Archives

Sep
23
2009

TomTom? More like LOST TOM!

On two recent trips I decided to use TomTom for iPhone instead of my standard TomTom and very stupidly I left my my standard unit at home.

Driving around Edinburgh it was losing GPS signal, putting me on roads no where near I was and lagging so badly behind that it was really difficult to take the right turnings when they were really close together. We resorted to using Google Maps to route ourselves to our destination.

Obviously the limitation is with the iPhone rather than with TomTom hence them saying you need to have the car kit WHICH YOU CANNOT BUY YET!

Really wish I had not bought this, I feel ripped off and will be firing off an email to them as they simply should not have released this without the car kit.

Sep
06
2009

My PS3 and YLOD

A few days ago my PS3 turned off whilst playing COD:WaW. It simply froze, turned off with a flashing red led. So I waited a few minutes, turned it back on and all was ok.

Or so I thought

The next day my son was playing Ratchet and Clank when it did the same thing, except this time it would not come back on. When I turned it on several hours later I noticed Green Led -> Yellow Led -> Flashing Red Led. Checking the internet shows this was a YLOD which basically means it has a hardware issue and requires to be sent to be repaired. Sony want £150 for a refurbished unit and after a scan of repair companies I found a company called Console Doctor, and the good news about that is they are a local company and it would cost £69.99 to repair.

At this point I decided to do a bit of research into the error to see what it most likely is. There are many many reports of this problem and the diagnosis is that the chips on the motherboard are likely not to be seated correctly due to movement when overheated during use.

A possible solution :

If, like me, you are confident in taking things apart then there is something you can try.

Tools Required :

  • Phillips Screwdriver
  • Small flatblade screwdriver (or Torx security screwdriver)
  • Faulty PS3
  • Heat Gun (yes that’s right a heat gun).

Then follow what this guy does here

I followed this and lo and behold my PS3 is now functional, not sure for how long but for now it works! WOOHOO

Aug
23
2009

6 out of 9

Sunderland CrestYesterdays important win over Blackburn means 6 points out of 9.

Cana, Cattermole once again impressed me immensely. Then again, we do tend to like footballers willing to “get in” there and make some hard tackles and that was that these two did. Something we have been missing for a long time.

We struggled terribly with the height of the Blackburn players though, the number of corners and long throws they had throughout the game were, for the majority of the time, troublesome to say the least.

Kenwyne’s first goal was well taken with an excellent assist by Steed and I reckon a smaller player would probably not have managed to get the ball and his second was a powerful header by a great cross by Cattermole 😀

It was quite a messy win and a fortunate one, but at the end of the day it’s all about the points on the board.

Aug
18
2009

ShrinkURL for iPhone

Paul Carmody, @macjasp on Twitter, has created an iPhone App called ShrinkURL, (Site, iTunes) which can shorten url’s using the tinyurl.com service.

When posting links on Twitter nearly everyone uses a link shortening service in order to cram as much as they can into the 140 character limit, for example my quick review of TomTom for iPhone is 56 characters long (https://www.g4shallow.co.uk/2009/08/17/tomtom-for-iphone/) but using tinyurl this is shortened to 25 characters http://tinyurl.com/n39zom

In the images shown below I have copied the URL http://www.macjasp.com/2009/08/shrinkurl-for-iphone.html from Safari

Then launched ShrinkURL

and voilà the shortened url is copied back to the iPhone clipboard. For me this is extremely useful in order to shorten links ready to paste into Tweetie.

You can also type a URL in the application itself and click on the go button which will then shorten the URL and copy that to your clipboard. If you have non-url text in your clipboard when you open ShrinkURL you will see the following error so links that don’t work are not created 😉

Of course some people will have personal preferences on which shortening service they use such as bit.ly, is.gd etc so a user selectable preference would be an added bonus, something that the developer has stated will be coming in a future update.

Nice one Paul, a useful application that I can see me using often (especially when it has bit.ly support ;))

Aug
17
2009

TomTom for iPhone

TomTom for the iPhone was finally released in the UK today. I have been looking forward to this since they announced it as it would make sense to just have one device. I bought the European version as we holiday in France so it will come in handy. After taking an absolute age to download and sync I launched the app.

Clicking on the iPhone application gives this splash screen.

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To navigate simply tap the screen anywhere to bring up the menu, this brings up the following screen

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You then have the option to select Home, Favourite, Address, Recent Destination, Point of Interest, Postcode, Point on Map, Contact. I tested the Postcode and Address options.

Postcode Option :
When you first select this you are prompted to select a country. The UK postcode selection supports the full 7 character postcode which I think is essential in a navigation app. Once you enter the Postcode if the street supports numbers you will be asked to enter the number otherwise it will automatically plan your route and present you with a summary.

Address Option :
Once you tap this option you are then presented to enter the city where you want to go to, once you enter that you are asked to enter the street or crossing. As you type the street it will show you the streets along with the first part of the Postcode. It works incredibly well.

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Clicking on options shows you the following screen

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Clicking on the Instructions shows you a text version of the route that you will be directed on.

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Example of the navigation screen in Landscape mode.

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Map of route

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Browse Map

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Whilst browsing the map you can click on a POI to get more information, navigate to it, call the number associated with the POI etc

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With regards to POI, the majority of them are turned off which is probably a good thing as there are loads of categories.

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I only tested the actual navigation on a short journey to Penshaw and then back again. What I did find is that the GPS positioning can be quite slow in keeping up or pops you onto a road which is nearby thus causing the application to re-route you which can be a bit of a pain and in a place that needs you to take several junctions one after another I can see people taking the wrong turning or missing it completely.

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For example in this screen grab I had actually turned right just before the arrow and it thought I had gone straight on. Now, of course this could be due to the position of where I had the phone, mounted in front of the radio (I plugged it into the LiquidAux Deluxe) and not on the dash which may help (will test this with a screen dock tomorrow).

Speaking of the LiquidAux the TomTom application will actually sound the spoken words through the device and therefore via my car speakers (just wish voice calls would do this!).

I suspect that when they release the car kit this will cure the GPS lag and keep it in the right position but only time will tell. Also, where is the Live features? With the iPhone having 3G, GPRS etc and with pretty decent data plan in the UK on O2 I think that this is major oversight, or maybe they will just use it to inject more interest in the app in future updates.

A quick note about playing your music at the same time. The music simply cuts out, reads out the direction then music comes back in. Personally I would of preferred that the music volume was turned down a touch and the direction overlayed but I can understand why it goes silent first.

I will give the TomTom for iPhone a better run out over the next couple of weeks and report back my findings.