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Category Archives: Gadgets

Jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 iPad2

January 23rd, 2012
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iOS 5.0.1

Yep, it’s Chinese New Year eve yesterday and I jailbroke my iPad2, finally. My iPad2 is now happily on iOS5.01 and I am a happy man, maybe but we will see. Jailbreaking has its certain risks but I am still glad that I have done it. To be honest, I install cracked apps once a while but I still end up buying them later. I guess jailbreaking my iPad2 is just like giving freedom to it.

On this occasion, I used the GreenPoison’s Absinthe jailbreak software. It’s not extremely difficult as I just need to update my iPad2 to iOS 5.0.1 and then run the Absinthe on my Mac, and click the Jailbreak button. It only took like 5 minutes to finish jailbreaking and installing Cydia. My first mistake was to have the Passcode turned on. The first two rules are to turn off the Passcode and VPN. I didn’t know it until the Cydia installing process as the jailbreaking process was a success. As usual, I googled for the failure and it was then only I knew that I broke one of the two rules. Anyway, I just re-jailbroke it and it worked.

One frustrating thing that happened on my iPad2 while on jailbreak iOS 4.3.3 was the the iTunes sync failed to work after sometime. That meant that I had to copy out all my IPAs before jailbreaking to iOS 5.0.1. I should have tried to re-jailbreak it at iOS 4.3.3 and test the sync. However, what’s done was done and after jailbreaking to iOS 5.0.1, I downloaded a random app and tried the sync almost immediately. It worked and I guess I will be syncing quite often from now on just to be sure that the sync work and save me the trouble of backing up the IPAs next time.

So far, I have only tested the multi gesture and it is not what I have expected. I thought I could use multi gesture in Safari. However, I would be interested to see how the notifications work, which I haven’t tried yet.

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iPod Nano bug

December 9th, 2011
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iPod Nano Clock Faces

iPod Nano Clock Faces

I have been using a graphite iPod Nano on a Minimal Tik Tok watchband for almost a week now. As with all the reviews, Minimal Tik Tok is a high quality watchband and as expected, iPod Nano can be clipped to it without much hassle. Well, you might be thinking that of course it will fit as it’s designed for iPod Nano. I beg to differ as in the past, I have found that even some specifically made products have their flaws.

While using iPod Nano as a watch is fun, forgetting about having to press the sleep/wake button in order to see the time, I found out that the Time On Wake doesn’t actually work like how it should be. Let’s start from the beginning. I use iPod Nano first as a watch and then as a music player a few days later. So, for the first couple of days, Time On Wake worked every single time. I could go into each menu and press sleep/wake button twice and it would show me the clock. While looking at the time, I could also change the clock face and also swipe to use the timer functions.

I then copied some songs into iPod Nano via iTunes. That worked as well. However, I soon found out that when I woke up my iPod Nano, it showed clock but a single touch would bring it to Now Playing. I couldn’t change the clock face or use the timer functions. Instead, I had to scroll through the menu and enter through the clock menu. While accessing the clock through the clock menu, the Time On Wake didn’t work anymore and when iPod Nano woke up, it showed Now Playing instead. Hence, in order for iPod Nano to show the Time On Wake, I needed to go to the main menu before putting it to sleep.

It clearly is a bug. The easiest solution is to just connect it to iTunes and it becomes normal again. The problem will come back as soon as you start to play a song.

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Radios and Scanners

September 26th, 2011
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Walkie Talkies

Walkie Talkies

I always have this idea of saving phone cost. Wouldn’t it be better to buy a set of walkie-talkie which has a range of a few miles and then we don’t have to regularly rely on mobile phone if we are close enough? True enough, my wife’s sister actually use a set of walkie-talkie to communicate while shopping inside a shopping complex. I think it’s great especially we normally don’t get strong enough mobile phone signal inside a shopping complex. However, never did I know that walkie-talkies can go up to a range of 36 miles.That’s pretty impressive!

By the way, walkie-talkie might just be my kind of language. In some countries, they are called radios. With the use of radios, there are also range of scanners like the uniden bcd396xt which scans for radio frequencies. It works like our in car entertainment unit except that the range of radio frequencies that these scanners scans are not available to our cars’ radios. Different countries have different set of rules about which types of scanners can be used as it might interfere with police activities. For example, criminals might use scanners to escape from the police. Anyway, these scanners are by far more powerful than our home radios. They can store hundreds of channels while as far as I can remember, my car’s radio only stores six channels and has trouble scanning even the most popular radio station.

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Buffalo LinkStation Duo NAS

September 14th, 2011
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I have been searching for a NAS for quite sometime now. NAS is the short form for Network Access Storage. It’s the same as normal external hard drives except you can connect it to the network rather than using USB. The best of it is that literally all devices on the same network can utilise the same drive without the need to unplug and plug. I am a little bit fed up with using my current external drive as I can only use it through USB connection. In my ideal world, I like to connect things wirelessly and not directly to my PC or laptop. True enough, there are already WiFi Storage devices available in the market now. Well, the price of NAS has already put me off and the WiFi storage device is even more expensive than NAS. The other concern that I have is the speed which is without doubt, incomparable to direct USB connection.

Buffalo LinkStation Duo

Buffalo Linkstation Duo

Buffalo Linkstation Duo

At the moment, I am just trying to weigh between the pros and the cons. I am not in a rush to get myself a NAS until yesterday when I saw a reduce price of Buffalo LinkStation Duo 1TB selling at £64.97. It’s refurbished and re-certified but that price is unbeatable. A normal unit of Buffalo LinkStation Duo will cost twice the price. It’s a bargain but I am still hoping that the price would drop further. As it doesn’t matter to me if I didn’t get one, I think it’s worth the wait.

The Buffalo LinkStation Duo looks really huge on the picture but in reality, it’s tiny. I have read reviews about it being quiet which really increases my desire to own one especially at £64.97. It does Raid 0 and Raid 1 as capacity of the said hard drive is divided into two separate hard drives. In other words, it has two hard drives in it. Apart from using it as a Raid, user can also choose to fully utilise both hard drives.

Finally …

Some Amazon users commented that when they received their Buffalo LinkStation Duo, there were some loose parts in the drive itself. That was the common problem of this drives and it had caused some users to lost their data as well as making the drive unusable. The issues have been rectified and it should not happen again. This bargain Buffalo LinkStation Duo might have been refurbished from the return units but the current price is incredibly attractive. It’s a huge dilemma for me. I would love to have one and I wish I have ordered a unit of Buffalo LinkStation Duo by now but somewhere at the back of my mind is telling me to wait.

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The end of HP Touchpad

August 30th, 2011
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HP Touchpad

HP Touchpad

On 18th August 2011, HP announced that it will discontinue it’s mobile devices line. It includes the new HP Touchpad and Palm phones. You would probably know about it already since it was quite a big news in the tech world. But what has captured the interest of gadget lovers is not the decision to discontinue those products and they are probably even less interested in the future of HP tablets and mobile phones. The fire sale is the headline. Everyone is waiting for their local retailers to slash the prices; from £479 to £115 for the 32GB model and from £399 to £89 for the 16GB model. For that price, anyone is interested and that includes me. At first, I doubt that UK would follow the trend when US first announced that there will be some sort of fire sale. But it is true now and as soon as HP Touchpad is selling in fire sale mode, it’s sold out.

Right now, I wish that I should have bought it at full price and then wait for HP to announce a refund of the differences. That’s quite a huge risk to take though. Anyway, the time has passed and I should move on. I have indeed moved on and I found myself checking Argos stock on HP Touchpad every now and then. I am not obsessed with HP Touchpad since I already have an iPad2. The deal is just too good to pass.

I am thinking, if I had a HP Touchpad right now, what will I do with it.

Digital Photo Frame and Clock

This is a nice though. A 9.7-inch digital photo frame plus clock would be great. I have been dying to get myself one but most of the digital photo frame plus clocks in the market rely on main power supply. HP Touchpad could easily hold its charge at least 7 hours. Well, there will be a few with its own battery but they certainly can’t do more than HP Touchpad.

Android

Everything is possible nowadays. Getting HP Touchpad to run on Android is not rocket science. Imagine the possibilities that will be opened up by having Android on board on a HP Touchpad? Endless! A good quality 9.7-inch 16GB Android tablet priced at £89 is almost impossible to get.

Use it as it is

I am a gadget lover but I am not an extensive user of gadgets. Take iPad2 for example, I only use it for games, e-mails and internet. I did try to use it as a secondary screen using Air Display but it still needs some improvements in terms of speed and usability. Accessing Twitter, Facebook and e-mails is quick and easy. I believe HP Touchpad could do the same too.

Finally…

Until I get my hands on one, it is still quite a mystery device to me. To be honest, I am most likely to retain WebOS rather than install Android or any other possible tablet OS that will be compatible or made compatible with HP Touchpad. WebOS will be obsolete if no one take up the challenge to revive it from HP. I kind of like the idea of owning it since HP Touchpad is probably the first and the last tablet to run WebOS.

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