Thursday, November 21, 2013

Where did Apple get their logo from...?

I wonder if Steve Jobs and his Apple Inc. co-founders popped into The Apple Bite Roadhouse in Edenvale early in the 1970's for a quick bite, and saw the sign below as inspiration for the logo of their future technology behemoth...?
(What they might have been doing in Edenvale of all places, I cannot speculate over...:))


I mean how many establishments use a semi-munched apple as their logo?
After all, Apple Inc. was founded in 1976, yet the Apple Bite Roadhouse was founded in 1970... and so the plot thickens!

Oh and they make damn fine pizza as well (the Apple Bite Roadhouse that is, not Apple Inc.) :)
Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, November 1, 2013

Thinking of upgrading your Apple Mac to Mavericks? Better read this first...

It's crazy to think how huge corporations nowadays can affect our lives and change our behaviour, simply by changing the way their products work.
In so doing, they force their customers to break old habits and adopt new ways of doing things.

Apple has recently done exactly this, by means of the much touted "Mavericks" update to OS X - version 10.9.
In case you missed it, gone are the days of the big cats.
No longer will we have such bravado codenames as "Mountain Lion" and "Tiger", by which to refer to the various OS X versions.
Mavericks is in fact a popular surfing location in Northern California, and future updates to OS X will carry the names of locations in California that have inspired the company.

Onto the point of this post.
One of the most controversial changes in Mavericks (in my opinion anyway), is the obliteration of Sync Services.
In layman's terms, this means that you can now no longer sync your iPhone / iPad calendars, tasks and contacts to your Mac, via iTunes using USB or WIFI.
Think about that for a sec - pre-Mavericks, iTunes had a tab called "Info" when you plugged in your iDevice. That tab is now gone.
Now if you are someone who uses Microsoft Outlook within the Mac environment, and you like to keep your contacts and calendars in sync between Outlook and your iDevices, well you're clean outta luck.

Outlook used to be able to sync to iCal and Address Book using Sync Services. With Sync Services now gone, so is that sync relationship - Outlook is now dead in the water and totally isolated from your iDevices.

In terms of a fix, patch, update or resolution, nothing is forthcoming at this stage from Apple or Microsoft.
Apple forums all over the web are abuzz as Mac users continue to hit this seemingly backward move for OSX.
In terms of workarounds, they range from tedious to extreme...:

Tedious:

Point iCal (now Calendar), your iPhone and iPad to your iCloud account so that they all sync there.
With all your iDevices now talking, manual labour is required in order to keep Outlook in sync.
For EVERY new appointment created or accepted in Outlook, you have to drag that appointment from the Outlook calendar, down onto the Calendar icon in the Dock.
Calendar will then popup, asking you to confirm which category you would like to add the appointment to, and you're done.
Tedious as hell, but it's all we have right now.

Extreme:

Backup your Mac and downgrade back to Mountain Lion (10.8).
Extreme, yet it appears that some people are prepared to go this route in order to retain USB syncing of their devices with Outlook.

It all comes back to what I said at the beginning of this post - changing the way we behave as consumers.
Apple clearly want their customer base to become more reliant on iCloud, and what better way to achieve this, than to kill USB syncing in OS X. Nasty.
I am also not quite sure what message they are sending to Microsoft here - Apple seems eager to lay blame at Microsoft's door for not seeing the update coming and making Outlook more compatible, yet the counter argument is valid as well - with so many Apple customers depending on a sync partnership between Outlook and OS X, why the hell not just leave Sync Services alone?

Will Apple fix it? I doubt it.
Will Microsoft update Outlook 2011 to remedy it? Probably not - Office 2014 is likely around the corner anyway...

What will you do now that your iWorld is out of sync?

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

What People Do On Smartphones To Pass Their Time?


What People Do On Smartphones To Pass Their Time?
This Infographic is produced by Coupon Audit (provides Abebooks coupons) and Nybbles And Bytes

Want to place this infographic on your blog?
Just copy and paste the code below, and you are good to go:


Enhanced by Zemanta

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Relive Warcraft on the Nokia Lumia 920... or something similar anyway :)

The Nokia Lumia 920 continues to impress me on a daily basis, as I find out more about what the phone can do each day.

That's the thing about Nokia, and maybe it's to their detriment somewhat - they release awesome yet understated devices that are capable of amazing things, but they don't proclaim their devices to be "the best in the world" or make use of other similar marketing tactics a la Apple.
Good example - the Lumia 920 screen has a higher pixel density than the iPhone 5 screen, and looks easily as good (if not better), yet Apple will quickly tout their screen as being "the most advanced screen in the world", or something along those lines.

In the meantime, Nokia will carry on doing what it does so amazingly well - build brilliant devices, but minus the over-the-top in-your-face arrogant marketing.

Bit of a deviation there from the topic at hand, and indeed the title of this post, which is the awesome game "Royal Revolt!", available for free at the Windows Mobile Store.
Royal Revolt! revives fond memories of days (and nights) spent waging medieval war upon Orcs, slaying peons, mining gold, harvesting lumber, building foundries and barracks, casting Bloodlust spells... well you get where this is going (at least if you ever played Warcraft, that is).

While the gameplay is somewhat different to Warcraft (you are the Hero, around whom soldiers, archers, mages etc. fight), a lot of the game bears a striking resemblance to the original Blizzard masterpiece.
The game is a "reverse tower defense" game, meaning that you control an army who is launching an attack on an enemy castle, meeting enemy soldiers, archers and towers along the way.

The graphics are also a treat, and the hardware of the Lumia 920 ensures fluidity all the way.
Check out these screenshots to see what I mean:







The game is available for several platforms, namely Windows Phone 8, iPhone, iPad, Android and more - check out the website to download - www.royalrevolt.com.

Get it while its free!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Monday, May 27, 2013

Today's Bing photo kinda bent my mind a bit...

Bing usually put up an awesome photo on their search page each day.
Generally one can expect to see amazing natural sites, beautiful places, weird and wonderful creatures and other such things.

Today's photo however, is truly something to behold.
I give you, the world's largest cave - Hang Son Doong, in Vietnam:


Just try get your head around these dimensions - the biggest chamber of the cave is 200m high, 150 wide, and more than 5km long!
For more facts, photos, and info about this incredible natural wonder, click here.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Monday, March 11, 2013

Monday, February 25, 2013

Which phone should I upgrade to?

It's almost that time again - when my cellular network cleverly gets me to sign up for another 2 year contract with them, by offering me a "free" upgrade to my existing cellular device.
That's right folks, Cell C are giving me a free new phone... not!

Anyway, I thought I would put it out there and get some suggestions on what my next handset should be.
Here's my cellular device history thus far, right from the very beginning... my very first Ericsson GA318...:

- Ericsson GA318
- Ericsson T10s
- Motorola Timeport T250
- Sagem MyX-5
- Sagem MyX-7
- Nokia 6100
- Nokia N80
- Nokia N95
- Nokia N97
- Nokia E7

So no prizes for guessing which brand I am most likely going with for my next phone... :)
Things are heating up in the smartphone arena though, and right now there are so many players out there, all manufacturing spectacular devices.
A few that spring to mind are:

- Nokia Lumia 920 - Nokia's make or break flagship Windows device, after their departure from the long-standing Symbian OS.
So far it has received rave reviews all over the web... (pardon my bias - I have supported Nokia for so many years... :)
- Samsung Galaxy S3 - Samsung's hardware powerhouse, running Android and equipped with everything but intercontinental missiles... perhaps we will see those on the Galaxy S4...(which, incidentally launches in less than a month... what else will that bring I wonder?)
- Apple iPhone 5 - A strong contender by any account. Some feel that the evolutionary development of the 5 over the 4s has dropped Apple behind in the innovation stakes, yet this handset continues to garner steadfast support from Apple fans worldwide.

- Blackberry Z10 - Although Blackberry has been on a general decline in recent years, the Z10 packs in everything that Blackberry fans have asked for in the past. Featuring hardware that matches up to or exceeds current trends, can the Z10 pull Blackberry back from the brink?
Worth considering, I think...

Then there's HTC, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and others, all with their own unique spin on cutting edge smartphone technology.
It's a tough choice, and obviously my Nokia run has got me slightly biased in the direction of the Finns, but I still have a month or 2 to go, and in that time a lot can happen in the smartphone world.
So what should I get folks?
What would you get as your next smartphone upgrade?
Enhanced by Zemanta

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Martin Solveig - The Night Out: Awesome track & awesome video...

Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Henri seems to think that they can sit behind a computer and churn out "musical" drivel that often (unfortunately) ends up on the charts, even though it required about as much imagination and creativity as I have inside one of my armpit hairs... and that 'aint a lot.

Let me not start a full out /rant about some of these modern day electronic artists, but it is really rare to come across someone who can create a decent track, in a climate currently filled with a maelstrom of musical mayhem...

Decent music is one aspect - the image and attitude that the artist portrays is another important one that stands out for me.
A commonly found image among electronic artists today is one of being too damn cool for school, with heads about as huge as boulders on their little shoulders.
It's as if being able to tell a computer program to make their music for them just transformed them into the Bruce Lee of the musical world, even though you usually never hear them sing or play an instrument in any of their tracks...

With all that out of the way, French DJ Martin Solveig simply rocks.
He's the guy who created the 2010 hit "Hello", in collaboration with Canadian act Dragonette (you will know it when you hear it, trust me).
The guy makes decent music. He can sing. He pokes fun at himself. His music videos are awesome, and funny to boot.
He often wears a silly headband, but somehow manages to pull it off like you or I simply never could.

His music video for "The Night Out" plays out on the streets of Paris, where he shares a date night with his girl as they cruise the streets on a scooter, go for a spot of clubbing, and finally see in the sunrise while enjoying breakfast on a river boat (all under the watchful eye of the seriously funny-looking guy steering the boat :)).

Very cool - see if you agree...:

Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, February 22, 2013

To all those confused people out there, THIS is what a biscuit looks like...

South Africa is known for its unique slang and sayings that only we locals will ever understand.
I won't even start to go into them here - there are countless other sites and blogs that deal with the subject in more detail.

One of the ones that I hear a lot of late, has to do with this humble piece of food:


Yes folks, it's a biscuit.

See those crumbs?
Note how it has been baked in an oven?
It's an edible and probably rather tasty baked good.

Usage (or abusage, if that's a word) of the humble biscuit, goes along the following lines:

- Graeme Smith smacks a six during an innings: A common response to this might be a fan shouting: "Graeme you biscuit!!!"

- Friday arrives...: Someone who has had a torrid week might be tempted to exclaim: "Friday you biscuit!!!" 

Neither the captain of the South African cricket team, nor the last day of the workweek resemble a biscuit, at least not as far my eyes can see.

So there we have it - next time you want to compliment somebody or something that you like - remember the image above.
Then compare your object of affection with this image, and decide if you should be calling said object of affection, a "biscuit"...

Unless of course, you are opening a pack of delicious Tim Tams or something similar...
Then by all means, use the "you biscuit" compliment to your hearts delight :)

Enhanced by Zemanta

Grab your inverter now and be prepared for Load Shedding!

Shop HP Printers here!

Low on ink? Shop Genuine HP Ink and Toner here!

Shop Targus laptop bags, USB hubs, accessories and gadgets here!

Popular Posts