMe is working fine now having made the long the transition from .Mac on Wednesday night, which took a lot longer than anticipated.
So, after a rocky few days I’m glad that everything has shaped up okay and everything I wanted to get my hands on is now in my hands. Sadly the same can’t be said by many people who wanted to buy the new iPhone 3G on Friday due to o2 and the Carphone Warehouse having ridiculously low stock levels which couldn’t meet the demand. You’d think Apple+o2+CPW would have guessed that much, wouldn’t you? But, I was watching TWiT live with Leo Laporte on Friday afternoon (which was so fun + first time I’ve watched Leo) who was covering the simultaneous launch across the world and it seems the long delays and short supplies were in full effect across the pond aswell. If you missed SKY News report on the UK iPhone launch on Friday then fear not, I uploaded it here…
Am I the only one who thinks that (forced) pillow fight was a little bit lame? No wonder the guy behind looked like he was thinking “Yeah yeah, just gimme my iPhone already!”.
But back to the apps for a moment: anybody got any game suggestions, especially for driving games which I seem particularly good at? I would love to see a Sega ‘Super Hang On’ app because that was my most favourite game on the Sega MegaDrive – that would take me to retro heaven!
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Keep it simple
Jul 4th
A couple of weeks ago I saw a segment on our regional news programme, BBC Look North, about how the future new Children’s Hospital within Newcastle’s RVI was looking for a new name and wanted the people of the North East to vote for it. There were three choices: The Great North Children’s Hospital, The Greenhouse Children’s Hospital and Northern Lights Children’s Hospital. We were able to do this by logging on and voting here, aswell as view the logos and hear a pitch by three North East celebrities on why we should vote for the name they have stood by.
I didn’t need to listen to any of the pitches, the choice was easy: The Great North Children’s Hospital. Seeing the logo confirmed it for me…
That name and logo just says everything that a name and logo should say. It’s simple: Newcastle upon Tyne is the Great North, obviously, but most of all I think it will appeal to kids as it’s got a fun element to it with the rainbow of colours and the cute eyes over/within some of the lettering. The voting was pretty close all along with The Great North pretty much head to head with Northern Lights. The Greenhouse was only ever stuck on 2%, bless it, and although not a fan of the name at all I can see why that was put out there as the hospital is going to be green and round.
The winner was announced this evening at 6.30pm – The Great North Children’s Hospital Well done to my fellow Geordie’s for having good taste 
I love seeing simple logos like this that don’t need any further explanation…unlike London 2012. If only the British public were given a chance to vote on that….
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Jul 2nd
If you are a Twitter user then you’re probably frustrated with the service thesedays and fed up with seeing the Fail Whale page that tells you that there’s just “too many tweets”. The API requests has also been lowered from the standard 70 per hour to just 20 which means if you’re using a desktop Twitter client like Twitterrific then you are buggered unless you lower the auto refresh from every 3 minutes to every 15 minutes to avoid the dreaded yellow triangle.
The official Twitter Status page often seems a bit casual as if they are shrugging and saying “So the site is down again, so what?”. Nothing much seems to change – goes from running fine then oops, everything has gone pear shaped again. Personally I prefer the Fake Twitter Status. It’s given me a good laugh this afternoon, especially this more recent one at the time of writing…
You’re totally going to laugh about this one. Somebody tripped over the power cable in our new offices and through some kind of “Butterfly Effect” kind of thing, the entire website went down. Go figure.
I’m looking forward to the day when the official Twitter status page is as open and as frank as the fake one!
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