Posts by Craig McGill 1

Sympathetic Scots scoff-house offers hard-up Apple fanbois a discount

Re: An interesting way to drum up publicity

They've had ads on the front page of the P&J for a few years.

Mars probably never wet enough for life, nuclear bomb crater indicates

Snow on Mars

All the details in the link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080929.html

Beck's open-source challenge to freetards: play it yourself!

Brilliant stunt but fighting piracy?

Surely, all it will take is a bunch of scanned PDFS to be put up of the sheet music?

Did Mitt Romney really get 117,000 REAL Twitter followers in ONE DAY?

The 2000 limit

Twitter's first cutoff limit is 2000 followers - ie you can only follow 2000 people. If you want to follow more, you need to have 2000 people follow you first.

There used to be limits at 4000 and higher as well but I don't think they are in place any more.

This is a fairly well-known trick, it's why only numpties go by follower numbers (on any platform) and instead go for the a-bit-more-trustworthy metric of engagement or even sales/ROI.

'Sacrifice another goat!: iCloud is Apple's biggest failure before Google

Re: Google isn't the pinnacle of cloud sync, Dropbox is

It baffles me that DropBox gets the praise it does. You can't edit and save work on Apple apps like Pages and Keynote remotely. On the iPad for example, ou need to open Dropbox, access your file, then open it in the host app then save it on the iPad. Then transfer it over when you get to your main machine.

I'm really hoping OsX 10.8 allows for proper Cloud storage (with folders and so on) but with a local version remaining for when in offline areas.

Basically a version of DropBox that works with Apple apps...

SpaceX signs deal to put its giant rocket to good use

Re: Vandenberg?

Back when the plan was for the Shuttle stack to go from there, they had to clear the sides of the roads so that the shuttle could fit on the roads - http://galaxywire.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/enterprise-on-the-move-to-lc6.jpg is the best pic I could find with a quick Google.

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Mealy pudding v migas

Get it right!

Glaswegians have long preferred square sausages and the white pudding that you mention is more a delicacy of the East and Dundee, not Glasgow.

Pilots asking not to fly F-22 after oxygen problems

No one gone for the obvious Top Gun song reference?

It's a bad day when good taste is getting in here...

Nordic region, Ireland adopt new 'connected telly' standard

The point of this article was

So a TV standard is being used in Europe and not the UK - any thought as to the article perhaps giving us analysis, opinion, thoughts on what might happen with regards punters? In other words, what we expect from El Reg. This was just a factual statement padded out.

BYOD sync 'n share

Great idea but...

I was a 100% fan until I edited a document on my iPad and then discovered that it doesn't automatically sync up with the version in DropBox - it's locally saved only, which makes it a bit of a pain when working on stuff out of the office...

Facebook to acquire Instagram for $1bn

Re: OMFG! Dude, seriously, WTF?

It's not about the filters? What is it then?

Navigation app CoPilot Live goes freemium next month

Worst SatNav App ever

I don't know how this gets the praise that it does. Let me count the ways that it's rotten (in Scotland at least):

1) Maps are out of date

2) It's slow to update. You can be past the street you were meant to turn down before it tells you to turn down it

3) Doesn't update when driving at slow speeds.

4) Slow to get a lock on you when starting.

5) Terrible UI compared to the likes of TomTom

6) Worst of all, doesn't actually send you the quickest routes (even when that's the option selected). I've seen it tell me - on more than one time - to turn left, drive up a main street, go round the roundabout at the top and head back in the original direction, all instead of a simple turn right instruction.

Might be good in other countries but in Scotland? Avoid.

I bought it as I thought the TomTom price was ridiculous. With hindsight, I would have rather forked out.

CoPilot - even at free, it would be no use.

Wake up, small biz: Learn to speak internet

IPM?

Google page one results for that are all over the place so what is it?

UltraViolet passes million download mark

It's a crap service

You try to download the digital version and you can't download it direct to a tablet or phone - you need to download to Mac/PC first and then transfer over. After that, you need to use a specific app to watch it in - it won't play in anything.

And the Customer Service is far from helpful. We bought one title, thinking it was the way to go but won't be buying another.

So close, but so far...

Belkin Keyboard Folio case for iPad

Disagree with the review

The keys are too close together to do any sort of decent typing and too soft when typing. I've found the Kengsington keyboard case to be a lot better.

Anyone thinking of a keyboard folio case should really try before they buy because your finger size does make such a difference - as does your preference for a style of keyboard.

But agree that they are a great thing. The people slagging it off are kinda missing the point - it's a very convenient laptop replacement for 90% of tasks. Instead of a laptop case/rucksack, I can carry an iPad and throw the charger in my pocket, which makes life a lot easier.

Also, if you do a 3 deal (I did the £260 option for the wifi/3G 32GB model) with 15GB a month for £25, it's a total winner. I needed two new laptop batteries - that would have been £200 for a MacBook Pro - and a 3G connection, which would have been (at least) £8-£10 a month. For a wee bit more, I got something lighter and a lot more convenient than a laptop.

(Having said that, would never have paid the full price upfront for an iPad.)

Kodak to kill off digital cameras

Shame this, the Zi8 camera is a belter - captures lovely outdoor colours and gives a clear, crisp picture and one of the few (if not the only) that has a slot for an external mic. As someone else said, time to try and snap a few up.

Orange Tahiti 7in Android tablet

That's not bad

For all the moaning about pricing, not everyone wants to faff about and search for cheaper options like GiffGaff (or whatever it's called) - £69 upfront and then £25 a month isn't bad. I paid £250 to Carphone Warehouse for a 32GB 3G iPad 2 and that's £25 a month to Three for 15GB (which is better admittedly).

But what's on offer here could do for the casual tablet user or for businesses who just need a few machines on the cheap upfront.

Groupon offer burns cupcake baker’s profits

She made even more of a loss...

The thing is, she offered that discount but then Groupon take half the actual sale offer price as well. Ouch. Groupon can work for firms but only if they're canny about it.

Can the iPad save newspapers?

What about PressReader

PressReader is a great iPad app - you get the papers as they look in print but can tap on the headlines to see them in a straight text style too. Doesn't have all the papers in the UK or world - but it has bloody plenty of them.

I'm on the £18 a month scheme and that's saved me a fortune in paper costs - of course I have no idea how the press are making money from it, which brings us back to the problem in the article.

This was never a failure of journalism mind you - it was a failure of the advertising and marketing departments who never thought to try things like affiliate stores and so on. They were too greedy and got caught for it.

Newsnight presenter pwned by snarky hack

It's legit

Turns out that it is legit - BBC Scotland has stated as such on Twitter - and the page has been like this since Feb 2010.

Virgin to offer 100Mb/s broadband by year's end

Never mind the DL

What about the upload speeds?