Archive for July, 2007

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Vista set to overtake Mac OS X


27 Jul

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 According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January’s 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.’s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June.

As far as I can see people are slowly warming to Vista, though new rumors that SP1 might not materialise until 2009 might put a slight dampener on things.

I still maintain my views on Vista…… IT’S GREAT!

Datacenter power outage


27 Jul

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Ok OK a few days late on this one but I’ve been busy!

365 Main a datacenter in downtown San Fran on the 24th of this month suffered a power outage, the cause was initially thought to be a drunken employee on a bender, but was later confirmed to be power problems in San Francisco rather than the datacenter specifically. 365 Main apparently lost their authentication database when their power went out; legit customers couldn’t get in to fix their sites. After a while a queue of people started gathering trying to find answers.

365 Main hosts customers such as Craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, AdBrite and SixApart (including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox) as well as my sites www.andrewwardlaw.com and www.aspiringgeek.me.uk

Power was eventually restored to the site and things seem to have been fine since. 

A

Dedicated in flight laptop power and wifi coming to Quantas


27 Jul

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Qantas’ forthcoming A380s or revamped 747-400s, will reportedly feature in-flight WiFi and laptop power. As if that weren’t enough, the new A380s will even dole out power sockets to those in economy class, and while the in-flight entertainment system may be preferred by your offspring, we know you’ll greatly appreciate the internet access and seat-mounted USB / Ethernet ports.

It’s about time this happened. I am sitting on a train at the moment moving at 125mph and I have an internet connection. If they can do that why not in planes?

The technical side of wiring up a plane for either WiFi or ethernet is not that complicated really.

Roll on the mid-air blogging!

A

Blog Downtime


25 Jul

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Apologies for the downtime in my blog and website (www.andrewwardlaw.com) over the last few hours. This was due to a power outage at the 365 data center in San Francsico.

More info on the data center is here and here

Hopefully, it will be stable from now on. Sadly it did not fix the centering issues with IE

A

Google Plans Search Service for Mobile Content


24 Jul

Posted in Mobile, Technology | Comments Off

Google inc are looking to create a mobile based search that will help consumers find and buy ringtones, games and other mobile content as the Internet company pushes more deeply into wireless.

Google already offers cellphone users a version of its popular engine for searching the Web. Now the company wants to go beyond just looking up Web pages, effectively becoming a gateway for finding and paying for mobile media content.

For me I think that a service like this is somewhat going to become redundant soon! If people catch on that it is so simple to take a music track from a CD and use that as a ringtone surely then they will stop buying ringtones from these companies?

A

Work all weekend


21 Jul

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Ok it’s 6.28am on Saturday and I am off to the office to work all weekend. If I can find some time I’ll blog some things, if not, Monday will be my next Entry!

Have a good weekend all!

A

Vodafone to buy Verizon?


17 Jul

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Yesterday the Financial Times published an article on Vodafone:

Mobile phone group Vodafone has been considering a $160bn takeover bid for its American peer and partner, Verizon Communications — a deal that, if consummated, would rival AOL’s takeover of Time Warner and Vodafone’s earlier acquisition of Germany’s Mannesmann as one of the largest M&A transactions on record

Should the buyout occur it would equate to nearly $160bn $90 of which would be private equity and that would amount to the largest leverage buyout on record!

I don’t mind what voda do, as longs as my phone bill doesn’t go up and if they do buy Verizon I want cheaper calls when I’m in the US!

UPDATE – According to Engadet Mobile Vodafone are flatly denying that they are looking to buy Verizon, of course that could mean ANYTHING.

Who needs an iPhone?


17 Jul

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http://www.whoneedsaniphone.com:

This site popped up last week and to be honest I am quite looking forward to seeing what the two guys behind it can create!

They are looking to create an interface for Windows Mobile devices that is iPhone like.

We also want to let everyone know that the intent of this project IS NOT TO DUPLICATE THE IPHONE INTERFACE… we just want to take some of the principles of that interface and bring them to Windows Mobile users!  One of the big keys here is operating the phone with just your finger… I have always hated having to pull out the stylus to do certain things… bigger buttons and more scrolling without scroll bars and stuff like that…

I hope they succeed and yes I have signed up to be a beta tester for it! I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

Checkout the website for more information!

A.

Skype calling quality……….


15 Jul

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….. is simply outstanding. I was talking to my friend Lin tonight; she is in LA and uses Skype also! We were chatting away and it suddenly popped into my head how clear she was! It really sounded like she was in the room with me! Yes now and again we got a few dropped packets etc but that is expected especially as I was connected to the office via Citrix as we were talking! Even with that the quality was exceptional and of course our call was totally free! I am connected to a simple 4mbs broadband connection here with 3 or 4 other machines using it and Lin has a DSL connection over there (I don’t know the speed).

Well done Skype for producing such a fantastic piece of software!

A.

Call of Duty rocks


15 Jul

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I’m not a big gamer really, if I am playing a game though, it’s usually either, a driving sim, a flying sim or one of the Fifa games (let’s not get into the PES vs FIFA debate now), oh and of course I cannot get enough of Tomb Raider. On the odd occasion I might play Half Life, Counter Strike or another RPG, but have never been that good at them and they are not a genre I’d like to play constantly. Until that is, I played Call of Duty. Lots of my friends and other people (Chris Moyles of Radio One fame for example) had been talking about it and so I thought I’d give it a try. Well yesterday I completed Call of Duty 1 (it took me about a 3 weeks of on and off gaming) and BOY OH BOY what a fantastic game!! It drew me in and I found myself playing it for hours and hours and getting more and more angry and frustrated as I kept getting shot by the Nazis. The graphics are fantastic even on Vista and the game runs amazingly well! I just bought CoD2 last night and have been playing that today, and it’s even better than its predecessor. Better graphics, better AI, better gameplay, all round a fantastic experience!!

I would recommend it to anyone!

A

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