IT Support for Lincolnshire

WordPress iPhone App Updated

The WordPress app for iPhones updated today and it has been greatly improved.

The page/post editor now has formatting buttons and adding a link is also on a button – in the previous version I had to google to find out how to add a link. Although the editor is not wysiwyg – it just puts the code on the page for you – it is easy to pick up the basics. Still no horizontal line though.

The app now includes a reader for WordPress sites you follow and shows the “freshly pressed” WordPress blogs.

One thing that has not changed, is that images are always inserted at the end of the post – it would be better if they were inserted at the cursor – it would save much cutting and pasting.

I use the iPhone app not only to write my blog but to write posts and maintain pages on the Octagon Technology and the National Hamfest websites.

am really pleased with this update – and it has come just in time before I go and walk the West Highland Way when I plan to blog a lot, so family and friends can see out progress. A little formatting will help the clarity of the posts.

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Other engineers and staff at Octagon use Android phones/WordPress apps to contribute to the site – when I am back at work following the National Hamfest I will check out whether their apps have also been upgraded.

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Lincoln club hosts national festival

Lincoln club hosts national festival.

The National Hamfest is next Friday and Saturday – so this Monday morning I am off to spend a week camping at the Newark Showground, to co-ordinate the Lincoln Shortwave Club and it’s friends in organising and running the event.

A big thank you to all those people who help out in any way, in making the National Hamfest a success.

Octagon Technology, for the third year is a major supporter of the show.

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iPhone Problems

Like the rest of the world I have had to listen to how perfect iPhones (insert Mac, iPod, iPad etc as required) are. We have watched Steve Jobs preach and perform hardware miracles on the stage at the launch of the next product. There are Apple Stores, bright, shiny, modern, complete with “Geniuses”. We all want one.

Even me. Let me declare I love my iPhone, I would count myself as a geek and a power user when it comes to my iPhone, I use it all the time for business and pleasure. Whenever asked I will promote iPhones to my clients to help them with their businesses.

BUT… Apple is not perfect.

They have big problems – magnified all the larger when you rely on the gadget to run your business.

Last week the screen went black. Pushing the two buttons, available, had no visible effect. Remember the iPhone has no “on” LED (a design omission!) or reset button. So I am looking at the most expensive brick I have ever owned – with no way to access that days appointments or phone the office to ask for help – and my clients could not call me. Add another “gotcha” to all of that, because the iPhone does not use a standard size sim card I cannot even transfer it to another phone.

This issue apparently fixed itself!

A couple of weeks back – no audio on the phone – read more here.

This issue apparently fixed itself!

Today, as I went to leave the office, I checked my mail on the iPhone and found this.

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There was mail there when I checked it over breakfast. There was mail in the mailbox online. As ever the iPhone provides you with little feedback to diagnose the problem. I deleted the account on the phone and put it back – no difference. I ran out of time to do more so I left for my meeting, when I got the phone out at the meeting the mail was back!

So this issue apparently fixed itself as well!

For both of the first two issues I searched Apple.com for answers but I could not find any useful help or explanations. I have tried the almost standard Apple support answer – reset and restore the phone. It hasn’t helped.

The Apple Support Communities and Forums are useful but sometimes offer conflicting or worst, complicated sequences of things to do, “which worked for them”.

Everyone knocks Microsoft – however ask any support engineer how useful Microsoft’s TechNet is when sorting out a problem with MS products. At Octagon Technology we use it all the time.

I did not have the same issues with my old Windows phone. Yes it crashed and I used the reset button to fix it. The green LED told me it was on. But there is no going back the HTC Pro was good in its day but technology moves on.

Android? Nothing wrong with them but it does not run Memory Map.

I would not change my iPhone – even with the issues – and I will just have to worry that it will fail me when I am away on holiday or during an important project. Should I buy a second as a spare?

It is time for Apple reality.

(Written on my iPhone 4 using the WordPress App – told you I use it all the time.)

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Wainwright’s Coast to Coast

We are just getting into the final planning stages for the West Highland Way walk in about six weeks time – and whilst going through the maps and other documents for the walk, on my laptop, I came across the document I wrote after completing Wainwright’s Coast to Coast.

The information is from the summer of 2008 but it should still offer an insight to walk for those thinking about doing it. I have put a link to the .pdf file on the Downloads page and the here.

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eBooks Mobile

As the weather has been a bit grey here in Dingwall this morning I have been reading on my iPhone using Stanza – and I finished the eBook I was reading. I am not sure how many books I have loaded on my phone on Stanza, it must be a couple of hundred – but rather than choose one of these I decided to see what was available online for free that I could access and use on my iPhone.

Project Gutenberg and iBooks

Everyone’s first stop for free ebooks, Project Gutenberg now has a mobile site Project Gutenberg Mobile, which works well in Safari on my iPhone 4 and is easy to use and find books that you would be interested in. I looked in the Science Fiction section and found The Door Through Space, by Marion Zimmer Bradley – it was easy to find the download for this book, I chose an ePub version and opened it in iBooks, Apple’s own eBook reader available from the App Store for free. I also chose the version with images so I had the book cover showing on my iBooks shelf!

It was a very easy process and with over 36,000 books available you should be able to find something that interests you.

Stanza

The Stanza app has a built in online catalogue.

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Within this catalogue are books to purchase – but there are many free books including a link to Project Gutenberg. Some of the free books on offer, from the shops, are the first books in a series so encouraging you to go back and buy subsequent episodes. Project Gutenberg was easy to use; with the books going straight into your Stanza library.

I was interested in Books from Munseys as they advertise pulp fiction – my favourite – I like nothing better than a old fashioned sci-fi pulp story, with heroes, heroines, monsters and laser beams!

I quickly found a book I was interested in their catalogue by going to the Genres Section. Who could resist this cover? (JSC has just commented “don’t judge a book by the cover”, teenagers, they of course know everything!)

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Clicking the download button puts the book directly into your Stanza library. If your return to this page later the download button becomes a read now button as the app records you have a copy of this book in your library.

A quick browse of Munsys and Project Gutenberg shows you there are thousands of free books out there to choose from.

If you want to purchase the latest best seller then Stanza and iBooks both give you access to those as well.

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I have an account with Smashwords – I have bought the Starship Sofa short story collections from them. For these books they offered them in a variety of formats – I chose ePub for Stanza/iBooks – all the formats were DRM free.

This article is sponsored by Octagon Technology Lincoln, England

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3G Signal Coverage

A couple of weeks ago the BBC announced that it was going to carry out a survey of UK 3G Signal Coverage – using an app for Android mobile phones and the participation of members of the public. This morning the results have appeared here and make a case that smartphone users outside of the of the major population centres of the UK do not get a good deal when it comes to 3G (but of course we all pay the same fees). This is something our engineers at Octagon Technology, myself and our clients understand very well living in Lincolnshire – a county not known for great urban sprawls!

There is a quote somewhere about how good and reliable statistics can be and the mobile operators have always relied on their statistic of providing coverage to a very high percentage of the population, not a statistic of covering the UK with a 3G signal. I can understand this from a business investment/profit position as 3G installations are expensive and the mobile companies paid billions of pounds for the rights to the frequencies to transmit 3G.

The government has hinted at initiatives to increase coverage in rural areas (let’s see this happen) and now they are talking of improving coverage on major roads and railways – Lincolnshire has little in the way of major roads and we may or may not have a direct rail service to London!

Now I enjoy living in a rural area, and will put up with the inconvenience of not having a polluting, noisy, fast motorway coming through our city and the small inconvenience of having to go to Newark for a train to London. I will also work around using 2G sometimes rather than 3G. But the point is when are the mobile providers going to have a scale of charges that reflect the service you get rather than the service they say you will get – and we all know at this point the mobile companies will direct you to the disclaimers about selling you 3G and then providing 2G and that is your problem and not theirs. Now this is my point – in these days of technology if you live and use your smartphone in an area with reduced 3G coverage, it must be possible for the mobile providers to reduce your bill accordingly?

In the BBC article it points people at a website for checking 3G coverage where you are – OpenSignalMaps. We are camping very close to the station in Dingwall and luckily I have a 3G signal.

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This site has gone into the favourites on my iPhone for future use.

The aim of the site is to create a worldwide coverage map, using an Android app to collect the data – if you have N android phone or tablet I’d encourage you to get involved – I would if the was an iPhone app.

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