Sunday 2 August 2015

ApplePay and saving money at Lidl versus Tescos

Just shopped at Lidl for the first time. Firstly, was really impressed with range and quality of produce and fresh produce that they had. What blowed me away was how much cheaper it was than Tesco!

Just take a look;



I saved £5, on a £20 shop in Tesco it only cost me £15 at Lidl, very impressive that is a 25% saving. If I did that each week for a year that would be about £300 a year saved! Or on a £100 shop, I'd be saving £25.

Wow.

And they accepted ApplePay.

And it worked perfectly!

Friday 31 July 2015

ApplePay anecdotes

So I almost ran into the AppleWatch ApplePay, ran out of battery fail at mignight on Wednesday.

However before I went through the barriers to the overground train I discovered my last train had gone. Between there and the tube my AppleWatch ran out of juice! Lucky I had not swiped in!

Therefore I had a chance to use ApplePay on the iPhone 6 Plus. I didn't realise the NFC field would activate it, so I opened Passbook and fiddled for a while, as I couldn't work out how to make the card ready.

So I just placed it on the contactless reader on the gate and put my finger on the scanner. It took a while and was rather cumbersome, but it did work, and on the other end too.

Love the AppleWatch ApplePay tibe/overground/tfl experience, but I shall be avoiding doing it on my phone whete possible.

Monday 27 July 2015

Setting up new ApplePay card

After HSBC failed to launch ApplePay, I opened a Santander mastercard account. Today I got back from holiday and setup & activated my new credit card.

Pre-ApplePay, because it was a new card; I did a PIN transaction, then a contactless transaction, and only then did I add it to passbook.

Adding to iPhone Passbook was seamless, adding to AppleWatch, slightly more difficult. To add to AppleWatch you have to go via the AppleWatch app on the iPhone. On adding the Santander card, it did not appear on the AppleWatch, even after making it default.

An iPhone reboot did not resolve the issue.

Then I tried turning the AppleWatch off and on again. And just like that; it suddenly appeared on the AppleWatch. 

I then tried paying with the double click AppleWatch ApplePay - frictionless, wahoo!

Thursday 16 July 2015

Hidden feature for ApplePay in AppleWatch!

Quick post; just discovered you can double tap the side button on AppleWatch - the one that usually brings up friends/favourites/contacts, and you have your ApplePay card ready and active immediately.

OMG so convenient, this is the killer feature. No more navigating to Passbook, or using Siri to "Open ApplePay".

Monday 1 June 2015

Create your first Apple Watch App in Xcode

I had to upload to the latest Xcode for this to work.

Then you go to the main project settings window, click the + and add a new Apple Watch app, and mark all views (including glances).

Then add a label to the storyboard so you can see something output.

Then run the app, in simulator you can see the Apple Watch, by going to hardware > Apple Watch.

To run on your phone, you choose the WatchKit app schema to run, and choose your phone. The latest xcode will fix any signing and provisioning profile issues. If it does not, close Xcode and load it again, especially if it says that the Watch is not paired.

That's it, first Apple Watch App working.


Sunday 24 May 2015

Migrating AWS EC2 WordPress install to micro instance issues

After migrating my AWS (Amazon Web Services) EC2 instance from small to micro - in order to stop getting charged for it. I found all the urls were pointing to the old domain.

On the face of it, this looks like a Linux hostname issue, and I spent a while setting up the ssh access to the box and searching for the hostname or server name - what I found turned out to the be private hostname / ip address, and therefore wasn't causing the issue.

I suddenly had a brain wave that maybe it was stored in the DB.

I then found I could login to the DB using the 'mysql --user=username --password=password' command. This allowed me to login.

I then found the schema for wordpress; https://codex.wordpress.org/images/9/97/WP3.8-ERD.png



Which I made a guess that it was the wp_options table.

I then did select * from wp_options, and put the result in a text editor and searched for the old domain name, and there it was under the option_name 'home' and 'siteurl'.

So I then used the following two command to update those values;

mysql> select * from wp_options where option_name = 'siteurl';
+-----------+-------------+-----------------------+-----------+
| option_id | option_name | option_value      | autoload |
+-----------+-------------+-----------------------+-----------+
|         1      | siteurl       | ***URL**              | yes          |
+-----------+-------------+-----------------------+-----------+

update wp_options set option_value='http://newdomainame/wordpress' where option_name='home'

update wp_options set option_value='http://newdomainname/wordpress' where option_name='siteurl'

And ran a commit for luck, and it all started working again.



Friday 13 March 2015

Designing Your Future with the Connected Car

The company Frog Design are currently hosting a session on "Designing Your Future with the Connected Car".

It was good to meet the leads from Frog; Cobbie and Michael.

The introduction circled around the goals of the session; exploring User Centred Design, and the Connected Car.





What is the connected car?



It's predicted by Telefonica that by 2010, 90% of all new car sales will be for connected cars.

What are connected cars;

- Wirelessly connected
- GPS
- Sensors
- HCI / HMI changes
- Wearables
- BIG data
- Machine Learning
- AR

Apple's Car Play, Google's offering and lots of other tech companies are trying to get into the in vehicle space. And lot's of car companies are trying for the self driving car.

User Centred Design

The session then focussed around the human element of cars - that everyone has a car story and interactions with cars are an emotional experience.

What are the needs / issues we are trying to solve with technology?

A process they follow is;

1) User research
2) Synthesis and brain storming
3) Storyboarding the best concept(s)
4) Illustrating the idea with a photo prototype
5) Pitching the idea

Idea in and around the connected car

Makes lives safer
- Proximity sensing
- Object identification and response / avoidance
- V2V comms

Show us the way
- Nav-D project on the road
- Search a map
- AR overlay on road / ghost car

Save Time
- Sync device e.g. nest
- Self parking
- Self driving cars

Make life richer
- In car comms
- Ride sharing
- Spaces / places to connect e.g. CES Mercedes swivel chairs

Help us explore
- Podcasting
- Exploration tools / road trips
- Contextual interfaces

Knowing us
- Personality & name for the car
- Driver (and passenger) emotion monitoring
- Health monitoring / biometrics
- Awareness and AI e..g Google car that looks 'adorable'.

Some of the Tech involved















Monday 26 January 2015

Business tech creation weekend

This weekend I did plenty of tech delivery;
 
1) Added article to Kevsweb on friends new website http://www.kevingordon.org.uk/articles/prittlewell-ringing-centre.html

2) Rebuilt the following website as a responsive design http://www.mrchhoystuktuk.com meaning it looks good and works well on mobile and tablet, as well as desktop

3) Built to further responsive proof of concepts





4) Built an augmented reality business card

5) And lot's of app development planning



Saturday 17 January 2015

New website design business

As a new year's resolution I have decided to start up a web design business; http://www.digitaltechnologylabs.com

Sevices offered include web design and build.
Bespoke software built
App development
Augmented Reality expertise
On-line marketing
Social media setup

Wish me luck

How well did I predict the iPhone 6?

Want I wanted  to see;
  • Larger form factor & bigger screen - check
  • Better camera - check
  • Faster wireless mobile / cellular data capability - check
  • Enhancements to Siri - check
  • Better battery life - check
  • Faster processor / more memory / better graphics - check
  • Additional multitasking functionality / dual screen functionality - check
  • More reliable / robust / less buggy / lower failure rate - ?
  • Beautiful new design - check
  • Smart bezel to have some interactivity with the bezel of the device with the screen - nope
  • Larger choice in colour? - nope
  • Better quality speakers / higher volume capability - ?
  • Reversible USB / Lighting connection - yep
  • Enhancements to the iBeacons technology / reliability / frequency reading capability - ?
  • NFC capability to enable the digital wallet in your phone - nope

Not bad, most of my predictions were correct!