It's been a while coming and I've released a couple of screenshots on twitter in the past, but, here are a collection of screenshots from version 2.0, just to let everyone know what they can expect from the next version!

Push Notifications

Faster Comics

Favourites

Loading Screen

Comic View

Share Menu

I'm now in the process of downloading SDK 4 so I can start work on Dark Legacy upgrades! Version 2.0.0 of DLCapp should be arriving in the next couple of weeks so hopefully 2.5.0 should be ready just in time for the release of OS4 to the general public.

Finally, the game centre app looks like it could be interesting and if anyone out there is using the beta please add me! Username: vultuk

After a long wait for most iPhone users finally the iPhone supports Turn by Turn navigation! No longer do we need to carry around Tom Tom's or a variety of other sat nav systems because it's easier just to use it directly on your phone. A number of applications have promised to have turn by turn in and the first of these to arrive on the AppStore was Mobile Navigator (Navigon).

At first I was dubious, I've always been a Tom Tom kinda guy and the thought of using a new Sat Nav system just seemed alien to me. However the fact Tom Tom seems miles away from being on the AppStore, Navigon won my purchase. Two versions of the App are available on the AppStore, a full Europe Version and a Britain only version. With plans to travel in the near future I chose the EU version.

First thing that struck me about the program was its rather hefty size, at 1.7GB it's rather large and this meant removing some music from my 8GB iPhone. I was a little upset about this at first but with the plans to get a 32GB iPhone 3GS in the near future it wasn't something that swayed my decision. After the 2 hours download time (I was on a slow connection at the time) it installed (in around 20 minutes) and then was up and running. In my office at work I managed to get a GPS signal with no problem and Navigon positioned me pretty much perfectly.

Navigon Menu

The Main menu system is much like you'd expect, large buttons and simple enough to press in a hurry. Obviously you wouldn't do this whilst driving but it made it quick and easy to do when you were pulled into the nearest layby.

Navigon gives easy navigation to anyone in your address book, simply clicking the 'Contacts' button brings up all your friends. Click a person and then you can select their address and instantly get directions there! The first thing I noticed here was the unfortunate fact that although you can set a Via by another address, POI and other items but not directly to another contact in your address book. Although not a major issue it's something I would have liked to see!

So, some of the simple features now.. 'Recents' simply holds the recent places you have visited so you can easily click them and be taken there, this is accessible directly from the Via menu. The 'Take me home' feature does exactly what it says, it plots the fastest route from where you are to the Home address you set on first use. 'Show Map' simply gives you a map you can scroll around, zoom in/out. All these items are pretty standard and expected features and they all work well.

Points of Interest (POI) are embedded into the program, what does this mean? Well it means there is an excellent selection of POI built into the App featuring everything from Petrol Stations and Cash Machines to Tourist Attractions. The display of them is excellent allowing you to easily display POI's that are close to you and navigate them using the Via Menu. This works exceptionally well and i've used it a number of times to go to the nearest cash point when in an unknown area. You can also select 3 POIs that will always display on the map, this is very convenient when you are on holidays and you want to easily see local Tourist Attractions, very handy for me

Now the important part, how does it handle navigation? Actually, exceptionally well!

Mapping with Navigon

At first I thought the mapping was rather simple, there didn't seem to be much displayed, however I think what was really missing was the pure colour that comes with Tom Tom. Colours on Navigon are much more pastel based and a lot easier on the eye, it has the obligatory Night Mode which darkens the colours. I have not experienced any problems with route finding at all, all routes have been perfect however it has been reported that a few roads have been missing or routes have taken people obscure directions.

One of the things I instantly noticed about navigation is the speed of updating. In other Sat Nav systems I have been plagued by "Calculating new route" and loading icons and actually meaning I was missing new routes while it was calculating. Navigon updated the routes almost instantly so much so that it took a false right turn followed by a left turn into a back alley (around 20yds after the right turn) to cause the App to get confused enough for it to have to think. Due to the way I drive this is an amazing thing because I spend way too much time ignoring directions until I actually need them.

There's a lot of other features that I like but don't really warrant their own section. So I'm now going to finish off with a quick Good and Bad bullet point view below. Thanks for reading and good luck with your chosen Navigation application!

Good

• Quick updates on route changes
• Voice navigation is clear and precise with good forewarning
• Plenty of POIs for all areas
• Nice Pastel colours
• Good GPS tracking
• Excellent system for motorway junctions
• The option to choose a "Scenic" route while using Navigation

Bad

• No custom POIs
• Can't set a contact as a via
• No built in iPod control
• You can't carry on navigation whilst talking on the phone

You can get Navigon on the AppStore now!

Europe Edition :

Britain Edition :

Ok, I've been hosting websites for while now, started with a normal hosting account where I only gave a couple of friends FTP access. Next I progressed onto a reseller account then when needing more flexibility I moved onto running dedicated servers. In recent months dk101.net moved to a VPS account hosted by Innohosting. I've loved every second of my hosting with them, the system is very stable, runs well and their support has always been quick and knowledgeable.

I also have 2 other VPS's hosted by another company, now I won't link to this other company because at the end of their day the service is rubbish and I wouldn't want people going there, however it wasn't bad enough to link to them to complain (i'm sure that makes sense) But, now I have found another company offering VPS. Now, if it wasn't geeky enough already for you it's going to get there shortly...

What do they offer?

• A VPS which is instantly scalable, giving you the ability to increase your capacity when you need it and scale back when you don’t.
• A VPS which can deliver your content simultaneously from both the United Kingdom and United States.
• Failover service meaning that if your site goes down it will automagically switch to a new node and is back up in around 40 seconds
• A managed DNS system,  very powerful, setup with Anycast and highly redundant.

To top is off they also offer Free Control Panel Software and unlimited free SSL certificates. I've recently taken out a few nodes and messed with all different configurations and I'm very happy with the service so far. The support department have replied to tickets within 45 minutes so far and their community forums are filled with knowledgable people including the CEO of the company who are very willing to help.

The Bad things...

• The only way to pay through paypal (at the moment) is by talking directly to a sales person which I found a little slow.
• Purchasing a license for cPanel/WHM again had to be done through a sales person
• The company is reasonably new meaning that things are still in production

So if you are looking for server space for any item I would seriously reccommend VPS.NET!

I didn't think this would arrive as soon as this, I was expecting to have to wait until firmware version 3.0 arived for the iPhone but to my shock and delight Sims 3 arrived in the app store at some point recently. I purchased it on Monday and am already addicted!

As with the majority of (big company) iPhone apps I was expecting something Visually impressive and I haven't been let down. From the main loading screen we are treated to awesome quality graphics and yes it does only get better. Loading time is reasonable, though i'm sure on the 3GS it will be much faster.

I've not spent enough time on it to give a decent review so that will come later.. But For now.. Here's some screen shots from the game...

UPDATE: Get the dk101.net new range of ticket tout t-shirts now available! Show your hate towards touts! - http://s.dk101.net/80328/

So, i'm sure you've all read my problems ordering tickets for Green Day thanks to ticket touting. This is an issue, which i'm sure many of you will agree, needs to be fixed! There's lots of different 'solutions' that companies have tried to solve this problem ranging from Limiting the amount of tickets per person to needing a utility bill when you go to a gig. However this isn't solving the problem. In the first case, ticket touts clearly just purchase less tickets on more cards! In the second case touts tend to just provide a utility bill when you purchase a ticket from them. Both of these 'solutions' do just add more effort to the legitimate purchases like myself.

So the solution has to be in our faces. Photo identification is required almost everywhere from Passports and Driving Licenses to a simple club membership card. So where is the problem with printing a photo of us onto our ticket?! Companies like ticketmaster already have a nice back ends for clients so they already have our name and other such details on file. So with a quick modification to the code we have something like the following...

Now the photo that's on my profile then gets printed directly on to my ticket. This would be done during the normal printing system so we don't have any issues with laminating and touts being able to remove the picture. Then through the post we get tickets that look like the following..

Right, so now we have a reasonably fool proof way of proving that I ordered the ticket, it has my face on it! There's a few provisos on this though. The picture on your ticket MUST be the one that was registered on your profile at the time of ordering. This would mean that touts couldn't simply replace the picture in the profile depending on who bought the ticket. The name of the person the ticket was ordered for would also be printed under the photo so extra proof of ID could also be asked for.

In the admin section of the ticket selling website we could have a list of all photos used previously, what tickets they were used for and a way to upload a new photo like the following...

Finally, this system would also mean it would be possible for you to remove the limit on ticket ordering. Ticketmaster could use people's profiles almost like a facebook friends list. This would mean Chris, Del, Feeney etc etc could add me as friends on ticket master. Once this has been done I am then free to order tickets for them through my account and card but their photo would be printed on their ticket.

Yes, this system would mean that if someone decides they cannot make a gig their ticket would be useless, but it should certainly cut down the number of tickets for sale on ebay and mean that the true fans can actually see bands they like without having to buy tickets for 2+ times the price from touts on ebay.

Well I managed to well and truly give myself a heart attack tonight. I'm an iPhone developer so i'm not just using Dodgy Torrent Firmware.. Tonight I decided to update from iPhone 3.0 release 7A238 to release 7A259 in the hopes it speeds up and fixes a few bugs in the system.

On doing the Update to the firmware the iPhone restarts and greets me with just a blank white screen. iTunes dies and leaves me with a phone in restore mode. However, all attempts through iTunes to restore previous firmware fail giving me a 1604 error. I try many of the methods to recover from this.

• Entering DFU mode
• Changing USB ports
• Booting in windows and try it there
• Swing the iPhone by the cord around my head 14 times in a clockwise direction

Etc etc. Nothing works. I'm still stuck with a bricked iPhone. My sim card goes into my old iPhone so I can text people about my missfortune and keep them awake while I get to work.

After a while I goes back to my old *cough* Jailbreaking days *cough* and downloads the latest version of pwnagetool. I used that to create a custom ipsw package for the previous 2.2.1 firmware. I then used pwnage to start up DFU mode. This DFU mode appears to be different to the normal Home+Power DFU mode as with pwnage open you do not see anything on screen yet you are still in recovery mode.

I hits the Alt+recovery button in iTunes and select the new firmware bundle i made in pwnage and instead of the iPhone just sticking on the recovery screen I see the progress bar on the screen of the iPhone! I smiled! About 1/4 of the way through I gets another error message and the restore is aborted. I cried a little. :'( So in all hopes I press restore again. This time the progress bar makes it to 1/2 way through and it crashes. No tears but still no smile. I press restore again and low and behold I'm saved! I have an iPhone with 2.2.1 installed on it again! Now i'm smiling!

Do I upgrade to the latest version of 3.0 again now? Hmm? Maybe in the morning!

So, there's a bug with the iPhone 3.0 software that I wish to report.. I logs onto the apple developer bug reporting site and go to file my bug report... What do I get? I get greeted with the following screen... It made me LOL!

Apple Bug Reporting Bug

So after the fun talk (and crappy leeds lineup) a number of friends were greeted with the following picture message on their phone this morning!

Leeds Festival 2009 Lineup

A further collection of screenshots from the iphone 3.0 firmware