ryv's blog

It seems to me that with the advent of all our social media applications – Facebook, MySpace, twitter, Flickr, Tumblr etc., the ability for us to get our thoughts out there is the easiest it’s ever been. The detail that this provides to people is remarkable. Ad companies use it for focused advertising, other companies use it for various nefarious means and criminals use it to steal our identities. Less insidious I think is that people can know us in a way they never have before. The cost to our privacy seems to be one we’re happy to bear though – the most popular consumer mobile devices have Facebook and the like built in and integrated with everything – messages, photos, GPS locations etc. Our internal thoughts and feelings are now able to externalised quickly and limitlessly. Nine times out of ten this is incredibly boring stuff (let’s face it, we’re not as interesting as we’d like to be), but the fodder for bullies, abuse and misuse is extraordinary. It’s very much like posting

In the last few months several of my clients have made the jump from using Microsoft Exchange to using Google Apps. Initially this has just been for email, calendar and contacts but has since morphed into using Drive as well. At my office we have also made the change, but our split in staff - half telephony and half IT, means that the IT guys have really taken it on board, more so in fact than the telephony chaps. Recently I was working with some gents from another organisation still using Office - we were using tethered laptops to exchange spreadsheets with simple data in them - at least they were doing it that way. I was getting the spreadsheet, importing it to Apps, updating it and sending it off. The beautiful thing was - I was doing it from my iPhone, HTC and my Google Nexus - same file, updating straight away and then emailing back to the guys - brilliant! And with offline files enabled it was even easier - I could still access files via Chrome and makes changes. The sync wo

Recently to replace my HP6560b notebook, I purchased a Lenovo L430. It looks like this: Lenovo L430 Notebook and it's specifications are: 14" AntiGlare LCD monitor i5-2520M Processor, 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM (upgraded to 8GB), 320/7200 HDD, Multi-Burner, HD Graphics 3000, Bluetooth, Fingerprint reader, 720p Camera, ABGN Wireless, WWAN, Card Reader, Windows 7Professional 64, 6 Cell battery (max 7.5 hours run time), 1 Year return to depot warranty GPS  It has the same sturdy feel and build that all Lenovo notebooks do, a legacy of the IBM heritage Lenovo has successfully perpetuated. I'm absolutely delighted by the keyboard on this device - it is the best notebook keyboard I have ever used. I'm comparing it to the following notebooks: HP 6560b, HP tc4400, Lenovo R500, MacBook Air, various ASUS laptops, various Toshiba laptops, Lenovo X1 and HP 6730b. Obviously I get around on the notebook scene :-) The touchpad and other pointing device are