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greenpeace_cloud_cleanliness_rankings
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Apple scores 100% score in Greenpeace cloud report

Greenpeace have often lashed out at Apple for their lack of green credentials so it’s nice to see them giving 100% to Apple in their “Green Cloud Report”

Apple has a massive data over in North Carolina which powers iTunes and iCloud offerings that’s using nothing but 100% solar energy to keep those cloud servers going.

greenpeace cloud cleanliness rankings Apple scores 100% score in Greenpeace cloud report

Be sure to check out Greenpeace’s Clicking Green report [pdf]. Amazon’s full report is on page 45, Apple’s on 46, Google’s on 52, and Microsoft’s on 55.

Again another shining example where Apple can say they don’t consider the ROI as it would more than likely take a good decade to recoup the building costs for a solar farm of this level.

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Kickstarter Review : Copanhagen Parts Magnetic Lights. 2 Years waiting to be disapointed

Oh Copenhagen Parts how you managed to disappoint me on my first ever backed Kickstarter Campaign. I backed their magnetic bike lights as that’s exactly what I needed and plus supporting smaller companies get a leg up makes me feel kinda good. Shame that I had to wait just over 2 years for abject disappointment.

Continue reading → Kickstarter Review : Copanhagen Parts Magnetic Lights. 2 Years waiting to be disapointed

Word of iPad Screenshot
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Microsoft Office For iPad Is Now A Reality

Microsoft have finally shown us the much vaunted Office for iPad in their. Microsoft is using a “freemium” model for Office for iPad. The base suite, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, is free. Users who don’t add an Office 365 subscription to the offering still can do some basic tasks. But to do more advanced tasks, users will need an Office 365 subscription.

Continue reading → Microsoft Office For iPad Is Now A Reality

Haunted Empire Apple After Steve Jobs
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Haunted Empire “fails to capture Apple, Steve, or anyone else in the company. “

Yukari Iwatani Kane throws a strop as Tim cook describes her book, Haunted, as missing the point about apple. What a surprise that a WSJ Journalist doesn’t understand Apple.

This nonsense belongs with some of the other books I’ve read about Apple. It fails to capture Apple, Steve, or anyone else in the company. Apple has over 85,000 employees that come to work each day to do their best work, to create the world’s best products, to put their mark in the universe and leave it better than they found it. This has been the heart of Apple from day one and will remain at the heart for decades to come. I am very confident about our future. We’ve always had many doubters in our history. They only make us stronger.

Update 3/18 2:22 PT: Yukari Kane has given a statement to Re/code on Cook’s condemnation of her book.

“For Tim Cook to have such strong feelings about the book, it must have touched a nerve,” Kane said. “Even I was surprised by my conclusions, so I understand the sentiment. I’m happy to speak with him or anyone at Apple in public or private. My hope in writing this book was to be thought-provoking and to start a conversation which I’m glad it has.”

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Reviews on Haunted Empire

Rene Ritchie: ‘This Is a Bad Book

This isn’t a great book I simply didn’t like. This is a bad book.
I was sent an advanced review copy a week ago and it was arduous to get through it.

Seth Weintraub, reviewing Haunted Empire:

The book concludes exactly how it has been prepared to conclude (sorry, no surprise ending).

Siri New iOS voices
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How To Get Back Siri’s Old Voices in iOS 7.1

So the new iOS update dropped on us the other week and despite myriads of improvements not everybody is happy. One of the main gripes that I often gets to hear is that they don’t like the new Siri voice. Even though the new voices or of a higher quality and contain more information some people, for some unknown reason, want the old British Siri

in iOS 7 .1 Seery no has two new voices. Even in the UK we can now choose between male and female voices. So if you are a fan of the old voices this is how you get them back.

Adjusting the Siri Voice Settings

You can adjust Siri using the Siri options found in Settings > General > Siri. Click on Language and choose from the following:

Siri Language How To Get Back Siris Old Voices in iOS 7.1

English(Australian).
English (Canada).
English (United Kingdom).
English (United States).
If you miss the old Siri, we find English (Canada) to be more like the old Siri than the new English (United Kingdom) setting. Canadian Siri is not exactly the same as the old British Siri but has a less stuffy mannerism and a similar accent. To our mind using Siri in a different language doesn’t make much difference to its usability.

How To Change Siri’s Gender

You can now choose between Female and Male Siri voices. Before iOS 7.a the English (United States) voice was female and English (United Kingdom) was male. Follow these steps to change the Siri Voice Gender:

Tap Settings > General > Siri.
Tap Voice Gender.
Tap on Male or Female.

Siri Settings How To Get Back Siris Old Voices in iOS 7.1

 

We find it best to hold down the Home Button and say “Hi, Siri” and ask it a few questions to get a feel for which Siri Accent and Voice Gender we prefer.

How to get the old Siri voice back on an iPhone
If the Canadian version of Siri still isn’t enough like the old Siri for you, and you want to hear the old version of Siri, then you can hear the old British Siri voice in Voice Control. Voice Control was the technology that preceded Siri, and it isn’t as powerful as Siri.

You access Control Control on the iPhone by turning Siri off. Note that this Siri trick only works on the iPhone, not the iPad:

Go to Settings > General > Siri.

Tap on Siri to turn it to Off..

A warning will appear that disabling Siri removes information from Apple Servers. Tap on Turn Off.

Siri will now no longer work, but if you hold down the Home button on the iPhone you will receive the Voice Control interface. This is like Siri and uses the Siri’s old voice. So have a good chat. Voice Control has much less functionality than Siri. Because Voice control it doesn’t tap into Apple servers it isn’t as good at detecting what you’re saying. We find it often tries to call people in our Contacts list, for example.

If you turn Siri back on it will take time for Apple servers to get your personal information back (Siri adjusts to your requests over time). So for a while Siri may not work as well as it did before.

Voice Control How To Get Back Siris Old Voices in iOS 7.1

ios7 faster animations
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Whats new in iOS. iOS 7.1 Reviewed

An interesting post from Ars detailing the finer points of what’s changed in iOS 7.1 to make it faster. Granted it not actually increase performance benchmarks but there’s some nice tweaks to the animations so certainly make things feel brisker

Dragon Dictate 4
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Dragon Dictate 4, Announced Better transcription features, Gmail integration

Nuance has just announced the next major version of its Mac dictation software, Dragon Dictate 4. The new version improves recognition accuracy as well as several new features, including the ability to machine transcribe from a pre-recorded audio file. You no longer have to be recording a voice live to get transcription.

Continue reading → Dragon Dictate 4, Announced Better transcription features, Gmail integration