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• PS3, too big for your boots?

  Posted June 26, 2009 // Tagged as Gaming, PS3, Xbox 360 // 1 Comment

  Last year, back in December I received the lovely gift of a PS3 – it was a rather epic present. I’d always wanted one, but I’ve never got one due to the ‘high’ price of the machine and the fact that I have a xbox 360 has always put me off. Now that I’ve got one, I can see why many people dislike it. I’m going to say now, that I still like my PS3 I just have a couple of issue’s that I’d like to talk about.

  
  

  The user interaction between you and the console.
  
  
  The PS3 for me, is a little emo. It’s a little too hard, it’s like a tight up business man. When I turn on my 360, I get a bright nice, loud welcome screen, and engages the user for playing with it. With the PS3 it feels like you have to do something If you really want to achieve anything. As soon as you turn the 360, you are attacked with a wealth of information including movie trailers, game teasers and demo downloads – information that I want to see. With the ps3, you choose to log on, and once you’ve done that, you only have the option to play the games you already have or the demo’s.
  
  
  Oh, I’m so excited to play this game!
  
  
  Wait, hang on. You’ve got to wait 2 hours for the updates to download. That’s how I waited to play burnout revenge, not fun eh? The updates are tediously long, especially system updates. Instead of being incremental updates like the 360, you have to download the 200mb+ OS install. Luckily, my connection is fairly decent and downloading doesn’t take to long but do I seriously need to download the operating system again?
  
  
  Playing with friends..
  
  
  No headset provided free? Come on, even Microsoft provide on free, and it’s actually fairly decent. Is Sony expecting me to have a bluetooth headset lying around the house, because I don’t. When you receive a friend, a notice doesn’t pop up to tell you that you’ve received or a message either. With the 360, you have the request at the top of the list, and when you receive a message, a number appears showing the amount of unread messages in your in box.

  Overall, the power of the machine of excellent, the games are excellent and extremely well designed. Sounds like they need some real customer interaction with Sony to get them on track and to stop being so professional,  loosen that tie a litle and relax. Just seems like Sony need’s a rehaul on the UI front.

• I think it’s time you upgraded to IE8+

  Posted June 25, 2009 // Tagged as Rant // 1 Comment

  I’ll say now, I’m not a web designer. I have no creativity skills when it comes to creating websites. But when you’re working on something, it’s always good to support older versions of programs, you know, someone might want to read it. Lots of large businesses and corporate firms won’t upgrade from IE6 due to the scare of security and the fact they know that IE6 is safe. Continuing to support IE6 is a pain; the fact I know that public libraries still use it makes me want to still support the use of it.

  But is not time that we moved onto IE7/8 yet? Even better if companies would allow the use of Firefox, but that’s not going to happen in companies, because general security policies say that installing 3rd party software is a breach of policy. – ( it’s a piece of 3rd party software and should not be used). Many companies deny the ability to install 3rd party software also, denying users to able to install Firefox. So what are users to do?

  It’s good to here that’s Microsoft are not providing Windows 7 with IE, but how are you going to download a browser without a browser? – I hope they give the option for several different browsers including Firefox & Opera (which is one of my favourite – excellent IRC client and mail client too).

  But have people never heard of updating? It would be fine if the back end was upgraded to web kit. But if your reading this on IE6, please go and down a copy of IE8 or Firefox,  for you’re own wealthfare and wellbeing.

• College Year Completed

  Posted June 25, 2009 // Tagged as Personal // 3 Comments

  This is more a personal update really than anything. I’ve just completed this academic year at College, completing my CompTIA A+. I’m now, well, apparently – a fully qualified I.T technician.

  Hopefully next year I’ll be working on my Network qualifications and getting my Cisco’s together. Although it sounds like I’m after a career in I.T – that’s not what I’m aiming to do with my life. My career path is still unclear; but I’m looking to move into the police after I’ve finished college and done my gap year. (still planning).

  but in the mean time, thanks for all your on-going support it’s really helped me through.

  x.

• Recent Activity In Bayliss House

  Posted May 30, 2009 // Tagged as Updates // 1 Comment

  This one’s gonna be kind of personal; So recently i’ve been hammered under piles of home, coursework, assignments and revision for exams. This is the sole reason for the lack of activity on my blog and social media side.

  I’ve finally got shot of the iPhone that I had for about 10 months, and then it broke and decided, hey touch screen devices aren’t for me. So I recently picked up the Sony Ericsson C905, and excellent phone. With a 8.1MP camera, Wifi, 3G, GPS, it’s a fantastic little device.

  That’s basically summing up what i’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks. Again, i’m under a large amount of work now, causing the inactivity on my blog.

  Thanks for all the support you guys give me, it’s greatly appreciated. 

  James. x.

• Woaw, time flew by!

  Posted May 1, 2009 // Tagged as Updates // No Comments

  Thank you everyone for your emails and comments recently, asking for my where abouts! I’ve been so busy with college work, and keeping up with everything else in the world! I’ve been doing so many things recently I haven’t had anytime to blog or post many things to my Flickr stream. During the easter break (Spring Break for you U.S peeps!) I went with some friends to a lovely coastal village called Borth and chilled out on the beach with the waves rocking gently. I had such a good time.

  This is all for now, i’m still alive, still on this planet, just hard at work, and socialising!

  James.

• Apps: Shiira

  Posted April 6, 2009 // Tagged as Apple, Applications, OS X // No Comments

  I started using Shiira a month or two back, once Safari and Firefox had finally annoyed me enough. Shiira is a browser that runs on webkit (ACE!) and written in lovely Cocoa. Most mac user’s have probably never heard of Shiira, and I have no idea why. It’s a fantastic browser. It’s fast, runs lightly, and is easy on the eye. Something FireFox isn’t.
  

  Just some features of Shiira:

  You have two different options for opening tabs, you have the standard tab bar, across the top and you are able to select your windows this way. 

  

  Shiira also allow you to have your tabs at the bottom of the screen in a larger view. This makes it easier to quickly have a decent overview of the tabs that you have open. 

  

  All of this functionality makes Shiira an excellent and easy to use. But your probably still thinking why should I switch from my awesome firefox with thousands of awesom add-on’s? Think of Shiira as a light, gentle and neat browser. It’s so small and light on your system and hardly uses any ram.

  Try out Shiira, even if it’s for 5 minutes, try it out.

  Download it now

• You know, I give free hosting, right?

  Posted April 5, 2009 // Tagged as Servers, Web Hosting // No Comments

  It’s tough times at the moment, and I know about it, trust me. It’s tough times for us students too. For design students, young bloggers and developers, it can be a struggle to afford those monthly payments for your hosting.

  That’s why I have decided to give away free hosting to students. It’s completely free to any student to anywhere in the world. Fancy some free hosting? Go to leave a comment below (make sure you leave a email that works!) now!

• Why is it important to have a twitter account?

  Posted April 5, 2009 // Tagged as Services, Twitter // 2 Comments

  Being on a twitter more of a social icon than ever before. It’s probably one of the most talked about topics on the internet and I’m not surprised that it is. You’re probably thinking that this post is about a year late, but the fact is that twitter won’t be going away anytime soon. Although, the recent news of the possible acquisition by Google important, I think we still need to remember that Google won’t be do anything stupid if they do purchase it.

  So, why is it important to have a twitter account?

  1) Announcing news

  Announcing news and important information is easier than making a blog post. The information can reach people in more ways, and is accessible from different devices other than a web browser.

  2) Getting feedback and idea’s

  Ever wanted to know how someone feels on a certain subject or idea? Twitter is excellent for this, just tweeting how you feel about a product or service normally gets a reply and input from other twitter members. Sometimes, that company is twitter, and replying to them gets a reply quicker than contacting them by email.

  3) A Traffic Generator

  Want to quickly tell everyone about a blog post you’ve created, or show off some work that you’ve done in your portfolio? Twitter is a great way announcing your new post instead them trawling and finding it through their RSS reader

  4) Meet new online friends and people with similar interests

  Use twitter to your advantage and meet great people with the same interest and share your ideas with them. I several people who have met on twitter, thought of an idea and created a brands, and sites with each other. They may well be on different sides of the planet.

  5) Great source of information from others

  Just like you, other’s can announce news, pictures, video’s text from other sites, or they’re own. It’s a great way of finding blog posts, or new interesting ideas from other people.

  You’re probably still asking, what’s this got to do with the importance of having a twitter account? Having a twitter account is like having an email address; you need to have some online presence. You don’t need tens, hundreds, thousands of followers. Twitter can also be useful to use just between you and your friends. You can save money, by not texting your mate because he’s already announced what he/she is doing on twitter. Twitter is massive source information, and you need to start participating in it. Not being on twitter today is not having an email address almost. It’s makes you null online and this is the massive realisation decision that you need to make.
  

• Feedreaders, I guess it’s a requirement.

  Posted April 4, 2009 // Tagged as RSS, Thoughts // 2 Comments

  I’ve always been a user who is really oblivious to following RSS feeds – I find it difficult to keep on track with my RSS reader, I personally use Google Reader. But every time I try to use it, I forget about it for a week or two, and then next thing I know is that I’ve 1000/2000 unread Items. I’ve tried so many different ways to attack the issue, but failed so many times.

  I’ve found that my issue is that I follow many large blogs that post 40+ items everyday – and I think that following these kind of blogs for me, is wrong. I cannot keep up with it. It’s a struggle. To help me solve this issue, I downloaded a copy of NewsFire (free) for OS X and started importing links from various blogger’s, that are small, but their content is great and their posts are well constructed. I have NewsFire open when I turn on my macbook and so I read it when I start my computer.

  How do you handle with RSS and your reader? Do you have a set schedule or a specific routine? Do you feel it’s necessary to have a feed reader. I’d like to know.

• Is the App Store Bloated?

  Posted April 4, 2009 // Tagged as App Store, Apple, iPhone // 4 Comments

  Since the app store was released in 2008, it has exploded with thousands of applications now available to download to your mobile device. At the end of 2008, the number hit 10,000 – quite allot of applications for one small light, little operating system on a device. But is finding decent, worthwhile applications seeming more difficult to do? I believe Apple has let go of control of the app store, and let it run riot. The amount of actual worthy apps is actually very low and that allot are just complete and utter crap.

  Seriously, I thought Apple would really crack out the belt, and whip anyone who sent a application without any real thought process. Now, I don’t want to offend Apple / iPhone dev’s with this post as there are some real excellent developers who spend allot of time with planning and developing applications. Some of the App’s are actually extremely well constructed and have put some serious thought and time into it. But some are just pathetically bad, and poorly constructed.

  When will Apple regain control and actually go through the applications thoroughly, checking for small errors and mistakes and also making sure that the Application is of quality. What do you think about the current state of the app store?

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