Wark This Way

I never thought I’d see the day, but Skype have video running on the iPhone and iPad. Not much fun for Android or Windows Phone users but for Apples fans – a great day…

Head on over to Scargill’s iPad site for more info.

http://ipad.scargill.net/2010/12/30/skype-video-on-iphone-and-ipadat-last/

We keep hearing about Android tablets  – what do we see in the shops or on the web that’s actually for SALE? A solitary Galaxy Tab which is selling well but is a bit on the small side and hardly “thin” – and that’s about it – other tablets are either still in the works, still using older versions of Android – or recalled. Meanwhile the iPad has it’s new operating system upgrade, new Apps updates and now there is Apple TV -  which means that thanks to the REMOTE app, you can now use your iPad or even iPhone to control your TV, browse your music selection, make playlists and more.

I can’t think of a better gimmick for parties right now than to appear armed with wireless iPad and offer to let guests make their own music selections.  It all works and the Apple TV product is cheap.

Chances of getting compatible software on an Android device in the near future? I don’t think so.. all we need now is for SKYPE and APPLE to get their act together and put Skype video on the iPhone 4.

Peter Scargill

I’ve just realised I’ve not put anything in here for a while. I’m currently in Spain enjoying a short, email-free break from daily life.  for those of you looking in from the UK I can tell you the weather in Spain’s a lot nicer than it is in the UK right now. Having said that this morning it is quite cold, but the sun’s starting to appear so I’m sure that’ll not last for long. Head on over to the Spanish website to see what’s happening there.

Meanwhile a glimpse of the weekly market in Galera, Andalucía. I just happened to be passing on the way to the post office and noticed how summery everything looked. This morning there’s a thick mist over the valley – but of course that’ll last until the sun gets to it. A good start to the day, found my long lost Spanish mobile SIM frame with the PIN number on it… I had visions of having to change numbers, not for the first time! So a good start, now I just need to find somewhere that’s open selling milk – I’m in desperate need of a cup of coffee..

Meanwhile the Hollyberry Cottage website is all up and running, anyone fancying a romantic break in the Northeast of England might want to take a look at the site…

I’m going to stop watching TV – try as I might I just can’t escape the adverts… normally we record everything specifically to watch at a convenient time and so we can skip over the increasingly childish ads on British TV.  Ok, there is some merit in the “compare the Meercat” ads – but as for the tenor on “Go Compare” – I’d like to shoot him where he stands.  Talking of shooting, is it just me or do others find the increasing number of accident lawyer ads INCREDIBLY annoying?

“Had an accident recently? Made a complete ass of yourself and feel the need to SUE someone and ruin their life? Come to Urchins-r-us and we’ll take them to court for free”.  I just find the whole thing so annoying as they’re pitting man against man, woman against woman. Ok so insurance companies have to shell out, not people, right? Wrong – all that happens is everyone’s premiums go up – and so prices go up. People don’t NEED an excuse to be nasty to each other and yet these leeches are out there advertising during the day when kids are watching. So we’ve a generation growing up thinking there’s no such thing as an accident as WELL as thinking the state owes them a favour! A typical example is ad with the moron who’s gotten up the wrong ladder at work.  Ask yourself… this is what he does for a job and he doesn’t have the brain power to know when someone has given him the wrong ladder? How about personal responsibility? You can be damn sure if I used a dangerous tool at work I’d make it my business to know if it was the right tool for the job.

Don’t even START me on “we sell any car….dot com”….

I’ve always been a great believer in freedom of the individual – however that freedom stops when it adversely affects another – and in this case when it leads to brainwashing of our children.

For reasons far beyond the ken of any rational person, the government have awarded a “kitemark” to “Noahs Ark Zoo Farm” in Wraxall, near Bristol.

School-children who have been conditioned already to accept the word of adults as gospel (and who are predisposed to do that anyway) are “free to go to an area where posters and charts advance it’s religious beliefs”… all of which would be fine but we’re talking school outings here with susceptible children!

Can you imagine British children in the 21st century being exposed to crap like this….

• “The story of Noah’s Ark is supported by science”
• “Humans are not descended from apes – there are too many differences”
• “Consciousness is not a property of matter”

If consciousness is not a property of matter, then the scans that clearly show physical brain activity when thinking and the vast amounts of research that’s beginning to explain how this all works is all just a pipedream, then? Any sane adult would take this rubbish on the chin as they would TV sex and violence – but school-trips of children!!

While companies are free to peddle whatever they like as long as it is not illegal, we need a specific memo from the government, banning school outings and preventing children from being exposed to this rubbish until they are old enough and wise enough to put this nonsense into perspective – i.e. the blind ignorance of the uneducated.

America despite it’s supposed separation of church and state is in terrible difficulty thanks to the indoctrination of it’s children, with 50% believing in imaginary friends – as for the middle east – well, they’re simply totally lost in their own blind ignorance… we must NOT allow the great strides we’ve made in Britain in educating children to think for themselves to fall prey to this and similar nonsense.

That kitemark has to GO.

Another screw-up for Orange – the broadband we were supposed to have in Bellingham is still not running. I rang them up yesterday merely to ask when it would be connected.. can’t talk to me – data protection…  I pointed out that if I get Maureen to ring – to confirm, then I ring back, I’ll get through to another part of India who won’t know anything about the first call…  no difference, data protection.

If anyone from Orange is looking in – your people are an UTTER WASTE OF SPACE!

After waiting what seems like years but was probably just weeks for the update for the iPhone to version 4 then after waiting half an hour to grab iTunes on my laptop (not normally used to sync the iPhone so there’s a tip for you – NO you don’t have to use the PC you original setup your phone on) I proceeded to the upgrade button and upgraded my iPhone 3GS to iPhone version 4.0 OS software – another 20 minutes and no problems whatsoever.

That done the first thing I noticed was that my chosen background now appears on all screens – that’s nice!  The second thing that’s immediately obvious is the fact you can now drop one icon onto another and make instant FOLDERS which is nice. Each folder can now hold 12 icons and with a bit of planning you can how hold 12 times as many apps on the phone as before or opt for less pages of icons. That’s a plus though you’re not going to get all your games in one folder – you CAN thankfully make identically named folders if you like!! None of this takes any brainpower or manuals.

The iPhone now also handled multi-tasking – of a sort.  By double-clicking on the HOME button you can now see active tasks and switch between them.

The big plus is the ability to play a game or whatever.. and STILL keep SKYPE running in the background – depending on whether or not you’re a SKYPE user that makes a big difference… BUT NOTE: Skype does NOT yet run in the background – despite showing demos and saying that NOW you can run Skype in the background they have not actually YET released the new version. I’m awaiting this with baited breath as I use Skype for all calls and also keep my phone in my pocket all the time so this will be a game changer for me.

Another plus is the unified inbox – now if you have multiple accounts as I do (Exchange and Google mail) you have the option to read the inboxes separately or as one – nice idea – why don’t MS so that in Office 2010?

Other than that it’s largely business as usual though sitting here I’m having immense difficulty getting the newly updated iPhone to download the updated TomTom and it’s telling me to update that particular package via iTunes – granted TomTom is HUGE.

At least on the surface of it, updating is worth the effort but beware if you’re reading this on the publication date, the Apple site is running like a DOG!

For more blogs see www.scargill.net and http://scargill.wordpress.com/

So you think giving kids your personal views on religion is harmless? Stopping them seeing too much TV a good thing? Think again.  Perhaps after watching this – some parents may re-think what and how they teach kids. If the Taliban can convince ordinary kids to blow themselves to bits voluntarily AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY based on a clearly ridiculous premise of a an afterlife with virgins on tap, that pretty much shows how delicate and easily manipulated young brains are and what a CRIME it is to abuse that knowledge. The sooner our armies eradicate these evil men the better.  The best thing you can do for your kids is avoid religion OR give ALL major religions AND atheism equal coverage without bias…  and make sure they get subjected to as wide a range of international TV and publications so they are fully informed without being brainwashed, for adult life.

THIS is frightening! Watch how easy it is to program kids into robots.

Incidentally, TED is BRILLIANT – there are some fabulous interviews up there. See Craig Venter’s video on creating life – or the various arguments about nuclear versus other renewable resources – excellent stuff and usually thought provoking.

A lot hot air is circulating about the iPad, often by folks who have never laid eyes on the machine never mind made extensive hand-on use of them. I’ve seen reviews talking about reliability, about it being unsuitable for business… the list goes on – and mostly from those lacking any experience of the product.

Why listen to me? well firstly you need to know I would not touch a MAC with a bargepole so don’t peg me as an anti-Microsoft type. When the iPAD was released in the USA I had one shipped across almost immediately, despite lack of iTunes support in the UK. It looked ideal for reading agendas and other company paperwork, being the first supposedly long-life battery, thin almost A4 pad on the market… and I wasn’t prepared to take the word of others… I wanted to see for myself if this was going to be useful to see if there was a future for reducing or eliminating paperwork.  So, here it is, based on daily use of the iPad since its launch in the USA (and by that I mean used almost every day since then, sometimes all day), here is some information which may be of use to those of you thinking of using the iPad in a business environment.

Firstly the issue of WIFI. The only issue I am aware of is that the iPad occasionally forgets the login password and does not seem to track the best signal if you move from signal area to signal area within a building. It is a minor issue, does not really cause me any problems and the assurance is that this will be fixed. I can see no reason to doubt this as it’s little sister the iPhone does not suffer the same issue. 

Secondly business use – you hear “It’s all games” – no it isn’t – though some of the games are excellent – no doubt about it but with 200,000 apps you’d expect a lot of games.  I have asked our head office who normally send me reams and reams of paper to simply stop – and all my papers now go onto the company extranet  (Sharepoint).  I receive automatic email notification of the availability of documents and as long as I’m within range of a WIFI signal I can download using the likes of the GoodReader program (a bargain at 59p) and store the docs locally on the iPad. The largest document I’ve had the pleasure of using was 95 megabytes comprising over 400 pages of scanned documents – just about the worse combination…. No problem. I also use another package which cost peanuts to let me scribble on PDFs and open multiple documents at once.

Thirdly multitasking – after extensive use I have to say I do not miss the ability to do umpteen jobs at once – the ONE thing I’d like is to run SKYPE constantly in the background – and that of course will come in the autumn update. Most programs start up where they left off so they may as well be multitasking – but without the overhead.

“They say” iPad is not compatible with Microsoft… rubbish – I regularly open the latest DOCX files from Office 2007 as well as spread-sheets and other documents. At least one program can SAVE in these formats.

Specifically for use in meetings, the (realistically achieved) 10 hour battery life (including watching video) makes it possible to do an all-day meeting without a cable in sight. Those who lug around heavy bags full of laptops, power supplies and endless paperwork look on with envy. Armed with properly bookmarked PDF files I can view and search through large documents more quickly than with paper.

What about FLASH – well, I’d MUCH prefer if the iPad could handle flash, but not at any price and Flash does tend to be jerky on mobiles… considering that YouTube, Blip and others now offer iPad compatibility and even the BBC iPlayer is now iPad compatible, it hopefully won’t be long before that issue goes out of the window. You can watch a good number of the freeview channels including BBC News 24, for free on the iPad given a free program to do so, not to mention most radio stations.

When in Spain, as they say… I have a (small) place in Spain and last week I was other there. The iPad can’t handle dongles but I have a 3G dongle and I simply put the Sim into a phone which has WIFI and using a cheap program made the phone look like a WIFI access point – others may prefer to get the 3G version of the iPad itself  – as I already have a phone I didn’t fancy 2 subscriptions and annoying Apple won’t let you tether an iPhone to an iPad.   Skype and GotoMeeting work well – saving a fortune in calls when overseas as long as there is WIFI available. Emails using Microsoft Exchange, Google mail and others work absolutely fine as indeed do Exchange calendars and contacts. For streaming podcasts, I generally keep them on my PC and use STREAMTOME to listen to them on the iPAD (saves filling it up with audio and video).

Do I have any issues with the product? Of course I do – why on EARTH didn’t Apple put a forward-facing camera in for Skype etc. But them the iPhone 4 has that… Also being able to read memory sticks would have been nice but why not go the whole hog and put in Windows? Erm, no! The fact is that Apple have a great niche product on their hands which is, if you believe the hype selling very well thank you. Almost everyone I know who I’ve shown it to in business and otherwise wants one – I should have been a salesman but I’m NOT.

Of course, if something else comes along that’s better and cheaper I‘m a ruthless consumer with no brand loyalty… but from what I’ve seen, hands on reviews of what would appear to be alternatives have fallen apart due to poor video or other issues. For now, Apple are onto a winner – their shares don’t look too bad either (I don’t have any of those either).

Here it is – latest update on the iPad, launched today in the UK