Steve Litchfield

This seems to be an issue that keeps cropping up and I wanted to get some thoughts down somewhere as to what's going on. For starters, there's nothing wrong with the RSS file for each podcast - this is the plain text file that tells podcatchers which episodes are available and where to grab them from. There's nothing to go wrong here, other than the occasional typo, which I'd typically pick up very quickly. Every other podcatcher on every platform (I've tried over a dozen on Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry) reads this RSS file fine and podcasts appear as they should. But then there's Pocket Casts, probably the most popular third party podcatcher in the phone world. This goes one step further than the podcatcher itself grabbing the RSS (or XML) file for each of your favourite podcasts. Instead, it grabs them all onto a custom server, the idea being that each client round the world doesn't have to grab the same old RSS files time and time agai...

I'm sure I'm not the first person to suggest this, but here goes anyway: Twitter is ubiquitous these days. News, tech, sports, celebrities, music events - Twitter and hashtags (etc.) are where EVERYONE finds out what's happening and what other people think about what's happening. Quickly and succinctly (140 chars etc) in real time. From TV stations to radio to Internet hubs to the man in the street, Twitter is THE place to go - and yet we keep hearing that Twitter is struggling to make ends meet in terms of making a profit and so we have to put up with ads and sponsored tweets. WHY DOES EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD HAVE TO BE ABOUT MAKING A PROFIT? When something's genuinely and universally useful, why couldn't someone/something rich (think Apple, Google, or even the USA government) step in and fund Twitter out of their small change - the amounts concerned are relatively tiny. Say 500 million dollars a year to staff and run. It sounds a lot to you or I bu...

You have to hand it to the guys at Noreve. Eschewing 'same day shipping', plastic and 'faux' everything, they go all out when they make phone cases: real, high quality leather metal inner/frame deluxe packaging each case made to order (they don't even have sample cases to send out for review!) Put it all together and you get a sumptuous experience, here exemplified in the fabulous Tradition E for the new Blackberry KEYone . Noreve do a big line in folio (wrap around) cases, but in the KEYone's case I think an in-situ wrap-around design works best. The finish of the leather is stunning and, unusually, there's no sign of stitching - the leather panelling is moulded neatly around the metal inner so that the seams are hidden behind the glued-in folds of material. The phone is gripped very securely, with the metal angles of the case doing their job. The KEYone already includes some material, some texture, but only on the back - this gives an all-le...

What is it with notifications? Every phone, every application, every smartwatch, tablet, every web site, every desktop OS... THEY ALL WANT TO KEEP BOMBARDING ME WITH NOTIFICATIONS! Noisy, intrusive things. Beeping, flashing, distracting. Even in the middle of the night, waking me up. I spend most of my days turning them off in every app, every OS, for every site, on every device. It's a game of whack-a-mole, trying to find the relevant Settings pane, switching notifications off for everything and hoping that an app update doesn't reset things to 'on' again. But why should this be the case? Why not, for once, have an application default to not popping up notifications? Shouldn't this be something that the user turns on? By all means show me a tooltip or similar when I first start the app, reminding me that the notification system exists, but thereafter it should be up to me to turn on something noisy and distracting, surely? 24 hours a day, the only thing...

It's another case round-up, this time for the Samsung Galaxy S8+ - Mobile Fun have again come up with the goods and again I try and pick winners and losers. The S8+, like many modern all-glass phones, simply can't be used naked, so a case is downright essential. Here are six of the best: Olixar X-Trex Rugged Hard Case The toughest case in this bunch, this follows the usual tough case mantra of inner and outer shells, though the inner one isn't as rubbery as you usually encounter and rather hard - not very impact absorbent. There's a kickstand folded away into the back, as shown here - it works well enough, though is very plasticky and it's tough to click back into place afterwards. More worryingly, there are design issues, like the aperture for the USB Type C, which wasn't quite large enough for my test cables and so the phone wouldn't charge. Finally, the volume button covers are poorly made and I found it hard to change volume. Overall...

I fell asleep several times... After 'the most glamorous race of the F1 season', I think I've had it with Formula 1 - Monaco may be the most glitzy circuit, but it's totally artificial and even a much faster car, with the aid of DRS, still can't get past a slower car because the city track if just too narrow. What IS the point? If you can't actually race properly, then what IS the point? Race after race, in fact, you hear the commentators saying 'Of course, it's hard to overtake on this track'. The whole DRS (Drag Reduction System) technology was designed to make passing easier, and it works on most tracks, but it's not exactly a racing overtake is it? I mean, the number of times car A passes car B, which then is 'within the 1s window' and has DRS to enable it to pass car A again. I can count the number of genuine overtaking moves between the top cars in each season on the fingers of one hand. And that's not enough for 9 mon...

The story of our laptops and Wifi is a long, tortuous one. As our Dell and HP laptops have got older (3 and 5 years respectively), their built-in Wifi circuits seem to die. Not completely, but just enough that they lose connection every few hours and have to be power cycled (or the laptop turned on and off). A right pain. So I bought a couple of cheap USB Wifi adapters and these seemed to sort the problem out, in that connections were far more stable - but limited to the 2.4GHz band. Which was a bit annoying since every other device in the house ran on the 5GHz band - faster and more reliable (away from Microwave and other interference). So I bought a 5GHz-compliant adapter and... it died after a couple of days and was returned for a refund. All was then quiet until I was sent the AUKEY AC600 here for review - a newer, hopefully more robust dual band (2.4/5GHz) adapter. So we've been giving it a go - and it has been rock solid . Even on the older laptops. It's tough ...

Mobile Fun kindly sent over a bunch of LG G6 cases to review and, on the whole, I was impressed. Here are my assessments: Zizo Bolt Cover I picture this case being used while hiking up the mountains - the belt clip included is super-tough and heavy duty in grippy black neoprene-covered polycarbonate, while the case itself is a two piece design, in super-textured red plastic outside of a slightly softer (impact-absorbing) black inner shell. A kick stand is included in the back, giving this case an extra string to its bow. My only complaint here, other than the obvious increase to the phone's thickness, is that the volume buttons are hard to press through all the plastic. Maybe you'd get used to this, plus if you're manly (or womanly) enough to be out in all weathers in the first place then your fingers would have more strength than mine! The G6 slips in easily and isn't too bad to take out, even without separating the two parts of the case, i.e. it can b...