Lady in a Red Jacket

8 April, 2009 in Uncategorized

Once again I couldn’t resist taking a random iPhone shot of this woman
in the Metro in this bright red jacket. I hope you like my little
Photoshop Shake’n'Bake.

Breakfast of Champions

7 April, 2009 in Uncategorized
Tags: coffee, donut, donut king

Once again I’m running ahead of schedule (well actually my meeting was pushed back by half an our) so I got the chance to try out Donut King @ XuJiaHui. To be honest, the only thing this place has going for it is the weather. Donuts are meh and the coffee is warm. Not surprising as I’m the only one sitting here late morning on a Tuesday. I reckon they’d be paying a pretty penny in rent here at Grand Gateway.

As a plea to any budding business people out there… Shanghai NEEDS a Krispy Kreme. Well at least Donut King invested in funky crockery.

Blueberry Muffins & Joshua

5 April, 2009 in Uncategorized

Thanks Betty Crocker for making baking idoit proof. Joshua loves the
blueberry muffins.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Skype on the iPhone. What’s all the fuss about?

31 March, 2009 in Uncategorized

If you've been following me on twitter then you'll already know that shortly after Mashable announced that Skype for iPhone was on iTunes, I very quickly downloaded my own version. To my dismay though after installing it on my iPhone I couldn't get it to work. I was racking my brain as to why this was so. 

To be honest my first thought was that Skype had done the Pandora trick and made it exclusive to folks in the US but upon checking twitter, I found a tweet from @illuminateceo, who is Beijing who's said

Skype for iPhone 3G working fine 4 me from Beijing on WiFi. It's impressive, actually. Very iPhoney, very Skypey, and no wooop start sound

so that ruled out the regional restrictions.

My next was to look on Twitter Search (as you can see for issue such as these, I default to Twitter rather than Google). I found a comment that perhaps Clippy was the cause for my woes. So firstly I toggled off Clippy in from SBSettings. No Effect. Secondly I uninstalled it from Cydia. This also had no effect. Each time I tried to run Skype I would get the splash screen for exactly 5 seconds and then it would close and return to the Springboard. To cut a long story short (the long story can be found here) I ended up restoring my iPhone and starting with a clean slate. Having done so Skype worked "as advertised" with pretty call quality but not noticeably better than with Fring or Nimbuzz. It was only after I did all this did I discover from @eChinacities of a blog post by @zachnfine that explains that for Jailbroken iPhones I can get Skype to work in Safe Mode.

This leads me to the whole point of VOIP on the iPhone. The one thing that hobbles the iPhone compared to a Windows Mobile device (and incidentally makes the iPhone a lot more stable) is the inability for programs to run the background. Sure on a jailbroken iPhone you can install Backgrounder but it's really only a band-aid that doesn't really allow for multi-tasking. 

So for those who want to know, the Skype app is pretty good. The call quality is good and it includes all the features you'd expect. The main problem is that it can't run in the background so in the same way you'd use Skype on your computer or even on a Windows Mobile device, which put simply, if the device is asleep in your pocket, you can't receive calls. You can't keep it online to receive internet calls and if you want to keep your iPhone jailbroken you actually have to switch to safe mode to make a call. I'm not just talking about Skype. I'm referring to Palringo, Nimbuzz, Fring and any IM/VOIP app you might want to develop. Don't get me wrong, if you want to take advantage of the cheap calls/ free internet calls have to offer, then the Skype app will probably meet your needs but if you're looking for something that will enable Skype to be as functional on your iPhone as it is on your computer, then you're barking up the wrong device.

That's all I have to say at this stage. Now I have decide to break my iPhone back out of jail.

I just love it when a mistake turns out great

28 March, 2009 in Uncategorized

This is a shot of my son with all the setting wrong on my camera.

The Free VPN

26 March, 2009 in Uncategorized

Or it could be just a proxy but whatever was it worked. Click here to see what I am talking about

Blogging with my iPhone

25 March, 2009 in Uncategorized
Tags: blog, iphone

I just downloaded the WordPress app for iPhone so i’m going to start mobile blogging. I imagine this will end up being a collection of my dodgy phone photos. Stay tuned to see how dodgy I get.

Off Tianshan Road

23 March, 2009 in Uncategorized

Being early for an appointment with a camera brings with it some
interesting opportunities. I had a meeting near Tianshan Road & Hami
Road in Shanghai. That part of town on the surface is all construction
and dust but, as with most of Shanghai if you look beyond the surface,
you find the lives under the construction dust.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Spring is in the air

22 March, 2009 in Uncategorized

Every year I look forward to the arrival of spring and the blooming of
flowers in Shanghai, something that either doesn’t happen or I didn’t
notice in Sydney. Here are some images of the first blooms of spring
2009.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

20 March, 2009 in Uncategorized

Early night tonight. Have a drink 4 me party animals