AppAholic TechRant

Error 418, I’m A Teapot. Take Control Of Your Coffee Pot!

Relequestual — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:32:00 +0000

That’s right folks, were talking HTCPCP 1.0!

For those of you who don’t know, HTCPCP stands for Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. Let me explain…

Back in September when I started University, one of our first lab sessions for “Web and Media Development”, was looking up protocols on various given websites. One of the sites was http://ietf.org, which was when I remembered HTCPCP! I just HAD to look it up.

Low and behold, there was an article on HTCPCP, and its conception. The memo is 5 pages long, so I’ll talk about some of the best bits, and provide a link at the end of this post.

(...)
Read the rest of Error 418, I’m A Teapot. Take Control Of Your Coffee Pot!

Review: Universal Remote Control

Cooper — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Thanks to our new friends at BudgetGadgets, I have been given the opportunity to review good quality products listed on their website. They have a wide range of items on offer, from Garden things to Electronics at very low prices (Which is handy due to the *cough* recession). They have kindly offered me a Mini Keychain Universal TV Remote Control to test and play with.

(...)
Read the rest of Review: Universal Remote Control

MacBook Mini : Leak/Photoshop

Sam — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:52:46 +0000

Introducing what we very much hope will be a new addition to the apple family. There have been rumours about a lightweight netbook from Apple for a long time, many think it would be a sensible expansion of Apples current line up.

Analyists see the device as both a smaller version of Apples MacBook, but also with the addition of a touch screen it could function similarly to the iPhone and iPod touch with multitouch gestures.

Possible leak / mock-up of a new netbook from Apple

According to readers of 9to5 this screenshot came inside a Russian magazine. Gizmodo have deciphered the specifications to be listed as follows…

(...)
Read the rest of MacBook Mini : Leak/Photoshop

Mac OS X 10.5.7 Imminent

Sam — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:42:02 +0000

Apple have been busy plugging holes and fixing faults with Leopard. On Thursday March 12th, Apple gave developers a pre-release version of the latest update of OS X, version 10.5.7. Rumors have it that this update will come bundled with an updated version of Adobe’s Flash player alongside other bug fixes.

(...)
Read the rest of Mac OS X 10.5.7 Imminent

iPhone 3.0 Software Update

Sam — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:23:49 +0000

Hi, I’m Sam and i’ll be ranting about all things Apple. I thought i’d start with a hot topic right now…

iPhone 3.0 software has been released to developers, and was showcased in typical Apple fashion on March 17th 2009 despite a distinct lack of Steve Jobs! This software promises iPhone and iPod Touch users over 100 new features and is due to be released this summer.

(...)
Read the rest of iPhone 3.0 Software Update

A little support for Windows

jhayter — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:48:30 +0000

I frequently read about people complaining about various aspects of the Windows operating system. Usually I agree with them. However, I did find a neat little trick that Windows can pull out of it’s rear end which is rather useful. Mac users and Windows skiners may be familiar with this concept…

A DOCK!

If you don’t know what I’m on about, it is a little bar of icons at the bottom (or other side) of the screen where you can launch your frequently used applications from.

Yes Windows does have one build in. OK, so it isn’t anywhere near as good as Apple’s glorious creation. Neither does it compare to the similar applications for Windows. BUT - it is very simple to do, and requires no installation, thus absolutely minimal impact on your system performance.

So how, I hear you cry, does one atchieve this feat? Here’s how…

Make sure your taskbar is not locked (Righ click on it, make sure the checkbox isn’t ticked)
Drag your taskbar up so that it is twice as high as normal
Create a folder somewhere, say in My Documents, and call it something like ‘Shortcuts’
Create a new toolbar in the taskbar (Right click, toolbars, new toolbar…)
Find your ‘Shortcuts’ folder
Drag the little handle on the side of your toolbar so that you can move it to the bottom
Your toolbar will now be at the bottom of the screen
Right click your toolbar and untick the option for ‘Show Text’
Do the same for ‘Show Title’
Finally, right click and change the ‘View’ to ‘Large Icons’
Remember to lock the taskbar again after.

Yes, I know that it looks nothing like the dock on a Mac, but it is jut as useful.

What is nice about this feature is that you can drag and drop icons for anything (program shortcuts, folders, files, URLs etc) onto it, and they pop right up. Simple, easy, and it fits in with whatever Windows theme you decide to use.

N95. Bigger. Better. And about time!

tubster01 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:49:36 +0000

In recent years Nokia have strayed from making revolutionary phones that shake up the market. When the 3310 was released back in the day, I cant remember any other phone I wanted more.

However after that many other makes of phone took my interest, they were a hell of alot more cutting edge and looked a darn sight better than their Nokia counterparts.

That is ofcourse until the N95 came along, I dont know what it is about it but it looks good. Yes it is a brick, but thats what Nokias are meant to be.

Even in this modern day and age Nokia have still got the right idea, Building the ’slimmest’ phone isnt neccessarily the best. Building a ‘brick’ that has alot more stuff built into it than the competition is better.

Maybe thats the geek in me speaking, but im sure that even the high ranking exectutive on his coffee break likes to listen to a kick ass music player or watch a whole episode of Family Guy to pass the time.

A couple lost in the Scotish highlands that thought it was a good idea to bring as little as possible and forget the map, can just whip out the N95, use the GPS and Sat Nav to get home with relative ease.(...)
Read the rest of N95. Bigger. Better. And about time!

The 1.3KG Wonder…

Cooper — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:00:55 +0000

As some of you know, the Asus EeePC 701 was reviewed a few months back by TechRant’s own Linux Geek. Now you may think that all Netbooks are practically the same, but they are very different. Since the OLPC program was launched and the EeePC released to children in developing countries (via the Give 1 Get One Program), several manufacturers have tried to grab their share of the market by releasing notebooks in various sizes and colours.

Though similar in size ranging from 7″ models to 10.2″, they have different hardware specs (though a majority are similar). The Samsung NC10 runs on the newly developed Intel atom architecture boasting a clock speed of 1.6GHz of Hyper-threading goodness. The EeePC 701 has a Celeron M 353 under its hood clocking at 0.9GHz.

Memory wise, the NC10 has a 1GB of RAM as standard whereas the EeePC has only half of that. Both netbooks come with XP preinstalled (Though a linux version is available for the EeePC, but to make things fair, I will compare the XP versions). Having only half a gig of RAM may make the netbook rather sluggish at running multiple applications though luckily RAM is user upgradable on both netbooks.

(...)
Read the rest of The 1.3KG Wonder…

Wikipedia Has Rules. Sure. One being Ignore Them.

Relequestual — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:23:55 +0000

Cant remember how I found this, but it’s been on my reading list for a while. There are always questions about wikipedia’s reliability, and now this, raises even more questions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

Just encase you didn’t understand what its trying to say, you can even listen to this wiki policy! There is actually a wiki page which attempts to explain exactly what the rule IAR means. In effect, its also known as common sense!

In fact there are no longer any "rules" on wiki, just a set of policies, and in essence, shouldn’t it be called "Ignore All Policies"? It itself, it is called a policy.

Maybe I’m just being picky, but I like wiki, and maybe this just proves the fact that wiki is user generated. Rather than making policies that mean you never need to ignore them to do what you need.

(...)
Read the rest of Wikipedia Has Rules. Sure. One being Ignore Them.

The Future Of Cross Channel Travel - Jetpacks!

Relequestual — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:11:58 +0000

Jetpacks!

Swiss man crossed the English channel in under 10 minutes. 22 miles from calais to dover. 49 years old this guy was! An ex fighter pilot, granted, but even so, 125 mph is rather fast flying in the air.

He did win £1,000 from the Daily Mail, 100 years after they started the competition, although I doubt this was his initial target,as I guessing it cost a lot more than that to put on.

It started with a 8,200 feet climb in a light aircraft (sort of cheating really), and then jumped out and flew using the jet pack with wings. The wing span is 8.2 feet, weighing in at a total of 121 lb. The actual decent took another 3 minuets, making a total of 13 minuets from flight to ground.

(...)
Read the rest of The Future Of Cross Channel Travel - Jetpacks!