How Virgin Media could save customers money instead of increasing prices

Virgin media have just announced a price increase from February of 7%, this is way above the 2.2% inflation rate in the UK. I am not a Virgin Media customer and have no intention of becoming one, mainly because they are expensive and the people I know who use them do not recommend them.

They could however save a ton of money by not sending out massive promotional packs in A4 size envelopes packed with information that goes straight in the bin. I would have thought a company like Virgin would have been more innovative with how it does its marketing rather than sending huge amounts of junk mail. Come on Virgin and do something new to attract customers.

How is Twitter going to make money to justify its high share price

Twitter went public the other day with is price gaining just over 72% on the first day, the second it dropped about 7%, but is still 50 times the value of its sales. That means that Twitter has to have huge growth and increase in sales to justify this current share price, or what will most likely happen in the sorter term is the share price will fall, leaving some investors out of pocket.

Twitter should look at how it can increase turnover and usage, to justify the share value. A lot of people I know have tried twitter and have not got on with it and don't understand it, I can see there point of view and I only use twitter to tweet articles that I like. Maybe they need to promote twitter and make people realise it is not just for following people you know and minor celebs, but could be for following music bands or companies that give useful information. On that point I do find the problem with twitter is the amount of rubbish tweets that appear, maybe there should be a way to filter out tweets and only receive tweets other users have found useful by a rating method.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years with how twitter changes to make money and whether people will keep using it.

Why is Google Nexus 5 an LG phone?

The new Google Nexus 5 is due to be released soon, but why is LG making the phone when Google own Motorola. It sounds like Motorola are planning to also release a new phone, that will allow users to customise the phone by adding different components like cameras and keyboards. This sounds like an exciting development and look forward to see how this Lego smart phone will work. But it does seem a bit strange that Google is using LG to make their new phone, it could relate to resources and that Motorola currently cannot produce a phone to the quantities that Google would like, or maybe Google has a contract with LG for making the new Nexus 5.

Has the cloud really caught on

I have just been thinking about new technologies and what a few years ago was going to be the next big thing, the cloud. It seems that everyone has heard of it and most individuals and businesses have looked at what it offers, but few people have really embraced it.

From an individuals perspective I use dropbox and google for some online storage, but I have not moved all my data to the cloud and don't feel the need to. Part of me likes the idea that I own my data and have it close to me, and that if I lose the connection to the net I still can use programs and have all my photos and videos. Another problem with the cloud is not the cheap option, it can cost over £5 a month to store a reasonable amount of data, compared to an external 1TB hard drive that I can buy for less than £60.

From a business perspective it is also too expensive at the moment and you certainly need to have confidence in the hosting company. I do however think more and more companies will move to hosted services and that the price will start to come down.

In conclusion I don't think cloud storage has caught on the way people first thought, however over time with the amount you can store going up and the price coming down, more people and businesses will move in the online storage direction.

Owning a Nexus 4 after 6 months

I have now had my Nexus 4 for over 6 months, when I first received it I was impressed with what you got for the money. But here are some points about it after owning one:

1. It sometimes switches itself off when there is loads of power and to switch it back on you need to connect it to a charger.
2. Battery life has improved over time, this might relate to switching NFC off and the latest update of Android.
3. Updating Apps sometimes removes them from the main screen and you have to add them back, this might be an Android problem.
4. After updating some apps the icon gets removed and you have to remove the app from the front screen and add it back in. Possibly another Android problem.
5. Android is not as nice to use a iOS. 

Energizer leaking batteries - Hopefully in the future a thing of the past

I put some Energizer batteries into my sons toy car about 3 months ago, there is still charge and the toy was still working when I noticed a clear liquid coming from the battery compartment. Here are the pictures after opening the battery compartment.

As you can see 1 battery is clearly leaking, which I sure would be very harmful to my young son, or any child. I feel let down by this brand named company, and thought I was buying a safe quality product. Anyway I will not be buying these batteries again, and would advise not purchasing them until they sort out their safety problems.

Hopefully the future of batteries means that these sort of things never happens again, but I am not sure if this will be possible. It sounds like carbon nanotube batteries are the future, but they still contain acid, so how can they remove the risk? I am not sure, maybe the housing of the battery needs improving, also could improvements be made to the product that requires the batteries? I am not sure, but think it needs to be made a priority by the manufacturers to stop this sort of thing happening.

Parallels Desktop Review

I have had a iMac for a few months now and I love it. I moved over from a Windows XP PC with no problems, apart from one. I needed to access my work PC remotely using RDP, but I could not get it to work, when I worked for a previous company it worked fine without any problems, but after doing some research and contacting the people in-charge of our network I found out that they do not allow Macs to RDP on our network. The solution to this problem was to use a Windows VM (virtual machine) on the Mac.

I bought my iMac with a copy of Parallels Desktop because I thought I might need it and I had some software that would only run in Windows. I installed a copy of Windows XP and could RDP to my work PC without any problems. I found it really easy to setup and run, and it runs so much faster than my previous PC, this is partly thanks to the iMacs higher spec, but I run a Windows XP VM on my Windows 7 work PC which has a similar spec and it is over 10 times slower (Sophos could be the cause).

Here is a list of features I really like (Pros)

• Quick to start up and shutdown (seconds not minutes)
• Coherence allows you to run Windows applications in the Mac desktop, I generally do not use this, but it is a nice feature.
• Windows icon in Mac dock which lists Windows applications to run, basically the Windows Start menu program list.
• Multiple VMs.
• Specify the number of CPUs and amount of memory to use (RAM), I have it set to a single CPU and 1GB of memory.
• Loads of settings which I need to explore further.

Usually when I review something I put the Pros and Cons, with this software I have not found any at the moment. This is a great piece of software and makes the jump from Windows to iOS a lot easier and more gradual. You can have all the software you are use to on the virtual machine and as you get more comfortable with iOS, gradual move over.

Nexus 4 switches itself off

I own a Google Nexus 4, which is a great Android phone for the price, but recently I have had problems with the phone switching it self off and then finding that I cannot switch it on again. I have found 2 solutions to this problem.

1) Plug the phone into the charger and then try switching it on, even though the phone had loads of charge this seemed to work.

2) More recently I held the on switch on, and nothing happened, then I touched where the home button would be, then tried switching it on again and it started up fine.

Death of Windows?

I have been using and developing software for Microsoft Windows for over 15 years now and have been a fan until the last couple of years. It seems Microsoft keeps making basic bad decisions in the way their software works and the latest offering is Windows 8, which is confusing and chaotic and shows they need to make some better decisions in the future to survive. Here are some reason why I think Windows is a dying operating system, after using it for a very short period.  

• It's feels like an incarnation of the previous version, with more features, but not as user friendly.
• The way you use it seems confusing with options to run in 2 different ways depending on what you are doing.
• The new design does not wow and is pretty boring, I did not like using it and it is not intuitive enough. It seems to also seems to break some UX design rules, including hidden controls, ugly icons and everything is very boxy and flat.
• Search is still slow, Microsoft really needs to sort this out, iOS is far better and easier to use.
• From using it for a short time it made me feel that I should stick to Windows 7. 
• Messages are sometimes unfriendly, condescending  and techie. 

I think it is a case that in the future Microsoft will see that Windows 8 was a bit like ME and Vista and will need to get it right with Windows 9. These are the features that I think are required in the next version of Windows.

• Improve startup and shutdown times.
• Get rid of the 2 personalities of Windows 8 and Windows 7 desktop, and make it feel like a single OS.
• Don't hide features and expect users to explore to find hidden treasures, it's not a game.
• Get the search working properly so its quick, easy and finds the results, look at how Google and Apple do it.
• Needs to be more intuitive.
• Make it more innovative and include support for future technologies like Kinect, 3D and voice recognition.

Microsoft is in a difficult position at the moment with not just Windows, but their Office suite and their new XBox looking like it might be overtaken by the PlayStation 4, which from the specs is a superior games machine. I think they will need to have a good look at themselves, their competitors and the market place and come up with some great new products to survive, and there is a good chance they will.

How to insert a horizontal line in MS Word

I'm not a great fan of Microsoft Word, over the years it has become too busy and harder to find the feature or option you are looking for. A good example of this poor design is how to add a horizontal line, here are the steps for Word 2007, it is similar in other versions I have used.

1. Select the 'Page Layout' tab page along the top.
2. Click on the 'Page Borders' button.
3. In the bottom left corner there is a button to add a 'Horizontal Line'. Highlighted on the image with a red box.

This seems a strange place to put this feature and I think it should go in another area of the software.

Delphi XE4 - The future of software development?

I have been working in software development for 15 years and have seen some changes, but nothing as much as what has happened recently. Over the past few years we have seen the explosion of Apps onto our smart phones, tablet computers, Smart TVs and more choices when it comes to operating systems. With all these new devices with varied screen sizes, different interfaces and different operating systems does software development have to change?

Firstly it depends on the type of software you want to develop, if you are developing traditional desktop applications then the current suite of languages and environments works well. But if you foresee that in the future you want to develop for other platforms and devices what options do you have. Here is a list of possible options all most likely require developing the business logic in a web service, depending on what software is being written.

• Develop the apps in native code for each type of device, for example xCode for iOS.
• HTML5, produce the app like a web site.
• Embarcadero Delphi XE4, allows you to develop for both and deploy natively.

From these options it depends on the business which one is chosen, recently Facebook has been open in its development of a mobile App and said it tried HTML5 and failed to deliver a suitable one, and now believes in developing in native code. HTML5 does however seem like a good solution from a cost perspective, developing for each mobile platform requires more resources, time and management. 

The ultimate software development solution in my mine would be to combine the advantages of both, and develop in the same IDE, but deploy to multiple devices natively. Embarcadero's Delphi XE4 from what I have seen so far seems to be getting close to this. I have seen demos of developing iOS Apps on a Mac in a Windows environment, which can then be built and run on the Mac and deployed to an iOS device. This also means you can develop standard Windows software and web services in the same IDE, so all the code is done in the same development environment.

One issue with Delphi is that there are not many developers using it, but this is not that much of a problem seeing as it is very similar to C#, and I manage to switch between the 2 fine. So anyone who is competent in C# or another similar OO language should pick it up fairly quickly.

One downside of Delphi is the price, it is more expensive than other options, but taking into account cost savings of time and resources it most likely will recoupe this cost fairly quickly.

I have not yet started using Delphi XE4, so cannot give a full review of it, but at this moment it looks like a very exciting product that shows where software development needs to go. I will keep this blog up to date with more news of Delphi XE4.    

Switch keyboard from USA to UK

Just found why sometimes my keyboard switches between UK and USA, for example the # key becomes \ and " becomes @. I found that in the advanced keyboard options it was set as a hot key.

Pressing left ALT + Shift switches between the 2 keyboard settings.

Outlook.com delete inbox messages

Just went into my Outlook.com account, which had about 17 pages of messages in my Inbox, I then deleted a few messages (approx 5) and all of a sudden I noticed that the number of pages had gone down to 3!!!

After looking into it the all messages have been put in a sub folder off the deleted directory called POP. I do not know why this has been done, but I think it might relate to the rubbish Outlook.com app on my Android phone. Lately Microsoft just keep causing me problems.

Google Glass - Would you speak to someone wearing them

There has been a lot of talk recently about Google Glass, the glasses you can interact with the web, record photos and video and possibly lots of other stuff. Here are some of my initial thoughts on this new product.

• How comfortable are they to fit over my current glasses.
• What are the benefits over using my phone.
• Does any images or messages get in the way of reality, could this cause problems for example while driving.
• If someone is wearing a pair, how would you feel speaking to them, knowing that they are recording you.

These are my first thoughts, it will be interesting to see what happens when people start using them.

Outlook.com Android App Needs Fixing

I've updated my apps on my Nexus 4 phone and it removed the Hotmail app and updated it to the Outlook.com app. This was a big mistake, here are the reasons why this app is so awful.

• The font size from where the email came from is to large, this needs to be a setting.
• The background is white, with Hotmail it was black and looked better, this also needs to be a setting.
• Sent a single email to myself, 1 appear as expected on the web site, but I received 2 on the phone.
• Email from the app does not include the message signature.

Overall this app is very simple and does not feel as if it has been finished, Microsoft really should have done more testing and finished it before sending it out. I think it needs far more settings to enable the user to customise the look and feel. Poor show again Microsoft, please fix this app ASAP.

iPhone Sofa - Terrible idea?

I recently saw that a furniture company had manufactured a sofa that included an iPhone dock and speakers. This is an example of someone or a group of people desperately trying to think of something new, here are some reasons why this is an awful idea.

• Sofa space is taken up by a rather large dock.
• Speakers cannot be move to the best place in the room.
• It is fixed to a specific phone so if you change your phone you will need to change your sofa or have a redundant dock.
• It's not the future, surely the best solution is to control your music from holding the phone and not having to plug it into anything. This means the only use for the sofa apart from sitting on it, is as a charger for your phone.

The more I think about it the more I think it is a ridiculous idea, will be interesting to see what the next thing they do is, to try to sell a sofa.

How to unprotect an Excel workbook

I have an Excel workbook which is protected by a password, so that when you try to open it in MS Excel it requires a password. I needed to transfer this file so it was an Apple Numbers file. Numbers cannot open Excel files that have password protection, so I needed to find a way to unprotect the document open it in Numbers and then save the document as a new Numbers file.

The help in Excel did not give me a solution, but eventually I worked out how it is done, and it is not a case of removing the password protection, here is how to do it.

1) Open the Excel file and enter the password.
2) Click 'Save As' to open the save as dialog.
3) In the bottom left hand corner click on the 'Tools' button.
4) Select 'General Options'
5) This will open a password dialog which will allow you to remove the password and save the file.

This solution makes sense and that once you have added a password on a file the only way of removing it is to save it as another file with the password removed.

Top Free Android Apps

I have been using my Nexus 4 phone for 3 months now, below is my list of my favourite free Android Apps, I have excluded the usual Facebook, Twitter and BBC News apps.

1. Hotmail - View emails, I prefer this app over Google mail.
2. IMDB - I use this app more than I thought, contains loads on info on any movie.
3. Autotrader - View cars for sale
4. Rightmove - Useful app if looking for property
5. Wikipedia - Everyone knows this one.
6. Nectar - View your balance and subscribe to special offers
7. Task List - List of jobs and tasks that can be separated into different sesctions
8. Real Racing 3 - great racing sim

Broadband speed tests between Apple and Windows

The IPS I use at the moment is BT Infinity, which sells itself as a high speed broadband supplier. I thought recently I would try to check what speed I was getting

Below are some results of speed checking web sites. I concentrated on just the download speeds and on both iOS and Windows I used Google Chrome as the browser.

Speedtest.net
Apple - 37 mbps
Windows XP - 3.19 mbps
Android App - 14 mbps

BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk
Apple - 34 mbps
Windows XP - 3.38 mbps

I was surprised to see such a difference in the results. The results are the best I could archive and are not the average, but you can see a clear difference between Apple and Windows. I tried the speed tests on 2 different Windows XP machines and got similar results, so concluded at the time that it was not the hardware.

The following day, I looked at just using my Mac with a Windows virtual machine installed, here are the results:


Speedtest.net
Apple - 19.8 mbps
Windows - 17.8 mbps

BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk
Apple - 13.5 mbps
Windows - 5.9 mbps


You can see that the following day the speed was generally less, this could be the time of day and other factors, but these results are using the same hardware, just different operating systems to run the browser. Speedtest.net web site does seem to get very similar results, which would hint that different hardware (same router) could make a difference, but with BroadbandSpeedChecker it seems that different operating systems also make a difference.

In conclusion I think these speed testing web sites are a useful tool, however I am still not confident on how accurate they are and do not understand why Apple iOS gets such better results.

01792211844 Annoying calls to new phone

I recently bought a new phone (Nexus 4) and have not given out the details to anybody, except Apple. Today I received an annoying automated call informing me of money I could possibly be owed (PPI insurance most likely). This was obviously some sort of scam, but how did they get my number? There are 2 companies which I have allowed to know my number intentionally, which are Apple and of course my phone supplier Vodafone.

After looking into who might have my number, which now seems to be anyone, my conclusion if that my phone number has been retrieved from one of the apps I have downloaded recently. These apps can access my phone information and send it back to the company or individual, then they will sell it on. So these free apps from android can take information from your phone and sell it on.

Here is a list of possible suspects

• Lazors
• Flow free
• Real Racing 3
• Logo Quiz

It could be none of these, but somehow someone has got my new phone number and sold it on.

Screen Capture MAC

I use both Windows and Apple computers and I needed to find the best way to capture an area of the screen on my iMac. I thought I needed something like Cropper which I use in Windows, but have discovered iOS has it built in. Here are the following capture options I have discovered:

1. To capture an area of the desktop, press cmd+shift+4, this will give you a cross hair where you can select and area of the screen, this will save the image as a png file on the desktop.
2. To capture a application screen, press cmd+shift+4, to display the cross hair again, now hit the space bar and the icon will change to a camera and will select areas of the desktop.
3. To capture the whole desktop, press cmd+shift+3.

I thought this was great that Apple has included these features in iOS, I bet I will find some more useful features the more I use iOS.

How to Access Android files on Mac

I recently purchased a Nexus 4 phone, over the past couple of months I have been taking photos and video and wanted to transfer them to my iMac. I thought I would simply need to plug in the phone into the USB port and it would see the files, this is how it is done on Windows PC. At first I was a bit worried that because it was not Apple, and I had an awful feeling it would not work. But after doing some research all you need to do is download the Android File Transfer application, install it and you can see the files on your Nexus 4 phone.

Pomodoro technique using RicRac Stopwatch

As a software developer I have been looking at possible ways to increase productivity, recently I have spent a couple of days looking at the time management technique called Pomodoro. The basic process is to do increments of work which last for 25 minutes and then have a 5 minute break these are called pomodoros, then after 4 pomodoros you take a longer break of about 20 minutes. 

To do this I downloaded the RicRac Stopwatch, installed it and made a second copy by coping the directory, this then gave me 2 copies which I could have 2 different settings for, the first with a 25 minute countdown and the second with a 5 minute countdown. RicRac stopwatch worked well doing this, the issues I had was with the technique itself, my main criticism of the technique is that I work in an open plan office, and people constantly interrupt, which breaks the increments. For this technique to work I think I would need to be in a quite office or work from home.   

Nexus 4 battery problem

The other day my Google Nexus 4 phone had a battery charging problem. I put the phone on charge with 43% remaining and after a few hours maybe up to 5 the charge was only up to 45%. Taking it off charge and looking at the usage it dropped back down to 44% within a minute. I thought I was in trouble and there was a physical problem with the battery. The solution was to completely turn off the phone and switch it back on, then it started charging fine and I've had no problems since. The only thing I can think of that could have caused a problem is either the number of apps running or a specific app that causes a problem, will keep an eye on it.

The Nexus is not great when it comes to keeping its battery power and I have to charge mine on a daily basis. Here are some tips on improving the charge of the battery.

• Switch the NFC and Bluetooth off when you don't need it.
• Turn off App syncing when you don't need the App to be synced.
• I've chosen a dark background to try to reduce brightness.
• Apps that have the option to change the background colour I've set to black.
• Check the battery usage and see what areas could be improved.

Google Nexus 4 pros and cons

I recently purchased a new Google Nexus 4 phone, I had previously owned iPhones and even though I am a great fan of the iPhone, I decided to try something different and the price of the Nexus is £300 ($465) cheaper than the iPhone 5 costing just £250 compared with £550 for an iPhone. My first impression of the device was it was well built with curved glass edges, the speaker at the back is positioned in a funny place, the camera lens and flash are where you would expect them. There is no physical home button like the iPhone, but the home button is part of the display, which is actually better and I expect Apple will do something similar with the next iPhone..

The power supply for charging is via a micro USB, which is not as nice as the iPhone 5, but is more standard. I have found that the charge like the iPhone does not last that long and need to charge the phone almost everyday.

The Nexus 4 uses the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system, which runs very fast thanks to the quad core snapdragon CPU, and the 2GB of RAM, twice that of the iPhone 5.

The dimensions of the phone are 68.7 x 133.9 x 9.1mm making it larger and thicker than the iPhone and it feels slightly heavier, it has a 4.7 inch screen which fits very close to the edge of the device.

The main camera is 8 mega pixel which works OK, but some of the photos I have taken the result is a bit saturated and the contrast is not that good, it does however have HDR and panoramic options which do work well. There is also a 1.3 mega pixel front facing camera, which currently I have only used to unlock the phone with the great option of face recognition for unlocking.

Here are what I consider the Pros and Cons of the Nexus 4:

Pros

• Price is amazing and what you get for the money cannot be beaten.
• Well made phone which feels nice to use, I have already dropped it from about 5 ft and it survived fine.
• Elegant design with the glass edges curving and the edges having more grip.
• Very fast.
• Latest version of Android.

Cons

• Using headphones the max volume is still a bit to low, solution was to download so free software to boost the output.
• Battery life is short like other smart phones.
• No expandable memory.
• Copy and paste does not work as well as the iPhone.
• Not as intuitive to use as the iPhone.  

In conclusion I am very happy with the phone and at the price is an excellent product.

Canon Pancake Lens Review

A couple of months ago I got a Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Lens also know as a pancake lens due to its dimensions. It is a small lens which it designed for use as a video lens because of its silent motor (STM meaning stepping motor). The quality of the lens is good with the connection area being metal, instead of plastic on cheap lenses. It has a 40mm focus length which works well in both in-door and out-door situations. When videoing even though the lens it meant to be silent there is a slight noise.

The lens is very thin like a pancake and because of the dimension it easily fits into the camera bag. This is not a professional photographers review of the lens, but after using it for a couple of months I have found it a very useful lens, not just for taking video, but it produces some great photos which are clear and sharp. Because of the size and price, which is less than £200 it is a great little lens to own and would recommend it.

HTML5 Links

Below are some great HTML5 links I have found

Apples HTML5 page with links to some decent demos
http://www.apple.com/html5/

Mozilla developer network links to loads of HTML5 demos
https://demos.mozilla.org/en-US/

Googles HTML5 demo web site
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Loads of information and resources on HTML5
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/

Microsofts Internet Explorer demo page with some demos of HTML5
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

Examples of HTML5 features including some great resources
http://beta.theexpressiveweb.com/

Google search results error with AVG

While using Google search in the Chrome browser I received the following error message:
TypeError: Object #<Text> has no method 'getBoundingClientRect'

Clicking OK removed the message and allowed me to continue as normal, then I received the error message again a few moments later. I managed to find that the error would occur when moving the mouse cursor over particular adverts on the right hand side of the search results, I then realised that these adverts had an AVG related icon on the left of the title which when you hover over an AVG dialog would appear regarding the safety ratings. To fix the error I turned off the AVG safe search option in the 'Google Extensions' options.

Most popular browsers

I have just been looking at the stats for this blog and I was surprised to see which browser was the most popular. Here are the stats for the top 5.

1. Firefox 34%
2. Internet Explorer 24%
3. Chrome 16%
4. Safari 16%
5. Opera 3%

The reason why I was surprised is that years ago I used Firefox because it was a great alternative to IE, since then I found that IE caught up and then Chrome was released which I now consider the best browser for the Windows OS. I also used Opera for a short time and was impressed with some of the features included with the browser. The reason why I liked Chrome over IE, Firefox and Opera is that it runs really fast. I can see that Firefox users dislike IE and will eventually move over to Chrome and Chrome and Safari will become the top browsers.

LG OLED Super thin TV

LG have released the next generation of TVs with a 55 inch screen that is only 0.16 inch thick!!! OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode and is more efficient than existing LED/LCD TVs, but currently the new TV will cost over £6000 ($10,000), however it is predicted that costs will drop like previous technology and will become affordable by 2015. OLED is currently used in other devices with smaller screens like the Sony PS Vita. I imagine Samsung will release a similar model in the next few weeks.