PHILIPS DS8550/10 Fidelio Docking Speaker for iPad/iPhone/iPod

Do yourself a favour and avoid this.  It was meant to be a Christmas present to me so i’m glad i tried it out first! Before i get to the annoying habits/faults the first thing i noticed when i switched the dock on was the sound quality and i really don’t think it’s that great. I can hear a great deal of hissing and popping noises on a lot of songs (something that’s mentioned a lot on the Amazon US reviews i’ve since discovered) – i’ve tried several files from normal quality mp3 to very high quality, all of which play crystal clear on all my other devices but it’s there on most songs on this dock.

When you power on the dock it rams the volume up really loud even though your ipad/iphone was on its lowest setting so you’re left scrambling for the volume.  Also it just randomly switches itself off half way through songs for no apparent reason. I read that it also randomly switches itself on too at high volume. Not at all what you expect for a £200 dock.  So i’m sending it back and i won’t bother with a replacement – at least not a Phillips one.

Anyhoo, in the month (almost) of playing i’ve found some pretty brilliant apps. Here’s a few of my faves – click read more to have a butchers:

G-A-M-E-S
World of Goo – You need to join the balls of goo to create bridges and whatnot so that the other gooballs can get from one location to another. It gets progressively harder and it looks wonderful!

Scrabble – This is one of my favourite iPad games.  The iPad was made for games like this and if you ave an iPhone or iPod touch then you can use them as racks for your scrabble tiles. Nifty eh.

Lego Harry Potter – This game really shows off what the iPad can do! Very clever controls and a must have app for any Harry Potter fan.

Other mentions: Chopper 2, Sudoku 2HD Pro, Montezuma, Snooker HD, BeeCells HD

E-N-T-E-R-T-A-I-N-M-E-N-T

TuneIn Radio – I love listening to internet radio so this app is a must. It quickly found my 2 favourite channels (1.FM Chillout Lounge and The 1920′s Radio Network). You can also record from the radio which is extremely useful.

TVCatchup – This isn’t an app, it’s a web address (ipad.tvcatchup.com/) but i have it linked to my homescreen. It’s a web address where you can watch the freeview channels on your pad. You can also use it on your iPod, iPhone or android device.

Pulse News – This app collects all of your favourite RSS feeds and dumps them on one graphic easy to navigate screen (see screenshot). Much better than flicking through endless tex links. There’s is another app that takes this one step further (Flipboard) by making the feeds look like a magazine. Personally i prefer Pulse for its sleekness.

AirPlayer – A brilliant app for streaming your movie / music / photo files from your NAS drive and unlike the pads built in video player, it can play many formats!

Other mentions: T3 magazine, FlickrStackr, Kindle, Comics, CineXPlayer.

P-R-O-D-U-C-T-I-V-I-T-Y

MaxJournal – If, like me you like to jot down your thoughts in a journal then i highly recommend MaxJournal. It’s a bit buggy (the occasional crash) but once that’s ironed out i think it’s brilliant. You can quickly view your entried on a boxed style calendar and then just tap the one you want to read. You can add photos to your entries too. Much better than the MyOwnDiary alternative in my opinion.

Sketchbook Pro – This drawing app is just amazing. It’s unreal just how powerful it is and if you’re in any doubt just search Sketchbook iPad on Flickr and see some of the amazing artworks people have done. Pretty impressive considering most of them jut use their finger!

Dropbox – The Cloud is the future (Storing and accessing your files online). Dropbox can be used on pc, android and ipad/ipod so it’s ideal for sharing files to multiple devices. I hardly ever use USB sticks now for transporting files, this is so much easier.

Penultimate - this is a very useful notebook app. You can create as many new notebooks as you like, each containing your sketches, design ideas and notes, etc. The thing i like most about it is how it makes your handwriting look good – some of these apps show your writing as child-like scribbles but not this one.

What’s missing: A decent Last.fm app, facebook app, wordpress app. There is a facebook app called friendly but i find myself just visiting facebook though the web browser more often.

The app store is growing at an alarming rate and everyday i find something new and interesting. This is where i think apple beats android hands down – the quality of the apps. Android to me always feels rough around the edges whereas ipad is very polished. I’m sold.

Well i handed my beloved HTC Hero over to the hubby and i got myself a Motorola Milestone. I must say i haven’t taken to it as quickly as i did my Hero. It feels very much like a work-in-progress device unlike the Hero which felt fabulously polished. I love the screen on the Milestone, it’s bigger and better than the Hero (and in fact most phones). It feels very solid and it looks geeky. It’s a brilliant portable internet device.

But as a phone, it’s crap.

There is built in noise cancellation and it’s a pain in the ass. You have to hold it really close to your mouth or else the person on the other end can’t hear you. The problem with this is your cheek then brushes against the screen pressing either the mute or the hold icon. The screen should switch itself off but it doesn’t always unless you hold your phone at an EXACT angle and at an EXACT distance away from your face in preferable lighting conditions ….. WHAT THE FUCK!?

So as i say, it’s a shit phone. Interestingly though if you use something like Fring or Skype, the noise cancellation switches off and you can use the phone normally. Sadly there is nothing in the settings that lets you switch off the noise cancellation yourself, It really is a pity because there have been thousands of complaints about it. But Motorola don’t seem to do ‘listening to the customers’.

I carry around a Samsung Soul with me and i use that for the phone and my Milestone for texting and internetting on the go. And as an internet device it is amazing. The big screen is wonderful and it’s nice and snappy. It’s saving me having to go and switch my main pc on a lot. I can facebook, tweet, post to wordpress, shop on amazon, have my fave news feeds delivered to me, play on google earth, play games, email and what not without going near my pc. Fabulous! It’s a great time saver.

Now the main reason i went with this (because i was very happy with my Hero as i said) was for the physical keyboard. Well, imagine my disappointment when it turns out the physical keyboard isn’t great! Ok it’s not shite but the keys are so flat that you keep hitting the wrong one or press two at once. It’s much faster to type on the virtual keyboard. But what it is handy for is if your in the car (as a passenger of course) or on the bus, it’s a lot easier to use the physical keyboard when you’re shaking all over the shop.

The camera is also important to me because i’m always taking snaps and don’t always have a main camera with me. It’s not brilliant but it was ok for a phone – until that is i updated it to Android 2.1 which has added more camera features and a shed load of noise to the images. Lord knows why and i hope they fix it. Mind you that said, the ladybird macro photo just below this post was taken with this phone and i don’t suppose it’s that bad?

So i don’t regret having it because having a portable internet device is very important to me and i believe this is the best one. It’s a shame about the phone, keyboard and camera but you can’t have everything. However it has made my mind up that i’ll probably never have another Motorola device but will definitely be going back to HTC -something like the Supersonic (EVO) or whatever they have coming out after that because i’ll probably keep me Milestone for a while yet.

I’ve been playing with my iPod touch, using it to try out typing because i do a lot of emailing and texting from my phone and i just don’t like the keyboard at all. It’s nowhere near as accurate as my Bold. Plus it feels flimsier, i can slide my Bold into my jeans pocket and i know it’s not going to get damaged, it’s a tough old gal. But the iPhone/touch? My Touch is already looking very scratched and rough and i have been very gentle with it.

So, for the first time in my life, i’m not going to grab the newest shiny toy for the hell of it, and i probably won’t upgrade to the latest Bold either if they really are making it smaller. For me, it’s going to take a hell of a phone to compete with BB Bold!

Whilst we were at it i’ve got us a NAS drive (networked storage) meaning we can have one big itunes library on the NAS drive which can be accessed from any pc in the house wirelessly. Can also stream videos from it, stream music to my Pure Evoke internet radio and there’s also a printer connected to it so we can wirelessly print from any pc in the house too. Fabulous. I do worry of course that one wrong move or setting will have the whole lot come tumbling down! I’m not convinced networks are the most stable of things so i’ll make sure i have a complete itunes backup on a separate drive just in case.

What i wouldn’t mind finding out is, can you run World of Warcraft on a NAS drive because it would be very handy to be able to play from any PC in the house. At the moment it’s installed on my main big laptop in the office but sometimes i’m on my smaller laptop in the bedroom and wouldn’t mind a quick game of WoW. I shall find out!

Anyway, here’s how the room is looking now (click to enlarge).

5 things i HATE about technology:

• Youtubers. Now i don’t mean Youtube itself because being able to upload your movies and have them seen by the world is a brilliant thing. No. I mean the stupid bastards that comment on Youtube. Allow me to demonstrate: “OMG U FUCKN SUCK DUDE!!!!111!!!!!” and “GTF OFF UTUBE TWAT!” etc, etc. Will somebody please go and happy slap those little fucktards (and upload said slap to Youtube where we can all go and comment “OMG GET OFF YOUTUBE FKN LOOZER!!!”…)
• Microshite Micro$oft. Specifically Windows Vista. Oh God. Where do i even begin? This is more shit than can ever be expressed in a bullet point but i did touch on the subject in this post. But if you’re a MS user then surely you don’t need me to tell you what an unstable, unreliable, crashing, computer-taking-overer piece of shit it is?
• People who don’t use the latest Web Browser. It doesn’t even have to be the magnificent Firefox or Opera. Even the latest IE is fine. But what really irks me when i’m trying to design a website is having to make it compatible for people still using antiquated web browsers! I no longer pander to them. My motto is, if the site doesn’t work in your browser, CHANGE YOUR FUCKING BROWSER! Seriously how can the web evolve and move on when people don’t?
• Status Updates. Or rather people who update their status updates with nothing but drivel. Sure we all make the odd update like that but i’ve seen some who do nothing but! For example: “I woke up LOL” … “I’m drinking tea LOL” … “Just had a shite LOL” … “Going to bed LOL”. Jesus fucking wept.
• Pointlessness. Or technology for technology’s sake. In other words inventing and selling useless shit and ridiculous applications. Such as USB-Powered Gyrating Hips [Your Very Own Desk-Sized Shaking Ass] or iBeer [make your iPod touch look like a glass of beer] – Why!? See www.rubegoldberg.com for examples of over-engineering.

5 things i LOVE about technology:

• Blackberry Bold! Behold the most magnificent piece of technology on earth (imo). Seriously having had one now for 7 or 8 months i don’t know how i ever lived without it. I can email (push email no less), surf the web, update facebook, flickr, twitter, myspace, my blog, take and post photo’s & videos, use it as a sat nav, play music and movies on it, it has a proper qwerty keyboard, tons of applications, brilliant calender, weather station, my fave news and blog updates sent to my phone, google maps, instant messaging …. and that’s just for starters! Oh and it makes phonecalls too – and about that, they sound clearer than any phone i’ve ever had before.
• iPod & iTunes. I know a lot of people are anti-iTunes but it’s so simple to use and isn’t that what technology is about – making things better/faster/easier? For me iTunes ticks all of those boxes. And as for the iPod, i’ll be the first to admit it’s not the best sounding mp3 player but it’s good enough and coupled with iTunes it’s pretty fooking brilliant! I’ve had a classic, nano and touch. Classic probably my favourite from nothing but a music point of view because i use my berry for everything else that the touch can do. It’s so handy being able to carry around a huge music collection with you because you don’t always know what you’ll feel like listening to, remember the old walkman cassette players? Imagine trying to carry around a several thousand song collection with one of those! I’m a big music fan and so digital music is one of the things i’m most thankful for.
• Laptop/Internet. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing how much of my life is devoted to computers and the internet but i love it. I love how the world has become smaller, i love how you can find out pretty much anything any time you like. I love how i can chat to a pal in Australia in one window, do a weekly shop in the next, pay the bills in another, sell something on eBay in yet another …. all of this in the space of half an hour. Freeing me up to … well, spend more time on my laptop :-p Which of course i can snap shut and carry with me anywhere i like. How much cooler is life with the web? Course it has its downsides, doesn’t everything but i think the good points are far more.
• Status Updates. Hmm, didn’t i just put that in my list of hates? Well yes but social networking has its pluses. Sure you find annoying people who friend collect (want to add you to their list yet never speak to you so you have to endure their inane drivel in your updates) but the thing is folks – just delete those fuckers! On twitter i just follow people that interest me, in facebook i only keep up with people i know in real life, find interesting, old school pals or chat with a lot. Everyone else is gone. And it’s great because i get updates sent to my phone so it’s nice being able to keep up with what people are doing without having to trawl through each of their individual sites. I just get a brief overview every day so i’m always on top of who has exciting news, who is getting married, giving birth, emigrating, getting a sex change … Best thing for me was catching up with old school pals, just knowing they’re there and that they’re ticking alone fine. And of course you can switch it off whenever you want peace and quiet. Marvellous.
• Sex. Ok there i said it. Porno. Totty. Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it too.

This is my new radio. It’s a DAB wifi radio which is great because no only can it get the high quality DAB stations but it can also pick up thousands of internet channels. I’ve hardly used the DAB radio, i’m hooked on Internet Radio! My favourite channel at the moment is 1.FM Chillout Lounge.

The other thing you can do is stream music stored on your PC to your radio wirelessly. I just tell the radio where to find my Music hard drive and i can access it all on the radio. Hoorah! You also get to join The Lounge website, here you can organise your favourite internet channels (for example i have a folder called decades and within that the 80′s channel, 70′s channel, etc etc). Then when you switch your radio on it recognises the changes you made on the website and you can now access all of your fave organised web stations on your radio. Again – Hoorah!

Ooh and it’s also an alarm clock, the snooze button is cool, it’s the handle, just give the handle a tap and it goes into snooze mode. I bought the optional rechargeable battery too so it can come out into the garden with me especially on these lovely summer days. Very very pleased with it and i highly recommend it to anyone looking for a radio with a shed load of options!

UPDATE . UPDATE . UPDATE . UPDATE . UPDATE . UPDATE

Well i’ve been playing with it for a few days now and i am really pleased with it. The sound that comes from it is out of this world. I’m mostly using it as an internet radio and for streaming music from my PC’s hard drive. I wish there was a way of it grabbing music from an external networked hard drive though so i don’t have to leave the pc on all day.

For anyone who has googled the radio and found this article – if you bought the optional battery and are having problems, it’s not faulty! I found when i switched radio off whilst unplugged from the mains with the battery in it was shutting off completely rather than going into standby, and it wouldn’t turn back on. Well actually it will turn back on, you just hold in the on/off button for a few seconds. Gawd.

I might but the optional remote control next because the menu system on the radio isn’t the easiest to navigate. It’s not as nightmarish as some have said but it takes some getting used to and a remote control would speed things up a bit. Might save a few sticky finger print marks on the piano black finish as well! Anyway, I LOVE IT!

Well i’ve had my first ever Blackberry for about a couple of weeks now and i am frigging loving it! I wanted to be able to email on the move, plus i like texting so a proper keyboard was something i’ve always wanted. I hate phone keypads for texting! Anyway, it’s also got facebook, myspace, flickr, twitter, twitpic, i can blog to this site from it (after much tweeking), the calender is brilliant, it syncs with my google and facebook calendars, and yada yada yada. There’s are loads and loads of apps that you can install.

One of my faves is vlingo: http://www.vlingo.com/

Vlingo is a voice-powered user interface that unlocks access to mobile phone wireless data services. vlingo for iPhone™ and vlingo for BlackBerry smartphones allows users to speak into their device and have many popular applications carry out their respective functions. This includes dialing your phone, sending an email or SMS, creating and saving a memo or task, opening a web browser and performing a web search, composing a social-networking status message and more.

I have an iPod touch so i already knew i didn’t want an iphone or blackberry storm, the keyboard is too hit and miss for me, i prefer a physical keyboard. The camera isn’t great which is my only big letdown because i take a hellova lot of pics and like being able to take snaps wherever i may be. My previous phone (Samsung Soul) had a pretty decent 5 megapixel camera and my Blackberry only has a 2 megapixel camera. Bit of a shame when you think how easy it is to upload your photos to flickr, facebook, twitter, etc.

The media player and screen are both out of this world! The screen imo is better than the ipod Touch/iPhone. It’s very sharp and the sound is pretty damn impressive too. Oh and i live in a crappy area that is hopeless at getting strong reception for mobiles, tv, radio, etc and yet this phone has the strongest signal of any phone i’ve ever had before. So overall i’m a happy bunny!