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Mark Zuckerberg will take to the stage for the keynote presentation in approx 10 minutes.

Zuckerberg finally on stage, and has announced TIMELINE. A new way to express who you are. He says that the current profile only shows basic information about yourself, whereas timeline will be much more detailed.

Watch Keynote Live

I’ll be honest, I’ve never played the game on a Windows computer, but as the Mac App Store makes it so damn easy to buy and download games now, I bought the game on a whim a couple of days ago. Despite some initial p**s taking from my girlfriend, I started playing the game – whilst I should have been working of course. My verdict = strangely addictive! So much so, I have not achieved any of my work goals this week, as I have spent far too much of my time driving a bus……

I’ve never been interested in driving a bus in real life, neither have I ever been – or ever will be – a bus spotter (yes, they do exist!), but playing this game is somewhat relaxing. Maybe I’m just a little strange?!

I used to play Grand Theft Auto a lot when I was younger (on the PS2), but I often found myself stealing a bus when I came along one, and driving it around the streets following all traffic regulations. I did this purely because it was more of a challenge than driving like a maniac, knocking people over, and smashing into everything in sight.

So, Bus Driver instantly appealed to me. There are so many racing games out there (and I enjoy them too!), but just as in my GTA playing days, it’s much more of a challenge to drive sensibly – especially when driving a double decker full of passengers around city streets.

The game works on all recent Macs, including those with integrated Intel graphics, and it performs well. I’m sure you have guessed by now that your job is to drive buses on various routes, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. You gain points for following the rules of the road, and lose them for breaking those rules.

On top of this, you have to keep your paying passengers happy. Brake too hard, and they scream – and you lose points for distressing them. Leave any passengers at a bus stop and you are punished greatly with a large points reduction.

Routes vary from 3 minutes long, to the final ‘level’ that involves a 55 minute journey picking up your passengers and transporting them to the city airport. Below is a video of a 8 minute journey that I recorded as an example of the game;

Did you notice the passengers scream when I braked too strongly?!

In short, this is a very addictive game that is far more challenging than racing a car at 100mph round a track, the main challenge being to resist driving like a maniac!

I recommend you get this one for some great entertainment. Try not to let it disturb your work too much though… I’m off now to drive the number 56 to the airport….

GET BUS DRIVER NOW!

Unfortunately, I have to leave for work in about an hours time so I am feeling very sad that I will miss the details emerge from the keynote speech from Steve Jobs et al.

It has been revealed by Apple they will be unveiling IOS 5 for the iPhone and iPad, along with the new operating system for the Mac (Lion). However, the most eagerly awaited news appears to be iCloud – the new music service from the company.

There are many opinions and rumours available on the Internet on what iCloud will be. At first, there were strong suggestions it was just a revamped version of MobileMe, however it now appears that iCloud may be more of a replacement for iTunes.

If rumours are correct, iCloud will scan your iTunes library and store your media files on it’s company servers, thus allowing you to stream your media on any Apple device WITHOUT having those files on your hard drive/phone. Of course, these are all unconfirmed reports.

There are other strong suggestions that you will no longer have to sync with your computer to ensure all your music and movies are transferred to your other devices as this will all be done wirelessly.

Automatic app updates are also a possibility, with all this happening in the background. This would be great as I find myself spending most of my life downloading and installing updates to the numerous applications I have on my Apple devices.

With regards to IOS 5 for iPhone and iPad, there is a strong possibility that a new and improved notification system will be announced. If it isn’t, expect a lot of criticism from Apple fans as we have been asking (almost begging) for this to be addressed for at least a couple of years now!

There also appears to be a lot of evidence pointing to a deep Twitter integration on the new IOS, including photo uploads.

Personally, I would LOVE to see the iPhone lock screen improved to be dynamic. I was playing with my mum’s Sony Ericssson Xperia the other day, and her lock screen has a dynamic weather app that looked brilliant (yes, I am obsessed with the weather as well as technology!). This would be a welcome inclusion with the new update… please Apple?!

The changes in the Mac operating system have been widely discussed, but the finished article would be great to see. There are runners that the OS will be released within a couple of weeks (June 14th I believe). Lion is said to take some of the features of the iPhone and iPad back to the Mac.. and some of these feature sound quite exciting.

Well, I am going to miss the live updates as I am a Flight Attendant and will be at 38,000ft until about 1am British Summer Time. You can bet I will be straight on the iPhone for the updates as soon as I land though!

On a side note, there is no mention from Apple of an impending iPhone 5 announcement… but you never know, right?

If anyone would like to keep me updated, feel free to post comments below and I will pick them up when I get out of work!

It may only be May, but who cares. I have found a website that is continually counting down until 7am on Christmas morning – by the second, and I’ve set it as my homepage. Every time I open my Internet browser I can see how long I have to wait for my favourite day of the year.

Go to Days to Christmas or type http://www.DaysToChristmas.org into your web browser.

Today though I have been reading a lot of news reports about the bogus security software named MACDefender and have thought about making a u-turn.

This software has been installed by many Mac owners after the creators used scareware tactics -completing a ‘fake’ scan on your computer and then asking for credit card details to pay for the software to clean up these non-existent problems.

Apparently, the bogus software has been opening up the browsers of unattended Macs on to porn sites, and this has led to owners believing that the fake viruses do exist on their machine, and paying for MACDefender to eliminate them.

So, a word of warning. Do not – under any circumstances – believe that any software program that you randomly come across is producing genuine scan results for you…. THEY ARE NEVER GENUINE.

You have got to take care of yourself online, so never agree to download a program without researching it first. If it is not a well known brand (such as Norton or Kaspersky) then treat it as suspect until you prove otherwise.

Never enter your admin password to allow a program to install unless you know exactly what it is. Following this advice should protect you. Macs are more secure than Windows machines, but they are not immune from malware and other threats. However, any program that needs access to protected files will ask for your admin password. Only enter this for trusted applications.

Simply put, it’s genius. The app makes use of the iPad screen beautifully, even utilising swipe gestures to achieve some magnificent features. Every now and then I see an app that screams ‘this is what the iPad was made for’ or, ‘this is the way Apple should have done it’. ThinkBook fits perfectly into either one of these statements.

On first impressions, it looks like a standard note taking app. It’s well presented, clean, uncluttered, and professional looking. It’s not until you delve deeper that you see it’s true potential.

On the right hand of the screen you will see what the makers (bitolithic if you are wondering!) have called ‘the slider’. Forget copy and pasting, this is much easier and faster. To move text, simply swipe it from left to right on the right hand side of the screen (if that makes sense), and the text disappears into the slider. Move the slider to where you want to place the text and swipe the right hand side of the screen from right to left, and out pops the text exactly where you want it. If you want to simply delete the text, open the slider menu and select clear clipboard. Simple. There has never been an easier way to move notes around.

Swiping the left hand side of the screen has a different function. Once you write a note, you can place sub notes underneath it. To achieve this, write the note as normal, and then swipe it from left to right and it will be placed under the note above it. These notes then become collapsable, and allows brilliant and innovative organisation of notes.

This is taken from the Bitolithic’s description;

ThinkBook transforms your iPad into an organizational marvel. Create notebooks and outlines that live and breathe under your fingertips.Everyone can benefit from ThinkBook:

Keep class notes, add questions and todos then use ThinkBook’s unique ‘finder’ notes to make a dashboard showing unanswered questions and outstanding todos for each class.

Use ThinkBook to record meeting minutes and keep project notes. Plan your work by grouping todos into projects. Create dashboards showing you the next few todos for each active project.

Take notes from books you read, tag each section with the topics covered, search for those topics later.

ThinkBook adapts to YOU, not the other way around.

This is probably the best iPad productivity app that I have downloaded since I bought my trusty tablet a year ago. Once you get used to the way it works you’ll find it is incredibly easy to use. Don’t let the streamlined presentation fool you though as this app is brilliantly designed, and it has already become the only app I use to take notes. In fact, the rough outline for this very article was planned on ThinkBook!

Here is the video from Bitolithic;

So, why the change of heart….

I always knew Macs were good. Even though I could never understand how to work my sister’s due to being a Windows user since Information Technology lessons at school introduced me to the world of computing. Coming from a poor family, I’d never had access to a computer before, so this was my first ever experience.

Just seeing how quickly my sister’s computer started compared to my middle-of-the-range but still fairly new laptop made me very envious. I – being a man – have always loved gadgets, and I was starting to get very jealous of that MacBook.

However, at that time I still refused to even look at the possibility of investing in one. I remember saying;

But why would you choose to pay an extra £600 just to get a computer that ran a bit faster, and looked a bit sexier?

I fully believed that my £400 laptop could do everything her MacBook could do (even if a little slower).

The tide started to turn when I bought myself a iPod Touch a few years ago. I was amazed at how amazing this little gadget was – especially after owning a £30 cheap Mp3 player previous to this. I used it all the time for checking email, and surfing the net when I couldn’t be bothered to wait for my increasingly sluggish Windows machine to boot up.

It was spring 2010 when I realised that an iPhone would be perfect for me. All the features of an iPod Touch, but I could also use it to check email etc when out and about. The fact it was a phone as well was – of course – an added bonus. My contract was up for renewal, and so I got the 3GS (about a month or two before the iPhone 4 was announced!).

Next came the iPad. When the Apple tablet was announced I couldn’t see a need for one. It remained this way for almost 6 months until I ‘played’ with one in the Apple Store. From that moment I knew I wanted one…. not needed one, just wanted one!

After slowly getting my girlfriend to agree that it was a good idea to spend £500 on one, I walked to the Apple Store and left 10 minutes later with one under my arm.

Finally, my new MacBook Pro was purchased about 7 weeks ago. I had recently sold some shares and had the money sitting in my bank, where it was due to stay. But, I always had a little nagging thought in my head that I wanted a computer that WORKED.

The day I decided to get one, was the day my girlfriend actually suggested I go and buy one. Once I’d recovered from the shock of those words coming out of her mouth I started reading everything I could on the performance of a machine that was going to cost me £1000.

Thankfully, I waited long enough to get my hands on the updated 2011 version. Three days after it’s release, I was in the Apple Store to spend £1000.

I have waited this long to post my review of this computer as I believe ANY computer works pretty fast out of the box, and so thought I would see how it performs after a couple of months of use. Trust me when I say this…. it is the best one thousand pounds I have ever spent.

For starters, it starts up really fast. To prove this I recorded a little video that shows it takes less than a minute from pressing the ‘on’ button, to having the web browser open and ready for use. If you are interested, here is that video;

I am fed up with Microsoft Windows. In my spare time I am an Internet Marketer… meaning I make money on the Internet. Using Windows cost me countless hours attempting to get my 2 year old computer to work, and time – as the old proverb goes – is money.

It was time I had a computer that allowed me to be more productive and waste less time waiting for Windows to respond to a simple command to open an application.

With my new MacBook Pro, I now have that. It loads fast, it opens applications fast, and it doesn’t give up on me when I ask it to do more than one thing. In simple terms, it WORKS. It’s for that reason that when anybody says to me;

How can you justify spending that much money on a computer?

I can reply truthfully;

Because it does what it’s supposed to do.

For anyone that is interested, I have the least powerful MacBook Pro model. It has a 13″ screen, 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with 3MB shared L3 cache (I’m not sure what all that means though!), and a 320GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive.

This machine is impressive, and I would definitely encourage anyone looking to be more productive to invest in one. It could be your best investment yet…..

I own another – more popular – site on the fear of flying. The site gets an average of 1000 visitors a day, and my stats program allows me to see where in the world my visitors come from, along with information such as what Internet browser they are using.

That may seem like a pointless bit of information, but it relates to why I’m posting this review.

My stats show that a huge percentage of Internet users are still using Internet Explorer 6 to browse the Internet.

So what I hear you say….

Internet Explorer 6 is outdated, and insecure. In this day in age, it’s more important than ever that we all protect our data. Using such an insecure web browser is just asking for trouble. The following is taken from the Wikipedia page for the browser;

This version of Internet Explorer is widely derided for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in “worst tech products of all time” lists, with some publications labeling it as the “least secure software on the planet.”[2]

Because a substantial percentage of the web audience still uses the outdated browser, campaigns have been established to encourage users to upgrade to newer versions of Internet Explorer or switch to different browsers. Some websites have dropped support for IE6 entirely, most notable of which is Google dropping support in some of its services.[3][4]

Over nine years after its release, it continues to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month.

If you are using this browser, you really need to update asap. All Internet browsers are free of charge, and you DO have a choice.

Microsoft have always had the largest market share with it’s Internet Explorer browser. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best. The ONLY reason they are top of the table is because the browser is already installed on every single Windows PC. The majority of computer users are not even aware that there is an alternative, and they presume this is the only way to get access to the Internet.

In truth, Internet Explorer is slow, buggy, and sometimes insecure. I haven’t used any version of the Microsoft browser for many years now (apart from on work computers where I – unfortunately – do not have a choice), and I don’t plan on doing so in the future.

So what are your alternatives;

There are many browsers to choose from, but the biggest are Firefox, Safari (Apple), and Google Chrome (my personal favourite).

All of these are faster and more secure than even the newest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. If your Internet is running slow, it’s likely to be caused by a slow browser…… Do yourself a favour, and install a faster browser TODAY.

Download Google Chrome at http://www.google.com/chrome. Install it and set it as your default bowser. Give it a week or so to get used to the slightly different browser, and then I dare you to tell me you haven’t noticed an improvement in your Internet performance.

To be honest, I thought she was making it up and was just simply using her phone more than previously. But, after constant nagging I started to research the problem. It seems she was right, and it is a legitimate complaint after all. The Apple support forum has a thread devoted to the same problem, and it’s a very active one – meaning (of course) that there are plenty of people with the same complaint. Many people’s iPhone batteries are not lasting long since the ios 4.3 update.

So, if your iPhone 4 battery is now draining too fast, here are some of the possible solutions which may (or may not) work for you;

Check Your Software is Updated

Not long after ios 4.3 was released, 4.3.1 was available. Plug your iPhone into iTunes and check the software is up to date. If it needs updating, do it. This may fix your problem.

Reboot Your Device

More often than not, problems are sorted by rebooting your iPhone. Do this by holding down the home button, and the on/off button simultaneously for about 10 seconds (until the screen goes black). Your phone should then reboot itself and this may solve your problem.

Mail Accounts

Go to ‘Settings —> Mail, Contacts, Calendars’ and scroll down to ‘Fetch New Data’. Go into this menu and ensure ‘Push’ is ‘Off’, and ‘Fetch’ is set to ‘Manually’.

This could also fix your problem.

Sign Out of iTunes Store Account

Other users have suggested that there is a bug with the iTunes store, and if you sign out of it your problem may be fixed.

Go to ‘Settings —> Store’. Click on your Apple ID and then select ‘Sign Out’.

Try these options one-by-one and see if they make a difference to your battery life. I will add more fixes as I see them. Alternatively, you can read the Apple Support Forum Thread.

Update: After experimenting with my girlfriend’s iPhone 4 I think I’ve sorted it by signing out of iTunes store account (4th option above). This is slightly annoying as now every time she wants to download anything from iTunes directly to phone, she will have to log in and then remember to sign out from the account again afterwards.

Hopefully Apple will provide a fix for this in the near future…..

This time around, it’s an iPhone app by the name of SkyView. See dramatic screenshot to the left!

What the hell is SkyView I hear you ask? It’s another augmented reality app that uses your iPhone’s camera to show what’s around you. In this particular app, you can see what’s above you.

As the name suggests, it allows you to view the sky…. or more specifically, the stars, planets, satellites and whatever else is floating around in that huge galaxy of ours. It costs just 59p so I downloaded it approximately 20 minutes ago just to have a go, as it was getting great reviews.

I’m glad I did, as I’ve just had a very fun, but very educational 20 minutes. I’ve never really been interested in our solar system – as my school science reports I stumbled upon the other day confirm – but it’s completely fascinating to see what’s up there.

From the screenshot you can see that I was pointing my phone at Saturn. The orange line shows the path it has taken, and it’s future route across the horizon.

Unfortunately, I could not actually see the planet with the naked eye, but it was strangely compelling to know it was there nonetheless. I did test the app with the location of the moon (that was visible without the app – if that makes sense), and it got it spot on, so I have no reason not to trust the accuracy of the SkyView iPhone App.

The only negative – and it’s not the app’s fault – is it uses the iPhone’s compass (and GPS). As you may be aware, there is often interference with the compass, and your phone asks you kindly to move your phone around in a figure of 8 to recalibrate. I had to do this on numerous occasions whilst using SkyView. In the privacy of my own home this is ok, but I may start to look a little odd if doing it out on the street. To be honest though, I guess I’d look crazy enough pointing my phone at the sky in the first place (like one of those mad people you see moving their phone slightly closer to the satellite in order to get a better phone signal – come on, you know you’ve seen this happen….).

To download the app, click here now. Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi and iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G. Requires iOS 4.1 or later.