Apple Moves Closer to Making TV Set – WSJ.com

If this is true should I buy the first release or wait for the ‘S’ version?

Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test several designs for television sets, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting that the company is moving closer to expanding its offerings for the living room.

via Apple Moves Closer to Making TV Set – WSJ.com.

Concept refrigerator with no door won’t let you forget what’s inside | Digital Trends

Are you the kind of person who throws a box of leftovers in the fridge, only to forget it was ever there? One design student figured the solution to this would be if you could keep sight of what’s in your fridge whenever you walk by… so what’s a better way to do that than to eliminate the door as a whole? Wait, huh?

via Concept refrigerator with no door won’t let you forget what’s inside | Digital Trends.

Mapumental – amazing commute friendly property search

This site has two goals. It’s an advert for Mapumental, a project of mySociety – a high tech social enterprise that can build cool things like this for you. And it’s a real, functional tool designed to answer a common question – “Where should I live to have a tolerable commute?”

 

So 35 mins from my house to work is pretty spot on…  WC1E 6JA :: Mapumental.

iPhone 4 price comparison

Okay so finally Vodafone have released pricing for the UK iPhone 4 release. So that means Orange and o2 can be compared with the tariffs for Vodafone now. Three haven’t yet released their pricing strategy for the iPhone but given their 3G network coverage they shoudl be one to watch.

Usual disclaimers about checking pricing is correct before purchasing etc. Prices correct at time of publishing etc etc…
I’ve only compared the lowest two tariffs for each as to be honest I’m not interested in the more expensive tariffs as I hardly use my call or text allowance as it is.

iPhone comparison

cool new browser plugin

Thanks Dave for sending me a link to cooliris which is a great browser plugin – I love Flickr and now with the help of cooliris browsing photostreams is much more fun and so much easier – cooliris works on hundreds of sharing and web 2.0 websites, including the likes of Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Google, Yahoo and Photobucket oh and not forgetting YouTube
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New Apple MacBook Pro 17″ from £1,949 or a Mac for £17,000

Mac Pro with all the options including two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Mac Pro with all the options including two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Mac Expo has started and I was hoping they might have brought out a new mid range MacBook or a lower price for the Aluminum MacBook but sadly not. So whilst checking out the new MacBook Pro’s with their 17″ screens and funky new built in battery with 8 hour span between charges I wondered idly how much one computer could cost. For the price of a small house in some less desirable neighbourhoods you can buy a top of the range Mac Pro with dual 30″ screens and lots of processors, RAM and terrabytes of storage. A snip at a little over £17k and yours for around £550 a month which is more than a lot of peoples mortgage payments!

Of course all of this is great but I haven’t won the lottery yet so I’ll make do with my trusty (although battered and bashed a bit) MacBook.

New Time Capsule with iTunes library sharing…

The pre-Macworld Expo rumour mill has not been as mad as usual – probably due to Steve Jobs not delivering the keynote – but 9to5Mac reckon there will be an internet-based media server from Apple.

The rumoured Apple media server, would be based on Apple’s existing Time Capsule, an ARM-based 802.11n WiFi base station and backup system. To which would be added AFP-based file sharing, iTunes library sharing, a MobileMe tie-in for remote access (possibly with personal MobileMe subdomain), and the ability to share media with a Mac, AppleTV, iPod Touch, and iPhone “both over the Internet and while at home.”

Of course most of us with an Apple TV and an iPhone and a Time Capsule have been trying to get this to work with third party applications since they got them so it’s nice to see Apple finally listening. Shame they will no doubt want us to shell out more for them as I doubt there will be a TimeCapsule software/firmware update to allow the extra functionality.

iPhone 3G jailbroken (beta)

The iPhone Dev Team released its iPhone 3G unlocking utility, yellowsn0w, on the first of the year although it’s still a beta.

If you’d like to crack your iPhone with the beta remember version 0.9.4 beta works only with iPhone baseband 02.28.00, that’s the version installed by iPhone 2.2 Software Update, Apple’s most recent firmware update. So before you start use yellowsn0w, make sure to use iTunes to upgrade your iPhone to 2.2.

If you’ve used QuickPwn to perform a basic jailbreak before and you use Installer to load apps then you should be able to use this beta with no problems – otherwise I’d advise waiting until the non beta version is ready as I’m sure there will be better support available then when they are not concentrating on the new version although there is some basic help available now

Allegedly you won’t notice anything about it other than that your third-party SIM now works.

I’ve not tried it yet as I’m not going anywhere that needs a different SIM – always my big gripe when I am in Australia with the iPhone. I’m likely to wait to the 1.0 release.

WordPress for iPhone

So I’ve been playing with wordpress again recently as I’ve been doing a blogs project at work. I’m amazed by how many new plugins there are. It makes the blog platform better than many content management systems I’ve worked with.

Also since I have an iPhone the wordpress application is a great addition. To complete the picture I’ve installed an iPhone specific theme so if you are viewing note to self on the Jesus phone you get a different view 🙂

The long wait to record free HD TV in the UK with Freesat+

For years we’ve been promised that Freeviw would be the future. Now of course we have freesat too but more importantly and something I’m hoping will be the future is freesat+
Essentially it’s all the best bits of freesat – the free HD programmes the regular extra free channels and no monthly subscription with the ability to record to a hard disk. All using the EPG and with smart search and pause and chase play etc.
The only people looking to make a freesat+ box are Humax and if they make it like the FoxSat boxes in Australia then they are going to be smart enough to see if y ou have set something to record and it can’t then it will search the EPG for the next showing and set it to record that one instead. Also automatic recording of split (e.g. by the news) programmes. Oh and of course everyones favourite feature from Sky+ the series link or series record option. Allegedly it will also be capable of recording ITV HD Interactive service

My only concern is that we’ve been promised this PVR for so long and now it’s allegedly being release mid November and we are almost there and no further information or specs have come out.