18/08/2008 by Gavin.

GottaBeMobile - Throw Away Technology : Tablet PC & Mobile PC News & Video Reviews, and Tablet PC Forums

A thought provoking post over at GBM!

Here’s my comment:

Good article Matthew.

I work in the Environmental sector and am acutely aware of how my love of gadgets (and cars!) can be at odds with my profession.

In Europe we have the ‘WEEE’ regs, http://www.netregs.gov.uk/netregs/275207/1631119/?version=1〈=_e,  which will hopefully go some way to reducing the amount of electronic waste that finds its way into the Environment, and I am a strong believer that it is manufacturers who must take more responsibility for the ultimate disposal of their products, be it TVs, computers or phones.  And that doesn’t mean farming off disposal to the cheapest bidder who ships it to a developing country to contaminate THEIR environment.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/recycling-of-electronic-waste

I was also reading an interesting article earlier about recyling of mobile phone screens in Japan http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/15/mobiles-recycled-palm-sized
So it’s not all necessarily about having enforced legislation, the market can develop workable solutions too.  There are also a number of ‘freecycle’ groups here in the UK where you can get rid of items to those who need it.  You’d maybe struggle to sell an old printer but someone is likely to take it for free.

Remember however, that all this tech will eventually have a real end of life.  Even by donating and giving stuff away, we’re only postponing by a few years the inevitable.  If you’ve an old 386 PC in the garage, nobody is going to take that off you!  Therefore it’s important that there are genuine, easily accessible disposal routes for this stuff.  Where I live our recycling center has an area for PCs and other electronic waste.  I’ve recently asked our local Council for information on where they then dispose of this waste under the UK freedom of information act and await a response.

Posted in Environment, Gadgets, General | 1 Comment »

15/08/2008 by Gavin.

Palm lets slip Treo Pro piccies | Register Hardware

Palm briefly leaked details of their upcoming Treo Pro handset on their website.  more details over on The Register.

Palm was once synonymous with personal organisors, with many people still referring to any such device as a ‘palm pilot’.  I can’t see this making many ripples, being as it is a fairly standard spec (wifi, BT, GPS, 320×480 display) handset with an unmodified Windows Mobile 6.1 rom.  I guess the Palm name may still carry some weight with people in business but apart from that there’s nothing to get excited about here.

Posted in Palm, Phones | No Comments »

14/08/2008 by Gavin.

Live Mesh : The potential of Live Mesh is limitless…

I’ve been using Microsoft’s Live Mesh for over 2 months now and I love it.  I have three PCs I use to work on.  My home desktop, my Toshiba M700 tablet PC, and my small and light Fujitsu P1610.  Previously to sync all my documents I used an SD card and Synctoy.

This meant remembering to run Synctoy and I was always paranoid of syncing an older file.  Live mesh means my documents are all kept in Sync ‘in the cloud’, my devices are always up to date without having to remember which machine has the  SD card.

Another great bonus is I can access documents from any Web Browser, and yes, that means document access from the iPhone and Windows Mobile.  Access to all your docs from anywhere, all backed up online.  Lovely!

Very excited watching Live Mesh develop further.

Posted in Cloud computing, Live | No Comments »

14/08/2008 by Gavin.

GottaBeMobile - Apple and AT&T Need To Come Clean on 3G Issues : Tablet PC & Mobile PC News & Video Reviews, and Tablet PC Forums

My response:
Have you got your iPhone 3G yet Warner? If so, given the reported issues will you still be getting one or holding off?

I certainly don’t regret mine, albeit I’ve held onto my N95 for certain trips/situations where I wouldn’t take the iPhone. 3G has been pretty good on it although I panicked yesterday when there was no data connection. I thought it was my upgrade to 2.01 the previous night but turns out it was the O2 data network down in Central Scotland.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

14/08/2008 by Gavin.

Fake MSNBC news alerts push spam - The INQUIRER

I’ve been getting a load of these, fortunately filtered into my junk email.  I can see these catching out the less tech savvy.  PITA!

Payload seems to be trojan injection via visiting the links.

Posted in Spam, email | No Comments »

13/08/2008 by Gavin.

Mobilecrunch  is reporting on the latest rumoured date for the new Android Mobile Operating System.

Now, take that with a healthy pinch of salt, but it got me thinking on where the mobile OS is going.

The major players in this market are Windows Mobile,  Apple, Symbian, Blackberry and now Google enters the fray with Android.  What could it possibly bring to the party that the others don’t already provide?

The iPhone UI is second to none, no question about it but it misses the flexibility of its competitors such as running tasks in the background (an instant messaging or GPS app for example), customisation and skinning is not really possible and misses out basics such as cut and paste.  Although not really an issue with the OS, more by design, the iPhone has a crippled bluetooth stack as well.

That being said, what could we expect from Android.  If I’m honest, I’d hope for the rich user experience of the iPhone, combined with the flexibility of Windows Mobile and Symbian.  Now that could be the killer sell, finger friendly operation without the locked door approach of the iPhone.

Posted in Palm, Blackberry, Android, S60, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Phones | No Comments »

11/08/2008 by Gavin.

Isaac Hayes - August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008

“We shouldn’t be mad at Chef for leaving us, we should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains”

Posted in General | No Comments »

11/08/2008 by Gavin.

I’ve been having a few problems with Firefox 3.0 on my Toshiba M700 running Vista.  Intermittent crashes of Firefox are well publicised, but I am seeing another issue, that of excessive CPU cycles.

Often, and it seems to occur after resuming from hibernation, Firefox will take up 70 to 80% of both cores of my processor.  I notice this as the CPU fan fires up blasting out hot air and my battery life falls through the floor.  I have to terminate Firefox via task manager.

I have a colleague who is seeing similar behaviour.  One to watch out for if you are relying on your battery seeing you through the day!  If I find a solution I’ll post it.

Posted in Mozilla, Browsers, Firefox | No Comments »

07/08/2008 by Gavin.

Well, it had to happen to some poor punter who wasn’t paying attention!  Link.

Posted in Apple, iPhone, Are you having a laugh? | No Comments »

07/08/2008 by Gavin.

Brando have released an unlock clip for the iPhone 3G.  This doesn’t ‘unlock’ the phone in the traditional sense as it is a solution which fools the phone into thinking a valid sim is installed.  I’ve ordered one and will be testing on my iPhone as soon as it arrives.

The clip should also work in other smartphones.

Posted in Apple, iPhone | No Comments »