Archive for the 'Internet' Category

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When WiFi meets with SD Memory: Eye-fi

Published on Tuesday, May 2, 2006 in Internet, Noteworthy, PC, Technology and Wireless. Closed

eyefi

This is a really great idea. I wonder why no-one ever thought of it before. The idea is it occupies a standard SD/MMC slot and is the same size. As well as having a 1GB capacity, it also has a 802.11g WiFi chip embedded into it. This means no extra attachements for that Treo or other PDA. I really like the Treo 700w because I prefer Windows Mobile over Palm OS (I find it nicer, and it has more apps), however the no WiFi was a problem. This is a very good, and cheap solution at $100. I would definitely buy something like this if it ever came out (saves the WiFi CF card in my Axim X5). But we probably wouldn’t see it in the UK.
Another use of this is to wirelessly transfer our photos from your digicam to your PC or upload it to a server or service (such as Flickr or TextAmerica). However, I think that would be harder to implement as camera manufacturers would need to already have menus/support for it, which could be a problem.

Xbox Live service down on May 2

Published on Monday, May 1, 2006 in Gaming, Internet, Microsoft, Noteworthy, Software and Technology. Closed

xbox live logo Xbox Live will be down for 2 to 24 hours tomorrow (May 2). Microsoft didn’t exactly broadcast this, so I’m sure there will be some pretty annoyed people. However Xbox 360 Fanboy reader Clayj called Xbox Live customer support the other day and received an automated announcement that said that Xbox Live service will be down on May 2 for maintenance updates, including another Dashboard update. Apparently the voice message isn’t on the line anymore (I called the UK Xbox Support and nothing was mentioned at all), but if you hold and talk to a support staff they can confirm it. Though they can’t tell you much about what the update will involve, and nor can Xbox website.

Stream iTunes to your PSP

Published on Tuesday, April 18, 2006 in Apple, Internet, Podcasting, Shorts, Software, Technology and Wireless. 1 Comment

Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a very popular device and has sold a few million units, but when compared to Apple’s iPod, the PSP lacks storage space. Luckily, the PSP has a built in WiFi card to make up for this disadvantage. With a few simple steps, all of which are included in this tutorial, anyone can stream any non-copyright music from their iTunes library to their PSP.

The 5-Step Setup Procedure:
1) Download iTunes-PSP-Server.exe and save it to your desktop.
2) Disable any firewalls and/or keep port 8080 open.
3) Launch iTunes and then click on the iTunes-PSP-Server after.
4) In IE/Firefox open the page “http://localhost:8080″
5) Setup is complete if an “iTunes RSS Server” page appeared.

Got any tips or ideas for the site?

Published on Monday, April 17, 2006 in General, Internet and Technology. 5 Comments

I’ve been experimenting with the design of the blog and I want some of your ideas / tips. Anything small to big I would love as I am looking for a unique design (which I don’t think it quite resembles yet). I’m not much of a designer, at all, so anything to freshen up the site would be really helpfull

So, got any ideas? Then leave a message in the comments, or send me a note using the contact form.

Thanks!

Apple to exploit tax loophole for UK iTunes Music Store

Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 in Apple, Internet, Software and Technology. 3 Comments

itunes logo

Here in the UK, we really do get ripped off. For everything we buy we get charged an extra 17.5% for the VAT (value added tax). So what does this pay for? All sorts of government things such as health care, etc. But for electronics goods, the price does increase a lot, that is why we pay around ⅔ extra than you US folk.
So good old Apple discovered a loophole in the tax law, that allows them to avoid paying the extra 17.5% VAT on sales in the iTunes Music Store (for the UK).

Over the past two years Tesco, Asda, Britannia, HMV, Amazon and Woolworths have all set up delivery operations in the Channel Islands to exploit a law which allows retailers outside the European Union to sell goods worth less than [£17, which is roughly US$30] to UK consumers free from VAT.

This means that we would have to pay 12p less for songs (67p down from 79p). That is around $0.23 per song. Considering the fact that we already pay $1.34 for a song, $0.35 more than the Americans do, I’m sure that there are many people who would welcome this change. “Apple confirmed that it is looking at setting up a similar operation on Guernsey,” so that’s it then? Well it looks like the government has realised what has been happening:

The Government is becoming increasingly concerned by the amount of tax being avoided by these operations. Treasury officials believe the practice will soon cost the Government up to £200m a year. Nick Goulding, the chief executive of the Forum for Private Business, said: “This is more evidence of the urgent need for Gordon Brown to end this cynical tax dodge.“

Damn, it always seems to good to be true. All we can do is pray and hope that Apple can help us, and that the government won’t take much action.

UPDATE: It seems that this story is quite old, and Apple had denied it back in January. Sorry for this, but I had no idea. It looks like the government did screw us over! [link]

Firefox goes Universal

Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 in Apple, Internet, Shorts, Software and Technology. Closed

I know that many Intel Mac Firefox lovers have been dying for a Universal version of Firefox. Firefox is a great browser, but on the Mac, I think it is just too slow, so I use Safari. On the Intel Macs it would have been even worse, because of Firefox haveing to use Rosetta. But no fear, as of version 1.5.0.2, Firefox is now Universal. Go on and grab the latest version.

Hacking Google Analytics…

Published on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 in Internet, Noteworthy, Shorts and Technology. Closed

Most of you will have at least one friend who is obsessed with the web stats program. That may very well be me. If you want to have some fun with said friend, read on.
It turns out that someone had copied the source code of my Google Maps housing project and was hosting it on their own website, but forgot to remove my Analytics references. Whenever someone hit the page on their site, it would thus register as a hit in my analytics.
But what really interested me was how easily you could scew a websites statistics by simply adding a couple lines of javascript to the source code of your own site. If your website generated enough traffic, you could effectively render a target websites Analytics meaningless.
Want to scew the statistics of a friends website, how about a competitor? Look up their source code, plug it into your website header and laugh. But don’t worry you could run multiple accounts, and hit them both on each page. That way you can keep your stats flowing just like normal.

Even Microsoft Designers Have Problem with IE

Published on Thursday, March 30, 2006 in Internet, Microsoft, Shorts, Technology and Web 2.0. Closed

Microsoft Connect, home of Microsoft’s betas including Vista has some interesting CSS values. The first line in the .css is commented “fix for the IE 1px-off margin error”, followed by a value called “.StupidIEMarginHack “. [digg]

Try out Google’s new search interface (hack!)

Published on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 in Internet, Noteworthy, Shorts, Software, Technology and Web 2.0. Closed

Awhile back I posted about the new search results interface Google was supposedly testing. I can definitely confirm that today. This blog post describes how to set a new cookie in Firefox that will force Google to display the new results page for you. Since the instructions are a little off (and took me some fiddling to make them to work), here’s my version:[...] In the comments reader Whosawhatsis has posted an easier way to accomplish the same thing without installing any extensions. Try that first. [Download Squad]

Worked for me (in Safari and Firefox)!

OS X on an Intel Box – My Story

Published on Saturday, March 18, 2006 in Apple, Internet, Noteworthy, PC, Software and Technology. 4 Comments

I have been playing around with various Bittorrent clients on my Mac mini and I just happened to cross an OS X x86 installation. So it completed the full download this morning as an ISO file. Since my mac mini doesn’t have a SuperDrive I couldn’t burn the iso directly. I tried to put it onto an external Firewire drive I had but that FAT32 formatted so it can’t accept the ISO (as the file is bigger than 2GB). So I used StuffIt to compress the ISO and break it into parts, which was then re-assembled in Windows. In Windows Nero was used to burn the ISO (took around 15 mins) onto a blank DVD-R. I used Partition Magic to clean the drive (separate drive than Windows, an old 10GB drive) that I wanted to install OS X onto. I then used the DVD to boot up, and partioned the drive for HFS+ (Journalised) so that OS X can be installed. It took roughly 40mins to install the whole OS with hacks. I was surprised at how fast it was.
After all the installation and configuring I started up OS X for the first time. It booted up without any problems, and I saw the desktop on an Intel machine for the very first time. There are minor problems/glitches. All the parts in the Sony PC that I tested it out on is recognised, apart from the D-Link PCI Wi-Fi card I have in it. This means that there is no internet! How annoying! I spent a long time trying to get it to work but nada. So I posted a topic on the OSX86.org forums and I hope someone could help me. The other ‘problem’ is a visual artefact on the screen, sometimes a part of the screen shows something that has moved or was there before. This can be fixed by moving a window or something over it, but it is annoying. Apparently it is a reported error that numerous people are having (I don’t think it’s my graphics card, an AGP ATI Radeon 9600XT as it is working fine) so I’m not sure. Anyway the whole system is pretty fast, all the universal apps and the dashboard start up nearly instantly. Read on for specs of the system and image(s).
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