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  1. Pingit

    February 16, 2012 by admin

    I’m no particular fan of Barclays bank, since they pissed me off in 1988 (long story), but I have to give them credit for their new smartphone app “Pingit”

    It allows a smartphone user to instantly send (ping) up to £300 to somebody else. It uses a smartphone app to send the money, but anybody (even non-Barclays customers) with a regular mobile phone can receive payments.

    Right now the sending service is for Barclays customers only, BUT they are rolling it out for ALL UK bank account holders in “early March” (which for those of you with no sense of todays date means within the next 4 weeks).

    So imagine, you need cash because you forgot your wallet (something I have done twice this week!) and so a friend lends you £10 so you can buy your lunch. You open up the app, and 30 seconds later you have given them the £10 back. Straight into their bank account. Nice one!

    This type of personal, inter-person money moving technology has been a long time coming, and it’s impressive that Barclays (of all the banks) seem to have got it sorted first.  I will certainly be giving it a go just as soon as “Early March” come around.

    Pingit

    Category computers, Tech | Tags: , , , | No Comments

  2. Child safety on the web

    February 7, 2012 by admin

    A very interesting article on child safety on the web. I did a presentation to parents of primary school kids a few years ago on internet safety, and it was a great success, but so much has changed now, with Facebook being regularly used by children under it’s minimum age of 13.  A link to the article in full is at the bottom, but I would like to quote one thing from it. This made me laugh (how old did I feel!):

    “We’ve had [the interent] all our lives and we have just become so used to having iPods, iPads, laptops at our fingertips. It seems strange that in the olden days people had to go to libraries to find out information,” said Isabella, a Year 8 pupil at the school.

    The article in full

    Category computers, Tech | Tags: | No Comments

  3. UK Government stupidity

    January 13, 2012 by admin

    Does the UK have the most stupid government in the world?

    Below is a paragraph from on article by the guys at Raspberry Pi explaining why they have decided not to manufacture in the UK. Read it and shake your fists in anger and frustration at our government!

    I’d like to draw attention to one cost in particular that really created problems for us in Britain. Simply put, if we build the Raspberry Pi in Britain, we have to pay a lot more tax. If a British company imports components, it has to pay tax on those (and most components are not made in the UK). If, however, a completed device is made abroad and imported into the UK – with all of those components soldered onto it – it does not attract any import duty at all. This means that it’s really, really tax inefficient for an electronics company to do its manufacturing in Britain, and it’s one of the reasons that so much of our manufacturing goes overseas. Right now, the way things stand means that a company doing its manufacturing abroad, depriving the UK economy, gets a tax break. It’s an absolutely mad way for the Inland Revenue to be running things, and it’s an issue we’ve taken up with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

    Category computers, Tech | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Flatline for IE6 (finally)

    January 5, 2012 by admin

    Latest news from Redmond is that they are now very very close to killing off the worst (in my opinion) web browser known to man.
    Created during a time of “non-standard” thinking, it has been the pain in the arse browser for web developers ever since.

    Latest figures show that its now less than 1% of users in the USA, and only 7.7% in the world (china being more than half of that use).
    In my personal experience, the people still using IE6 work for dinosaur companies with tied down desktops that run ancient bespoke built IE6 optimised (read: crap web development) internal business applications. These companies should hang their heads in shame for the last 8 (at least) years of web development hell for all of us.

    Microsoft are so sure that it’s nearly dead, they even baked a cake to celebrate.

    Let’s just hope it’s not a fruit cake, and lasts for too long!

    Category computers, Tech | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Music video shot with iPhone 4s

    December 13, 2011 by admin

    This video was shot in the USA entirely with the standard video camera on an iPhone 4s. No special, fancy app…. just the regular camera function. They used tripods and Gorilla pods to stabilise the shots, and made sure they were in the right place, at the right time to get the right light.

    Post processing/Editing was done using Final Cut Pro.

    This really shows just how good the new iPhone camera is! I really should be using it more myself!

    Video link: Gillian Chase – iPhone 4s Music Video

    Category music, Tech | Tags: | No Comments

  6. BBC Micro Computer 30yrs old

    November 30, 2011 by admin

    The BBC micro Model B was the first computer to enter the Bingley house. Despite our requests, my dads wisdom over shadowed our youthful inexperience, and he got us the BBC, rather than the Sinclair.

    I continue to quietly thank him for that, as that BBC Micro introduced me to proper BASIC programming, and threw me into a world of code that I am still in today. At that time, I had no idea it would become my job, and provide for my kids, I was just fascinated by the loops and logic of basic coding.

    Yeah, I am (and always was) a bit of a computer/gadget geek.

    For those that remember the earliest days of British home computing, have a read of the following article and revel in the stories of old. Mixed in with the odd 1970′s wardrobe!

    Happy days!

    Full story here

    The BBC have also put up an article

    Category computers, Tech | Tags: | No Comments

  7. Wave Goodbye

    November 23, 2011 by admin

    Google has announced that it will be dumping “Google Wave”.

    In it’s Official Blog it announced the culling of 7 of its products that simply didn’t take off as they originally expected.

    Having been a person who tried and failed to make any sense of Wave when it first came out, I can quite understand its muted response from the world at large. On the few occasions I used it, I was left feeling underwhelmed and slightly confused. In a world in which Google usability reigns supreme, Wave was a thorn in it’s own side.

    The good news of all this, is that (apparently) this will free up resources to concentrate on the development of Google’s other fledgling services. (Read Google+)

    You have to hand it to them. When Google knows it was wrong, it admits it. Eventually.

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  8. Facebook users average 3.74 degrees of separation

    November 23, 2011 by admin

    Forget Kevin Bacon, forget “6 degrees”, in the world of Facebook its only 3.74 degrees. This means that a friend of your friend knows a friend of their friend.

    Ever wondered why/how you get those Facebook reccomendations…. well now you know.

    It’s a small Facebook world out there!

    More reading

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  9. Real Time Google Analytics

    November 21, 2011 by admin

    Having a close look at the new Beta version of “Real-Time” analytics data on my websites this morning. I have to say, that Google have surpassed themselves. The data is updated avery second, so you can see exactly how many people are on your site in real time, and what they are looking at.

    The Geographic map shows that America is firmly asleep right now! (09:54am GMT)

    Well done Google…. keep up the good work. Web developers love you!

     

    More reading

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  10. Tesco in-store Wi-Fi

    November 12, 2011 by admin

    Today I discovered that Tesco now offer free in-store Wi-Fi for their clubcard users. Just get your iPhone out and open up the browser, and you will be asked to log in with your clubcard number and your home postcode. Authentication takes seconds and you are up and running and able to check their competitors prices on goods in no time at all!

    I actually used it to get some recipe ingredients info today, and was fully expecting to have a painfully slow web browsing experience as usual on “Edge” at best signal.

    So well done Tesco for giving your loyal customers something for free that could actually be very useful indeed!

    Category Tech | Tags: , | No Comments

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