Status-Q

Back in February I wrote about my latest gadget - the LiveScribe Pulse pen. I've been using it extensively since then and am very pleased with it.

But I've just discovered that the update to the Mac software I installed a month ago has a very significant new feature: search. Yes, it recognises enough of your writing to do a remarkably good job at searching it. Anyone who knows my writing knows that this is no mean feat.

Of course, this is the easy way to do handwriting recognition: you don't actually have to transcribe it, you just have to work out a few possible interpretations which might match, with various degrees of probability, the thing being searched for.

It's the same technique we used to search video mail archives and TV broadcasts back at ORL... you didn't have to recognise the speech perfectly, you just had to get close enough that when someone searched for a word you could list the things that might be a match in rough order of probability.

It's still incredibly useful, though!

...everything looks like a tripod!

Tonight, in the UK at least, we perform that ridiculous ritual of 'putting the clocks back'. How much longer must we put up with this, for heaven's sake? For once, though, I'm grateful, since Rose is catching a distressingly early flight in the morning, and the hour of our rising will at least feel less abominable than it would otherwise.

It leaves me with a problem, though: what to use as an alarm clock?

Some of my gadgets are clever enough to take note of the time change automatically, others aren't, and some (like my RDS clock radio) will pick up the change once they're turned on. I'm really not sure whether they'll do the right thing if I set an alarm tonight for a time in a different timezone tomorrow. So which of these should I take to whichever faceless Heathrow hotel is to be blessed with our patronage tonight?

I certainly don't want to have any fewer hours of sleep than I'll be getting already, but I also don't want to gamble with getting to a transatlantic flight on time. So, ironically, I may take the most basic, least high-tech alarm clock which I know won't try to do anything clever and I can then work out the time changes myself...

Here's a wonderful hardware project, very nicely written up by Mikal Hart. Thanks to Stephen Turner for the link.

Ah - here's something for the run-up to Christmas...

The Kindle is now available in the UK (and quite a lot of other countries). You need to order it from the States, but apparently the 3G works here now too.

The MiFi pocket 3G-to-Wifi gateway has proved pretty popular in the US among the cognoscenti. Now it's available in the UK, from Three.

Might be tempted when my dongle contract expires...

Well, OK, landlines are almost gone already, but their demise took another big step closer with AT&T's testing of a $150 3G femtocell.

If femtocells haven't played a big role in your life so far, let me explain, because they probably will do in the future. These are little cellphone base stations that you plug into your broadband network and, hey presto, give you mobile coverage in your home or office. Your phone can use them in just the same way as it would use a traditional cellphone tower, and the calls get routed over the broadband to the mobile service provider. Goodbye DECT.

I live about a mile from the centre of the UK's high-tech hub, Cambridge, and still get pretty patchy coverage in my house from most of the major providers. It's a disgrace, but soon devices like these will allow us to fix the phone companies' failings. At our own cost, of course, but that's better than not being able to make calls at all.

Anyone trialling them in the UK?

OK, I admit it - I'm hooked. It was my friend Hap who first told me how he'd tried it and enjoyed it at a friend's house, and then another friend gave me a sample and I decided I had to have this...

I'm talking, of course, about the Aeropress - a coffee-making device from those people at Aerobie who brought you the better Frisbee. This is a better cafetière. I'm pretty fussy about coffee and I think this makes perhaps the best I've ever had. Actually, it's a sort of cross between a cafeterière (or French press) and an espresso maker, because it pushes the water through under pressure. The hot water only stays on the grounds for about 20 seconds, which I think is part of the key to its success.

I've long been a fan of my Nespresso machine, but I have to admit it's been standing idle for the last couple of days since this arrived. The Aeropress has been on sale in the US for a while but it's only fairly recently that you've been able to find it easily in the UK - I bought mine on amazon.co.uk for a small fraction of the price of the Nespresso machine.

A very fine bit of design, and definitely recommended.

You can see one in action here:

I use water from a not-quite-boiled kettle rather than doing the microwave thing, but this shows you how quick the process is. Oh, and the stirring is important.

A few of my favourite recent iPhone/iPod Touch applications - all very different - all recommended:

• OffMaps is a map browser. It lets you do similar things to the built-in Google maps, but based on OpenStreetMap data (which is sometimes better, sometimes worse, but generally more up to date). However, the reason you might want to use OffMaps is that the Off stands for 'offline'. If you're like me, one of the main times you want maps of an area is when you are in another country where roaming data charges are extravagant. With OffMaps you can download the maps for an area in advance and use them when you have data roaming turned off - very handy.
• Glyder. I'm not much of a gamer, but I really enjoyed this, and played it through to the end. It's a lovely demo of the graphics capabilities of the platform, and a very nice use of the accelerometers as flight controls. Passed quite a lot of time very happily with this.
• RightMove is one of the biggest online estate agents in the UK, listing properties from very many sources. Their iPhone app is brilliant if you're in an area and think, 'I wonder how much it would cost me to move here?'. It can use your current location, and with one click list the properties for sale or rent near to you. You can enter an address as well, but that's not so cute! Very easy to use and very nicely done.
• HereIAm is a simple utility for iPhone users trying to find other iPhone-owning friends. It gets your current location, shows you an estimate of how confidently it knows it, and pops up an email-composing window which includes a link to google maps pinpointing your position. Desktop users clicking the link will get a browser window, iPhone users will get the Maps app. It works fine on my tests and it's free... it would be nice to be able to preview the location before sending, though - something that should be possible in OS 3.0. But I guess you can just switch to the Maps app for that - it'll be the same location.
• Now, given that most iPhone apps cost a pound or two, it may seem ridiculous to pay £14.99 for one! It must be pretty revolutionary, right? No, it's a dictionary. A Collins French-English dictionary, in my case, though they have a variety of other languages available as well. So, yes, this does cost about the same as a nice hardback edition of the same dictionary, but it's really very good, much quicker to search, and much easier to carry in your pocket. If you look up 'frog', it will also give the translations for 'to have a frog in one's throat' and 'frogman'. It includes verb declensions, it auto-completes searches... well, anyway, I took a deep breath before buying it when going on holiday, and have absolutely no regrets.

Know what a vortex cannon is? I didn't, but it sounded interesting when my friend @Phil_Boswell mentioned it on Twitter.

So I did a search and found this on YouTube:

Fun, eh? But...call that a cannon? This is a cannon: