Apple TV 3rd Generation

Like many I sat and watched live streams of the iPad 3 media event on the 7th March 2012, and sat at drooled at the new shiny. In addition to the iPad 3 being launched there was the announcement of the 3rd generation Apple TV. It’s selling features at the event was a new shiny UI and the ability to output 1080 video (instead of the 720 from the 2nd generation) Although the 1080 did sound appealing, I spend the best part of a month encoding all my media to 720, and didn’t plan on re-encoding all the blurays to … Continue reading Apple TV 3rd Generation

Xbox Live “Metro” Dashboard

Being a Software Tester and a Gamer, I obviously jumped at the chance to become a beta tester for the new Xbox Dashboard. Earlier this week I got the “Time for an update” message, and knew it was time to play. As always with the Xbox updates, it just worked, took very little time and before I knew it, I was presented with the new dash, and I have to say, Microsoft have really impressed me. So, what to expect when this goes live to the public ? First screen you get is, Download a profile, Create a profile, or … Continue reading Xbox Live “Metro” Dashboard

Apple TV 2nd Generation

So today my Apple TV (2nd Generation) turned up, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Anybody who knows me or has been reading these my post, will know that over the last couple of years, I’ve become an Apple fan boy I’ve gradually replaced my MP3 player, my phone, my PCs and even my entire network with Apple products, and as time has gone by, I’ve organised my entire music collection to be “iTunes friendly”. I’ve been toying with the idea of an Apple TV for a while now, and very nearly bought one of the 1 generation … Continue reading Apple TV 2nd Generation

Google Latitude on iOS 4 update

Now don’t get me wrong Latitudie does what it says on the tin, but boy…does it drain the battery. I also found that the only way to turn it off was to stop the background app from running, and then disable the location service for it. The setting I used for background were, Best location, periodic updates when not moving…off. With these settings, a full battery would last around 8 hours on my iPhone 4, and around 6 hours on C’s 3GS. Now suprisingly I would have expected to App store to be over saturated with Google latatide apps, however … Continue reading Google Latitude on iOS 4 update

Apple iOS 4

When I moved from my Nokia E90 to iPhone, there were a few features missing that I used a lot. Being a “tidy freak”, I kept my application organised in folder. I’m also a big fan of Google Latitude and had this running in the background all the time, but these were scarifies I was willing to make to move across to the iPhone. As you can imagine I was overjoyed to find that not only were Folders coming to the next OS for the iPhone, but also “multitasking”. Now granted this isn’t the same multitasking that you get on … Continue reading Apple iOS 4

ted (Television Episode Downloader)

If you are anything like me (and god help you if you are :)), and use the internet as a PVR, then this software will be a god send to you. I’ve just recently ordered a Mac Mini to replace my last remaining Windows machine, and thought I’d better check if I could still do what I do now. Currently my Dell machine, sits in the corner, and is used as my media server, my iTunes server and my torrent machine. Currently I have uTorrent installed, which downloads each episode using the RSS Feed option. Each of the RSS feeds … Continue reading ted (Television Episode Downloader)

1password

For years now, I’ve been experimenting with different types of password management/virtual wallet software, but never found one that I’m 100% happy with…well, not until now ! When I bought my iPod Touch a couple of years ago, I found the most painful part of browsing, was entering my username and password into websites (as you can imagine the email address of ub3rg33k.co.uk isn’t very iPhone / iPod touch friendly). I tried many free and cheap iPhone apps which sort of did the job, but at best I could copy and paste the details to the site, 1password however just … Continue reading 1password

How to stop spam bots on phpbb3

Over the past couple of months I’ve been having a bit of an issue with spam bots signing up, and posting spam all over my forums. I spent the best part of 2 days trying to combat this but to no avail. I was just about to tear my hair out, when I stubled accross a brilliant idea over at awesomestyles.com The idea was to create a custom field which was compulsery on signup. Custom profile fields are a feature of phpBB3. They allow you, as admin, to easily add fields that a user can fill out to their profile … Continue reading How to stop spam bots on phpbb3