You may have seen that registration for UK TechDays events from 12 th to 16 th April is already open - but you probably won’t have seen this newly announced session, even if you are following   @uktechdays   on twitter After Hours @ UK Tech Days 2010 – Wednesday 14th April, 7pm – 9pm. Vue Cinema...

As titles go that’s an odd one, but stay with me. I’ve written before about my Citroen C6 : Before Christmas a warning message popped up saying something was wrong with the hydro-pneumatic suspension which give the big Citroens their wonderful ride. A visit to the garage confirmed the problem was real...

In theory I was supposed to be taking a day off on Monday to look after my children on half term. (Note for parents, making hot cross buns at home is a fantastic way to occupy the kids.). A spot of car trouble killed off our trip to go swimming so I ended up spending a fair chunk of the day following...

  Our press site says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will host a press conference at Mobile World Congress 2010. Watch the live Webcast  Recording here   on Feb. 15 starting at 6 a.m. PST/3 p.m. CET.  That’s 2PM UK time, and thanks to other commitments I’m going to have to watch the...

Arthur : “You mean you can see into my mind ?” Marvin: “Yes.” Arthur: “And … ?” Marvin: “It amazes me how you manage to live in anything that small” Looking back down the recent posts you might notice that this is the 8th in a row about my new phone (so it’s obviously made something of an impression...

I’m getting on reasonably well with my new HTC Touch Pro2, and Windows Mobile 6.5 (a.k.a Windows Phone). There are places where it has adapted well to being operated as a touch device – chunky menus and big buttons are essential – the 480 pixel wide screen is as wide 3 of my fingers which puts about...

The more I explore the features of the Touch-Pro 2 (and Windows Mobile 6.5 – or “Windows Phone” as the marketing people have it), the more I find to like. Being a Sunday I found myself with other parents from the village standing beside a freezing soccer pitch cheering on our offspring (since mine was...

I keep thinking back to the theft of my laptop last year. I’ve had maybe a dozen laptops over the years and I haven’t really the same bond with them that I have with, say, my cameras. Even so whichever laptop I happen to have at the time goes everywhere with me like some kind of comfort blanket. It might...

OK cards on the table. I’m prejudiced. I don’t pretend to be anything else, and I try to open about my biases - flaunt them even. And Like most prejudiced people I can explain the logical roots that my prejudices spring from. When it comes to browsers I think IE is pretty good .Actually let me qualify...

One of the things with the change of phone means sorting out sat nav software. I’ve been using  ALK’s co-pilot as my sat-Nav on the last two phones, with a Bluetooth GPS puck. I’ve been through 3 different versions of the software and I’ve grown used to its foibles. Since my phone arrived the day...

I’ve tried more several different twitter clients on my desktop but I always end up gravitating back to the Web interface – I think mostly because I follow a lot links from twitter posts and with IE7 pro installed (on IE8, despite the name) I can use a “flick” gesture to open a link in a new tab and...

Last week Orange delivered a consignment of HTC-Touch Pro 2 phones and one of them had my name on it. Every phone I’ve ever had has been driven by buttons and I wrote before Christmas that I was in two minds about “going touch”. But my old E650 was falling apart and I decided the HTC was the best of...

Someone at work (no names, no packdrill) keeps telling me I’m set in my ways, and I keep disagreeing, since I’ve always thought it’s one of my personality traits to challenge the status quo (see Apparatchik vs Autistic ). But I’ve been forced to confront my own conservatism when it comes to phones. I...

Everyone uses different bits of office. There’s a core piece that everyone uses and then we all have our personal 10%. I like the OCR feature of One-Note. For example on the way to the BETT show a few days back I saw an advert on the tube that’s a grander variation on “How do you pronounce Ghoti ?” ...

Everyone knows Apple’s advertising annoys people at Microsoft. That’s partly what it’s for. And I’ve held my peace about an iPhone advert which appear to feature a faked series of operations. If you watched the ad closely you could see that a .ZIP file is downloaded from a mail message and magically...

I’ve been “on Holiday” for a few days. My mother-in-law hasn’t been enjoying the best of health so we took took the family off to visit her over the half term week. To a rented house with Satellite TV – because it is in a DVB deadspot – but no broadband, and no 3G reception. It’s been a lesson in just...

A few days ago I posted in praise of McDonalds for their free WiFi . So I shouldn't have been surprised to stop at the motorway services and find Roadchef (at least at Norton Canes , off the M6 Toll) are doing the same. But in an otherwise predictable day, it was a surprise. OK they did charge me £7...

Part of my salary package working at Microsoft UK is a company car, for which Microsoft buys the fuel. I can opt out of this scheme and take money instead (which is taxed like any other Salary payment) and the Tax office also works out the notional value of the car and fuel (both are based on the C02...

I'm working from home today - not so much to be green but I had a routine appointment with my Doctor late in the morning and it just made more sense. Because it's half term I'm also minding my daughter so she ended up coming with me to the Doctor's and on the way  home we popped into McDonalds to...

I was wrong. People seem to get on better with "touch" phones than I thought. I understand that different form factors suit different people. Just as some want a PDA and some want a phone, it seems that some want 12 keys, some want Qwerty and some want touch. HTC have sold 2 Million of their touch phones...

**Warning** Neither I nor Microsoft will take any responsibility for what happens if you follow these instructions. I am not recommending this, just reporting my experience. For ages now I've had a bookmark for a hack to make a "USB Battery" . I wrote ages ago about making up cables to power things from...

When I had my previous smartphone , I decided I'd try running Satellite Navigation software on it. ALK were the first to support the phone with Co-Pilot. Co-pilot 5 had it's foibles but basically it worked. It didn't work with Windows Mobile 6 which is what my current phone uses. I looked at the upgrade...

Silly me believing stuff I read on the Internet. First there was the The register's story about only 26,000 iphones being activated in the UK . Next came Electronics weekly's usual " Made by Monkeys " e-mail - I'm not sure how I ended up on the list for it, but I haven't unsubscribed because once in...

One of our Redmond product managers was visiting today, and since he's old friend of mine from my days in consulting we took a chance to grab a Coffee. In putting the world to rights we took in the problem of one part of Microsoft not knowing what another is doing. It always amuses me that people outside...

The news went live on the Exchange Web Page yesterday. Technet Magazine has " 16 new features in Exchange SP1 " the one which is of most interest to me is " Improvements to Unified Messaging "... that's all about integration with OCS and communicator. Update : Jason thinks the mobility improvements are...