Category: gadgets

big gadgets, little gadgets, all things electrical

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broken gear End User gadgets H/W phones

SD card unexpectedly removed SGS4

It’s not looking good. Just had notification on Samsung Galaxy S4 that “SD card unexpectedly removed”. This is the same message I was getting before the last SD card was wiped.

If we recall, the SGS4 was launched on 26th April 2013.  This means that my SGS4 is less than 1 year old1 and it looks a if it is about to destroy a second SD card. Notwithstanding the fact that the phone is less than a year old and it is already my second SGS4. My first had a faulty USB socket.

Frankly this is totally unacceptable. These are very expensive devices. The reliability is atrocious. I am going to take this up with Samsung as a point of principle. Stay tuned…

1 in fact I got it on 13th May 2013.

Categories
End User gadgets phones storage backup & dr

Ooo my what a big SD card you’ve got sir – is that 128GB bulging out of your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

list of micro sd card sizesJust been to PC World to buy a new 32Gig SD card. As you know my old one was jiggered by my camera/phone/SGS4/intergalactic-slow-software-communicator (if not catch up with the story here and here)

Permit me to be flabbergasted but these things now come with up to 128GB of storage! FGHJOweroijhlkjhlklnnnggg1. Now I don’t think I need 128GB. I’ve only got about 50GB on my Drive athough that doesn’t include music and photos.

This is the point when someone usually chips in and says “that’s more storage than ever existed on the whole planet before 1983” or “that’s more storage than they had on board all the space shuttles and all the Apollo missions ever including Apollo 13!”

I think at this stage that storage tech would appear to be outpacing the media tech destined for storage and also the battery technology destined to power the mobile media players (ie c/p/S/i above). Mind you it is a fair bet, knowing the people I know that someone will come back and tell me that he has to carry several 128GB SD cards around in case some of his main storage runs out (Tom Bird? 🙂 ).

I bought a 32GB job for about £19. It’ll do me for now.

PS when will they be quoting how many UHD videos a card will store. I spoke to a guy in PC World who told me they weren’t selling many 4K TVs.

PPS I know some smart person will also tell me I could have bought the 32GB card for 25 pence online but I didn’t want to wait ok? 🙂

1 Sound of me being flabbergasted
2 Applicants for membership of the extreme abbreviators club should leave a comment. We meet evry mnth in gd pb cld rhdtfpt in htbrftp.

Categories
Engineer gadgets obsolescence

The ghosts of computing past

I have a large plastic box with a lid (you know the type you can buy from the local DIY ‘shed’ or independent hardware store) filled with various cables, adapters, a backup ADSL router, an old US Robotics dial up modem that connects via good ol’ RS-232, and — most interestingly of all, I think — two Iomega zip drives (a 100 MB drive that connects via parallel, and a 750 MB USB drive).

Along with the goodies mentioned, I also have an opened box of 100 MB disks and an unopened still-in-shrink-wrap box of 750 MB disks. At the time I bought these disks USB flash sticks weren’t so prevalent and neither was broadband. I bought them as a backup solution for the Pentium 166 PC I had at the time but never really got round to setting up a backup procedure. And y the time I retired that machine I had USB sticks bigger than its hard drive (a whopping 2.1 GB) so data transfer was no problem.

So I feel I am holding an important bit of computing history in my hands, but I am also wondering what is best to do with the Iomega zip drives considering that the company is apparently no more and that these days the drives only appear on eBay.

All suggestions welcome, and I’ll get the camera out tomorrow and add a picture.

Categories
Business gadgets

I have the power….. (now anyway!)

I’m a professional nomad.

I neither work from home, nor from a specific office. I live from my rucksack – in fact, my Swiss Gear laptop job, thanks to the slimness of my laptop, is sufficient for me to travel for 4 days without anything else. OK, so the shirts get a little creased, but no more so than on the daily commute, and before anyone asks, there’s always daily clean underwear and shirts.

It’s not uncommon for me to go 12 hours in London between umpteen locations for meetings and never touch a desk. This poses a problem; modern electronic equipment, such as the branch of Dixons in my rucksack (two phones, iPad, laptop and a MiFi) seems to have gone full circle with battery life. The first Motorola mobile phones lasted for just a few minutes…… then Nokia in the late 90s appeared to have produced a hydrogen fuel cell by accident as the 6110 and its ilk would last for what seemed like years, even playing Snake constantly. And now, I am lucky to get 2-3 hours full use out of the Apple equipment and maybe 4 out of the laptop with the extended life battery.

If Shakespeare wrote Richard III today, I am sure the famous line would be “A socket, a socket, my Kingdom for a socket!”.

I know you can eek out more life by using more Wifi over 3G/4G, or disabling 3G/4G and relying on 2G/Edge and disabling push email/notifications and lowering screen brightness, clearing background apps and whatnot. That essentially, with each step, reduces the smartphone more and more back towards its Nokia 6110 ancestor and, for the professional nomad, makes life more and more difficult.

I’ve long known about portable battery backs, things to give a quick boost in charge to a phone; brilliant if you’re broken down at 3am on the side of the road, but an extra 20% wouldn’t cut it, not in the slightest. I then discovered there are packs out there that (in technical lingo 14000 miliamp Hours in capacity) can charge the devices that demands 10W/2A outlets, like the new iPads. Not only that, some can charge another device at the same time, albeit at the lower rated output used by older devices. In layman terms, 14,000 mAh is about 7 full iPhone 5 charges, or just short of one full iPad 4 charge.

This was a godsend of a revelation; not only could I do a full 12 hours out and about without a socket, I could do another day too. Best of all though, it gets over the fact that almost every Premier Inn in the country doesn’t have a socket by the bed, which is infuriating for the average smartphone user.

It also has an unintended side effect. Despite the model I chose being brickish and garish white, it attracts attention. On more than one occasion pretty ladies have inquired as to what it is at the bar; so it seems I have somehow lucked upon the modern day equivalent of a Gucci filofax!

Google+

More good reads:

Disappointing news re mobile charger power consumption.

Categories
End User gadgets

Google Chromecast available in the UK this week.

Google ChromecastNoticed a piece on the Guardian talking about Google Chromecast becoming available in the UK from Wednesday. Interestingly this review of Chromecast has had 12,578 views since it was written in October last year. Also did a second review a short while later.

I occasionally use the Chromecast to watch stuff on YouTube when there is nothing I fancy watching on “normal” TV.

Categories
Business gadgets voip voip hardware

Android DECT VoIP phone from Gigaset and the all new R630 waterproof handset

gigaset android dect phone

Gigaset android

Android DECT VoIP phone by Gigaset is impressive piece of kit

Probably spent more time on the Gigaset stand than any other. Party because I kept bumping into people I know there and partly because they had a couple of great products being demo’d.

The first video is a demo of an Android DECT VoIP phone. It’s basically a tablet mounted on hardware that turns it into an useable telephony device with a DECT handset on the side. There is a wired version available.

gigaset_android_wall_mountThe phone costs £500 but you have to consider this in relation to the cost of a high end business phone together with the functionality on offer.

Continue reading “Android DECT VoIP phone from Gigaset and the all new R630 waterproof handset”
Categories
End User gadgets

Book royalties starting to flood in

In other news royalties from book sales have started to flood in. You may recall that last year I published a book – “The Abandoned Sandy Shoe and Other Chinks in the Curtains of Life“. The first print run sold out in a shot and now online sales have started to kick in.

This morning I was informed by my bank that a total of £11.22 had been credited to my account. This is thrilling news because it it brings forward the break even date but a fairly significant percentage. 1% of infinity is a long time.

The power of the world wide web and ecommerce eh? I don’t have a breakdown of where the sales come from. I’m sure it wasn’t my mum because I gave her a free copy – as you do. Made my sisters pay though. Business is business.

Thanks to everyone for your support  and if you know a friend who reads poetry send them my way.

More get rich quick online links stuff here.

Categories
broken gear Engineer gadgets

External USB sound card to replace broken laptop card

usb_sound_cardPicked up this cracking little USB sound card off eBay for less than two quid, including postage and packaging. It’s for my old Dell laptop. I knocked it off the arm of the settee a year or so back. It fell on the floor and rammed the headphone socket right inside the machine. Ah well.

I’ve lived without sound since then but whilst I rarely use the Dell any it has become Mrs Davies’ machine since hers played up and it seems reasonable for her to have sound, especially for the price.

I’ve only tested it on some old vid on YouTube and it did sound tinny but that might well have been down to my choice of content rather than the actual sound quality. For two quid who is going to complain anyway.

That’s all. Two quid!!?? I’m going to plug in a set of speakers for her so that she can listen to her favourite radio programmes.

Tbh she rarely uses a laptop anymore, It’s all iPad. I’d tell you what make the USB thing is but I can’t tell from the packaging. It looks pretty generic. Made in China, fair play.

Categories
Business ecommerce gadgets

Skimlinks – moneymaking machine #wonga #moolah #lolly

skimlinks revenuesA few weeks ago  as a bit of an experiment I signed up with Skimlinks. Skimlinks is a means of making money via affiliate marketing on your website. Their plug in scans your site for words that they can associate with their affiliated merchants (Amazon etc) and they insert a link to a relevant product sales page on that site. I have it set on a fairly low level of intrusion as a) it was only an experiment and b) I didn’t want to annoy people with too much in the face advertising. Google can also take a dim view on this sort of stuff if it is over the top.

At the time it was before I had announced my plans to leave my previous employer and start anew. One or two of you did actually notice and made comments on Twitter. Nothing bad, Just “interesting, let us know how you get on“.

Well I am excited to announce that since signing on (looks as if it was early November) I have made a grand total of £57.34.  In recognition of what is a huge rate of growth (zero to fifty seven quid = infinite rate of growth) I shall shortly be announcing the imminent flotation of this blog on the stock market.

It is worth taking a look at where this income has come from and at some of the stats so vibrantly driving the new economy.

I mentioned Amazon (etc). All the sales have in fact come through Amazon and the vast majority have been for the Google Chromecast for which I am making anything between £1.12 and £1.47 commission per sale achieved. For the unfamiliar amongst you a sale is recognised against my account by tracking the click through from trefor.net to the ultimate signing on the dotted line by the paying punter. I don’t get the money for around 60 days which are pretty generous terms in Amazon’s favour considering they will get the cash instantly because the customer will have paid by credit card.

skimlinks_sold_itemsAside from the Chromecast there’s a fairly long list of other items bought after clicking on a link. The mix is wonderful. Wonderful because you wonder how on earth they got to this blog if they were actually looking for certain items. Click on the photo on the right for a larger view. The wonderful list includes a Breville Technique Digital Steam Iron, 2400 Watt, BRASS ALLIANCE QUINTET FROM ST. PETERSBURG (presumably a musical CD – I’d expect a fairly substantial commission if I’d managed to arrange a gig for them),  Ramozz @ 5X Led Pcb Connector Cable For 5050 Led Rgb Strip and some MENS LONG COTTON SOCKS Comfy grip Size 6-11 Black 6pk (made 45 pence there – don’t laugh, it all adds up).

If you look at the statistics since the installation of Skimlinks the blog has had 62,605 visits and made £57.34 from 1,450 clicks – thats an average of 4 pence per click.

Ok so this isn’t going to pay for next summer’s holiday in Barbados, or even one in Skegness although I still have time before I need to book – will just have to accept that we might miss the January sales.

It is however interesting to see what kind of traffic you need to drive to the site in order to make money. If we assume that Barbados is going to cost ten grand – we will have to leave the kids behind, we have to be realistic about expectations – then my quick back of a google spreadsheet calc tells me we will need just under 11 million visitors between now and the end of May. This assumes Anne and I will be going at the start of the school holidays (wouldn’t want the headmaster to find out we had abandoned the kids for a couple of weeks) and recognising that it is going to take 2 months to get the cash off Skimlinks.

Half the battle in business is getting your objective setting right and making them realistically achievable. Also you do have to be sensible about these expectations. Clearly the blog isn’t going to go from the current visitor levels to around 2 – 2 1/2 million a month just like that. We must expect a ramp up. So in order to hit an average of around 2.5 million visitors a month over the next 5 months or so we probably need to be hitting a run rate of 4 1/2 million visits a month by the end of May. Ish.

There we go then.

Now this is all just a bit of fun but at the end of the day trefor.net is going to make money so what learnings can really be taken out of the Skimlinks numbers.

Well for one the blog is getting a lot of visits to the Chromecast review – 10,754 in the time period being covered here. This is almost certainly because we were one of the first to carry a review of the Chromecast in the UK – it was only available via import at the time. This has been noticeable over the years. Before FTTC (fibre broadband) was available I wrote some technical posts on it and for a long time, until the consumer ISP advertising machines got into gear, the blog ranked very highly for FTTC.

Also a search for Chromecast on this site brings up 7 results. I’d be surprised if was really that low but in any case there must clearly from Google’s perspective be some content regarding Chromecast worth ranking.

Once we are properly up and running trefor.net is going to specialise in certain aspects of the technology market. It isn’t hard to guess what the focus is going to be. It’s the kind of stuff that has been covered over the years – connectivity, hosting, mobile and so on.

The key is in generating content that will elevate the site up the rankings for specific subjects. For example a high end broadband bundle can yield up to £140 in commission for a sale achieved through an affiliate marketing click through. A few of those in a month and you can justifiably start applying for the passport and cancel the caravan booking in Skeggy.

It’s also important to understand who the blog readership is because getting the content right will also not only generate affiliate click through sales but also attract specialist advertising.

Anyway that’s enough for now. Gotta nip out for some suntan lotion – Poundland, January sales.

trefor.net is open up for guest posts so if you have anything you want to say in the technology area drop me a line and can chat about setting you up with an account.

Ciao

PS Only £7 of the Skimlinks money is so far available for collection because of the 60 days rule. I haven’t looked to see if it is there. I don’t get out of bed for less than a tenner.

Categories
End User gadgets

Chromecast footnote

I have to say that having bought the Chromecast just 11 or so days ago it is now in regular use in our house and I’ve watched more YouTube in the intervening time than in the previous year. Fwiw I particularly been watching old episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour. Timeless classics though clearly, from the quality, produced for much smaller screens than the 42″ job in our TV room.

Terry Hughes’ first review of the 25th October has replace the “how to bypass Virgin Media filters” as the most popular post on a daily basis.

What next gadgetwise?

Categories
End User gadgets media Weekend

Sony 4KUltra HD TV KD-55X9005A and XBox1 Console sales

Sony_4k_UltraHD_TV_KD-55X9005A4k_Ultra_HD_TVContinuing with the weekend posts I swung by PC World and Currys. Looking for a speaker system to add a bit of richness of experience to the Chromecast we installed last week. PC World hardly has anything – they are moving back to their computing roots.

Currys is where it is at for thispricing for Sony 4K Ultra HD KD55X9005 kind of stuff. I was unnaturally thrilled to come across this Sony 4K Ultra HD TV (the good old KD-55X9005A). A snip at £3,299. OK it is a nice TV. The picture quality was great. However £3,299 puts it in the more money than sense bracket. Since when has that been a problem for the multi-millionaire looking to impress the bloke in the next mansion.

I imagine that the promo video it was playing on the loop was one of the few bits of content you could get for it. Apparently you get 8 “free” Blu-ray discs to watch when you buy the TV.  I managed to find 10 movies available in 4K format on one site and 11 on another – all Blu-ray. I’m sure there will be more.

It is early days for 4k TVs. Of course prices will come down. However I may be wrong but I can’t imagine that Currys will sell many this Christmas. If you are going to blow the dough you might as well buy the Bose sound bar for three hundred quid. Great offer.

xbox1 console sold outThe XBox1 console on the other hand is a different kettle of anchovies. If you ain’t planned ahead on this one you’re not going to be taking it home from the Lincoln Currys store, nosireebob.

Currys look as if they were caught by surprise with the rush because they have had to scribble a quick sign guaranteed to disappoint the eager gamer looking to upgrade his or her experience for the festive season.

Can’t understand why you’d want it meself but I don’t think I’m representative.

I leave you with a video taken of the TVs in Currys Lincoln. I am easily impressed and thought that the splendid array of colour was very nice.

Ciao beb.

Categories
End User gadgets virtualisation

Update on Chromecast story – chrome literally being cast

Chromecast is now working for my browser. Yesterday I mentioned that I’d found the icon for using Chromecast from my chrome browser but hadn’t had time to test it. I’m working from home today so I’m sat in the TV room having a play testing.chromecast in browser

The pic shows my Google screen on both the Chromebook and the TV – it’s a Doctor Who special Google doodle if you’re interested.

Interesting thing is that I can be in one window on the Chromebook whilst another window shows on the TV.

Also interesting is the fact that the cursor that appears on the Chromebook doesn’t appear on the TV and there is understandably a lag between when I type and when it appears on the box. This isn’t a big deal. It’s just interesting (I think I may have mentioned).

The whole experiment with the Google environment does point towards the need for good quality high speed connectivity to make it all work. The photo in this post was taken with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and uploaded to Drive. I used online photo editing service pixlr.com to edit the photo fetched from Drive, subsequently saved to a specific blog images file back in Drive and then uploded to WordPress on my server at Timico (running VMware instance fwiw).

There was a little delay with each process step but not too bad – certainly bearable.

Ciao.

Categories
Apps End User gadgets media

Chromecast – a second review

chromecast setupHaving read Terry Hughes’ Chromecast review I eventually got round to rushing out (metaphorically) and buying one from Amazon. It was forty two quid or so ($35 in the USA) but the cheaper ones involved longer shipping from the States or an additional postage charge so ripped up the budget and clicked.

The Chromecast is now installed and in use. I have some observations:

  1. You have to actually physically switch on the Chromecast dongle – it doesn’t just power up in the “on” state
  2. Installation from Chromebook didn’t work. I don’t know why. I moved on to do it from the S4.
  3. Installation from my Android was very simple. I guess this is it’s core use market/scenario (if that’s the right phrase)chromecast ready
  4. The dongle sits nicely and unobtrusively at the back of the TV and is powered by the USB port of the TV (didn’t realise I had one but now I do – phew – Anne would have complained if there was another dangling cable)
  5. It is very easy to use. In my case I just selected HDMI2 input and hey presto…
  6. It is also easy to “cast” content onto the TV from your phone – there is a small icon to select inside the app view.
  7. Now this is where it starts to get interesting. You can use Chromecast to stream movies, music, YouTube and Netflix. I only use YouTube to store the occasional vid for use in embedding in this blog – as in this post for example. I have no interest whatsoever in Netflix content – though many others must be as it takes up a significant chunk of ISP bandwidth. I have no movies to stream (and rarely watch them anyway – 90mins?!) and all my music is on my phone.
  8. chromecast musicThe latter point is definitely interesting. This is all about driving traffic into the cloud. In moving operations to Google Apps, Chromebook and cloud storage I began the process of shifting my music to Google Music (or whatever it’s called) but I stopped for some reason. I think it might have been because it involved entering my credit card details. Obviously Google wants to make it easy for me to buy more music.
  9. Currently any music I buy is in CD format and I then upload it to my phone. In my new cloudy ecosystem I may have to rethink this. Although I like having a CD in its case to touch and feel this might be because I’ve grown up with that experience. My kids think nothing of buying music from iTunes and never having a “hard copy”.
  10. Chromecast is likely to change my habits here. I had already been thinking of buying a surround sound system for the TV room and this may top the balance in its favour.
  11. I will also say that I was astonished at the quality of HD streaming on our TV. Although the TV is HD “ready” we have never had an input source to supply the HD – no Blueray, no Sky, no Virgin etc. The HD footage I took with my Samsung Galaxy S4 – this ride on Stephenson’s Rocket for example, was really good quality full screen 1080p on our 42″ box (flat panel).
  12. It was also very easy for multiple users to take advantage of the Chromecast. One of the kids came home from a music rehearsal and had downloaded the App and got it working in seconds. The kids are much bigger users of YouTube than I and he was streaming jazz videos in no time, (until his mum wanted to watch the news).

In conclusion – Chromecast – very easy to set up and use, obviously aimed at delivering content from the cloud, and could well move my music listening to streaming from that cloud. It’s all driving bandwidth use. Onwards and upwards.

I note Phil’s comment re waste of space. It does need to support more apps. I didn’t try seeing if I could surf using it but I suspect not – it would have been more in my face. Rewind – just noticed this icon in Chrome – not tested it but looks positive.

Update on casting from Chrome browser here.

chromecast in browser
Update 17th March Google Chromecast to become available in the UK – leading to lots of visitors to reviews on this site

Categories
End User gadgets

Google Chromecast has arrived at the Davies household in the UK

google chromecastI was so impressed with Terry Hughes’ review of the Google Chromecast that I decided I should get one meself. It arrived yesterday and I’ll be plugging it in later today.

I’m not much of a TV watcher but we’ll see how we get on. Let’s hope there are no cookery, DIY, self build etc programmes on to compete with the TV slot – we only have one TV which I know will seem strange to many of you.

Stay tuned 🙂

Categories
Apps chromebook End User gadgets

How to do a print screen using Chromebook

error message using east cost wifiThis is dual post really because I was going to write briefly about an error message that came up when using eastcoast.co.uk’s wifi. I couldn’t access Google drive because open DNS is blocking it! Rather than stick the text of the message in I thought I’d just do a screenshot but there was no obvious way of doing it.

A simple Google search came up with the goods and it is quite impressive. You do a ctr shift  []]] (the key above the number 6 – took me a while to find it) and the cursor changes to a + select tool. You can chose which bit of the screen to print – uber impressivo.

This might be old new s to some of you but as you know it sometimes takes me a while to catch up 🙂

Categories
Apps Cloud End User gadgets media

Google #Chromecast in the UK – review 5 days in #YouTube

Terry Hughes has just got himself a Google Chromecast dongle. In Google’s own words “With Chromecast, you can easily enjoy your favorite online entertainment on your HDTV—movies, TV shows, music, and more from Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, Google Play Movies and Music, and Chrome.” Must have been Google’s spiel because I wouldn’t spell favourite like that.

Anyway I spotted on Facebook that Terry had gotten (just pulling your leg) a Chromecast and he agreed to do a review for the blog. Not being much of a TV buff myself it’s the only way it was gonna happen (there I go again) in the near term.

Here is what Terry has to say on the device:

Google ChromecastI’ve used various media steaming devices for several years, Apple TV, Android MK802, etc, all with various results. Today, I am a UK owner of a Google Chromecast device, purchased from Amazon.com, as one of a limited number of purchasers who got it for £34 including shipping and handling. This a quick review, considering I have only owned it for 5 days.

This device is a $35 streaming dongle that plugs into your TV’s HDMI port. You can use it to stream online videos from YouTube, Netflix, and Chrome browser, and use your tablet, mobile phone, or computer, as a remote control. (PC or MAC)

If you use your phone to start it off (Samsung Galaxy S4 in my case) it doesn’t stream videos directly to your Chromecast dongle. Instead, it just tells the device which video it should stream from the cloud. That means that you can use your phone for something else, once the stream starts. I even rebooted my phone whilst streaming to test this.

Simple Setup

It really is as simple as plugging in the device into a spare HDMI socket, and connecting power via the supplied adaptor, or from a TV USB port if you have one.

Now Google doesn’t currently allow Chromecast in the UK Play store (October 2013), so I had to get it via other means to setup the initial way in which the Chromecast device know about your router details. I expect this to change quickly during the next Google Event at the end of the month.

Once plugged in, enter the password of your local Wi-Fi network, and you’re all set to run. The device has Wi-Fi built in and doesn’t need Wi-Fi on your TV.

Streaming YouTube

My main use for Chromecast right now is YouTube, and I have now streamed my fair share of videos from that site in the last few days. Overall, streaming worked really well, simply by clicking an icon that appears in the YouTube menu, and choosing where to stream too. Why Choose? Well, you could actually have multiple Chromecast devices in each room. I don’t as yet 😉 I have now successfully got this to work from the above phone, Nexus 7 Tablet, and Asus notebook, all with wireless connection to the same router.

What other Apps work?

In total (so far) I have managed to get working:

Google Play for movies and music

Netflix

Chrome browser (with extension) for desktop and video playback (mp4, m4v, avi and mpeg)

BBC Iplayer via Chrome browser

What do I think?

I love it! After using Miracast, long HDMI cables, small PC under the TV and more, it’s now my main device for streaming YouTube, Netflix and more in High definition, with good sound and obvious lip-sync for movies.

FOR

Streams Android to a big TV

Works with MAC, PC’s, Tablets

Easy to setup and transport

Cheapest media adapter

 

AGAINST

Early days, so limited apps (Pandora, Hulu Plus, and HBO Go are all expected to be next )

Mirroring limited to browser tab

Windows Phone not supported

Chrome is the only supported browser

Can’t store files directly on the device.

THE END

Thanks Terry – I owe you a beer

Footnote – this post is getting quite a bit of interest. Google Chromecast seems to be available to buy in the UK at Amazon.

If this review was useful you should also check out these other Chromecast reviews on this blog here and here.

Update 17th March 2014 – Google Chromecast to become available in the UK – leading to lots of visitors to reviews on this site.

Categories
Cloud End User gadgets hosting

Bluetooth speakers for your mobile & consumer personal clouds Western Digital

Bose bluetooth speaker

bose_bluetoothIt was chucking it down on Saturday so no golf and there was no rugby on so I wandered down to Currys on Tritton Road in Lincoln for a bit of a browse. I wasn’t after anything in particular but found myself in front of a portable Bose speaker system that allowed you to hook your phone up using bluetooth. So I did.

The sound quality was mind blowing and it was really easy to get set up. I got chatting with a sales assistant and mentioned the fact that at £249 the price was a bit rich. “You’re paying for the label” he said so I asked him whether there were some equally good but cheaper systems where I would be just paying for the quality. He pointed me vaguely at a Sonos system so I went along to look at that one.

Standing in front of the Sonos I did a bluetooth scan and took a guess as to which was the right kit to hook up with. Playing Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust nothing seemed to be happening. Then I realised the sound was coming through a different Sony product a few feet away. Someone was standing in front of it talking to the sales guy so I whipped up the volume:)

samsung bluetoothThe Sonos didn’t work using bluetooth – it’s WiFi apparently. What struck me, apart from the fact that it was so easy to set up and the quality of the sound was the number of devices in the shop with bluetooth connections. The screen shot shows loads of Samsung TVs. I’m a bit of a luddite when it comes to TVs & simlar but was astonished to see how thin they are these days.

Wandering round the shop I also noticed they were pushing your own “Personal Cloud” from Western Digital. This looks like a solid state hard drive with a WiFi connection – no resiliency. It doesn’t matter. It recognises the fact that people need to store data away from their pc or mobile device. I’m still more comfortable with having lots of resiliency in a backup though I guess two WD devices would do the job. The Smart Home app is working brilliantly btw. I made a donation.

The fact that Currys was using the term cloud is pretty significant. It supports the whole move of operations into the cloud. It wouldn’t surprise me to see sales of Chromebooks shooting up this Christmas. It’s the way ahead.

PS might ask Santa for the Bose speaker for Christmas.

 

Categories
Cloud End User gadgets

Uber cool NetApp Fan

Just watch this – uber cool USB fan, fair play to NetApp.

Brought it back in a goodie bag from a recent NetApp workshop and only just noticed over the weekend what happens when you switch it on when one of the kids pointed it out to me. Not much call for cooling in our house at this time of year.

Categories
Engineer gadgets

Home networked devices

I took a look at my router yesterday, as you do, and counted 14 devices connected over WiFi and 4 over Ethernet.

WiFi included 4PCs/laptops, printer, 4 android phones, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Ethernet included my laptop, a VoIP phone and a couple of homeplug devices that hook up the XBox.

That’s not SoHo. That’s a small business. We certainly have the overheads:)

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End User gadgets H/W

Who wants a Microsoft Surface?

Microsoft’s new Surface tablet is all over the news today. Google it – you don’t need a link from me. Apparently it is going to be available in October. That will be 2 1/2 years after the introduction of the iPad.

I can see it fitting into the corporate market – it will just be another laptop type device that will have all the standard security and device management features an IT manager craves. It will aslo fit nicely with Lync – the Microsoft Unified communications product. Also note that they haven’t delivered it yet.

I would imagine however that it won’t be that attractive in the consumer market. Sounds expensive and high end – the iPad already does that.  It needs to be cheap and it doesn’t sound cheap.

I would like more tablets scattered around the house but they need to be down at the £100 level.

I get the feeling that it could be quite a crunch time for Microsoft this Christmas. Will the ability to throw a seemingly endless pot of cash at it make the difference?

What do you think?

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gadgets online safety piracy Regs

How to bypass the Virgin Media web filter to access Pirate Bay

pirate bay virgin media web filter

How to bypass the Virgin Media web filter to access Pirate Bay

Before you start reading this post, and many thousands have, take a look at Broadbandrating – if you are looking to move ISP then the site will help you choose which one to go for.

Now the post:

Industry colleague Gary Hough left a comment on my blog post on Pirate Bay the other day. He has now written a guest post (tagged on to the end of this one) outlining how easy it is to bypass web filters to access “blocked” sites. I asked myself whether this was a responsible thing to publish. After all it flies in the face of the process of Law and Order and I am not in favour of promoting unlawful activity.

However the process described below is such common knowledge1 and there are so many sites out there providing proxy services used by millions of people that I feel that the story needs to be told in an environment/on a vehicle that promotes sensible discussion of the issue. We certainly need those in places of power to have the opportunity to read about and properly understand the problem.

The issue is not just Pirate Bay or any other site promoting the music downloads that have engendered such emotion within the Rights Holder industries. The issue is the fact that the same process can be used to bypass any web filter. This means that were we to enforce blocking of other types of website – pornography, for example, or sites promoting racial hatred or extreme political views the blocks would be ineffective.

Moreover in encouraging the move underground,

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Engineer gadgets

Raspberry Pi – the real McCoy

say hi to RaspberryPiI kinda like winding down on a Friday afternoon Raspberry Pi fresh out of the boxalthough this week has been so hectic it feels as if I need a couple of extra days to squeeze it all in.

Fridays are usually when I put up the trefor.net megaprize competition. It isn’t too late to have one this week but first I need to talk about Raspberry Pi, for yes, I have been playing with one.

The amazing thing about Raspberry Pi is that it just works out of the box. They have done a great job. The processor is a bit slower than you are used to with graphics but hey – it’s twenty five quid for petes sake.raspberry pi screenshot

The pics in this post say it all really.

The first is just the PCB. It’s almost like a mobile phone without the screen and battery. Then I have a few screens shots with the obligatory picture of the blog in it to show the browser in action.

Second screenshot zooms in to show the menu options and then I’ve shown the development environment in a window.raspberry pi dev environment You can be up and running straight away although you will need to learn some basic programming languages, which is the whole point of the device.

The last photo shows the desktop setup wit ha Raspberry Pi plugged in to an Ethernet cable. Obviously there is only one video card so only one of the screens are used.

It might almost be conceivable to use two processor cards to have two screens. I can certainly see Raspberry Pi being used in many applications around the home and office.Raspberry Pi desktop setup

Obviously the cables would have to be tidied up a bit for every day use and I expect Health and Safety would insist on a box for the processor card.

The video at the bottom of this post shows a screensaver in action. Thanks to Gareth Bryan for letting me have a play. I didn’t get in particularly early with my registration.

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Engineer gadgets

More RaspberryPi

Just noticed an email from RS Components had come in 23.30 on Saturday night acknowledging my registration to buy a RaspberryPi and that the boards, once they are in stock, will be allocated on a first come first served basis in order of when requests were received.

That puts me well down the list then because all the fuss surrounding the launch was on Wednesday and I registered on Friday sometime. The fact that the acknowledgement email came in over a day later surely suggests a massive backlog? 😉

Strikes me that it will be interesting to plot the progress of the kids’ coding skills once we get one in the house so watch this space.

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Engineer gadgets

Spot the odd one out – Pi, Apple Pie, @Raspberry_Pi

I get high on RaspberryPiMost people will not have heard about it before today when it hit the headlines. It is also hitting the shops – two of them. It is the way of the future in the here and now. It is affordable and will one day, in one form or another, inevitably permeate into every household on the planet. It is educational, sensational, it’s the RaspberryPi.

Most of you will know by now that the RaspberryPi is a low cost very low cost computer that has been developed to encourage kids to learn to write computer code. The level of interest in the device has been so great that the two outlets chosen to stock the device, Farnell and RS Components, have this morning seen their websites crash due to high levels of traffic 1. A botnet generated DDOS attack could not have done any better. In internet terms it’s the same as the huge round the block queues that unexplainably form outside Apple stores just before a new product launch.

I leave the minutiae of RaspberryPi  to

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Business gadgets

CES Las Vegas – the non report #CES

I’ve been keeping an eye on proceedings at the Consumer Electronics Show in ‘Vegas1 . So far it’s a bit disappointing really. I guess we are all used to a rapid pace of change and when it doesn’t keep accelerating we think something is amiss.

This year I suspect the change is going to come when the next generation of mobile handset technology comes out sometime later this year. Mobile is where it is at.

I want integration of the mobile with the house. Currently we have DECT phones scattered around the place – the kitchen, lounge and TV room all have chargers. Apart from my wife everyone has a smartphone in our house (granted the 11 yr old wants an upgrade from his Nokia N97 which, at some point soon I will see as not an unreasonable request). I see no reason why these handsets shouldn’t replace the DECT ones. Everyone already has their own number. The kids only use the house phone to avoid paying mobile charges. This should all be blended. It’s just about the physical transport medium. It is doable once the mobile networks play ball.

I also see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to

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End User gadgets

Typing can be bad for your health if you use a keyboard #Microsoft

Microsoft health warning on keyboardDoing my usual plugging in the laptop routine this morning I noticed a label attached to the Microsoft keyboard with a health warning.  It was one of those Alice In Wonderland type moments. Something like the time when Alice spotted a cup with a label saying “drink me”.

I’ve had the Microsoft keyboard a few months ago but only today noticed the label1 . This directed me to read a health warning under the keyboard and blow me down there it is as bold as you like on a 2″ by 3″ label (that’s 5cm x 7.5cm to European readers).

I take these warnings seriously and immediately gave myself a mental once over to make sure that I had no symptoms ofanother Microsoft keyboard health warning hand, arm, shoulder or neck discomfort that might be ascribed to a poor posture when typing at the Microsoft keyboard. To my horror I found I was suffering from all the problems warned of on the label.   These are however more likely caused by a lifetime of bodily neglect rather than the Microsoft keyboard itself.

Anyway there isn’t much point to this post other than it starts off another busy week.

All the best.

1  Editor’s  note –  I’m not sure there was anything to suggest that Alice herself had only just noticed the cup and that it had been there in front of her very eyes for months.

PS I am far more likely to have problems with what I type than how I type 🙂 I also wondered whether the twinge in my knee might also be down to using the keyboard but decided probably not.

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End User gadgets

testing testing can you understand me at the back?

Here for your delectation and delight are some experimental video shorts. I’m looking at ways of moving the blog content on and this is one of them.  These videos are approximately 60 seconds long, that being the attention span (max) of many people using the internet these days. This is being somewhat unfair as readers of trefor.net spend on average 90 seconds on the site with some days hitting 4 minutes.

The videos are unedited – single take recordings. I don’t want to spend hours making each video but I wouldn’t mind receiving some feedback on the content and the unstructured/unedited approach. More videos banged out quickly is better in my mind.

I used used a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 and also wouldn’t mind hearing what you think of the audio quality.

There are six of them and you don’t actually have to listen to them all though doing so does buy you brownie points and we all know what points mean 🙂 Following some useful feedback I have also put links in for the moment as well as the embed code.

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Business Cloud gadgets

PC Market Gartner slashes PC market forecast – my wife would agree

Research firm gartner has cut its PC Market forecast citing a move away from traditional computing towards tablets. I think we are not far off the tipping point. My 11 year old son’s laptop may well be the last PC we buy for the family.

My wife, whose PC is about 8 years old, keeps asking to borrow my iPad. She uses it primarily to look up recipes for family meals and sometimes has it propped up in the kitchen when she is cooking.

Her only other uses for a PC are email, banking and sites such as eBay where she is an avid participant. If the browser was reliable enough, which it isn’t on the iPad without support for flash, a tablet with keypad would be all she needed.

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Engineer gadgets

It pays to shop around – Dell Inspiron M501R

Dell Inspiron M501R Laptop

My youngest is getting kitted up for “big school” – the Lincoln equivalent of Harry Potter going to Hogwarts.

He will have to learn a whole new set of skills – the mind can only boggle at what. For example one of the kids told me the other week that everyone knows how to get around the school web content filter. Of course it is highly illegal to do so but…

I don’t really want to know what else they will learn, other than what I will hear at parents evening when I get to meet the teachers.

I have had a policy of equipping the kids appropriately for secondary education. They have all (4 of them) had mobile phones and PCs as an essential part of their kitbag, along with pencil case and PE kit.

When my oldest, now 19, went “up” we bought him a PC for £800. I don’t remember the spec although my wife still uses it, not without complaint. The heir is now onto his third computer – the last two having been laptops.

The next two got PCs as well, ie not laptops. However this time round I’ve been amazed at how cheap these things have become.  I bought a Dell Inspiron M501R Laptop (4GB RAM, 500GB HD, 15.6″ screen) for £319 from Tesco including a £50 discount voucher and 6 months interest free credit (and 758 clubcard points – I bought a bag too!).

There were suggestions on Twitter that I should just get him a tablet but tabs ain’t good enough for homework yet, for that is the purpose of the purchase.

It was also suggested that at the age of 11 he isn’t going to be particularly gentle with his machine but you know what? It isn’t going to be expensive to replace when the time comes and at least we can make him do his homework in view of a (partly) responsible parent.

PS Sorry if your thoughts are still on summer holidays and not school – you are right that this post is a bit early but if I’d left it until nearer the time I’d probably have forgotten all about it and the moment would have been lost.

PPS please no comments telling me I could have got twice the spec for half the price elsewhere. This would not be productive and I did shop around 🙂

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End User gadgets phones

26 tablets announced at CES last week 15 = Android

photo in the picture is of graffiti taken by Sue Davies

It’s mind boggling how many new tablets were announced last week at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show – 26 according to Pocket-Lint. What can we derive from this, other than the fact that everyone is convinced this is a market to invest in?

Competition is great and breeds choice. Just to pick a couple of metrics the prices ranged between $399 and $999 (thats probably £399 and £999 if are UK based – doesn’t sound right I know).  Also the screen sizes on offer were 4″, 5.5″,  7″,  8″, 9″, 10″ and 10.8″. Wow! If one of those doesn’t do for you I don’t know what to say! 🙂

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