chrisgreen.co.uk

One of my last projects of 2008 has now gone on sale - it is a bookazine devoted to one of my favourite technology subjects - the BlackBerry.

You can buy The Ultimate BlackBerry Guide from those nice people at Amazon.co.uk, where it is currently on sale with an equally nice online discount.

The book will tell you everything you need to know, from handy shortcuts to undocumented features, along with tips on the best third party software and games available for the current range of devices. There is even a section dedicated to using your BlackBerry with a Mac.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this book possible. It was hard work, but I hope you will agree it was worth it.

Yes, I know its only Monday, but that doesn’t mean I can’t resurrect my favourite list-based rant format. Christ knows I need something to get me motivated today:

1. That study is not going to tidy itself.
2. 90 per cent of the world is populated by very nice people
3. 5 per cent are idiots
4. 3 per cent voted for Bush – they need to be shot first come the revolution
5. 1.5 per cent bought Betamax – need I say more
6. The remaining 0.5 per cent are rude/prickly/overly aggressive/piss people off/don’t appreciate the situation (delete as appropriate). I haven’t decided what to do with these ones yet – might sell them on eBay.
7. eBay rocks!
8. I didn’t want a walnut-effect steering wheel, what I really wanted/needed was a new leather one.
9. I’m sure Euro 2008 was a feast of football, but it failed to do anything for me 
10. Not enough going on at Frightfest to justify a full festival pass this year, but I’ll be there for at least half the event.
11. Jeremy Clarkson actually said something useful…when was the last time you just went for a drive……It’s been too long.
12. Mmmmmmm…….cheese!
13. Lovefilm sucks! If it improves, I’ll stay, otherwise I’m off
14. Busy busy week this week.
15. I need a new phone. I want a Nokia E71, but given my network provider only seems to add new handsets a year after everyone else, and has a hatred of anything with a keyboard, I’m not holding my breath.
16. Finally did an iTunes movie rental on Saturday – the whole experience was surprisingly good.
17. Despite being a Tesco loyalist, I am thinking about defecting to Asda.
18. Not spending enough time blogging or Twittering. Need to sort both out.
19. Need to find a nice place to stay in Northern France for a long weekend, somewhere that’s big for food and drink would be a huge bonus.

It’s the perfect gift for birthdays, christenings, grduation, or just a good read if you are stoned or just miss the greatest decade since we all realised the world isn’t flat.

Written by members of the greatest generation (those of us who grew up in the 80s), and edited by my friend and colleague Simon Brew, this book is the definitive guide to all things 80s - TV shows, music, films and proper computer games (the ones that came on tapes).

You can buy Celebrate the 80s now from Amazon.co.uk.

And yes, I did write some of it.

Seriously, its a brilliant book and it will bring back some fantastic memories, and a few that will make you cringe as well. Find out what all your 80s big and small screen favourites are doing now (not all of them are flipping burgers for a living) and read some exclusive interviews with the people who pioneered 80s entertainment.

WARNING: This book does contain a picture of me, with a mullet!

For the first time in years (far longer than I can actually remember for sure), I’ve forgotten to take my mobile phone with me. As I am now half way along my journey to work, this means I will be separated from my phone until at least 7pm today.

I already feel a bit cut-off, but that will soon change when I get into the office. For now, I’m making do with my 3G modm and the MacBook, which is how I am doing today’s post.

Suffice to say, if you need to reach me today, you will actually need to call my office landline for a change, rather than going straight to my mobile.

I do get rather fed up with people, usually work contacts, who insist on using my mobile phone number as the primary way of contacting me for work-related queries (and I’m talking about the pointless stuff like “did you get the press release we sent you a week ago” rather than the more useful “My client is running late for his lunch meeting with you”.

I have a perfectly good landline in my office - please use it in the first instance. The mobile is there so that you can get hold of me if it is urgent, or if you have genuinely failed to get me on the landline first - don’t just bypss my office number altogether.

I do reject about 70 per cent of the calls I get to my mobile number during office hours anyway (and definitely bounce unknown and withheld numbers straight to voicemail unless I’m not sat at my desk, then I will answer), so chances are you’ll still only end up talking to my voicemail before you talk to me, so you may as well talk to my office voicemail if it is not time critical - it’s more likely to get a reply, or at least listened to before my mobile voicemail will.

Coca Cola is DOS Compatible in Spain

Originally uploaded by Ewan Spence.

Just finished a Skype chat with Ewan Spence, who is over in Spain at a media conference. Our VoIP call was interrupted by Ewan cracking up, when he spotted this DOS reference on the bottle of Coke we was chugging.

Yes, it’s a geek joke - and it’s a funny one!

I’m having a bit of an iPod clear-out, having realised that I own more iPods than I could possibly make use of.

The stuff is listed on eBay, and all proceeds will be used to buy shiny new Apple items, such as a 160GB iPod Classic, and if there’s anything left over, a second composite video cable and power adapter for it.

http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZchrisgreen1

Everything has been looked after, in most cases you’d struggle to tell it has been used at all as I keep all my iPods in cases as I am paranoid about scratching them.

And before anyone asks - I am not selling the engraved Nano I was given just before Christmas - as the guys in the office will confirm, I’m keeping that and use it every day!

This year I’ve decided to split things into two posts - one for here and one for my IT PRO blog. For the personal blog I’m doing my resolutions, for the work blog I’ll be doing my technology predictions for 2008.

I should add at this stage that I am hopeless at sticking to such resolutions, but it remains important to at least try. You never know, this might be the year that one sticks!

Chris Green’s 2008 New Year Resolutions

1) Blog more - both my blogs (this one and the IT PRO blog) have been suffering a bit of late. I’m not losing interest in blogging, quite the opposite in fact, it is just a problem with spare time, and not having any. I need to blog here and at IT PRO more than once a week each. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more time this year as things continue to settle down at work and hopefully at home. Also, now that we have completed the migration of the IT PRO blogs away from the abysmal system we launched with and onto Wordpress, using it will be a lot more practical and pleasant.

2) List stuff on eBay - before anyone gets the wrong idea I’m referring to my own possessions, not anything I’ve ever received as a press gift of review item. I’ve become overloaded with junk again, and I need to do a massive eBay selloff to get some space back in the house. That means getting rid of things like obsolete computer equipment and software I’ve bought and subsequently replaced with other kit (for example I have a pile of CRT monitors I desperately need to get rid of), DVDs I no longer watch, obsolete DVD players and Freeview boxes, plus anything else I’m not using any more that is occupying space and cluttering the house up.

3) Pay down my credit cards - they are way too high and need sorting, sharpish. Item 2 will go some way to helping.

4) Get some exercise - I’ve spent the last 18 months driving a desk and I’m really feeling the worse for it. I have not been travelling to the extent I usually do over the course of a normal year, and believe it or not, all that time usually spent out at conferences, running around airports and generally working in the field does do some good in terms of keeping you healthier than normal (you don’t eat as much, you eat at regular times and you get some upper and lower body exercise from all the walking, running and luggage carrying). I’m not talking about getting back into the insane shape I was in at school and university (it would be nice, but is ultimately unnecessary), but I do need to be more active, and I’ll feel better as a result. That means less time in the car and more walking, getting back to the gym more often, dusting off the golf clubs now and again, and maybe laying off the Coke - maybe!

5) Write more - not just blogs but do more journalism in general, I need to write much more than I did in 2007, more news and especially more features and reviews. I am going to set myself a target of writing at least one review and one feature a month as a minimum, and see where it goes from there.

6) Podcasting - need to do the podcasting more regularly, and start doing some of the video stuff I’ve been threatening to do for a while.

7) Summer Party - For the last three years I’ve been talking about holding a summer bash at the house for family and friends, this year it will actually happen. Now I’ve said that we had better have the weather to make it happen.

8 ) Redecorate the conservatory - it’s a mess, I hate the colour and the roof needs some work to stop it leaking - again. All stuff I need to do this year and the sooner the better so that the conservatory can be used come the summer, as right now it is not somewhere I’d like to be, let alone entertain guests.

OK, I know I said the next post on this blog was going to be my Skypephone opus, and that is coming next, but I just wanted to slip in a quick post about my latest purchase and how much fun I am having with it.

On Monday, in-between having a puncture fixed on the car and trying to install Leopard on the MacBook, I did a load of Christmas shopping, and treated myself to a little gift.

Having recently received a iPod Nano as a gift, I’m using it a hell of a lot (it is a lot lighter than my 60GB iPod Video, which I still think is great, but the Video Nano is nice for taking to work and on short trips where I don’t want a brick in my pocket). The trouble is that the video output cable for my 60GB iPod Video doesn’t work on either the Video Nano or the new iPod Classic. Apple has removed the video out from the headphone jack on the new models and instead only offers video output from the dock connector (and they’ve changed the pin outs so that older dock connector video connectors etc won’t work).

Anyway, I decided to cash in my Nectar points, and in Argos I picked up the new and improved composite video cable with dock connector. It wasn’t cheap - £35 before Nectar discount - but you get a fair amount for your money. It is a well made cable, with a dock connector at one end (push-pull type rather than with locking clips), and three metal phono connectors at the other. There is also a USB connector, allowing you to charge your iPod while playing through the cable, or even sync it. Also included in the box is the new-style USB power supply. Its the same one bundled with the iPhone, so it is half the size of the original USB Apple power supply. US buyers get just the US 2-pin head attachment, us Brits get both the UK plug attachment and the 2-pin European attachment.

As a result of buying the cable (which works with the Video iPod as well as with the new models) I’ve been watching a huge number of video podcasts on my big TV in the study, as well as watching a roaring fire, courtesy of Cali Lewis and iYule.tv.  Even though I was only playing th iPod Nano version of the iYule video rather than the high-res one, it still looks and sounds great.

Nothing sinister, just having one of those weeks where I am very unsettled.

Part of it is to do with last weekend’s office move. I’m in new surroundings - OK, it’s just another two floors up in the same office building I’ve been in since I joined Dennis, but it is still a bit weird (since I’ve been there we’ve steadily worked our way up above sea level - we started on the ground, then the third, we are now on the fifth. Next move will probably be to the water tower on the roof

Ultimately its a good thing that we’ve moved - it will be better for productivity, we have more space, we are now working in the same space as our colleagues on the other Dennis technology magazines (a really good thing), and its about a thousand times quieter and a more professional working environment for my team.

There’s also a lot going on within the team itself - lots of change (for the better), new faces, new job roles and new ideas for the coming year. All really positive things, all things I’ve wanted to happen, but as you might expect these are things that introduce an element of uncertainty and thus anguish into the mix.

And that’s why, for the fourth night in a row, its past 2am and I’m wide awake, buzzing with energy and ideas, with no sign of being able to sleep. Even my trusty Melatonin isn’t able to knock me out (and I’ve smuggled enough of it back from the US to open my own branch of GNC).

As I write this, I’m re-watching the Top Gear Polar Special as there’s nothing else on. Yes, over 300 channels and there is nothing worthy of watching.

My next blog post here is going to be about the 3 Skypephone. I’ve been playing with one of these for the last couple of weeks, and now feel ready to convey my thoughts and pass judgement on it. Basically it’s brilliant, and is without doubt the unexpected gadget hit of this Christmas. While I love my iPhone, if you can’t justify £270 for the handset and £35-£55 a month to the bandits at O2 for something loosely resembling service, then £49 and a minimum of a tenner a month in top-up gets you one of the nicest phones I have used since I got my beloved RAZR V3. If you get it on a contract, ANY contract with 3, then the handset is free (contracts start at £12 a month). The Skype deal is simple. Whether you are a pay-as-you-pimp or contract user, you get effectively unmetered Skype-to-Skype voice calling and IM messaging (it’s 4,000 minutes and 10,000 IM messages a month, which even I would struggle to max-out in a month and still hold down a job).

The coverage area and quality of 3’s service has improved a lot since I last went near them (just under a year after launch, when I bought a phone and then sent it back as I was so dismayed by the quality of the phone service and the customer service). Sadly, 3’s front line telephone customer service is still very poor (though I’ve experienced worse - it’s called T-Mobile), but the actual mobile service has definitely moved up a notch. So much so I bought (note, bought with my own money, not blagged) a USB 3G modem and service contract from 3, and I can’t speak highly enough of it - I even get a HSDPA connection for the entire overground part of my tube journey to and from work. The same quality of signal and calling service applies to the Skypephone. I’ve had only two brief instances when it couldn’t get a 3G signal, and had to step down to a 2G roaming signal. The rest of the time - fast, reliable, all-you-can-eat Skype goodness.

I’ll post pictures and something similar to a balanced review in my next posting, but for now, keep £49 on standby, or if you go to Carphone Shed, you can buy two for £85 - a bargain!

Phones are a bit of a thing for me at the moment. I’ve been doing a fair amount of radio and TV talking about emerging technologies for 2008 and Christmas gadget gift advice, and all of it has been dominated by talk of phones. I’m in desperate need of a new phone as I do need to carry two phones (one being the mobile number that’s on my business cards, the other being the number that only family and a few close friends have - thus ensuring they can always get hold of me even when I don’t want to be disturbed by calls on the work mobile). I currently have the iPhone, I adore the iPhone and I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen if and when the time comes that Apple asks for it back (the phrase “from my cold dead hands” has been banded around a few times of late).

So either way, one phone is going to have to be an iPhone, or maybe Le iPhone. The iPhone is a must, having integrated into my everyday life more quickly than even my first BlackBerry. The other phone is still in play. I did have a Motorola Q9H for a while, which was a great bit of kit, but it broke (it was a pre-release sample to be fair). Trying to buy a replacement is not easy, hardly anyone sells it and those that do want the national debt of Zimbabwe for one.

I am also very drawn to the Samsung SGH-i320. It’s not a new phone, but it is cheap, and has a surprisingly nice QWERTY keypad. It’s Windows Mobile-based, which is not good, but Motorola managed to build a Windows Mobile phone that isn’t shit, so hopefully Samsung has managed to do the same. The Skypephone is definitely being bought no matter what, just cos its soooo cool and nice to use.

I’ve also added a new plug-in to this blog. I’ve enabled the Twit This plug-in, to make it easier for other Twitter users and me to tweet about posts on this blog.

Also, I’m finally beginning to warm to Windows Vista, it’s only taken a year! I have one live machine at home running Vista (the rest of our Windows machines are running XP and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future), a laptop from a well-known games console-making electronics giant that was allegedly built for Vista and shipped with it pre installed. Unfortunately it took a ridiculous amount of work and time to actually get it to work reliably and to interact properly with all the built-in hardware in the laptop. Most end users would have smashed it to pieces in frustration months ago. Hopefully the release shortly of Service Pack 1 will address many of the well-documented shortcomings of this OS.

Better still, buy a Mac, along with a copy of Leopard and save yourself nine months of pain.

I’m playing a lot with video, with a view to turning my hand from audio podcasting to video podcast production. It is a lot of fun, and I’ve found a good use for my otherwise obsolete but excellent quality Samsung/Medion Hi-8 camcorder, adding nothing more than a £6 USB video capture dongle I bought on eBay. I’m particularly taken by Ustream.tv and Seesmic.

Finally, I’m watching a lot of video podcasts, thanks to the recent gift of a 8GB iPod Nano (which is a lot smaller and lighter to carry than my 60GB video iPod). Chris Green hereby gives the seal of approval to the following video podcasts:

• Mahalo Daily
• Geekbrief.tv
• Tiki Bar TV
• Diggnation (not a new discovery for me, but still worth a nod)
• Onion News Network (from the publisher of The Onion)

Ultimately - I need a rest - a proper rest - and maybe a few good bottles of wine, some good home cooking, a working Macbook again and some quality time with my friends and my DVD collection.

Oh, and a trip to Vegas would also go down well - need to sort something out there, I’m missing Vegas almost as much as I miss San Francisco.

The recent introduction of IMAP support to Google Gmail is nothing short of a godsend, particularly for people like me that have more than one active Gmail accounts (for example, I use one for all my eBay stuff, one as a general back-up, one for freelance work etc) but for those who want to manage multiple Gmail accounts through their native web interfaces, all that logging in and out can be a pain in the arse.

Not any more!

I’ve been beta testing a new app called Mailplane. It is a Mac OS application that lets you do all sorts of funky things with a web-based Gmail account, such as drag-and-drop file attachments, iPhoto integration and chat management. Best of all, it gives you a very simple way of having multiple Gmail accounts and being able to switch between them just by clicking on the appropriate email address in the account list in Mailplane.

While it is in beta, Mailplane is free, and I have some spare invites going if anyone wants to have a play with it.