On Tuesday February the 16th 2010 @ 10:30am we will eventually have a Apple store in Newcastle Upon Tyne…
I’ve already planned to take the day off and be there for doors opening.
The first 1500 people through the door will all receive the converted Apple T-Shirt.
If your going to be there let me know and we’ll meet up.
Just a quick post to let you in on a discount code for Mac app’s, not sure how long its going to run for so be quick.
Using the code “OneFingerDiscount” you can get 20% off loads of Mac apps like Mars Edit and Textexpander or PDF Pen
Here’s the link to the story behind it and Here is the the page to see the rest of the developers taking part.
Enjoy
Today I found a excellent site that helped me in a bit of trouble shooting on my network.
The problem was connection speed to the internet, lately it’s been rather slow and phoning my ISP ment I had to be connected via their supplied router in order to get tech support.
After sorting out the spaghetti that is the many many different cables and changing over routers I went to Speedtest.net to test out my line speed where I came across a link to PingTest.net. The side is still in beta at the minute but as you will see it helped me a while lot more than a simple speedtest did.
What is Pingtest.net?
Use Pingtest.net to determine the quality of your broadband Internet connection. Streaming media, voice, video communications, and online gaming require more than just raw speed. Test your connection now to get your Pingtest.net rating and share the result with others!
So what do they test?
Packet Loss
Much as it sounds, if you have anything less than complete success in transmitting and receiving “packets” of data then you are experiencing this problem with your Internet connection. It can mean much slower download and upload speeds, poor quality VoIP audio, pauses with streaming media and what seems like time warping in games — your connection may even come to a total standstill! Packet loss is a metric where anything greater than 0% should cause concern.
Ping
This measurement tells how long it takes a “packet” of data to travel from your computer to a server on the Internet and back. Whenever you experience delayed responses in Internet applications – this would be due to a higher than desired ping. Similar to packet loss, lower is better when it comes to ping. A result below 100 ms should be expected from any decent broadband connection.
Jitter
Once you understand ping, jitter should also make sense. Jitter is merely the variance in measuring successive ping tests. Zero jitter means the results were exactly the same every time, and anything above zero is the amount by which they varied. Like the other quality measurements, a lower jitter value is better. And while some jitter should be expected over the Internet, having it be a small fraction of the ping result is ideal.
I’ve not had much of a chance to get online lately as my Macbook Pro has been away being fixed or so I thought.
In June I started to notice problems with the connection speed between my MBP and Time Capsule.
In the beginning I thought the problem was to do with my Time Capsule, so after a bit of trouble shooting involving formatting and changing of settings without any change I did a bit of a comparison on speeds with @PatMahon.
Still no joy so it was time to give Apple a call and get some use from my Applecare policy.
After going over a few details of my issue with them we decided it was not a Time capsule issue as first thought but it was in fact a problem with my MBP, specifically the Airport card.
Getting to this conclusion was now quick or easy by any means, apart from the obvious ping tests and testing on a clean user account etc I did a archive and install of the OS, then a complete clean install…
Still no improvement.
So off my MBP went to Apple to be fixed, all boxed up and off it went.
A few days later I received a phone call from Group 8 (the company carrying out the repairs) they asked me a few questions and decided to replace the Airport card.
I happened to be on holiday so I had a bit of a wait until I got the MBP back.
Unfortunately once I had reinstalled my account from my backup I noticed that it was not in fact fixed, it was to tell the truth now worse than before.
Back on the phone to Applecare and I explained the situation was now worse than before, I had one more test to do…
Boot from the instal DVD and ping test, this confirmed once more that it was not a software issue.
I was sent a program by Apple that gathered some info and this was sent to Apple for the engineers to take a look at.
So here I am waiting for a reply from them to find out what is to happen next, I imagine that my MBP will be returned and ill be back to using my iPhone for a while.
If like me you experienced the double Contacts and Calendar entries after upgrading to the iPhone 3.0 software update don’t worry there is a easy fix available courtesy of TUAW.
Double Contacts and Calendar Entries
After setting up Mobileme and syncing my phone the first time, I found that all my contacts and calendar entries had been duplicated so that there were two identical entries of everything. Our own Chris Rawson set me straight on fixing this. If you disable calendar and contact syncing from the iPhone, all the information brought in from Mobileme will vanish. Next, re-enable them and you will be asked if you want to merge the contact and calendar information of what’s on the iPhone which was brought in by iTunes. You do. And in doing so, the problem will vanish. This tip is not just for iPhone 3G S owners, it’s also happened to previous iPhone users who updated to system 3.0.
It’s a easy fix and sorted the problem for me straight away, but typically I had tried a few other things including a full restore before this fix popped up in my RSS feed.
There are a few other tips and tricks included in the article so click away and read the full story from TUAW.
I’d like to invite you all to a Tweetup (meet up of Twitter users) that’s been arranged for 19th December 09.
If your interested or just want to know a little more about it check out LiverpoolTweetup.co.uk for all the details and a list of people who are coming along.
A few of us are making it a all day event so we’re staying over for the night, there is a link to local hotels in the area on the Tweetup site so check it out if you’d like to join us.
Thank you and I hope to see you there… 
For a few weeks now I’ve been using an application called Notebook from Circus Ponies.
It’s an application I’ve tried a few times in the past but never really found a reason to buy after the free trial.
After the update to version 3.0 I decided to give it another go and try to see if I could use it to consolidate information on my Mac and clean up some folders.
So upon looking into my folder’s I found there were a few candidates for that could do will a little better organisation.
So I set about reorganising things once I downloaded NoteBook V3.0 and soon had a everything in one place in a easily searchable notebook.
The searching and organisation is what makes NoteBook special.
With NoteBook, you organize your information naturally, using a familiar notebook interface, complete with pages and tabs, sections and subsections. Add notes and other text.
Drag in files and folders. Even “clip” web research, mail messages and other content into your Notebooks without leaving the application you’re working in.
Annotate your information with diagrams and sketches, highlighting and keywords.
Take voice-annotated notes that you can download to your iPod. And protect private thoughts with passwords, covers, and encryption.
My folder system is now a lot cleaner thanks to Circus Ponies NoteBook.
After a week of using the previous shortcuts I’ve mentioned so far, I have to say that it’s working out okay.
I think a week is long enough to get familiar with the shortcut and to allow your hands to get used to using them.
This weeks shortcuts are:
CMD + DELETE, ⌘ ⌫
CMD Delete moves the selected item to trash.
SHIFT + CMD + A, ⇧ ⌘ A
Shift CMD and the letter A opens your Applications folder.
I’ve decided to make more use of keyboard shortcuts on my Mac.
My reasons for this are two fold.
To speed up my workflow and more importantly these days, to reduce the risk of RSA from the constant use of my mouse.
I have already replaced my old mouse with the more comfortable VX Revolution, this had made some difference but getting away from using the mouse as often as I do is the main aim.
I’m planning on trying to master a few different shortcuts during the course of a week as a way of trying to remember them.
This weeks shortcuts are:
CMD TAB, ⌘ ⇥
The CMD TAB key is the application switcher shortcut, used to easily switch between running applications on the Mac these keys bring up a bar like view showing all applications running, allowing selection from left to right, using the SHIFT key ⇧ along with CMD TAB allows application switching from right to left.
The second shortcut is:
CMD H, ⌘ H
CMD H will hide any open application on the Mac, thus allowing the application to be opened again using the CMD TAB shortcut.
If an open application is closed by clicking the red button in the top left corner, then the CMD TAB shortcut will not re-open the app.
Next is:
SHIFT CMD H, ⇧ ⌘ H when in Safari.
An application specific shortcut, SHIFT CMD H takes you back to your Homepage, Google in my case.
My first thoughts on the SnowFlake mic from Blue.
It’s a nice piece of tech for sure, only let down a little by the detachable white plastic back-piece which is used to store the USB cable inside the mic housing when put together.
The Snowflake appears well built and solid, once detached from the plastic back-piece and placed on the top of my MBP the small pads on the inside of the body prevent any damage and stop the mic from sliding across the top of the screen if the MBP is moved.
Now for the sound…
Strange though it may seem, I can’t actually comment on the quality of the audio from the SnowFlake.
I’m the only person from the list of people I’ve spoken to so far that hasn’t actually heard my audio from the Snowflake, saying that all the comments are positive so far, with the SnowFlake delivering clear and good sounding audio.
It seems that the SnowFlake can be placed at some distance from you while still delivering excellent results, which turned out to be rather a funny tale while trying to explain the placement of the mic during a recent Mac20Q roundtable discussion.
That story aside for now I would say that the SnowFlake can still deliver excellent results even while placed 3 feet away.
So my investment in the SnowFlake seems well worth it so far, I’m hoping to hear some of the audio soon so I’ll be able to tell for the first time just how good it actually is.
