Wednesday, 25 June 2008

TECH: O2 iPhone 3G PAYG price accidentally revealed?


Following on from the last post it would seem that O2 briefly posted pricing for the iPhone 3G PAYG on their site this evening. Only to have it taken down moments later. Did O2 jump the gun? Was the pricing incorrect? Hopefully not as at £299 the iPhone 3G seems like a fair enough deal on PAYG. Click the image for a full size screengrab...

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Wednesday, 18 June 2008

TECH: iPhone 3G - PAYG, how much?


Perhaps the most interesting development for the new iPhone 3G is the ability to purchase it on a Pay As You Go contract from O2 (UK only).
However, how much does O2 intend to charge for the device? Given the original iPhone started out at £269 with a hefty 18 month contract and ultimately failed to produce the desired sales, one has to wonder whether Apple/O2 have actually learnt from their previous pricing mistakes.
My take: with the new £99 price for the iPhone 3G handset on the cheapest O2 contract (a far more sensible proposition) I imagine a PAYG price of anything beyond £300 will turn out to be a serious mistake, especially given that the 8GB iPod touch, (basically an iPhone without the 'phone') currently costs £199.
I think they will pitch in at £269-£299...

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WEB: Webfusion - what no sendmail?


If you are considering a new web host and want to include any sort of 'contact us' form on your site, my advice would be to steer clear of Webfusion.co.uk.
Unfortunately they have taken the ill advised step of not supporting sendmail. This means there is no real way (other than with ASP pages) of being able to code and configure a simple 'contact us' form for your site.

Instead they support 'intmail' (rather than 'localhost') and require authentication with a valid username and password. I didn't even have any joy configuring tectite to work with PEAR PHP settings.

If you know ASP it won't be a problem but if you don't and you want to use something like tectite to easily build your form you are out of luck...

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WEB: Valley Stone Ltd website up


I've just finished a fairly small brochure style site for a company called Valley Stone Ltd, an architectural stone work company based in Stoke On Trent. The site can be viewed here:

www.valleystone.co.uk

My two favourite sections are the 'gallery' page which uses the Greybox javascript trick to fade the background and display images and the 'visit us' page, where I integrated Google maps to give a fully interactive map on the page (you can choose satellite imagery, zoom in and out, drag and drop the map etc) and get turn by turn directions by entering your postcode below.

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Tuesday, 17 June 2008

POLITICS: Petition against the Lisbon Treaty

The EU is forging relentlessly ahead with the ratification of the Lisbon treaty. This despite the recent 'NO' vote from EIRE which should have seen it dead and buried. If you have even the slightest belief in the concept of democracy let our deceitful government know your feelings by signing the following petition at No. 10 Downing Street. The very concept that a government is supposedly voted for 'by the people for the people' seems a concept they are struggling with:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Abandon-Lisbon/

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Thursday, 12 June 2008

FLYING: An argument against ballistic chutes

There is always a debate amongst Microlight (Ultralight in US speak) flyers as to whether ballistic chutes are more risky than taking your chances without. Stumbled across this video which makes a good argument against...




However, it is alleged the pilot in question had altered the chute installation so that the release for the chute was on the bar! Needless to say on takeoff (when the bar is fully forward)...

I still think they are a good backup.

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WEB: Google Maps - finding the GLatLng setting

Note: Unless you?re a website designer, this probably won?t mean a lot to you!

Need to find out your ?GLatLng? settings for a custom Google Maps implementation? The code looks something like this...


"function load() {
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map"));
map.setCenter(new GLatLng(37.4419, -122.1419), 13);
var gIcons = [];
map.addControl(new GSmallMapControl());
map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());
map.openInfoWindow(map.getCenter(),
document.createTextNode("Where I want to be"));
}
}"


The trouble is, by default it is pointed to Santa Paula or similar and you can't use a UK postcode or similar to centre the map where you want it. You need the true Latitude and Longitude figures which are often a little hard to come by. Michelin to the rescue...

Head over to the Via Michelin website: http://www.viamichelin.co.uk/viamichelin/gbr/tpl/hme/MaHomePage.htm

1. Choose your country
2. Enter the postcode
3. From the resultant window on the left, choose the 'Send via GPS' option
4. Choose 'Garmin' for the GPS type
5. Name the file in the next box (e.g. 'test') and click 'OK'
6. Save the file produced to your desktop
7. Open the *.gpx you just saved in Textedit (Mac) or Editplus (win) or similar and look for the latitude and longitude numbers. They will be near the bottom and look something like:
8. In your web code, replace the default longitude and latitude settings with those in the file. However, Google only excepts values to 4 decimal places so make '53.4776593' into '53.4776' and also remember that the longitude will have a '+' or '-' before it - don't forget that.
9. Save and upload your amended web file and you should be centred exactly where you want to be.

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Monday, 9 June 2008

Politics: EIRE - our final hope...


After the, frankly despicable failure of our government to provide the referendum on the EU treaty/constitution (only an imbecile would argue any real difference between the two?) it promised us, our fate (saving the unlikelihood this court action pays off) is left in the hands of our friends just over the water.

What a travesty our democracy has become, when our only hope of getting a choice in our future governance lies with the people on another landmass.

People of Ireland, I hope you vote wisely on Thursday.

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TECH: iPhone2 a.k.a. iPhone 3G


So, here is the iPhone 3G. In case you haven't already, check it out.
I moaned about the affordability of the original iPhone back here and here. Apple have obviously learnt their lesson and I think it's hard to criticise the new pricing structure. The GPS is also a feature I'm glad to see them incorporate...
However, it still won't do it for me. As amazing, beautiful and intuitive as the phone is, it's still lacking a few things I just love having on my current handset (Nokia N95 8GB) - 5MP camera (not perfect on the N95 8GB by any stretch but definitely superior to the iPhone cam), Podcast download direct over Wi-Fi (iPhone requires you to download to desktop and then sync) and video recording, something the iPhone still has no official application for. The last feature in particular is really quite impressive on the Nokia.
So, much as I'd like to jump ship and save myself suffering the infuriates of the Symbian OS, unfortunately its features trump the iPhone 3G's usability. For now at least.

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Thursday, 5 June 2008

TECH: Orange - get some working spam filters

Orange - for crying out loud get some working spam filters! I have 2 or 3 email accounts I use regularly but my Orange address (actually still a Freeserve one before Wanadoo and then Orange took it over) presents an avalanche of 'RE: La Pha en Ligne' emails EVERY SINGLE DAY - I'm talking 400 plus at the minute. I daren't even look 'La Pha en Ligne' up on Google, lest my screen gets infested with stripping Lolitas and malware.
The most frustrating thing is that even having logged into the Orange web mail, selected the offending mails and marked them as spam - it makes absolutely no difference.

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