Tech | Hangout

Netgear XAV5501 AV+500 Powerline Adapters

Holy moly!

I’ve been using a pair of Netgear XE104s to extend our network to the living room. They connect using mains electrical power, and have worked fine for a couple of years.

This morning I replaced them with Netgear XAV5501 AV+500 adapters, which claim to work at gigabit speeds. So I ran a [...]

iPad 2: Protecting the back

Everybody loves Apple’s Smart Cover for the iPad 2. But it doesn’t protect the back of the iPad at all.

Several companies have released “smart” back covers, such the SwitchEasy CoverBuddy, the Hypershield, the Smart Cover Enhancer and the Simplism Smart Back Cover. However these back covers aren’t cheap and, as far as I know, [...]

Aperture Albums in iTunes

I had an issue the other day where a couple of my Aperture photo albums weren’t appearing in the photos tab of iTunes, so I couldn’t sync them to my iPad.

The fix turned out to be: select the errant photos in Aperture and then click on the menu item “Photos > Generate [...]

Olympus Penpal PP-1 for E-PL2

So my PP-1 turned up last week. It’s a Bluetooth adapter for the Olympus E-PL2 which fits into the Accessory Port and allows wireless image transmission from the camera to a mobile phone or laptop.

I paired it with my Apple MacBook Air but couldn’t get any files to transfer. So I emailed Derrick [...]

Reset iPad Backup/Sync

Several times lately when I’ve tried to sync my iPad it’s failed to complete the backup stage, even after 10-12 hours. If you force-quit iTunes and try again iTunes will skip the backup with the error message:

“iTunes could not backup the iPad “Chris’s iPad” because a session could not be started [...]

More Stuff For Sale

Having a clear-out:

Apple iPad WiFi 64GB

Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA65EX Digital Camera/Camcorder

On eBay…

iPhone Folder Icons

Apple’s iOS4 introduced folders to the iPhone. By dragging an app onto another one, either on the iPhone or in iTunes, a folder is created with a suggested, editable name.

Many of us have done just that. In my case, I kept my most-used apps on the first Home Screen and organised the apps into [...]

O2 micro sim Activation

iPhone 4

I had a faff activating the micro sim in the Apple iPhone 4. The O2 page talks about activating the phone and activating the sim card and I confused the two.

After leaving the iPhone overnight with a screen message “Waiting for activation, this may take some time”, I realised I had [...]