01923 555048|info@chno.co.uk

17 More Sleeps :)

Morning all and welcome to another new week! Hope everybody had a fantastic weekend and is looking forward to the week ahead.

I spent Saturday in London visiting Winter Wonderland with family. It’s a great day out if you’ve never been before, the only negative things I can say abou it is that (although its free to get in) it’s a bloomin’ expensive day out (£5 a pint for a beer, £7.50 for pie and chips, and £6 per person on a roller coaster), and also I’d recommend not going at the weekend. Saturday was ridiculously busy, verging on the dangerously overcrowded possibly, and it took a little of the pleasure away for us. But, still, a great day was had by all.

Our trip to Hyde Park seems to have become a bit of family thing to start the Christmas spirit going, and this year, more than since I was a child, I’m really looking forward to the festive season. With a burgeoning small business, my free time is much less than ever, but my happiness is much greater and that’s what really counts.

For those of you following us on Twitter, you may have seen the blog post from CultOfMac that I tweeted over the weekend regarding iBeacon. It’s well worth a read, because I think, no hope, that it may turn out to be a big thing in 2014 from Apple, and could be another game changer.

Finally this morning, I’m working on a post for later this week about tech gifts for Christmas this year. I’ve got my own ideas about what I’d like to give/receive……but what about you? If you have any great ideas, please send them to me at info@chno.co.uk, or leave them […]

By |December 9th, 2013|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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PFF: Flipboard

Hi Folks, welcome to my first Product Feature Friday.

It’s been a challenge putting this video together! The experience of getting this one published has given me a huge amount of respect for the people who do this kind of thing on a regular basis (Glyn Dewis being a friend who inspired me to have a go at this kind of thing). Not only there are a lot of new skills to learn technically to put together the kind of video I’m happy with, there’s also an art to speaking on video (and quite frankly, I’m not a natural!). However, it gives me great pleasure to publish the first video today, and I’m looking forward to the next one having learnt so much about my own workflow doing this one.

Have a great weekend, and as usual, if you have any comments or questions please drop me an email at info@chno.co.uk, via the comments below or on the contact page.

Chris

By |December 6th, 2013|Apple Software News|0 Comments
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Apple Store App Giving Away Free Christmas Downloads?

Hi Folks, almost the weekend now. I don’t know about you but I’m really looking forward to it as we’re heading off to Hyde Park for our annual family trip to Winter Wonderland. If you’ve never been before, it’s a lovely day out….bloomin’ expensive, but really good fun if you go with the expectation of not having a cheap day.

Anyway, today I thought I’d point out a little freebie I spotted in the Apple Store app last night. It seems that Apple are, at least for now, giving away a Photo Cookbook app (normally £2.49). You’ll need to download the Apple Store app if you don’t already have it (see below) and scroll down in the Gifts tab (towards the bottom of the screen). From what I can gather after a bit of research, they’re giving away some Christmas music in the US version of the app, so I don’t know if our offer will change over the next few weeks; one to look out for. I haven’t had chance to check the app out yet, but thought I’d let you know before it becomes unavailable. You can always delete it if it’s no use to you!

While we’re on the subject of free stuff from Apple….they normally give away 12 products (apps, books, TV shows, music etc) in their 12 Days Of Christmas app, so keep your eyes out for that coming up soon; I’l post more when I hear more.
Tomorrow will see our first Product Feature Friday, where I’ll be showing off one of my most used apps on the iPad; Flipboard. The good news is that it’s another free product, so well worth a look even if you don’t see the appeal […]

By |December 5th, 2013|Apple Software News|0 Comments
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Which Way Tom Tom?

Morning all

Early start for me today as Wednesday is my BNI networking morning; fortunately early starts are not something I worry too much about unlike some!

I’ve done a fair bit of driving this week, and it reminded me how great it is to have TomTom on my iPhone for directing me from client to client. It also prompted me to remember some of the GPS app purchases I made previously. Don’t make the same mistakes as me! TomTom is not the cheapest navigation app out there, but it is, in my humble opinion, the best by far. I was always put off by the price, and bought competitors products because they were much more ‘affordable’. But after several “incidents”, I finally bit the bullet and replaced them with TomTom one day on holiday in Florida when the competitor app took me 15 miles away from my intended destination (in my defence, I was tired and I have a trusting nature). That was about three years ago, and despite retrying some of the (updated) other apps again, nothing (including the free Waze) comes close to the accuracy and ease of use of TomTom.

Anyway, have a great day, got to dash!

By |December 4th, 2013|Apple Software News|0 Comments
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All About The Upgrade to Mavericks

We’ve been getting quite a lot of questions recently relating to upgrading to Mavericks. So today we’ll be focusing on answering some of those questions.

Firstly, its been around six weeks since Apple released OS X Mavericks, and our advice at this point is that we’re still not entirely comfortable that the OS is stable and bug-free. We tend to suggest erring on the side of caution, especially for those people using their Mac as a tool for work. For those people using it at home with less risk involved though, feel free to go ahead! We’ve also setup a page on the site where we’ll update our advice on whether the time is right.
Once You’ve Made The Decision (That You’d Like) To Upgrade
There’s a number of steps you need to take before actually going ahead.

Technical Prerequisites
Questions you should ask yourself
Pre-upgrade steps

Technical Prerequisites
OK, for the first time we’re about to present some video, as its much easier to explain this by actually showing you what needs to be done! This is (hopefully) the first of many video tutorials/tips, so if you have any comments or feedback, I’d definitely appreciate it!

There should be a couple of notes in the video that take you to links on our site. One should be our Mavericks Upgrade decision page, the other gives the various Apple links I used in the video.
Questions You Should Ask Yourself
If the answer to any of the following questions is no, I strongly recommend that you don’t go ahead until you can comfortably answer with a yes.

Is this a production machine, and if so, have you tested all your software works under Mavericks on a test platform?
Have you run through the technical prerequisites above and confirmed […]

By |December 3rd, 2013|Help and Advice|0 Comments
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