Shaun Mccran

My digital playground

11
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2011

Backing up your SMS and MMS to GoogleMail from an Android device

I've been using the same Android phone for over a year now, a HTC Desire. Over the last year I've been sending and receiving texts on a frequent basis. My SMS app seems to struggle with the volume of messages it is now holding, over 5000+, so I thought I'd find a way of backing them up and clearing it all out in an effort to speed things back up.

This article explains how I used the 'Backup to Gmail' application to backup all my SMS and MMS messages.

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08
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N
2011

Handling Error templates in FW/1

I've been using Framework one for a few smaller scale projects, and during a wrap up session I noticed that I didn't have a global catch-all error page, or any kind of error notification subsystem, like an admin email prompt.

This blog article describes how FW/1 looks for and uses an error handling template.

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05
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N
2011

Welcome to the strictly digital age: Dirt 3 for PC only available for download

I split my gaming across the Xbox 360 and the PC, so I always tend to weight up which format I want to buy new releases on. Dirt 3 was released in the UK last week, and I noticed on the tv advert that the PC edition is now only available as a digital download.

A quick search on Game's website shows this too: http://www.game.co.uk/search.aspx?s=dirt+3

I used to work for a high street game retailer so I've always know PC sales are considerably lower than console, and the prices is usually 30%-40% less, so they are a less attractive option to software companies. This is the first time I've seen a new title ONLY available as a download though.

Personally I like to buy physical versions of my software as I generally sell them on, maybe this is the start of a trend? Are you comfortable having no choice, and only being able to download a title?

04
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2011

HostMediaUK site migration complete

I'd been unhappy with my current hosting provider for a while, the performance just wasn't there, and the more I pushed the boundaries of development the more blocks I encountered. Also they were running old versions of ColdFusion and an old JVM which was having an effect on some Java development.

About three months ago I bought a test account with HostmediaUK. I thought I'd venture into Linux based ColdFusion 9 hosting and see how it worked out. I dropped a few test sites onto the platform and discovered a few migration issues around Linux, obvious things to me now, but case sensitive database table names and a totally different file directory system caused me major headaches.

That being said the server performance is great. sites respond well to requests, is easy to manage through the software layer installed on the servers, and when I requested access to the DNS settings it was freely given (albeit with the usual 'here be dragons' warning!).

The customer service is great too, they keep winning awards and I can see why. I've just finished migrating the rest of my site to their platform, it is rare that I recommend a service but I'd point anyone in the direction of HostmediaUK.

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