By Euan Cowieson [BE77Y]: posted July 25th, 2010 - 9:13pm
Good news! Skype have just updated their iPhone app to take full advantage of iOS 4, bring the much sought-after functionality of backgrounding the app. That’s right – you can now have Skype permanently running in the background on your iPhone! Ok, so I’m the only one who’s genuinely excited about that, but it is a handy feature, and is not noticeably detrimental to battery life (on which I keep a keen eye, so I’d have noticed!).
Skype will also let you receive calls while the phone is locked. If you hadn’t downloaded the Skype App for your iPhone yet, you should know that the app allows you to make calls over WiFi and 3G, and of course instant message over either, as well. One last thing to note, folks – as backgrounding an app obviously requires multitasking, this will only be supported on the iPhone 3g(s) and iPhone 4.
By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted July 13th, 2010 - 9:39pm
The guys at istartedsomething.com have made a fantastic video demoing the latest build of Windows Phone 7 , Microsoft’s newest offering to the smartphone market. I have to say I think it’s coming on rather nicely, certainly looking forward to trying it out on some real hardware.
For more thoughts and a second video demoing the ring tones you can read their article here.
By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted July 11th, 2010 - 9:36am
Google have recently rolled out support for multiple signatures in Gmail, something I’m sure will be celebrated by anyone who uses it for multiple email accounts. At the same time they’ve also added rich text options, basically allowing you greater control over the look of your signature, even allowing you to include pictures.
If you want to check it out log into Gmail, click on settings and you should see ‘Signatures’ under the general tab.
By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted July 9th, 2010 - 11:12pm
Loads of keyboards and laptops include buttons which allow you to skip or pause tracks, launch your web browser or simply alter the volume. When I moved to the Microsoft Arc Keyboard I was surprised by how much I missed some of these keys, specifically the skip and pause track options (note – the Arc keyboard does have volume controls built in). So what can you do about it?
I don’t know about you, but there’re plenty of keys on a keyboard that I hardly use,for instance why are there so many function keys?! I decided that it was high time I changed them to something more useful. However I had no intention of running some resource hungry, flea ridden monstrosity of a background application to do it. There is in fact a much better (and easier) way. (Windows only I’m afraid, although I’m sure there are similar methods for other operating systems).
By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted July 1st, 2010 - 10:18pm
My bag has been a semi-permanent home to a couple of pendrives since I finally managed to replace my detested floppy discs. Little did I know I haven’t really been using them to their full potential…
They can be used for a lot more than storage, something I always kind of guessed but for whatever reason never really got around to experimenting with. A few days ago I set about creating my self titled “Pendrive of Gold”, it’s nothing completely mind blowing but it certainly improves my productivity, especially when I’m away from home.
By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted June 21st, 2010 - 5:59pm
If you’re like me, you’ve probably managed to amass an awe inspiring amount of CD’s. We’ve all got hundreds of the things cluttering up window sills and once empty drawers, most of which we use rarely, if at all.
The problem is no one wants to throw any of them away, leading to this ever increasing mountain of dusty jewel cases. (By the way if anyone ever has the need to install every version of Ubuntu ever released, or fancies going back in time and listening to Now 47, I’m your man.)
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t weed out some of the unnecessary junk we horde but many of these CD’s do come in handy, just very occasionally. A couple of years ago I came across what I think is the ideal solution…
Good news! Skype have just updated their iPhone app to take full advantage of iOS 4, bring the much sought-after functionality of backgrounding the app. That’s right – you can now have Skype permanently running in the background on your iPhone! Ok, so I’m the only one who’s genuinely excited about that, but it is a handy feature, and is not noticeably detrimental to battery life (on which I keep a keen eye, so I’d have noticed!). 
