If you like me you own HTC Sensation you might have been plagued with random shutdowns, usually when it’s in your pocket….grrrrrrr!

I have three fixes:

1) Every couple of months remove the battery and scrap the gold gold contacts to remove any tarnish, the gold contacts of the Sensation have pinpoint contacts.  (This may be why Apple solder their batteries in)

2) Pack the bottom edge with a thin piece of card (a cut up train ticket works well) to make the battery a really tight fit.

3) Dump the stock  HTC battery and buy an Anker battery, about £8 on Amazon and offering considerably better performance than the original battery.

Hard to believe such amazing technology could suffer such silly faults……

 

Ever wondered where your number two’s wind up?

Check out http://www.flushtracker.com/

 

So there you are, 5 hours into your flight back from Miami to London watching a couple of movies on your mobile phone or iPod Touch and the battery dies just as Bruce Willis is about to save the world.. go  my son.. ugh..nooooo. Worse still you are sat in economy seats (you known, these are the ones with outside toilets) so no posh power hook-ups for your gadgets.

Heres’ on one solution.. the Mili Power Miracle Universal USB Battery Pack . A compact external self contained power source that  can power and charge most modern gadgets that get their charge from a USB port. It’s basically a 2000mAh battery encapsulated in a stylish hard shell with USB in/out  ports offering  5 volts out at up to an 1 AMP.   It’s recharged in 4.5 hours from from a computer USB port or car  cigar plug and sports some  clever LEDs that let you know the state of charge. A  variety of adaptors are provided including Nokia, Apple, Android, popular GPS and camera power adaptors and it even comes in it’s own nitty little little pouch.

At £20 incl delivery it’s an ideal power accessory not tied to any specify device, so if you change from an iPhone to an HTC Android or Windows phone you don’t need to update it.

Click here to read the user manual

 

If you use iTunes to stream music over your home network to Windows PCs ,Mac, iPhones and Apple TV you can now add Android phones to the list of supported devices thanks to  a nitty little program call Airbubble.  It also works with programs like Airfoil etc.

 

Have to say I was rather impressed with our local vicar (Kate Wilson) here in Ashurst recently.  She was performing a funeral quite a way from the church part of which included reading extracts from the 1939 King’s speech, but unfortunately had left her notes on the kitchen table! With the clock ticking Kate promptly whipped out her iPhone, Googled the Kings speech and bingo, she was back in business!

Xmas Update:

Kate received an iPad for xmas and is now using it for Sermons!

See also:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/30/churches-increasingly-using-custom-apps/

 

Many of us are guilty  of just assuming people understand a point we might be bring to get across.. but once in a while stepping back and looking at something from someone else’s perspective can make a H-U-G-E difference to an outcome. Check  this clip if you have 1 minute 48 seconds mins to spare…

 

Imagine you have an implant like a pacemaker installed that doctors can program via radio (quite common these days).. but… the bad guys hack in to the implant and blackmail you.  A recent BBC podcast has a really interesting discussion on preventing your implant being hacked….

Click here to listen online

 

I don’t normally talk about where I work on this blog but for once I thought I’d break the mould  as our company blog has a really interesting piece about our Flying unit.   I believe the camera we use on the aircraft shown would not  give you much change out of £1,000,000 .

The  accuracy of much of the work we deliver these days is just a few  centimetres, just as well when  you are digging up the road for gas and water pipes….

You can read the full story here..

 

If you ever been sent a supposed parking ‘fine’ at one of those shopping car parks where you can park for 90 minute for free so long as you collect a ticket from the machine but forget to get the ticket this video is worth a watch.  I’ve had a couple of these supposed ‘fines’ and a friend who is solicitor said just ignore them, ditto C.A.B.  I’ve had also sorts of threats of county court action, balifs coming round, debt collecting agencies and increasing charges but have yet to find anyone who has been taken to court bar this example

Sadly around 40% of  people who get these ‘fines’ (BTW they are not fines in law they are invoices for goods you didn’t order)  usually pay up because they are scared they’ll loose their credit rating which is complete clap trap according to Solicitors.   Word has it on the consumer forums that many small claims court judges loath these sort of actions especially as it’s private land and just trespass which is very open to interpretation.

Anyway, have a look the video…

Further reading -

Consumer Action Group

MoneySavingexperts.com