new.facebook.com thoughts and review

Facebook have launched a design for the site and there is a mirror site showing off a re-designed facebook. you can access your own facebook page by logging on to http://new.facebook.com. Its easy and you can switch back if you don’t like it.

I think the initial goal of the re-design was to stop those annoying applications taking up so much space vertically on the page thus no ideal positions to place ads. We all have friends that install everything and decide to open up their friend lists and information to any tom, dick and harry that can develop something using the facebook api. So those people might benefit by allowing people navigate their profile a little better.

Here’s some changes I found

• Ads are clearer and more visable as ads. Before FB ads got mixed up witht he profiles, now it seems to be a bit more of a clearer design.
• There are a series of tabs along the top where you can create sections of your profile, quite a useful feature. However i HATE how some tabs make the profile picture and contact details columns different, some how this goes against most usabilty standards for websites … hope they fix it soon.
• The site is now optimised to a 1026×768 resolution, which is ok but personally I like 800×600 optimised websites (like the bbc) that have a narrow page width, i find it faster to read and easier to scan with my eyes for stuff I need to read. I like scroll wheels
• Font is now bigger and the padding around the different sections are wider. I don’t like this … its just too much white space for me. adds lot of glare.

So there are some plus and some minus points so check it out and see what you think

HD or not HD, that is the question

Yes that is a really cheesey pun based on a famous line from “Hamlet”, but it is very relevant to this article and a really good question when it comes to buying a camcorder. Ever since HDTV first came out we’ve seen massive adoption of the technology into peoples homes in the form of PlayStation 3, HD DVD players, BluRay players  HD cable boxes and Home Theatre PCs. The technology really has gone leaps and bounds to get where it is today. mostly because of the steep price drop of HD LCD panels in 2006/2007 which have made them popular and a standard for a new TV not only for image quality but the size advantage too.

However, storing and creating your own memories and media in HD is a real technology gap at the moment and definatly not mainstream … yet. For example if you shoot a video clip with a standard digital camcorder you could fill a DVD with 2 hours of video, given that a dvd is 4 gigabytes of data. DVD resolution is 480p which means there are 480 horizontal lines progressivly on the screen at any one time to build the image, HD resolution is 1080p so there are 1080 lines of data on the screen at the same time. So if you have twice the amount of lines they’ll need to be twice as long to maintain the correct aspect ratio of the image. Which means HD will need four times the amount of data as DVD quality. So now your 2 hours of film in HD will require 16GB of space not 4GB.

So what does this mean to you?

You need Skype!

I think anyone who hasn’t used Skype before should certainly give it a try. I would hope that this blog helps regular non-techy people find out about technologies that can make their lives better and more convenient, Skype is one of services that deserves a lot more publicity to push it in to the mainstream because of the ease of use and the potential money savings it can bring to anyone.

Skype is basically an application you install on your computer that allows you to use the internet and the computer microphone/speakers to tranform your computer into a telephone. It uses the technology behind a VOIP  telephone system however the end point is a computer and not a home telephone.

You can call any phone to most international numbers…

Travel alot? try iPass

Travel alot? need to connect to WiFi hotspots but don’t want to pay a $10 day rate? Well I might be able to help you … since you have to be careful with your data cost on those silly Canadian data plans .. tethering your laptop to your brand new iPhone may not be a viable option.

Tethering is a way of connecting your laptop to the internet over a GSM cell phone signal. Most phones that are 3G can act almost like a modem when connected to your laptop with a USB cable so theoretically you can connect ANYWHERE! … however most mobile providers don’t provide data plans that can support the heavy amount of data being transferred by a laptop so it could be a very expensive way to stay online.

However, I wanted to share iPass with you…

More on the iPhone Data Phones

So Rogers have ‘responded’ to the publics less than favourable attitude to the bad voice/data combination to the iPhone plans and have announced a short term deal to entice iPhone shoppers to commit to Rogers for their data plans.

Rogers are offering 6GB for $30 extra on top of your existing, in-market voice plan.

For mobile internet, daily browsing of facebook twitter, email and adhoc mp3 downloads I think 6GB is more than than enough, its not unlimited but its enough and ample breathing space for the heavy user.

However this plan will not include iPhone’s Visual Voicemail and any essentials like call waiting etc.

If you have had one of those nice unlimited voice plans you kept since 2001 or got given a deal on your voice plan for customer retention you will need to give it up and go for one thats on offer on their website …. this includes EPP and corporate plans too so be very careful before commiting yourselfs to this offer you could end up losing out.

Just read these points and consider them before you setup a tent outside a rogers store tonight

1. Be smart and shop smart
2. Don’t get sucked in by the iPhone fad
3. Don’t forget its just a cell phone
4. iPhone is a design marvel and not new technology!
5. There isn’t much that an iPhone does which other phones that have been out for years can’t do …. yet

RedFlagDeals.com!

For nearly 3 years I have been a part of a community called RedFlagDeals.com, in Canada it is the best site for deals and coupon codes you’ll ever find. People on there are friendly, knowledgeable and, for me, the forums are the last web site I look at before committing to buy most things. There has been times where I’ll be ready to checkout something online, search RFD and find a coupon code that saves me 10-15% off the bat!

This is a list of some of the savings I have made in the past

Harmony 880 Remote for $119

Realtor.ca is here!

Finally Realtor.ca is here. Its leaps and bound better than MLS.ca which will soon retire.

Realtor.ca brings in the best of Web 2.0 like google mashups and web services to allow you to search the city or property to rent and buy easily.

Its really empowering and I’m sure the site has stirred mixed feelings amoung the realtor crowd. I can image some tech savvy realtors embracing this alot however some not so techy realtors might think this as a threat to their businesses, we’ll see.

I just remember searching mls hours upon end looking for comparable properties in my area I would need to query each street separately, now with this site there is so much more you can do.

Happy Property Hunting!

TopGear tries out the Lexus Park Assist

One of my favourite shows on TV is top gear, just this week (on BBC Canada) they had a go at the lexus park assist thats is claimed to park your vehicle without you touching the steering wheel … check it out its hilarious

Rogers at it again! Home Phone this time

So while we’re reading about how rogers plan to address the negative publicity from their 3G data plans and “gouging” Canadians. I just got a call from rogers saying that they have bought my landline telephone operator and, if I agree to take on rogers home phone, they will commit me to a 2 year contract!

These guys never stop, given that my choices are to get VOIP or use my mobile phone all they time, I had to argue that they can not commit me to such a term. After a while I got it contract free … who knows, they might iron out all the flaws in VOIP soon?

Facebook – Windows Mobile Integration

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could relate all your facebook friends to everyone in your outlook contacts and then download up-to-date information to your phone? Well we’re nearly there! There is a great app call Fonebook available to download for free.

The app is installed on your computer and it can automatically download Birthdays, Photos and Status updates directly into your contacts in your Outlook. As far as I can figure out it matches facebook friends to outlook contacts by email but the app allows you to filter all the unmatched friends and assocaite them to Contacts manually. I just found out that you can keep it running in the background and it will automatically run every 10 minutes if you so wish.

Once all your contacts are updated in your outlook you can then sync your phone with your computer to get all the photos and birthday reminders on your phone … pretty cool eh? I haven’t has any issues with the app yet.

Happy 141th Birthday Canada!

I’d like to wish everyone a happy Canada Day! Canada is 141 years old today and every Canadian should be proud of were we are today.

I just started this blog and thankful for everyone coming by to visit. Please leave a comment if you found my articles useful or even if you disagree! 

iPhone in Canada

Finally the iPhone will touchdown in Canada on July 11th. After scanning most speculation and chatter on the internet about the reason for the delay, I could only think this was a massive political stunt on behalf of Canada’s parasitic wireless telecoms network Rogers Communications. Rogers is Canada’s only GSM cell carrier.

GSM is a section of the wireless telecoms market where the cell phone contains a SIM card which can be removed and placed in another GSM phone. GSM is better technology for world travelers and people that like to change their phones without notifying the network. Today in Canada there are two CDMA carriers (Bell and Telus koodo = Telus by the way)

Parasitic, you might say I’m being harsh but I strongly feel that Canada is long overdue for healthy competition in the GSM market or some decent governing body to stop Canadians getting ripped off for any moderately up-to-date technology. In the UK there is a company called Ofcom (http://www.ofcom.org.uk) which watches over the telecoms network and one of the duties is to ensure a wide range of telecoms services is available to everyone in the UK. This is great as it looks at the big picture and governs the service as a whole … not just on their by own bottom line.

Google Documents

One of my favourite Google applications is Google Docs. Its still in beta but it works just fine and haven’t had any  bad experiences with it.

I use it to share documents and collaborate information. Great for To Do lists, Planning Projects/Vacations, Organisations and general business use.

The best thing about it is you can create documents online and work on the document at the same time with any user with an internet connection. If both people update the same data it prompt you to resolve the conflict with no data loss. You can create Spreadsheets, Documents and Presentations. (I was deliberate not to mention any of the Microsoft office products as these work quite differently!!).

TomTom GO 730 Review

So after loads of research and numerous returnage to find the GPS thats right for me I ended up waiting 2 months to purchase the TomTom 730. I found it a week after it released in the US at www.gpscentral.ca, I was expecting it to take longer to come up to Canada as with everything else but I snapped it up as soon as I saw it on shopbot.ca.

I bet you’re thinking “why wait when there is so much choice on the market?” well reason is that the new features of the 730 are very significant to the previous models and when you compare to other brands for the price you do get alot of features crammed in there.

There is no differences between the 730 and 930 that I found except the 930 came with European, US and Canadian maps however the 730 model only comes with US and Canadian maps.

So let me break down the features I found useful and what it all means to us