Category: Tech

Ain’t got the Knowhow

I was listening to the BBC’s You and Yours programme and heard a feature on ransomware (malware that encrypts your files and then demands money for the key to decrypt it), and having data...

On Ubuntu ditching Unity

Yesterday Canonical, the company which develops the Linux distribution Ubuntu, for a long time the most popular distribution (or ‘distro’) and the basis for Linux Mint, possibly the most popular distro at the moment,...

But it’s not Unix!

A friend recently posted on Facebook this video in which tech columnist Matt Weinberger explains, in a minute and a half or so, why he switched to a Surface Book laptop running Windows 10...

CyanogenMod knocked on head

Update 26th Dec: Cyanogen, Inc. turned off CyanogenMod’s web servers yesterday, likely in response to a final blog post from the team. The download site remains up until the end of the month. As...

A few weeks back on Android

Over the summer, my iPhone broke down. The charging point initially stopped charging when the Lightning plug was not plugged in at exactly the right angle, but one morning while I was out driving...

Apple iCloud scam warning

Earlier today I got an email ostensibly from Apple, which told me that my iCloud ID was facing deletion because I had not ‘confirmed’ it. The email read: You’ve not yet confirmed your iCloud...

When will Google fix the Chrome wi-fi bug?

I’ve been using Linux on the desktop (and laptop) since about 2003, and I’ve seen it progress from being something that didn’t work with most of the hardware I had access to (including the...

CyModding your LG G-Pad

So, last week I got my replacement for my iPad, which I was dissatisfied with because of the completely inadequate Apple keypad (see earlier entry). I looked for a similar size Android tablet, because...

Bye-byePad

Well, I’m sending my iPad back to the vendor today. Amazon’s policy is that an item is returnable for about a month, and I’ve had mine a week and a half (although I made...

Screenshot from an iPad's home screen, showing various app icons.

iPad: First impressions

The other day I took delivery of my new tablet computer, an iPad mini with a Retina display, which cost £290 plus delivery charges on Amazon. It’s a wi-fi only model; I can’t afford...

Wanted: decent Android Twitter app

I’ve used Android since 2009, and I’m currently on my fourth phone and first tablet. I’ve used Twitter since about the same time, maybe a little bit more. Having a smartphone pretty much makes...

Don’t believe the “wearable tech” hype

SwiftKey: Top 10 tech predictions for the future Last week SwiftKey (or rather TouchType Ltd), the company behind a sophisticated predictive keypad for Android devices (which I used for several years before switching to...

CyanogenMod and ungrateful users

Recently, as I posted here last week, I upgraded my main phone (a Nexus 4) to run CyanogenMod 10.2 which is based on Android 4.3 — they are starting work on the next version...

Taking care of business

The last few weeks I’ve not been blogging as much as I used to, and there’s one important reason for this: I’ve been working on getting my HGV (truck) licence. You have to do...

CyanogenMod 10.2 and the Nexus 4

I bought a Nexus 4 a couple of months ago when it was reduced to clear, having previously been using a Galaxy Nexus which ran CyanogenMod 10.1, which was based on Android 4.2. This...