02076197597 Phone Calls After Donating

In November I was approached by a young lady in the street collecting for the Shelter charity, which I believe is a good cause and I thought I would donate. They way they wanted me to donate is via a simple SMS text message which would cost me the amount that I wanted to donate. I thought this was a good idea because it is not always you have the correct amount of cash that you wish to donate. Everything was fine until I started getting calls from 02076197597, I did not answer these calls because generally I don't answer calls who I don't know who it is, it us to mainly be annoying recruitment companies with jobs that had nothing related to what I do. After doing some research into this number it appears to be related to a number of charities. I might be incorrect, but I think that Shelter must have taken my number and past it onto a charity collecting company. Because of this my advice is never give your number out to charities and if you are going to give stick with cash or card.

Death of social networking?

Lately I have found that there are more and more issues with social networking sites.Here is a list of current issues and possible future problems that I have heard of.

• There are more and more scams appearing on the sites, the latest I saw was the Facebook Tesco scam which looked like a valid offer because a friend had put a link for it. I can see that there will be more elaborate scams in the future.
• You have to be very careful on who is your friend, there a lot of fake accounts with people who say they know you just to get more information on you.
• Insurance companies are looking at social networking and what information you put on them, like if you say you are going out and you get burgled they will not payout.
• A lot of people are getting a bit tired of it and it is no longer innovative and needs something new. Once everyone was using friends reunited, but these things are fads and become less and less popular.

There are of course reasons why social networking is here to stay, but people get bored and there has to be constant innovation to keep people interested, without this people will move onto other sites and trends. Is it possible that in a few years time people will have had enough of social networking and will be interested in something else. I can see some sites like Linked In continuing because it is a place to advertise your work, it could be Facebook and Twitter also go down this avenue and include a way recruitment agencies can use their sites. I think the next couple of years will be an interesting time, with existing sites looking for innovation and new sites and new ideas appearing.

Outlook.com First Impressions

Outlook.com is the new email service from Microsoft, which is designed to replace its Hotmail service. I received an email to my hotmail account with a link to upgrade to the new service, simply clicking the link upgraded the service almost instantly. My first impressions are good, here are some of the pros and cons I have found so far.

Pros

Clean looking more modern feel, more Windows 8.
Option to delete message from within the message line.
Sweep option to help clean up the inbox.
More email settings including an automated holiday reply option.


Cons

Need for larger screen, does not work well on a netbook.
Does not give a page number, just gives you the current page and options to more back forward and to a specific date.

These are currently my first impressions of the new email service, I imagine the more I use it the more will appear.

Is there a bug with Google

Recently I have noticed a couple of issues with Google when searching, and it seems to occur on multiple PCs with XP and Win7 operating systems, using the Chrome browser.

The first issue is when you do a search and get the results listed, then click on a result which takes you to the web site you requested if you click back to go to the search results it takes you back to the Google homepage and you have to perform the search again. This does not occur every time, but has happened to me multiple times over the last few weeks.

The second issue also does not occur every time and might be linked to the first issue, after typing in a search you can usually hit enter to perform the search, but sometimes it leaves a blank search result section below the area to enter the search.

I imagine Google have loads of testers and have noticed this strange behaviour and are working to fix these rather minor bugs.

Canon G9 Time Lapse

Recently I bought a new DSLR camera (Canon 650D), which I am very happy with. My previous camera was a Canon G9, one feature that is missing on my new camera is the time lapse option in video mode. It is not a big deal, but I managed to produce some interesting videos from this feature (see below).

The way I produced this video was simply to attach the camera to a gorillapod tripod and fix it to the dash of  the car.

Is Windows 8 doomed to fail?

Recently I had a quick play with the new Microsoft Windows 8 operating system and was disappointed. The reasons why I felt disappointed are as follows:

• Without a touch screen to scroll to the left or right there is a naff scrollbar, it would have looked a lot better if they had to large buttons on each side like in Google Chrome.
• Some of the live tiles look annoying with constant movement.
• You cannot see more than 2 applications at the same time, this is clearly designed for tablets, but what about users with large monitors.
• The 2 application view does not allow a 50/50 split, there is always 1 application larger than the other.
• The old style Windows 7 option, seems to run a virtual machine, but is not as good as Windows 7 and the integration with the main operating system is clunky.  

Overall I got the impression this OS has been designed with the tablet in mind and I think if you are going to run it on a PC stick with Windows 7. The history of Microsoft OS seems to hint it is not going to be a good OS, see my list of OS and what I think of them below, hopefully Windows 9 will be the next good OS.

Windows history showing a trend.

• Windows 3.2 - Good OS
• Windows 95 - Not bad, but not great and seemed a bit buggy
• Windows 98 - Great OS and worked very well
• Windows ME - Rubbish
• Windows XP - Very Good OS
• Windows Vista - Dreadful, problems starting up and shutting down.
• Windows 7 - Good OS and runs really well 
• Windows 8 - So far, not good.

Canon 650D Camera Review

I recently bought a new DSLR camera after doing months of research I decided to purchase the Canon 650D. When I was looking for a camera my budget was in the £600 ($965) region, it came down to the Nikon 3100 and the Canon, after playing with them in a store it was clear that the Canon was a superior product even if the mega-pixels is less, 18 with the Canon compared with 24 with the Nikon.

After owning the camera for a couple of weeks and being on holiday with it I am very happy with it. It takes great photos and I like the touch screen, which I thought I would not use as much as I do. Here is a list of pros and cons I have found so far.

Pros

• Easy to use menu, I have owned Canon cameras before so I found I could use the camera straight away.
• Touch screen which I find very useful for changing settings and reviewing the photos.
• Continuous auto focus in HD video mode.
• When camera is in video mode it is also possible to take a photo when not recording.
• HDR function is useful is some situations and have had some interesting results from using this.
• Good image quality.

Cons

• Video is not have as many options as my other Camera (Canon G9)
• Lens included with the Camera was a 18mm-55mm which has a noisy auto focus so is not good for video. I am currently looking at the Canon pancake lens for video.
• Video file format is mov, would have like it to be in avi format like my Canon G9. There might be a setting I need to find for this.

Overall I am very happy with the Canon 650D and I am still learning some of the features. I think as a beginners DSLR camera it is the best on the market.

ITV Player for Samsung SMART TV

I have just downloaded the new ITV Player for my Samsung SMART TV, the menu system works well and I can see the programmes available, but when I select a programme to watch a progress clock appears in the top right hand side of the screen and then the TV switches itself off! I've tried a few times and it keeps happening, I think I will have to wait for ITV to fix an obvious issue with their app.

Canon 650D at John Lewis

I have been looking around for a while for a decent DSLR camera, after reading reviews I was looking at either the Canon 550D or the Nikon 3200. Then I saw that Canon had released the Canon 650D, reading the reviews of this camera I decided it was either this our the Nikon 3200. I went to John Lewis to have a play with these 2 cameras and after taking some shoots was much happier with the Canon, the Nikon 3200 seems much cheaper (as is), but the Canon ticked all the right boxes.

When it came to price John Lewis sold the camera for £620 with a 18-55mm lens and a camera bag, this was a deal up to September 26th. I could not make it to the shop before this date and thought I did not mind missing out on the camera bag, but the day after they did not include the bag and they put the price up to £650. Is this some sort of price adjustment to get rid of the Canon 600D, have they put the price up so they can later add a better discount? I don't know. Hopefully I will find a good place to buy this camera soon

Delphi RAD Studio XE3 now available

Delphi XE3 has now been released. This version of the software development suite now supports Windows 8 and Mountain Lion for the Mac. This version does not include the ability to develop mobile apps, but it will come later, which will allow users to develop apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad) and for Android devices.

I am looking forward to having a closer look at XE3 in the near future.

Here is a link to the preview site
RAD Studio XE3

Open plan offices are bad for software development

I work as a software developer and last year I moved job to an open plan office, which I thought was a good idea as I suffer from claustrophobia and did not like working in my previous office as it was completely enclosed with no outside windows, which cause some anxiety. Since I have moved to the open plan office there are some advantages and some disadvantages, particulally relating to my job role.

Advantages
1) The main advantage of my current office is that it has windows and a nice view.

2) It is easy to see if someone is in, although with using MS Lync you know if someone is available to talk.

3) More people on the same floor space. Putting separation between offices and corridors takes up more floor space.

4) Easier to change office layout. It makes it easier to move desks to a different configuration.

5) Can be an advantage if the manager is also in the ofice, they get a better feeling of how the office and staff are operting rather than being in their own office.

Disadvantages
1) The main disadvantage is the amount of noise, being a software developer you need to be able to concerntrate for long periods of time, up to 30 minutes if you are working on something complex. Constaint noise and people talking and even shouting causes breaks in concentration. This means a reduction in efficiency and a more likelihood of errors to occur. 

2) Air conditioning causes confrontation between employees. People do like different conditions and temperatures, air conditioning is difficult to get right when there are only a couple of people in the room, but when there are over 30 there is more chance that someone will what it cold and some want it warm. 

3) Lighting is similar to air conditioning, some people like it bright and some light it dark. 

4) Less wall space, means you have less area to hang white boards and information. Currently where I work my team are in the centre of the office and have a very small area at one end (1.5m wide) to hang information on projects. 

5) Video conference and calls are harder work because of the surrounding noise. 

I conclusion open plan offices may work for certain industries and types of work, but I do not believe they are a productive environment for software development.

Excel 2007 problem printing fix

Recently I have had problems printing spreadsheets from MS Excel 2007, the print preview worked fine but when the spreadsheet was printed out parts of the document were missing. After some research I found the problem was due to a Windows update (KB2596596). Removing this update fixed the problem.

PS3 Getting 3D working with TV

I recently got a Sony PlayStation 3 and was impressed with the picture on my Samsung TV while playing some games, I also received Tron 3D on Blu-Ray, when I tried to view this it said it was not connected to a 3D TV, but it was. The solution after looking on the net was that the cable that ships with the PS3 is not the correct one for 3D TVs, you will need to purchase a special HDMI cable designed for 3D TVs, I would recommend this as it also improves the picture quality of normal viewing. Expect to pay around £40 ($60) for a good cable. I have seen the Sony HDMI cable for sale at £20 from Sainsbury supermarkets.