This is only one of a few stories like this recently. The other most notable one in recent times is that of the battle between Finnish company Nokia and computer company Apple. The contention here was similar in nature to that of Kodak in that Nokia is claiming that Apple is infringing their patents in many of the ways that the iPhone works such as multi-touch technologies. Apple true to form have of course counter sued Nokia claiming that in fact Nokia is exploiting up to 13 patents that Apple holds.

I do understand the importance of companies in such highly competitive markets to protect their competitive advantages however it almost seems as though the ‘underdog’ company, in these cases Nokia & Kodak are suing to help bump up their incomes.

Would it not prove more productive for them to put the energy and money into developing products that have increased appeal to the consumer? I would certainly prefer to see companies pouring their resources into developing some compelling offerings rather than into senseless efforts to gain a quick buck. Not only that, but what what does all of this legal action mean for the end price that the customer needs to pay ? Well when a company is paying out big bucks for lawsuits and lawyers it must get factored into the pricing of their products some how.

Unfortunately it does seem to be part and parcel of operating a business in todays litigious environment so in a way I suppose we will see this more and more as it becomes more important to protect your intellectual property and the things that you have that give you an advantage over your competitors.

I downloaded it late last night and thought I would have a quick browse around with it. I almost always use Safari on the Mac which I consider to be a very fast web browser and on par with Firefox, but upon opening up Chrome and using it for a little while you do notice the speed in which web pages load. Speed is always something that we are looking for in a web browser because we all want the fastest load times possible and Chrome certainly doesn’t disappoint here.

As far as appearance goes, if you have used the Windows version of Chrome at all you will notice that it is all very similar but with a more…Mac’ish feel to it, the colour scheme has been adapted to better fit within the OS X environment. Although Google have equipped Chrome with a host of different themes that can be added to it as well to change up the look. It does offer the now expected feature of tabbed browsing, however it does so in a different manner to what we are all used to. As mac users if you remember back to when the beta version of Safari 4 was released the behaviour of the tabs was to sit above the address bar? Well this is the same way that tabs are implemented in Chrome – I really like this way of setting out the tabs as it maximises your viewing area which can be especially valuable if you are on a laptop and it is something that I wish had been kept in Safari.

The other neat thing that you will notice is that you lose the search bar that we have come to expect, it is no longer a separate box to type your search into. Google Chrome integrates the address bar and search box all into one and they call it the Omnibox. Therefore if you know the URL go ahead and type it in, but if your not sure use the same box and do a Google (or other specified search engine) search.

One of the other things that has become standard in all modern browsers is the ability to browse the web in ‘private’ mode, Chrome also has this functionality which they call Incognito. Essentially meaning that there will be no cookies or web history saved from sites you visit while ‘incognito’ this is a very good feature if you are using a public computer and would like to further increase your safety while doing internet banking or shopping. I do however like the rather humorous explanation that Google gives about the Incognito function.

All in all this is a very capable browser and I like it a lot! I’m glad it is finally available on the Mac and Linux platforms for all to utilise. Google Chrome is available for download here: http://www.google.com/chrome

And further information about the browser is available here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features_mac.html

This all made me think a little about what actual purpose the ‘Record’ store actually serves in the current world that we live in. One of the biggest differences between the two and reason that I think that online music stores have been so successful is not so much the ease of purchase but more so the ability to pick and choose exactly what songs you want. No longer do you have to spend $30 for an album where you only get two or three songs that you actually want to listen to. It think this is the major appeal, but what about pricing?

While albums available for online purchase all come in at different prices depending on the number of tracks, when comparing their prices to purchasing a CD from a store there is a significant price saving.

I have a feeling that the preference to purchase music on a form of media like a CD may also be a bit of a generational thing as well. Given the fact that in the past people have always had a very tangible experience when purchasing music and movies, essentially they would walk into a store, hand over their hard earned cash and physically get something for it. From what I can see it seems that those generations of people still want that tangible experience. However for the younger generations that are used to the more intangible experience of handling their media I think we will slowly see the need and want to have a physical copy of a movie or music slowly fade, and with it will the need for bricks and mortar record stores. Just the way I see it anyway. What do you think? Let us know in the poll below!!

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DNS stands for Domain Name System, and what does this mean? Well the main purpose of a domain name service is to turn domain names (the address or URL of a website) into something meaningful to humans. Essentially the internet is a massive number of computers which all connect to one another and every computer that has access to the internet has a number the usual format is something like 111.222.3.44. The way you access websites is by telling your computer to go and get information off another computer using a given number. Due to the fact that the internet would be largely unusable to us if we had to remember these numbers each time we wanted to visit a site, we have domain names. each domain name is an easy way of presenting the string of numbers the computers use to talk to each other.

Normally when you type in an internet address you’re computer speaks with your internet service provider who then gets the page your looking for. However services such as OpenDNS allow you to direct your internet traffic through their data centres rather than through that of your own internet service provider. This is achieved by either re-directing at each of the computers on your network or you can tell your router to control this allowing easy set up for all computers on your network.

If for nothing else the benefit of using a service like this enables a good speed boost to your web browsing experience. On some of my tests I noticed that sites were loading around 2 seconds quicker than they previously were through my ISP’s service.

I feel that all households should make use of a service like this in large for the security features that they offer. If you have children it may be of interest to know that you have the ability to specifically blacklist websites that you want to restrict access to. This is often more effective than the built in parental controls on the computer itself becuase it is being controlled by a third party service externally, therefore it is not possible for them to work around this. There are presets provided by OpenDNS which allow you to quickly and very easily filter your web access the presets include:

• None: no restriction to your browsing, you may select this if you’re not using the service for security
• Minimal: protects you against phishing websites and attacks
• Low: protects you against limited adult material & phishing attacks
• Moderate: protects against all adult material & illegal material & previously mentioned items
• High: restricts all adult material, illegal activity, social networking, video sharing, general time wasters plus previously mentioned items.

If you run a business you may find the high level of protection suitable to protect you and your employees from accessing unwanted websites and material. To further add to the offering, if you are so inclined down the big-brother kind of path you can enable stats. This logs all websites that are visited and makes them available for you to view, this can of course be turned on or off.

One of my favourite uses of this service is mainly because I’m lazy, and this is the shortcuts feature. Once you have set this up within the dashboard on your OpenDNS login you simply add a website to the list and give it a shortcut. For example I have it set so that when I type ‘fb’ into my address bar, it will automatically direct me to facebook.com. Pretty handy if you can remember your shortcuts. There is always bookmarks in your browser of course. To add to this is the auto correct feature, this means that if I type facebook.cmo by mistake it recognises this and redirects me to facebook.com instead of giving me a 404 page not found error.

One of the last things that I will mention here for personal users is the ability for the service to redirect when you come accross a site that either no longer exists or you have entered incorrectly and isn’t able to be auto corrected. What happens is that if I am to try and go to fabebook.com, this is obviously spelt wrong but instead of my browser giving me the very annoying 404 page not found error, OpenDNS spits up a page which politely says why you weren’t taken to the page and gives you a list of alternatives or you can do what looks to be a google search.

These are some of the reasons why I feel that this is a service that all homes should be using, and the best part is that for the basic account which gives you all of the things I have mentioned here it is all free! No theres no catches all free. If you’re a business and want some of the more advanced features that this kind of service can provide you do pay a fee. So even if for nothing else but a bit of a speed boost to your browsing head over to OpenDNS.com

If you are anything like me, it drives me crazy when all I want to do is sync my phone with iTunes and every time I connect it – iPhoto opens. It opens whether there are new photos on my phone or not (thats possibly the most annoying part – please fix this Apple). So I went on a mission to find out how do disable iPhoto from automatically opening when you plug in an iPhone or digital camera. Turns out that it is pretty simple!

Essentially you just need to open iPhoto, select the ‘iPhoto’ menu > Preferences > General Tab > Connecting Camera Options > No Program

This will stop any programs automatically opening when you connect any iPhone or Digital Camera, and allows you to then manually open it when you see fit.

There are other options for doing this, such as using Image Capture. I think they may have taken this out in Snow Leopard 10.6 because I just can’t find it. But presumably in prior versions of OS X you can open Image Capture and follow a similar process to selecting which programs you want your computer to open when connecting a camera.

This is one of the new features that Apple included in iTunes version 9. If you have ever had to import more than a single file into iTunes at a time then I think you need to be aware of this method.

Apple have created a folder called ‘Automatically Add to iTunes’, and any media that you place in this folder will automatically be added to your library and organised in the appropriate way. It really is a shame that they decided to hide this folder away down in the depths of you’re computer because it certainly does make importing files a whole heck of a lot easier.

Just a little thing to be aware of when it comes to putting files into this folder. Don’t be alarmed when they suddenly disappear – it’s ok! What iTunes does it takes the file and puts it within the iTunes library files with all of your other media.

Hopefully this little tip will help out

It’s here, Dropbox have released an app for the iPhone & iPod Touch. I have written several posts about dropbox now, and the more I use it the more and more I find it useful and this just adds to the argument. The beauty of Dropbox is that it creates a folder on all of you’re linked computers and anything that you keep in this folder will automatically be updated on you’re web account and any other computers that you have installed and authorised Dropbox to work on.

So back to the iPhone app! When you launch the application for the first time, you get a little intoductory PDF to look at which runs you through the ‘good to know’s’ of the application. After this you are prompted to input you’re dropbox log-in details then you’re phone will automatically reach out to the dropbox servers and bring back down icons for all of the files and folders that are currently in you’re dropbox folder.

For files like presentations, word documents, photos, PDF’s and so on, you simply tap on the representative icon and viola the file loads and you have a full screen and very legible copy of the document to read. Very handy for viewing files that you need on the spur of the moment or when you have left your laptop behind.

One of the other things that I find great about the dropbox app for the iPhone is the ability to shoot/choose existing photos & videos (for those of you with a 3GS) and upload these to you’re dropbox folder. This of course sync’s back down to any of the other computers you have linked. This is a god send for getting photos back to the computer rather than dealing with the time taken up to connect you’re phone and wait for it to sync etc etc etc all just to get a photo.

The other beauty of this app is the ease in sharing files in you’re dropbox. When you are in one of the selected files and in viewing mode, simply tap on the envelope in the lower left corner and enter the email of the person you would like to share the folder with. This sends the person an email containing a link which is valid for 30 days from time of sending. When the link is clicked the recipient is taken to a browser link to view the file.

To me this is just one more reason to use Dropbox on my computers at home, and for anybody who does use Dropbox – if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should definitely give this app a go!!! To get the application on you’re phone or get extra information about Dropbox you can visit their site here: getdropbox.com

Google, through their Sync feature have enabled essentially an Exchange service for Gmail. This means that if set up properly on your iPhone you can get your email pushed to and from your phone just as if it was a mobile me account! Great news. I set this up today and gave it a bit of a test. To test this I would essentially send myself an email (lame I know) but within minutes my phone would buzz and a badge would show up on my mail icon to say that I had new mail!

For me this is just one more reason to set up a gmail account as an alternative to paying for a service like mobile me or dealing with ISP’s to set up your email. It really is a pretty easy set up process and the google website gives nice easy and clear directions. If you wan’t to set this up on your phone check out the Google Sync page here.

Email

First and easiest is syncing your email. To do this you’re email provider needs to support what is called IMAP, generally they will tell you to set up your email programs with POP3. The difference here is that POP3 is a system which downloads what is on your email server and stores a copy on your local system – this is excellent if you only use one computer. But throw in your mobile phone and your laptop on top of your desktop computer and you will be getting the same email showing as unread multiple times, and if you delete it on one computer it will still be on the other devices same with your sent emails – frustrating!!.

The beauty of using IMAP based email is that every-time your computer or mobile phone is told to check your mail it will only show you what is currently on the email systems server, so think of it this way: somebody sends you an email > it goes to your email providers central computer > your computer or phone checks to see if there is any mail > it pulls down a copy of this and shows you your mail > all the time keeping a message on the emails providers computers. If you make a change such as delete or move it to another folder the action is mimicked on the email systems server. Therefore the next time one of your other devices checks for new mail it will see exactly what is on the email server and refresh all of your devices.

Setting up an IMAP email is hard to document because every internet/email service provider is set up a different way therefore there isn’t one set way to do this, generally speaking by navigating through your suppliers support pages and by using google to search you will generally be able to find a way to set this up. If your primary email is done through a service like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc this makes it easier because by nature these are already an IMAP way of managing your email just navigate to their websites and they will give you details on how to set this up for your email program.

Files

Mobile Me provides a service called iDisk, which is like your own portion of disk space on Apples servers. This means it appears as a local disk on your computers however it can be accessed by any computer you give access to or via the web. The nice thing about this is that if you work between multiple computers you know just what it is like to go out one day and have forgotten to copy the file across. My solution to this was to use a service called Dropbox. I have blogged about this previously so won’t go into too much depth, but for free with this service you get 2GB worth of space which I find is adequate for files and some pictures. You can pay for a larger disk space if you want to. This service provides the same function that I mentioned earlier about providing an online central place to store files, but the beauty of dropbox is that whatever you put in your dropbox folder on one computer is automatically synced up to the dropbox server and back down to any other computer that you have installed dropbox on!

Calendar

Another great feature of Mobile Me is the ability to synchronize your calendars across different machines and you’re iPhones, Mobile Me does a really great job of this by pushing any changes made up to their servers and back down to your other devices to be updated. There is one great way to achieve this for free and this is with Google Calendar.

Once you have a google account you have full access to this feature for free, the process is fairly simple however I won’t discuss it here for the fact that it is so in-depth, however if this interests you check out the links posted below to find out how to set this up. Below are the links to platforms and programs it is available with:

• Click here for links to set up Calendar
• Works with Mozilla Sunbird
• Apple iCal & iPhone
• Microsoft Outlook
• Windows Mobile
• Blackberry

Contacts

Google really provides so many great services at no charge and due to the nature of how your contacts with Google are managed – that is in the ‘cloud’, it allows them to offer this free synchronizing services for contacts as well. So like with the Calendar when you add or update a contact on your computer or phone, it will update this on every device enabled to do so. Again the explanation of how to do this is to in depth for me to cover here but if you would like to enable this as well check out the link here > Google Sync Services