Well, my new toy arrived yesterday and I spent the evening playing with all the applications I downloaded ages ago! And I really must be honest and say that I’m completely blown away by what my 16Gb iPhone 3G (in white) can do.
Obviously, if you mess around with it all night the shoddy battery will run down very quickly. But once the novelty has worn off and I reduce the amount of time spent playing games it’ll last much longer.
Not too pleased about not being able to send picture messages, which is very strange. But I can send them via email so it’s not that bad. Plus I can always upload them to Twitpic or one of the various other photo sites available by using the completely free downloadable applications.
And the apps are where this thing really stands out (I even wrote most of this post from a Wordpress app). The range of downloads is absolutely immense, allowing me to stop playing Monopoly and head over to check whether my train is delayed before looking to see what I might fancy cooking this evening. Superb (and you can download more directly to the phone). And with the unlimited browsing available as standard from O2, it works out as one incredible package. I expected the phone to be good before I got it, but I wasn’t prepared for just how good it is.
Get one if you can!
For those who may not know, as of yesterday iTunes started giving away something free each day for 12 days. Now, this stuff may not be your cup of tea, but who cares – it’s free! Yesterday was a music video from The Ting Tings, and today an episode of Derren Brown.
So keep your eye out and you might find something you actually want. Or you can be like me and download anything that’s free!!
I’ve placed the order for my new iPhone. The contract on my Nokia N95 doesn’t run out until the end of March 2009, but I guess it’s because I’ve been with O2 so long that they’re letting me upgrade from the 1st of January. So my phone should be with me next weekend. I can’t wait! I’m such a geek! 
I’ve also got rid of my N95 for a very reasonable price. I’ve sold it to a website called Fonebank who then do God-knows what with the things. Unfortunately I had to give a minimum of 10% of the price to Oxfam, but I guess it is Christmas, so that’s ok. Basically, once my iPhone arrives, I pop my old phone in a padded envelope and send it to them. They check it still works then send me a cheque for the value, minus the 10% I’ve given to charity. So that’s £85.50 I’ll be getting for a phone I’d otherwise be throwing away. Fantastic!
I was going to leave a Christmas posts yesterday, but in the end I simply couldn’t be bothered. I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of the day either, though I just wanted to make mention of the photo-related gifts I received. I shall list them below under their own little headings!
4Gb Sandisk Extreme III CompactFlash Card
For my trip to Scotland I wanted to make sure that I had enough memory for my days out walking and photographing. Not the biggest of cards, but the Extreme III works at break-neck speeds (not as fast as the Extreme IV but there has to be a balance between function and price). It’ll go very nicely with my others and I’ll now hopefully be able to go out all day shooting raw without having to worry about running out of space. I must just remember to take them off the card and put them onto the laptop once back at the hotel, or I won’t be able to do much the following day!
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Classroom in a Book
I’ve become a great advocate of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. I’ve never been overly familiar with Photoshop itself, although I have recently worked my way through a similar Adobe book on CS3 and I have to say it’s a lot easier to get to grips with than I ever imagined. Fortunately however, most of the functions necessary for me and my photography can now be performed in a much quicker and simpler way using Lightroom. I’ve been giving it a go for a while, and whilst I sort of know my way around it, I wanted to go through the same process I did with Photoshop and let Adobe tell me the key things to look out for. Hopefully let me start developing my own presets too, although I’ve not yet had chance to look through it to see what chapters are actually included. I’ll let you folks know once I’ve been through it.
Joby Gorillapod – SLR Zoom
This is something I was contemplating getting myself, though at the last minute decided to take off my Amazon Wishlist. So it was a very big coincidence that someone saw it and decided to get it me for Christmas. Very nice of them.
The Gorillapod, for those who don’t know, is a bendy tripod that you can hook around objects (posts, branches, fences etc) to enable you to get into some very awkward spots to take your pictures. It also enables you to get extremely close to the ground as the legs bend up on themselves allowing you to be able to practically stand the camera on the floor. And I have to say in my testing yesterday it seemed to work very well indeed. The legs are incredibly sturdy – the one I have has been built to hold an SLR with a big zoom lens attached. I can’t wait to get out there and start giving it a proper go in the wilds of Scotland!
I’ve just done something very naughty. I’ve just gone and bought myself a Blu-Ray player. I’d decided to wait until prices went right down to the sort of level you can pick DVD players up for. But if I do that I’ll be waiting years, and by that point I could have been buying Blu-Ray all this time instead of DVDs which I’ll then end up wanting to upgrade. So I’ve bitten the bullet and splashed out £160 on this Sony player right here.
To give it its full Amazon title, it’s a Sony BDPS350 Blu-ray Disc Player 1080p Full HD. So there you go! I placed the order a few minutes ago, and it will be arriving tomorrow before 1pm. Which means I need to get myself down to Blockbuster to rent out a couple of films to test on it!
