June, 2008

iPhone — No Comments
12
Jun 08

Apple iPhone 3G HSDPA vs Blackberry

Apple iPhone 3G HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) version will be great but will it make me leave my Blackberry 8820?

Apple’s new iPhone with 3G networking is going to be a winner. It will enable broadband like speeds over the mobile phone network which previously struggled to reach dial up speeds. It will make mobile internet, true internet fast and accessible.

I am a proud owner of a Blackberry 8820 on Orange. I use the internet a lot but the speed and somewhat limited browser can cause issues sometime.

Although unlike, the iPhone, the Blackberry 8820 has a full QWERTY keyboard which after an initial learning curve you can get a decent words per minute ratio. The iPhone text entry method, all be it innovative is not as good as having tactile keys to press.

I think I shall wait for the new Blackberry, the Blackberry Bold! Or at least until I can justify to my wife that I need a Blackberry and an iPhone.

Uncategorized / broadband — 2 Comments
6
Jun 08

Three 3 mobile broadband, a review on the Mac os x

Three mobile broadband is a great idea, in theory, as you can plug in the toggle and away you go. ADSL like broadband on the go and access wherever you want. So you can take all your online life with you. But how is it in practice.

Installing the Three mobile dongle, a Huawei E220 seemed to be an easy thing. Looking at the three website they had a Mac specific instruction manual and a driver to down load as the dongle does not contain Mac drivers as it does contain windows drivers. A minor set back I thought. So I download the driver and get the set up guide ready. Installing the driver goes well, but then the guide suggests that I change the APN number with the driver application… but where is it. It is not on the three website ad there is no mention of it in the questions and answers. Has Three made a mess up? Well only a small one, but thankfully where there is a technical problem there is a geek who has posted a solution in a forum. You need to download this file, it is not hosted in any official capacity, so please feel free to down load it from here to get your Mac working with three mobile broadband. (lhuaweidatacardapp) You then add the APN, three.co.uk and away you go.

Once connected I went to Speedtest.net, I manage to get a download of 1mb and upload of 100k. Not bd in my view for being in a built up area in London. The ping as high but in everyday usage it works. Pages are not as quick as appearing as on my home broadband connection, but that is 24mb from Bethere (see my review.)

So, it works while in London in my flat, but what about a road test. I am currently on a train speeding through the wonderful countryside of the west country in the UK. As soon as I got on the train at Paddington, I got the laptop out and fired up the device. It connected first time, registering 3.6mb, surfed a few pages, facebook being one (my profile is LINK if you want to add me.) and it worked well. It is a wonderful technology that allows my Mac to connect to the Internet from a high-speed train. Although, once we hit open country where I could hear the white noise of people saying, ‘hello, hello can you hear me?’ I realised my magical mystery tour of mobile broadband was about to turn into a wet British summer. The connection ground to a halt. I do not blame three for this, covering mile after mile of field is not a priority as cows and sheep simply don’t do mobiles. But I would like to see a greater commitment to developing a technology that provided a mobile service to long haul train routes. So I am writing this blog into a word file at the moment but do plan on posting it via three mobile broadband shortly.

The data plan is also very good, I have opted for a pay as you go option. For £15 I get 3gb of data to use over 30 days. I think this is very reasonable when there is no contract; the other options are 1gb for £10 and 7GB for £25.

One of the other reasons I brought three mobile broadband is you can use it abroad on three mobile networks for no extra cost. You can also look on that particular countries website and see if it they have signal in your area, even down to if they have signal in the accommodation you are planning to stay in. That is simply brilliant!

I am very happy with three mobile broadband, and once you have gotten around the comparative minor technical hitch at setting up it is a really useful and dependable service.

I have also contacted three and asked them to put the setup program on their website along with the driver for the Huawei E220.

SEO — 2 Comments
5
Jun 08

Top 10 SEO tips for Blogs

Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, not only applies to regular websites but to Blogs as well. Here are 10 top tips that I have learnt from my Blog and my Website design business, Andy’s Web

Getting your Blog on Googles first page is brilliant. My Doctor Who Blog, has been consistently on Google’s first page when searching ‘doctor who blog’. Here are 10 top tips that will help improve the SEO to your Blog.

1, Write original and interesting content in your Blog, it may seem obvious but the better the content the more relevant readers and search engines will think of it. Keep up-to-date on your area and don’t be afraid to experiment with styles and ideas.

2, Use a content management system such as Wordpress, this is easy to update and creates RSS (live bookmark) feeds which can be used by readers to subscribe to your content.

3, Choose the Blogs title and description well, use key phrases where possible but keep it readable.

4, Categories are your friend and everyone else’s, use them sparingly, keep them to a minimum and only one to be used with each post.

5, Tags, they make the Blog easy to find for everyone. These are composed of the main keywords/phrases of your blog. A tag cloud is a very good tool, (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hs-tag-cloud/)

6, Encourage comments, and watch out for Spam. Comments allow the read to interact with your blog. They may also attract further attention for search engines. It is advisable to screen comments as irrelevant content could put off your readers.

7, Promote your blog with a complimentary Facebook group, this really works as it increases your expose across the globe and gives yet another avenue for people to monitor and discuss the issues you raise.

8, Submit your blog to relevant directories and websites. Don’t flood every site but be selective.

9, Trace your blogs performance with Google Analytics using one of the many plug-ins, see what posts do well and write more like them.

10, Use Google webmaster tools, and other search engine web master tools to submit a sitemap generated by the plugin Google XML sitemaps. .

And two bonus SEO Blog tips!

11, Sign up to Google adsense to benefit for a little extra cash.

12, Write a tips list, like ‘10 Top SEO tips for blogs’ which means it will be easily found by search engines and generates a lot of hits by giving something for free..

Films — No Comments
1
Jun 08

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, thank you for inspiring me…

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, yes I know it is not geeky in the strictest sense but I wanted to write a review of this film for several geeky reasons and also it is a great film.

The film is a compliment to the previous films, but as a friend of mine said, it is a great film if you forget how good the other films are. This is in fact true, this film has a faster pace than the other films. May be they thought the audience would not be able to coup with long plot related dialogue or development of the characters. But at the end of the day, you have your hero, with hat and whip, your baddies and big stunts!

All of the stunts are believable, well, in the realms of Indiana Jones, except using a fridge to survive a Nuclear blast.. hummm..

If I could suggest some additions to the film, as a fan, I would suggest a random German castle, a trip to Egypt and, of course, Sallah played by John Rhys-Davies.

The film is brilliant and I would recommend to anyone!