Travel Adaptor

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Rob

Over the past few weeks I’ve been back and forth to Dallas, Amsterdam, London, Brussels and a trip to Hungary too and for each trip I’ve carried at least two adaptors or chargers. But that’s all about to change I’ve switched my trusty adaptor for a new adaptor like href=”http://images.maplin.co.uk/300/N16HW.jpg”>this one. It has the various european and US plugs plus crucial 2 USB sockets which allows me to charge both a phone and an iPad at the same time. So no more multiple adaptors just one from now on. Plus the adaptor has a blue light on it, which is great for testing which socket is live in airport lounges, no longer do you need to plug a phone/laptop in aswel, but just the adaptor itself.

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still no LoveFilm on Boxee

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Rob

We’ve had the Boxee for over a year now and it’s had it’s issue in use, which included the old wireless router not able to stream data fast enough and needing to be replaced with a new Wireless N router.

But now it”s connected to this new network it’s been flawless. iPlayer works like a dream on it and 4OD also works via the browser pretty well as well. So time-shifting TV is pretty easy and reliable now, which is great.

But what’s not working so well is the films, streaming them from the USB HD connected to the router works fine, but it’s the hassle of getting the disks there in the first place is the problem. Ripping some of my DVD’s has been easy, some have had their chapters muddled up in some attempt to prevent copying and others refused to rip at all.

So this is where LoveFilm streaming comes in, I currently have a LoveFilm account and get 2 DVD’s a month, but would happily swap it for streaming on demand to the Boxee and cut out the ripping.

There’s various upsides to a streaming service too, no more back ups, no more worrying about how long the USB HD will last. Music has already reached this position with Spotify which is on Boxee, I wonder when Boxee will get it fixed?

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it’s been a while

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Rob

i noticed that i hadn’t blogged for a few months, it dawned on me as to why, I had an iPad, I stopped producing and started to consume more.

so I just got a Logitech Zagg keyboard and it’s all changed, what a great device, small, acts as a case and has a superb keyboard

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Installed jetpack

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Rob

I just installed Jetpack onto my blog, it consolidates a few plugins into one which is nice

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Desk of the Day

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Rob

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A while back I used to take ‘desk of the day’ photo’s capturing all the different desks and different locations I got to work out of, I stopped for a while but I’ve not started visiting some interesting place again, this was my desk on Friday the 20th of May whilst at GE’s AMSTC in Michigan

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To do lists and Toodledo

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Rob

For the last few years I used Remember The Milk (RTM) to track my personal to-do lists, but found the annual subscription a little too high. So I looked for an alternative and Toodledo (http://www.toodledo.com/) is it.

Firstly, it’s a crap name, it sounds like some kids game, but putting that aside it’s a neat service and the key part is there’s app that sync to the web service for the iPad, Android devices and Blackberry too.

I just bought Taskjot (http://www.taskjot.com/) for my Blackberry to get my to-do’s on it and it works a treat, so all the pieces are there for me to run and have access to all my up to date actions on pretty much any device.

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New Job, New Company

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Rob

I start a new Job tomorrow (28th), I’ve left Orange Business and I’ve joined GE. It’s Telecoms sourcing still but I’m extremely excited to be joining such a huge and dynamic business.

I’ll need to update the about me page, Linkedin etc etc, but when I get a little more time.

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Tweet a pub service for ch100pub?

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Rob

just had an idea, could you develop a service whereby if someone tweeted in Chester with the hash #ch100pub and location switched on “wanted pub 5/10 with music and real ale” it returned a tweet with with the nearest pub meeting that criteria?

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100 Pubs in Chester

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Rob

Following on from last years 40 beers for 40 years, I’ve got a new challange for 2011 and beyond, visit pretty much every pub in Chester and record it here http://100pubsinchester.wordpress.com/

I’ve lived in Chester for over 13 years now and I’ve probably been to about 20 something different pubs in all that time, so it was about time that changed.

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Mobile Boarding Passes

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Rob

The ability to check in before you get to the airport is awesome, it saves so much time and speeds up getting through to the get hugely. Printing off a boarding pass at home is pretty straight forward, but the problem comes when you can’t yet check in for the return leg. You can only check in 24hrs before and that usually means checking in whilst your travelling. That’s OK if your in an office with a printer say your own company for example, but if it’s someone else’s office you’ve got to print to PDF transfer it to a USB memory stick and beg someone to print it out a right hassle.

Now, forget the printing, just have the boarding pass emailed to your smartphone. My recent trip with KLM to Vienna was mobile boarding pass enabled and made checking in at home and whilst travelling a breeze. No more thinking how am I going to get this printed or how much extra time will I need to leave to queue up at those self service machines, it’s just in your inbox.

If you get a chance to try it, I recommend it as it works great. Out of the 4 flights I made last week, 1 flight attendent grabbed my phone and scanned it, but most just asked me to place it on the scanner my self. The security guys at the scanners just wanted to check the date so there was no issue their either.

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80% of IT Organizations to support tablets by 2013

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Rob

Gartner has published it’s report – Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2011 and Beyond – and in there is that by 2013, 80% of business will support a workforce using tablets.

By 2013, 80 percent of businesses will support a workforce using tablets.
The Apple iPad is the first of what promises to be a huge wave of media tablets focused largely on content consumption, and to some extent communications, rather than content creation, with fewer features and less processing power than traditional PCs and notebooks or pen-centric tablet PCs. Support requirements for media tablets will vary across and within enterprises depending on usage scenario. At minimum, in cases where employees are bringing their own devices for convenience, enterprises will have to offer appliance-level support with a limited level of network connectivity (which will likely include access to enterprise mail and calendaring) and help desk support for connectivity issues.

That’s a pretty big number of business supporting devices such as the iPad in just over 2 years. We knew the iPad and tablets would make it into the business world, but Gartner’s confident numbers back that up.

Also posted at Orange Business Live

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apple is in the enterprise

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Rob

The need for IT support within the Enterprise is an interesting topic as some people believe that as more tech aware employees (Gen Y?) enter the workforce the need for IT support will shrink. We’ve all ready read about how the voice strategy is influenced by the users, but it’s now becoming clear that users are setting the agenda for mobile handset choice too.

If you step back a few years a corporate handset was a pretty basic Nokia handset (remember the 6310i) that was pretty much on a par with what consumers bought as well (I remember having two 6310i’s).

Now there’s a huge choice in the consumer space with devices such as the iPhone 4 and the HTC Desire which are very high spec devices. So when an employer hands over a blackberry curve or a Nokia E72 a lot of employees struggle with why they should use for a large portion of the day a device that is inferior to their own.

These high spec smart phones are capable of performing all the same tasks as the blackberry and they are at a price point were consumer adoption is high so the users flip the simcards around and bingo they are now able to use the handset they want in the Enterprise.

There’s two interesting elements to this, Apple is forging ahead almost by stealth into the enterprise without even trying and secondly it’s continuing the trend that we are now seeing that IT services and now hardware is heavily influenced by it’s users.

As I’m writing this news comes in that Apple may be moving on from the stealth approach, Apple is rumored to be poaching Enterprise Sales staff from RIM, makers of the Blackberry.

Also posted at Orange Business Live

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ipad in the enterprise part 2

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Rob

I wrote a little while back about Apple’s expected success with iPad in the consumer space and I asked the question if it’d march into the enterprise as well.

The answer is yes; I for one have one and wrote this post on it using wiriting tool such as plaintext to write the post, which then syncs withdropbox which allows me to access my documents from the cloud.

I know of at least 5 other people with them in a reasonable sized office, which isn’t a huge amount, but we never saw the same traction with netbooks in the enterprise which was the last big change in computing.

The reason people are giving for adopting them is for when they travel, the MS Exchange capabilities allows them to read and reply to email on a decent sized screen with a battery life that’s way beyond any laptop. The upside is the same device allows users to read, listen to music or watch movies too.

Also posted at Orange Business Live

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why does the skype generation accept a lower quality of voice?

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Rob

It’s an interesting paradox; Skype offers a pretty amazing level of call quality, which is the reason why it’s often used in recording Podcasts. An example being the TWiT network, Leo Leporte uses Skype to conference in his guests and the quality is great.

I’ve seen the phrase used a coupe of times now, but most recently to justify lower investment in voice infrastructure. The generation that uses Skype is also the generation that has grown up using mobile phones as their main form of communication. The call quality can be a bit shaky due to a myriad of reasons, but people have accepted the convience in substitution of quality.

Having tried Jajah, Rebtel, Skype, Truphone, services that use the internet as the voice backbone, I can say that about 80% of the time the call quality is really good, but there’s 20% of the time the quality is horrific, delays, calling dropping, strange noises etc. Compare this to traditional voice where you knew when you picked up the phone it was going to work 100% of the time, (even in a power outage).

Today we have lots of different ways of communicating, IM, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, email (through a variety of devices), so if voice doesn’t work a quick SMS, email or Tweet often get’s the message across. So we accept lower quality voice because there are other forms of communication not just voice.

So the Skype generation is in fact very communications savvy, they have lots of communications tools and have lowered the cost to almost free. What we’ve learnt here is that as predicted the IT strategy of anEnterprise is becoming heavily influenced by the users, as they bring with them products and services that work for them.

Also posted at Orange Business Live

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40 for 40…just 5 to go

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Rob

My last post was on my 40 different real ales this the year of my 40th birthday. I’d managed 30 up until a few days ago and then over the last fortnight I’ve managed 5 more..

  1. ?Eastgate Ale. Weetwood Brewey (a Cheshire business)
  2. Ossett Brewery Pale Gold
  3. Beartown kodiak gold
  4. Wrinkle brewery lord lucan
  5. Rebellion Smuggler (4.1% ABV), The Marlow Brewery

The fifth beer was at Heston’s Hinds Head in Bray on Tuesday evening, considering were it was poured it wasn’t the best of the bunch. So just short of two weeks left to go and it should be a breeze now, hopefully can leave just 1 to go for my actual birthday.

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