Category: Technology

This is showing my age but i was using Orange when they didn’t even have SMS enabled. It’s a shame to see two iconic brands disappear from the UK.  I’m entirely sure if the british public like the EE brand. Orange had a very strong brand awareness in the UK mainly down to the Orange wednesday cinema promotion and T-mobile with their good use of social media and revolutionary tariffs (anyone remember the Full monty of the Flext plans?).

 

“All current T-Mobile and Orange customers (around 19 million) will remain on their current deals – but will not be able to upgrade when the contract expires. EE will stop issuing T-Mobile and Orange prepay SIM’s from today. SIM’s will be deactivated permanently if unsold after a year.”

Source: http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/2015/02/02/orange-and-t-mobile-connections-to-be-scrapped/

 

 

Cant Get into the windows store? are you getting the error “Windows Store isn’t available on Windows To Go workspaces”

 

Here’s hoe to fix it.

 

Press Windows Key + R combination, type put gpedit.msc in Run dialog box and hit Enter. This will  open the Local Group Policy Editor.

 

 

 

 

Click:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates ->Windows Components -> Store

 

 

 

 

Double Click on “Allow Store to install apps on Windows To Go workspaces”

 

Then Click ENABLE

 

Then Click Apply.

 

This should fix the issue. 

 

I think LastPass is a great product. It helps remembering multiple passwords.

Besides the obvious such has giving Lastpass a very strong password, you should also restrict the countries that can log into your lastpass account. Not to stereo type but alot of hacks will originate from certain countries so restricting the countries that can log into your account will enhance your security. Also prevent access via Tor  and use multi factor authentication like google authenticator.

 

I’ve been with my current webhost 123reg for more than 5 years (I was with supanames) and it hasn’t been to bad. I recently re did my site with WordPress and a few plugins and noticed that the performance was awful. Searching the web i found i wasnt the only one, i suspect they squeeze as many  accounts on to one server. I decided to move to another UK webhost (vidahost).  Really good reviews and more of less the same price, so far it’s been really fast and responsive.

Comparison of the same wordpress install and mysql db loaded on the two webhost.

OLD Webhost 123reg – 8.22 sec

New Webhost Vidahost – 2.49 sec

 

Now you may think it’s only a few seconds but sometimes the site wouldn’t respond at all.

UPDATE:
I have had to use support a few times and they have responded within 30 min. Well impressed.

www.champsak.com

Japan has always the latest place for technology as you know… One thing that has really taken of is QR codes which is a new form of bacodes which can store alot more information compared to stardard barcodes (250 characters).

They use it on Adverts and information posters as a way of bookmarking/recording the information on to your phone so you can view it later.

So for example in the picture is a popular arcade game in japan. When you get a high score instead of writing down a long password for you to register it on the games website you have take a picture of the QR code. The QR code will with have all the information on it.

In this example a massive TV screen at a japanese train stations displays a TV advert. After the TV advert it will show you the QR code which if you take a picture of on a japanese phone it will translate this to a webaddress.

Another spin off of QR code is Beetaggs (the ebay tagg is a beetagg) these are more attractive as you can display a logo or picture in the middle. So i guess this is soon to a batter of the formats.

Anyway i made youtube showing you how cool this is…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40lsjCZJ-wI]

Anyway if you wanna try out QR codes you can download a reader on to your phone for free at http://reader.kaywa.com/

or www.beetagg.com  (try downloading them, then tagging the ones you see on this blog)

This is a handy program i came across the other week.

Isn’t it annoying sometimes esp on older computers when you start up your machine and it takes ages to load up? chances are you prob have loads of things all loading at once… this program can acutally delay some of the items on start up meaning that your computer loads fully faster…

Give it a go… on my laptop where i’ve tested this out, i’ve delayed my mobile phone sync software from loading right away its saved me about 60sec in loading time.

Tech Talk: it’s MSconfig with an egg timer.

The good thing about it… It’s Freeware!

http://www.r2.com.au/software.php?page=2&show=startdelay

I’m a gadget freak as some of you may know…. many years back when i was at uni a new Network called ‘3’ was lauched as the first 3G service in the UK.

As a curious person my g/f at the time and I decided to visit the ‘3’ store on oxford street london, where you could try this next generation technology, we was so impress we preordered our phones. at the time the minimun monlthy contract on ‘3’ was £60 (Kit plan). This made sense to for use as we would spend maybe £130 a month calling each other…. these was the days where cross network calls costed you an arm and a leg.

So £60 was brilliant at the time this got you 1000min any network and loads of texts as well…

Anyway to this day we both have similar phone numbers to each other but sadly i gave up first and left the network mid 2006. When I was first on the network the customer service was great (glasgow call centre) they were friendly knew what they were talking about etc. As the months went on the new call centre was really bad… if felt like a production like where they were trying to pick up as many calls as possible and to get people off the phone…. one example was my tariff pack changed on its own for no reason so i was being charged for every call. So I ask why this was? person had no clue just changed it back and said it wont happen again.

Anyway early this year something caught my eye with Three. It was the X-Series.

X-series is basically a Mobile Broadband service from the network. It’s equivalent to T-mobile’s Web’n’Walk but I believe with much more benefits and features.

X-series features:

SlingsBox: My fav and most used.

“Slingbox is a new piece of kit that’ll change the way you watch TV forever. Plug a Slingbox into your normal TV and it’ll send the live signal to your mobile. So whatever you would’ve watched on the sofa, you can watch elsewhere instead. In the room next door, down the pub, or on the beach a thousand miles away. And if you forgot to record your favourite show, you can use your mobile to tell your satellite and digital TV to record it while you’re away. ”

So basically you can stream any audio/video device from your home to your phone… i.e sky, freeview etc

Orb

This service lets you remote into your computer at home or work and pick up pictures, documents etc.

MSN Messenger

what more can i say…

Mobile Web

After downloading the king of the mobile browsers “Opera Mini” you can go on almost anysite you want….

Skype

This can save you a packet in overseas calls. …. but this also means you can call international via the web

There are other features that i don’t really use as well, but check them out here.

http://www.three.co.uk/xseries/index.omp

The best thing about Three now that i don’t know why they don’t advertise is the 3 Like Home (No Roaming Charge ) service… This means you can use your phone on any 3 network around the world without incurring a roaming charge. How good is that.

So this means i can go to Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and used my phone as if i was in the UK. So I can go on the web, stream my sling box, etc… you won’t get charged for people calling you and your min are used if you call UK numbers.