jpatkinson.co.uk

Well i have not received a 419 scam email for a little while till this morning.

It’s a surprise to see that there spelling is actually improving these days. However they still make the same mistakes i.e. using yahoo email addresses.

A quick look in the properties of the email shows that nylucky.org was a domain registered in VA in the USA via Yahoo using Domain Tools however there was no website currently up.

I also looked up their reply email address “sify.com” which is owned by an Indian Company in Chennai.

So i sent a simple reply back to the scammer but included Yahoo Abuse and also the domain admin of sify.com to make them aware.

If you get these types of emails the simplest thing would be to just delete. They have conned millions out of gullible people over the years so don’t get taken in by the promise of making lots of money from this type of scam. Also don’t forget to block them as spam if they are not caught by the email filter of the email company you are using.

As the old saying goes “if its too good to be true” then 99.99999% of the time it is.

An enterprising PC user has been refunded on his copy of Windows, after he rejected Microsoft’s operating system and license

Reg Reader Graeme Cobbett was paid $115 (£70.34) by Dell after he bought a Studio 1555 notebook with Windows Vista already loaded and complete with a free upgrade to Windows 7.

Rather than accept the Windows 7 upgrade, though, Graeme installed Ubuntu-based Linux Mint instead.

More Here

Microsoft has shipped most of the party hosts packs. These were due to arrive by Friday the 10th to allow the hosts to have it installed (or maybe get used to) Windows 7 in time for the launch date of the 22nd October.

I actually received mine yesterday afternoon and managed to get everything installed last night.

The box above is the actual package box that was shipped internationally from St Louis in the US.

By using Houseparty.com to do the promotional work for Microsoft personally i think took a lot of work away from Microsoft to allow them to concentrate on other area’s. One area i do not think was a good idea was to allow them to use their website as for at least myself has been very flaky to say the least and the first couple of days to try and use the site was unbearable at best.

So what’s in the box i hear you say? Well lets have a look.

On the right is the most important part of the pack. A signature edition of Windows 7 signed by Steve Ballmer. Now unlike other people that have went to the technical or developer launches or people that have also went to various other kind’s of launch parties round the globe the launch party hosts get both versions of Windows 7 ultimate in both 32 and 64 bit flavours. I have seen on various forums that people that went to the various launch parties were hoping to get the 64 bit version, however these people were only given the 32 bit version. In this day and age where especially a lot of people in the I.T. career have machines that are 64bit and with lots of ram I’m not sure why Microsoft did not offer them a choice in what flavour they received. However at the end of the day Microsoft did give them out for nothing so you cannot really look a gift horse in the mouth for there latest operating system.

Anyway i am starting to ramble on so lets look at what else is in the box.

On the left you can see on top the Jigsaw puzzle game, with the tote bags underneath. You get 10 tote bags in the pack so you can either give out to your guests or if you have more than that coming you can raffle them off.

In the picture above you can see the covering letter from Houseparty.com with a pack of serviettes, a deck of playing cards and the table decoration.

In the picture below you can see the large launch party poster to be displayed.

Yesterday the developers of Tweetie atebits one of the most popular twitter apps for the iPhone was released aptly named Tweetie 2. As soon as i saw the tweets to say it was out off i went to the itunes app store to purchase. Being an avid Tweetie fan i was excited to see what was new in this version.

Although a few people i know are dismayed that this is not a free upgrade as it will cost you another £1.79 on the UK store or $2.99 on the US store. I had a little apprehension about purchasing an updated version of a great app and was not sure if it could be improved on.

Some of the new Features include

• Exploring the timeline of all your own tweets as well as friends.
• The ability to read, tweet, favourite and follow in off line mode.
• Full configurable landscape support.
• Post photos and videos (3GS users) and even the ability to configure your own custom image host.
• Add multiple attachments.
• Link twitter accounts with your contacts.

You can see the features list here atebits.

After playing with it for a while to get used to it the layout of the app seems the same but its under the hood or hidden is which makes this completely different and why this is not offered as a free upgrade.

Time to show you pictures of some of the new and improved features of Tweetie 2.

The new settings and advanced settings to where you want to post your images to turn on off particular settings etc.

The main timeline for the account you are using also as you now get a luminous blue dot to tell you if there are new tweets in your timeline, mentions and direct mentions.

Now for one of the new features,if you drag your finger across a tweet from left to right it then brings up a hidden toolbar.

Now from here you can reply, attach, follow, make favourite and then we come to the last icon on the right which brings up another menu

Apart from retweet and post link to tweet the others are new. Hang on a moment does that say “Translate” hmmm lets try this out

Japanese (i could be wrong so don’t shoot me)

Spanish (again i could be wrong)

I don’t think tweetie 2 does a bad job at all in the translations considering some of the supposed translations sites that come back with a load of gobble-de-gook that you can not make head nor tail of.

Clicking on the search magnifying glass to the far right of the timeline brings up the searches box.

Here you have the search features including saved searches. Also here you have the nearby button which basically lets you see peoples tweets in your area and one of the new features. Basically in tweetie you would click on nearby and then select the distance from you to see the tweets. Not anymore it now brings up a map of where you are and puts pins on the map with their last message. You can also expand the map in the usual way by dragging it further afield and it will keep adding as it expands. You can also select the list view too if you want to.

The last feature i am going to show you as i do not want to show everything is the tweetie bookmarklet. Say you are browsing in safari and you want to tweet a link to a particular website you can now do that. The full instructions on what you need to do is here

All in all i think personally that tweetie 2 is very good value for how little it costs and i can see a lot of the die hard tweetie users upgrading to this improved version.

You can find Tweetie 2 here

John

I am not generally one to do reviews of iphone app reviews as there is already a multitude of site’s doing this including one by a friend of mine which is macslice.info.

I also do not have a lot of apps installed on my iPhone hence another reason for not doing this.

However i thought i would do a review of this particular app as i was after a specific application that would show me what tv show’s were being aired in the US on a particular day. After searching on itunes on the UK site i found a great program called TV Tracker!.

TV Tracker! is not a free app however at £0.59 i thought i would give it a try and what a pleasant surprise it was as i had found an app that did what i wanted to nothing more nothing less it just did what it said on the tin. It is a very easy to use application that even a child could use.

Now to show you how easy it is to use with screenshots.

Once it has been installed and the first time running the application it will ask you to do an update.

Once the update has been ran it will present you with the main screen

Now since i wanted to set up my favourites for TV shows that i was interested in all you need to do is click on edit favourites you are then presented with the below screen.

All you need to do is to start to type the name of the show into the search bar till you find the one you are searching for and once found just tap on the iPhone screen and it will put a green tick next to the name of the show which will add it to your favourites.

Now all you have to do is click on the favourites icon at the bottom of the screen and you are then presented with the screen below which shows the name of the show with a picture to the left of the name and how long till the next episode airs on the right.

If you then tap on a show in your favourites it provides with you information regarding that show including what season it is currently on, when it first originally aired, favourites icon to also add to favourites if you are scanning through main screen and name and dates of upcoming shows.

And that is how simple it is to set this application up.

Now as i previously mentioned this application is not perfect and  i am not sure if it is a bug or whether this is down to the developer.

Right at the bottom of the screen in favourites you will see a section called to be announced. Even though there maybe a TV show that is up and running it may still be put into this category as showing as no information regarding the next episode even though it may have them listed on say a site like tvrage. Also i have found that if you update daily shows that are in this section may drop back into the scheduling.

Apart from this it is a very good app and is an absolute steal at £0.59.