The EU has added to their list of unnecessarily arduous list of standards and criteria with the standardisation of phone chargers to mini-USB. Though it ruins Horne & Corden’s joke about Nokia Chargers, I really couldn’t care less about this story, I’m not sure what effed-up phone brands you lot buy but every phone I’ve ever bought has a charger that comes with it. Yeah, I get the reason for this but it’s never been a huge problem for me, if I’m going away I just take my charger with me or, if I forget, I just survive without my phone (granted I don’t have a smartphone or any of that jazz).

I can only assume that phone companies will start allowing data transfers between phones and computers via the mini-USB, though I only ever use Bluetooth for data transfers I can’t see phones having the mini-USB for charging AND another device-specific port for a cable (which will, ironically, most likely be USB) so it makes perfect sense. Though that screws up the iPhone a bit, Apple love their proprietary ports so either they’ll ditch the current iPhone ports (god forbid that they shouldn’t be unique and actually have to conform to something that actually works or is useful/easier) or be awkward and have their mini-USB port for charging and a seperate port for data/syncing. Then again, Apple don’t supply a mains charger anyway so there might be some loophole that they’ll use to avoid it, like they charge through computer thus they are a web-device and not a phone or don’t mains-charge so don’t have to meet these standards.

I don’t know when these chargers have to be in place by on all new released devices (nobody’s coming to your house to dig a new hole into your phone my friend, he said patronisingly) but I have a feeling that a lot of phone companies are going to rush out phones they’ve got in the works at the moment so that they don’t have to change their designs, builds or lose any money from this ruling.

Finally finished To Kill a Mockingbird and am powering through Animal Farm, preparing to go to Malta and got a load of films from my DVD Rental (if you join LOVEFiLM, tell them Mat Greenfield sent you *bad product placement thumbs up and toothy smile*), Shakespeare in Love, tailoring to my tastes, and Young Frankenstein, one of the many old Mel Brooks films that my dad introduced me to when I was younger that I loved……….I really must watch Blazing Saddles again.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but me and my friends used to do a podcast called Tech² that I’m going to talk to the others and try to reboot (it technically never ended but we have one live episode and we can never seem to successfully record, edit and upload an episode ina decent amount of time, mainly due to college but now that we’ve all finished we’re in a prime position). I know that Paul, one of the podcasters, has mentioned reading this blog, I doubt he’s a frequent or close enough reader to notice this paragraph, but if he is, what do you reakon?

Wimbledon 2009 final is currently on, Roddick and Federererererererererererer both have 1 set and we’re near the end of the 3rd set, if Roddick beats Federer then Murray was beaten by the best, but I hope Federer wins just so I can see him take the record for most grand slam wins.

I’ve just read a benchmark report of Firefox 3.5 being twice the speed of Firefox 3, personally I don’t notice it (and Firefox 3 being pretty damn fast to begin with you’d think I would) so I’ll have to take Nate Lanxon’s word for it.

I went into a Sony Centre today, my mum’s new laptop had a built in SD port and she uses a Sony digital camera (with those darn fiddly proprietary memory sticks so I went on the hunt of an adaptor. I explained my dilemma to the bloke and he looked dumbfounded for a moment, asking me to repeat what it was I was looking to adapt and slowly repeating the acronym “S……..D?”. Then he suggested I try Staples. Not only do their staff not know anything that isn’t a Sony product, they don’t even have the stuff in their own friggin store something that, supposedly, Staples does. I went to Staples and got a much better response (mainly because I went to college and am friends with most of the staff) even though they were out of stock. I wonder if the same is true of all manufacturer stores, like if I go into an Apple Store and talk to the so-called “geniuses” and mention two-button mice will they look at me as if I had just taken a dump on their shop floor and told them to have a merry rhubarb.

I was watching Diggnation the other day and Kevin Rose mentioned that Apple have a history of releasing big changes and then one (or two) intermediate small changes in their devices generations, most notable in the iPod (e.g. Nano, Nano 2, Nano with Video, Nano 4, I don’t count the accelerometer as a big change) so I realised that if I get into a 2 year contract for an iPhone now, I will probably get out of the big change cycle so I need to think some more on the iPhone, there’s so much bullshit about it and the battery that I might not bother, then again my Samsung’s battery isn’t great and I cope.

My sister’s back from university for the summer and brought back her extensive (though now largely untouched) book collection, when she was younger she was an avid a reader as I am now, though that was mainly because the computer with a big, scary behemoth machine that only dad was allowed to use, plus we had an old school (though then very much school) dial-up internet connections that was cheaper after 6pm. I had a look through and, after wading through the Sleepover Clubs and the oddly large number of books with young girls with horses on the covers (odd considering my sister has never ridden a horse, ever) I found a gem. Granted, this was what I was partly looking for, because I knew it was there having borrowed it a few years ago and expected to find it, though I was looking for new stuff. But I found George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I had forgotten how short a book it is at only 95 pages so I’ll have a read of it a bit later to remind myself of Orwell’s style before I start 1984 in Malta. The heat has literally drained me and Wimbledon has distracted me so I’ve been slow to get through TKaM but I’m aiming to get it finished tonight.

Have been re-road testing Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, because I realised you can’t judge it on a couple of searches, I also learnt the term ‘Bung’ from Diggnation, meaning getting bad or irrelevant results when searching on Bing.

Torchwood is starting it’s 5 episode mini-series next week, I’m clearing out my Sky+ hard drive so that I can fit 5 hour-long HD episodes easily, not sure wether or not to watch 1 and 2 before I leave for Malta and watch the rest when I get back or to save the whole shibang for my return. Not that it actually matters but still. Also rumours of a 2010 Star Wars live-action series that’s set between III and IV (so no friggin Clone Wars this time) and “heavy on the Fett” – presumebly Boba. Now I was never a fan of either Fett-man so I’m not thrilled about this, most people who, like me, are fans but not obsessive about Star Wars just want to see some Jedi and some lightsabre, both of which (it is reported) will be totally absent in this series (yeah they were all killed in III so it makes sense but just because it’s logical doesn’t mean it’s good).

Working the next 3 days (so will miss Wimbledon final dammit!), plan to pack on Monday and relax on Tuesday so that’ll probably be the next time I post. Will, hopefully, write some more in Malta but nothing is certain (I don’t know if our hotel has a computer) so if I forget on Tuesday, or have nothing to write about, I will probably return on the 15th of June.

Keep Reading!

So, Mozilla have released an update to Firefox3 in the aptly named Firefox 3.5. I tried out the beta of this software earlier in the year and uninstalled it almost immediately, I can’t remember precisely why but I think I was just put off by how, with the addition of a ‘new tab’ button (because CTRL+T was so fucking difficult) there’s a constant tab bar on the top, even if only one tab is open (unlike previous versions). Weirdly, I’m not quite as put off by it now as I was so maybe the old version had something else wrong with it that was removed, though I’m not in love with the perpetual tab bar, I’ll get over it. Other than that, no major additions or changes to speak of other than the usual boast of a faster browser which may or may not be strictly true depending on your situation.

Then again, it’s still better than IE8, I was setting up my mums new laptop yesterday and realised how much I despise Internet Explorer. But my mum’s too much of a computer novice to get used to anything other than IE. She used my laptop once when I was out with Firefox running and called me in a panic saying I had some virus called ‘Firefox’………………….yeah. I’ve been teaching her basics and realised that I’m really starting from scratch on most stuff, such as deleting songs in iTunes.

Still, I’m hoping that we got Vista in time enough to receive a free Windows 7 license which I’ll take, not sure but will see.

Not much going on in the tech world at the moment, I think that it’ll pick up in September when the new iPods are released, if Apple pull another stunt like they did with the 3rd Gen Shuffle headphones then tech reporters are going to have a field day!