Post processing fun

I've posted before about tweaking my photos in what's called "post-processing", when you use a software program like Adobe's well known Photoshop (or in my case, cheaper versions of software that does a similar job). I pointed out in that post that I always thought of it as cheating a bit, but the more I've started to play with this, the more fun I've had. Firstly, you can make fairly mediocre "out of the camera" or OOC photos look much better with a bit of contrast or colour tweaking here and there or a subtle (or not so subtle) crop. But there's also the fun element. In the original post I'd superimposed several images of me in my garden into one shot, looking like I had multiple doppelgängers - scary I know.

Today I've been experimenting with some photos I took of Barry Island's arcades a few months ago.. The original shots were taken on a fairly dull day in February, and looked like this:

These are ok-ish in the greater scheme of things, perhaps as a record of building on Barry Island at the time, but they're hardly stand out, and one it clearly out of focus slightly. Given the generally brash nature of arcades with their flashing lights and bright colours, I thought I'd accentuate all that but winding up the saturation in my software to 100%, and then collating the photos into one image. The result is this:

It's certainly not subtle, but I rather like the way it's turned out and would argue that I've managed to turn some frankly pretty ordinary photos into a piece of art. I acknowledge this sort of thing isn't to everyone's taste, but it was fun fiddling about with this. I might try it some more!

March 30th: Silicone and Windows - but not that kind

So, starting with coronavirus/covid-19 because that's what prompted this renewed effort at blogging. Yesterday the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England said that it might be six months before life in the UK returns to normal. That's quite scary as that takes us to the end of September, although she did say that doesn't (necessarily) mean we'll be in complete lockdown for 6 months. And I was thinking today, that on the day that Boris (or whomever says it) says, "Ok folks, you can get out and about", where is everyone going to go first? I bet for a good many it'll be straight to the local pub (if it's still open). Those first few days post lockdown are going to be really weird I think, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
It's evident that some people still don't appreciate the seriousness of this pandemic. However, when it starts affecting those they know and love, perhaps that'll hit home. A couple of those nudged me today. First, a post on Facebook from someone I don't know, but who lives relatively locally said they had someone in there family that had "had" the virus. True or not, when it's just around the corner, it rams it home a bit. Secondly, as people that are famous (or at least well know) are reported to have been diagnosed, it also becomes a bit more scary. Obviously we've had a few politicians who have been diagnosed including the Prime Minister. Today I found out that one of my favourite musicians, American country/folk singer John Prine has not only been diagnosed, but it currently on a ventilator. That's not to say that I didn't appreciate what a terrible situation we are in before today, but this brings it home even more. As an aside, one of John Prime's songs "Ain't Hurtin Nobody" has got one of the best lines of any song ever:

There's roosters layin' chickens
And chickens layin' eggs
Farm machinery eating people's arms and legs

On the basis of that single line about farm machinery I bought his album "Lost Dogs And Mixed Blessings" which is absolutely splendid.

In #isolationlife today I've meandered between redoing the silicon sealant inside the conservatory and upgrading a laptop. You'll recall my sone was clearing out his bedroom the other day. Well he dug out his old laptop. I can't recall just how old it is (it's the one before the one he's got now), but he was going to chuck it. Ever the gadget hoarder, I dusted it down (literally), booted it up and found that it ran (almost) perfectly. I did a completer restore of the operating system (Windows 8) and today I upgraded that to Windows 10. Can't see anything wrong with the device, and it runs really well and quite fast for an machine a few years old. Bonus win as a spare machine (although I'm a Mac man).

Old laptop with W10 installed

As for the silicone..... Well I'm not the best DIY-er by a long way. But how hard can siliconing be? The professionals make it look easy. I look like I've done 10 rounds with a silicone gun and lost badly, and whilst the sealing will do a job, it ain't going to win any prizes for neatness. It's terrible stuff! And I only managed to slice my finger once getting the old stuff off. I've got a few tales about my DIY failures which I'll save for another day.

Hardly seen the cat all day.

Four of the best

I've posted something similar to this before, but it was a while ago, and may be useful to rehash for those of you who are newer to smartphones, or have not come across these before (unlikely.

In no particular order - well that's not strictly true - I'm going by the order they appear on my phone.....

Evernote

 Evernote is the ideal app for storing your snippets of stuff. It's cross platform, so there are variants for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android etc and it has an online app too - by default you sync your stuff to the cloud, but if you run it off several devices it's available everywhere. You can store notes, audio, photos, files etc etc. Basic comes free - if you have lots you start to pay, but it's worth it. There are also browser plug ins so you can snip info straight from web pages - or even whole web pages if you want. If you store loads of "stuff", it's a no brainer.

Dropbox

One of the earliest modern "cloud" repositories and arguably still one of the best. Download the app (again it's cross platform), and anything you save in your dropbox folder gets synced to the cloud - where you can also access it online. It's got versioning, sharing and loads more. Again, there's a rather stingy 2GB limit on the free version, but you can pay for more space. Again, where-ever you are whatever device you're using, you can access your Dropbox stuff.

WeekCal

I use the calendar on my iPhone a lot. The bog standard Apple calendar however is fairly sparse in functionality. I've long used WeekCal in it's place. It's brilliant. Loads of options, loads of views, great support. It syncs to the inbuilt calendar so if like me you use your iPhone hooked via iCloud to a Macbook (or Mac desktop) everything is there, all the time. A highly polished calendar app and highly recommended.

1Password

There are a myriad of password managers out there. You really need one. No you really do. Really. If you're using the same password, or simple passwords for multiple sites, frankly you're an idiot (sorry, but it's true). You're just asking to get hacked, and probably, sooner or later you will be.

1Password allows you to create and manage complicated paswords that look like "gGt6%_43@£449+qEsW3" (and no, that's not one of mine). But the beauty of it is, you don't need to know this, and you certainly don't need to remember it. 1Password does the creation, storing and retrieval from a browser plug in. All you need to do is have one (1) secure master password. Password does the rest. There are as I said, lots of these password managers/vaults out there. 1Password is pricy. But in my view it's the best. Also cross platform, so I have it on my PC, my Macbook and my iPhone and it all stays nicely in sync without me worrying about it. 

Apple: Innovative, dominant or just control freaks?

Despite their über cool kit, and oh so easy to use OS's, Apple have a habit of rubbing it's own users up the wrong way from time to time.

One of the things that irritates a lot of people about the iPhone and iOS, is Apple's insistence on approving everything, and apparently vetoing apps that it thinks are too similar to it's own offerings. They usually cite the need for control and having a closed ecosystem does have positives, but I struggle to understand the rationale why when developers are coding better apps than Apple can provide.

Now I think it's fair to say that the general consensus, certainly amongst nearly all the iPhone users I know, personally and online, is that the iPhone's default calendar app is pretty crap.

There are all sorts of things that someone who makes a lot of use of a calendar (which is most of us I guess), that the in-built offering can't do. It's views are limited, it can't set a default alarm for new entries, and more.

So inevitably a plethora of alternative have sprung up. Some are relatively simplistic like Agenda and some like Pocket Informant try to cram loads of features in.

I like the principle of the default app but want something a bit more. Utilitap's Week Cal fits the bill perfectly and I've been using it for some months. I particularly like the the various views the app offers.

Tonight I noticed there was another update for this in the App Store , but imagine my suprise when checking the details of the update, its said, and I quote:

Apple ordered us to change the old month and change the day overview from Week Calendar. We had no choice but to comply, otherwise there would be no Week Calendar app anymore

This is astounding.

Apple must be aware that users want more from the in-built Calendar app - if they don't their head is in the sand. They are clearly aware that there are better apps than theirs out there. But to make a developer remove functionality and stubbornly fail to develop their own app to provide the functionality that users want (unless by some miracle it's coming in the iPhone 5) beggars belief and is arrogance in the extreme.

I am seeing more and more people starting to talk about the closed nature of the iOS system as a problem rather than a plus. If Apple keep doing this, developers will get fed up, and they'll go and code for Android (if they're not already).

Apple needs to take a long hard look at itself in relation to this. Idiots.

I've "downgraded" Week Cal with the latest update, but I'm never going back to the default Calendar app. It's been long consigned to an "unused apps" folder, along interestingly with the default weather app, the default stocks app.....get my drift?

Lion comes to Mac

The latest iteration of the Apple Mac operating system, "Lion" allegedly comes to UK users at 1am tomorrow morning according to Mactrast.

This is an exciting and major release for Mac users, with a raft of updates, enhancements and general UI developments.

I'm going to be downloading it as soon as I can (though won't be waiting up until 1am to do so), and am looking forward to using it on my Macbook Pro.

Apple goodness....Lion, iOS5 and iCloud

For users of Apple products (and that's me with an iPhone 4 and a Macbook Pro), the keynote delivered by Steve Jobs and his crew at this week's WWDC has shown us some wondrous goodies that we can expect over the next few months.

I'm no techie, so I'm not going into any massive detail here, but essentially there are three strands to what's coming.

1. Lion - the new incarnation of Mac OSX - the core Mac operating system. Already a super slick user interface, Lion brings a whole host of UI enhancements, better and clevere multi-touch gestures, improved apps and a whole lot more. And all for $29.99 (though here in the UK that'll probably translate to a more expensive £29.99. And that's for a 5 license OS - yes, you can install it legally on 5 Macs!
2. iOS5 - the latest operating system version for iOS devices - the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Again a whole ream of developments and enhancements - too many to go into here, but some notable ones include improved notifications, better handling of previously purchased apps, improved mail app, and great use of the lock screen. It's coming in the Autumn.
   
3. iCloud. The new way to sync your data across all Apple devices. At the moment I use MobileMe (and pay for the privilege). That's now effectively dead in the water. When iCloud arrives it basically means if you change data on one device (my iPhone for example), that data is automatically updated on my Macbook Pro. In the words of Steve Jobs...."It just works" No set up, no fiddling, it just works. And.....it's FREE! Awesome.

If you want more detail about all this lovely Apple goodness, then trot across to any of the tech blogs/sites which are awash with the detail of these three core elements. Me, I just can't wait to get hold of them.

Keeping it all together

Regular readers will know that I've got a pretty eclectic approach to computing. I have no real affinity for any one OS, and have desktop devices running Windows 7, a Macbook Pro on Mac OSX and a netbook running Ubuntu netbook edition. Chuck in my ever to hand iPhone, and the challenge for me is keeping everything together and in sync.

In all honesty, it's made a bit simpler in that the Ubuntu netbook rarely sees the light of day. It's an old Asus Eee with virtually no memory or storage, and I put Ubuntu netbook on it more as an experiment than anything else (it works fine though).

What is happening therefore, is a slow and gradual transition to cloud computing. Applications I tend to prefer are cross platform, and with an ability to sync seamlessly with whichever device I'm using . I'm not a complicated, or power user, which makes life simpler still, and what follows is a brief description of my key picks.


Dropbox
If you work in different locations on different computers and haven't used or come across Dropbox yet, you're missing out. You install the Dropbox client on all the devices you use and it creates a Dropbox folder - so it's installed on all my PC's, laptop, netbook and I have the iPhone app. Whenever you are connected to the Internet, whatever you have saved to this folder is synced to Dropbox. Then, whenever you connect using one of your other devices, all the changes are automatically synced back to that device. Simple. Add in versioning, so you know which is the latest version, and the fact that it's free for up to 2GB storage, and you not only have a way of keeping everything in sync across multiple computers, but some free online storage too.

If you are going to check it out - drop me a line first. I can refer you, and that helps me boost my storage space!
Highly recommended.


Evernote
One of the things that many people require from their computing devices is a good way of collating all those snippet of information, notes, screenshots etc. There are literally hundreds of thousands of solutions out there, but one of the best is Evernote.
Evernote, like Dropbox is cross platform, and you can sync to all your platforms. Like Dropbox it's also accessible online, and like Dropbox free at the basic level.It also has browser extensions so you can clip all, or bits of web pages directly to your Evernote account.
You can record text notes, voice notes, photo notes, documents - pretty much anything. It's fully searchable, you can have multiple "notebooks" within your account, and use tags on notes. A Premium version (which I use) brings added benefits, but for most people, the free version is just fine. If you need to store "stuff", then this is the way to do it.
Brilliant!


Email/Contacts/Calendar
Gmail is my preferred email route, because everything is available on any Internet connected device. It's got a a lot of functionality too - more than most people realise, you've just got to dig a bit to find some of the optionsd and settings.


My calendar and contacts are all handled by Apple's "MobileMe" service. You have to pay for it, but it keeps my calendar and contacts beautifully in sync on my Macbook and iPhone (I tend not to do anything that needs calendar and contact access on the PC, although I could always access Mobile Me through the browser if I wanted to.

I've tried a few times to manage contacts via Google Contacts, but I find there's always some corruption/duplication though the sync process back to the iPhone/Macbook. I know some manage this perfectly fine, but I've never managed to do so to my satisfaction.

So there you have it. Core functions of email, contacts, calendar, notes and document sync/storage handled through some first class online/cross platform applications, that are free.

It's a no brainer.

Week Cal for iPhone

For many iPhone users the default Calendar app is OK, but for others it's perceived as one of the weaker areas on the device. For a generation brought up on Palm's calendars, or third party offering like Datebook, the standard iPhone app just didn't cut the mustard.

Many pretenders to the crown have come and gone, often stymied by Apple's reluctance or stubbornness to let developers get right at the heart of the functionality they need to produce a decent competitor.

But then along came Week Cal by Wasabi Apps, http://www.wasabi-apps.com/weekcalendar/.

All of a sudden, here was an app that looked like it could offer a decent alternative including that fabled week view missing from Apple's native app. It got some pretty decent reviews, and I decided a few months back to stop using the default Calendar app in favour of the new pretender. And I liked it. It wasn't particularly barnstorming for me, but it was efficient, and that week view certainly made it better.

It's just gone to v3.0, and there are some great new additions to it's functionality. It's got a new year view - OK, not much detail here on an iPhone screen, but very easy to quickly navigate to a month/day.

More tellingly, and something that will possibly swing it for ex Palm users is a terrific Agenda/week view that you can customise with up to 8 different layouts. It almost looks like a Palm! (Note to self....move on...Palm's gone).

Additionally you can rotate views and have a different view depending on whether you're in portrait or landscape mode. For those that want it, there.s a global birthday alert (I have a wife for that). There are a myriad of other features including various full screen options, the ability to auto-hide bars, have different badge alerts according
to your preference, show or hide week numbers and change font sizes.

The neat ability to tap and hold to start data entry makes it feel much more useable than the native app, and generally this whole app gives a feeling of being very polished. I highly recommend this app for anyone who's serious about using a calendar on an iPhone. It's miles ahead of the native app, and Apple really should take a long hard look at this.

Hidden data use and the iPhone

A salutary tale

I'm on O2 as my carrier using an iPhone 4. I, like most people was a bit miffed when O2 slapped on a 500mb cap on data usage. On reflection though, I rarely get even close to using that. Sensible use on 3G, plus using wifi wherever I can, including at home means my typical monthly data use over 3G is in the region of 80mb - 100mb.

A couple of days ago I paid a cursory glance at my usage in Settings/General/Usage and it was around the 30mb mark. About right given my billing month runs from 25th of the month.

Over the weekend I've mostly been at home (on wifi) or at Cardiff City Stadium - where regular readers will know I don't get a data signal. I haven't been doing anything different, or downloaded any new apps - though I have updated a few existing ones.

Imagine my surprise therefore when at 8.57am this morning a text from O2 pinged in saying I was at 80% of my data limit and they'd let me know if I went over it. Sure enough a quick check in settings showed around 400mb used. Somewhat perplexed, but with no time to check anything (I'm a busy man) I vowed to check things out this evening. Then 30 minutes later I got another text saying I'd exceeded my limit and now needed to buy a bolt on.

I suppose at least they told me rather than letting me carry on and shafting me with a hefty bill at month end.

Anyway, busy I may be but not that busy. I checked again, and use was at 477mb according to Settings. I re-booted the iphone and made sure there were no apps running. What I should have done was check what apps were running - but as I've said before I wasn't doing anything differently to normal.

I then contacted O2 - via chat as it happened. Their phone lines - my first port of call said they were very busy, but within 20 secs of being on the web site I was offered a chat session which I gratefully took.

The next 20 minutes basically confirmed what I'd been told by text. Yes I was over my limit, yes I'd need a bolt on and given I said I'd not normally come near this level of use, they did agree to "look into it", but I suspect they won't find anything.

So, for a £5 bolt on I've got another 500mb to tie me over to my next billing date in 10 days time. Worryingly, I still have no idea which app was the culprit.

My vague recollection is that the following were in the multi-task bar - but remember these apps re supposed to be in a suspended (ie effectively stopped) state.

Sky Sports Football, Safari, Mail, Twitter, Messages, ECB Cricket, Notes, Reeder, Facebook, Contacts, SafeWallet and Angry Birds. I don't (or rather very rarely) stream video or music and certainly haven't been doing this in the last few days. One of them though, appears to have been doing something rather naughty. Two pieces of supporting evidence were significant battery drain - down from 100% at 7.30am to 68% by 9.30 when normally I'm not down to 68% by the end of the day, and the fact the phone did appear to be quite warm at one stage.

So, conclusions?

Well, clearly not all apps go into a suspend state when you open another app or return to the home screen, despite what most people would have you believe. I've heard of this with apps like Pandora and Spotify but I don't use those. Gavin suggested it might be a location services issue, although I don't think I've changed anything since yesterday.

A bit of a mystery then. One things for sure. I'll be paying a regular trip to the task bare to check what's there and clearing them down, and I'll be paying a bit more attention to my data usage over the next few weeks.

The iPhone Twitter app v3.3 Spawn of the Devil

I have 3 or 4 Twitter apps on my iPhone, but my preferred one is the actual Twitter app itself. Simple and intuitive, it does all I want in a slick and easy way.

Today v3.3 became available, and it brings a number of neat tweaks and updates that make the whole process of tweeting even better.

BUT, and it's a huge but..............

One of the updates in v3.3 puts a trend bar at the top of the timeline - it's that horrible grey box with #worldbookday in the screenshot here. It constantly updates with the latest trending topics, and here's the rub. You can't turn it off.

I'm personally not interested in trending topics. I've never taken any notice of them, and I don't want them forced on me in a way that I can't turn off. They're worse than ads. I've got a few "lite" apps that have ads, and they're nowhere near as obtrusive and annoying as this.

The iTunes stores already has a ream of responses (including one from me) about how absolutely annoying this is.

A piece of software shouldn't make you angry, but this has. It's turned an app I use every day - several times a day, and generally have found to be a very decent app into something I hate in an instant.

I hope Twitter takes notice of user feedback and at the very least provides a quick update with the opportunity to turn this bloody thing off.

In the meantime I've switched to another twitter app.

I can't believe I've got so het up about this, but there you go. I am. Grrrrr....

Ubuntu Linux

I'm feeling pretty chuffed with myself.

I've got an old Asus Eee 701 netbook, which has been gathering dust for a while. Originally it had Xandros Linux as an operating system (OS), which was OK, but not great. I eventually took the plunge and after much tweaking managed to install a very cut down version of Windows XP on it. That gave me the comfortable Windows interface, but to be honest it wasn't much fun on a 7" screen. Additionally the arrival of a 13" Macbook Pro consigned the Eee to the furthest corners of the study.

Recently, I got it out and was fiddling around, and decided to have a crack at installing Ubuntu's netbook Linux edition on it. Ubuntu is now one of, if not the Linux distro of choice for many, and has come a long way from the old command line only interfaces of Linux variations of yore.

So armed with a USB flash disk to download the distribution and act as the install disk, I duly cracked on. In the end, it was pretty painless - I consider myself an experienced rather than advanced user, and I can follow instructions, and it was straightforward. The Ubuntu interface was a revelation after my previous (albeit limited) experience of Linux. It's far more "Windows" like, and the Ubuntu software centre in particular does away with all that synaptic and repository stuff for installing software. which had previously put me right off. It's there hidden away if you want it, as is the terminal console - but I don't particularly.

It hooked up to my network like a dream, and I installed OpenOffice with no hassles - all this on a netbook with only a 4GB SSD mind you.

So, I've got a working Ubuntu netbook. Next up, though I wanted to connect my printer. This works over a wireless network, and the Ubuntu software centre didn't find the relevant printer drivers (it's a multi-function Canon MP560. So I downloaded the drivers after a quick google. I hadn't a clue what I was supposed to do, so double clicked a bunch of files, seemed to extract from the archive, tried to open/run some files that looked like executables and got a few errors. Another google suggested I had to edit an install executable. So I found a text editor, edited the offending line as instructed, and via a quick trip to the terminal window (really, this is gobbledy gook to me too) and a comand line instruction - bingo! Installed. Not only working, but I can print and scan - first time. Brilliant (considering I'm flying by the seat of my pants).

I've also just installed the brilliant Dropbox that allows you to store files "in the cloud" and then sync them and make them available to any device you install Dropbox on.

That just about does it for the moment. I've now got everything I need. A small, robust device, running a tidy OS that's Internet connected, I can print from and has all my key documents available to me via Dropbox.

If you're a real tech-head, this probably doesn't sound like very much of an achievement. Believe me, installing ANY OS is often fraught, one you are unfamiliar with is often treacherous. To get everything up and working, almost first time is an achievement, especially when you have to go digging in executables and editing files.

So all in all I'm very pleased with myself. I can now truly say that I am diversity personified when it comes to computing. I've got a Windows 7 desktop PC, a Macbook Pro laptop running Snow Leopard, an Ubuntu Linux driven netbook and an iPhone running iOS4.2. A tool (and OS) for every occasion!

Neat

Adobe: What a load of old cobblers

I've just had an inordinately bad experience, and I'm trying to hold my temper, but it's hard.

I've been an Adobe Photoshop Elements (v2) user for years. That version has always just about done for me and I've avoided upgrading, but tonight decided the time had come to take the plunge to the latest version (v9), and so I navigated to the Adobe online store.

Yes I know I could have gone to Amazon, or somewhere else but the price difference wasn't that great and I get it right from the horses mouth so to speak.

No I must digress briefly here, and say that I've ranted about Adobe before - that was about the price differential between what US customers pay and European and specifically UK customers pay. Adobe put this down to the shifting exchange rate. I say "cobblers" (or words to that effect). Not a valid argument for online software purchase. It's entirely Adobe taking UK purchasers to the cleaners. Enough said.

Now I've made a few big online software purchases recently - MS Office for Mac, MS Office for Windows to name two, and several others to boot. In ALL cases, I've paid, downloaded installed, registered and just got on with it. How about with Adobe? Oh no........

First up, I paid. Fine - they took my cash sweet as a nut.

Click on the download link and get a cryptic message saying if I'm downloading with IE then blah, blah, blah, but if I'm using another browser I have to download something else first. I was in FireFox, and I didn't want to download something else first to enable me to make the download I wanted, so I switched to IE (yuk) and downloaded the 1.75 GB file to my desktop.

When it was downloaded I tried to launch it. Oops. Mistake. It's some odd compressed file that nothing on my Windows PC could read, so I then had to download some more software to extract the files (stuffit expander - or a choice of another couple of programs) to extract all the files, which I did and it duly did.

So, left with two folders. A Readme and an Program folder. Read the Readme ((briefly) as you do, nothing untoward in there, opened the program folder, double clicked the "setup.exe"..........and got an error message saying "Please install/uninstall the product setup.exe to the root folder". Click OK and the installer exits. D'oh!

A quick Google didn't find anything obvious so went to Adobe site and clicked Live Chat.

Within seconds, had Umer on the desktop offering to help. I explained the problem. The rest as they say is history. The full transcript of our chat is below.

Thank you for choosing Adobe. A representative will be with you shortly. Your estimated wait time is 0 minute(s) and 30 second(s) or longer as there are 1 customer(s) in line ahead of you.

You are now chatting with Umer.

Umer: Hello! Welcome to Adobe Customer Service.

Simon: Hi

Umer: Hi Simon

Umer: I am glad to help you.

Umer: As I understand, you are unable to install the software, correct?

Simon: That's right

Umer: Thank you.

Umer: Let me check the order number AD000726232UK

Umer: I see that you have placed the order on Dec. 05, 2010

Umer: Please be informed that it normally takes 24 to 48 hours to complete the order.

Simon: Why 24 hours? Yes - I have downloaded a 1.75GB file to my desktop. Expanded it into two folders - a read me and a APSE 9 with a setup file (amongst others). Launch the setup file and get the error message

Umer: You will be able to download and install the software 48 hours after placing the order.

Simon: I already have downloaded the software

Umer: I see that the the order is processed completely.

Umer: Please try to install the software after 48 hours.

Simon: Why can't I install it now? What's going to change in 24 hours?

Umer: The product will be ready to install in 48 hours.

Simon: I don't understand why, when I have a 1.75GB file sitting on my desktop I can't install it for 48 hours! That's ludicrous.

Umer: Simon, I see that this is a technical issue and I may not be of great help to you.

Simon: If I go to a store and buy the software on a CD/DVD would I have to wait 48 hours before I installed it? I think not.

Umer: I request you to call our Technical Support team on phone if you are unable to install the software after 48 hours of placing the order.

Simon: This is ridiculous. I'd like a refund please

Umer: Sure. We can help with this.

Umer: May I please have the product serial number?

Simon: Yes it's 1057-1717-6531-9470-5398-9279

Umer: Thank you.

Umer: In order to process your return, you must agree to delete the existing software from your computer and destroy any existing copies. You may not sell, transfer, give away, donate or otherwise distribute your existing Adobe product to anyone else. Do you agree?

Simon: Yes I do

Umer: Thank you.

Umer: You will receive the refund in 7 to 10 business days by the method of payment.

Simon: Thank you

Umer: You are welcome.

Simon: I'd be grateful if you could provide some feedback to your manager.

Umer: Sure.

Simon: I have bought online and downloaded several commercial software suites recently, and in all cases with this exception, the process has been flawless. Buy, download and install and I'm up and running straight away.

Umer: Let me help you with a link with more information on this.

Simon: The process for downloading this software (and I assume all other Adobe software) is convoluted, unclear and the idea of having to wait 48 hours after downloading before I can use it is completely ridiculous. Adobe have just lost a customer, and I will be looking elsewhere for my photo editing software.

Umer: Thank you for waiting. One moment please.

Simon: I appreciate your help in processing the return, but I'm unhappy with the process and feel aggrieved that it had to come to that.

Umer: Please click here

Umer: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Simon: OK. Thanks. Goodbye

Umer: Thank you for contacting Adobe. Goodbye!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Umer is a nice person. But what's all this crap about having to wait 48 hours before installing software that I've just paid for and downloaded, and is sitting in a whacking great 1.75 gig file on my desktop? Excuse my French but that's just bloody ridiculous. What the hell is this, and how suddenly after 48 hours will a file decide it's OK to be installed?

I'm beginning to understand why Steve Jobs (head honcho at Apple) has a thing about Adobe.

It's worth googling Adobe and install - seems I'm not the only one.....

Any thoughts?

Apple: It just works. No it doesn't

You know, for a company that prides itself on ease of use and the "it just works" principle, Apple have sometimes got things horribly wrong.

Take calendars, and three Apple specific elements.

1. An Apple Macbook Pro
2. A pricey (by most people's views) subscription to Apple's Mobileme cloud/syncing service
3. An Apple iPhone 4

Now then, let me see - oooh, I have all of those. And what I want to do is have my calendars on the two bits of hardware to be seamless. Update one, the other one updates. And it works, mostly.

I have two calendars on my MBP that are "subscribed calendars". These are calendars that someone else has built. You download them, and then subscribe to them, usually for free (in my case, a calendar of all Cardiff City's fixtures, which saves me having to type the darn things in at the start off a season, and a UK holidays one so I don't have to add in things like "Christmas Day" or "Easter Sunday").

The beauty of a subscribed calendar is, if the data is updated - say a CCFC fixture v Middlesborough on Saturday is moved to a wet Tuesday, the calendar automatically updates with the new data - I don't have to do anything! Marvellous!

And it works except.....that the subscribed calendars don't sync. A "normal" local calendar syncs to Mobileme and to the "other" device, but the bloody subscribed ones don't.

It's such a pain in the arse. A beautiful elegant solution that's been hamstrung for Lord knows what reason.

You'd have thought Apple would have been able to make it work, but it doesn't. And that means they are driving people to alternative solutions like third party sync tools and Google. Surely that can't be good for business?

Come on Apple, make subscribed calendars work with Mobileme.

App karma

Following my post of a few weeks ago about the multiplicity of to do and note type apps on my iPhone, I think I have finally settled on a set up that seems to be working for me, far better than any previous approach.

For Notes I'm using Evernote. I splashed out on the premium version, mostly because I want to have my notes available at all times, not just when I have an internet connection. I'm using both the iPhone app and the cloud version on my Macbook Pro and PC, which works just fine. I've migrated all my others notes from others apps, and everything seems to be going OK. I like the way I can clip to Evernote from a web page using Firefox's EN plugin too.

For my to do app, I'm using Appigo's ToDo. I have to say I really, really, like this app. I've tried three of four (at least) other to do type apps, and all have their merits, but nearly all have substantial flaws (for me at least). the Appigo offering is great. It's neat and simple if that's all you want, offers lots of options if you want to, and I'm growing into it more each day. If you have an iPhone, and like to keep your to do list in order, I highly recommend this app.

I'm also finding that my app use is steadying down. Thought I've downloaded a couple of hundred apps over the life of my iPhone, I'm really only using a few in anger with any degree of regularity. They are (and this is only the order in which they appear in my homescreen, and exclude things like Settings, Mail, Messages and Contacts as I'd assume anyone would use those regularly:

• WeatherPro
• Evernote
• ToDo
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Safewallet
• Reeder
• CoPilot Live

There are loads more obviously - I have about 100 plus apps ont eh phone at the moment, but these are the ones I use as a matter of course on a day in, day out basis plus mail, messages, calendar, safari and contacts.

Oh no....another to do app

Bugger. Barely 4 days after I've revamped and rationalised my notes/todo apps on my iPhone, I've gone back on my plans not to fiddle.

I saw a tweet from somewhere that said Appigo's ToDo app had been updated, and like a fool I went and re-downloaded it.

Last time I had this app on my device I didn't get on with it at all. It looks like it's gone through a few iterations since then, and now looks like a very grown up, capable to do app.

Visually it's great without being "twee". Very "Ronseal" - does what it says on the tin. Importantly, it now has local task alerts, and I'm pretty sure since I last looked at it (though it may have had it a while if not always) better alert notification generally.

I'm very impressed and have shunted "2Do" to my rarely used apps folder as I get to grips with it. It's got a fair few settings for those who want to customise it a bit, though it's set up to work very well out of the box so to speak.

It syncs with Toodledoo if that's what you want, or it's own ToDo Online which looks visually stunning but comes at a cost.

I'll stick with the free Toddledo for the moment, although the app looks to do everything I want it to.

very impressed.

Too much choice = disorganisation

Choice can be a terrible thing. Especially when it costs nothing to only a couple of quid.
There are so many different to do, and note apps available for the iPhone in the App Store it's hard to know where to start, and perhaps more importantly, where to stop.

I've gone through a fair few over the time I've had an iPhone, seeking the perfect app. In truth, I don't think there is a perfect app. As with so many, there are bits of some that are great, but then things that they don't do that another app will.

The result has been a proliferation of similar type apps on my device. The problem is that now I've got notes stored everywhere. Some stay on the app, some sync to the cloud and some sync to different services.

So I've made a decision that I'll pare down on the apps, and keep only one or two that complement each other. How long this will last is anyone's guess, but my guess is probably not long.

So, I've kept Evernote, bizarrely an app I have never really got on with, as my notes app, and 2Do as my to do app. For the moment, out go AwsomeNote, Notebook and Toodledo

I've also upgraded Evernote to the premium service - it's "only" about £26 a year, and brings a couple of significant benefits. One is that notes sill stay on the device, where with the free version you have to have a connection to get hold of the full editable note, and secondly, any photo note you take with text in it, becomes searchable once Evernote's servers have done their text recognition thing. The fact that an Evernote note can be text, photo or voice is a nice bonus, and the search and tagging functions make finding a note a breeze.

2Do is a graphically nice app that gives you lots of options when creating a to do, and I like the configurability.

So that's what I've done, I'll see how it pans out in practice. I'm a bit sad to see Appigo's Notes app on the "out" list, as I've had it a long time, but you can't add photos as a note. Maybe if that comes in a later release I'll switch back. It synced to Tooddledo, so there didn't seem to be any point having that app as well.

AwsomeNote was graphically nice (perhaps over emphasis on the graphics). It also syncs to Evernote, but again if I'm using Evernote anyway, AwsomeNote just seems like duplication, and the way notes were synced wasn't entirely to my liking - and they only sync one way as far as I can tell - Create a new notebook in Evernote and it didn't sync back to AwsomeNote.

With so many apps around that do notes and to do's there's bound to be something else out there that some people swear by, or that will eventually sway me to move, but fore the moment I am going to try and stick with just these two - Evernote and 2Do.

DVD Catalyst - great customer service

How's this for cracking customer service.

In the past I'd bought DVD Catalyst for ripping DVD's, but since an upgrade of my PC had managed to wipe the program. Downloaded the latest version which installed as a trial with no obvious method to upgrade the full paid version.

Fired off an email to support, and within minutes had a response from Mitch along with a link to download the full retail version.

I sent him another email thanking him for such a fast response, and he came back - again almost immediately with:

"My response was 1 minute faster than 2 years ago.

You asked me the same question on dec 14, 2008.

You just upgraded from a Palm to the iPhone at the time.

Thank you for using the same email for contacting me, it made it a lot easier to verify your order confirmation.

Sincerely,"

Now I'm impressed with that.

And it's a good program too!

Wireless woes

My daughter's nagging finally got the better of me over the weekend, and I relented and agreed to move our second, older desktop from the "study" into her bedroom. This leaves the newer desktop for me/my son, though it's mostly him as I spend most of my time on the Macbook Pro now.

So between us we undid all the connections and took it into her bedroom and set it up again, only for me to realise it had been hooked directly to the router via a cable and I didn't have a wireless card/adapter around. Ah, should have seen her little face when she realised she'd have to wait a day until she could hook up to MSN Messenger and all her chums again....even though she'd see them all at school today! (she's 13 this year by the way).

So today I popped into PC World on my way home and bought a Belkin N150 Enhanced Wireless USB Network Adapter (model F6D4050). The box didn't mention Win 7 compatibility (in fact none of the various makes/models did), so assuming everything would work (why sell kit that wouldn't eh?) I stumped up the cash.

When I tried to install it however, it refused point blank to play citing an error message about a missing *.msi file path. I hunted the install CD, and Belkin's support site to no avail, and even downloaded the latest drivers (which I think are the same as those on the install CD. Google suggested very quickly that Win 7 was a bit of an issue unless you installed in XP compatibility mode - not available on my version of Win 7. Somewhat miffed I returned post haste to PCW (which is rather conveniently or dangerously depending on your point of view, only about 5 mins away in the car). Despite my protestations that I knew what I was talking about the chap frowned, muttered and said he's be back in a minute -actually it was nearer 10. He said he'd found a forum where someone had built their own Windows 7 driver (I kid you not) for this device. I suggested to him that that's not really what I should have to do. To be fair though, he went and got all the other flavours of USB wireless adapters and did a quick search and came back to tell me that two of them had Win 7 drivers available as downloads from the manufacturer support site, and the other one from a support forum.

In the end I took the Linksys Rangeplus WUSB100, one he said needed a download from the Linksys site, and which cost £4 more than the Belkin (and looked smarter too - D'oh).

Once I got home, I just installed the thing from CD - first time. No download necessary. Up and running in 2 minutes. Good on you Linksys.

I've had some problems with Belkin kit before, so I think I'll steer clear of it for good now.

One final moan. Why do you need a box the size of a small house to sell what in effect is a thumb size wireless adapter with 1 CD and a couple of bits of paper is beyond me.

iNews for iPhone updated

My current favourite iPhone RSS reader iNews, has just been updated.

iNews 2.1.3 offers the ability to scale images to fit screen width in summary view and fixed a few bugs.

Nothing significant, but I guess it improves an already decent RSS newsreader for the iPhone.

Software unlocking - how mad is this?

I've just bought and downloaded a version of Pinnacle's Studio video editing software - software I've used in the past but am now several versions behind on.

I've done this ostensibly because I've got a new digital video camera for Christmas. I downloaded the 2.6 gig file and installed it and then imported some footage from my new camera, which stores video in MP4 format. Despite having registered and entered the software key, the system then required me to undertake a further online activation to enable me to deal with MP£, DivX, MP4 and H.264 files.

Why?

Why not just unlock the ability to process those files by default? There's no extra cost. Seems completely stupid to me.