Category: Technology

Technological tidbits

Multiple Calendars – For People That Do (And Are Mobile)

Maybe it’s because I’m what would be regarded as a ‘power user’ – but I find calendars on my phone and online with Google very, very useful. What is a seemingly simple tool is enabled and ready to make magical things happen.

A discussion that I raised with one of my BBM groups today was a question: Will BlackBerry 10 support multiple calendars? This is and always has been a big deal for me. Although I found myself explaining to one member why it is important. I hadn’t really considered that those who don’t use calendars wouldn’t see the benefits of multiple and shared calendars.

Read on to find out how amazing multiple shared calendars are. Continue reading Multiple Calendars – For People That Do (And Are Mobile)

BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha Debug Stats

Having fun playing with the new BlackBerry Dev Alpha?

There’s a lot hidden away on the new software including an onscreen output for watching the performance of the handset.

To access the diagnostics, simply place your finger at the top left of the bezel and swipe inwards. Make sure that you are using the homescreen when you do this.

Repeat to clear.

A quick way to handle both strings and arrays in PHP

Something that happens occasionally is that I need to create a function that will specifically output chunks of HTML.

A good method is to allow for functions to handle both single strings and arrays. The problem? I don’t like duplicating code. The solution? A quick convention to an array!

function arrayish($a)
{
  $a = (array) $a;

  foreach ($a as $b) {
    echo "<p>$b</p>";
  }
}

That’s it. Nice and simple!

If someone knows a more efficient way to do this, I’d love to know.

BlackBerry 10 – Backups, Backups, Backups

BlackBerry Desktop Manager with PlayBook connected

Right, let’s cut to the chase.

RIM – you’re current backup system for the PlayBook is inadequate.

There, I got it off my chest. But it had to be said. As you can probably see from this blog – I like BlackBerry. It does what I want it to do most of the time. I want to get things done. I’m nearly always mobile. BlackBerrys keep me connected to everything that I need to do.

But as BlackBerry 10 looms closer, I’m worried that some PlayBook-isms will make it across Continue reading BlackBerry 10 – Backups, Backups, Backups

Update to Disqus

After a long brain-think, I’ve decided to use Disqus for my comments from now on.

There just seems to be no benefit to managing a comments system when there is so much that people expect out of it now.

Please bear with me as my existing comments are synced to “The Cloud” (or as we used to call it – a server on the internet).

Get Ripple to work in Linux

As RIM plough forward and deliver a cascade of development tools – one of the key tools is the Ripple Emulator. The Ripple Emulator allows you to simulate a mobile device in Chrome or Chromium and debug it easily. It’s a great app for creating HTML5 apps.

Unfortunately for us Linux users, we have had the short straw as a quick peek over at the BlackBerry site reveals that there is only a download for Windows or Mac.

Not to be put off – I figured that the code must be pretty much the same for both systems and decided that I’d get it working in Linux. Here’s my howto for getting Ripple working with Ubuntu 12.04 Continue reading Get Ripple to work in Linux