Skype for iPhone released

Skype have just launched their official iPhone client in the UK! Woop!

My first reaction was definitely one of ‘wow’ – the interface is slick, and a quick phone call to their ‘test service’ (didn’t want to wake anyone!) revealed the call quality to be excellent, although it seemed that a little part of my test message was dropped.

Only problem I can see with it is the lack of cell network support, I’d really like to be able to make calls on the go without having Wi-Fi nearby. Other ‘nice to have’ would be the use of background processing on the iPhone, but that is Apples’ fault obviously. Maybe push notifications could be used somehow in this app? We shall wait and see…

My new addiction

And they say small things amuse small minds? Never been more true!

Found an absolute gem in the iPhone App store the other day: Flight Control [iTunes link]. Here’s my go at a little review!

The UI is much smoother than I’ve seen on many iPhone games, simplistic menu options and tutorials make this game so easy to dive in to. The basic idea of the game is to guide planes onto a runway (you can probably see why I like it already!), whilst making sure they don’t collide with each other. It’s harder than it sounds!

There are 4 types of aircraft in this version: light aircraft, helicopters, medium and large jets. All of which move at a slightly different speed – the controllers nightmare! I’m sure nothing this drastic would occur in real life though (aircraft landing within split seconds of each other?!), or else I’d only be able to land 66 planes before killing someone!

The use of the touch-and-drag interface on the iPhone coupled with clever use of the on-screen graphics and onboard sound make the game extremely easy to use, it takes mere seconds to get started.

Overall, I’ve no regrets on spending 59p on this app, and I can’t wait to see how it will be expanded on in future releases

P.S. I wanted to include some screenshots, but no matter how hard I try, the iPhone won’t let me take them off the internal memory :-(

Published!

Woop! I’ve had one of my projects (Twit2MSN) published by the good people at Messenger Plus! Live :-D

The script can be found at: http://www.msgpluslive.net/scripts/view/520-Twit2MSN

I hope to be able to get version 1.2 done this week, and get that published soon

Last.fm Boffin

http://www.last.fm/group/Audioscrobbler+Beta/forum/30705/_/510180

Been trying out the ‘Boffin’ tool from Last.fm this evening – and I’m astounded!

Basically, it scans your PC for music, groups it by tag, and then lets you play only music with a specific tag. For instance, I’ve had “Trance” selected for a while now, and it just keeps shoving on amazing tunes I didn’t even know I had!

Obviously, its on an Alpha release, but the technology demonstrated behind it is superb. Didn’t take long to scan my entire music library, and did a pretty good job (so far) of getting the tags and grouping them.

Its also nice to see what my music library mainly consists of (hope the picture works!):

Can’t wait to see this incorporated into the main Last.fm program!

Invaders must Die

Downloaded the new Prodigy album yesterday, and I’m currently in two minds as to whether I like it or not.

The title track is pretty awesome, and ‘Omen’ is epic (I owned that before), however a lot of the other stuff just isn’t their style, neither old school Prodigy or new-electro Prodigy.

I’d say I do regret buying this one, but its definitely one to get for free (not that I encourage that!)

Site upgrades

Found time this afternoon to make a couple of quick upgrades to the website :-D

The ‘blog’ link will no longer go straight to blogger, but will instead parse the feed within my own site. I’ve also removed all the nasty characters (I think) that the RSS feed seems to put in, but I’m still having trouble with the actual styling of some posts, apparently ones that come from my phone! I’ve also not quite finished a way of viewing older posts, that should be here soon.

Keep your eyes peeled for more stuff soon!

Busy times

I really should get round to writing here more often!

Spent quite a lot of last night writing up a summative essay for Intro. to Management, a lot of bullshit went into it though! I’m currently procrastinating instead of walking the 40 minute round trip to hand it in. Really can’t be bothered!

48 hour production in college this weekend – and all the PA Committee ‘freshers’ are involved, I’ve just had an email saying I’m doing all the mixing for the band – joy of joys! Should be a fun weekend anyway, can see me being drunk for the majority of it though!

Also been told I’m ringing in another quarter with DUSCR next week, I think I’ve scored more this term than I’d done in the 8 years before uni!

Peace out…