Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Posted on November 23, 2008 - by Jordan H
PHPNW ‘08
Today I’ve been out to PHPNW ‘08, a web development conference at the Manchester Central Convention Complex (formerly the G-MEX). I was helping out so I had an early start, and was in Manchester for 8:30am. It got off to a great start, and over the day I met some great people and saw some familiar faces too.
One of the most interesting talks was the Getting Started with Zend Framework and the From HTML to Drupal in 30 Minutes (although it may have been better suited to 60 minutes!). I got a free T-shirt and some cool goodies too.
They’re one of the first conferences to utilise the http://joind.in/ service which helps attendees give feedback on the talks and can provide some constructive criticism to the speakers. It’s a really cool ‘Web 2.0′ idea, and I hope it takes off with many other conferences using it.
Encouraged by the great time I had today, I’ve booked a ticket for BarCamp Sheffield next weekend (the Sunday to be specific). If you see me there, feel free to say hi!
Posted on October 15, 2008 - by Jordan H
How the little guy can do something…
It’s quite typical in this day and age to turn on the television and see yet another news report about starving children in Africa, people dying in Bangladesh or something similar, and it’s quite typical to disregard it as nothing much and flick over to another channel. It’s not hard to think that poverty is something that doesn’t affect us and is only a problem in third-world countries. I think it’s time we all thought again.
Poverty is something that can be very close to home. Albeit not to the extremes which are saw in places like Africa and Asia, it’s still there and something, which again, is very easy to turn a blind eye to. You may find these facts hard to believe, but one-fifth of the UK’s population don’t have enough to live on. That includes almost 4 million children. The amount of children in poverty has doubled since the last generation, despite advances in technology and availability of benefits.
We’ve all wore the white band, but has that actually meant something to us? Of course we can’t donate millions ourselves, and most of the time we can’t see an actual change, but there are tons of things we can do which, when done by a lot of people, can make a huge difference. There is a great list here of a small things you could do which could make a big difference on the lives of people in poverty all over the world.
Yes, your average Joe doesn’t have a million pounds to give away, but there’s nothing stopping him clicking a button or donating the money he’d spend on a coffee to help out those in need.
Today is Blog Action Day, and thousands of blogs around the world are joining together to make a combined effort to make people aware of world poverty. This is a great example of how many people can do a small thing, but when it’s combined together makes a massive difference.
There’s an endless amount of things you can do to help, and it’s amazing what the world can do when people pull together.
Photo from SamPac on Flickr. Statistics from Oxfam and JRF. Part of Blog Action Day 2008.
Posted on September 27, 2008 - by Jordan H
Television
I’ve been waiting ages to get a High-Definition Television, and yesterday the wait was worth it! I went to Tesco and eventually decided on buying an LG 32in Television (32LG3000). I got it home, set it up in my room and I was stunned by the awesomeness of HD!
The picture quality is really good. It’s not 1080p, but it has a sharp, stunning picture and a 15000:1 contrast ratio. It’s got a brilliant backlight and the screen seems huge in my room!
I’ve got my Xbox 360 and my PS3 hooked up to it now, and I’m on my second attempt of downloading the new Burnout Paradise updates for PS3. I’ll be reviewing those later!
Posted on September 23, 2008 - by Jordan H
Twittelator Pro Review
Last week I bought Twittelator Pro for my iPhone from the App Store. Having searched left, right and center for a decent iPhone Twitter app, I found the free version of Twittelator pleasant to use. Now here are my thoughts on the paid version:
Compared to other paid Twitter apps, Twittelator retails for a measly £2.99 on the UK store, compared to Twitterific’s mighty £5.99. This seems much better value, especially when you consider the many more features you get in the paid version of the app.
The app has a clean interface, and has four different themes to use. From the main screen you have the option to choose to view your friends’ tweets, replies, your tweets and view your favourites, as well as your friends favourites. In addition to the standard options, you can view the trending topics and you can conveniently store searches too.
Sending tweets is easy using the large button on the bottom bar on all parts of the app. You can send maps of your location (very useful indeed!) and pictures which get uploaded to TwitPic. I have found these features great and reliable too.
The overall reliability of the app is good, I’ve not experienced a crash yet (and I’ve used this a lot over a week or so). You can have multiple Twitter accounts which can be switched at the touch of a button.
Overall, this app was definately worth buying. It goes above and beyond what any other Twitter app does at the moment. This is the first paid app I’ve bought and if all apps are as good as this then this certainly won’t be the last! (:
Posted on September 13, 2008 - by Jordan H
Actually, I Like the New Facebook
Well, it’s the most controversial change in the history of Facebook, but I’ve decided where I am in all of this. I like the new Facebook. Why? It’s clean, consistent, and developed around the user and the masses of applications that have sprung up over Facebook’s Developer Platform.
The old Facebook was great, but it was never designed to deal with the millions of apps which were made, and the result was that every profile was cluttered with an app here and an app there. It all looked quite messy, like MySpace. The new design, however, was created to cater for applications. For example, the wall now actually pulls the latest information from the user’s apps, and can actually keep the page readable. Seperate tabs for information is a good idea too. If I want my friends to view my Flickr pics in a full page, they can view the tab instead of going to the website.
If I was given £1 every time I’d rejected an invite to join a group against the new Facebook, I’d truly be a millionaire by now! One thing that strikes me is the lack of peoples’ common sense - instead of creating hundreds of groups for the same thing, create one and have an overwhelming number of people there! In fact I’ve had quite a chuckle at some of the names of these 300+ groups - “The NEW Facebook SUCKKKKSS - Change it BACKKKK“, “1m Against The New Facebook” (which oddly has less than 2,000 members), “Bring back the old Facebook or we’re off to MySpace”.
The last of these group names pretty much sums up the whole divide. Before the changes, Facebook was turning into something as cluttered as MySpace. One of the main aims of the redesign was to try and stop the clutter from getting out of hand. The problem is that the people who want the sites to be organised and clean are the web designers, the developers, the “webbies”. But the people who are protesting against the new Facebook are precisely the opposite, the “MySpace crowd”, the ones who actually like their pages filled to the brim with messy apps.
The overall issue is how to handle the conflicts of interest between the 100m users who use Facebook.
Posted on August 26, 2008 - by Jordan H
iPhone
Well, I said I was getting an iPhone, but I sure didn’t expect to get it this soon! I actually got it last Wednesday, but I’ve been so busy playing around with it that I haven’t got round to writing a blog post about it (until now!).
It’s amazing as a phone, amazing as a mobile device in all. I love the internet, the apps and the GPS. It’s so much better than the Viewty I had until last week. So far, I’ve installed iPint, Twinkle and Tap Tap Revenge. These are really cool, free apps from the App Store on iTunes.
It’s a phenomenal phone, and I can’t really describe it in any other way! Apple and O2 are fantastic.
Posted on August 19, 2008 - by Jordan H
Goodbye T-Mobile!
Out of some miracle I’ve managed to get myself out of an 18-month T-Mobile contract which was started in April. Because at the time, we dealt via Fonehouse instead of T-Mobile direct, they really messed something up and we were being billed more than we should have.
So, what’s next? I’m going to O2. And Apple. That’s right - I’m getting an iPhone (:
Posted on July 26, 2008 - by Jordan H
Windows Live Messenger…
I turn on my phone this morning to recieve four (yes, four) messages from a friend who I won’t name, all saying “come on msn jordan” or some variation of that. As of writing, I have 57 people on my WLM friends list, with a select list of about 5 or 6 people who I actually enjoy talking to using it, mainly because they don’t talk excessively, understand that I’m busy doing coding or halfway through a Bad Company game and don’t say “jordan y u not my m8″ when I leave my computer to have breakfast.
I can’t block anybody from talking to me because they just ask their friends “Is Jordan online?” and then they get quite annoyed at me. And I don’t want to stop using MSN because there are a few people who I don’t mind talking to and can have intelligent conversations with. How I managed to get 57 people on my friends list remains a mystery… probably through a long web of “can I have your addy?” and multiple conversations.
Short of getting another MSN account, I’m not sure what I can do! Suggestions are welcome…
>Jordan