The digital domain of Rick Curran
Well, I’ve previously posted my Second Life avatar here, but now thanks to The Simpsons Movie website you can create your own Simpson’s Movie Avatar.
This was the closest I could get to creating myself, there were no options for facial hair so it’s lacking that, plus I’m wearing shorts all the time at the moment! (I chose the ten pin bowling t-shirt option is because I won at bowling the other night!).
I just got a Nokia N95 today, I’m pretty stoked to get this phone especially as I got it for free, although on condition of an 18 month contract with Orange. I notice that Amazon list the N95 without sim card for £459 so I’m happy with the deal I got from Orange.
The phone is pretty slick, it’s a slider phone but it opens up both ways, one way for keyboard, the other for media player controls.
Although not quite as easy as simply rotating the device like the iPhone it is very easy to toggle from portrait to landscape view in most applications. This is especially good for web browsing I’ve found.
This is a rough list of features of the N95:
I’m beginning to play around with it so I’ll write some more once I’ve gotten into it. I’m interested to see how the still images and video footage works out, the little I’ve used them so far is indoors with fairly low-light conditions and it’s definitely an improvement over my old Nokia N80 for still images.
One thing I did notice is that it felt very responsive when navigating around the various applications. I read a few reviews of the N95 which criticised the N95 for being sluggish, I found the total opposite, maybe there was an earlier version of the firmware which didn’t work so well for the people who wrote these reviews. It’s certainly a lot better than any other Symbian based phone I’ve had.
One of the reasons I love the Symbian OS is the various applications that are available, not just commercial apps but various freeware / open source apps.
I’m going to have a good look for some interesting applications that really make use of all the hardware thats packed into the N95. One application I came across already is Movino:
Movino is a collection of applications for streaming and broadcasting live video from smartphones. The main applications are the following:
- A client for S60 smartphones
- A smartphone client for J2ME
- A gui application and a QuickTime component for OS X
- A video server for linux
- A drupal web front end
Basically it lets you use the phone as a webcam source for things like Skype chats etc. I’m going to have to try this on my G5 tower at work and see how it goes, it sounds pretty cool though.
I’ll write more once I’ve used it a bit more.
~Rick
In my recent post "Update on the ‘Four Mysteries of the Universe…" I highlighted the fact that 3 out of 4 ‘mysteries’ had been answered. Well, Apple answered mystery #2: AVCHD editing software today with the release of Final Cut Pro 6.0.1. The Final Cut Pro update page states:
New in Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 Update
Improves overall stability, resolves issues with long filenames on non-HFS systems, includes improvements for both FxPlug plug-ins and master templates. Log and Transfer support for the AVCHD format.
I think I can hear a collective sigh of relief from many Mac using purchasers of cameras such as Sony’s HDR-SR7 or HDR-SR1
So, go get your wallets out and buy Final Cut Studio Pro 2 and get editing that AVCHD source footage!
~Rick
Here’s some handy tips if you ever have to prepare presentations or documents at work:
http://bancomicsans.com/statistics.html
~Rick
This post is not about a certain mobile phone that comes out this week, although I have to admit that I would be very interested in getting one if it was being released in the UK as well.
I needed to use track and trace for a Western Digital NAS hard drive that I was getting swapped for a standard desktop version (due to it being sslloowweerr than a snail stuck in molasses). I tried using the website but the tracking code wouldn’t work either on Royal Mail or ParcelForce websites. This meant I had to call them up and get someone to check it for me.
Unfortunately I found that there was no human at the end but instead one of those lovely automated systems that wanted me to read the tracking code out character by character. I’d had a bad experience trying to use one with UPS before so I wasn’t hopeful.
My lack of hope was well founded as this system totally sucked too. It was completely incapable of understanding me, and I was speaking as clearly as possible! I spent about 25 minutes trying to make the system understand me and each time it went something like this:
Phonebot: Please say your tracking code one character at a time by only saying the letter or number required. For example: N S 1 2 3 4 5 and so on. Please say your tracking code now…
Me: C P 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A
Phonebot: Thank you, I will now read back the code as I heard it. If it is correct say ‘Yes’, if it is incorrect please say ‘No’: E P 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A.
Me: No.
Phonebot: Please say your tracking code again one character at a time by only saying the letter or number required. Please say your tracking code now…
Me: C P 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A
Phonebot: Thank you, I will now read back the code as I heard it. If it is correct say ‘Yes’, if it is incorrect please say ‘No’: C B 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A.
Me: No.
Phonebot: Please say your tracking code again one character at a time by only saying the letter or number required. Please say your tracking code now…
Me: C P 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A
Phonebot: Thank you, I will now read back the code as I heard it. If it is correct say ‘Yes’, if it is incorrect please say ‘No’: E P 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A.
Me: No. (…gggrrrrr….)
Phonebot: I’m sorry, we can try that one more time, please say your tracking code again one character at a time by only saying the letter or number required. Please say your tracking code now…
Me: C P 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A
Phonebot: Thank you, I will now read back the code as I heard it. If it is correct say ‘Yes’, if it is incorrect please say ‘No’: E P 3 5 7 8 3 1 5 0 0 0 M A.
Me: Aaaaaarrrgghhhhhggggrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
Phonebot: I’m sorry, a tracking code is required in order to track the status of a parcel, please make sure you have your tracking code and then call back. Click.
Me: What? It hung up on me? Huh??!!!?!!??!!!
I then repeated this whole thing about three times over! Eventually I tried another number and got a human being, but only after being faced with yet another automated system which made me try a few times again. But at least that one put me through to a human!
These kind of automated systems are supposed to save time, but all it did was waste 25 minutes of my time which was then dealt with by a human in about 30 seconds. These systems should at least send you to a human if it fails to recognise the code after a few attempts, not just hang up on me!
~Rick
…it’s a big-ass table.
Back in April I wrote a post entitled "Four mysteries of the Universe…" where I pondered over a few unanswered questions:
Well, interestingly 3 out of those 4 questions have been answered! The only one outstanding is #1 – Adobe’s European pricing for the CS3 suite. I’ve yet to hear a better answer than exchange rate differences or pricing structures in global locales. On the plus side though Adobe’s profits are up 24%! ;)
#2 mystery was solved when Sony finally brought out a new version of their Sony Vegas video editing software to allow those who bought their HDR-SR1 six months to edit their HD video footage!
#3 mystery was partially solved last week when Apple updated their website and got rid of the aqua pin-stripe navigation graphics. Although I have to say partially solved as the UK site has yet to be updated. I don’t really understand why the UK lags behind on offerings by Apple, when new products are announced they never appear until a few hours later than the US site. Don’t get me started on the unavailability of TV shows and Movies in iTunes, or maybe the iPhone but I’m not so bothered about that as it’s only just coming out in the US, but TV shows and movies have been available in the US for about 2 years now!
#4 mystery was solved after I’d been pestering a few people at Adobe for an answer to whether there would be a new version of Director coming anytime soon. I got an email reply from someone who pointed me to the Director FAQ page which states, albeit slightly uncommittedly:
Adobe has not published an official time frame for the next release of Director and generally does not disclose details of new releases more than 30 days before a product is expected to ship. However, our current planning assumption is that the next major release of Director will be in the second half of 2007.
Unfortunately I was too late to get on the Beta testing programme for Director, I would have loved to have had an opportunity to help test the next version of Director.
I’m glad it’s an app that’s going to continue to be developed although I do feel there is a big challenge being presented by the whole AIR (formerly Apollo) project and advances in Flash like PaperVision3D.
I’m a bit concerned that the lack of real announcements about this has caused many to consider Director dead in the water, I look forward to there being a public beta on Adobe Labs!
Apple just announced updated information about the iPhone, namely that it will have longer than expected battery life and an ‘optical quality glass screen’ rather than plastic. The iPhone’s battery will provide:
Oh, and the Olympics 2012 logo still sucks! Also Hi to students from New College, Pontefract, thanks for your ‘insightful’ comments on my ‘Historical overview of Olympic logos’ article ;)
~Rick
Who cares about having a multi-touch interface, Safari web browser, enhanced voicemail features and widescreen iPod format when you can have Marioland and other NES ROMs running on your phone!
The phone is called the Gionee S20, the other cool thing about it is that it can hook up to your TV so you can play the games just like back in the day!
I have no idea if they’ll be available in the UK but I’m sure eBay will be a good source for them.
~Rick
If this turns out to be true then it means the FairPlay DRM scheme must now have the ability to do time-limited control of playback capabilities. This will definitely make a good addition for those with an AppleTV. If this story is true then the BBC iPlayer team should go talk to Apple right now!
Wow, I hadn’t thought about this, but seeing as Adobe’s Apollo (now known as AIR) initiative uses WebKit and runs cross-platform then it makes sense that a native Windows version of Safari would be possible. This will be very handy for web developers ‘stuck’ on Windows! It’s available now as a beta for OSX and Windows.
Great looking set of features in there, I’m really liking the changes to the look and feel of the user interface. The iTunes-esque Finder looks to be a good update, I’m wondering how well those who really hate the current finder will take to this, will it be an improvement or not? I’ve not seen any concrete evidence that the Finder has been substantially rewritten, will this be the end of spinning beachballs when network volumes disappear?
~Rick
Ok, forgive the dumb title of this post! It’s probably not hard to miss the fact that I’ve got ads on my blog but I hope that they are generally for things that are of interest to some of the people who visit my site and fairly relevant to the subjects I like to write about.
One of the links I’ve had for a while is to an online DVD rental site called LoveFilm, I’ve been a long time online DVD rental user until fairly recently having used WebFlix and then ScreenSelect which has now, after several mergers / buyouts turned into LoveFilm. I say until recently as I stopped my account a few months ago as I was watching far more films on demand via my Telewest cable TV package instead, I was also a bit frustrated about how long it was taking to receive DVDs sometimes.
Since I switched to Sky however, I’ve not been impressed by the movie options on there, no on demand service and too much per film (about £3.95 for recent films). I got to thinking about reactivating my account with LoveFilm – conveniently your account isn’t deleted on cancellation but it simply stays inactive keeping your list of movies and previous rentals. I finally decided to do it when I came across a handy activation code that will give you a 3 month free trial, even for people like me who are reactivating their accounts.
So, all this leads up to a link to LoveFilm where you can sign up for this free trial for yourself! I just thought it was too good an opportunity not to give it a little bit of exposure :)
Go check it out and sign up for yourself, don’t forget to use the activation code LFZZ98778 to get yourself the 3 month trial of the Combination 2 which means you can get unlimited movies a month, 2 discs at a time, normally £14.99 a month. Check that you are receiving the 90 day trial as sometimes it may only be a 14 or 28 day trial.
Click the image below to click through to LoveFilm.com and put the activation code in the ‘promotion or gift code’ field when signing up, then enjoy unlimited DVD rentals for 3 months!
~Rick