15 January 2010

o2 Upgrade

Having had my current phone (iPhone 3G) for 17months, I rang o2 customer services to see if I could upgrade my phone, preferably to the nice new 3G s. After being on hold for 20minutes I got through and was greeted with:

o2: Thanks for calling o2, you are speaking to (name),

Me: Hi I would like to upgrade my phone, to the new iPhone 3G s

o2: We can give you a £45/month contract and the 16GB phone for free on a 24month contract

Me: Sorry thats not good enough, can you not do any better, I would only like to pay £35/month and only have an 18month contract

o2: Um… If you would like that the phone will cost you £189.

Me: Thats no good, could you put me through to cancellations please

HOLD…..

o2: Hi, this is cancellations, I hear you would like an iPhone 3G s, we can do it for free on a £35/month 24 month contract

Me: Ok, thanks but I would only like an 18 month contract

o2: Wait one second…. Yes we can do that, £35/month 18months for free

Me: Thanks a lot, I will take one

o2: Ok, we will post it out to your current address and you should receive it Monday

This is the first time I have asked to be put through to cancellations in 6 years of being with o2 due to the customer service advertiser could not give me the contract I wanted, and thanks to the cancellations department for meeting my needs, and even thought o2 signal is rubbish at work, I think I am able to put up with that for them being helpful, and giving me a nice brand new iPhone 3G s for free. I also will be staying with o2 for the foreseeable future.

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11 January 2010

Sign in with...

To sign in with a third party API or not?

I am starting to write a web application (app), but have come across my first hurdle. Do I ask users to register with my web app or do I allow them to use a third party facility such as twitter to sign into my app with?

There are pros and cons to both solutions. The biggest and easiest thing with allowing users to use their account details from another service is that they do not have to go through the sign up process, or worry about security on my app, which will be top notch. But whats saying that the third party service they use to access my app with gets hacked? Then it becomes unsecured?

Another question I ask myself is, why would users not sign up with my app? When twitter (for example) first came onto the web why did anyone sign up there, who was to say it was secure or a reliable service? This leads to what happens if the third party service people are using to access my app goes bust? It leads to all sorts of complications that you would not get from direct sign ups.

But say I allow for every scenario, how do I handle duplicate user names coming from different third party services, and people who decide to open an account direct? Also do you allow for every service, Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, etc. Or would you limit the market and only allow Twitter users?

This is just one of the decisions I am faced with, it’s also a big decision at the moment as its holding up progress on writing the app as I want to write the user part first, making sure you can register, sign in, log out, etc.

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1 January 2010

2010

Well with it being a new year and all that, it’s time for people to write down their new years resolutions, and review last years resolutions that were made and try to explain why they were not achieve and how this year will be different and so forth. I am not a big believer in making resolutions, but I do tend to have a mental note, and a lot of the time I even jot down on paper or into my computer somewhere what I want to achieve.

I feel that if I write here what I want to achieve in 2010, I am going to let people down or sound like an idiot when I was not able to make the goals set out. Do not get me wrong I do not have an issue with people making new years resolutions and telling everyone through their weblog, I actually quiet find it interesting to read what people are setting out to do in 2010.

A lot of the stuff I would have as resolutions is not always determined by my actions, for example so I wanted to find my ideal job. This is more then likely to not happen due to fact that we are in a so called recession and people are not employing, also if I was to apply to my so called dream job whats to say when I started, that I did not like it.
Many of you may be saying if you want it that much you will get it, but frankly that is not 100% true, yes I would love to have my dream job but like everyone else I would like to win the lottery too but certain things just don’t happen.

You my say, go freelance. Who’s going to pay the bills?

May sound like I am going on a bit, and rambling, but one thing is for sure is in 2010 I am going to try and reach my goals, and aims, and when I do I will document them but for now my new years resolution is to:

Aim to do my best, and do my best in getting towards my final dream

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25 December 2009

Merry Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas to my readers. Hope everyone has a fantastic day. Try not to over do it on the christmas dinner and dessert, and be careful you don’t eat too many chocolates.

This is the second christmas with our son Todd, but the first real christmas where he knew what was going on, as he was only 3moths old last time around. This year was bit of shock as he was into everything, ripping the wrapping presents off and wanting to play with his new toys.

A couple of tips I have taken away from this mornings unwrapping is to:

  • Make sure we have the right batteries for his toys
  • Build up any of his toys ready
  • Undo the wire they use to hold toys to packaging

With these tips we should be more than ready for christmas next year, but as normal we will forget something.

Me and the wife decided not to go over the top on each other with presents, as grown ups we buy what we want throughout the year, and decide to just buy something small to unwrap on the day. This year I got a lovely pair of Chuck Taylors that I love, and can not believe I have not owned a pair of converse before now.

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19 December 2009

1st Year Anniversary

So today was mine and my wife’s first year wedding anniversary. It’s amazing how time flies, I can not get over it’s been a year. So many things have happened since then, and it’s hard to remember where the time went. I’am not complaining, I want all years to be as fun as this past one, and look forward to many more years with my wife

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28 November 2009

A to Z URLs

So everyone seems to be doing and why not, it’s actually an interesting meme to do as you find some interesting sites, and see what different people regularly visit

Check out a few others: Sam Brown, Wil Linssen, Marc Roberts, Thomas Decrick, Thomas Maier, Andy Clarke, Bradford Dielman, Yaili, Owen Gregory, Elliot Jay Stocks, Matthew Maber, Alex Blundell, Ian P. Hines, Christoph Zillgens

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16 November 2009

Too Many Too Follow

So there I am, thinking to myself about adding another twitter user to follow on my account. That would increase my follow count from 126 to 127, obviously, everyone can add up.

So on to the question that I am getting to is: How many users is a nice number to follow. As you already know I follow 126 users, that might not seem that many to some people but I tend to follow people/company/apps that I like/inspire me/use.

But every now and then I come across another user that I feel like I have to follow, or I’ll be missing out on something. But by increasing my follow count am I increasing the chance of overload?

Onto the maths:
I follow 126 users, I have tweet 6 times today so if all the users I follow tweet 6 times a day like I have that will mean:

126 × 6 = 756

So I have 756 tweets to read and digest, or do I? But whats the point in following someone went you don’t read their tweets right?
Say I was following 300 people, the daily count for tweets would be 1800. Is it possible to read all those tweets or do you just skip a load?

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10 October 2009

Re-release at a price

When tweetie 2 was announced, it got some bad feedback due to the fact that the developers stated if you wanted to upgrade to tweetie 2, you would have to pay for the application again for $2.99. This generated a bit of a conflict with people who had already paid for the original tweetie. So people would have to splash out another $2.99 for the same app by the same developer that did; the same thing.

Obviously it was not going to go down great with everybody, but in life you can not please everyone, and to be honest I was not over the moon with having to splash out for an app that I had already purchased to do the same thing. But once details were released and screenshots appeared of the new tweetie I was actually looking forward to spending the $2.99 for the new app.

My opinion for changing my mind, and paying for the application for the second time, was that if the developers had just updated some features and fixed some bugs throughout the application, then it should be released as an update making it FREE to all users who already own the app.

But as the new version was being rewritten making, it a completely different application. Along with more features and a nicer user interface, then it becomes a new application even though it has a lot of features of the last version. Due to the fact the developer took it upon themselves to listen to the users and make the app more user friendly, and added a ton more features, I felt I owed it to them to purchase the new version and set aside my gut feelings. Obviously I now have two applications I have paid for that pretty much do the same thing, but if you add the two $2.99 up making $5.98 you can safely say that tweetie 2 is worth $5.98.

One problem I see with the developers of tweetie, is that a lot of other developers with probably try and jump on the bandwagon and release future updates as new applications and try to charge again for their products. But unless you are releasing a massive update or revised version of your software with better features, nicer interface an so on, I feel people will not take to kindly to having to splash out more more for the same applications.

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