Category - Computers & Tech

I’m getting to grips with my new HTC Desire smartphone.

There is a brilliant little widget you can get called GPS2GoogleEarth – what it does is use the phone’s GPS sensor to record your journey (or you can use phone masts, though this isn’t as accurate), which you then save.

When you open the saved file in Google Earth it draws your route on to a map – which you can zoom into as far as Google Earth will allow.

I set it running this morning when I went out on a lesson. The first picture here is a fairly high level view of the part of the lesson which went into Clifton, Nottingham (the red line, obviously). The second is my journey up the ring road (to pick the pupil up) and back again (during the lesson). Note the clear lane separation.

The final picture is where I did a turn in the road outside the pupils house – it’s only when you go down to the highest level of detail that any small inconsistencies in positioning data become clear. I would say that it is accurate to within about 2 metres. At this level of detail, the car sometimes appears to weave across roundabouts or – as you can see here – doesn’t show how close to the kerb I actually got when doing the turn (though I suspect Google’s maps have some margin of error)

You can begin to imagine how useful this could be – to a driving instructor especially.

I’m just waiting for the Orange messages to come through to activate my new phone, but it is already much better than my HTC Touch HD (which ran under Windows Mobile). The screen is ultra-bright (vibrant colours and all) and the phone is superfast.

Just ordered some screen protectors and a leather case.

One thing that suddenly hit me just as I was about to activate it, and that was that my text messages would get lost (I’d backed up my contacts via Windows Mobile Device Center, but it doesn’t do the text messages).

However, you can use Microsoft MyPhone to do this for you – the texts are all stored on free webspace, and you can sync them back on to your new phone. All you do is enter into your phone browser and install the software, then you can run the new program and log into your new free space using your Windows Live login. Tell it what you want to sync, and it takes… well, I had over 3,000 texts to back up and it took less than 10 minutes.

It’s ordered, at last (after a long period of intermittently being out of stock). My HTC Desire smartphone will be here Tuesday!

iPhone (NOT the 4)

This story in the Daily Mirror today made me smile.

It started a few days ago with this report on the BBC, where anoraks who had queued to get the new iPhone the day before were finding that the signal strength dropped when they held it. The BBC story points out that the iPhone’s case is made of stainless steel, which also acts as the antenna, so you can immediately see a possible connection between physical contact with it and signal strength. The same story also mentions that Steve Jobs referred to this antenna as “really cool engineering ” when he announced the iPhone 4.

Better still, in a follow-up story the next day, Jobs’ official response to the fact that if you hold it in the lower left corner where the antenna is centered you lose signal was:

Just avoid holding it in that way.

This is classic – it reminds me of when I was a kid and my mum went to the doctors with a bad back. She raised her arms and said to the doctor “it hurts when I do this”. He replied: “Well, don’t do it then”.

The official Apple stance (i.e. minus Jobs’ expert people skills) is:

…to “avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band”.

Alternatively, said Apple, customers could buy a case to shield the antenna.

So! The Mighty Apple has screwed up, eh? But now look at that latest story in The Mirror. Apple is trying to claim that the problem is merely down to a faulty algorithm for calculating how many bars to show.

Apple says the problem relates to an error on how the signal bars are displayed, rather than the signal.

This is in spite of the fact that the physical act of holding it in the lower left corner appears to affect the algorithm as well! Apple rambles some more:

“We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising,” the statement read.

“Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong.

“Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays two more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display four bars when we should be displaying as few as two bars.

“Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying four or five bars.

“Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.”

And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything – and you also probably bought an iPhone. However, many experts believe there is a deeper problem.

I would not use anything by Apple – even if you paid me. Macs are for people who can’t use a real computer, just like AOL is for people who don’t know what proper internet access is. And the iPad is like a catwalk model: great to look at, but pretty dim inside.

My Orange contract is up for renewal in August and I want a new phone to replace my HTC Touch HD. The HTC Desire is the one for me.

Incidentally, while I was looking for an iPhone photo to use in this post, I found this blog post (look, I wanted an iPhone pic quickly and this was the first one that came up – I don’t actually read stuff like this). Seems like Apple screws up more than it’s followers like to admit.

EDIT 20/07/2010: Jobs admitted this week that the iPhone is flawed, after all. Just goes to show how pointless it is fabricating a complex web of lies when the facts are staring everyone in the face. Apple if offering a free cover/reception booster to try and make amends.

I recently bought a 50″ LG 50PS3000 true HD TV, and then upgraded to Sky+ HD from my original Sky+ package.

The TV is excellent – what they say about being able to see every blade of grass on football matches (in HD) is true (the state of some of those grounds is shocking – the groundskeepers ought to be ashamed of themselves 😉 ).

One thing I noticed immediately after I’d installed the Sky box was that the newer boxes give a much better picture, even in normal definition. So that’s worth remembering if you get a large/HD TV.

Upgrading the Sky box was extremely quick. I called on a Thursday afternoon to upgrade, was told the box would arrive (for self-install) by the following Tuesday latest… and it arrived at 9am the following morning! That’s excellent service.

Setup was a doddle, just requiring one call to activate the card for HD.

There is one snag, which I only discovered last week. I cannot use Live Rewind or record anything! Sky quickly sent out an engineer (I called Saturday and could have had the engineer Bank Holiday Monday if I’d wanted). It turns out that there is nothing wrong with the box, but this has been a bit of an issue with self-installation.

According to the engineer, the Sky databases have all the information, but the server which sends out the information isn’t working properly. The inital install wipes out the old Sky+ settings from the card, but doesn’t replace them, so you have the receiving package (the “HD” part of the deal) but none of the other bits (the “+” part). Apparently, it doesn’t matter how many times you try to pair the card with the system, the chances are it won’t work. He said that in the past, they took a while to admit (or rather, identify) that there was a fault.

Well, I called Sky about 4 hours after the engineer had gone (you’re supposed to wait up to 24 hours after an update, but it was obvious this wasn’t going to work – the intial HD activation was instantaneous when I called). Sky were very good again: the agent I spoke to didn’t appear to be aware of the problem, but I explained what the engineer had said. She spoke with her manager, who then came on to the line after no more than a minute, and who told me he would escalate it immediately. Another couple of hours later they called back to get some details of my system and are obviously dealing with it now.

I cannot fault Sky on any of this. So they have a problem with a system? It happens. They are dealing with it. Admirably.

Of course, this would be enough for most people to start a website dedicated to how bad Sky are  – probably made worse by convincing themselves that the Irish accent is an Indian one (that’s the usual gripe – call centre not in the UK).

If you have this problem, call Sky on 08442 414141. They are helpful.

One more thing: to make your Sky remote control work with the 50PS3000, you need to use the code 1293 to program it. This code will not work on older Sky remotes (and my Sky+ one was one of those).

It looks like HP have finally issued Windows 7 drivers for the G4010.

Mind you, so much for their bloody “sign up and we’ll email you when they are available” crap! I did, and they didn’t.

I’ll update this post once I have installed and tested the driver… Which I now have, and it works great! If you go to this link you can choose your version (32-bit or 64-bit). The software is the FULL VERSION – so it includes OCR. It is also better than the original Vista version.

EDIT 24/05/2010: Oops! Forgot to update it like I promised. Not a lot to say, really. The drivers work perfectly, and so does the OCR.

Summary: official drivers are available for the G4010 scanner, and have been since February. They are for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7. They work perfectly, so the wait was worth it in that respect.

Anyone who installed the Release Candidate for Windows 7 should have known that it would eventually expire – Microsoft told you that when you downloaded it.

Well, the counter has now started… Windows 7 RC will begin to shutdown without saving your work every 2 hours starting March 1st. Here is the email Microsoft has sent out:

It’s time to upgrade from the Windows 7 Release Candidate
While most people who tested Windows 7 have now moved to the final version, some are still running the Release Candidate. If you haven’t moved yet, it’s time to replace the RC.

Starting on March 1, 2010 your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Your work will not be saved during the shutdown.

The Windows 7 RC will fully expire on June 1, 2010. Your PC running the Windows 7 RC will continue shutting down every two hours and your files won’t be saved during shutdown. In addition, your wallpaper will change to a solid black background with a persistent message on your desktop. You’ll also get periodic notifications that Windows isn’t genuine. That means your PC may no longer be able to obtain optional updates or downloads requiring genuine Windows validation.

To avoid interruption, please reinstall a prior version of Windows or move to Windows 7. In either case, you’ll need to do a custom (clean) install to replace the RC. As with any clean installation, you’ll need to back up your data then reinstall your applications and restore the data. For more details about replacing the RC, see the Knowledge Base article KB 971767 . For more information, visit the Window 7 Forum .

Thanks again for helping us test Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Team

I’m sure this will result in plenty of complaints from the idiots of this world. When I first installed it and was looking around for information I was amazed at the number of people who had shifted their entire lives over to Windows 7 – even though it was trial software and would expire at some stage. Microsoft was quite clear on that.

I used my time with RC1 to do exactly what it was intended for – to make sure I knew how to use it and what problems I might find. To date, only my G4010 scanner has been an issue, and I knew that while I was using W7 RC1.

I purchased the proper version of W7 as soon as it became available.