Category Archives: Technology

Technology

Google launches calendar

Well, possibly not officially, but this link will let you login to Google Calendar, a reasonably sophisticated, quite slick Ajax-enabled web-based calendaring system (who’d have guessed). Here’s an interesting news bulletin covering the announcement.

Interesting that Google continues its rage against the MS machine. A few years ago, I couldn’t imagine depending on being online to use a service like this – POP email was necessary (IMAP was purposeless, web-based was tedious), and I relied (and continue to rely) on an Outlook Calendar. Now, though, I’m increasingly open to the possibility of reducing my reliance on MS based thick-client apps in favour of lighter online tools that don’t compromise the performance or reliability of my PC – which gets more unstable with each application I install, and as my email inbox creeps upwards of 700MB.

However: the calendaring function is definitely one where I think Google needs to think about MS integration. People at work regularly use Outlook invites to schedule meetings, and loads of third party software is designed to work with it. Google Calendar supports a one-off import (from a CSV file) of your Outlook Calendar, which is sub-optimal for ongoing, corporate, scheduling.

We’ll see… The app does seem to work well, but I sadly lack the time to bother with the novelty of duplicating my calendar just to see if it works better…

Technology

Sheila doesn’t like my offline blogging

She claims to have a manual version of Bloglines that alerts her to new posts in my little black book. Then she nicks the book and writes ‘monkey’ all over it. Which, I guess, is an offline version of posting comments. And then I hit her (gently, she’s my sister, easy now), which I suspect is the offline version of a trackback, or a deleted comment. Or posting a comment that says ‘you suck’ on her blog. Offline.

Okay, getting silly now…

Technology, Travel, Writing

L’il black book

At Waterloo I thought it might be nice to pick up a PDA with wireless capability so I could blog remotely. I looked and looked for a notebook that suited the requirements, but whether due to Dixons decision to rebrand as Currys Digital or some other circumstance of fate, there was a rather limited selection of electronic notebooks available.

So I got a lower model.

Ages ago (back when I was blogging with motime for cryin’ out loud), I wrote about ‘manual blogging’ – using archaic ‘writing’ technology to pen my thoughts on a convenient napkin of sorts. Now, I bring you manual blogging 2.0 — my very own little black notebook, in which, much to the frustration of my family, I have been writing down every joke I (or anyone else) has made, random observations about life, and occasionally just a list of what I ate for dinner in the hope that it will provide useful fodder for blog posts, and, in the main, for the upcoming novel…

We’ll see. It’s definitely fun — feel I’m capturing valuable imagination capital that might otherwise be lost. Like Jerry Seinfeld, however, there is the occasional scribble that doesn’t make sense to me the day after… For example, why did I write down ‘nun with soft-boiled egg’ on the first day here in Bruges?

Of course, now that we’ve piggy backed onto a wireless network in the hotel I can blog directly, but I like the little black book and it may come in handy in the future. At UKP2.75 it was a damn site cheaper than a WiFi enabled PDA, anyway :).

Technology

OMG I KILLED BLOGLINES!

Well, I think I did. All I did was upload my 111 feeds from Feedreader as an OPML file and then Bloglines crashed. The world over.

That’s some hefty power. Bwahahahahaha!

Update:

Hi, I’m the Bloglines Plumber. Bloglines is down for a little fixer upper. We will be back shortly. Bloglines will be all better when I’m done with it. Thanks, The Bloglines Plumber

Now, I can LOL.

Film, Personal, Technology

Slingshot (or: how David slayed Goliath)

2 Comments

My brother’s just launched the website of his film company, Slingshot Studios, an all-digital film production company. It’s a pretty ambitious project – making relatively low-budget films come to life through digital production and using innovative new technologies to make it all work effectively.

I’m really excited about where he’s going with this: its a great concept and I know he’s working with some very impressive people. And my brother’s always had a flair for identifying the things that make stories work, so is well suited to the task.

Toured his offices at Ealing Studios the other day – also very impressive. What can I say, I’m itching for a role as an extra (and possibly a credit as a writer, once I get my stories off the ground ;)).

Technology

Tracking patches

OK, so I’m slightly obsessive about making sure my PC is up to date. There used to be a great Cnet application called Catchup which scanned your PC for the software you had installed and checked for updates – and helped you download them via Cnet’s own download.com. Seemed a clever strategy – then they killed it. Anyone know why? And if there’s a similar service now? Some of my shareware and freeware is depressingly out of date.

That said – there are a couple of dangers with this model, I guess. Firstly, that Cnet could be collecting and transmitting all sorts of dodgy information about you (as MS no doubt does with its newfound ‘Microsoft Update’) – and second, that some of the updates could contain spyware (as the new version of of my fave video player, BSPlayer did :().

Still, I liked the convenience of it. My IBM laptop has a handy utility that does that for me, but the useless Dell desktop update utility just keeps telling me that ‘I could be vulnerable to the latest phishing threats.’ Not really a concern.

Culture, Technology

Google Talk updates

Google have added a bunch of features to their chat client, most noticeably the fact that you can now use an image avatar. Which is fine — I am digitally represented by a Superman-esque image which I think MS packaged in an earlier version of MSN messenger — but it may well run the risk of becoming bloatware, as ICQ did. I mean, if you’re going to add a feature – add the ability to have add multiple particpants to one chat, or conference voice calls – don’t add pointless cutesy crap.

But I guess the heaviest consumers of IM are teenagers, and they probably like that stuff. Any teenagers who read this blog that would care to comment?

Doubt it. The youth of today – apathetic as hell :P

Gaming, Technology

Xbox £360

I really want an Xbox 360. I mean, mostly because it’s new and fancy and I’d like to see what hi-def games look like on my plasma screen, but at least partly because I want to play the new Elder Scrolls game.

But: that’s probably the only game I want to play, and to get the kit I need to make my Xbox 360 useful as a console (Premium pack, second wireless controller, the Elder Scrolls game) I’d actually have to spend £360. Which is outrageous.

Sadly, with the PS3’s delay and rumoured pricing (apparently around £350 for the console alone, if rumours and misquotes can be believed, which, apparently, they can’t) — the price on the 360 is unlikely to drop for a while. So I guess I’ll hold tight – and see what they come up with. If they release Halo 3, then I may break, but odds are that will be delayed till November as well.

Damn my tendency to want instant gratification, and my lack of limitless funds…

Technology

Themeatic issues

I’m getting tired of this look for the blog. Apart from anything else, it has trouble with my blogroll – doesn’t separate the blogs from the links, which is irritating. But: every other theme I’ve found is either too hard to customise again with all my lovely sidebar content or just mings, plain and simple. Doesn’t help that I’m set on getting a theme with expandable sidebar components (like WordPress’ new widgets).

Ah well. I’ll find a way around it eventually. Or just get someone else to customise me a theme ;)

Music, Technology

Multi-room audio

So, my brother wanted us to sort out multi-room audio for him for his birthday. Easier said than done; all my research turned up expensive, bespoke systems with remote controls the size of toasters and slightly annoying file library systems (all non-networked). Thanks to a little hype and a lot of research, we decided to go for Slim Device’s WiFi Squeezebox, with an accompanying Qnap NAS drive. Whilst expensive, we managed to get it all set up and working, and were quite impressed.

Setting up the Squeezebox’s and NAS drive (we got 2 boxes and one NAS drive) took about 10 minutes – sorting out the music collection – thanks to the mess that is iTunes – took several hours. Squeezebox, frustratingly, can’t play M4A or M4P files (both DRMed and non-DRMed AAC files) – so had to convert them all, which required finding (and paying for) a batch conversion program. On the plus side, that worked and was good (from imtoo.com I think).

So: Squeezebox rocks but would be better if it could cope with iTunes files, iTunes sucks and it would better if it used MP3s. And my music collection has been 100% converted now :)