Merl’s Blog

It’s been a busy day for Apple with the release of two long overdue products updates and a brand new device.

New iMacs
New Mac Pro
New Magic Trackpad

Surprise, surprise when you stick salty water (your hand) in the way of your mobile phone signal then the signal gets attenuated.

So it’s not just the iPhone 4 that suffers from the death grip it is also the Droid, the HTC, Nokia in fact any mobile phone suffers unless the signal is so strong the attenuation becomes insignificant.

Haven’t we known this for years, or has the whole world fallen over and banged it’s head.

More info: http://www.apple.com/antenna/

Samsung Death Grip:

HTC Evo Death Grip:

* Nexus One Death Grip:

Droid Death Grip:

The subject of the talk is absolutely fascinating and that way it is presented is very engaging.

This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

Some interesting background information to the BP oil spill.

• the contract was American
• the contractors were American
• the subcontractors were American
• the platform was American
• the failed blowout preventer was American
• BP is now simply the brand name for a corporation which is 40% American (Amoco merger) / 40% British / 20% others

Still, don’t let a few inconvenient things like facts get in the way of a handy little bit of xenophobic scapegoating.

When I Googled “oil spill” every search result returned was an article about how “BP buys oil spill keywords”.

Does this mean BP will now implode like if you Google “Google”.

When I saw this I imagined it is how the Large Hadron Collider works.

Two awesome inventions combine to form something greater than the sum of the parts.

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Their ADSL service in the Wolverhampton area totally sucks. On an ADSL2+ service that I have seen hit 12Mb down and 900k up, which is good – don’t get me wrong. I also frequently see speeds of 200k down and 50k up with a ping ranging as high as 2-3,000ms. Yes that is the correct number of zeros.

There are an incorrect number of zeros running their network.

Martin’s dad Brian makes him sandwiches each morning to take to college for lunch. There are three types of sandwich to add variety, one of which is salami. This routine has gone on for many months.

Brian has, in the recent weeks, changed the salami. The new salami is more ‘fatty’ and Martin doesn’t like it so much. Rather than informing dad of this he chooses to dispose of the salami sandwiches in his wardrobe. Communicating with dad isn’t easy – he shouts and moans a lot.

Julie, who cleans for Brian and family, doesn’t clean Martin’s room because it’s normally such a mess. Therefore the salami isn’t discovered as soon as Health and Safety might prefer. A odour develops.

When the salami is eventually discovered altercation and bickering engulf the bazaar of the bizarre.

The episode raises questions:

Was Martin dropped on his head as a child?

Has Brian no culinary imagination?

Does Martin know where the fridge is?

Might Brain prefer an extra 10 minutes in bed in the morning?

Real names changed to… you know the drill.

UPDATE: According to Martin’s mom Susan, pensionable salami sandwiches were also found in Martin’s kit bag…

If you got excited recently about the EU enforced drop in prices for roaming phone call, text and data prices then calm down, it’s not what it seems.

Thinking that I was only going to be charged the new capped prices of €1 per Mb I decided to use my iPhone for 3G data whilst in France. When the bill arrived I had been charged £2.50 per Mb.

A call to O2 was, as usual with any operator, a quite un-fulfilling experience with the individual on the other end indicating that data hadn’t dropped in price – but she didn’t know why.

After some Googling it turns out the €1 cap is a limit on what the mobile network operators can charge each other – they can of course continue to charge their customers what the hell they like.

Shame Ofcom don’t insist the operator make this a bit more clear.

Seems the BBC also mis-understood the changes – as they state in this article “The cost of transferring a megabyte of data is capped at one euro”.

Jeez!

Twitter – not really sure I get it. Signed up made a few posts, joined a twibe, and came to the conclusion it seems to have become another form of instant messaging. Or perhaps I don’t feel the need to tell everyone when I stand, sit, walk, fart.

New iPhone 3GS looks awesome, so plan to upgrade on release on 19th June. I have the original 2G so am out of contract – making the upgrade easy.

Many are moaning it’s really expensive because they have to get out of their current contract. Maybe they need to understand better what ‘contract’ actually means. Or are the moaners just a bunch of me, me, me, want it now for nothing kids that society seems to produce these days.

Discuss…