Well I have managed my first review in a very long time here on Kainzy.org. It’s obviously been long overdue but with real life work commitments, it is so hard to spare the free time. Anyway, I have written a short ‘review’ if you will on Apple’s latest iPhone. The device is already a heavily controversial one, but at the same time it is a device  feature packed with great hardware. As always, you can find it in the reviews section.

It’s been so long since I last wrote a post on this blog that I had actually forgotten my blog login details!

Enough of my long abscence from this blog anyway. I will be posting a lot more frequently here as the mobile wars I predicted earlier hots up this week.

Apple’s WWDC (World Wide Developers  Conference) begins tommorow in San Francisco,  Moscone West for three days. Of course the one highlight of WWDC every year is the most talked about mobile device since it’s first launch in 2007 – the iPhone. Love it, or hate it you just cannot ignore the massive impact the device had on the mobile world. Anyone denying this is pretty much fooling themselves to be honest.

I have previously stated that 2010 will be all about the mobile operating systems such as Mobile OSX found on the iPhone,  Google’s Android as well as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7 arriving towards the end of the year. My predictions of Apple falling behind couldn’t have been more accurate. The Android OS is gaining ground at a colossal pace, but at the same time OS fragmentation is occuring as certain Android apps work with the latest version of Android and not earlier versions.

Apple’s recent Mobile OSX 4.0 preview was less than impressive, infact it was very poor when you look at the improvements Android received a few weeks later at the Google I/O conference. Apple introduced nothing new, well nothing new that the Jailbreak world already had. Apple’s multitasking features looked ‘tacked on’, and don’t get me started with the ‘folders’ in which you can organise apps into – Jailbreakers have seen it all before, a long time ago. Also shown was the inclusion of iAds – in-app advert banners that are meant to be non-intrusive…I can’t see any users liking that imposed upon them. What was shown by Apple was ultimately rather poor, but there was a lot more that we never got to see.

Since then there have been numerous ‘leaks’ of the next iPhone. Gizmodo recently got into trouble for obtaining the lost device, which was left in a bar and more recently another phone somehow turned up in Vietnam of all places, sporting a slightly different build around the camera lens area. These devices, to me look like engineering prototypes or samples that contain the latest iPhone 4 hardware but not the final ‘look’. The general build of these ‘lost’ devices stray from Apple’s general designs in the past, but it also lines up with various case patents they have taken out over the past years. So who knows?

Credits: Gizmodo

Tomorrow will be very interesting indeed. Hardware wise I cannot see Apple really bringing anything impressive to the table, especially given that the HTC Evo 4G has some of the most insane hardware known to man at present. Since I bought my iPhone 3G it has spent most of it’s life jailbroken to give me custom features I just cannot live without and that Apple don’t want to allow. I shouldn’t have to go to such lengths just to unlock a device’s true potential. Suffice to say I am tempted by Android’s potential but Mobile OSX has a solid set of quality apps now…at last, whilst Android apps are just taking off.

I for one look forward to the show, just to learn about what will be coming for the year ahead in the mobile world and also for the newly announced iPad.

Two Tablet models:

Tablet 1:

• 10″ LED Backlit TN Panel Widescreen feat a touch display and a resolution of 1024 x 768
• 3GS style Oleophobic coating to be present on the screen
• Wifi N ONLY wireless connectivity
• Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR Tech
• Assisted GPS (same as iPhone 3G/3Gs)
• 16, 32GB storage ability
• Dual Cortex A9 Tegra 2 SoC
• 2x USB ports
• Twin speakers and a Microphone
• 3.5″ Headphone connector
• Accelerometer
• Runs Mobile OSX (the same OS that is present on the iPhone’s and iPod Touch)

Tablet 2: All of the above with the following additions.

• 10″ OLED Widescreen display featuring the same details as Tablet 1.
• Built in iSight web camera
• Wifi N & 3G wireless connectivity
• 64, and 128GB storage capacities

Compare my guesstimate specs with Apple’s iPad specs and you’ll see I wasn’t too far off! Ideally I was expecting a 10″ touchscreen housed in a smooth aluminium body that presently encases present day Macbook Pro’s and Macbook Air’s. I had expected Mobile OSX to power the device, why not? The appstore despite being criticised heavily in every area has been a monumental success for Apple. It may be flawed in many ways having a system where you cannot effectively trial apps before purchase but at the same time it has been hugely successful thanks to a superb SDK that developers have access to.

Mobile OSX in my eyes was the perfect foundation for a tablet. I have to admit that I am not a fan of previous tablets, I have hated their swivel screens, which screams ‘BREAK ME’, and I have disliked the fact that these things ran a fully blown OS, Windows for the most part. In my eyes a portable hand held device shouldn’t have the complexity of a full OS, instead it should be instantly accessible and easy to use without too much underlying complexity. Mobile OSX as seen on the iPhone and iPod Touch was just perfect, so perfect that even my technophobe parents can use my phone with ease, whilst previous phones have just baffled them.

I wanted a flat panel that my parents could pick up, tap on icons and bring up films, and photos without indulging in complex, puzzling OS features that they don’t need e.g window min/max/close icons that adorn our application titlebars. Given that they can pick up my iPhone 3G and browse my camera roll easily scares the hell out of me – but they can do it, and they’re confident when using the OS…if only Apple could stick that onto a 10″ screen I thought…

It was obvious that Apple were going to demonstrate gaming on the slate pad, and whilst I am not a fan of iPhone gaming (due to poor battery life) I do appreciate what the gaming developers have done. For this reason I was under the impression that the device would be powered by the Tegra 2 SoC (system on a chip). Instead they’ve opted for an in-house 1GHz A4 SoC. I have previously touted 2010 as the year for mobile devices, and mobile apps thanks to processors such as the Tegra 2 arriving so I would love to see the A4 benchmarked against the competition as it would be the perfect chip for future software and intensive video demands. Sadly it would also cost Apple millions just to get the chip from nVidia, so there was a strong chance that this wasn’t going to happen anyway.

Do I want the iPad? There is no doubt that it’ll be an awesome device for my parents as they have easy access to all my iTunes content. First impressions on the device are good, but lets see how badly the UK gets ripped off on pricing, as no prices for the UK have been stated just yet. Besides…I think five computers in this house is more than enough.

The A9 dual core Tegra 2 SoC

2009 saw me pretty much ignore this blog in favour of Twitter. By now most of you have some idea as to what Twitter is, and I must say that I am addicted to the service being a heavy user. It has been another great year for Twitter growth. Everyone is talking about it, both positively and negatively – and whilst both topic’s are relevant, the negativity revolving the stereotypical usage of the service ignores one important trait – everyone uses the service in a different way.

Of course this is reinforced by the fact that the very premise of Twitter changed in 2009. The service used to ask you one simple question “What are you doing?”. In 2009 this changed to “What’s happening?”, as users began using the service for different end purposes. Twitter for me became a replacement from bloated (see MSN/WLM) Instant Messaging Clients. In addition I use it to find out what is happening around me – in my town of Harrow for instance, especially with the unreliable public transport.

This blog was created as a way to air my thoughts, which worked fine for sometime. As life progressed onwards so did my ‘time’. It takes time to compose and lay out a blog post, whereas on Twitter you can just mindlessly type out your thoughts – just be prepared for feedback from others. Oh by the way, the iPhone was made for Twittering!

2009 was to become my most challenging year at work yet. Organisational changes meant that I had more responsibility at work and I have to admit that I struggled to ‘balance the plates’ as it were. On many occasions I found that I had to ignore my own job in order to lend support to other departments, mostly because we were short of staff.

Our company has it’s lease expire sometime in 2011 so obviously we will be moving to areas unknown at present. Given that a vast proportion of our workforce consists of ladies in their 60′s, it is fair to say that they won’t be following the company should they move to a far off location. As for myself I’ll stick with the company and will be around to train new staff until I can ascertain travel requirements.

2009 was a year in which I became….an APPLE TART. Yeah baby! Ok so I had already owned an iPod Touch, and presently own a jailbroken iPhone 3G, which I am incredibly fond of as it forms a central part of my day to day life. On the other side of things I have been using the RC (Release Candidate) release of Windows 7 for quite sometime, well before it’s October 22nd launch and I wasn’t really happy for reasons I’ll not expand on (it’s better this way).

After doing a heap of research OSX seemed perfect for me. So I purchased a £750 refurb Macbook Pro from Apple’s Online store. Instead what I got was a Macbook, even though the OS (Operating System) and receipt state Macbook Pro. After much head scratching and reading of the MacRumours forums it turned out I had a rare Macbook Hybrid. For the money I had paid I had been gifted a higher spec machine, with an extra 2GB of RAM and a backlit keyboard, the latter of which isn’t a Macbook feature.

Mac OSX was a breath of fresh air. Having grown up around Windows from it’s very first incarnation, OSX was just so damn slick that I fell in love with the OS inside a week. It is just a beautfiul OS to use on a daily basis. No faffing about with stupid application installers, you just drag and drop install. Applications are all self contained so they don’t scatter dependent files all over the place – it just works!… (famous last words I’m sure) I now use my Macbook more than I do my monster overclocked dual core 3.7ghz PC, hooked upto 10 TB of data. I already have plans to buy an iMac but have no desk space for one just yet.

2009 was a key year for Mobile Phones. Apple pretty much scared the living shit out of phone manufacturers by releasing the first iPhone back in 2007.  They followed up with the 3G a year later, and in 2009 released the 3Gs…a speed bumped version of the 3G in the same body…with very little new features. By bringing out the first iPhone Apple were a good 3yrs ahead of the competition, however towards the end of 2009 the competition have caught up and surpassed Apple’s current model in terms of hardware anyway.

Alarm bells are ringing for Apple now, and in 2010 they will face incredible competition on all fronts. Apple’s success with their AppStore has also been their downfall, they just cannot control the sheer number of apps being submitted, and a great deal of poor/untasteful apps have been approved and removed from the store giving the AppStore a rather poor reputation with both developers and customers. Couple this with Apple’s dictatorship like stance over developing apps mean that this can only hurt them more.

June 2010 will see them launch the next iPhone – I can see the obvious larger storage capacity, faster CPU being present and an AMOLED (vastly vibrant/low power) display, which is long overdue. I just hope we get a half decent camera as 2-3mp is just laughable in 2009.

Mobile OS’s will be the highlight of 2010 as iPhone’s Mobile OSX goes head to head against Google’s Android OS, Palm’s WebOS and the somewhat antiquated but hardened Windows Mobile OS from Microsoft. Mobile applications will dominate 2010 and they will be powered by either of these systems.

2009 saw yours truly spend a month and a half out of work, with Post-Infectious Encephalitis. Whilst at work during October I had picked up a nasty cold that just wouldn’t go away, even with three courses of Antibiotics. I thought nothing of it and carried on working despite the fact that I was getting progressively worse.

On a random day towards the end of October I had gone into work in a rather dazed state, but assumed it was the cold messing me about. I was struggling to string a single sentence together when talking to colleagues, and had begun stammering badly. I suddenly realised something was wrong when I was operating some high pressure test equipment and almost performed a dreadful mistake that could have endangered my colleagues not to mention myself – however I stopped myself before any of that could happen. My actions were horribly clouded at this point and thinking methodologically was impossible.

I took some time off work and had some check-ups. A Computerized Tomography (CT) scan revealed that I had Encephalitis, the Post-Infectious type. In other words – inflamed brain tissue after one’s immune system mistakenly attacks the brain instead of a viral/flu infection. In my case I had inflamed tissue at the rear of my brain.

The following month saw me having sheer head pains, which were enough to bring me to my knees half the time, as well as an aversion to bright light, dizzy spells, and random anger bouts. I confined myself to my house after almost blacking out whilst shopping, only leaving to visit the corner-shop/doctor/hospital. Sleeping at night was a bastard and a half. I’d have major head pains and would have to wait to sleep until my body caved in from tiredness, often at 3am ffs.

Only a few work colleagues know, as well as my friend Ayesha who has spent this Christmas with me…as well as eating the contents of my fridge. It would crush my parents if they actually knew about all this.

Visiting hospitals, and having injections – things that I hate had now become a weekly thing for me. I remember being shattered when I was told that recovery couldn’t be measured in weeks but months, many months. My workplace has been quite good about it and told me to get better first. The thing is, where do you I go from here? How do you return to work knowing that you could be clobbered at any time by what resembles a nuclear strike within your head?

So this has been my 2009 in a nutshell. I wouldn’t at all put it down as a bad year but I do hope 2010 will treat me better! Now excuse me whilst I go off in search of PIE…MINCE PIE.

Today was the 11th September, 9/11 – not a good day for more than one reason as most people could attest. It was an unusual day at work, mainly because hardly anyone was there! Most of our production staff had gone to a big defence show in the Docklands, London aside from me and a few others. In general I was hoping for a Friday in which I could do a lot of work for once. Every Friday normally goes tits up for me. Well today NOTHING could go wrong because there were hardly any production staff in the first place…

Well the peace didn’t last long when two mates texted me saying that all hell had broken loose in Harrow, as there was a 9/11 protest outside Harrow Mosque, which I believe is in the final stages of construction.

Upon checking various websites I realised that this protest wouldn’t be a dozen or so people waving placards around screaming at the top of their voice, it was rather serious.

The English Defence League (EDL) have already been protesting in Luton and Birmingham recently, mainly because they are opposed to Islamic Extremism. They believe the religion to be extreme in it’s own right. Today they were due to arrive at this mosque in large numbers.

On the other hand, the UAF (Unite Against Fascism) were there in even greater numbers to rally support. Now it’s fair to say that the EDL wouldn’t have stood a chance in Harrow. I’ve lived here all my life, and the town at present couldn’t be more bloody ethnically diverse if it tried. We have all pretty much got along for many years now, although tensions are high just outside Harrow, in my home town of Wealdstone – the very place I was trying to reach today so I could go home and just eat after a hard day at work with no money for food! In short, the UAF didn’t need to go looking for support – it came to them.

I sat in the 140 bus counting the number of hot chicks I saw as it passed through a busier than normal Harrow Town centre and then right outside Debenhams got stuck in a typical traffic jam. The mosque was 6mins away down the road, so I ended up getting off the bus and walking down – I had to get through the protest just to reach my town.

It was madness and it was clear that there were young kids from outer boroughs pretty much looking for trouble. I had already made my mind up that if anyone would cause trouble it would be most of the hyper-charged young Muslim kids who were here for reasons not related to the protest.

My iPhone along with Twitter kept me abreast of the news here as people were tweeting all over the shop. ControlB was a star and kept regular updates on twitter. I popped into Skippers for a bite as I was starved. The place was getting colossal amounts of business today and the chap behind the counter was all over the place. Nomnomochipsnomonom! Christmas had come early for this shop.

I realised that I still had to get home and by now the UAF led protesters had gathered in size. Most watching from afar, whilst the central group occupied the main road despite community leaders asking them to allow vehicles through. Chants of "Whose Streets? Our Streets!" rang out.

It was now 5pm, the time at which the EDL were due to arrive. I believe I spotted Tony McNulty, Harrow East MP although I could have been wrong. There were well over 2000+ people here, it was a mixed race affair for the most part.

A group of ‘outsiders’ did arrive, weather they were the EDL members is unknown but they were kept away by the riot police and prevented from moving forward. At one point a large crowd of muslim youngsters charged up the Bridge road but I never saw it. No idea what that was about. There were clashes with the police though and bottles and bricks were sadly thrown. I wasn’t too pleased – so much for the ‘peaceful’ protest.

These clashes can be viewed in two ways, were the kids goaded by the ‘outsiders’. Pictures taken at JessHurd.com seem to suggest so, then again why were people ‘armed’ with bottles of bleach amongst other thngs?

I had been joking around with the police just moments before as I spotted a young asian copper who was about 4ft tall, she looked like Yoda looking ultra cute in her helmet setup.

One thing was clear, the EDL really didn’t stand a chance of coming to Harrow and getting their point across. However having said that I do get a distinct feeling that on the day, the EDL may have got the last ‘laugh’. Our town came to a standstill and the riled up kids clashed with the riot police – all this without the EDL having even been there.

I finally reached Wealdstone and did some shopping for food before walking home with my face firmly planted on the iPhone as I read the latest goings on via Twitter. A lot of thicko’s over Twitter kept referring to ‘RIOTS IN HARROW’. Last time I checked, the term RIOT didn’t refer to a couple of people chasing another bunch of people about. All in all, this wasn’t the Friday I was expecting – yet again.

Other Articles…
http://throughthescarydoor.blogspot.com/2009/09/nazi-scum-humiliated-in-harrow.html
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/09/english-defence-league-humiliated-in.html
http://www.uaf.org.uk/news.asp?choice=90912
http://www.demotix.com/news/unite-against-fascism-demonstration-harrow-london-0

Something has been peeving me off lately – and it’s those annoyingly deceptive Apple iPhone 3GS adverts that are currently being sprawled across our UK TV screens. Now upon first viewing it doesn’t seem too bad, until you actually begin to think about it.

This is the new iPhone, and it lets you do some pretty incredible things… You can copy a phone number, and paste it in a text. You can copy an article, and paste it in an email…

Fark me Apple, welcome to the year 2000. My Nokia 6600 could do that, and that was one of the first generation of smartphones. Practically any one of today’s ‘dumb’ phones manage that task. What truly irritates me is that Apple is using Cut & Paste as a selling point. Even worse is the fact that this very feature is rather finicky and intrusive and yet it is marketed to the user as a technology breakthrough. Kind of sad given that Clippy – a third party application available to Jailbroken phones could do the same thing quite a while ago.

The advert ends on an even sillier note:

Copy & Paste on the iPhone 3GS, the most powerful iPhone yet.

Of course it’s the most powerful iPhone yet – it’s just happens to be the latest version, and there have only been TWO before that! I just think the ad is truly deceiving. The next iPhone, due in June 2010 will most likely market a 5mp camera as revolutionary, when the rest of the market are on 12mp variants. For those who have yet to see the advert, it is available on YouTube.

<–hurhur

Ok, admit it. How many of you lot have begun ignoring your blogs in favour of Twitter? Since returning to the fast growing service in February 2009 I am pretty much guilty of this as I have indeed ignored this blog, something I never thought I would do.

I suppose it is a multitude of things though. Yes Twitter is to blame, but aside from that I have been focusing on my working life pretty much 100% since the year began. I had enough distractions towards the end of 2008 and wanted to start the year fresh – and have done. So, work goes incredibly well. Too well infact and I am almost struggling to cope with some of the things now bestowed onto me.

I think Mr.Wud stated what I’ve had on my mind for a while now. I have noticed that a lot of bloggers since moving to Twitter have just let their blogs slowly gather dust, as it were. Blogging takes some thought, time and planning in some cases before one publishes a post. Twittering is limited to 140 characters a ‘tweet’ (message) so you can jibber-jabber about anything without a care in the world.

Does that mean my blog is pretty much stagnant i.e dead? Well no. I’ve put a lot of work into it, but time is precious, and after coming home from a long day at work I pretty much crash out on the bed/sofa. Twittering on the move is simple and quick, blogging isn’t so and that is my problem right there. I will continue to add reviews, and thoughts that cannot be twittered though but I predict things will be rather quiet for the most part.

Anyway, I’m pretty much looking forward to this summer. I had plans to visit Australia, NSW this April-May as I understand the weather isn’t hot at this time of the year. Heat=baad, Cold/Rain = Good. However as usual, those plans have gone tits up thanks to my parents who don’t want to go.

This summer see’s the arrival of the third iteration of Apple’s iPhone (the plodphone). I am excited as hell, even more-so with the new OS 3.0 that will be launched alongside it. My current Jailbroken iPhone is such a strong part of my everyday life that it’s hard as hell to live without it. I just can’t wait for the next version.

Windows 7 Release Candidate (Build 7100) was leaked onto the interwebs just a week ago and my, it is good enough to ship retail in it’s current state. I’ve presently got it sitting on my Samsung NC10 netbook and it quite literally flies in comparison to XP SP3, that was on there. I await soundcard drivers for my Auzentech Meridian er soundcard so I can install the RC release on my main desktop rig though. Oh, and we can now uninstall that heap of gobshite known as Internets Explorer!! How cool is that?

I had written a ‘short’ story over the past few months based on the Fallout universe and my adventures since discovering the game late during December 2008. However it has ballooned to such a size that I’ve no idea how to get it onto the blog! It was about my adventures in the game basically with a nice bit of fiction about my lone quest to get to Rivet City, and then to find ‘Dad’. Most people who know me know that I can pretty much sprout A4 paragraphs in minutes, so trust me – it is large!

Hmm, I gotta get out more!

Back in July 2008 I decided to try out a little known application for the iPhone by the name of Twinkle, developed by Tapulous. I was instantly hooked as it used the geo-location functionality of the phone to let you know when people are nearby. You could search for users within a specific kilometer radius around you and chat to them, in addition you could enlarge or shrink that search radius to suit. Seeing other twitter users who were within range of you and chatting away was horribly addictive.

Twinkle was basically a superb (and still is) location aware chat client that allows you to upload photos to your Twitter account as well as update your status. Addictiveness knows no boundaries and I was pretty much ‘Twinkling’ on the way to work whilst on the bus, as well as doing the same whilst in the office at work and then on the way home. I’d be constantly ‘chatting’ to complete strangers via 140 character long messages, similar to SMS texts if you will.

Behind all of this was Twitter. In its simplest form, it is a website where you can broadcast short messages up to 140 characters max – to anyone who has signed up to receive them (known as a follower). In turn you can also become a ‘follower’ to other twitters. Your followers for instance could be say ten of your best friends or if you’re a well known celebrity like Stephen Fry, 190,539 crazed fans. Twitter started off fast and is gaining momentum and a frightening pace. Balls to Myspace and the Facebook’s of today, they’re nothing by comparison.

Twitter went mainstream fairly recently on February 5th 2009 when a US Airbus Flight 1549 hit some birds and lost power in both engines. The plane slammed into New York’s Hudson River, with everyone on board surviving. The most incredible thing was that there was a person on-board the flight using Twitter as his prime means of reaching the outside world. How he managed to remain calm and type away amongst the turbulence is another thing altogether.

As far as the UK is concerned Twitter is everywhere over here. Two celebrities have helped its popularity soar over the recent months. Stephen Fry as well as BBC presenter Jonathan Ross who was recently suspended for various reasons I shall not bother getting into. The tabloids got wind of Mr.Ross utilising Twitter to talk to his fans and Twitter received a great deal of national press coverage. As for Mr.Fry, well he got stuck in a lift and decided to ‘tweet’ some photos of himself in the lift with various strangers. In Ross’s first chat show following his suspension Fry discussed Twitter with Ross and that was enough to get the thing even more publicity.

The premise of Twitter is as described by the website.
"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

With that statement in mind, you may think that this is another Facebook – it isn’t in the slightest, it is so much more. Everyone uses the service in their own unique way. You could add your latest tweet as "I’m taking a dump", or simply "I’m at a Phil Collins concert" (with an attached photo of the stage area. You could use it to keep in touch with friends because its usage is so much more flexible than plain old SMS texts in that a complete stranger can see what you’re talking to your friends about and simply join in the conversation.

I had a great time during my lunch hour a week ago chatting to a guy in Darwin, Australia because he had seen a screen shot of my jailbroken iPhone 3G that I had uploaded and wanted to do similar things with his phone.

Twitter is far from a fad, it is what you want it to be. In the right hands it can be a time killer, a news source, a business tool, a way to keep in touch with distant or even close friends – whatever you wish. There are a lot of people out there who will simply follow the trend of criticising yet another internet phenomenon without actually trying it.

1. Try it! – Before you bash the thing, give it a shot. Sit back and search for friends or celebs and generally see what people are doing.

2. You don’t have to use the website – There are heaps of programs out there that making Twittering easy. They’ll either sit at the side of your screen and appear with a single click, or you could see if you can get one of the many Twitter style apps for your phone. There are quite a few on the Apple iPhone platform. I use Tweetie for twittering and I use it 90% of the time. Other Twitter applications consist of TweetDeck , Twitterfeed , Twhirl and Twitterific .

3. Confused? – Don’t be. I still get confused about certain things and I have been using it solidly for a couple of weeks now. You aren’t alone so don’t be afraid to simply put out a tweet saying "How does <insert feature> work?".

4. Use it however you like – I use Twitter to publish my little daily thoughts, odd moments during the day when only a photo can express things or I will comment on blog articles published by friends. My overall goal is for my Twitter feed to detail my blog activities and just general day to day ramblings.

5. Twitter on Mobile Phones – If you have a suitable powerful smartphone, then look for Twitter applications on it. The iPhone 3G excels in this area with its GPS functionality enabling you to search for other users around you and so forth. Tweetie , Twitterfon and Twitterific are the most popular applications for the iPhone. All mid-high end phones in 2009 should have applications that utilise Twitter in some form. Don’t ignore them!

Finally I have a bone to pick with someone. See back in July 2008 when I first discovered Twinkle, I was MOCKED by my good mate PR who said things like "Oh if I want to chat to people I pick up the HOUSE PHONE" and so forth. So it highly amuses me that he was HE who just recently signed up to the service and then I followed suit and re-signed up myself!

So for those unfortunate souls who wish to follow me, my Twitter ID is Kainz_UK.

1.21 Gigawatts!

We all know what a clumsy oaf our iPhone 3G’s are when it comes to battery life. It is common and quite upsetting to see that battery meter on the top right of our screens rapidly deplete as we merely browse the web or just use GPS with google maps just for a few minutes. It is something we sadly have to live with for the most part.

After ending up lost in the middle of Gloucestershire with a couple of colleagues because my 3G ran out of juice, one thing was pretty much clear. Those battery packs that I have seen people rabbiting on about, that extend the runtime of the 3G could actually be rather useful. I’ve had mobile phones in the past that could go on for days until they expended all their juice but the iPhone 3G is slightly different – I pretty much depend on it for almost everything I do. No mobile gadget has ever had such an impact on me…

With all that babble out of the way, my first review of 2009 arrives. It’s very short, with hardly any detail – I give you the APC UPB10!