A quick tip. I discovered that the automatic timezone support on iPhone relies on GPS location services checks. These checks are quite regular, and until you’re actually travelling, quite useless for the most part. To disable these checks, change the following setting:
I was having a debate with a friend on Facebook regarding the new Amazon Fire, and we both agreed it was a very strong offering. In my opinion, I believed it wasn’t a strong enough offering to topple the iPad as the #1 tablet PC through Christmas 2011, primarily on the basis of small screen size. My friend posted the following statement, and as I composed a response I realised that my long outdated blog would be the perfect platform to air my opinions.
Before I get abused for being critical about Apple, I’m typing this on my iPhone 4 … And reading engadget on my 14″ MacBook Pro unibody
If the best Steve Job could of come up with iCloud and IOS5 and OSX Lion at the last apple conference, with all the handbag swinging with patents at the manufacturers that supply their components in all their devices and hardware (bite the hand that feeds you why not), also if apple are so confident about their app store and tablet, they should let samsung build their Tab and watch it fall flat like HP’s touchpad… In my opinion I think Apple’s “i” days are numbered, they are not the Apple they were 3yrs ago they’re falling apart, struggling with new innovations, plus if the 4th October conference is about an Facebook app and iPad apps … and no iPhone 5 you probably know that the Korean semiconductors have told apple to take a run and jump
[Amazon Fire] Being 7″ and not 9″ is another reason to not get sued by Apple for copying the iPad, that’s prolly why HP jumped ship… jumped is prolly the wrong word, I mean pushed before Apple took them to court too
I’ll start at the top. iOS5 + Lion + Cloud is actually CRUCIAL to the future vision of computing. That conference, as insignificant as it might seem to the consumer, paved the direction of the technology industry. I strongly believe that within 3 years, the notebook / laptop computer will be dead as a consumer product, and left to retire in niche markets such as prosumers and gamers. It’ll be replaced by 2 currently emerging markets, the tablet PC and the media ready television. Our entertainment, YouTube etc, will be streamed through technology rich television sets and our daily internet usage will be conducted through our tablet PCs. The tablet PC already offers one of the best platforms for browsing Facebook, news sites, reading email and generally everything else we currently do as “consumers” with our laptop machines.
Apple released Lion, Lion is the king of the cats right? Hell, it’s the king of the jungle no?? So what comes after Lion for OS X? Well, in my firm opinion… nothing. OS X will merge with iOS into a single operating system, available as an IPSW type package, distributed through App Store as Lion is. A single operating system, suitable for touchscreen and non-touchscreen devices. Apple also introduced the Thunderbolt connector, a single connector which provides power, graphics, inputs and data. Imagine an iPad with this new operating system paired with an iPad dock with the Thunderbolt connector. You carry your iPad around all day, browsing and reading and then you need to compose a long e-mail, read throughly through a website or browse and post on a discussion forum. You walk over to your Thunderbolt setup, dock your iPad and suddenly your tablet PC has all the facilities that you require as a consumer to carry out these tasks with ease and comfort. Good bye laptop
Samsung… Samsung, Samsung. Naughty naughty boys. Come Tuesday, I’m hoping and praying that we won’t see a single iPhone launched to market, but rather… a pair of iPhones! I’m HOPING for iPhone 4S, a budget, entry level iPhone based on the current design but with reduced manufacturing costs (read: cheap parts :p) and… of course.. the iPhone 5. I also believe that the iPhone 5 will look remarkably like the Samsung Galaxy S2! Apple have ripping off Samsung??? No. Apple design and build their products months in advance, and from my work in the technology industry, we’ve had experience of manufacturers who share factories with Apple stumbling upon designs and prototypes of their new products as production techniques are being tested in shared factories (an un-named radio manufacturer once sketched out the design of the new iMac for us a few months before it was actually released!). In this same respect, I think the reason for Apples current reaction to Samsung is because I believe they have been designing, building and planning to release a product which strongly resembles the product Samsung put to market a few months ago! I mean, come on… have any of you used a Samsung device recently? Have you seen their UI layer which sits on top of Android? Slide to unlock? 4 icons across the bottom of the app screen? Jusy Google image search “Samsung Ace” and squint a little…. it’s like walking into Apple store Regent Street!! If Samsung haven’t “slavishly” stolen all of Apples hard work, I’m sure they’ll be able to demonstrate this in a court of law by showing all their research and development data as well as their complete proto-typing process
Finally, back to the Amazon Fire. Amazing little product, fantastic price point and obviously fills the budget end of the market in which there is incredible demand as the firesale of the HP TouchPad demonstrated. Unfortunately though… my vision of where the tablet will sit in the market (as a replacement to the laptop machine), and the simple problem of creating a comfortable touchscreen keyboard on a 7″ display, will prevent it taking the top spot. It will do well, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t see it becoming the champion 
French site Nowhere Else have posted an informative info-graph detailing the current array of rumors surrounding the iPhone 5 and rating them with a probability of likelihood.
The complete info-graph details a total of 27 rumors, and is available in English and French. As the original 4400px tall image is quite a lengthy read, I’ve summarised the 17 most likely rumors (with a probability of 50% or above) in a shorter version to the right
Personally, I believe the iPhone 5 operating system (iOS5) will be demonstrated to us in early June at WWDC San Francisco. As Apple have to really pull something strong out of the bag to fend off declining market share due to Android devices, and paired with the fact the iPhone 4 is still performing very strongly 9 months on, I think the phone will be released much later than previous years. Hopefully we’ll see a debut in stores early September. I’m predicting / wishing for a larger screen (4 inches!), removal of the physical home button, availability of larger capacity models, upgrade to the A5 processor and maybe even a boost in RAM! I believe a larger screen paired with the performance the A5 processor delivers should be enough to keep the product at the forefront of the market for another year.
If you’re on O2 and have any iPhone which you wish to unlock, including the iPhone 4, please visit this link for a complimentary unlock courtesy of O2 themselves! Unlike jailbreak methods of unlocking, this is a permanent all-carrier unlock which is not lost if the iPhone is restored.
Please note this works only for Pay Monthly customers! PAYG customer will have to pay £15 for the unlock.
HDR or High Dynamic Range photography is a method of taking photos which involves taking multiple photos at different exposure levels and merging them for representing much greater detail in the final image. Essentially, you take a photo of all the detail in low light areas with extra light and all the detail in excess light areas with very little light and merge the two for an image which demonstrates the best of both worlds. Luckily for iPhone users, Apple have introduced this feature into its iOS software for iPhone in version 4.1.
But before Apple kindly gave its users this technology in a free software update, a little company called eyeApps LLC was providing this technology in a chargeable iPhone AppStore application. In the demonstration below, I’ve taken HDR photographs using both the Apple feature and the eyeApps ProHDR application.
Original Shot
Apple HDR
Pro HDR
As you can see there’s more detail in the Apple HDR shot than the original shot, but the Pro HDR image was much, much more detailed all together. Here’s another shot taken with both Apple HDR and Pro HDR application for iPhone:
Apple HDR
Pro HDR
Looking at the bricks constituting the pathway alone you can see how much superior the ProHDR application is. If you haven’t tried out the HDR function in the iOS4 Camera application, I suggest you do, and if you like it… I recommend you consider purchasing the ProHDR application
Hey guys! I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while, soooo! Here we go… Raj Singh’s top 5 applications for iPhone. These apps are rated on the basis of how often I find them necessary and how long I’ve been using them (nearly all these Applications I’ve been using since my iPhone 2G!). I hope you find these applications useful, for me they are truely apps that have stood the test of time and not mere gimmick-ware!
So where’s number 5? Well… I couldn’t really pick one, so maybe you can recommend me one? Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of amazing applications which I’ve been using since I can remember such as Train Search (free – Check local train times), UrbanSpoon (free – Choose local restaurants), Flixster (free – Check local movie times), but as a general MUST HAVE application… well, actually… there is one I can think of…
Like many, I was an avid fan of the TV series LOST. I wasn’t so much angry and disappointed at the ending, but had come to the realisation a few episodes before the finale that there would be no way to wrap everything up as cleanly and tightly as we’d all hoped back in the earlier seasons. Nevertheless, the ending provided what it needed to and was “good enough”, satisfying even!
For those who still haven’t had enough of this epic TV series, gizmodo have a review of the 36 BLU-RAY DISC BOX SET! It looks like it contains some rather tasty trinkets
Also, for those of you who haven’t seen the extra 12-minute Lost chapter called “New Man In Charge“, you should also check this out! It offers a look at what Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Ben (Michael Emerson) do as the new Island overseers. This is the footage deleted from the broadcast of the finale that details life on the island for Hurley and Ben after Hurley becomes “the new Jacob”.
NB: Spoilers in the comments section
Didn’t Whatsapp kill off PingChat? Well, it would have seemed so, but it appears now that PingChat is back! With vengeance…
PingChat is another instant messaging application for iPhone, but once Whatsapp had released their Blackberry Beta, it was all but game over for PingChat. Ping fired back with Ping v2.0, which remained iPhone only, but incorporated vital features missing from Whatsapp such as group chat.
Now… here’s where it get’s interesting. Earlier this month PingChat completed Beta testing and was launched on the Andriod Market for all to share. This finally allowed cross platform communication between Andriod smartphones and Apple iPhones. At the same time, they also completed Beta testing for Blackberry, and now it appears that PingChat is available on Blackberry Appworld! We finally have cross platform communication and group messaging on all commonly used smartphones! Firstly, thank you to enflick for making this happen for all of us
Secondly, get downloading! PingChat is free! Free to download, free to use! It is ad supported however. Allowing for Group Chat, Multimedia Messaging and Cross Platform Messaging, there really is no other application like it available. Delivery is instantaneous like SMS messages and delivery notifications indicate delivered / read status of each message. Also, unlike Whatsapp and BBM, Ping uses a username system opposed to phone numbers or device PIN’s. Usernames are transferable between devices and maintain privacy, so that’s one up on the other available applications Download the application for your device using one of the following links:
Apple iOS
Blackberry OS | Alternative
Google Andriod OS
Thirdly… add me on PingChat PingChat id rajsingh.
Looks like the Sony Playstation 3 finally has a mod chip! An extremely hassle free USB device at that PS Jailbreak simply allows you to backup games to the internal PS3 hard drive or to an external USB hard drive. Once backed up, you can mount and load the games from the hard drive and the PS3 is clueless to whether you have the correct disc in the drive or not
This is perfect for users of the older “fat” consoles, as these machines run significantly hotter and as a result, the blu-ray diode / laser is more likely to burn out during use. This is an expensive part which can be tricky to replace if your console is outside of warranty (most likely if it’s a fatty!). Installing games to a hard drive reduces blu-ray drive usage and not only improves performance but also improves long term reliability.
You can watch a video of the modchip in action here on youtube. At $150 US, approx £100 GBP, it’s not a cheap device, but neither is the £50 process of replacing your blu-ray drive! Personally, I’d wait for a firmware release or two to hit PSN, see what Sony’s reaction to the device is and see if they start banning users before venturing into the world of PS3 Homebrew
iPhones can get “bricked” quite easily once you delve into the world of Jailbreaking. Bricking, if you’re unfamilar with the term, is when a device doesn’t respond of function in any capacity. The most common sign of bricking with iPhones is when the device appears to be stuck during boot and displays only the black screen with the Apple logo. Luckily, the Apple iPhone is a device which is easily unbricked in 99% of failures. Here’s how:
Hello and welcome to the opinionated thoughts and ramblings of Manchester educated technology enthusiast Raj Singh.
Feel free to browse news and posts to the left, and links are at the top if you wish to know a little more about me. If you're looking at this from a more professional context, feel free to check out my LinkedIn profile:
