I’ve been going through my huge gmail inbox, which I had let get quite out of control recently. Many different email address and accounts all sending thousands of emails to my single primary gmail account. Well, finally I’ve been filtering out the junk, deleting the pointless stuff, markign a whole bunch of things as unread (that may be useful in future…!?) and also unsubscribing from a load of things I don’t ever recall signing up to.
Of the unsubscribe process, some are great – a single clear link towards the bottom of the email (some evenr have it at the top – even better) that link to a page which instantly tells you that you are now unsubscribed. Thats it, no more emails form the company, you can forget about them. However, some prompt you to login after clicking the unsubscribe link, meaning they’ve either been lazy (not coding a unique to you id into the URL behind the link), sneaky (trying to prevent you from going through with you request to unsubscribe) or maybe a bit of both…
Play.com I’d have thought you could do better! A few however, then choose to send you an email after you have unsubscribed, tellling you goodbye! I unsubscribe as I don’t want any more contact from you, so anymore emails, especially a pointless ‘goodbye’ is bordering on insulting. Next they’ll decide to say sorry you unsubribed, we miss you, fancy re-subscribing…. oh wait some even do this! Simple solution is now just the handy ‘mark as spam’ button – thank you gmail.
Posted in: Rants.
Tagged: gmail · unsubscribe
Of all the suggested name for apples new wonder-machine such as iSlate & iTablet, it just had to be the iPad. It sits so nicely next to the iPod, the seminal gadget that changed the way we listen to music, and of course the iPhone which is slowly but surely eating massive chunks of the mobile market, before long, apple will rule.
But this new ebook reader cum photo frame cum web browsing device cum video player to name but a few of its caapabilties looks simply awesome. I want one. No, in fact I think I need one!!! Apparently wifi devices will be available in late March, 3G devices in April. I will definately wait for the online anywhere version, there is still far to much of a dearth of wifi hotspots in the UK to go for any other version. Ok, so I’ll need to sort a 3g data sim/contract, but hopefully apple will have the sense to allow any sim to be used from the outset. Check out the official apple page: http://bit.ly/bRwWyP and let me know what you think! Hot off the press: I’ve just heard that a smaller footprint ‘iPad mini’ is being rumoured, which will do kind of what the normal iPad does but with an ultra compact 3.5″ screen size. Oh, hang on a minute …. http://bit.ly/bRwjH9
Posted in: Gadgets.
Tagged: apple · iPad
Its been rumoured on hummy forums for ages, but its finally happened. BBC iPlayer is available on the Humax Foxsat HD and HDR!
The BBC are running a beta trial of iPlayer on freesat, and have chosen Humax machines to be the test platform of choice. If you’re lucky enough to have one of these PVRs (I swapped my 5 yr old Sky+ box/subscription for one a few months back) then all you need to do is plug your Humax Freesat HD or HDR box into your broadband router with a network cable. (There is a network port known as an ‘Ethernet’ port at the back of the unit). Then, when viewing any BBC channel simply hit the red button, then type in the number 5483, and you’re in!
You may get a number not found message, but this can be ignored.
Once you’re in you get a somewhat cut down version of iPlayer compared to the website, and the image quality isn’t perfect, but watching the Incredibles last night in High Quality was great, no difference to watching a normal channel over freesat. This beats hooking up a PC or PS3 any day – good work BBC!
For further official instructions / troubleshooting see the link below:
bbciplayerbetatrial09.freesat.co.uk
Posted in: Gadgets.
Tagged: BBC iPlayer · Humax Freesat · TV
Ok, so Chrome has been around for ages now. Since it was launched in Beta in Sept 2008, I have downloaded and played with it a bit, didn’t really like its overly simplistic nature and switched back to good ‘ol Firefox. However since later versions of Firefox seem often to take forever to load, I decided to give it another go. And I am liking it alot! Its not quite my default browser yet, but the speed, simplicity, plus a certain amount of customisation possible thanks to the open source community, it is a Browser worth having installed on every machine.
Browser Wars
As of just before Christmas, Chrome had a market share of 4.63% worldwide, lagging behind Firefox on 24.6% by some way. I obviously won’t mention what’s at number one.
A recent high profile newspaper and billboard marketing campaign in the UK will only help boost this.
But my concern is the amount of websites I come across when using Chrome that don’t quite function right. By far the biggest is ebay – have you ever tried to create an auction on eBay in Chrome? It’s appallingly bad. I always jump back to FF for this. And it this kind of thing that Google must get to grips with, and shoudl have sorted before the big money campaigns! I will carry on using it due to the speed and light weight nature of the software, but am slightly narked that I have to use multiple browsers in my every day online life. Let me know of any other sites you have to switch back with in the comments!
Posted in: Web apps.
Tagged: Google Chrome · Web Browsers
I’m with O2, on a pretty good deal as I am also a mobile customer. The stabilty and reliabilty has been excellent since I signed up (ignoring the blip when Virgin broke it for me) but over the last couple of weeks the conneciton has dropped a few times requring a router restart, and also drops in and out form time to time (sometimes just for 30 seconds or so).
My current ping/speed test results:
Thing is I’m skint and don’t wnat to spend any more than the current £7.34 for unlimited download 8mb connection… anyone got any recommendations?
Posted in: Utilities.
Tagged: Broadband · o2 · Virgin
If you use Social Bookmarking sites in any kind of promotional fashion, you may be interested in seeing a list of 100Social Bookmarking sites with their google pagerank, as of Jan 2008. I plan to do an updated version of this myself soon, sign up to my feed to make sure you don’t miss it!
http://www.squidoo.com/100-social-bookmarking-sites-with-google-pagerank
Posted in: Social Media.
Tagged: Google · SEO · Social Bookmarks
A new breed of netbook has crept into the market to coincide with the launch of Windows 7.
The 5 following laptops are all ‘big’ netbooks, or could actually be described as ultra portable laptops.
Screen size is 11.6 inch, processor typically a bit faster than your average netbook, portabilty is excellent and battery life awesome – upto 12 hours!
Dell inspiron 11z ultra thin
Asus UL30 Ultra thin – 12 hour battery life!
Samsung X120 Ultra Thin
Toshiba satellite T110
Samsung N510
In my opinion these machines are the perfect mix of mobilty, long battery life but with great usagbilty and a screen large enough to show a decent resolution (1280x 768). Now I just have to decide which one to get!
Posted in: Gadgets.
At the weekend, I went to download all recent bank statements from one of my bank accounts with Cahoot. I was somewhat surprised to see that there wasn’t actually a download option – none whatsoever, to download to excel, pdf, etc… all you could do was print! I managed to go to print preview and then copy the table into excel, and tidy it up a bit, but have had to do this for each statement month. Not how I want to spend my saturday morning really!
It made me think how much variance there is between the different bank’s online bank applications. I recently got a pleasant surprise at a change that Barclaycard have rolled out to their online credit card management system – very handy spending categorisation and visual representation of spend/limits etc.
Most review sites for banks focus mainly on the rates, charges etc. which whilst these are important, the online experience is usually just ‘mentioned’ rather than reviewed. One site I have found that addresses this gap, which looks quite new, but certainlyone to watch, is Online Banking Reviews
Posted in: Money.
Tagged: Money · online banking reviews
Ok, you need a premium (£10/month) account, but this is simply Awesome… really adds fuel to the debate of whether music ownership is now redundant! http://bit.ly/Q0sBI
Spotify, the European iTunes rival that’s attracted a huge fanbase, is now available in its much-anticipated iPhone version, the company has announced [iTunes download link]. An Android version is also available as of today (search the Android Market for “Spotify”).
Spotify is an awesome way to consume music, providing on demand access to 6 million+ tracks. The only catch: you can only use it if you’re in the European countries already served by Spotify (a US launch is expected soon). You’ll also need to be Premium subscriber to use either of the apps.
The most remarkable part of this story, however, is that Spotify has been allowed in the App Store at all: it appears to be a direct rival to iTunes, making us wonder if Apple would find a squirmy way to reject it. That hasn’t transpired, meaning that Spotify’s impressive feature set is now available to the iPhone and iPod touch addicts among us.
As we wrote of the app last month:
A demo posted to YouTube last week (embedded below) shows off features that include offline playlists: you can store up to 3,333 songs in offline mode, making it ideal for listening to your music on the plane. The core selling point, however, remains the same as the desktop app: on demand access to 6 million+ tracks. Another neat feature: it syncs with the desktop via wifi…no need to hook up your USB cable. Even US reviewers are blown away: Wired’s Epicenter blog claims it’s so good that “you’d have to pry it out of my cold, dead iPhone before I’ll delete it from my phone”.
The app will only be available to those with paid Spotify accounts: with Spotify only available in Europe right now (although launching in the US very soon), that means we’ll get it first.
If you’re a Spotify user, what are you waiting for? Go forth and download!
Posted in: iphone.
Tagged: iphone app · mp3 · music streaming · spotify
