Apple’s 2010 Music Event Summary
Sep 1st

Today Apple held their annual music event where as predicted they announced a new line of iPods and a few other things.
One of the things that caught my attention was the new Apple TV. If your in the US you get Netfilx right of the box, not something I thought Apple would do but hey theres a first time for everything. Although the thing that got me interested was AirPlay with the new iOS 4.2 coming to the iPad in November your can stream content from your device to an Apple TV and start watching a video, listening to music or viewing photos on a big screen TV.
Plus it’s tiny.
Another advantage for those in the US is the new prices of HD TV shows starting a just $0.99 and first run movies will be $4.99 and go down as they get older. But with no on board storage renting the content is the only option without a computer to stream from.
The box itself has also had a price cut going from $299 to $99. The reason I’m not getting one films in the UK are £3.49 to rent, which is fine but TV shows are £3.99 and the box yea thats £99. Yes thats right £99.


They also announced a new retro iPod Shuffle with buttons, again but of course it’s smaller and lighter and just £39 ($49). The new iPod touch is also even thinner if thats possible and comes with the Retina Display, A4 processor and FaceTime. The iPod Nano has lost it’s buttons and is 46% smaller then its predecessor with a multitouch display.
Apple also claim the iPod touch is the number one portable gaming device in the world out selling both Nintendo and Sony combined.
And thats not all Apple also announced iTunes 10 with Ping a social network for music as well as iOS 4.1, coming next week for iPhone and iPod Touch owners.
iOS 4.1 features High Dynamic Range photography built right into the camera and they’ve added HD video uploads over WIFI, Game Center and TV show rentals.
iPad owners will get everything in 4.1 and 4.0 plus wireless printing and the previously mentions AirPlay in iOS 4.2 coming in November as a free update.
Auto Update WordPress on Rackspace Cloud
Sep 1st
This is the first in a series of how to’s regarding Rackspace Cloud Sites hosting. When I recently moved my sites over here I ran into a few problems with configuration differences and settings from my old host and in this series I will be exampling why they are in place and how to get around them.
I recently set up a new WordPress powered site on the Rackspace Cloud, I uploaded the 3.0 files I already had and planned on using the auto update capabilities of WordPress to get the latest version. However on Rackspace Cloud Sites the memory allocated to PHP is the default 8MB that PHP sets itself up with and WordPress need at least 128MB of RAM to update itself.
The solution is to add a line to the .htaccess file the site uses. Under the WordPress section of the .htaccess I added:
php_value memory_limit 128M
You could also place this in the route of your account to affect all your sites but I do this on a site by site bases as I have also increased the upload limit and I don’t want the higher limit on every site.
Fujifilm W3 3D Camera
Aug 17th
Today Fujifilm announced a pretty sweet looking ‘Real 3D’ camera, so need for glasses. This stunning camera doesn’t just do 3D video it also does 3D still pictures and 2D pictures and video and unlike it’s predecessor, the W1, the W3 shoots 720p stereoscopic HD video perfect for YouTube 3D.
Hosting with the Rackspace Cloud
Aug 14th
Recently my site was running very slow mainly due to the load my old server was under serving around 30-40 page requests a minute across a number of sites. This would lead to time out errors when some of the sites posted new content, advertisers been put off and visitor numbers falling. While I was always working to decease the server load by caching and side loading images from other servers this eventually hit a limit as well.

After hitting limit after limit I decided to move all the sites to a new hosting provider, Rackspace. With the Rackspace Cloud I am able to scale the sites automatically at low cost to well beyond what I in vision using, or at least by the time I get there Rackspace would of increased it’s infrastructure allowing me to continue growing without doing a thing. And that is the beauty of the cloud, auto scaling with massive amounts of power on tap and ready when you are.
I chose Rackspace as they have the 2nd largest cloud in the world, plus they are amongst the cheapest and have a proven track record. GDGT’s live blog is hosted on the Rackspace Cloud and during their live blog of the WWDC ’09 keynote they hit 4.3 million page views without skipping a beat, I won’t be getting that kind of traffic but knowing my host can handle that is comforting.

So far I have noticed a considerable speed increase after switching most of the sites I host over. When they advertise “fanatical Support” they really do mean it, I spent about 25 minutes in a live season talking to one of their sales people, and they weren’t all about selling Rackspace service. They suggested Amazon’s EC2 might be better for my needs, however I’d already ruled them out on price after some prototyping I did on there earlier in the year. We went through my needs and what I currently use and in the end we agreed the service was what I needed. Signing up took only 5 minutes, again in the live chat as I already had a Rackspace account.

Since signing up and moving my sites over I have used the ‘fanatical’ support again this time after moving this site across I couldn’t access the WordPress admin. The person I spoke to identified the problem as been the amount of memory allocated to PHP on my server and increased it for me, and then going on to show me how to do this myself via the .htaccess file. He also went on to show me how to increase the file upload size limits (default is 2MB).
To host sites on Rackspace Cloud you need to transfer your domain to them ($10) or change your name servers, ether way Rackspace will be handling all the DNS for the domain. I chose to change my name servers as I have domains they aren’t able to transfer. The DNS management interface is fast, quick and easy to use, I had my CNAMEs and MX records for Google Apps set up in under 2 minutes as oppose to the 10 minutes this takes with Godaddy’s DNS manager. While Rackspace also provide email for every domain you host with them I didn’t use it because all my data is already with Google.

The control panel while simple provides all the information you need, keeping you up to date with how many cycles, how much disk space/bandwidth you’ve used as well as allowing you to add more sites in less then a minute and database even quicker. While there is no one click install of popular applications like most shared hosts offer you can normally install applications manually, and often quicker thanks to the speed everything works at.
The Rackspace service is aimed at more professional users with large sites that need power and reliability, if that’s you I defiantly recommend their services, I will be posting some tips and how-to’s in the future as I move and create more sites over there.
Making the Site Faster
Aug 7th
Just a quick note, that over the next month or so I am going to be changing cache settings, trying content delivery networks and other things to try and improve the recently slow speeds of the site. This is will involve down time, sometimes even slower page load times, out of date pages and missing images and files but it will all be worth it in the end.
If you experience problems with site chances are I know about it and you should try again in 5 or 10 minutes. Thank you for your understanding.
Update (10/08/10): Over the night and into this morning the site was moved to a new provider, The Rackspace Cloud, who should be able to handle any traffic spikes and scale with me as my sites grow. I will provide a full review with reasons behind my diction soon. The content delivery network has yet to be implemented however the page load times are greatly improved and the network may not be needed.
OmniFocus
Aug 1st
Recently, with a number of active projects, my current GTD task management system Things wasn’t cutting it. I needed something with more structure and filters.
With 3 or 4 active projects each with hundreds of actions and sub projects with even more actions Things was become cluttered and more of a hindrance then a help so I turned to OmniFocus.
OmniFocus a much more power and expensive system, costing $79.95 for the Mac client, is based around the idea of projects and context allowing you to focus in on only the tasks you can do. For example when I’m at my desk at home I’m not interested in anything for work or at the supermarket so I can hide them with the click of a button and only show the things I can do.
This brings with the ability to be truly the only system needed for task management in both home, work and business. The powerful sync via MobileMe, Bonjour or any WebDAV server allowing over the air sync with other Macs, iPhones and iPads without the applications have to be running on the same network.

OmniFocus also has a iPhone and iPad app which both follow the same steep pricing structure as the Mac app costing £12 and £24 respectively. But what you get for your money is well worth it.
The iPad app is well designed and offers all the features of the desktop counter part, well at least I haven’t found anything to be missing. Where as the iPhone app as you may expect offers the basics and a bit more but if you are mobile and away from your Mac a a lot like I am you’ll need one if not both of these. Both the iPhone and iPad apps sync over the air so your almost alway update everywhere you go.
Do I recommend OmniFocus. Yes despite is steep pricing it is worth it to anyone that wants or needs a task manager and I even recommend it over Things unless the price is an issue for you I’d recommend OmniFocus every time.
Huawei E585 MiFi
Jul 20th
With my WIFI only iPad and a recent need to use it outside of home and work I needed to get some form of mobile broadband data solution. For which I turned to the Huawei E585 MiFi, while only available from 3 in the UK the price is very reasonable from only £49.99 on pay as you go.
The data speeds are better then I expected with downloads well over 3.5Mbps and uploads over 1.5Mbps
The device is very simple to use with only one button on the side, a power button, there is however a web based interface to access text messages and settings. I do recommend changing the SSID and encryption key and obviously add a admin password to protect your settings.
Apart from that little setup the device is ready to go out of the box after a little charge. On a full battery it’s good for about 5-6 hours of constant uses.
The predecessor E580 had 5 LED lights to provide you with the information you need to know about network connectivity and power and a Windows only control panel to change settings. The new E585 has a LCD display providing better and more detailed information such as how many devices are connected up to 5.
The data plans 3 offer are very good with 15GB of monthly data costing £20 a lot more than the almost standard 3GB for £15 that the major networks offer. The coverage of 3 is far better then most of the big networks in terms of data coverage, I’m yet to find a place with no connectivity.
Buying this allows me to connect my phone, laptop and iPad when on the go and I only need one data plan.
Twitter Apps on iPad
Jul 7th
Since I got my iPad over a month ago I have been looking for a good Twitter app and still haven’t found one. While Twitter for iPhone runs beautifully on the iPad I want a native app that can take advantage of all that the platform has to offer.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Twitter’s own iPhone app is the best on the phone with all the basic features and some more that I want but on the iPad it feels out dated and old.
On the iPad I have tried Tweetdeck, Osfoora, Twitterific and Echofon, all of which cover the basics multiple accounts, lists, contact search for @mentions, etc. very well. But for me they are all missing one feature, custom URL shorteners. I use YOURLS on matt.mx and Twitter for iPhone allows me to shorten URLs via this.
Whilst trying all these iPad apps however I did get to use some features I really liked for example, sync and push notifications on Echofon and the pure beauty of Osfoora on both the iPhone and iPad.
While Echofon isn’t the prettiest it is the only universal app (both iPhone and iPad versions in one app) I tested and with the sync and push notifications I am drifting that way. Plus theres a Mac application as well.
Unless Twitter come out with a iPad version of the iPhone app, I will be using Echofon.
(Helping a Brother) Psychology Experiment
Jun 24th
Please spend a few minutes to complete this simple test.
- This test consists of 20 quick questions and takes around 5 minutes to complete.
- The test contains 6 different types of questions focused on Maths and English.
- Please do not participate if you do not speak fluent English.
- We ask that each participant completes the test once only.
For information on how your results will be used, the nature of the experiment or any other queries please email psychologystudy [at] hotmail.co.uk. If you would like to withdraw your results, please ask via the email and state the number you selected from the “Student” list.
We ensure complete confidentiality and anonymity of your results and any emails you send or receive.
Follow this link and select any number from the “Student” list to begin.
Thank you for your time.
Mystique2 Preview
Jun 18th
Today I set to work putting the final touches to a WordPress theme I’ve been working on. Mystique2 is a modified version of Mystique featuring major rewrites to certain areas of the code to bring the latest WordPress features such as custom menus to the theme.
Version 1.0 is currently running on my site and although not released I do plan on publishing version 1.5 with support for more of the new WordPress 3 features in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
As a side note, I will be running maintenance every Tuesday and Friday on this site to update the theme and this will result in around 10 minutes downtime each night.










































