In March I bought an Aiptek AHD200 720p High Definition Camcorder from QVCUK for less than £110. It’s an excellent quality camcorder that feels like it should be twice the price. But now there’s an even higher spec Aiptek for £175 at QVCUK.com which will be available only up until 12 midnight tonight (Sunday 22nd) on 3 easy payments of £58.40. It’s the Aiptek AHD Z500 1080p HD camcorder.

Looks like the big brother to my AHD200 has finally arrived and as you can see in this review here the recommended price for this model is £250, so it looks like QVC have a fabulous deal on today.

A couple of weeks ago I found a very comprehensive web tracking and analysis web application called Woopra. After a quick look through it’s feature section I signed up for a free (in beta) account then added my website details in the members section. It took around 5 days for my site to be approved then I was able to choose from putting a few lines of code on the site or installing a plugin for Wordpress. Incidentally, in order to add a website, you need to have direct access to the server in order to install the Woopra tracking JavaScript.

Once I’d installed and activated the Wordpress plugin I then downloaded the Woopra desktop client for Mac (must be a 64-bit Mac to work). There were a few niggling problems with that as it repeatedly told me I needed the latest Java 1.6, which I already had. A quick look through the Woopra support forums and I soon resolved the issue which I will outline here just incase anyone else experiences the same problem. Go to Applications > Utilities > Java > click on Java Preferences and ensure that Java SE 6 (64-bit) is at the top of the Java Application Runtime Settings list, as you can see in this screenshot. If it isn’t then simply click, hold and drag it to the top of the list. You should then be able to install the Mac desktop client without issue.

The desktop client is feature rich and packed with information about your site visitors with lots of tabs to flick through within the Analytics menu. It’s live tracking means it knows who is on your website the minute they hit it and you can view their details (IP, platform, browser, screen resolution, country, referrer etc…). I can easily see which keywords and queries have brought visitors to my site, how long they stay on the site and so much more. Sure, there are stats packages provided with my web hosting, but nothing beats live up to the minute information that is available as a desktop client. A ticker tape also runs along the bottom of the Woopra app window with up-to-the-minute details such as how many visits today, how many new visitors, how long they’ve spent on the site and so on. Woopra is easily the best web tracking app I’ve tried.

Yesterday Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G at the WWDC08 Keynote in San Francisco. For weeks there have been all kinds of rumours as to what would be announced during the event, but the more solid rumour was the new iPhone.

During the keynote which started at 6pm UK time, I was in an AIM/iChat with a few people from Twitter, including my favourite Apple Geeks. We decided to have a chatroom on the go as we suspected Twitter wouldn’t be able to cope with the extra traffic during that busy time as it’s been falling over for weeks without something as huge as the Stevenote bringing it to it’s knees. Most of us were also listening to the secret keynote audio stream through ustream.tv and getting deafened by the applause and whoops of delight, especially when the new $199 iPhone pricetag was announced! But, that was fun.

o2 were very quick to update their site with information about the iPhone 3G and how existing customers can get their hands on it come July 11th, with a list of the tariffs and prices. The other great news is the new iPhone will be available for business customers. This will please my other half as he is an o2 Business customer and late last year he held off upgrading his phone in the hope that come November/December he would be able to upgrade to the iPhone and slide across keeping his existing number. Sadly that wasn’t possible, and moving to the iPhone and changing his number isn’t an option. So, late December he begrudgingly upgraded his handset from an old and broken one and now won’t be eligible for an upgrade until Springtime next year, but I’m betting the iPhone will be his next phone.

The other exciting news, however, is o2 are going to offer Pay & Go customers the opportunity to get the iPhone without signing any lengthy contracts. I’m on a contract which I can leave at anytime as long as I give a month’s notice. I changed from my £14-99 a month contract last year to the £15 o2 SIMplicity contract which is just 1 month long, as long as I kept my existing handset. What I would like to do is buy the P&G iPhone and put my SIM into that. I have no idea whether that’s possible as there isn’t any details on the o2 website just yet, but I’ll most probably speak to someone soon at o2 about it to find out whether this is indeed a possibility. I really want the new iPhone and am fully prepared to pay up to £300 for the handset if Uncle Steve and o2 allow me to pop in my own SIM and keep going with my £15 a month tariff. My money is ready and waiting in the bank, just hope it gets to spend itself on the gadget of my choice I love o2, been a mobile phone customer for years aswell as an o2 Broadband customer since last November. I will love them even more if I can get in on the iPhone.

Then there’s something else I’ll be throwing my money at come July: MobileMe.

This replaces .Mac and current subscribers will be upgraded for free when the service launches mid-July…and what a fantastic service - well worth the £59 pricetag, in my opinion. Wherever you are, your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac (and/or PC) will always stay in sync via the “cloud”. You can watch the guided tour video here - well worth a look. I didn’t ever get tempted by the .Mac service, but MobileMe blows that out of the water.

This is how chaotic things get in the Fruit Bytes HQ some days.

Created with iStopMotion 2 which is very addictive and a lot of fun. This is the first time-lapse video I created a couple of days ago.

It seems like every week I’m discovering new social sites and signing up to them to give them a trial run as I’m always up for trying new things so I can give my opinion (yes, I’ve tried Facebore. Verdict: Zzzzzz) Yesterday it was the turn of Plurk which is a micro-blogging site where you give short 140 character updates.

The site design is nice - bright and fun looking, although I think the “share your emo-ness” is a bit lame and I did wonder if this was going to be aimed towards the 12-16y/misery-teenage-types. The timeline is a bit weird to keep on top of. When I log onto the site a little message comes up to say there’s XX updates…and I never catch up or read what’s been posted as there’s often a lot going on. If there was a Plurk desktop client for Mac then that may make life easier to keep on top of things. I’m not keen on the Karma rating - that’s not something that interests me at all and to be honest I can only see that encouraging people to post for the sake of posting, so they reach new levels and get more emoticons.

Anyway, I’ll be looking in on it every now and again to witness it’s growth - feel free to Plurk me.