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Showing posts from September, 2008

Stanza eBook reader for iPhone looks and feels great

I've only just installed the free eBook reader, Stanza, on my newly upgraded iPhone and I already feel compelled to write about it. To cut a long review short it looks and feels great.  - It's free to download in the AppStore - You have access from inside the app to an online list of publications, including plenty of free ones - You can change the font and the size of the text - You can change the text colour and backgorund colour (I prefer light text on darker background) - The page turning is quick God I love the AppStore and the fact that there are so many great free applications to download :) 

BBC 1Xtra Drum n Bass top 10

I had some trouble listening to the BCC Drum n Bass top 10 this week. The BBC was telling me that iPlayer couldn't find the recording when I pressed the "listen now" link on the DnB chart page. Oh well, luckilly I still had a rtsp link in my RealPlayer favourites and was able to play directly from RealPlayer. The BBC isn't too keen on their streams being played directly through  RealPlayer; something to do with it not being all that kind to their servers. But if it's the only way.. :) Here's the direct rtsp link. rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/1xtra/mistajam_wed.ra?start=9300 You need to open this link in RealPlayer by the way. It's the only player that will play it I'm afraid. I've spent countless hours looking for an alternative without success. MPlayer can't play it, even though it supports rtsp streams. It's something to do with the way the streams are encoded.  Enjoy the bass ;)

iPhone upgrade: 1.1.4 (ZiPhone) to 2.1 (Custom ipsw) [via 2.0.2 QuickPwn]

I followed a bunch of stuff I read on the Code Retard blog and found my way from a 1.1.4 iPhone (unlocked and jailbroken with ZiPhone) to a 2.1 iPhone (curtesy of Pwnage) Now I'm going to be short and sweet. - First I installed iTunes 8. Now that was kinda unintentional, but heh, what can you do! - I hooked my 1.1.4 iPhone (ZiPhoned) up to iTunes 8. (You can skip the red bits if you want because I finally resorted to custom firmware) - I did Shift+Restore (hold down Shift and press Restore button) and loaded up an original 2.0.2 firmware image. - After the 2.0.2 firmware was in place (took a while) iTunes was moaning about the SIM card being no good blah blah blah. Don't worry, that's what QuickPwn is for. - I then ran QuickPwn 2.1 GUI and voila my phone was unlocked. - iTunes was happy again - Then I tried to upgrade to firmware from 2.0.2 to 2.1 in iTunes. Something that the Code Retard blog had said was possible (I thought). Anyway, it didn't work for me and I don

Google Chrome has poor performance with PDF documents

I always found opening PDF documents a drag in Internet Explorer, and just as bad in Firefox. All that waiting for Adobe Reader to load up its umpteen plugins... But I must say that the PDF experience seems far worse in Google Chrome. My CPU goes crazy and the browser hangs every time I try to scroll down a PDF document inside Chrome. I've already resorted to downloading the PDF first and then opening it, otherwise it's just not usable. Hmm, wonder if anybody else has experienced this? I'll have to go check the Chrome bug list. 

Google Chrome is a "must have"

There's no getting away from it. Google Chrome is the browser of choice. A beautifully simple and bug-free browser that's just dying to get onto every single desktop on the planet. I'm certainly using it already as my browser of choice. Partly because I'm admittedly a bit of a Google addict. In the sense that I loved Google from the moment they found exactly what I was looking for (no, not that) back in 2001 or something. And partly because I just can't wait for another browser to gain market share over Internet Explorer, and give Microsoft another reason to make Windows truly user friendlier. If you haven't tried Google Chrome yet, go and get it :) Here it is: http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html?hl=en Even if you don't have administrator rights on your PC chances are you can still install it. I could. Now if you've already installed it and just happen to be thinking, like I did, that it would be nice to be able to make it look a tiddly bit different