The heat wave may have broken in the UK, but that hasn't stopped the world from noticing that Apple has released some support information concerned with overheating iPhones and using the devices in hot weather. We know, the words 'support information' chill us too (if you'll excuse the pun) so we'll summarise it for you - don't let your iPhone get too hot or it will stop working.

Although designed to work in temperatures that range from chilly to "will someone please let me out of this oven" (between 0ºC and 35ºC) trying to use one outside of these parameters could cause it to stop working, Apple has warned. The firm makes a number of recommendations, including telling people not to leave their iPhone in a hot car. Instead it recommends that you turn off the phone and move to somewhere cooler - like indoors maybe, or Iceland?

Although Sneak usually adjusts to the hot weather by making small changes to his daily routine - for example, storing his underpants in the office fridge - he can't help but wonder what this sort of announcement will mean to those holidaymakers planning on using their iPhones in St Tropez, St Lucia or some other summer hotspot. It's hard to imagine them stuffing the oh-so-trendy item anywhere but on permanent display. Besides, beach outfits tend to be low on pockets.

NB: The Apple support page was updated on 25 June. We would like to apologise for our lateness in bringing it to your attention, but Sneak works remotely and like the iPhone was struggling to work in the heat.

July 3, 2009 Web/Tech, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak was intrigued to read reports that the BBC is to screen a 'comedy drama' about the early days of the home computer industry in the UK, when men were men, computers were knocked up from kits that had to be soldered together at home, and software was almost invariably loaded from audio cassette tape.

The show is apparently to be called [bad pun alert] "Syntax Era", and will star comedians Alexander Armstrong as Clive Sinclair and Martin Freeman as Chris Curry, one of the founders of Acorn Computers.

Many of the reports Sneak has seen indicate the show's plot will centre on the rivalry between Sinclair and Acorn Computers for "home computer supremacy".

This isn't how Sneak recalls this period of IT history, it has to be said. Sinclair's ZX Spectrum and Acorn's BBC Micro computers were aimed at very different ends of the computer market.

The 'Beeb' was regarded as the Rolls-Royce of home computers, as it had a full typewriter keyboard, video outputs for a TV and monitor, and an array of ports, including analogue-to-digital converter, disk drive interface, and even a set of chip sockets for plugging in add-on ROM chips that expanded its built-in software. It was a hobbyists' dream.

By contrast, the 'Speccy' was cheap and cheerful, with a rubbery keyboard and a single expansion port that simply brought out the processor bus signals to a connector at the back of the case. It was great for learning to program, playing games, and an introduction to the world of computers.

It would be difficult to decide which of the two was best, however. While the Beeb was clearly technically superior, the Spectrum was far more affordable and had many more software titles created for it. Which would you choose?

As to the "Syntax Era", don't you think that it's great that the BBC went out of its way to find so obvious a look-alike for Clive Sinclair?

July 1, 2009 Television, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Have you ever sat at your desk fighting back a strong desire to eat some beans?

No, no one in Sneak's office has either. But apparently the people at Heinz are so bean-obsessed that they think that what the world needs more than anything is a USB-powered microwave designed for heating up beans. At your desk.

Yeah - you read that right. A bean microwave for the desk. We had to check the date to make sure that it wasn't actually April Fool's Day, but a story in the Daily Mail has pictures of the device and pictures of a man sitting at a desk using one. The mind boggles - in 57 different ways.

The Daily Mail has spoken to all involved - while presumably keeping a straight face - and has come up with the following facts: that almost 70 per cent of people are too busy to leave their desks at lunchtime, and that the mini-microwave would carry a price tag of around £100. Neither of which really sounds like a good reason for developing or purchasing a deskbound microwave.

Still according to those involved, the possibilities are almost endless: "It is possible to heat a pie, a burger, a cup of soup or tea in quick time," explained microwave expert and the Beanzawave's designer Gordon Andrews. Prompting us to wonder whether the device is aimed at office workers or food concessions at football grounds.

June 10, 2009 Food and Drink, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yasmina Siadatan is the lucky winner of this year's Apprentice, and as a prize she's landed the business job that we all dream of. No, not being Alan Sugar's apprentice - he has already had four of those from the previous series so we doubt he'll have much time to actually manage and nurture her.

Yasmina's exciting new role will see her giving away free electronic screens. With adverts on. To doctors surgeries. Wow. That's definitely bleeding something, if not quite 'bleeding edge'.

This new role sounds very similar as the job given to Lee McQueen, the winner of last year's show who also went to work for Al's Amscreen digital signage division. Lee - known for his bizarrre dinosaur impression and CV fakery - was recently applauded by 'Surralan' for getting a large contract inked for the firm. What was the contract for? Giving away free screens? Check. With adverts on? Check. To doc... No, this time it was to petrol stations.

Boy. I bet Yasmina wishes she entered last year. Or had stayed put at her restaurant.

June 8, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a recent survey by a government group called the Communications Consumer Panel (CCP), nearly three quarters of respondents said they couldn't live without their home broadband connection, rating it as high as other utilities such as electricity and water.

This prompted a range of headlines stating that 'broadband is now as important as water'. Now, while I wholeheartedly agree that broadband is an increasingly essential part of our lives, rating it as highly as these other life-giving services is possibly a step too far.

Removing the fact that without electricity there is no broadband, two weeks without water or power and your internet connection would soon pale into insignificance, except possibly to bombard your water and electricity providers with angry emails about the lack of service.

To be fair to the CCP, some of this was simply over-hyping from publications trying to generate an eye catching headline.

I've looked through the report and at no time does it actually say that respondents consider their home broadband to be as important as water or electricity, simply that they increasingly treat it as a utility rather than a commodity and that internet access should be considered a right, rather than a privilege. The distinction is a subtle one, but it is there nonetheless.

Perhaps my instinctive aversion to the comparison comes from being born and raised in South Africa, a country where a lack of electricity, water and basic sanitation is still a very real issue for thousands of people, but interestingly even there a mobile phone is increasingly seen as a vital part of life.

Returning to the first world and the UK in particular, the report does raise some interesting points about how internet access at home is viewed as increasingly essential and not having internet access at home is now considered something of a disadvantage, especially for families with children.

Anna Bradley, the chair of the Communications Consumer Panel puts it quite well: "The tipping point will be when broadband does not just provide an advantage to people who have it, but disadvantages people who do not," she said.

"Interestingly some people already feel disadvantaged: those who live in not-spots and those who have school-age children but do not have broadband at home."

We're living increasingly hyper-connected lives, using the internet not just for information, but for communication, purchases, services and entertainment - and that means that, while data access at home is never going to be as important as running water, those that don't have it are going to find themselves struggling to keep up with their peers.

For those of you interested in the full 'Not online, not included: consumers say broadband essential for all' report a PDF version can be found here.

June 4, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

The beleaguered entertainment industry has received another blow in its battle against the downloaders, as uber-cool music producer Danger Mouse has revealed plans to issue his latest album with a blank CD-R.

Due to a falling out with the suits at his record company, EMI, Danger Mouse (real name Brian Burton) will release his Dark Night of the Soul album with elaborate packaging, but will ask his fans to download the contents via the internet on to the included blank disc - and not by official sources either.

Young Mr Burton, who is half of Gnarls Barkley, has worked with Banksy and Damon Albarn (there is always room for one blip) and first won praise with his internet-only - and non-record company sanctioned - The Grey Album, a mashup of the Beatles and Jay Z. Now, following the EMI dispute, Danger Mouse says he "hopes that people lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, are as excited by it as he is".

The announcement is surely the sort of thing that sees record company execs remove their faces from mirrored surfaces and move at speed in the direction of high-storey windows. Just consider what the entertainment industry has to put up with already: early releases, forced preview downloads, DRM technology and unnecessary accompanying applications - and that's just the music biz.

Just last week, the UK creative industry stopped searching eBay for limited edition Nike trainers long enough to ask ISPs to step on prolific filesharers, while a study from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) revealed that one in four software installations in the UK was illegal.

Illegal software, the BSA warned, might not live up to your expectations and could leave you open to security issues - leaving Sneak wondering when they were going to start talking about how it differed from the official version in many cases.

While the above examples aren't quite as cool as Hip Hop industry spats, they still show just how concerned the 'biz' remains about pirates. Artists lowering a ladder for the miscreants to jump onboard ship isn't going to help anyone. Unless...

Sneak eagerly awaits the day that Celine Dion follows suit. Because surely a blank Ms Dion CD is the best Ms Dion CD.

May 18, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3)

In a bid to tempt the ladies to get all techie and buy a laptop, Dell launched a web site earlier this week aimed at women and called 'Della'.

The site is divided into just four areas (that's it, Dell, keep it nice and simple for the ladies): Products, Featured Artist, Tech Tips and Giving. Sneak's favourite area is the Tech Tips page, which until Wednesday this week featured 'Seven Unexpected Ways a Netbook Can Change Your Life' and boasted the promise that once you get beyond their cuteness, you'll realise netbooks can do more than just check your email.

However, in response to feedback (no doubt of the negative kind in response to the previous patronising tone of the advice), Dell has now updated this section and reduced it to only five tips, along with a note explaining the changes: "Some of you have read this article over the last several days and will notice a few modifications. You spoke; we listened. Thank you for your ongoing feedback."

Luckily Sneak had already saved all the info from the original seven tips, and can safely say that while none of them were that 'unexpected', all fit the normal lazy stereotyping around women and technology. The original list featured ways to use your laptop as a calorie counter, recipe finder or meditation aid. The new tips still include an e-book reader (so you can catch up on the latest Mills & Boon or Jackie Collins blockbuster, no doubt) and a lifestyle organiser. But the reference to a 'Remember the Milk' time management application has now mysteriously disappeared.

The 'Stay in the clouds' section has also been wiped. This covered nothing too technical at first: "'Cloud computing' is a buzzword for what your mini does best: save money and time by using free online apps for everything you need - meaning you don't need to buy, install or update a bunch of space- and memory-hogging applications on your computer itself."

However, it then went on to reference streaming media, Google Docs, transferring data, porting it via removable SD cards or USB flash drives, and plugging in an external drive. Hopefully this section hasn't disappeared as readers complained it was too techie and complicated. Instead there is a much more basic 'Get more' tip, which encourages women to, "Add storage to your netbook with memory cards or memory keys".

Fortunately the Featured Artist area of the site still features Robyn Moreno, author of Practically Posh: The Smart Girls Guide to a Glam Life and producer for Plum TV in the Hamptons, no less. I'm not sure what she has to do with the Della web site or netbooks, but she seems to like eating and drinking wine, judging by the pictures on the site, so a perfect choice for selling netbooks to the ladies.

May 15, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ryanair, which recently announced that it would let its passengers use mobiles while flying, may not be so keen on phones being used for updating blogs mid-flight. The firm has been left red-faced, and more than a bit flamed, after calling bloggers 'lunatics', and telling them to keep the blogosphere to themselves.

The situation arose after one internet user, developer Jason Roe, discovered a glitch on the Ryanair web site. He did what any sane person would do and shared the glitch over micro-blogging site Twitter, only to be insulted back via a comment. This is a blogger and web developer being insulted, so he was unlikely to let it lie. So he set about discovering where the response came from.

Perhaps surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, the comment Roe received calling him an idiot and a liar were traced back to Ryanair's own headquarters, which really should have embarrassed the company. Only it didn't.

Rather than apologise, the firm decided to make this announcement: "It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm it won't be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blogosphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel."

You got that bloggers, don't bother trying to engage with Ryanair using social media, the firm is not interested. And you will only end up looking stupid. Well, in Ryanair's eyes you will anyway.

Everyone else will think it's the other way round.

February 26, 2009 Travel, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (5)

This week's totally unseasonal appearance of snow wreaked the usual havoc on the transport infrastructure of many parts of the UK, causing many workers (Sneak included) to work from home.

Another predictable effect of the weather was a flurry of press releases either jumping on the opportunity to publicise the advantages of home working (usually from purveyors of mobility tools), or pointing out the dangers of remote working (usually from purveyors of security tools).
Sneak would concur that working from home sounds a good idea on occasions like this, especially if your work is heavily web-based and needs little other than a computer, internet connection and a phone.

However, it can quickly turn into a nightmare for those workers with a corporate IT department that believes the only secure system is one that nobody can actually access.

Sneak's company email system is based on Lotus Notes, with external access provided by a web-based tool called iNotes. The version Sneak has access to is virtually unusable and requires a different set of credentials to the Notes client on the network (naturally), but it also proves to be incompatible with modern browsers, refusing to work properly in FireFox 3 or IE 8, even with compatibility mode turned on. Fortunately, Sneak was saved by having an old PC at home still running IE 6.

There is also the problem that several documents Sneak was working on happened to be on a PC hard drive in the office, meaning they had to wait for another day to be completed.

Oddly, Sneak didn't used to be bothered by difficulties like this, because tools like GoToMyPC and LogMeIn allow you to reach your office PC via the web, so you can access your desktop email account and copy across any files you need in a flash. Unfortunately, someone in the IT department decreed these to be a security risk, and blocked them at the firewall.

Flexible, remote working is possible now, but a change in mindset is needed or we might as well not bother having all this modern technology. Now, Sneak is going to make another cup of tea before frustration causes him to do something that might invalidate his computer's warranty....

February 4, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some good news for all you pick 'n' mix fans out there: Woolworths is to relaunch online.

After the high street chain collapsed late last year, Shop Direct, which also owns catalogue firms Littlewoods and Kays, has reportedly paid an undisclosed sum for rights to the Woolies brand. The plan is to relaunch the store as an online shopping business in the summer.

According to a message posted on Woolworths.co.uk in the early hours of 2 February, the store will be "back soon". Although the Woolies site is now "undergoing essential maintenance", the original message can be viewed from Google's cache.

"We've got high hopes and big ideas for the Woolworths we want to bring back to you!", the message reads.

It goes on to request feedback from visitors on "what you liked most (or disliked!) about Woolworths so we can make sure we'll be even better when we return". The page includes a comment box and space to leave an email address to be updated on the latest Woolworths news.

Whether Woolies fares any better as a web-only store remains to be seen. In its old incarnation it had an accompanying web site and catalogue division but this area of the business lost the firm around £10m per year. Woolies online will also continue to face tough competition from supermarket giants such as Tesco and Asda, which offer huge discounts in-store and through their web sites.

Furthermore, new owner Shop Direct is going through an organisational restructure to focus more closely on its online business, which currently accounts for 56 per cent of overall sales, up from only 18 per cent three years ago. As part of these plans, 1,150 jobs are under threat, so it doesn't look like many - if any - of the ex-Woolworths employees will be in line for a post at the new company.

And then of course there's the problem that pick 'n' mix, that staple of the Woolworths brand, might not have the same appeal as an online shopping proposition. Where's the joy in having someone else picking out all the sweets for you, Sneak wonders.

February 2, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)