Feb03

ATM skimming devices in Ireland

by Lucid on February 3rd, 2011 at 9:47 am
Posted In: Tech

Just wanted to show you all the skimming devices that have been found around Ireland. keep an eye out and hopefully you wont be scammed like I was a few months ago.

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Jan28

Boxee box – Another vice in my life

by Lucid on January 28th, 2011 at 11:19 am
Posted In: Tech

Last year I bought myself a little present for Christmas. I got the Boxee Box by link. For those of you not familiar with boxee it is a piece of software built on the XBMC platform. I did have boxee installed on a Linux machine until the CPU melted down on me.

I had been following the development of this little box on the site and thought what the hell I might as well get myself a treat. Once it arrived I set it up in the living room hooked up to my HD tv. I had all my films and tv shows backhoes unto my pc and so I pointed the media source on the boxee box to my windows 7 machine.

It took a long time for it to scrape the folders and populate the meta data. Once it had finished I tried to watch a movie. It started playing fine but after a few minutes it began to stutter and lose sync. I thought this was down to the size of the file (mkv 8GB) but sadly it was happening on smaller files. This issue has since been fixed with a firmware update but I went a different route in the end.

I had a 2TB external hardrive lying around that I wasn’t using. I moved all my content onto this drive and connected it to the boxee box via USB. I also enabled the sharing option which effectively turns the boxee box into a nas server. The box scraped the media folders much faster than before and all my files played perfectly.

Additionally there is a lot of online content provided through apps that can be downloaded directly from boxee or independent repositories. It’s great for watching Engadget, the escapist magazine and BBC iplayer.

Now that a lot of the bugs have been worked out with the latest firmware I would have no problem recommending this bit of kit to anyone, if you’re American though there is an ongoing issue with hulu which is restricting the content. Keep an eye on that in the future if you’re on the other side of the pond. Also check out http://forums.boxee.com for other news about it.

Remote

Now there is one thing that has let the box down and that is the remote. It’s very nice and works well with a full qwerty keyboard on the back. The only problem is that the keyboard keys are dark grey letters on black buttons that make it near impossible to use at night.

Check out the following link for some great tips on getting the best from your boxee box: http://lzt.co/f

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Jan27

XMI X-mini II Mini Speaker review

by Lucid on January 27th, 2011 at 4:58 am
Posted In: Tech

XMI X-mini II Mini SpeakerI’ve needed a portable speaker to use with my mp3 player for awhile now and finally decided on the XMI X-mini II Mini Speaker (UK – http://amzn.to/bEi9M0, US – http://amzn.to/9wvYEi).

I am fairly impressed with it so far.  For such a small device the volume it can achieve without distortion is pretty impressive. It expands out to increase the bass and it is made of rubberised plastic that is pleasant to hold.  It can be charged from a USB port and has a built in cable to jack into a normal earphone jack.  You can also link them up in order to provide even more power but as I only have one I can’t test this yet.  Below is a video of me using the speaker with my iPad but you can’t really get the full effect.

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Jan27

Amazon.co.uk kindle books not available in Ireland

by Lucid on January 27th, 2011 at 4:16 am
Posted In: Tech

Kindle
With my recent purchase of the iPad one of the first apps I downloaded was the kindle app for amazon. At the time there was only the US version of the kindle store on-line but being in Europe there were restrictions on some of the books I could buy. Now that the UK version of the site was up I was greatly looking forward to downloading a greater variation of books to read on the go and using my purchasing history to receive recommendations.

So I receive an email from amazon.co.uk letting me know the kindle is now available. I fire up the ipad and go to amazons kindle page and at the top of the page was a warning that kindle books are not available in my country. I was shocked. I can buy the kindle device from the UK store and have it shipped to me here in Ireland but I can’t buy any of the book that I want. Many of the book I am looking for are simply not available from the US store.

I can only assume that the publishers are the ones causing these problems as they don’t seem to have gotten there head around digital distribution. This leaves many customers in Ireland, and in fat other European countries with very little options and I fear that downloading books illegally and converting them into a format your device can read will become more common Which is a shame. Hopefully these restrictions will be lifted soon and we can start enjoying the kindle store as it should be.

UPDATE #1 email from amazon

Dear Mr McCabe,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk.

Unfortunately at the moment the Kindle and the Kindle Store is only available to UK customers. Publishers grant eBook rights on a country by country basis; as a result at the moment the Kindle content in Amazon.co.uk can only be sold to customers within the UK.

At the moment, customers outside the United Kingdom will need to continue to use the Amazon.com Kindle Store to order a Kindle device or Kindle content. Kindle is available for delivery to over 100 countries from our partner site Amazon.com. To view and place an order, please see this link:

http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Reading-Display-Graphite-Globally/dp/B002FQJT3Q/

We understand that the situation is frustrating, and we regret that at the moment we can’t provide any further information regarding the UK Kindle Store being available for customers outside the United Kingdom. Any updates in relation to this will be announced in the Amazon.co.uk website.

Strong customer feedback like this helps us continue to improve the service we provide, and we are glad you took time to write to us. I have sent your comments to the business team.

Please feel free to forward further comments and suggestions about our website and the Kindle Store to us. Each suggestion will be read and taken into consideration.

Thanks for your interest in Amazon Kindle.

Update #2

According to a source on the Amazon discussion board he was able to order with a UK shipping address (apparently a McDonalds in the north).  I wouldn’t be to confident about using this method and I don’t recommend it.  But of course its a free world and you can do what you like. :D

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Jan26

Crysis 2 Demo multiplayer first impressions

by Lucid on January 26th, 2011 at 11:14 am
Posted In: Games

Crysis 2

The Crysis 2 multiplayer demo is also out today on the xbox 360 and I have to admit I was very disappointed. The aiming was sloppy, it was difficult to distinguish players from the background and it wasn’t really a very good showcase for the game.

I will be the first to admit however that I do not like first person shooters on consoles. I feel bulletstorm pulled it off well however which may have made my frustrations with crysis 2 more acute.

Let me know what you guys thought of it.

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