WordPress App for iPhone

I’m currently testing WordPress’ new app for publishing from the iPhone.
I have to say too I’m impressed so far. I’ll continue to test to see what I can get out of it

Reliability

My Vista machine is normally pretty reliable.  I installed iTunes 7.7 on 11th July 2008. It has all be downhill from there…

Down for Maintenance?

The Fail Whale

Twitter is down for maintenance “for a couple of hours.”

I’ll be amazed if they’re back in under three!

Update: Credit where credit is due. They did it. Learnt their lesson from yesterday I think

Hopefully it’s the last time we’ll see the Fail Whale for a while.

iPhone 2.0 – One Week On

It’s been one week since I downloaded and installed the 2.0 software onto my 1st gen iPhone, and while the experience hasn’t been too painful I can’t help but feel a 2.0.1 is right around the corner.

On the plus side the phone seems relatively stable and there have been no major crashes to speak of, even in Safari which was also the more tempermental of the phones applications. The introduction of the third party apps via the app store has also made the device a lot more useful to me.

iPhone's gMap Stuck in Leicester

However there appears to have been a couple of bugs introduced that are beginning to get annoying.  The SMS and Contact apps have taken a performance hit and appear to lag quite significantly.  In fact the keyboard in the SMS app is so slow that sometimes you can be waiting 5-10 seconds for it to actually catch up with what you have been typing.  The location finder also appears to have been broken.  Introduced with the 1.1.4 software update, Google Maps was able to use wi-fi access points and cell towers to be able to locate the phone.  While not hugely accurate it was good enough.  At the moment though my phone seems to think it is in Leicester, over 50 miles away from my current location and nothing i’ve tried has managed to convince it otherwise.  This makes the location features of many of the new applications useless.

The apps I have been using on a daily basis so far are Facebook and Twitterific.  I’ve also installed Evernote and although it has not been used in anger yet I can see how it could be extremely useful if I suddently find myself unable to note down information quickly.  The experience using these has been good so far and I can only hope they get better as they are updated.

JS/Aseljo.k

Windows Live OneCare found what is a suspected trojan this morning: JS/Aseljo.k on one of my systems.

There seems to be very little information on what this actually is and the only mentions of it I can find on the internet occur after July 11th, meaning it must be a recent addition to the program’s signatures.

I can only assume it’s being served by banner ads on various websites.  So far OneCare has been able to remove it so I will keep an eye out and see if it reoccurs.

iPhone 2.0 & MobileMe

After the chaos of Friday I chose the quiet time of Saturday morning to finally download the iPhone 2.0 software and apply it to my first generation phone.  I figured if I caught the servers early enough everything would run smoothly.

For the most part everything did work. The software downloaded and installed and although activation took slightly longer than normal I didn’t have to wait long.  However unfortunately my iPhone did not want to resync its contacts and content.  In situations like this I figure a reboot is what is needed…. which caused a Blue Screen of Death. Only the second one I have seen on my Vista machine in nearly two years. Cheers iTunes

The iPhone software seems relatively stable in the couple of days I have been using it. My iPhone seems slightly more sluggish than before although I cleared some content from it and that seems to have sped things up slightly.   The only external apps so far installed are Facebook and Twitterific. While they are both fairly thin on the features side of things they’re not bad for apps you do not have to pay for.

My experience of MobileMe on the other hand has so far been lacking due to the amount of the downtime the service has been experiencing.  On paper the service sounds like a great idea however only time will tell whether or not that is the case. I’ve briefly tested syncing calendars and contacts between Outlook, MobileMe and the iPhone and it seems to work while they service is up.

Time will tell.

Plurk: Take 2

Following my first review of Plurk I ended up giving up on the service.

What annoyed me was the constants “alerts.” It’s always bugging me to let me know that there are some new plurks or there are some new responses… mainly to Plurks that I have no interest in whatsoever. In fact following more than 5 or so people suddenly becomes a chore and I found myself constantly hitting the read only button just to make things disappear.

Still, for some reason I decided yesterday to give it a second chance. The jury is still out however with the ability to mute some Plurks it seems things are moving in the right direction that will hopefully turn it into a service that is a lot less annoying that it is currently.

However at the moment Twitter is still, despite it’s ups and downs, my prefered service of choice when it comes to micro-blogging.

A Day of British Sport

Slightly depressed that the weekend is slowly drawing to a close my distraction, a day of British sport has finally come to an end with Lewis Hamilton winning the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and Rafael Nadal winning the Men’s Singles at Wimbledon.

I enjoyed watching the F1 race with it’s changeable weather conditions.  It showed off everything the summer in the UK is all about…. rain interrupted by a tiny bit of sunshine.  It also provided a chance to see some of the less prominent drivers challenge for some good points positions.  It was nice to see Rubens Barrichello up on the podium.

Lewis drove an almost faultless race and deserved the win after what must have been a rough weekend with the battering he’s been getting from the mainstream media.  It gave the crowd something to cheer about though.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard the crowd at an F1 event be so loud.

The men’s final at Wimbledon was epic.  I would have personally preferred Federer (probably the most down to Earth sportsman on the planet) to have won but Nadal (who annoys me with his constant time wasting) played the better tennis on the day, even if it was on the more boring side.

Disappointingly this now means a sports void for me until the beginning on the football season in a few weeks time. I live in hope there will be some pre-season friendlies to watch and relax to during my downtime from work. In the mean time though maybe i’ll spent some time setting up my Fantasy Football team for the coming season. I kicked arse in our work league last season and I’m hoping for a repeat performance this year.

I Sometimes Wonder…

I worry about that we term as “severe” weather.

The BBC is tonight reporting that a funnel cloud has formed in the North-West of England.  A spokesman for the Met-Office (the UK organisation that issues weather warnings etc.) is quoted as saying,

“If the funnel had touched down it would have caused severe damage.“

Wow. Sounds serious… you would think.  The spokesman continues,

“It could have badly damaged a tree or a shed roof.“

I sometimes wonder about these people.