Apple hype

Thank God. I thought I was going mad. I thought I was the only one noticing how much free advertising Apple receives through the Australian media.

Luckily, we can always rely on Australia's ABC MediaWatch to tell it as it is.

Watch the first few minutes of their latest episode to see what I mean.

Telstra 4g

Whilst at JB HiFi today, I took the time to check out the new HTC Velocity 4g. I was particularly interested in checking out just how fast the 4g from Telstra is.

The friendly sales guy suggested I do a speedtest via, you guessed it, the Speedtest app and so I ran that on the Velocity and also on my 3g HTC Desire.

The result was pretty impressive:

4g (Velocity) - ping 81ms 24.3 mbps
3g (Desire) -    ping 120ms 2.758 mbps

Wow. I expected a bit of difference but that is quite impressive!

Of course, I don't know the number, but there can't be too many people on 4g yet, so the network certainly wouldn't be getting overloaded. This is in contrast to the 3g network I was using (lunchtime in the Sydney CBD so pretty much peak time) but still!

Apparently at present the 4g network covers "5 kms from the GPO" according to the sales rep. The rest of the time you're still stuck on the (what now seems like) slow 3g network.

In a way, 4g is TOO fast at the moment. What I mean by that is I couldn't imagine getting blistering speeds and then the network dropping out and having to go back to just average. It would be like using cable bopradband and every now and again someone coming in, unplugging the cable and hooking up your old 56kbps modem.

In the future though, once the network expands, I'll be 4g'ing it all the way.

Ipad 3 review

For people like me with not a lot of liquid cash, and no connections with companies' PR departments to send out freebies, I rely on one simple method for reviewing new products. It's a method that many others use also, when deciding whether to purchase a product and that is, pop down to the shop and have a hands on play with the display device.

That is exactly the method I used today when I popped down to my local JB Hifi store and checked out the "new iPad" (God I hate that name!)

First impressions? It's OK. Frankly, I had read a fair few reviews which had discussed the miraculous, beautiful, incredible (etcetera) new display so I was looking forward to my eyes being treated to something good. Unfortunately, maybe due to the beat up, I was left disappointed.

Don't get me wrong, the display is nice. The colours are bright, the pictures are crisp, but overall it's not enough to sway me over to the Apple tablet world.

Oh, and the other thing...it does get bloody hot! I had read some articles about the new battery heating up but most were American and were blaming it on the 4G radio being turned on. Here in Australia, where I assume JB would have not bothered with the 4G, the unit was still VERY warm to touch. A fact made even more curious as I'm pretty sure the device was plugged in, not running on battery power.

So all up I rate the new iPad about a 3.5/5

Twitter has time travel

Einstein believed time travel is beyond our reach, but he never predicted Twitter.

I find it curious that when you add a new tweeter (is that the right term?) to follow, you not only get all future tweets but tweets from before you added them. I really don't want to see what people thought was relevant 5 days ago but maybe some people do.

So, I suppose the moral is be careful what you tweet. Something bad you say about someone a week ago, may be read by that person today when they decide to follow you.

Google AdChoices still needs some work

With my surname "Church" I have put up with many years of jokes, puns, comments etc regarding my religious beliefs but now I find a new type of problem.

It appears Google AdWords thinks my site must be of a religious nature as I keep having popup ads pointing people to church related sites. Don;t think I'm going to get too many clicks on those ones, somehow!

Probably this post won't help too much either, come to think of it.

Maybe I should add some keywords like "Satan", "anti-Pope", "paganism" or the like.

UPDATE 11/3/12: I have since found a way to edit the ads that appear on my blog and have taken out religion as an option. Seems I was a bit hast with this post heading. Oh well. You live and learn.

iPad 3, sorry.. iPad HD..um...new iPad - Gee didn't expect that.

Image by mobileszoo.com

The new iPad has arrived and I have to say it seems to be with more of a small pop rather than a bang.


Weirdest part? The name. New iPad just seems wrong. What's going to happen when they release the next one? Can I have a new, new iPad please? Or are they going to say iPad, iPad 2, new iPad, iPad 3? Very strange.

New features?

• it's faster
• it has retina display
• it has a better back camera, but surprisingly not a better front facing one
• it cooks for you (oh, no...sorry not yet)

 Really, nothing most punters had not already predicted

What's missing?

• There's no update on front facing camera (i.e. - the camera still sucks)
• It's not lighter
• There's still no USB port (but that's never gonna happen)
• You still can't upgrade memory with an SD card (probably dreaming on that one also)
• You can't get it in purple (just to keep up 'the last point must be silly' requirement )

iPad 3 - ho hum.

So, not long until the iPad 3 announcement. I don't think there's been a day this week that there hasn't been a news article or 20 about what we can expect.

I am less than impressed with models 1 and 2 and I can't think of much that will excite me about 3.

Feature-wise, Apple is always playing catch up with Android when it brings out a new model but somehow seems to be able to convince media (and consumers who read that media) that they are cutting edge innovations.

If the iPad 3 has a full USB port I might change my mind, but the odds of that are the same as Steve Jobs coming back from the dead for the announcement.

Whoops autocorrect!

A boy in America wanted to type "gunna be at West Hall" in his iPhone and the autocorrect changed it to "Gunman at West Hall" which sent the cops into a frenzy and the schools into shutdown mode.

Whoops. It pays to double-check before hitting send.

Here's the full article from SMH.com.au

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/smartphones-autocorrect-function-puts-high-school-on-lockdown-20120302-1u6pq.html