I bought SmartThings some time ago. It was my first venture into the home automation market and the kit seemed like a good purchase. I got the Hub, to make it all work, some presence sensors for attaching to things that move in and out of the house, a water sensor, a door sensor, power
Recently I noticed a problem with my PlayStation 4. When watching a Blu-ray with one of the new audio formats (DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD) it would only play in stereo. Play a game, stream something, or watch a DVD or Blu-ray with an audio track of Dolby Digital or DTS and they played
SmartThings arrived on the marketplace and was quickly backed by Samsung who proclaimed their idea of all things connected, and I mean really connected, not just a company selling their own connected items which didn’t talk to anyone else’s connected items. Suddenly SmartThings looked to be a really strong and viable choice to connect your
The Internet of Things doesn’t work. That’s it right there. I would say that’s all I have to say on the topic but that would be lying, and those that read my blog would know that. So let me elaborate. The Internet of Things doesn’t work because companies don’t want it to. They haven’t looked
I’ve now had my Vivosmart HR – that’s the new Garmin Vivosmart device, a wrist band that measures heart rate, delivers notifications from your phone, and more – for some seven days. While it does more than the previous Vivosmart, which I had for some time and found practical, easy and extremely useful, it isn’t
I’ve been thinking about two things to do with data and how it is presented, mainly to do with Learning Systems but the ideas apply to anything, and lately I’ve been using my Internet Banking application and wondering why it doesn’t behave in this way.
There are two concepts I have in my mind whenever I’m looking at a Learning System, contextual data and the analysis of the data on hand. Basically the idea of a system analysing the data it has on you and, making assumptions and suggestions based on it, and providing those to the owner of the data as and when they need them.
I’m back. I’ve neglected my own blog for too long, so I decided to return to it and give it a little revamp, starting with MovableType 4.
One of my friends had already done it and he didn’t have many problems, so I thought I would give it a go, and I have to say the installation and upgrade was dead easy. However if you to take advantage of many of the new and powerful features of MT4, then you’re in trouble.
I use Skype mainly as a chat system, but now and again I use it for telephone calls, indeed it was all set up to record an interview with a major Hollywood actor, until that fell through.
So when I noticed Skype for Windows Mobile come out I didn’t instantly download it and try it, but last night I did, and ran it to see how it went.
There were a few surprises, one being it worked perfectly, and it’s still in Beta. Microsoft take note.
I’ve seen this idea somewhere before, I’m not sure where, but I remember it’s stayed with me since and only now have I decided to write about it. These are the tools I use on the Web and on my computer at home. Some I find more invaluable than others, and some are just gimmicky, but all serve a purpose and a positive purpose that I use.
I plan to write this over a few days and see how much comes out about each tool, if there’s enough I might create a separate review on my Review site, we’ll see. For now let’s get on with the list of tools, what use they are and why I use them. Hopefully you’ll find it useful and perhaps pick up a couple yourself.
A little while ago my Windows XP decided that it would no longer allow software to be installed. During an upgrade of Internet Explorer 7, some important registry keys were labelled as read only, and these appear to be ones required for software installation.
So after a lot of searching I found some solutions. I tried them, and none of them worked. Then I happened upon another one which I had been trying previously, searching through the registry and setting the parent permissions down through the tree.
I tried it, and something very strange happened. I couldn’t access anything on my desktop. My registry was now locked out and things just went from bad to worse.