General

iPhone 4 Built in Camera App

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Whilst I was away I tried out both the Camera+ app and the built in camera app. The Camera+ has lots of options and other “good things” for making creative images, editing, sorting etc. The built in camera is much simpler but it does have an HDR setting dessigned to deliver better quality images. I set the camera to save both the composite HDR image and the “standard” image for comparison. I was very pleased with the results especially in very difficult lighting.

The first images are the standard shots, the second are in HDR

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Pine Lake Resort Internet – Update

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I waited for the Swisscom tech support to call me back and in the end at about 2pm (after I got nack from a walk) I called them for an update.

Again I got a very polite member of staff who looked up my case on their system, yes it had been escalated to the second line support team, but as of then they had not taken any action on the matter. It was explained to me that they were probably dealing with a higher priority matter. He resubmitted my call so it was again at the top of the call list.

So here I am waiting again – no internet. ICorrect me if I am wrong but I am pretty certain that someone here has made a profit from selling me this service.

Let’s keep a list of days without internet – but paid for.

Saturday evening – paid my money but no internet
Sunday – no high speed internet

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Good Cafe Bad Cafe

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I am on holiday at this moment, in Aviemore, Scotland – so it is a good time for me to get this blog going. I thought I would walk in to the village and get some breakfast, went to one cafe where after ten minutes they had not taken my order – even though the place was less than half full and two of the staff had time to discuss their activities from the night before. I am not even sure they knew I had left or not been served.

I then went to “The Coffee Pot” it is the last shop of the block where the Post Office is, heading out of town. I went there last summer and it was good and it did not disappoint today. It is a clean, smart, traditional British cafe with a coal stove to keep the customers warm. They have a short menu done well, some homemade items, a barista so you can get a coffee and the tea comes in pots. I had a breakfast roll, runny fried egg and black pudding and a pot of tea and got change from £5.

Didn’t  realise whilst I was there that they had free wifi.

An excellent place – give Aviemore’s trendy cafes a miss and visit “The Coffee Pot”. Couldn’t find a web site for them but they are on facebook.

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Smartphones

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I got my iPhone 4 just before Christmas – and it was not an easy purchase. I had set up many iPhones both 3s and 4s and iPads and really liked the interface and the hardware but the thing in the back of my mind is that you never own the iPhne it always belongs to Apple and it will work how they want it to work. I am an extreme user of PDAs and have been for many years using them in preference to laptops in my job and personally as first, ebook readers and later as videos and audio players and most recently as my camera and hill walking navigation device. Would the iPhone do all these things for me.

Now audio is not an issue – unlike many I have always thought iTunes was a reasonable product and have used it successfully with my iPod Nano. It manages the podcasts and I have it set to manually manage music allowing me to load audio books and drama into the Nano as playlists. I now use the automatic setting for managing music to the iPhone and create playlists in iTunes which I then select for syncing.

A trip to a friend who already owned an iPhone 3GS and an iPad answered several more questions. The word processor and spreadsheets could be handled by Documents ToGo – a program I was familiar with from previous Palm PDAs. My company uses DropBox extensively and I was very pleased to find Documents ToGo and DropBox so closely integrated.

That left Memory-Map. I have a large investment in maps both 25k and 50k which work on my PC and on my Windows Smartphone – would they work on an iPhone. To test this I bought a copy of Memory-map and tried loading my maps onto his iPad – and they worked.

Ebooks were next – I have a huge collection of ebooks and text files – I could use ereader again but I have become fed up with not being able to purchase the books I want from their web site because I live in the UK. A search on the Internet, and I discovered Calibre and Stanza.

So I was ready to go ahead and buy and iPhone. Within hours of getting it I had my business critical Contacts and Calendar synced and the iPhone linked to DropBox.

I spent some of my Christmas holiday getting to grips with more of the software. I am now on holiday in Scotland and the Lakes so I will have plenty of time to test the iPhone out.

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Time to Blog… Again!

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So I logged into my blog knowing it must be a while since I’d put anything up – nearly two years – and what do you know he last thing I put up was a blog about my then new smart phone. Well I wore the HTC out and just before Christmas I got an iPhone 4 and the reason I am now posting is that it has an app for WordPress.

I never remembered to post – the HTC phone was good but not great for using on the web – and by the time I got back to my PC the moment had passed and I had work to do. With this app I hope I will be able to post more. I have a long interest in mobile computing and love walking and photography and that is what I want to talk about.

So watch this space and let’s see if it works out.

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New PDA – Phone – GPS – Camera…

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In a previous post I discussed the tech stuff I carry when walking or just for work – and especially the number of devices and chargers I have to pack. Well just before Christmas I got an HTC Touch Pro – and it was great to have only one device in my pocket – which does everything.

I got the extended battery pack, which is essential if you use it as much as I do and want to get a full days use from it, the supplied slim 800mAh battery is just not good enough. I also added a 16GB memory card.

Great Points

  • Excellent camera, which includes a flash light, exposure compensation and auto-fucus.
  • The ability to photograph documents and even business cards – very useful for me as I am always losing bits of paper when I am at work, and as a Director in BNI I get dozens of business cards each week.
  • The keyboard is very useable – and illuminated
  • Exceptional screen – it is small, but sharp and very easy to read. I can easily use the Memory-Map navigation software on it, edit word documents using TextMaker and read books.
  • The supplied RSS Hub application is very good – downloading content in the background when there is  data connection – and even able to download on request podcasts – which can then be played from the application or saved to the storage card.

I hve always thought that the Windows media player, supplied with Windows mobile devices, lacks flexibility. On previous PDAs I have used the free TCPMP player – but that does ot work in WM6.1, so I bought a copy of its commercial replacement Core media player.

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