Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

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Sat outside a sunny Pizza Express in Reading I requested the bill and then proceeded to whip out my iPhone and fire up the app. Using it is simplicity itself – you simply type in the number from the bottom of the bill and enter your PayPal details. Once done you receive a confirmation which says “Thank you for your payment, you can now leave the restaurant” which I duly did.

I had probably got less than 50 yards away from the restaurant before the waiter caught me up to ask me if I had paid the bill! So App fail there I think.

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The company that I work for, 2LS, are providers of recruitment software and, as I am sure you can imagine, this last year has been particularly tough for that sector as new jobs have been few and far between and recruitment agencies have been tightening their belts. Despite this challenging background 2LS has bucked the trend and grown over the last year. In fact we have tripled the number of customers in that period and consequently have also had to increase the number of employees to keep pace with the growth.

The team has worked extremely hard over the last year and I am very proud of what we have achieved. Now we have to look to do it again in the next twelve months.

You can read the official release here.

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This year was completely different. Spread over three halls there were gadgets for everything you could possibly imagine and every price point.

Big this year was 3D with several major manufacturers showing off their 3D TVs. We took at look at the offering from Panasonic and I have to admit that it was pretty good being one of the most realistic that I have seen (you still need to wear those glasses though).

For many years I couldn’t go anywhere without my Psions and I was really sorry when then ceased to make portable computers. So I was really happy to see the psixpda which has the Psion 5 in it’s DNA. However, rather than running EPOC this device runs Windows XP and while it looked good it was simply too small for general everyday usage, which was a shame.

Also looking good was the swap watch which had bluetooth phone capabilities, a camera as well as being able to be tell the time. But you do need large wrists to make the most of it.

As well as the stands in the halls you could also go to the live theatre where the Gadget Show presenters put on a live version of the TV show which was really well done.

I was glad that I made time to go up and greatly enjoyed the day but it was packed. At one point it was so busy that the walkways were gridlocked. A real sign that they have a winner on their hands so lets hope it expands again next year.

Below is a small selection of the pictures and videos taken at the event and you can see more here.

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It did offer Mat the opportunity to play on a number of games, including Guitar Hero and Rock band, as well as seeing the Guitar Hero World Champion in action. He must have been about 16 and while quite impressive you can’t help but think that his parents would probably have been more pleased if he put in the same amount of effort on revising for his GCSEs than the enormous amount of practice he must have put in on Guitar Hero!

As you can see from the photo we did get to meet presenter Jason Bradbury who was signing copies of his new book aimed at teenage gadget lovers. Jason was just as you would imagine him to be, friendly in a cheeky-chappy sort of way and Mat was made up to meet him.

I got to play with Sony’s answer to the Netbook the snappily titled VAIO P VGN. I was a fantastic looking unit and, as you would expect from Sony, beautifully put together but completely impractical and, at a shade under £1000, too expensive.

So we had fun. Would I go again? Probably but not less than 24 hours after stepping off a long flight!

Click here to see all pictures from Gadget Show Live

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I am pleased to be able to announce that I have now setup my own business, Ammat Consulting, offering strategic consultancy and tactical support to software companies of all sizes. This makes use of the more than 20 years I have in both software development and running of software based businesses.

The website was launched this week which gives further details of the services on offer. You can visit the site here http://www.ammatconsulting.com.

I have already secured a number of clients but still have some time available. If you think that I may be able to help you or your colleagues then please get in touch.

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I did learn some interesting things though. The project is completely government backed to the tune of £370M, so if you are a UK tax payer you have contributed to this. 90% of the time available in the synchrotron is available for academic use and is free to use. The remaining 10% is for company research, predominantly pharmaceutical based, for which they pay "a few thousand" per go.

I was also surprised to learn that there are about 70 other synchrotrons worldwide and the one at Harwell is the 4th largest. Although size does not seem to be what is important with these things but how bright the light is determines how good it is. In this case it is one billion times brighter than the sun, so pretty bright then. 

For those that are interested there are some pictures of the facility below and for the really curious you can visit their website here.

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At this point I decided that the best course of action was to install the previous stable build (2.3.3) and redo the transfer. Again the install was a breeze. This time I encountered a different problem in that not all my posts would import. I then spent a while checking a number of things from the size of the file to the format of the XML. A number of imports later and I am still no closer.

So I have a number of choice:

• import all items and not be able to delete them
• import only the items that Wordpress decides
• move to some other blogging platform
• give up.

Right now I am going with the latter option while I do some more research on resolving one of the issues. When I find a solution I will post it.

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So what are my objections to the innocuous looking device? Well for a start I access my bank account from home, from work and, crucially, while on the move from my mobile. This implies that I will have to carry this calculator around with me too. I can’t see that working. I will, no doubt, leave it on my desk at work, get home and find that I cannot make a payment as I don’t have the required security codes. And as for keeping it in my pocket so I can access on the move – forget it. So from that point of view it is a backwards step as I will no longer be able to manage my account where and when I want.

Perhaps that is the real security improvement. As this device is going to be tied to my debit card and not (easily) transportable I won’t be able to access my account as often and when I do it will be only on a single PC. Once the system is operational in a couple of weeks I will report back on its use.

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Xobni appears as a column down the right hand side of Outlook that displays information about the sender of the currently selected email. At the top is a picture placeholder which is a little redundant in my case as I don’t collect pictures of my contacts. Below this is details of your email activity with this individual and their rank.

The next block has telephone number details (if available) and a clickable link to call them via Skype. Also contained in this section is a really cool piece of functionality that is a simple link that says "Schedule time with x". When you click on this an email opens with details of all your free time over the next few days (you can set in options which days it includes). This is great as if you get asked to schedule a meeting or a call, rather then check your calendar you can just press the button and Xobni will do the check for you. It’s a great idea and very simple but unfortunately there are a few problems with it – more of which later.

The final sections have details of the email conversations you have had with that contact and the files you have sent them. Both of which are invaluable when you are looking for an email you know you have sent recently but can’t quite track down. You see on the bar a few lines from the email but clicking it displays the whole thing in the Xobni bar.

But the best functionality is the least visible and this is a small search field at the top of the bar. Searching in Outlook can be a painful experience: slow and with little choice over the folders you can search at any one time. Xobni searches across all folders and does it at lightening speed much better that Outlook itself or Google Desktop Search.

I have to admit that I was a little bit dubious about Xobni at first as it takes up a fair chunk of screen real estate down the right hand side. However, the functionality offered is genuinely useful and the fact that you can collapse Xobni down to a thin column means that you can regain the space should you need to.

Xobni is currently in beta and there are a few wrinkles to iron out, particularly around the schedule function which doesn’t work if you have the email type set to HTML and you are not using Word as your editor. However, I have to say that the guys on support at Xobni have been very responsive and I have every confidence that these problems will be sorted for the final release.

It also seems that I am not the only one that has taken a shine to Xobni as the rumours suggest that Microsoft may be looking to buy the company.

Xobni is currently in closed beta but if you would like an invite please send me an email.

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