Changes include

This update contains over 200 new features, including the following:

Notifications
◦ Swipe from the top of any screen to view notifications in one place with Notification Centre
◦ New notifications appear briefly at the top of the screen
◦ View notifications from lock screen
◦ Slide the notification app icon to the right on the lock screen to go directly to the app

iMessage
◦ Send and receive unlimited text, photo and video messages with other iOS 5 users
◦ Track messages with delivery and read receipts
◦ Group messaging and secure encryption
◦ Works over mobile networks and Wi-Fi*

Newsstand
◦ Automatically organises magazine and newspaper subscriptions on Home Screen
◦ Displays the cover of the latest issue
◦ Background downloads of new issues

Reminders for managing to-do lists
◦ Syncs with iCloud, iCal and Outlook
◦ Location-based reminders when you leave or arrive at a location for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4

Built-in support for Twitter
◦ Sign in once in Settings and tweet directly from Camera, Photos, Maps, Safari and YouTube
◦ Add location to any tweet
◦ View Twitter profile pictures and usernames in Contacts

Camera improvements for devices with cameras
◦ Double-click the Home button when device is asleep to bring up a camera shortcut on iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch (4th generation)
◦ Volume Up button to take a picture
◦ Optional grid lines to line up shots
◦ Pinch to zoom in the preview screen
◦ Swipe to camera roll from preview screen
◦ Tap and hold to lock focus and exposure; iPad 2 and iPod touch (4th generation) only support exposure lock

Photo improvements for devices with cameras
◦ Crop and rotate
◦ Red-eye removal
◦ One-tap enhance
◦ Organise photos into albums

Mail improvements
◦ Format text using bold, italic or underlined fonts
◦ Indentation control
◦ Drag to rearrange names in address fields
◦ Flag messages
◦ Mass mark messages as flagged, read or unread
◦ Customise mail alert sounds
◦ S/MIME

Calendar improvements
◦ Year view on iPad and new Week view for iPhone and iPod touch
◦ Tap to create an event
◦ View and add event attachments

Game Center improvements
◦ Use personal photos for your Game Center account
◦ Compare your overall achievement scores with your friends
◦ Find new Game Center friends with friend recommendations and friends of friends
◦ Discover new games with custom game recommendations

AirPlay Mirroring for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S

Multitasking Gestures for iPad
◦ Use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen
◦ Swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar
◦ Swipe left or right to switch between apps

On-device setup, activation and configuration with Setup Assistant

Software updates available over the air without tethering

iCloud support
◦ iTunes in the Cloud
◦ Photo Stream
◦ Documents in the Cloud
◦ Apps and Books automatic download and purchase history
◦ Backup
◦ Contacts, Calendar and Mail
◦ Find My iPhone

Redesigned Music app for iPad

Hourly weather forecast

Real-time stock quotes

Wireless sync to iTunes

Keyboard improvements
◦ Split keyboard for iPad
◦ Improved auto-correction accuracy
◦ Improved Chinese and Japanese input
◦ New Emoji keyboard
◦ Personal dictionary for auto-correction
◦ Optionally create keyboard shortcuts for frequently used words

Accessibility improvements
◦ Option to light LED flash on incoming calls and alerts for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4
◦ Custom vibration patterns for incoming calls on iPhone
◦ New interface for using iOS with mobility-impairment input devices
◦ Option to speak a selection of text
◦ Custom element labelling for VoiceOver

Exchange ActiveSync improvements
◦ Wirelessly sync tasks
◦ Mark messages as flagged, read or unread
◦ Improved offline support
◦ Save a new contact from a GAL service

More than 1,500 new developer APIs

Bug fixes

Products compatible with this software update:

• iPhone 4S
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad 2
• iPad
• iPod touch (4th generation)
• iPod touch (3rd generation)

* Normal carrier data rates may apply. Messages will be sent as SMS when iMessage is unavailable; carrier messaging fees apply.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

I have 2x New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers and 2x Philips SCE4430/05 battery chargers.

The New Trent 5000mAh will give me about 40% extra power on my iPad (which already enjoys a massive 10 hours battery power), or I can get around 3x full charges of my iPhone 4.

The Philips SCE4430/05 which I have previously mentioned here and here, will give me around 1x full charge of an iPhone 4. I actually do have 3x of these and not 2, although one requires a reverse adapter (which I conveniently forget) so I tend to not use this one so much.

So in essence if I take all 4x battery chargers out I can get a massive 8x full charges of an iPhone. For the most part I never usually have to charge up my iPad as I’m never away for more than 10 hours from an electrical plug socket, but it’s nice to know I have some power on tap if I need it.

For the most part if I’m only out and about for a few hours then I’ll take my Philips SCE4430/05 with me, or if I’m out for 5+ hours then I’ll carry around the New Trent 5000mAh charger. I usually keep at least one in the car, so if I need to I can run back to the car to get additional juice.

The great thing I like about both of these battery chargers is they have a standard USB socket on them, so pretty much any USB cable you have for a phone or gadget will connect into these devices. So no real need for these attachment bits that some chargers come with (and that you always happen to lose).

The Philips SCE4430/05 is great for putting into your shirt pocket with ease, the New Trent will fit into your shirt pocket and it’s the same dimensions of the iPhone 4, but a little heavier, so although you could put your iPhone 4 and New Trent charger into the same shirt pocket, it does look a bit on the bulky side.

I always pack at least one of the New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers into a bag I carry whether it’s an iPad bag, gadget bag or even my Messenger (over the shoulder) Laptop bag or rucksack. That way I always have something available fully charged and ready to go just in case I ever need it. You’d be surprised the amount of times you think, I’m running low on battery or I need a quick top-up. Whether it’s in meetings where you might have plug sockets but no charger plug lead to being out in the street, out on location photographing something or at a friends house.

About a year ago, I was looking at an iPhone Alarm Clock dock to replace my ageing digital alarm clock in the bedroom.  I looked long and hard, most were well over £100.  I don’t mind spending that kind of money providing what I get is value for money and that it will last for a long time.

When I was looking about a year ago, the iPhone 4 was coming out, and none, I repeat none said whether they supported the iPhone 4 or not.  I still had an iPhone 3GS but I wasn’t about to purchase a dock over £100 and find that I get the classic “Accessory not supported” error or simply it doesn’t charge the iPhone.

A year on I had been taking a very extensive look at the current assortment of iPhone Alarm Clock docks and it still seems that nothing has moved forward in a year.  90% of all the iPhone Alarm Clock docks do not say whether they support the iPhone 4, be it on web stores or more importantly on the manufacturer websites.  You have to dive deeper into looking at customer comments on each webstore or reviews to work out which ones still don’t support the iPhone 4.  In a year my requirements have changed, no longer do I have a 3GS or a single iPhone, I have 2x iPhone 4′s, so I want an iPhone Alarm Clock dock that supports two iPhone 4′s.  I also have an iPad, but I’m not expecting any of these iPhone Alarm Clock docks to support the iPad, that would be just too much of a requirement.

Whittling down the iPhone Alarm Clock docks that have a dual charger facility and that support the iPhone 4 I came up with only two.  Actually there’s like a dozen, but the majority of these say that the left hand dock only sync’s and doesn’t charge and the right hand dock only charges the iPhone 4.  Or that one dock is for iPhone 4 and the other for a non-iPhone.  That unfortunately rules them out in my situation.

So back to the 2x I could find, one looked ideal and was just what I was looking for.  Unfortunately looking at the Apple Store comments, there’s about 50 reviews across UK and US Apple Stores online and pretty much they all say that within 12-18 months the unit dies.  Prices have come down a lot in the last year, but I’m not going to buy something with a high failure rate and especially outside of the 12 month warranty.  That reduces it to two iPhone Alarm Clock docks, both remaining ones don’t have a digital alarm clock on them (which is again one of my requirements to replace my ageing alarm clock).  So now I’m down again to a healthy 0 available for my current needs.

I’m amazed that with people either married or in relationships, that charging two iPhones in the bedroom is I would have thought it quite a necessity now days, yet there’s very few alarm clock docks that will actually allow you to do it.  Why?

I think one of the big problems is that most of the hi-fi manufacturers haven’t really embraced this technology yet, most likely because if they want a “designed for iPhone” or “iPhone Supported’ logo then they have to give Apple 30% of the revenue, which means either they make a 30% loss or they have to hike the price by 30% – incidentally that’s most likely the reason why these are usually over £100.  There’s one that was made from a reputable hi-fi manufacturer, JVC, but it didn’t have a large LCD alarm clock on it, and looked very large and bulky.

I really wish companies would stand up and take note that having one of these in the bedroom is a good thing.  I suspect another reason why companies aren’t making these is that they feel that each person has their own bed stand, so will want their iPhone close to them.  So that means going for a single iPhone Alarm Clock dock for each person, which also adds to their profits.

If you’re in the market for a dual iPhone Alarm Clock dock, then if you have an iPhone and an iPod then you’ll find lots of different docks, but if you want two iPhones or two iPhone 4′s to be supported, that’s when it starts to become tricky.

If you have found and are using a dual iPhone Alarm Clock dock, let me know which one you have and how it’s working and how long you have had it.

You’re probably reading this because you’ve been Googling and have a problem getting your Zinio mags and aren’t finding any help. The simple answer is if you’re reading this in early March 2011 then it’s because Zinio has a massive outage.

I started these blog posts and tweets because Zinio wasn’t communicating with their customers. A 48hr outage then a few days uptime then another 48+hr outage meant very little communication coming from Zinio. This is not designed to be anti-Zinio and Zinio do understand that, but it’s born out of frustration both from myself and many other thousands of Zinio customers not receiving any information about the service they have invested in.

Here’s a quick summary…

What’s gone wrong?
Zinio have a major outage and are working to restore the service. Zinio will publish information on what went wrong after the event and what they will do to resolve this I am told.

Why is it taking so long?
It’s a complicated issue, it’s not just a hard drive crash in a RAID array as I understand it. They are also working on reinstalling the platform to restore service more quickly.

How can I trust Zinio again?
Zinio have a good 10 yrs of service in this area and are not a new startup. Typically most companies have a good run then hit into problems at some stage. Zinio are now in this phase and I am told they will do their best to ensure that this and other problems don’t happen again once they have restored service.

Why haven’t they updated their home page? It says will be back shortly…
Their maintenance message was really only designed for planned maintenance. This is very unplanned and they are locked out of modifying the page unfortunately. They have setup a blog at http://zinio.wordpress.com.

Why weren’t we told as customers what was going on?
Zinio were undoubtedly trying to reduce the PR nightmare as many companies would in this situation by trying to restore service quickly and trying to reduce bad PR and that ultimately meant not communicating with customers admitting the problems. This isn’t new, most companies on their first major outage fall into this. The key is to communicate with customers, it’s not good PR to tell people that service is down because media outlets get hold of this and make a mountain out of a molehill, however communicating with paying customers to keep them on side, to not lose the business that has been built up is key. Zinio understand this now and are communicating much more on their blog which is what I was trying to achieve from these updates.

When will service be restored?
Zinio are hoping for Saturday 5th March in the morning EDT (East Coast US time). With the nature of the problem anything could affect this window, but Zinio are hoping to restore service around this time. If complications set in then it may take longer.

Will I be compensated?
Zinio do understand that their customers are key, it’s what has built their business and that without you as a customer their business wouldn’t be what it is today. Although I can’t say what level of compensation will be provided, yes I have been told by Zinio that they will be trying to put it right with customers affected by the service outage. What that will be I don’t know, that will be down to Zinio to decide. Whether it means extensions to your existing subscriptions, additional complimentary subscriptions of your choice or refunds will be down to Zinio. I think due to the level of outage that maybe it should be a combination of all three, but that’s based on a feeling as a customer.

Was Zinio hacked, have they gone under?
No, that has been the unfortunate perception by some because of the lack of communication. Zinio have also put an answer to this on their blog. They did also have an unfortunate outage on their phones but these are back operational.

I want to read the magazines I have, what should I not do?
Okay, don’t uninstall the Zinio app or delete your magazines, otherwise you won’t be able to access them throughout the outage. Also try not to restart your iPad or iPhone because this will also log you out of Zinio to authenticate you. Hold tight and hopefully you can still read what offline magazines you have on your device and you will receive all your magazines once Zinio is restored. Any issues that should have been sent out to you through this outage you will still receive when service comes back.

What happens when service is restored?
The first thing is that you might see the service restored then it goes back offline again. This can happen when trying to restore any kind of service, it might be that it comes back online but configs or service packs or other items need to be applied to servers to ensure stability. So if you do notice it goes down soon after for a little while longer, please understand this. This isn’t something Zinio have mentioned to me but it’s something through my experience of managing servers can and will most likely happen.

More information is available at their blog but I will keep you updated here in the event that information does dry up whilst trying to restore service.

Although the situation is no doubt complicated with regards to any kind of technical outage, they’re trying to bring back and restore the service as quickly as possible. This obviously can bring further complications when it comes to technology but Zinio are hoping to restore service early on Saturday morning US time. Obviously with any kind of technical outage like this it’s not possible to guarantee or pinpoint a day/time, however Zinio are hopeful Saturday AM will be an achievable target if everything goes smoothly.

Zinio have provided an updated status page at http://zinio.wordpress.com and have asked me to pass this along to anyone reading this. Zinio understand their customers frustration and will try to provide more updates to customers. This is the first major outage for Zinio in their 10 years of service. Zinio will continue to update the status page link above and try to engage with customers over Twitter and Facebook to provide regular status updates.

Our sincerest thanks from Zinio
We realize that this is not the level of service that you expect from Zinio. We are working tirelessly to return the quality of service you have come to expect from Zinio over the past 10 years. Please bear with us during this time.

The first outage was caused by a power failure according to Zinio

To have two outages in less than 3 days isn’t uncommon, but to have 2 major outages, the first lasting just under 48 hrs and the second lasting 34+ hrs and rising is very unusual.  To have a second power outage is extremely unlikely and it seems that Zinio are being plagued by faulty hardware or corrupted databases.  Any power utility company would have restored power within a matter of hours.

The only message thousands of loyal customers are receiving from Zinio is

With no proper communication from Zinio or their Marketing team, this is turning into a PR nightmare for Zinio. Many customers have subscribed to several hundreds of pounds / dollars of magazines, personally I have spent over £1000 with Zinio.

As a once loyal Zinio customer I have now had to pay additional money to Apple to get my magazine subscriptions through Apple due to Zinio not being able to provide my PAID subscriptions.  I’m sure Zinio will not be refunding me for these purchases, and to be honest I don’t care now.  I just want access to my magazines and as Zinio have proved they cannot provide that and cannot provide a reason for the down time or an estimate on when the service will return, there’s only one thing most of us are thinking.  Have Zinio gone under and not able to pay their bills?

I’d just like to take this chance to apologise to anyone that has subscribed to Zinio on my recommendations (from emails I’m receiving I know that’s a lot of people). I feel your pain too with the amount I have invested in Zinio and am truly sorry that we are all suffering from the lack of service and communication coming out of Zinio.

If Zinio ever recover from this they will have lost a very large percentage of their customers.  Customers are voting with their feet and 38% of Zinio customers have now rated the iPad app as 1 star.  If Zinio don’t want to lose their customers they need to turn this around and be honest with their customers and tell them what’s going on.

Unfortunately last weekend Zinio had just under a 48 hour outage and 3 days later they’re into another 12+ hour outage of service.

The service outages means that customers who have paid for their magazines cannot access the Zinio service to download the paid content.

The email from Zinio in the first outage to customers…

I wanted to reach out to you personally to thank you for your patience this past weekend and check to make sure your Zinio access was working properly. As you noticed, Zinio experienced some systems problems that impacted your ability to shop and read your magazines. These have now been fully resolved. On behalf of the entire Zinio team, I wanted to apologize for any inconvenience this unfortunate outage caused.

Zinio was able to restore service on the first outage approx 48 hrs later. However, Zinio’s down again 3 days later and has not been able to provide it’s service for over 12 hours.  It seems like there’s no out of hours coverage at Zinio for it’s service due to the downtime over the weekend and overnight all being outside of core business hours which doesn’t bode well for Zinio. Zinio has been around for a number of years (since 2001) but there are more companies coming onto the scene to compete with Zinio. Apple more recently started selling Magazine subscriptions for the iPad through iBooks and a number of magazine companies have already started offering their magazines through iBooks or through their own apps on the iPad.

I’m an avid Zinio supporter and have spent well over £1000 on magazine subscriptions with Zinio so hopefully that shows my level of commitment to Zinio! However, Zinio being down twice in 4 days for a serious amount of time has now put me off making two further magazine subscriptions with Zinio and I’ve just given Apple the money for these. After the first 48hr outage I purchased some additional magazine subscriptions and I haven’t been able to download these new magazines because Zinio’s service has gone down a second time. Zinio also offered me some complimentary free magazine subscriptions on top of this due to the last outage, but again they weren’t showing in my account just prior to the second service outage.

It’s one thing being bad for Zinio’s customers seriously making them look elsewhere for magazine subscriptions but it’s more serious for the magazine companies that partner with Zinio because new customers can’t purchase magazine subscriptions resulting in loss of sales.

I really sincerely hope Zinio can rectify these outages and improve the level of service to it’s customers and magazine partners and pull through this.

I haven’t had these long so I can’t comment on the headband breaking (some videos you can see on youtube) but I must say these are a really good set of headphones and covers a large dynamic range. Even though there’s reports of the headband breaking I don’t misuse products that often or stress them out so I’m hoping that I won’t be affected by this, but only time I guess will tell.

The Studio phones are great and they lock around your ears real well, extremely comfortable and even with no music playing lock out the sound pretty good. The downside to the Studio headphones are that you need to use 2x AAA batteries in them and you don’t want to leave the power button on as the batteries will drain. The batteries are supposed to last for around 50 hours of music play back but I suspect this depends more on how loud you have the music playing. So far I haven’t been able to measure battery performance. It’s a little disappointing that you will have to carry around a spare set of AAA batteries as you can’t use the headphones without these, they’re completely dead otherwise, but it really does improve the quality of the audio.

The ear cups fold in to make them more portable and you get a free zip-up semi-hard case that’s padded to stow them away in when traveling.

The big downside for me is that I bought them both for listening to music outside of an iPhone dock / hi-fi but also for conference calls as they look very comfortable (and are). However you get a lot of cell phone interference coming up the audio cable or through the air to the left speaker and that kind of puts you off when talking or listening. You don’t hear this much if at all when listening to the music but if you hold the iPhone up to the ears you can hear it loud. I really don’t know why Monster would consider including a 3.5mm cable with in-line microphone when this occurs. Maybe they never tested it with a phone combination in their Quality Assurance testing?

Monster provide two cables, one is a red cable for regular MP3 players/iPod Touch which has 24 carat gold connectors and then a black cable that has the same 24 carat gold connectors but has an in-line microphone.

Anyway that aside, the headphones are really good, I’m very impressed with the dynamic range, the bass and the overall sound quality. I only have to have the iPhone on 50% volume most of the time and 60% max and that’s so loud that I can’t hear anyone else talking that’s next to me. You’d never want to put the iPhone up to 100% volume with these as it will be just too loud.

For anyone interested in how bad the GSM interference is on the headphones, here’s a good Youtube video that demonstrates it.

However, your device is only as good as your last update. Having a device that won’t upgrade to the latest Operating System version is of pretty no use to you. Why? Because these mobile operating systems move quickly and anyone that doesn’t keep their phone updated to the latest mobile OS means that apps and games stop working because they drop support for older OS versions pretty quickly.

For regular readers you’ll know I have iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad but likewise I also have a HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S, so I have devices from both platforms – Android and iOS so get to experience the nirvana of both.

Apple provide a mobile OS upgrade every 3-4 months, they don’t provide it OTA (Over The Air) as you have to connect your iPhone to iTunes to download and install it. Although this can be a hassle and I would much prefer to download it OTA over WiFi or 3G, it’s an easy process, it works well. iTunes backs up the device first – just in case the update crashes the phone so you can restore it, giving you the best of both worlds.

For Android you receive your updates OTA (Over The Air) – no need to connect your device to a PC or Mac to get your updates. However, your phone doesn’t get backed up so if something does go wrong, then you’re to put it likely going to have a bricked phone. That said, the percentage of bricked Android phones from failed updates are so small you never really hear about it being a problem.

For me the biggest problem is how to get the updates. App and Game developers update their apps to support the newer OS versions and drop support for the older OS versions, mainly because they can’t have devices running on every OS version to test as it would be a nightmare. With Apple, they push out an update every 3 or 4 months and EVERYONE in the world gets the update to install. No matter what network or which country you are in, you get the choice to get the update and install it, and all at the same time (albeit maybe a few hours different).

Here’s where the problem comes with Android. You have Google who write the OS, the manufacturer that creates the phone and the mobile network / cellular provider, e.g. AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon/O2/Orange. So what happens on Android is Google says…Hey, there’s a new OS version out, please push this out to all your users. The hardware manufacturer can block the update going out and not provide it to customers of their phones for whatever reason they see fit. If they do agree to allow the updated Google OS update out, then the mobile operator can also block it and say they don’t want the update to go out to it’s customers.

So, what happens with Android? Most customers don’t get the updates when they should. HTC Android customers in UK get updates at different dates to say French or German or Italian or US customers. Likewise some manufacturers like Samsung block the updates. Or even if the update doesn’t get blocked then the mobile operator then can block it or delay the release date further. This completely fragments Android to the point that a lot of Android customers still get devices that can’t be updated.

Take Samsung with the Galaxy S. US customers received updates pretty quickly but they were staggered across the mobile operator networks, some European customers then received the Froyo 2.2 update a few months later. I’m still waiting for 2.2 and am stuck on 2.1, 6 months later due to Samsung not rolling out the update properly to customers. My device shouldn’t be blocked by a mobile operator because, it’s an unlocked device, I paid around £499 unlocked, yet thanks to Samsung’s terrible update policy because I paid a larger sum of money compared to others that got there’s a lot cheaper on a locked network, I’m stuck behind on 2.1. So no joy in receiving the Froyo 2.2 update, most likely no joy in receiving the Gingerbread 2.3 update and likewise I doubt I’ll get Honeycomb 3.0.

If Google with mobile operators don’t get a handle on this soon this will absolutely kill the Android market. There are so many customers out there angry because they’re not getting the updates they need. With Apple although not ideal having to connect to iTunes, it works, everyone gets the update and the only OS version fragmentation are down to customers that choose themselves not to update to the latest iOS update.

The iPod player on the iPhone 4 works much better and does remember your position until you decide that you need to power cycle the iPhone and then….guess what? It forgets where you were before you restarted.

The audible.com app which is free on the iPhone came out a while ago and I did take a brief look at it when it was released, but either I failed to see at the time or a new feature has been added, but now the Audible app allows you to pick up audio books that you purchased through iTunes. Not only that but also to allow you to bookmark them….hooorah!

No more scanning through chapters of an audio book trying to work out where you finished listening.

Apple sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 19.45 million iPods during the quarter, representing a seven percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter.

If you haven’t used any then basically gestures are a combination of multiple finger swiping be it up, down, left or right. Apple have implemented this into the latest iOS 4.3 Beta to developers and also included a five finger scrunch gesture to go back to the springboard form any app or game.

You can see the gesture support for iOS 4.3 in the video below.

For Mac users this will most certainly be a welcome addition to the iOS platform.

I’ve been finding Dropbox a very good system until today, and I’d like to explain why suddenly I’m reconsidering cloud computing.

Last week I received a new credit card and I did what usually do and that’s update the information into my secure eWallet. The eWallet file is now on Dropbox and when I save this, it should then replicate it to my MacBook Air, which in turn when I sync eWallet to my MacBook Air from the iPhone and iPad, then transfers to these devices and all should be great. A perfect experience! Well I updated the credit card details including my PIN as it’s a new pin and I couldn’t remember what it was, synced my iPhone and iPad to the MacBook Air this morning then went out to do some shopping.

I did my shopping and reached the checkout and was ready to pay for the products I was buying, whipped out my iPhone and opened up my secure eWallet and……CRAP! The Credit Card isn’t showing in eWallet! What happened?! I know it was there because I checked it over several days on my PC. Thankfully I had another Credit Card I could use and was able to remember that PIN but it seriously made me think about how I synchronise between computers to the cloud.

I remember I made a whole host of other changes last week to my eWallet and needless to say these changes aren’t there either. Unfortunately I can’t remember what all the changes were, so now I’m in trouble. I checked Time Machine and these changes weren’t on the Mac, so it looks like either:-

1. The PC didn’t write the eWallet file to Dropbox
2. The PC did write the eWallet file to Dropbox but at some point when I opened it on the Mac it took that as a newer file and overwrote it without downloading the update to the Mac

Either way it’s not good. Looking at the Dropbox Events I see that the eWallet file was modified but unfortunately unlike Windows Live Sync, DropBox doesn’t have detailed logs on which computer modified the file.

I’m going to have to scrutinise Dropbox more carefully now when saving files as it looks like it isn’t synchronising as I would have hoped between devices.

Many other UK banking apps are limited to viewing your account statements and provide no additional features for managing your account and making payments.

Obviously it goes without saying that you need to have a First Direct bank account of some sort to use the service and be registered for First Direct internet banking.

The First Direct app has been designed very well, uses your same Internet Banking credentials and is very fast and sleek. All in all a great looking app!

[First Direct iTunes App Link]