Surely this is a little obsolete now that iOS 5 uses the Volume Up button to take pictures with?
Posts by Ian North
42 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jun 2007
Belkin LiveAction Camera Grip
Dell flees netbook market, dumps Minis
Woz's key to success: Burn the tie, wear T-shirts to work
iPhone users get iJustHadAShag bedpost-notch boast app
UK broadband speeds crippled during 'rush hour'
Pass the wine, dear. Yes, that papier-mache thing
Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 91z all-in-one PC
Apple Thunderbolt Macs have chips for optical links
Skype arrives on fondleslab
Facetime...
I'll say this for Facetime, for all of its faults it does seem to produce a clearer and smoother image than Skype does, from the iPhone at least.
I was chatting to my girlfriend over skype the other day, her on her iPhone and me on my computer. We decided to try Facetime for some reason. I could see her a lot more clearly and the framerate was higher. She said that she could see me more clearly too.
Same hardware on both ends, same internet connection.
Stop sexing up IT and give Civil Servants Macs, says gov tech boss
Synology DS411slim Nas box
Cute download Firefox, 'treat a cub' vid downed by IE glitch
Apple vanishes Java from Mac OS X Lion
Britain takes delivery of first Nissan e-cars
Bookshop swaps Kindles for real books
Title...
1 and 2) That isn't a failing on the part of the e-reader, that's a failing on the part of whoever did the conversion process. I've got a couple of ebooks with illustrations and diagrams, they were at least as good as the paperback equivalents.
3) That depends on the device, surely?
4) Purchasing an eBook from Amazon uses the exact same process as buying a paper book with the added bonus of getting your new book right away
5) Depends on the book that you buy but I don't disagree entirely
6) With the Kindle at least, all of your purchases are stored on Amazon's servers and can be downloaded and redownloaded at will. The device itself can be backed up onto your computer too. What's difficult to archive?

Bloody luddite
Pagers, Laserdiscs and 1990 cell phones all got superseded by superior products, i.e. mobile phones, DVDs and 2000 era cell phones, not because the people didn't like them. I have no doubt that the Kindle will one day belong in such a museum but I don't think it'll be because people don't like the concept, it will be because something better would have come along.
Yes, I like books just fine but the Kindle (and eBook readers in general, lets not be brand specific here) is a really good concept. I got a Kindle for Christmas, I've so far loaded the better part of eighty books on it and can carry those books around with me where-ever I go. Can't do that with paperbacks.
Sony Ericsson LiveView remote phone viewer
Microsoft sings Happy Birthday to Windows 7
Uh...
"Can you PLEASE get rid of any and all requirements for F6 Raid/SATA/AHCI driver installations?????????? What the frack, why is this still DOS? Every and any driver, firmware, software should be able to be installed in a Windows GUI environment as well as be updated, on the fly without ruining prior installations. I don't care how you do it, just do it."
Am I missing something here? You've been able to update Microsoft OS drivers in the GUI since forever. In addition, the installation routine for Windows since Vista has been completely GUI based and you no longer have to press F6 to load third party storage controller drivers. And you can upgrade some firmwares in the GUI as well but that's more dependent on the hardware manufacturer than the OS vendor.
Firefox wraps its gums around the iPhone
Far East fanboi dresses iPad as Mac (Classic)
O2 to step back from unlimited mobile data deals
BBC ices launch of free iPhone news app
Same Data, Same Devices
Maybe so but generally speaking the data is presented in a much better way in a native app than on the webpage. There is a world of difference between (for example) the Wikipedia app and the mobile Wikipedia website despite the data being the same. Same for the eBay app, the Independent app etc
Belkin preps SuperSpeed USB 3.0 adaptors
Windows 'openness' hailed in Nintendo game defeat
re: "Say What?"
"It's a gaming device, not a general purpose computer. Does Microsoft allow all and sundry to develop games to run on the xbox360?
No. No they don't."
Actually, I think they do. They have the XNA Game Studio which allows anyone to write and publish games for the XBox 360 via XBox Live.
Hisense 1080p Media Player
PC tune-up software: does it really work?
TomTom goes Jock to abuse English 'bas'
AppleT&T's MMS legal woes double
Who uses MMS?
Probably those people who don't have iPhones or other smart phones with unlimited data plans but have access to cheap PAYG or low-end contract phones. Not everyone has access to their email accounts everywhere and all of the time. Not everyone's phone has an email client. But most phones available now have colour screens and can receive MMS messages. Sometimes it's nice to have MMS in those cases.
Example, when my niece was born last year, I was in the middle of the French countryside with no internet connection. My sister still managed to get me a picture of her by MMS. If she'd emailed it to me instead, I wouldn't have picked it up for another week.
Samsung Story Station 1TB external HDD
Microsoft dumped after India PM's emails go AWOL
Where has all the bad storage gone?
RE: RAID 1
Cris Wilson, RAID1 is not a replacement for a backup, merely a complement to it. It won't protect you against file or operating system corruption, it won't protect you if your computer gets destroyed or stolen. Solely relying on RAID 1 for disaster protection is an exercise in foolishness.
Unofficial fix issued for Vista networking flaw
Microsoft sneaks out Silverlight 2
Multi OS Support
Silverlight already works in IE and Firefox on Windows and in Safari and Firefox on Mac. There is also a Microsoft sanctioned Linux port called Moonlight which works with Konqueror, Opera and Firefox again. I don't see what else they can do to make it much more cross-platform than that!
Dell offers XP option for £44k
Apple sued over 'inflated' iMac claims
20" iMac
I kind of agree with Thomas Reynolds although I don't love Apple quite so much. I have one of the new generation 20" iMacs too. I use it with a Dell 2001FP screen and there is a noticable difference between the two screens, the Dell is much nicer. That said, I'm not too bothered. The iMac's screen is good enough for my purposes and lets face it, 20" 8 bit panels are getting to be like hen's teeth these days anyway.
Apple updates laptop lines
Phoenix hijacks Windows boot with instant-on
Cheap PS3 won't help Blu-ray, claim HD DVD backers
MS HD-DVD Drive
"Curiously, the EHPG is nonetheless quite happy to include Microsoft's HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 games console in the debate, so we can only hope the organisation is praying the software giant chooses not to release a second-generation 360 with an HD DVD drive built in."
I suppose that the difference is that whoever decides to buy the HD-DVD addon for the XBox 360 is only going to use it as a HD-DVD player being as no software is going to be released on HD-DVD for the XBox. However, with the PS3 you get a Blu Ray drive whether you want to use it as a Blu Ray movie player or not.