It now seems fairly natural to be walking around with a slim glass-and-aluminium device that’s more powerful than mainstream PCs of just a few years ago – so the only questions is – WHICH tablet should we be carrying?

I recently got my hands on a 7” Android tablet running “Gingerbread” – or Android 2.3.  Since then we’ve seen “Honeycomb” and finally “Ice Cream Sandwich” but most of the cheaper tablets are running 2.3 or lower.

To be honest I would not waste my time with anything LESS than version 2.3 is it’s fore-runners were never designed for tablet use.

Until now I’ve avoided Android tablets altogether for a number of reasons including the absolutely useless “resistive” displays that many of the cheaper ones employ. These are of the old-fashioned variety you have to press on to get any response and they are deeply unsatisfying to use. One of the iPad’s best features is the utterly responsive “capacitive” display which requires no finger pressure AT ALL to work – and so that for me is the minimum I’m prepared to look at.

The Yuandao N12 Fast Tab is one of dozens of 7” tablets out there that runs Android 2.3 and on the surface of it, it’s a mini-iPad..  the 7” format means it fits comfortably into a big hand and you’d expect that to be a big plus compared to the iPad’s rather larger format. In fact there is little apparent difference in weight.

So, in 2012 how to Android and Apple stack up?

The N12 is CHEAP – I’ve seen it at £100 including VAT in the UK so it’s not in the same league as iPad price-wise or feature-wise.

Let’s look at the pluses and minuses of this particular tablet – which is not untypical of the far-eastern offerings available right now..

Minus

• Battery life –claimed to be 20 hours standby and 5 hours video – yes, if you are lucky, more like it 4 hours of use. The iPad has never run out on standby in the time I’ve had it and gets around 10 hours of video NO PROBLEM.
• Microsoft Exchange – The M12 cannot handle any but the simplest of Exchange setups – if the setup won’t work with email and password, there seems to be no way to get into manual setup – this is a MAJOR omission for corporate use.
• Display – fast and responsive but ultimately at 800*480 pixels it’s an overgrown phone and the pixilation is obvious, even watching movies.
• WIFI – the WIFI is very insensitive, picking up less signal than many phones and dropping out occasionally.
• Limited memory – a common Android problem, although the unit has 8GB internally with access to an external memory stick, it seems that even though you can move Apps into this larger space, there is an internal CORE of 512MB RAM (this is a common limit – see specs – APPLE do NOT have such a limit) and even Apps in external memory use up SOME of this 512MB RAM which soon gets eaten up – putting a limit on how many Apps you can install – this is really unacceptable but somehow manages to escape most reviews.
• Speed – not quite fast enough to make good use of Flash – one of the so-called Apple-killer features, the Flash performance is poor.
• Finish – the unit has a nice Aluminium finish which unfortunately has sharp edges – after repeated handling while, say, watching a movie, tends to get annoying. This sharp edging appears to be common among the Chinese offerings
• Reliability – the hardware seems reliable enough but Gingerbread is chocker full of bugs – the language control means that some menu items come up in Chinese no matter what you do and installations can easily be messed up.
• The Android market has some gaping holes compared to Apple, the latter having an excellent PDF reader (GoodReader) and several other business tools missing from Android market.
• Front-only camera which is poor quality and not that reliable – only sometimes works with Skype. No back camera.
• No Bluetooth – yes you heard it  – no Bluetooth (the iPhone 4 and iPad2 reliably handle 2 simultaneous Bluetooth connections – in my car for example the phone is Bluetooth hands-free but also talks to a separate Bluetooth unit to play audio through the car stereo – something the old 3GS could not quite tackle)
• No sign of upgrades available – website is in Chinese, very little English discussion on the web.
• Large border area around the screen.
• 16:9 wide format

Plus

• The 7” format would fit into a large coat pocket and just feels nice
• The screen is bright and responsive
• The Android market has come a long way and although still full of rubbish, there are some hidden gems in there – many of which are free.
• External memory means no limit to movies you can store on the device.
• USB means external keyboard is easy to implement (though Bluetooth would be more convenient)

Summary

Based on the above – for me the ideal would be a 7” tablet with little border area i.e. mostly screen, running a later version of Android which properly handled Microsoft Exchange, on a tablet with at least 1024 pixels wide, rounded corners, 6-10 hour battery life, Bluetooth, sensitive WIFI, at least 1Gb internal working RAM, preferably more.

With current improvements to the Android Market, there is definitely a place for these devices. If you look at the likes of the Samsung S2 phone – slim, incredibly light, super display – think of one of those stretched to 7” or so and I reckon there is definitely a place for such a device provided the price is right (i.e. WELL under the cost of an iPad) – as yet it does not seem to exist, the NOTE being the nearest but still too small.

For now, the iPad is still streets ahead of Android…maybe they’ll keep that lead, maybe not. There is something quite nice about the smaller form factor and lower cost of the Android devices – opens up all kinds of possibilities if only the quality bar was raised…

Armed with a budget of £300 I went off onto the web in search of new kit – and I’m very pleased with the end product… The system includes Gigabit wired networking, 80211n multi-point wireless and load balancing/fall-over protection in case my primary service provision fails and to share out the load a little when the grandkids are over hogging bandwidth. I’ll explain this….

But first, the starting point… when we moved over here into the countryside 11 years ago I was on a budget, having spent a bomb kitting out my home office, I simply bought bulk networking cable, a bunch of connectors and I was very lucky to get some second hand ADSL router kit from friends. One of those routers is the Draytek Vigor 2800vg which of course is too old to handle modern high speed 802.11n wireless but which has MORE than done it’s tour of duty over the years and is still an excellent and supported router.

I’ve had access to all manner of ADSL modems and most of them by comparison to the Drayteks seem “amateur”.  I ended up with 3 of these and a Netgear unit giving 4 access points around the house – I also had Orange Wireless but that was so bad I turned it off. The Drayteks have all SORTS of useful tools that other kit simply doesn’t have – like decent bandwidth monitoring facilities, VPN, interchangeable aerials (I had WAY oversize aerials on my main unit to get more range).

Why so many routers/access points? Well, our house is a cottage and it’s built out of lots of VERY thick stone – WIFI just does not go through this stuff so you might have a great signal in the living room – walk around the corner to the kitchen and it’s gone. Also as we’re on one floor the distance from the kitchen to my office is quite large.  So one Draytek router acted as the ADSL router and access point (wired and wireless), the others as simply switches/WIFI access points. I also had a dedicated 16-port switch as I have lots of kit to plug into when I’m doing a bit of R&D. The two main machines and my NAS drive (network addressable storage – i.e. a black box with 2 disks in it) are all connected together by wire as WIFI is too slow for some operations – like moving massive files back and forth.

We have Internet access via the organisation I work with – and we also have Orange Broadband. Why the latter?

Well, I would not use Orange by choice but as we had a house phone line and Maureen has an Orange phone, they gave us broadband for a fiver a month – can’t really say no to that especially as it gives her free calls to Orange mobiles (the kids). Both broadband setups are limited by the BT cables here in the village and give around 6.5Mb/s download and around 500Kb/s upload. The Orange router is that big grey thing on the left and it’s useless, not reliable at all but I recently found that by sticking a timer on it so it resets overnight – it becomes reliable. Not much use however without some kind of automatic fall-over if it’s in use at the time (backups etc). We were going to upgrade this until I saw the reviews of it’s replacement on Amazon – voice after voice slagging off Orange for supplying the new unit – so – stick with the devil you know.

I’d been using a software switch on our computers to select between the two networks (main network and Orange backup) to try to do some kind of load balancing -  but of course that doesn’t work on mobiles which don’t support the software etc. and it’s manual and  “fiddly” so I included provider switching in my goals for the upgrade:

• Faster wireless
• Faster wired connection
• Better coverage
• Some kind of automatic switching/backup/fall-over

We have Apple TV and my videos and music etc. are stored on the NAS unit  so speed of connectivity is important – a request from the TV has to go off to Maureen’s computer – which gets the video from the NAS box and pipes it back to her computer and on to the Apple TV… it doesn’t take many bottlenecks to mess that up.

Well, I ordered the replacement gear and the first stuff that turned up was the cable (of interest I used CABLING4LESS – they seem pretty good and delivery was quick) – I chose ready-made lengths of CAT5-e (why not CAT6? From what I can read it’s for perfectionists and the price difference is high – I also had some decent cables which were gigabit-certified and wanted to use those).

Ok, back up a second – what’s the difference between the cables? If you look at your average network lead, there are 8 connections at each end. Cat-5 only uses 4 of them – whereas Gigabit networks need all 8.  So to have a Gigabit network your modem, switches and cabling all need to be updated to CAT5-e or better. But the cable is cheap -  I think I spent £30 in all.

I bought a range of colours of Cat5-e cable and started checking to see what needed replacing. The first shocker came when looking on the roof at some of the original cables put in place a decade ago – totally SHOT. I’ve never seen cable disintegrate so quickly on touch! Amazing what several years of even British sunlight can do.

So it quickly became a gutting operation – all but one grey lead (which miraculously is in perfect condition 11 years on AND is certified for Gigabit operation – as it spans the building I was quite relieved not to have to throw that one away).

Next stop the main ADSL router. I did my homework and I’m fairly confident I picked the best of the lot – the new Draytek 2830n. This really is a winner -  with dual inputs (3 if you include the ability to use a 3G dongle as a backup -  but we’ve no 3g in the village so that’s redundant), 4 Gigabit ports, multiple LANS, multiple VPNs… load balancing.. name it and it’s got it – well under £200 from Amazon. Took around half an hour to get that running with the existing kit – which includes a 16-output switch in my office for the various gadgets.

First things first – the 802.11n higher speed WIFI claims better speed and better range and I noticed a marginal improvement in range almost immediately. That’s at ONE end of the building. I then fitted a TP-LINK TL-SG1016D 16-port Gigabit switch to replace the old switch to give me some more connections – one of which attachés to the lead which goes right across the building to another, smaller new unit, the TL-SG1005D 5-port Gigabit switch – which then feeds Maureen’s computer, the Apple TV and a new TP-Link 150Mbps Wireless N Access point at the far end. The large switch indicates what speed the connection is running (10/100 or gigabit) with green indicators which is great.

Finally I had to wire the Orange ADSL unit all the way back to the Draytek second input and make sure the Draytek was aware of the incoming Orange network. Interestingly I had a problem in that I wanted to keep the same DNS (domain name lookup) – and the only one I could find at first was OPENDNS -  but they charge if you have more than one incoming IP address – I resolved the problem eventually by forcing the network to use GOOGLE’s DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) and up to now they are working a treat.

For Wireless I gave both units the same name – ensuring they were using completely different wireless frequencies which are ALSO distanced from the frequencies used by neighbours.

The result  – even the iPad now works seamlessly anywhere in or around the building. The overall range is WAY better – but now needing only 2 wireless units and not 5.

Apple TV works smoothly – and having set up the Draytek to work from the main ADSL line, falling over to Orange (tested by simply pulling the broadband line out – operation continues more or less seamlessly, the only change being the external address changes of course) it’s all working a treat, no failures, drop-outs etc. – and all the kit is green – keeping power usage to optimum levels (this if often overlooked – the cost of running this stuff mounts up as it’s on 24-7).

I’m currently running scheduled backups to the NAS using GOODSYNC – and cloud backups using bandwidth-restricted LIVEDRIVE (that’s a long story) with unlimited backup, consuming around 100Kb/s of my 500Kb/s upload bandwidth to keep 2 computers constantly backed up in the cloud – but because of the dual-WAN setup I’m managing to split that – one machine backs up to my main ADSL, the other backs up to the Orange ADSL – all works a treat…  and hence leaving plenty of upload bandwidth for Skype on either (though one could always make use of more precious upload bandwidth). More detail as time permits – if you Google these products – all I can say is they work for me…. older kit will be on Ebay presently…

Well, there are APPS out there that do most of it but not exactly what I was after – so I wrote my own.

But first – some explanations:

What’s a Facebook profile?

That’s the bit you get for free when you signed up with Facebook. Let’s ignore the Facebook TIMELINE which was supposed to appear some time ago – looks like litigation’s putting the kybosh on that for now. Mine’s all set up to go – but no-one can see it!! But I digress…

http://www.facebook.com/petescargill

You’ll notice the above already looks a bit personalised – and it is – how did I managed to get multiple images and text on the left? I didn’t. 

Some time ago, Facebook changed the rules to allow images as wide as 180px by something like 520px high as your profile picture. What you see above is simply one large image. Now you have to be careful as your little avatar image has to come from that so you’ll see in my case I’ve made sure that the top part of that image is me.

The avatar (your little image you see in your posts) is then just the top bit of the image I’ve used on the left.

There are 3 columns in all Facebook pages – the left you have some control over as you can see, in your profile you’ve little control over the middle column other than it’s full of your messages on your WALL – and of course you can show your photos etc.  the right side is reserved for Facebook ads which are often terminally annoying.

What’s a Facebook PAGE?

Isn’t that my profile?  No! A profile is simply your personal profile, it’s very hard to make that into anything else – and you can’t easily add to it or personalise it.  But anyone can create a Facebook PAGE and this is more suited to for example businesses of if you are a personality – or you have a cause etc.

Given that you create a PAGE – which looks pretty much like a profile at first… you can start to customise it. One of my pages is called:

http://www.facebook.com/cavehome

From now on I’ll not show the THIRD column as you’ve no control over it…

Notice that once again I’ve used a large image on the left – and you’ll see the little avatar there on the posts… notice also that I’ve uploaded several normal size images up there but selected the one larger one to be the profile image. So, on your WALL you not only control the LEFT column but you can control the imagery at the TOP as well. Nice.

But there is SO much more. in a PAGE it is not necessarily the WALL that is the first thing people see – you can easily go in and tell the page to start up with a DIFFERENT TAB (the TABS are the items you see on the left above – wall, info, photos etc.

Notice there is a TAB above called WELCOME.

As they say in the movies “I made that” – it’s an APP written in a language called PHP with a little icon I designed –WD for Willow Design… I designed the App way back in September but I’ve updated the blog since then.

This APP is designed to let  me whatever content I want in the MIDDLE section of your page – and importantly to show different content to some who LIKES me to someone who has yet to press that LIKE button. 

Why bother? Well once someone LIKES you their Facebook pages show whatever you have to say on your WALL – which might be about you, your company, it might be something you have to offer or some community event.  Very important.

Ok, so let’s see the page from the perspective of someone who is new to this page.. Remember I’ve set my page to START UP with the WELCOME App, not the WALL.

As you can see you don’t get much until you press the LIKE button. That centre column is simply an image I put together – and if you want to make something similar…. get Photoshop or the free GIMP package – and PowerPoint and a few other tools and start pasting images and text together – it’s easy enough with a little practice.

So – if someone presses the LIKE button – if they are already logged into their FACEBOOK account, job’s done – if not, they’re asked to log in – if they’re not a member of Facebook they’re asked to sign up – if not.. well, is there anyone left who ISN’T part of Facebook?

Ok, so here, more or less is the LIKED version

What you’re looking at above is not some HTML but a complete embedded website in Facebook. The APP lets me point to another website and I made one up specially to fit into the 520px wide limitation of Facebook and with short pages.  By updating that website – I end up updating Facebook.

So how does the APP do that? Well, what you don’t see above is the ADMIN button which I have when I’m logged into my Facebook account – and on my own pages (I have several). Here’s the ADMIN view.

Several things going on here. I’ve designed the APP to show 2 windows – one for people who LIKE and one for people who DON’T yet like my page. In the second (lower one) I’ve put in some simple HTML web page code to show an image – in the FIRST one – ignore the text, look at the URL box – I’ve simply pointed to a specially made website – which is special only in that it does not have a fancy header – and it is limited to 520px wide. That’s it. The user sees either the top or bottom version depending on whether they’ve clicked the LIKE button or not.

I’m not ready to roll this APP out yet, I want to get some more security into it and make sure it’ll scaled out for general use – also I want to add a few more features to it and some help. But as you can see – it works.

Below are some more LIKED and YET-TO BE LIKED pages I’ve put together – hope they give you some ideas. Again these are admin views hence the “edit” options but are otherwise pretty much what the end user sees.

The way I’ve written the APP I can make several available so that for example one could have a Welcome APP, then a payment APP – you can do the lot with one APP if you have a special website to point to – but then not everyone has that.

Here’s an example where  I’ve renamed the tab and two versions of the APP are in use on a page with different icons.. see below the PHOTOs built-in APP

If you’re interested in any of this – get in touch… details are on the sites for which I’ve included addresses!

Peter Scargill – Willow Design – www.willowdesign.info  – www.scargill.net

]]> http://scargill.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/facebook-development/feed/ 0 scargill http://scargill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/my-first-facebook-app-2/ http://scargill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/my-first-facebook-app-2/#comments Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:25:47 +0000 scargill https://scargill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/my-first-facebook-app-2/ ]]> Superceded.. see  http://scargill.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/welcome-some-thoughts-on-a-fan-gate-app-for-facebook/

Here’s my simple, inexpensive but powerful system and a few tips along the way.

Firstly the system is PC-based. I’ve tried Microsoft’s Media Centre and it’s too limiting.. I’ve also tried various open-source solutions and many of those don’t work either and for while I was starting to give up – but then I got the iPhone and things started to fall into place.I though of putting everything on the iPhone but with fixed memory that didn’t seem like a good idea – and what if I lost the phone?

Firstly there is iTunes on the PC. With that on your PC its easy to keep all your music, pictures and videos in one place. It’s also then easy to copy stuff onto your iPhone – but what if you only have the 16Gig iPhone and you have lots of video and music. I’ve always thought that a better way would be to wirelessly send my media to wherever I need it.

So let’s look at the HOME side first. You want your music, videos, images etc. in one place. Put them in iTunes. If your PC is attached to your TV you’re all set – but what if it’s in a different room or the other end of the room. My solution was to spend sub-£100 and buy Apple TV 2, a little box that plugs into the PC and lets you share everything on your iTunes PC (or several PCs for that matter) to the TV. Works a treat. With Apple TV2 comes a little remote control but you can also use an iPhone armed with the REMOTE app to do the same thing.

So now you have Internet radio, videos, images and music all available at the tips of your fingers.

But, what about music on demand… do you REALLY want to pay the ridiculous prices that the App store charges for music? In my case no. There was a time when I’d pay anything for the next YES album – but that time has long gone.  I’d been looking at Spotify as that’s a great program for legally playing just about any music you want… but to do the job properly you need to pay around £9.85 a month. I was thinking about that when I switched my phone from Orange to THREE.  Why is that relevant? Well, as part of the all-you-can-eat deal with THREE, they GIVE you the licence for Spotify Premium – i.e. no extra monthly payments.

So now you’ve added music on demand… but wait, how do you get the music from Spotify or similar to Apple TV? It won’t do it on it’s own. Well a little utility that costs around £15 called AIRFOIL lets you take ANY audio source on your computer-  and send it straight to Apple TV. Problem solved.

Now lets look at the mobile side.  With Spotify on the phone, it’s easy to stream or download music – and the PHONE APP can beam directly to Apple TV2 (handy for parties, playlist on the phone, selecting on the phone – but playing from Apple TV2 through your stereo (in my case my stereo is old and does not have optical input. Apple TV2 has optical output and a quick trip to EBay got me the relevant converter – optical to normal wired connection.

With StreamToMe APP on the phone, I can access all video and audio etc. from my PC to the phone. With TuneIn APP I can get all the Internet radio stations, with TVCatchup I can watch live TV.

Add AirFoil Speakers App and I can even stream any audio from the PC to the phone.

Ok, this glosses over some detail but nothing you see above is hard to implement OR expensive.  So now I can get access to my media as well as TV and radio when on the road and when I’m at home I can control the whole lot with my phone and even let guests select their favourite music, whether I own it or not, at parties, to play straight into the stereo system or TV.

I thought I’d take a diversion from talking about iPhones and iPads here as nothing that exciting is happening at the moment and talk about QR codes, a really handy way to give people information on a mobile phone from a website or printed publication.

Firstly, what are QR codes?  A kind of Barcode? Checkout the QR code on the right here, it’s a link to my website. The idea is you point your mobile phone at the image and are taken straight to the website.

To quote Wikipedia, that well-known source of all truth… “A QR code (abbreviation for Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera telephones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL, or other data.”

Put simply, stick one of these on your fizzy pop can and kids who can’t type will easily access your website or whatever else you want them to look at. The limits of these codes seem to be around 4000 characters – which gives you a lot to play with. Try the link to the Wikipedia site reference on the left.

So firstly, how do we READ QR codes?

ON the iPhone, “SCAN” is in my experience the fastest, easiest, no-frills QR code reader – it’s free and it works. On the iPhone 4 it’s just about instant. If you have one of these devices there is NO reason NOT to have this app! Just go to the App store on your phone and look for “scan” without the quotes.. their icon is shown above on the left. It’s free and no catches that I can see.  Indeed even the demo image on the App store (seen on the right here) takes you to a valid site instantly with more information on QR codes. The Android phones will have their own scanners and success will vary depending on the software and the camera on the Android phone.

How do we GENERATE QR codes?

That’s just as easy. To have a play I recommend you go to this website… http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ – it really doesn’t get any easier.

The more technical among you might be thinking – well that’s fine but I want to generate these on my own website….well… here’s the thing. Google have an API for this.

http://createqrcode.appspot.com/

Put in your information, hit “Create QR code” and Bob’s your uncle..  try this for example..

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300×300&chl=http%3A//www.fsb.org.uk&chld=H|0

What is REALLY good about this is that you can use this as the basis of generating images on your website or elsewhere in custom ways.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300×300&chl=http%3A//www.fsb.org.uk&chld=H|0

The colouring above should help you see what is fixed and what you need to change for your requirements. The %3A is necessary to use in place of colons in addresses, the rest should be obvious – size of the graphic and the address you want to link to…

A project called the ZXing project allows you to create a QR code easily with your contact information which, when scanned (for example by the excellent SCAN App) will create a new telephone contact for you. Check that out here.

The QR code on the right is an example – scan it and you should see a new contact open up with my details including phone, address and notes. The same site has other options such as calendar events but at least on my iPhone, they do not actually create calendar events as yet. As soon as they do I can see a whole host of applications arising. The best code readers can handle type 40 code readers – which can handle over 4,000 characters (and get quite large) – less powerful readers may only be able to handle earlier versions. Read all about this at the Google Chart API site.

If you want to give people-on-the-move easy access to your website or other information – there it is…QR codes. Cheap, cheerful, easy and as far as I can tell, reliable.

I thought I’d take a diversion from talking about iPhones and iPads here as nothing that exciting is happening at the moment and talk about QR codes, a really handy way to give people information on a mobile phone from a website or printed publication.

Firstly, what are QR codes?  A kind of Barcode? Checkout the QR code on the right here, it’s a link to my website. The idea is you point your mobile phone at the image and are taken straight to the website.

To quote Wikipedia, that well-known source of all truth… “A QR code (abbreviation for Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera telephones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL, or other data.”

Put simply, stick one of these on your fizzy pop can and kids who can’t type will easily access your website or whatever else you want them to look at. The limits of these codes seem to be around 256 characters – which gives you a lot to play with. Try the link to the Wikipedia site reference on the left.

So firstly, how do we READ QR codes?

ON the iPhone, “SCAN” is in my experience the fastest, easiest, no-frills QR code reader – it’s free and it works. On the iPhone 4 it’s just about instant. If you have one of these devices there is NO reason NOT to have this app! Just go to the App store on your phone and look for “scan” without the quotes.. their icon is shown above on the left. It’s free and no catches that I can see.  Indeed even the demo image on the App store (seen on the right here) takes you to a valid site instantly with more information on QR codes. The Android phones will have their own scanners and success will vary depending on the software and the camera on the Android phone.

How do we GENERATE QR codes?

That’s just as easy. To have a play I recommend you go to this website… http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ – it really doesn’t get any easier.

The more technical among you might be thinking – well that’s fine but I want to generate these on my own website….well… here’s the thing. Google have an API for this.

http://createqrcode.appspot.com/

Put in your information, hit “Create QR code” and Bob’s your uncle..  try this for example..

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300×300&chl=http%3A//www.fsb.org.uk&chld=H|0

What is REALLY good about this is that you can use this as the basis of generating images on your website or elsewhere in custom ways.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300×300&chl=http%3A//www.fsb.org.uk&chld=H|0

The colouring above should help you see what is fixed and what you need to change for your requirements. The %3A is necessary to use in place of colons in addresses, the rest should be obvious – size of the graphic and the address you want to link to…

A project called the ZXing project allows you to create a QR code easily with your contact information which, when scanned (for example by the excellent SCAN App) will create a new telephone contact for you. Check that out here.

The QR code on the right is an example – scan it and you should see a new contact open up with my details including phone, address and notes. The same site has other options such as calendar events but at least on my iPhone, they do not actually create calendar events as yet. As soon as they do I can see a whole host of applications arising.

If you want to give people-on-the-move easy access to your website or other information – there it is…QR codes. Cheap, cheerful, easy and as far as I can tell, reliable.

Internet radio is not a new phenomena, “Shoutcast Radio” by Nullsoft (Winamp)  has been available since 1999 and has continued to grow ever since. PC users have been able to listen to their choice of worldwide radio stations since then – which is fine but not a lot of use on the move.

Recently several things have happened recently (I refer here to the UK, American viewers have had satellite radio options for some time now while we’ve been stuck with the umpteen regional repeats of the BBC and a handful of alternatives on FM) which has made mobile Internet radio practical.

Firstly, mobile phones have become smarter to the point where Android and iPhone devices for example can handle fairly sophisticated programs in the background as well as transmitting audio via Bluetooth to car speakers.

Secondly, the mobile network has improved. THREE company claim to have just about the best 3G network – now, I know Orange customers will say that Orange and O2 collectively have a massive network – but take it from me, in rural areas, for example the A69 in Northumberland, you’ll find much of that is the older kind of connection which simply is not fast enough to “stream” music.

Thirdly more car radios than ever now either have an “auxiliary” socket for audio or handle Bluetooth connections for audio (sadly, still not enough).

Ok so what do I mean by “stream”?  Well, downloading tunes before you play them is not really practical for mobile radio and so Internet radio is “streamed” which means your device at any time only downloads enough to be able to play the tune. As the music plays, the next few seconds are downloaded ready for use etc etc… continuously. This allows for continuous play after a short delay. That delay determines to some extent how well the service tackles signal drop-outs – ie what happens if there is no signal for a couple of seconds or so due to a combination of poor signal and obstructions.

Let’s take my setup as an example… I have a Mercedes with an auxiliary socket for audio. The car handles Bluetooth but only for phone calls so I bought a Belkin Bluetooth audio receiver which requires power, connects to the Bluetooth on your phone as a kind of headphone device- and transmits the audio from the phone through a 3.5mm stereo jack to your home stereo or car radio. It works a treat and the quality is high. In my case I have a 240v supply in the car but the unit operates on low voltage so anyone with a bent towards a soldering iron should be able to adapt the unit to run off the car. Some folk have questioned the quality of such devices, I’ve had no problems at all.

That takes care of the hardware and for software I use “TuneIn Radio”which costs a couple of pounds at most on Android and iPhone devices. Hundreds if not thousands of radio stations available at the touch of a button are now available to anyone who puts the effort forward to make it work.

Be aware that using Internet radio eats up your mobile data so a few hours in the car listening to Internet radio could put pay to a few hundred megabytes easily – make sure your service provider does not impose limits on how much data you can use. Orange for example despite claiming “unlimited data use for iPhones, in fact have rescinded on that and have a “fair use” policy, which translated into English means they underestimated the amount of data people would use.  Three specifically state “all you can eat” in many of their contracts and there is no fair use policy. So make sure you’re with the right provider.

So what about drop-outs – with radio the signal quality degrades and you end up changing channels all the time when on the move (unless you only ever listen to BBC in which case you’re missing out) but with Internet radio this simply does not happen. If you have a bad or no signal for more than a few seconds, the music simply stops and may pick up when you get back to a half-decent signal – but to put this in perspective, a trip down the M6 will see areas in the mountains of NO radio signal at all while Internet radio continues un-hindered.  In my experience, using THREE as a source of Internet (either on the phone or using a MIFI dongle to supply WIFI to the phone) it is pretty much swings and roundabouts which is best in terms of availability – but of course with the latter you don’t have to change channels as you do, with, say BBC local radio.  My local Northeast radio for example is available on TuneIn Radio and I can pick this up anywhere in the world, not just while I’m in the Northeast.

I hope if nothing else this article gets you to investigate Internet radio – a wonderful alternative to rather limited FM radio.

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Anyway having discovered that someone has already successfully won a legal case to get out of their contract because of lack of signal, I convinced Orange to let me go without a penalty.

Armed with that freedom I headed off to the THREE store. Why THREE? Well, I already use (and recommend) their MIFI units and perhaps contrary to what you might think, they have quite an impressive coverage in the UK, at least everywhere I’ve tried up to now. They are also FAR more realistic with data, offering up to 15GIG a month data on their MIFI units. Better, on their iPhone deals, the offer a flat-rate package at £35 a month that gives “all-you-can-eat” data.

Now, we’ve all heard that from the other operators who until recently claimed “unlimited” broadband then when you read the fine print it’s a con – they have “fair use” policies which means the claim of unlimited is really a downright lie.

So I checked – according to THREE, “all you can eat” means unlimited data with no fair use policy.  Further, unlike Orange who charge an extra TEN POUNDS a month to share phone data with a laptop, sharing with the laptop is INCLUDED in the deal.

For reasons well beyond me the fellow at the THREE store thought this did not include iPads which would not work – but I remember standing outside the store thinking “But if you share over WIFI how on earth would it distinguish an iPad from a laptop?” and sure enough I was right, the iPhone will take in 3G, spit out WIFI and share it with any device that works on WIFI AND yes it will handle VPNs for those who need to log into work.

So, armed with my new phone and new company I headed off from Hexham for a trip to Blackpool, Internet radio (the American BIG CHEESE radio station) running on the phone…  and in a trip taking over 2 hours, I lost no more than a couple of minutes of radio time. Bye Bye BBC!