Andy’s Tech Blog

You may know I have been using the Skypephone on the 3 network since December and I though I should give a short review here. The Skypephone is a slim candybar design, with all the usual features (2 megapixel camera, media player, Internet, Email, Java applications, Micro SD Card).

The Skype client has been customised for use on the 3 network and has had 2 of it’s most useful features removed, namely SkypeIn (your choice of numbers in many countries so your callers only pay local charges) and SkypeOut (cheap calls to loads of countries), despite this I have found in invaluable.

On Pay As You Go you get 30 days of Skype usage (up to about 60 hours worth) with each £10 top you activate. Calls to landlines and mobiles are charged at 12p per minute and texts are also 12p. They have a range of add-ons, including TV, Internet, and Mobile Broadband. I mostly use the phone this way, but when I expect that I will be making a lot of calls I buy a Stretch pack for £15 which gives me 300 minutes any network any time and an additional 100 minutes of 3 to 3 minutes. If the 300 minutes run out you can continue to make calls at 5p per minute until the 30 days runs out.

My only reservation so far has been regarding talk time which does seem to run out sooner than I would like, though it does charge via a USB (Mini B to A) cable so this has never really been an issue for me. This handset works with everything I have connected it to (ie used it a a Bluetooth modem with my iBook), in fact the only problem I have had is getting it to sync with iSync which is notoriously finicky about new products.

For the money (£39.99) it is easy to recommend, though I will probably end up replacing it with a Sony Ericsson or Nokia handset sometime in the near future for the sake of compatibility with iSync.

I just noticed that O2 are planning on offering the iPhone on Pay As You Go. No details as yet on the pricing and features, but will update when I have more news.

Update: According to various sites the pricing of the Pay As You Go iPhone will be £299.99 for the 8GB version and £359.99 for the 16GB version. This includes unlimited browsing and WiFi for the first 6 months following activation, with an option to continue for £10 per month thereafter. You will be able to choose from the standard O2 Pay & Go tariffs for voice, text etc.

As many of you probably know I am a big fan of the folks at moo.com. I have been using their MiniCards for a while now and they are always a talking point, 100 half height full colour busuness cards for £9.99 (you can even have each card with a different image, great for promotional use). Now they have launched their Business Cards 50 full size cards for £10.99, again with your choice of image on each and every card. They have a range of templates for your text and logo and will soon offer your choice of image on both sides so you can go to town with Photoshop.

I have been waiting a long time for a decent Subversion client for use on my Mac. Soon the wait will be over as there is a new client on it’s way called Versions, currently in public beta it seems to be what I have been waiting for. I will post an update when I have had a chance to play with it properly.

I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these Myka boxes.  They seem to be the Holy Grail for an Open Standards Set Top Box. They play all the formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264/AVC, DivX, XviD, WMV, VC1) you are likely to use if you use ripped or downloaded content and as they have BitTorrent and RSS onboard they can do the work for you.  With a little judicious scrapping of RSS feeds you can create a custom feed for the content that you want.  As far as outputs go you have everything you could want (HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite, with SPDIF (Optical or RCA) and RCA Stereo for audio).

Why should I have to buy a box from Apple and another box from Blockbuster and yet another from NetFlix.  Ideally I should be able to buy whatever hardware I choose from whichever manufacturer and subscribe to any services I desire from any provider.

Now, I know I am being terribly optimistic but that is how I want it to work.  Media that is locked to one specific hardware/software platform is not convenient for the user.  What we really need is a way of authorising the content to playback on any device the user chooses regardless of the actual platform at the time.  The simplest form this could take could be something like an SD card with the user’s digital certificate for authentication and an IP connection for validation, if the card is not present then the content does not play.  This is simple to implement and manage and easy to use.  An extension of this could be to have the certificate on the user’s mobile phone and have it validated over Bluetooth, so long as the user is in range the content is authorised.  This way the content is locked to the user not the device.  The user is free to use whatever platform he prefers and is not tied to an outdated unstable operating system.

Until the big players get together and learn their lessons from VHS vs Betamax, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD and the obvious parallel of downloading video as XviD with MP3 vs CD, consumers want one format that works everywhere.  It’s not about stealing content for most people, it’s about convenience. It has always been safer to lock the content to the user but it requires cooperation by the providers and manufacturers and as they are all trying to get all the money and lock everyone else out rather than their share of it, in the meantime consumers have a conduit to content in a vendor neutral format.

I have been a fan of these little white boxes for a while now. The idea is that you buy one of their WiFi Access Points (either €14.95 or €39.90) which have two separate secure WiFi signals, one for your own personal use and one which is available for public use.

Anyone who is already a member of the Fon community can use another users public signal for free. Anyone else can make use of this public signal by paying Fon a fee (as you would with any commercial Hotspot) which you would receive a percentage of.

You get the best of both worlds, free worldwide WiFi access from other “Foneros” when you are away from home. And a possible income from your own Hotspot with minimal effort required on your part. Fifty percent of the net revenue from your Hotspot is paid straight into your PayPal account.

You also have the option of allowing anybody to access the public signal for free if you are feeling particularly community spirited.

Have you ever thought about getting an 0845 or similar number for your business but it seems so expensive. Well it doesn’t have to be. You can have an 0845 number and route it to any standard landline number for £9.95 from 4tel with no further costs. You can change the number it routes to with a simple phone call or email. So you can keep the same number no matter how many times your business moves, from your bedroom to your own offices and beyond.

Another useful service that I use is YAC, it stands for You’re Always Connected. They offer a range of services, the one that I use involves a Personal Number (070xx) which I use to route all urgent calls to the duty manager regardless of who that actually happens to be at the time. All it takes is a couple of clicks on a web site and the calls go to whoever I want. It can even hunt in a list if need be. While the caller pays a higher charge for the call I know that the call will get through to the right person at the right time and it is only used for emergency calls.

It’s also worth taking a look at the new 03 numbers they work in a similar fashion to the other Non Geographic Numbers, but are specifically designed to be charged by all operators as standard calls so will be in any inclusive minutes or other packages.

I have been waiting for this since I first found out about the Drobo.  The Drobo is a great USB/FireWire external storage solution with user friendly RAID like redundency (See this post for more info).  The DroboShare turns a Drobo into a NAS allowing you to access the files stored on up to 2 Drobos across your network.  The DroboShare connects to your Drobos via USB.

I love the Drobo, now it is easy to get hold of in the UK from Amazon from £299. So, what does this magic black box do then you ask? Well it is a USB storage device that has 4 bays for SATA Hard Disks (bring your own – up to 4x1TB with current drives, up to 4x4TB=16TB with future disks) that protects your data across multiple disks using a RAID like system, if one disk should fail your data is still safe elsewhere. Simply replace the broken drive and you are fully protected again with no loss of data.

Where this device differs from traditional RAID is in upgrading. With typical RAID if you insert a new drive into the array typically any new capacity is ignored. With the Drobo any new capacity is available to the array almost imeadiately. An older smaller drive can be removed at any time so long as the array has sufficient capacity to cope with the loss. In is way you can start off with a few smaller drives if you already have them and grow the storage up to 4TB (in 2 pools of 2TB) when you can afford it.

The drive manages itself plus there is an administration utility to keep an eye on things but this is not required for actual use. Each drive has a status indicator light (Yellow light Drobo is 85% full, add or replace a drive. Red light, your data is not safe, add or replace a drive immediately) and there are a series of blue LEDs to indicate capacity usage.

Whether you need to keep photos and videos safe or vital company data the Drobo offers protection from hard disk failure, just make sure you also have a suitable off-site backup available as the Drobo cannot protect you if your home or office burns down.