[tech junkie]

Vodacom wants to rob you

Whilst making coffee at the office this morning I was informed that Vodacom have finally enabled the Visual Voicemail feature for the iPhone on their network. This feature has been available on the handset since the launch of the original iPhone 2G some 3 years ago. I always understood that the feature wouldn't be available on the Vodacom network as they would have to build some kind of additional functionality into their existing voicemail platform. This didn't really bother me and I made pe...

Quick App for Xbox 360 Owners: 360 Live

Most of the apps I've installed that claim to deliver a great Xbox Live experience have fallen very short. This new app by Juan Xavier Larrea finally delivers the goods. I guess you need to be a bit of an Xbox Live freak to see the value in an app like this, but I've found myself in a situation before where I wanted to check on either one of my own or a friends achievements, online status or some such. If you are a big online gamer and own a Xbox, 360 Live [$1.99 - iTunes Link] is the app fo...

Handbrake Video Encoder Hits 0.9.4: Not Dead, Just Pining for the Fjords

Anyone that owns a Mac and a portable media device that is capable of video playback has no doubt used Handbrake to rip and/or convert a DVD or media file to an appropriate format or size so that they could have it with them on the go.It's been a while since the application has been updated, but the it has been worth the wait. The speed improvements and the presets make faster and simpler than ever to drive the sometimes scary task of fiddling with video.Best of all, it's still free. If you're ...

Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone

[Rating:7/10] After some initial hiccups with getting (and keeping) the application in the iTunes App Store, Manomio are back with C64 (iTunes link) and 8 free games. At first you may find yourself questioning your sanity, but after dropping £2.99 in the iTunes store and playing one of the old classics, you'll be pulled right back to you gaming roots. Now maybe it was just because I was stuck on a two hour flight and had nothing else to do after I had finished reading my Stuff Magazine,...

Plex and the ultimate media center setup

[Rating:10/10] I've been using XBMC on my old Xbox as a media center for a few years now and it has served me well. In fact, it is still serving me well, but it doesn't have the horsepower to get HD content onto my TV. It also doesn't have some of the features that I'm after in a media center. Some time ago I started playing with the free app Plex (Plex was born out of XBMC) on my iMac at home and I was very impressed with what it could do. The only problem was that my iMac was nowhere nea...

Protect your iPhone

[Rating:9/10] I've never really been a fan of cell phone covers or cases. Usually because you end up compromising on the functionality of your device or you end up doubling its size. My 2G iPhone ended up looking like a expensive German bathroom fitting that had been attacked by a child with an angle grinder. Not a pretty site, but I never saw a cover that appealed to me. Mind you, I wasn't really trying very hard to find one. I was determined not to let my shiny new iPhone 3GS suffer the ...

Macheist warming up

Macheist sounded their early warning system a few days ago. Claiming to have detected abnormal cosmic radiation levels. It seems that the countdown has begun. Navigating to correct galactic co-ordinates and sending out a solar tweet results in you getting a license for the disk visualisation application Daisy Disk worth $20. I participated in the previous Macheist and scored a boot load of applications for $39 (retail value of apps was around $558). The concept gains momentum every year a...

Kindle vs Nook (vs iSlate)

A few lucky early adopters have already received the Kindles down here in deepest darkest Africa, but as much as I want to get my hands on an ebook reader immediately, I'm going to try to fight the urge until there a few more killer devices available locally. The Barnes & Noble Nook was recently announced and will be available soon in the USA, but no word yet on availability internationally. I'm pretty sure that they will want to distribute the device as far and wide as possible, especially if t...

How to clean your Apple Mighty Mouse

The little scroll wheel/ball on my Mighty Mouse gets lazy every few weeks and only lets me scroll in one direction. Sometimes only up, sometimes only down. Side to side never seems to be a problem. A simple fix I learned about to solve this problem meant I didn't have to keep phoning Digicape to complain about repeatedly being sold bad mice... Simply turn your Mighty Mouse off (by sliding the cover at the bottom closed), turn the mouse upside down onto a piece of paper and move the mouse a...