The iPhone 4

So it's been a while since I blogged. Blogging has frankly lost out to micro-blogging, sorry. Turns out I don't have much to say that can't be said in 140 characters and, if I'm honest, I'm not even sure that's all that interesting! Twitter has indeed stole my heart from you blog. Sorry! Now however seems a good point to blog. Today I took delivery of an iPhone 4. And here are my thoughts...

Firstly I'm excited. Like a child! I'd booked some on the off chance with O2. They are distributed by them on a lottery basis to business customers. We won. Good times. Upgrades were due, so no expenditure was necessary. O2's policy was bizarre. "How will I find out if we get some?" I asked the nice business manager at O2. "Well some iPhones will arrive in the post" he replied sagely. Turns out he was right. They did! Cue childish excitement and anticipation.

Setup was fairly painless. It seems to be gussied about the USB port than the 3G (honestly!), but once I sorted that it restored from my old phone fine. The iPhone 4 uses a micro-sim like the iPad, so had to go on to O2 to make the switch. Initially website was overloaded, but it worked eventually. And so about half hour after I started I had an iPhone 4, working and looking (software wise) rather like my 3G with iOS4.

First impressions - the new phones smaller (marginally) than the original. Initially it didn't feel right on my hand, but it fits well now. It is lighter, but I've never thought the old one was too heavy.

Overall the softwares faster and I'm sure the sync was quicker. I've not had a chance to try FaceTime yet, but normal call making was fine. Mail has support for two exchange accounts, which is cool.

Multitasking took a while to find, but the theory seems good. I couldn't see any apps that supported it particularly well, but it does making switching easier. I guess time will tell with future apps.

The camera initially seemed impressive, but that was such an understatement. The still camera is brilliant. I've taken some impressive pics already and the colour in daylight is very impressive. Te video camera is equally impressive and I've just downloaded the iMovie app which looks like a great addition. Altogether an excellent package for taking/editing/uploading. Watch this space for more uploads soon! Samples of the first stuff on my Flickr - http://www.Flickr.com/users/Jasonthejoker.

So far it's brilliant. Initially not the massive change that the iPhone 3G was from a "normal" phone, but it's a superb evolution of the product. How does that leave me for the iPad? Wanting more... There's no real one BIG reason for wanting the iPhone 4, but as a package it really works. I want more Apple! Steve - give us more!

More Excellent Apps for PDF Working

I shared ion a previous post about the excellent guys at www.A-PDF.com That time it was for A-PDF content splitter, which is an excellent way of splitting large PDFs down based on their content. We use it at our school for distributing timetables. I've now found another excellent product for printing PDFs (and other docs too), which as you may be aware is a huge problem for large numbers of docs.

This product is awesome and very good value. Check it out. http://www.a-pdf.com/batch-print/

Well done developers

Gods voice and kids programmes

I've come out for a walk with the dog. It's wet and horrid, but he needs excercise and I need some time to contemplete. I'm contempleting the challenges that come along with this walk with God. If we're Christians I think we think longer about lifes purpose. Not because we're fundamentally better than others, but because we're given a need to. "What does God want for me?", "Why don't I hear God?", "Why doesn't God answer?", etc. To me the only sensible suggestion is prayer. Give your time to God. Make your petitions. Listen for his word. If you don't hear? Try again! It's probably not your fault and believe it or not He IS listening.

So what did I get this morning? Well my heart was heavy, so I turned to God. He answered immediately! As soon as I prayed there it was. The voice of God in my head, saying:

"Chugg-ing-ton, chugger, chugger, chugger. Chugger, chugger chuggington."

Maybe I'll try again later!