At last!

I know Apple has many things to work on, but something that annoyed us (and many other developers) was the review system in the Appstore.

It was WIDE open so anyone could go and write 'tat' without actually purchasing and using an app.

What this meant was you had very silly people writing nonsense reviews and rating apps at 1 star. Often this would be a rival application developer or just someone who really needs to 'get out more'.

Well, now you at-least have to purchase and install the app in order to review it. As this post from Macworld points out.  

Ok, it is not going to get rid of some of the stupid reviews but at least it will take a little effort to review now (and that should deter some).

Do you read reviews? We do, and love to look through apps that have got great reviews and then in amongst you'll see a 1 star 'dumb' comment. It's obvious what's going on, and hopefully obvious to the more sane public!

ThaiCats at the Southampton Boat Show

A picture of the ThaiCats CC and TT boats at the Southampton Boat Show.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Valentino Rossi, for winning his 6th MotoGP title at the weekend (his 8th in total, including his 125cc and 250cc titles)!

The word legend is banded about all to often these days and few are truly deserving of the honour. Rossi however, is the true epitome of legendness.

Not only has the man dominated top-flight motorcycling for almost a decade, not only did he decide to leave the comfort zone he had at Honda to drag an under-performing Yamaha to the top, he also retains not only a great sense of humour but a lot of humility. Valentino is a genius.

His track record is stunning. One year in a series to work it out, and the title in the second year and onwards.

In 1996 Rossi made his 125cc debut. He won the title in 1997.

In 1998 Rossi made his 250cc debut. He won the title in 1999.

In 2000 Rossi made his 500cc debut, guess what? he won the title in 2001 (the final year of the 500s). He won the first 990cc MotoGP championship in 2002 (add 2003, 2004 and 2005 to that) and now he has his first 800cc title.


Valentino Rossi - 6 times MotoGP champion, and a nice bloke. Well done sir.

McLaren ready for first F1 night race

From Thursday's press conferance...

Q: (Tomas Richtr – TV Nova) To the McLaren drivers: could you please quantify the advantage from the headlights that your team at Woking installed on your car last week?
HK: Yeah, I had a chat about that with my engineer but I still prefer the aerodynamic advantage, so I will keep the lights off.
LH: For me, I thought I needed a bit more downforce, so I’ve opted to use them.

Capturing a single window on Mac

I love the way screen-capture is integrated into OS X. It's another of those tasks that they have thought about and made really 'slick'.

I just found out though that capturing a single window is really, really easy too.

All you do is this:

- Command + Shift 4, then hit Space

You'll then get a nice 'Camera' icon where you can select the window (it does not even have to be in the foreground) and screen-capture will handle the grab.

Simple.

Tags?

I have been playing with 'Tag Clouds' and this is what our Blog reported....

A real mix of words from a real broad range of articles!

I also had a quick go on one of our client sites 'Mastersparesonline'

And as I liked the results so much decided to try our latest client Thaicats also.

I hope I'm wrong but....

It seems Nick Faldo is being controversial for the sake of being controversial.

Europe has always fielded strong, though-out, gritty teams for the Ryder cup. A team based on what works best, rather than who might individually be very strong or 'the best'.

Leaving out Monty and Darren seems strange - they are great team players. Day 2 sees Nick drop Westwood and Garcia who actually played really well on day 1. Why?

Nick was a great player, and is a great coach but the choices he is making do not seem right. 'Hopefully' I will be proven wrong and Europe will come good over the next couple of days....

London to Paris completed

The London to Paris ride has been completed.  Hooray!

A long and tough ride - but good friends made and obstacles overcome.

The ride involved a nasty accident on day 1 which then broke my bike but after being able to use a spare bike I was able to complete the ride.  We rode at a good pace which meant it was a good challenge, although the hills regardless of distance where always a challenge.

What's next....that cancelled skydive!

iChoose 2.0 - now available!

Free Torchwood from the BBC

As part of their Big Bang (no, it's not what your thinking!) Day, the BBC have produced a one-off Torchwood radio special. Broadcast this afternoon on BBC Radio 4.

The episode, entitled "Lost Souls" (40 ish mins long), is now available as a free MP3 download from the BBC Radio 4 website. Given that it's an MP3 link, it may be available to those outside the UK as well - I don't know.

Get it here - be quick though, it's only available for 7 days.

Busy redecorating

We're busy redecorating right now - our new utopia 365 website will be up within the coming days (or weeks - you know how it is).

We will also be launching a much needed update to our Talee Talee iPhone and iPod touch website, including details of our native iPhone Apps.

In the meantime, if you'd like to subscribe to our notifications service, pop along to the website and enter your email address. We'll let you know when the new site is live and keep you up to date with what's happening in the world of utopia 365.

Thaicats brochure

The Thaicats website is up and running, and we've also worked with them to design a brochure for the newly imported catamarans.

Visit them at the Southampton Boat Show and take a closer look, or arrange a test drive.

Mastersparesonline going strong

It has been a few weeks since the launch of the new Masterspares website (http://www.mastersparesonline.com).

The site provides hundreds of spares and accessories for various Domestic Appliances, along with many finished goods including top brands like Dualit and Miele.

Utilising the functionality of ruby on rails along with a very clean design the site is becoming popular with consumers. Mastersparesonline enables people to repair and update their appliances rather than dispose of them - saving money and being environmentally friendly.

Given that there are literally hundreds of thousands of parts and accessories it's very important for Simon (the owner) to be able to quickly add items onto the site when they become available, or if someone contacts him for a part.  Using a custom designed admin tool enables Simon to do just that, even optimising the output for Google to aid in SEO.

A nice feature for users was the 'Search as you type' facility implemented into the main site search. As customers enter a product or model/part number the search instantly starts to display the top results directly below.

You can find out more, or better yet shop online at http://www.mastersparesonline.com.

A busy week ahead

A busy week ahead for us.

iChoose should be released any day now. We received correspondence from Apple asking us to 'tweak' a couple of the images as they did not meet their terms & conditions. This has been done and the latest version uploaded.

utopia Solitaire development continues with some lovely and unique features being put in by Andy. We hope to release this week.

I will be cycling to Paris from London from Weds in aid of The Rose Road so that will have me busy for a few days!

My skydive which I was due to do last Saturday was cancelled due to bad weather. It is re-scheduled for a couple of weeks.

Keep an eye on this Blog for the latest news!

Thaicats launches

We are pleased to announce the Thaicats website.

We were approached to design the site which includes branding (logo and colour work). The site uses a range of technologies including Ruby on Rails, Flash, CSS and XHTML.

We were also asked to design the logos for the catamarans. 

You can find out more by visiting http://www.thaicats.co.uk

A few days to go....

It is only a couple of days before my adventures begin.
On Saturday I do a skydive (my first one) in aid of The Rose Road and then on Wednesday I start my cycle to Paris, again in aid of The Rose Road.

I will be cycling around 85 miles per day so it's going to be a good effort. I am not looking forward to the hills around northern France.

Many, many thanks to all the individuals and businesses that have sponsored me - which in turn helps a great charity.

http://www.justgiving.com/jumpnride

iChoose demo video

Well, here is a little video demo of the all-new iChoose version 2.

We're [EDIT: 'Still!!!!'] awaiting release confirmation from apple which should be soon!

EDIT 13/09/08 - iChoose 2.0 is now Available on the iPhone App Store.

Enough of the 'Killer' Blogs

Sigh......

Google announce their new Google Chrome browser....hours later blogs are filled with the 'same-old-same-old' stories....

"....Is THIS the IE Killer......Will Chrome KILL Mozilla, IE and Safari..." etc. etc.

NO - it won't. It introduces choice. People will always choose different things, like different things, say different things, go different places, talk in different ways, use different software and so on, and so on...

We've seen it with new operating systems, we've seen it with the iPhone, with Android, iPods, Zune, Wii, PS3 etc. etc. 

Enough with the 'Killer' stuff.....please.