Blog

Flock Hands On

The first official beta of Flock was launched last week and as it promised so much I gave it an extended test. Eight months ago I was pretty scathing about Flock. Not for me was the upshot of my brief trial. So why is it now so close to becoming my default browser?

The browser has established itself as the most used app on a pc, for me at least. Get news, share opinions, shop, blog, download etc etc etc. No other app is used as much as the browser. So to move application it has to be as quick as the opposition, render pages accurately and also support easy migration from your old app. Flock is based on Mozilla (same code as Firefox) and I found the import of data to be excellent. Cookies and form data were imported as well as favourites although how the favourites were stored is another matter – more on that later.

Flock - New ItemsI thought the previous version of Flock was slow, not just in the application itself but also rendering web pages – not so this version. Almost all of the extra functionality worked well and was snappy in use. Web page rendering was fast and accurate. I also love the look of the app – more like a Mac than a Windows app although after using Vista there are some influences from there too. You can easily see when there is new photo or news content – a small orange circle shows you when your contacts or RSS feeds have been updated. Makes for an easier browsing experience.

Photo’s
Flock - Flickr tag searching on your photo's or your contactsFlock integrates with Flickr and Photobucket via a Photo’s topbar. Once you allow the app to talk to your Flickr account it will check to see if your contacts have added any new photo’s and let you know when there are new ones to view. You can easily select your own photo’s or your contacts to be viewed in the topbar. Click on the photo to view it in the browser itself. You can also view your own, contacts or public photo’s by tag. The topbar totally changes how I use Flickr and now makes it easy to keep up to date with new content.

Flock - Upload PhotoIf this wasn’t enough Flock also comes with it’s own uploader application to make publication to Flickr easy. Drag photo’s from any webpage to the topbar and it will launch the uploader app (which can be launched independently at any time). Using this app you can crop, rotate, resize images before uploading and create a new set, add to an existing set and then upload your images. You can also select files from your hard disk or just drag from explorer onto the app. Works really well and your newly uploaded images are instantly viewable in the topbar. More details after the jump. Continue reading “Flock Hands On”

Sneaky Orange

Opened my mobile phone bill and spotted that from 1st July Orange will now charge £1.50 to receive a fully itemised bill. As usual they will auto subscribe you to this great feature unless you opt out. To opt out text BILL to 2018 or call 150 from your phone and speak to customer services. You can get itemised billing online for free but obviously times are tight in the land of Orange. I’ll be keenly looking elsewhere as my contract is up and I don’t like underhand actions like this by companies I use. Just don’t see a phone that I want to get.

Vista Beta 2

Vista - DesktopFirst screen from my freshly installed Vista Beta 2. After partitioning my drive to allow for dual booting with XP and getting an iso image to finally burn correctly I installed Vista tonight. It took around an hour and a half to install but this was unattended so you could wander off and watch some football while it churned.

Flickr set is up although with only a few screens to begin with. Quick impressions – boot time is long, looks to be more security aware, couple of nice window opening effects, alt tab nice, speed seems ok which was surprising, Windows Update managed to install all my drivers which considering the pc is two years old was pretty impressive, XP still works, there still some Win 95 icons in there – it’s not crashed yet. I’m really wanting to test out day to day functionality like search, robustness etc as I’ve almost made my mind up that my next pc will be a mac…the beta will be a good test before I switch. More updates when I’ve used it in anger.

Ok – first night with it. Not done much except install Office Beta and also anti-virus. Thought I would use AVG free but once downloaded I tried to run it but Vista wouldn’t let me install – there are issues that might break Vista and I should contact the suppliers to pester them for a fix. Sigh. Microsoft though have sorted out a PC-Cillin anti-virus package that runs for the length of the Vista beta – that installed with no issues.

Tried Media Centre – worked OK although it seemed to crash on building my music library. Started it off well before the England game tonight but by half-time it stil hadn’t doen anything. Stopped the program, set-up library via Media Player 11 and it seems to be ok now. It’s either really slow (pc left unattended for 90 minutes yet failed to import 5000 tracks) or it crapped out.

Saying that system feels really usable. Office works well and one O/S has loaded it doesn’t feel any slower than XP. Need to delve into search though and see how that works. Pop-ups asking for permission to run apps and install programs is a tad frustrating too.

BumbleSearch

A great extension for Firefox – BumbleSearch. Can easily switch off shopping results from a Google search, search other sites from the same Google search page and also cross search ebay, Amazon, Digg etc. Can turn on search highlighting which makes finding info on a page very easy. Also has some sidebar note capturing functionality which I don’t use. Well worth installing.

Sky HD – One Week Later

Still loving it. World Cup has been brilliant and BBC really are showing the way with their broadcasts. Been impressed with the cricket as well so looking good for Premiership next year. Was getting used to the picture quality and switched the TV on for the Brazil game earlier this week. It looked awful – pixelly, low detail, lack of colour. I was so disappointed and thought the BBC were maybe using different settings for their admittedly test HD service. I then realised I was on BBC1, not the BBC HD channel. Switched over and normal service was resumed – moments like that really hit home the difference in quality.

There are however some firmware issues. Had the video stutter twice now after watching a recording which is easily solved by powering the box off and on. No Sky+ failures yet but the time does drift on these boxes – about a minute a day. I’m sure a future firmware update will resolve this but in the meantime…

  • Select Services from remote
  • Then press 4, 0, 1 and then Select to enter the Installers Menu
  • Select the Planner Rebuild menu option (number 7 and NOT number 8 which will wipe your recordings)
  • Housekeeping should then start and once complete power down the box
  • Press Sky or the power button to bring the box back on.

For me not a big deal especially when I look at the picture quality I’ve now got. Loving Sky+ also – so easy to use and totally changes how you use broadcast television. Should have bought it years ago.

Picasa Web Albums

Google launched Picasa Web Albums last week which allows you to publish your Picasa managed photo’s easily to the web. I was interested as I use Flickr for my web albums and my local photo management is poor – would Picasa sort out my local and web needs?

Picasa - Upload OptionsEven though Picasa is beta software the Picasa Web Albums are officially a ‘test’. Already trying to differentiate from Flickr Beta and Gamma. Once you sign up it’s then easy to publish photo’s from Picasa. Select a photo or album and load it into the Photo Tray. Then select Web Album to load whatever has been added to the Photo Tray.

The options on uploading are fairly limited. You can create a new album or add photo’s to an existing album. You can add a description or add location (for Google Earth integration which is really smart). You select the quality of the picture you want to upload and then finally whether the pictures are public or private. The uploading then takes place in the background allowing you to continue using Picasa.

Picasa - My Public Gallery.jpgOnce uploaded you can easily see your gallery at picasaweb.google.com/username (mine’s here). Compared to Flickr there are some obvious disadvantages. No concept of tagging or groups and hence a real lack of community unlike Flickr which uses these features to drive the website and share your photo’s with other like minded groups. Picasa album functionality is also basic – can view a slideshow and change order but that’s about it – feels very old school compared to Flickr but that’s really just styling that could be addressed through time. There is nothing similar to the Flickr Organize features at all.

Picasa - Album View.jpg

For free Picasa will allow for 250Meg of storage – if you take a lot of photo’s this will go quickly. For $25 a year you get access to 6Gig of storage. It’s not clear if that is the maximum amount of storage or whether you get an additional 6Gig every year. Flickr doesn’t limit storage but upload bandwidth. For free you are allowed to upload 20Meg per month and are limited in the amount of sets (albums you can create). There are also adverts. For $25 a year you get a 2Gig per month upload limit, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and sets. No adverts either. For my requirements Flickr wins hands down.

Flickr also allows 3rd party access via API’s which means external apps and companies can access your photo’s (with your permission) to create print albums, allow for easy access from phones and other applications etc. Google doesn’t have anything like that at the moment although you can order prints from Picasa with ease.

If you use and love Picasa for local photo management then Picasa Web Albums will be a good solution as like most Google online offerings it is simple to publish and easy to use. Flickr is far more feature rich though and makes sharing and also finding photos easy. I also like the number of apps that now link to Flickr. Picasa Web Albums looks to be more expensive than Flickr while offering less. It’s a shame there is no way to use Picasa and publish to Flickr instead as on this showing I can’t see anyone wanting to move from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums.

HDMI Switchbox

Octava 5 Port HDMI SwitchJust when you though it was safe to throw away scart switchboxes as you move to hi-def you soon realise that most HD TV’s come with only 1 HDMI socket, 1 DVI socket and a component socket (although most new TV’s now come with 2 HDMI’s at least). Not much when you think of the multiple HD sources that you could have. To get round this little issue I plumped for an Octava 5 way HDMI switchbox. This works really well as a pass through device and gives long term expandability for any future HD devices I may add.

It allows for 5 HDMI/DVI sources to be connected and so far with my two sources it’s worked with no issues. Although it auto switches it also supports Infra Red selection of an input which is useful feature to have. If you do want one I can highly recommend The Media Factory who answered all my queries and also delivered promptly. Will definitely use them again. Worth noting that the Octava was pretty cost effective when compared to other HDMI switchboxes on the market at the moment.

Also worth considering is the Octava switchbox that also allows for multiple optical inputs – very handy if your amp is low on capacity. Ultimately the switchbox is more expandable and cost effective than upgrading your amp which looking at today’s market will give you one extra HDMI socket which really isn’t enough.