[tech junkie]

Plants vs. Zombies

[Rating:9/10] Everyone knows that everything is better with zombies. Plants vs. Zombies is no exception. This 28MB download from Popcap games will ensure that from now on, you won't have a minute of boredom while sitting in from of your computer. Essentially, instead of shotguns and chainsaws repelling hordes of the brain eating undead, you make clever use of your green fingers and some rather obviously genetically mutated plants to build a line of defense between them and your back d...

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...

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...

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...

Enabling click-to-dial on Snow Leopard

As a follow up on my Dialectic article, I thought it may be necessary to post some information on how to enable click-to-dial in Snow Leopard. The problem is that Mac OS X 10.6 no longer supports contextual menu plug-ins, so any plug-ins that you had will stop working after you upgrade to Snow Leopard. Replacing this functionality is a much improved Services support and this can be used to dial selected phone numbers from most applications. After installing Dialectic you can do the foll...

Tale of the annoying Apple headset mic

Does the placement of the microphone/volume control button on the Apple headset annoy anyone else ? Maybe I just happen to have a very unfortunate set of bodily proportions, but the microphone/button placement on the headset cable always catches on the collar or my shirt when I am sitting down with the earbuds in my ears. It catches just enough that I have to make wild neck movements to "unhook" it while I'm driving. I have exactly the same problem with the headset that came with my...