One. Steve Jobs has sadly passed away.
Two. It’s getting really cold after a lovely warm start to October.
Three. Apple have just released their newest iPhone in the range, the iPhone 4s.

Now, I’m a bit of a sucker for Apple tech… They’ve got me each and every year since the original iPhone was announced back in 2007. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it’s 2011, and I’m preparing for (yet another) upgrade from my iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4s. Now, I’m not going to debate whether its a viable upgrade for one main reason: My 18 month upgrade has come to an end (3 months early as I’m a gold priority O2 member), so it’s time to get a new phone!

I decided to take a look at a couple of options, and found that there is a more cost effective way of buying an iPhone than the typical 12/18/24 month iPhone contracts that O2 provide (Yes, I’m on O2, so I’ll be focusing on that.. Although similar tariffs will undoubtedly be available on Orange et al!).

Here’s the round-up for an 18 month contract (which I signed up to 18 months ago!).

Minutes: 600 per month
Texts: Unlimited (Debatable!)
Internet: 500Mb per month
Handset Cost: £140.00
Cost per Month: £42.00
Contract Term/Length: 18 months
Total Cost:(18 x £42) + £140 = £896.00

Now, bare in mind that if you intend to upgrade when the new phone comes out (presumably in 12 months) you’ll be eligible for 1 month early upgrade (as you paid over £520 already in the past 12 months) so will have 5 months worth of contract / £210.00 (18 months – 12 months paid – 1 month early upgrade = 5 months x £42 = £210.00) to pay off.

Here’s the alternative: Upgrade to a simplicity package.

(The one I’m upgrading to is O2 simplicity 600 12 month)

Minutes: 600 per month (same as above)
Texts: Unlimited (Debatable!)(same as above)
Internet: 500Mb per month (same as above)
Handset Cost: I’ll come back to this!
Cost per Month: £21.50 (Half as much as above)
Contract Term/Length: 12 months (6 less than above)
Total Cost:(12 x £21.50) = £258.00

What’s it all mean?

Now, that total cost does look a lot less.. But you do have to buy the handset at it’s full amount. This is usually around £500. Add that to the cost and you’ve a grand total of £758.00.

Now, Simplicity’s £758 is £138 less than the iPhone tariff mentioned above (£896). There is one major advantage, and one minor disadvantage to the simplicity method:

Advantage: The Simplicity method means that after 12 months, when the new iPhone comes out, there is no contract to pay off. If you think about it logically, with the iPhone tariff you’d not only have to sign up to another 18 x $42 a month contract, but also pay £140 for the phone and an additional £210 contract cancellation charge. That’s a total of £111 (18 x£42 = £756 + £140 + £210 = £1106 over 18 months). The simplicity tariff means you’ll not be paying any contract cancellation fee, simply signing up to another 12 month £21.50 per month contract and buying another handset.

The slight disadvantage is that you have to find the bulk of the money (£500+) at the beginning of the upgrade, where as the iPhone specific contract you pay a more even price over the 18 months. That said, if you upgrade each year then expect to pay at least [handset cost] + ([# months] x [cost per month]) at the beginning of the next upgrade!

Still confused?

There you have it. It’s a bit confusing, I know… To be honest writing this article helped me understand it myself a little better. Basically, if you can afford to pay the £500 for the handset (SIM free) and signing a “SIM ONLY” contract, then you’ll be saving money (around £138) over 12 months, compared to the bundled contract and iPhone deals.

I’ll start by reiterating; This isn’t a hack. It’s a simple work-around! No coding knowledge is required..

The “Film to Go” app gives users a promotional code which can be redeemed on iTunes (once per week, on a Thursday!) to download a specific film (chosen by Orange).

To get the App, simply download it from the Apple App Store. Next, you’ll need to get an Orange phone number from a friend or family member (Preferably one without an iPhone, so they can’t take advantage of the offer anyway. In my case, my Mom!).

Enter the phone number into the app (More -> Settings -> Mobile Number). A few seconds later your friend/family memeber should receive a four character/digit code. Simply enter that into your app and you’re ready to go.

If you do this on a Thursday you’ll get a promo code right away, and you can go download/watch your film – May I suggest you invite your Orange-phone-number-mate round to watch it with you, you probably owe them one!

Here is how I (eventually) managed it:

1. Log into NOW (http://now.ntu.ac.uk).
2. Click on ‘NTU Email’.
3. In the mail window, click ‘Options’ to reveal a drop-down box, then select ‘See all options’.
4. Select ‘Change Your Password’ on the right hand side.
5. Select ‘Change’ next to the [******] password.
6. A default password has been set up, which you won’t know…
7. Select ‘Forgot my password’ under the old password field.
8. Insert your email address as a windows ID (e.g. n0000000@my.ntu.ac.uk)
9. Complete the captcha.
10. Select an email response. You will be emailed a link to set up a new password.

So, that’s how to define and locate your password. From here it’s relatively simple.

For iPhone:

1. Go to settings > ‘Mail, Contacts and Calendars’.
2. Under accounts tap ‘Add Account’.
3. Select Microsoft Exhange
4. Enter your email address (N0000000@my.ntu.ac.uk) as the email address.
5. Enter ‘pod51007.outlook.com as the server.
6. Leave the domain blank.
7. Enter the same (N-Number) email address for your username.
8. Enter the newly defined password for the password.
9. Ensure that SSL is ON.

That should be it – New emails will now sync into your iPhone’s mail inbox!

For Outlook 2010

1. Go to File > Account Settings > Account Settings.
2. When the window appears, Click ‘New’ under the Email tab.
3. Select Email account and click ‘next’.
4. Enter your name (or N number) in the ‘Your Name’ field.
5. Enter your N-Number (N0000000@my.ntu.ac.uk) email address in the email address field.
6. Enter and confirm your newly changed password.

After filling in the fields and clicking next, Outlook should search, find and complete your email address. Your ready to go!

A couple of important notes:

With the first/last name email address, the four numbers on the end is the starting year of your degree.

Both email addresses will receive emails (to the same inbox) – However setup requires the N-number version.

Existing emails will not be synced to the iPhone, only NEW emails will be received.

It had been in the back of my mind for some time, so the first available Sunday (after the stress of exams and deadlines for final year) I took my trusty (although ageing) camera (Cannon IXUS75) and an old Sony tripod into university to try and get some clips. I’d roughly planned out the sections I wanted to talk about, and had written five or 6 bullet points for each section on different pieces of A4 paper. These auto-cues were pinned directly under the camera (you can probably see my eyes move down slightly every now and then).

It was actually really intimidating talking to a camera, with no-one else in the room. The task of getting over a fun, bubbly character and also one who is serious about computing and work is no easy feat! However, I think I did OK, after about 25+ attempts!

So then the videos were reviewed and the best chosen; Into Windows Live Movie Maker 11 they went (which I don’t rate at all by the way – far too pretty with a lot of useful features removed!). There were however a couple of nice transitions, and knocking up the section headers only took a couple of minutes.

Finally I added a transcript using WLMM11 captions, which was tricky and time consuming. Finally, I used a piece of software called Watermark Maker 2 (Free trial for 20 days) to add the watermark in the top left.

Hey presto! One upload to youTube and a couple of blog articles later and I’m done. I’m pretty proud of the result, considering it only took one afternoon (and evening!).

Let me know what you think.

Now, stay with me here, as I spent ages looking at blogs thinking that the Facebook RSS pages have been blocked, but they haven’t. To access your Facebook RSS feed navigate to Facebook and click on your notifications (“See all Notifications”). On the right hand side is a “Subscribe to Notifications” section, and under that is a “Via RSS”. Uncheck all the tick boxes and click on this link. From there, simply change part of the URL from “notifications.php” to “status.php”. This should produce the RSS feed required.

Now, on TwitterFeed.com sign up and add your copied URL for Facebook RSS feed. Authenticate Twitter and set (in the advanced options) your prefixes, postfixes and update schedule.

And that’s it! Facebook will now generate the RSS of your status’, TwitterFeed will pull them in (checking every 30 mins or whatever) and post them to your Twitter for you! If your really clever you could set up an RSS from your website too, and get that to post to Twitter/Facebook whenever you add a new article!

The problem is that the JavaScript (JS) for both the FCG and Lightbox conflict with each other, resulting in the FCG displaying a black background with loading bar but not actually loading. To resolve this we must stop the conflict between the two scripts. The method – multiple headers, PHP IF statements and a brilliant plug-in called slimbox. Don’t worry though, it’s not as complicated as it first sounds.

The first step is to get FCG working within any Lightbox plug-ins activated (LightBox 2 in particular causes a conflict). Set up the FCG options page (video here) and add a couple (at least 2) posts with images. This was my first hurdle – Make sure the images are the correct size (specified in the options page) as if they aren’t the FCG won’t load.

When you have the FCG working create multiple headers. To do this, duplicate the ‘header.php’ (rename it to something like ‘header_home.php’). Now in the home page (home.php) of your wordpress theme add the following code:

if (is_page('home')){

}
else {

}
?>

Download and install Slimbox 2, a clone of LightBox 2 which does the same thing as lightbox but uses a slightly different script. Install and activate this and you should be about there. The lightbox effect should now work on all but the home page, and the featured content gallery only on the home page.

If it’s still not working look for a js.conflict(); piece of code by doing a find in the theme / plug-ins folder – Uncomment this if you find it.

And that should be it! You should now have a working FCG and Lightbox effect all in one page!

Again, google was my first source, but there were a lot of possible solutions but required a second CD drive and alterations to the motherboard (RAID related) which I didn’t perticularly want to do.

My solution was to re-burn the installation DVD using MagicISO (previously used Nero) and set the ‘mode’ to “Mode 2 / XA”. I also burnt the disk at a slower speed (x16). Reformatting again I awaited the dreaded error, but to my supprise it didn’t come up. Instead it went streight to the disk partition stage! Success!

I’m not sure if it was in fact a faulty disk or the burn method – Either way the installation completed perfectly and I’m now running Windows 7. Try MagicISO if all else fails, it just seems to work!

Here is the code (it uses javascript);

The first thing that happens is that the function is named and given a single variable, which is called ‘form’. In the form design we used an onsubmit to use ‘this’ (i.e. the form itself) as the variable content.

Function specific variables are defined, calling in the input values of the form.

Now it’s relatively simple; a bunch of IF statements to return false unless the criteria (for example more than one character) is met. If none of the IF’s are called then the function returns true and consequently the form can send! It’s litterally that simple! Have a play with the code, and you will get the hang of it soon enough.

I hope this tutorial helped at least one person, as I looked for ages online to find an all-in-one solution for designing and validating a form with little success!

Anyway, the idea here is some explained code to produce a simple online form which will email a person/s the data from the form. It also includes validation to ensure that the form can not be sent unless the data is precise and relevant.

On to part one – The Form and the mail functionality.

The first thing we need to do is create the form itself for the user to put there data in.

<form method="post" onsubmit="return validate(this);" action="formPage.php"> <input id="name" size="50"/> <input id="company" size="50" /> <input id="contact" size="50" /> <input id="telephone" size="50" /> <textarea cols="38" rows="5" id="description"></textarea> <input id="quantity" size="4" /> <input value="Submit"/> <input value="Reset" /> </form>

The opening form tag contains method=”post” used to actually post the data, onsubmit which is used to call the validation function and action which links back to itself. The .php file in the action will have to be renamed the same as the page the form is being displayed on. There are two buttons at the bottom (‘input values’) one of which will submit the form (method, onsubmit and action) and the other will clear all data from the form. Simple!

Next, the code to email the data to the admin:

<?php

if(isset($_POST['contact'])){ $admin = "recipient@sendToEmailAddress.com"; $name = $_POST['name']; $company = $_POST['company']; $contact = $_POST['contact']; $telephone = $_POST['telephone']; $description = $_POST['description']; $quantity = $_POST['quantity']; mail($admin, 'Subject Title', "This email was generated using the Product Resource Form at www.johnalexanderrowley.com.\n Name: $name Company: $company Email: $contact Telephone: $telephone Description: $description Quantity: $quantity", 'from: fromAddress@fromaddressEmail.com'); ?> <script> alert("Thank you for using the formPage.\n Your request has been sent to the Relevant person."); </script> <?php } ?> The IF statement checks if the input field (in this case 'contact') has been filled in. If it has then the following mail code is ran. This stops the form submitting when the page is loaded.

The various variables are set, including the ‘$admin’ variable which contains the email address that the data is to be sent to. The other variables pull in the previously posted form values. The form ‘input id’ is the text contained within the square brackets in each case.

Now the variables have been set the mail can actually take place; The ‘mail’ php function is called which requires a recipient, subject title, content and header information separated by commas. These are defined in the normal brackets using the various variables. Note that the content is comprised of various variables and no commas are used.

Finally, a javascript script is used to display a thank you message, and the IF statement is closed!

Hay presto, the form is created and will email the admin.

To add validation to the form, please view Part 2!

This setup falls in at £1207, with a budget of £1250 leaving a little room for extra remotes (for example the PS3 remote / Keyboard) and optical cables.

It seems expensive until you consider what you get for the money: The Samsung 5 series has been reduced from £999 to £599 in the Christmas sale in Comet, and for that you get a HD ready TV with a huge screen, beautiful looks and built in Free view. It also has plenty of functionality and tons of additional features, not to mention the superb picture quality. The speakers have been reduced from £500 to £298, and trust me when I say that they pack a powerful punch! I have had the older Z5400 setup in my room for a number of years and they are more than adequate to wake up the neighbours!

Now to my main point: A 5.1 blu-ray home cinema system will set you back at least £500 for a decent setup, which will only allow one input (if that) and will be used for one and only function. Using a PS3 and Z5500′s (for a total of £480/£500) you will get a top of the range Bluray player, as well as all the additional functionality that a PS3 brings (BBC iPlayer, Internet Browser, Gaming, Internet access etc) as well as having a brilliantly powerful 5.1 system which can take up to 6 inputs (including your TV, Sky box, PS3, PC, Laptop and room for one more too!).

The cables make this system what it is, and are expensive. But when your spending this sort of money on a Home Cinema System it’s worth the extra few pounds to get the best cables around! You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes!

More to come soon!