A New Template - Blog - Adjustment - Tag-Line?

After adding a few changes to the blog and a desperate attempt at changing the template to bring it in to line with the modern styles of Fecund Musings and Jack Usher, I realised I don't like change! Yes, this is a bad habit of mine, but changing the whole template seemed, and turned out to be, a challenging feat, especially with all me minor HTML tweaks, like adding the AddThis button and the Facebook Comments box. It works when you are just starting out, but migrating after a full years worth of tweaks and posts is near to impossible; however, not quite. Henry Dyer migrated to Wordpress, but as I said, I don't like change. Henry can code, I cannot, and no matter how hard I try, I just end up playing around with a the simplest bits of Javascript and Liner Basic.

So, I ended up deciding to stick with Blogger and use the default templates. Wordpress was too unintuitive for me, a not coder, and even though Blogger is unintuitive, I have learned to play around a bit with the HTML, evident with the title in the centre, and just enjoy the experience of blogging for the world, whatever your world may be!

Just as a question to my readers, do you like the "Expect Everything" tag-line, because I have come up with something more original than that, but you will never know what it is unless you want me to change it.

Please, fill out the feedback form and tell me what you want to see. The Fecund Muser did it, and I headed his advice almost immediately by removing two very stupid questions that had no point to their existence whatsoever and removing those wind turbines from the background, which I liked, but now I like the new one even more.

See, change is good. I just don't like it.

< Content&Services > - Part 2

You are currently reading another aviationally written post, but this time, I am sitting on an Austrian Airlines plane, not BMI! Wow! Clear skies, a sleeping father, an annoying man with a pillow and the prospect of starting my GCSE course in a week’s time, are a few things going through my mind. To be honest, I had not planned to write a part two of the previous post, and I don't want to really waste time explaining the whole HTML tag title thing, so just read the original post, where all is revealed.

The last post of this topic concentrated mainly on mobile phone networks and such. Today, I want to elaborate on that a bit, plus bring in another industry, namely, TV and film.

Let's start off with an issue dear to our heart and not in anyway related to Apple, which the next part will be. I live in the UK, but from the stories and articles I read, I too have developed a hatred for AT&T, an American mobile carrier. There are several reasons why I hate them, including the fact that their customer service is apparently complete dog-excrements and their coverage is terrible for what they expect you to pay, but the real thing that ticked me off was their recent "streamlining" of their texting plans.

Copyright, Infringement and Stupidity: Update 9

Yay! Were back to this old topic again!

Previously, back in the early days when Nic’s CompBlog still existed, I had posted a series with this title, relating to copyright; however, I decided to expand the definition of that title to not only include petty copyright cases, but also big boy patents, which opened me up to write a whole lot on very juicy subjects.

Patents, patents, patents.

Recently, especially over this summer, things have been heating up in the patent world, starting with the Nortel Patent auction. For those of you who are either tech illiterate, don’t like the news or just don’t care about tech (even though you are reading this tech orientated blog…), let me indulge you in the joys of patents.

Nortel have a big patent portfolio of about 6,000. There was an auction for them, as I am sure the observant readers will have picked up by now. Google started off, placing a $900m bid. Now, that’s pretty high for a first bid, actually, that’s pretty high, period. The competitors (Apple, RIM, Microsoft, Sony, etc.), who all hate the success of android, saw that Google was serious. As Google is a new company, they don’t own that many patents when compared to Apple and Microsoft. Patents are vital to defend products, as I will show later, so it was vital for Google to get these patents, especially as they include 4G LTE technologies.

So, after a while, Apple joined up with some other minor companies and the bidding was reaching ridiculously high numbers, like $2b ridiculous. Come to think of it, the numbers were ridiculous, regardless of the letter preceding them! Google were starting to bet $πb ($3.141b) and other mathematical constants! This was either a genius move or a death sentence. They were confusing people as to why they were bidding these numbers, which might have played to their advantage, but at the same time, they were also portraying themselves as not caring. It was then when things really got interesting.

Apple & Co. started teaming up with RIM (the blackberry makers), Sony and Microsoft.

What? Did you just say Apple and Microsoft?

Yes, indeed I did.

The Dell Experience

I am currently sitting on a very turbulent BMI flight to Vienna, as usual, for the penultimate leg of my summer holidays. As I am flying unaccompanied, I get to cut the lines, board first and get general priority over everyone else! Unfortunately, the airline screwed up the seating plan, so a family of 4, who just HAD to sit together, also booked my seat. Being a kind of nice adolescent, I moved willingly, only to find that wherever I sat, people were telling me to leave, so I am now grumpy and as a result, you are going to get a grumpy post!

This post is about Dell, as I am sure you can tell by the title. I was inspired to write this by a recent follower of my twitter account, namely, @DellCares! I had been tweeting about Dell and adding my opinion, in the customary way. As a result, they tweeted this:

DellCares DellCares 

@ 

@nicolasweninger Regret any trouble. Pls follow/DM service tag, issue specifics. Will look into any unresolved issue you may have. Thanks.MA

Microsoft, Again - Part III

Welcome to the last post in this 3 part series. Some of you may already know I loath Microsoft to the core, for a few distinct reasons found in a previous post. For those interested in the other parts in this series, they are found here and here.

Now we have a very formal introduction over, unusual for these types of posts, let me introduce to you the subject of this post: Steve Ballmer. Many know him as the current CEO of Microsoft, others know him as a salesperson, I know him as a twat who has no damn clue.

Don’t believe me? Look at this video.

HA! What an ignorant fool! Look where Windows Phone (WP) is now compared to iPhone! The lowest of the low, behind RIM (who are not doing too well either)! At the iPhone launch, every tech company and blog were complaining that it did not have a physical keyboard, including this excuse for a CEO! Most popular android phones don't have keyboards, that being the reason why they are so popular! Those crappy, plastic keyboards were, and are, a pain to use, and one can type much faster on the iPhone keyboard. What about the $500 argument? Well, how much do the current WP7 phones cost? You guessed it! $500. Let us not forget how great WP 6.3 was: I myself had the pleasure of owning one (notice extreme use of irony).

Microsoft, Again - Part II

The last post was written on a BMI flight from Vienna. Now, at 10AM on the following day, I am sitting on an old, smelly BA Boeing 737 (which my uncle flies for Austrian Airlines) on route to Geneva. I am tired, grumpy and have my whiny sister sitting next to me, reading Michael McIntyre's autobiography (apparently very funny, noticed through her annoyingly loud giggles), with her elbow taking up the whole damn armrest.

Moving swiftly on, this post will be based on Windows 8, Microsoft's recently previewed operating system. Now, this is interesting, as they are attempting to merge the PC with the tablet into one system. Just take a look at this video.

Feed Me Feedback

As you may know, There has been a recent change to the pages on the top of this blog. The new Partnership Program allows you to fill out a form and send it to me to consider you as a possible partner. The thing I want you, the reader to do, is go to the top of the blog and click on "Contact Us" and on that page, you will see a feedback form link. On that form, you will be able to tell me what your opinion is on the blog. Its good for me to see what you think, and not just what I think!

So, go ahed! Be as brutal as you want!

Microsoft, Again - Part I

Welcome to another aviationally-written post, as Henry Dyer describes it, filled with many subordinate clauses and rhetorical questions! If you read my past few Microsoft posts (here and here), you will know that I dislike Microsoft for a variety of different reasons, but I also have praise for them when it comes to the Xbox and Windows Phone 7 (although it never really, and will never really, catch on). There have been a few interesting developments recently, Windows 8, Microsoft+Android and my recent realization that Steve Ballmer, current CEO of Microsoft, does not understand crap.

So, without further ado, let us begin this 3 part series on Microsoft that I hope you find entertaining and interesting. The first thing I want to talk about is Microsoft+Android. A recent TechCrunch article was talking about Android and Microsoft, as you can imagine, but how, you may be asking, does Google Android (a phone OS) relate to Microsoft? Turns out, Microsoft earns more money annually from Android than their own WP7 (Windows Phone 7) software! How is that even possible?