Posts under ‘Blog’

iPhone 4 tariffs compared

All of the UK mobile operators have now announced their iPhone 4 pay-monthly tariffs and most tech web sites seem to have posted something about which is the best deal. Many are mistakenly assuming that the lowest monthly payment or lowest up-front price is the best value though, so I thought I’d analyse the tariffs [...]

How to permanently delete a Facebook account

As I write this, a gaping security flaw has been found in Facebook that allows users to spy upon their Friends’ chats. The flaw looks like it’s in the process of being fixed, but this is just the latest in a long line of problems with the social networking service’s privacy. The security hole in the chat [...]

Hands-on with the Palm Pre

I’ve been sitting on this hands-on video of the Palm Pre for a week or so now, since I don’t have a suitable site to post it to at the moment. So although it’s not the kind of thing I’d normally post here, I thought I’d upload the video anyway rather than let it sit [...]

Why your MacBook runs like crap

I use a MacBook Pro as my my main computer, plugged into a desktop set-up. Like any right-thinking geek with such an arrangement, I removed the laptop’s battery to prevent it suffering from being charged all the time — the MacBook Pro is never used away from mains power and can’t be accidentally unplugged. I [...]

How to sync an iPhone with two computers

Unless you’re using over-the-air Microsoft Exchange syncing with your iPhone (via Google Mobile Sync, NuevaSync or a corporate Exchange server), you’re probably keeping its contact and calendar information in sync with Outlook or iCal using iTunes. This works well enough, but what if your calendar and contact data is stored one computer (at the office, [...]

Safari 4′s hidden preferences

The WordPress 2.7 bug makes the Safari 4 beta useless to me, but if you’re a Safari fan who wants to stick with it, but don’t care for the cosmetic changes, head to the Random Genius blog. It has a whole list of hidden preferences for Apple’s new web browser, including one to put the [...]

Where does iTunes keep its iPhone backups?

Whenever an iPhone is synchronised with iTunes, iTunes makes a backup of (most of) the iPhone’s data. You can view the iTunes’ backup history by going to Preferences > Devices. iTunes maintains some kind of history for successive backups, but I have no idea of the underlying logic. You would imagine that three or four [...]

Custom keyboard shortcuts in Firefox for Mac OS are broken

I complained at length about keyboard shortcut inconsistencies in Mac OS X the other day — an OS that’s supposedly ultra-consistent — but it appears that the Apple isn’t wholly to blame. I singled out Firefox and NeoOffice as particular offenders (largely because as a new-ish Mac user, they’re the two apps I use the [...]

Safari 4 beta bug with WordPress 2.7

The new Safari 4 beta is pretty good, as long as you’re happy with a browser that lacks most of the features that have been standard on the competition for some years (ad-blocking and saved sessions, to name but two). It is a beta though, so it’s bound to be buggy — and I’ve just [...]

How to make the Home & End keys on a Mac keyboard work like Home & End keys

When you press the cursor keys, modified cursor keys (with [Shift], [Ctrl], and so on) or [Home] and [End] keys on a Windows PC, the on-screen cursor reacts in a consistent way when it’s in a block of text, no matter what application you’re using. Its behaviour is controlled at operating system level rather than [...]