Yup, took the plunge and got myself an iPad 3G 32gig. Already jailbroke it. Expect some iPad and iPhone posts coming through soon.

Because I travel frequently, I wanted to have a device that can work well with my iPhone and can replace the need for having a netbook as well as a paperback stored in my hand luggage.

The iPad has finally delivered an on the go solution that allows me to connect to my work machine whenever i need to, carry a range of electronic books and media with me for the plane/hotel and being able to browse on a larger screen (than the iPhone).

Bing just announced a new version of the free Bing Application for the iPhone that fixes a number of stability and usability issues.

The new version is only available currently on the US version of iTunes and over a million downloads have already been racked up.

I’ve had the fortune of using Bing on my iPhone and its actually quite a cool looking application and does what it promises. Its interesting to see where this goes especially given the fact that Google and Apple are going head to head with their respective phones. Bing just may become the default search engine on the iPhone.

For me as a consumer, this in combination with Google Apps meets most if not all my needs on my iPhone.

In addition, they have added additional features such as:

• Ability to bookmark maps, sites, businesses and weather.
• Sharing of results via email
• Copy and Paste is now supported within the application
• Search settings and Search history
• Support for all versions of iPod Touch

You can get Bing for the iPhone via the following iTunes Link

As part of coming back, there are a few additional changes we need to make to the site. This includes incorporation of a new theme and look & feel.

We have now put in a placeholder theme until we work through all the kinks. On the whole, it doesn’t look that bad actually. Am working on a suitable logo that will replace the horrible over-size Impact font in the header.

Old Site Theme:

New Site Theme (work in progress):

With more changes on the way :)

I’ve got to admit that over the last few months I haven’t been giving this blog much attention. This is due to a variety of reasons including work, personal life and World of Warcraft to which I’ve returned to spend more time in the virtual world.

In saying that, I’ll be making an effort to return to blogging albeit with a slight difference in terms of topics for the blog. I’ll be broadening it a bit to cater for my current interests which includes everything so far on the blog and extending it to online gaming, coding and UI design.

If there is anything in particular that you wish me to write about, please let me know.

Some of these articles have already been drafted and expect to see them released in the coming weeks.

Dee.

Recently I created a post (turned out to be one of the most popular on this site) to show how to install Live SkyDrive as a Network Drive using Gladinet.

At that time, Gladinet was still a Beta Program. Recently, they released Version 1 and there has been some significant changes to the instructions. I’ve now updated the post to properly reflect these changes.

I’m now using the free edition of Gladinet to connect to my SkyDrive, Google Apps and Google Picasa albums all via My Computer

You can find the article here: Set Up Live SkyDrive as a Network Drive via Gladinet

Hope this helps everyone!

After procrastinating for ages, I decided to give our twitter page a bit of a make-over. Following the excellent guide by Chris Spooner (Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices @ Blog.SpoonGraphics), I think I’ve finally come up with a look and feel that I was happy with.

  http://www.twitter.com/newbtech

Its a little on the lighter side, but I think it works for me :)

My previous attempts was a little too Web 2.0’ish… so i decided to change the colour scheme around a bit to make it look less so:

I actually wanted a darker “logobar”, but then decided against it.

Anyways, let me know what you think :) and if anyone wants any backgrounds done, I’ll looking for practice :)

My wife went for an operation a couple of weeks ago to get rid of her Endometritis. This has resulted in me taking some time off (both work and blog) to look after her and the family while she recovers.

You should see more posts coming through in the next week :)

Dee.

Recently I test drove a free screencast application called ScreenToaster (a free application that can record your screen and upload to YouTube!).

You can check it out here: ScreenToaster Article

One of the major gripes I had with the application is the lack of online help support in the form of a Forum. A forum for any product is important as that builds the community and is one of the first places to look in terms of help and support. Additionally, its a place where others can showcase their ideas, tutorials and suggest ways to use the application well beyond what the original developers have intended for the application.

I’m pleased to say that recently we got an email from Rudy that ScreenToaster has now put in a forum on their site!! This is excellent news and while its still new and relatively unpopulated, with the wide range of follower that ScreenToaster has, I see the forum growing significantly over time.

In addition to that, the latest version of ScreenToaster includes:

• Uploading videos to YouTube can now be done in High Definition format. So you don’t have to stick with hosting your videos on ScreenToaster if you want HD.
• Downloading in .mov format is released so that you can now do some offline editing of the screencast using your favourite video editor
• There is now an API available for developers to use to publish your screencasts directly into your websites/blog/forums.
• More tweaks to make the application even easier to use.

So along with the forums, I can see some really positive directions ScreenToaster is taking. I know its not going to be as fully featured as a commercial product such as Camtasia, but its an excellent free alternative which doesn’t require an application to be installed (apart from Java) and can screencast from any desktop with access to the internet.

Related Links:

• ScreenToaster Forums
• ScreenToaster Home Page
• ScreenToaster Press page (where yes! we’re mentioned too!)
• NewbTech Test Drive of ScreenToaster

I’ve been thinking.. This blog was initially created as a personal blog to hold my thoughts and views on practically anything. So I wanted an online diary of sorts. However, when i started setting up everything, a clear purpose behind this site suddenly eluded me.. and i started going in all sorts of tangents..

I saw that the majority of the blogs out there served two purposes: 1. a personal blog that was hardly visited apart from family and friends, and 2. a resource blog that specialized in one or more areas and over time grew to have a wider audience.

Also, i noticed resource blogs coming in many flavors. A lot of resource sites out there are simply portals that spin out dozens of posts every week with links to everything to do with their subject. This is "good" in some ways, but the articles are not really written by the site owners.. they are simply pointers to other peoples work.

Then you get the great tutorial sites that pick a product such as Photoshop and go hard out in teaching its audience on how to best use that product.

I didn’t (and still don’t know) the purpose behind my blog.. Ideally I want this site to be a place where people can come and see my experiences with test driving new applications or technology. This doesn’t mean that I need to be an expert at these applications. Rather its more of a casual look and more than just providing a blurb and link. Certainly a product may take more than one article to cover off and we want to start doing that as our knowledge of that product grows.

I want a wide set of audience and LOTS of comments :). I don’t want this to be a portal site as such (y’know… the articles that begin with "25 ways to do something" and end up with 25 links to other sites).

So, if there are any products out there that you want us to test drive and play around with and give our thoughts on, please let me know via email or leave a comment here. Our next applications will be the Zoho suite of online applications and ScreenToaster (a great little tool everyone can use to "Record" their desktop and create mini movies)..

Till then.. thanks for reading my ramblings and leave a frickin’ comment!