By Neil Bird on April 20, 2009
Sky Replace Viewing Cards
Satellite TV provider Sky, are starting to roll out new viewing cards for all of their 9.2 million subscribers. You should received yours within the next few months.
From time to time we need to replace your Sky viewing cards with brand new ones to ensure you receive a secure and up-to-date service.
When you get yours, just follow these simple instructions:
Replacing your card
- With your TV and Sky box turned on with the green light showing, simply pull out the existing card.
- Insert your new card into the same slot with the arrows showing on top of the card and the card pointing towards the box.
- Wait for a few seconds until you see the on-screen message.
- You’ll then see a message confirming your new card is working. Now just press BACK UP on your remote control to continue viewing as normal.
Sky have set-up a Sky Viewing Help site dedicated to replacing your Sky Viewing Card, giving more information on why the change, how to change and troubleshooting advice.
The viewing cards have been updated a few times since Sky Digital first launched in 1998, do you remember them?
Posted in Gadgets | Tagged card, sky, tv |
By Neil Bird on April 17, 2009
The Gadget Show Live online
For those of you lucky enough to get yourself tickets - The Gadget Show Live started today and runs until Sunday at the NEC in Birmingham.
For those of you unable to attend (including myself) you can still keep up with the events going on at The Gadget Show Live online:
You can go to The Gadget Show Live website
or if you use Twitter you can follow the official Gadget Show and Gadget Show Live tweets:
@GadgetShowLive / @TheGadgetShow
or why not follow your favourite Gadget Show presenter:
@JasonBradbury /@suziperry /@jonbentley90
Posted in Internet | Tagged Event, gadget show live |
By Neil Bird on April 7, 2009
Sky+ Remote Record from your iPhone
Sky have released an official remote record app for the iPhone. The new app will allow you to access your Sky+ Planner from your iPhone to record your favourite shows when you are out and about.
After logging in you will be presented with the familiar Sky+ TV Guide, where you will be able to scroll through the days TV programmes, call up programme synopsis, search and record.
There are a few other paid iPhone apps that have had the same functionality, TV Plus is a fine example, that I have written about previously.
You can Download Sky+ Remote Record from iTunes/App Store.
Posted in Mobiles | Tagged app, iPhone, record, remote, sky, tv |
By Neil Bird on February 9, 2009
Google have just launched a Beta of their Google Sync for Mobile Phones.
The new service opens up Microsoft Exchange connectivity direct to the Google Cloud, so that you can sync your Contacts and Calendar to a variety of mobile phones:
This means that companies like NuevaSync who have currently been filling the gap with their own Exchange Server to the Goolge cloud may now have their days numbered, as people no longer have to use the services of a 3rd party.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt_-qHczCMg
Posted in Mobiles | Tagged Google, Mobiles, sync |
By Neil Bird on February 2, 2009
Google Tasks goes Mobile
Google have announced that their Google Tasks, recently launched as a Gmail Labs addon, is now available for iPhones.
The interface is clean and simple and enables you to update or create Tasks for use within your desktop GMail.
Goto gmail.com/tasks on your iPhone.
Posted in Mobiles | Tagged Google, taskd |
By Neil Bird on February 2, 2009
Track your Photos and Videos with Nokia viNe
Back at the beginning of September I was fortunate enough to be part of the Nokia viNe Beta trial. For those of you unfamiliar with Nokia viNe, its an application you can install on your Nseries handsets that will record your journeys out and about and when and where you took pictures and recorded video. This info is then uploaded and plotted on a map.
Nokia viNe on Holiday
I took Nokia viNe with me on holiday to Portugal to record my movements around the resort I was staying. While abroad I obviously did not want to rack up high data charges so turned off data access. Nokia viNe is happy about this as it allows you to record your activity and save it for upload at your convenience.
All of my viNes appeared to track OK with photos and videos recorded by the application.
On my return to the UK, I uploaded all of my viNes from my N82 to the Sports Tracker website. All seemed OK until I actually checked the results. It seemed that the GPS accuracy of application wasn’t to great and photos that I had taken didn’t match up with the correct locations on the map.
I thought that the problems may have been due to not using the mobile network while in Portugal, so I tried again on a trip to Dartmouth a few weeks later in Devon. Sadly the same happened again, images were not correctly geo-tagged. In-fact they were miles out.
Nokia viNe had great potential - but if it wasn’t going to do the job properly, then what was the point?.
Nokia viNe - third time lucky
Its been a while since my Beta experience, and now that Nokia viNe is publicly available I thought that Id give it another go.
This time I took a trip to Lyme Regis and took along my Nokia N82 with the latest version of Nokia viNe to see if things had improved at all.
After my time walking around Lyme Regis, I uploaded my vine to the servers, and logged into my Sports Tracker account to check the results. This time I was pleased to see that things had been tagged properly. Nice
Conclusion
Nokia viNe is a great tool, the latest version of the app, is much improved over the orginal beta that I had a play with. Although saying that, as much fun as it is to use, would I really have a need to use it? After all Flickr allows you to Geo-tag your images, just by snapping and uploading them.
Holidays are the only real occasion that I can think of that the Nokia viNe app would really be of benefit. Its great to track your movements around a resort (its amazing how far you can walk) and have a visual record of where you were when you shot some video or took some snaps..
Have you used Nokia viNe, what did you think?
Posted in Mobiles | Tagged Mobiles, nokia, nseries, software, vine |
By Neil Bird on February 2, 2009
Get free credit from Tesco
British supermarket giant Tesco have some great deals on their Tesco Mobile to beat the credit crunch.
Simply top-up your pay as you go Tesco Mobile and they will give you extra credit free!
- Top-up £10 and get £10 free giving you a total of £20 credit
- Top-up £15 and get £30 free giving you a total of £45 credit
- Top-up £20 and get £40 free giving you a total of £60 credit
This sounds to good to be true - and guess what it gets better as you can use the free credit towards Picture Messaging and Mobile Internet Browsing!
Get two free Tesco Mobile Sims delivered to your door!
See the Tesco Mobile Free Credit Terms & Conditions for more information about charges.
Posted in Mobiles | Tagged Mobiles, offer, tesco |
By Neil Bird on February 1, 2009
Mac users rejoice - Five have updated their online TV catch-up service Demand Five to stream in Flash, meaning that you can all now watch your favourite Five TV shows on your lovely Apple Macs!
Mac users have a tendancy to be forgotten about, or not supported for a whole host of services. The BBC first launched their BBC iPlayer without Mac support, but have since embraced the platform, both supporting Macs and Apple iPhones. Lets hope that Channel 4 do the same soon.
This is great news for gadget lovers as you can now watch those missed episodes of The Gadget Show online on your Macs.
Posted in Apple, Internet | Tagged Apple, five, Mac, tv, video |
