Posts by CarlC 60 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Feb 2011
I am a recent Sonos convert and could not be happier. Great sound and very easy to setup. I also have it linked to my Nas and a media server. On the media server I download podcasts automatically and the Sonos system indexes them overnight so I have all my podcasts to hand too.
But I am bias as I am, as I said, a recent convert.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/point-of-view-hdmi-smart-tv-dongle-android-4.1-685649
Got mine when Maplin had a special on them for £39.99. It came with the dongle and a little wireless keyboard/pointer.
Not sure if they still do but mine came with Flash pre-installed. I have used it with Netflix with no issue. It is pretty basic but it does work, and is very portable. It does not replace my laptop or tablet though. Wifi range is okay, but the wireless keyboard range is a little limiting and seesm to be about 2.5 metres. (I am a lazy ass, so have to lean forward in my chair to ensure that everything I type gets to the unit).
All in all for 40 quid it has been a fun bit of tech to play with.
And just to illustrate PrivateCitizen's point:
I got myself an ASUS tablet (running Android) in the middle of last year - it is a great, fast device and it has all the apps I need (from the Google App Store). However, I was lucky enough to get to try a Samsung Note 10.1 table (also Android) and loved the USP of the SPen apps.
So I purchased a Samsung Note 10.1 and took all my apps and data with me in one easy move.
If ASUS make a better (in my opinion) tablet later I may switch back. Not great for ASUS or Samsung unless they commit to improving their devices to give me what I want (and in ASUS's case win me back), but it is excellent for me and for consumers in general
Just got a LG blue ray player with their Smart TV stuff built in. That gets me BBC iPlayer, Lovefilm, Netflix, Blinkbox plus their apps (not sure about those yet) all for less than £60, was pretty much a no brainer as I don't have cable or satellite TV services.
Works well for me, and a lot cheaper then changing my perfectly good 40inch TV for a new one.........
lol are you being serious? On my desk in my office I have 3 android tablets, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, and 2 android phones.
These are needed to check applications for cross platform compliance - Unemployed burglar? no just aware of the divergence of the device platforms people are using.......
Personally I limited myself to 1 android phone and one android tablet.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_Rocket
"although no official authority would recognize this achievement as a record"
"While it has been claimed that the Budweiser Rocket did briefly break the sound barrier, it could not gain any official titles"
"According to witnesses no sonic boom was heard."
"Despite an unauthorized written speed certification by the United States Air Force (USAF), there is much debate over the validity of the claim. The USAF states it "never intended to give official sanction to test results, nor to give the appearance of expressing an official view as to the speed attained by the test vehicle"
Nicely verified speed run then........more holes than my string vest
American court and jury find for American corporate against johnny foreigner. Is the verdict right? - not sure, I haven't seen all the evidence presented in the case. Does it feel right - well no, it feels like America protecting it's own while crying and having a tantrum when the rest of the world doesn't see it their way......Just my opinion mind.
I will now show my ignorance, so apologises up front.
My thought was that Samsung and the other SEP holders negociated by saying - Hey Samsing, Nokia here, you need my patents and I need yours, lets tally up. Right, You owe me 50c/ we owe you 50c. If that is what happens I can understand the 2.5% of retail cost that Samung is demanding. The conversation goes something like this;
Apple: We want to use your stuff Samsung.
Samsung: Okay Apple what SEP patents do you have we need?
Apple: erm well None...........
Samsing: Ah right, okay so we have nothing to trade on SEP, I guess we will need to charge you the full fee.......
So I guess if Apple had SEP patents it would help them a bit..............
Am I missing something here?
Yes DR were definitely a player back then, My first 8086 PC had DR GEM as the GUI (prior to that it was Z80's with CPM). Everyone seems to forget that one when the GUI wars are discussed. It was okay, but as you say DR never took their competition seriously and suffered because of it. Oh those were the days though, 3 months salary to buy a basic machine with no hard drive, a monochrome monitor and no real software to run on it.... I did get a hard drive eventually - it was 5mb
And I have done just that. Picked up my TF300 a week or so back and it is great. Quickoffice HD (bought for my Motorola Zoom so effectively free) covers my mobile word processing and spreadsheet stuff (its basic but ok). LInked to both Dropbox and 8GB of ASUS cloud storage I am sorted. Oh and I have an Alienware laptop through work so serious stuff gets done on that.
How Microsoft think they can sell against a £400 device with a more mature OS, keyboard and swift overall performance I just don't know. Will be interesting to see how Surface and Win 8 on tablets fair. I am not putting any money on them succeeding.
Oh I don't know, myself and a number of other hobby robotics developers are using Android to build some interesting stuff using things like IOIO and the Nao robot. May not have made it into the App Store but Android provides a really good platofrm for this type of stuff............
Now I can tweak my robotics apps on the go - that is just really really useful.
This relates very well to B2C (Business to consumer (customer/client) but is less applicable to B2B businesses. I would love to see one of my clients with a £250k+ budget go trawling Google for a company they have never heard of, to provide a business critical solution. Mind you I do run a boutique business...........
openness has a price and that price is vigilance. It is a pressure and I agree that it doesn't work for people unless they choose to be actively engaged. For those that do not an iPhone is an excellent choice.
However, regardless of device you will be hard pressed to find anyone I know who trusts a mobile platform enough to keep their banking details on it. Lets face it, phones and tablets are the devices that get lost most frequently. A member of my own family lost their phone just last week. Good job all finance details on that device refere to a prepay credit card that never has more than £30 on it.
"And yeah, Apple also pays royalties on some patents to others."
And one of the long ongoing battles that has allowed the Dutch court to intervene and Motorola to get an injunction against them is their refusal to pay patent licenses in an internationally agreed way.
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/12/09/apple_motorola_patents/
Quote from Dutch Court article on Samsungs claim for FRAND license agreement with Apple and Apples refusal to sign.
"And the court in the Hague backed up the general view on FRAND issues, that if a company wants to use a patent from an essential standard, it's open to being licensed. The ruling therefore ordered the two companies to negotiate such an agreement."
I'll tell you how we all suffer, regardless of device manufacturer.
These law suits cost money. HTC,Apple,Goggle et al do not fund these out of their own personal pool of money, they fund it out of the money they make selling you, me and everyone else a device. So the price we all pay is a combination of manufacturing costs, marketing etc costs, profit margin and contribution to the 'oh we will probably get sued we had better cover that too fund' costs.
The only option a manufacturer has in this day and age with the distorted patent system is to build a device that only has features they know they own/have licensed.
So we either pay the additional fees to fund their legal actions, or accept that the device market will stagnate.
And seeing as you mentioned legality try this one http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/02/apple_loses/ - A big corp trying to crush a small inovator. Lets be honest all the device manufacturers are as bad as one another.
@GitMeMyShootinIrons - I just add to add my support to your statement: I am a happy Android user and am very gald you enjoy your iPhone. Everyone should be able to choose the device they want to meet their own needs.
As you say the only people suffering here is us, the consumers, and we suffer in multiple ways. Firstly, these silly rulings reduce our choice in devices, secondly they stifle new features and innovation but most importantly they cost us, the consumer, our money!!! We are the people funding these stupid court cases.
for the poor ladies involved. This could have serious ramifications for them. They may now only be able to achieve erm satisfaction when embraced by a huge electro magnetic field. If those machines are as noisey as they appear on telly the neighbours will definatley be banging on the wall.
Firstly I am no campaigner for anonymity, but I do understand where some of the campaigners are coming from.
I guess if you totally trust the people who have your information now, and who will have it in the future, then you are ok. But if they decide to do 'no good' do you want to be on the recieving end due?
Now that said, I am a prepay customer so they have all my data anyway.
Apple and Microsoft played silly buggers over mouse driven GUI interfaces. Xerox kicked in and said behave or we will sue the Sh1t out of you both. They behaved.
Please let there be a 'Xerox' in this field too. It is needed to ensure the consumer is protected from the anal antics of the major players
/^v.+b$/i
If it is who I think it is they are a knowledge management company that was originally started in the UK.,a good number of years back (in the mid 1990's I think). Within the last 6 months or so aquired Interwoven, the owners of the Worksite(formerly iManage) Document Management Platform, as well as their own range of CMS and Marketing delivery systems. I think they are primarily software but this all from memory so I stand to be corrected where wrong.
Having ownered and used an iPad for 9 months and then getting a Motorola Xoom, I would say that the Xoom and a lot of the other higher end tablets are definiately competition. I have now sold my iPad and replaced it completely with my Xoom. I am, personally, much happier with my Xoom, but appreciate everyones requirements differ.
a bit complacent when we work in the industry, or have a keen interest in computing etc., but I am still amazed that in this day and age these types of phishing/scamming attacks are worth running.
Obviously, they are or they wouldn't still be around and I guess all of us 'in the know' need to make sure we spread the word to our less informed/ technically savvy friends.......
Most people use Google because Google gives the best results for their requirements. My girlfriend was very late to the internet (in the last 3 years), she loves Google because it does what she wants. I have shown her Bing and others but she always goes back to Google.
Back in the day (well the early days of the internet, pre Goggle), we (me and my friends) all used altavista. It was good, it did what we wanted. It was usurped by Google, why? Because of lots of reasons but mainy because (right or wrong) we all preceived Google as better.
This whole investigation sounds like sour grapes to me. Want to beat Google? Then offer us, the users, a better service..........
I also thought the Apple process would have been able to find code that sent data off the device especially something like a pin code, even if it is only used by the app. I thought that was the point of the App approval process and the walled garden. Guess I will stick to my Android, at least I know it is insecure and I don't have a false sense of security.
I can only say that this is great news.
When I say Nao developer I don't work for Aldebaran but am part of their external Developer's Program. (http://developer.aldebaran-robotics.com/) So there is already a bunch of people working on developing robotic applications for Nao from simple games to email clients. It's a lot of fun, and the rise fo the personal robot is not that far away............
I have had multiple Android handsets and have had no issue. Currently I run a Hero, An HTC Desire and Xoom. We have multiple Android devices in addition to these (they are just my personal one) and again, no issues. Occasionally you get a rogue app but they are not that difficult to identify. Hmmmm I installed xxxxx yesterday and today my battery only lasts 8 hours? I wonder what could be causing that !!!!!!!!!!
(explosion to signify the light of reason exploding into the mind of logic)
All my nieces and nephews (I am not a parent) who are between 17 and 25, have traded their iPhones and Android devices for Blackberries, as have most of their friends. I certainly know one of my nieces, some time ago, changed her phone to that phone on 'The Hills' (I think that was the show) - which was a Blackberry.
Interesting......... because I believe it shows that there are as many preferences as their are devices out there. The problem for Nokia is my girlfriend, who has an 8 year old Nokia and won't change it because it works. Nokia will get no business from her until that phone totally dies, by which time I am not sure Nokia will be about..........
I have just replaced my iPad with a Xoom and I am very happy. I am a bit of a geek though and have been developing with Android since 1.5. The Xoom does everything I used my iPad for and for me, personally, I prefer the Android interface and approach, primarily the easy use of widgets and the multiple appstores approach.
I think the important thing is to find a device that works for you. The Xoom does for me, but hey if an iPad works better for you 'go for it'
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