Have your very own TV Schedule in Google Calendar

Overview

Keeping track of all your favourite TV Shows can be pretty daunting at times especially if you are a person like me who watches ~60 shows throughout the year. But I got a solution which will allow you to keep track of all your shows straight from Google Calendar with very little interaction on your part.

How-To

1. Create an account/Sign In to Pogdesign TV Calendar

Pogdesign TV Calendar is a web service which as you guess it will tell you what shows air on what date and time. Having an account is important because of the next 2 parts

2. Favourite your shows

Once you have an account click "Add Shows To Favourites" in the top left, choose your shows and once you have finished click "Back to the Calendar"

3. Copy the .ical link address

In the Top Right of the page a new button will appear called .ical, Right click that button and choose Copy Link Address (May be called something different on Firefox and IE)

4. Add the Calendar to Google Calendar

Go to Google Calendar, click the dropdown for Other Calendars and choose Add by URL. 

Paste in the link and click Add Calendar

5. Done

The calendar will now be added to Google Calendar, if you ever become interested in any other shows then all you need to do is go on the Pogdesign website, add it to your favourites and Google Calendar will update pretty much instantly.

The reason I chose Google Calendar for this was because it can be accessed not just from your computer but also your phone and tablet (no matter the device). This solution may work with other Calendar services but you will have to find that out by yourself

Why I hate physical buttons on Phones and Tablets

Earlier today Samsung shown off their innovative Galaxy S5 and with it one of the things which annoyed me was that it looked pretty much the same as the S4 (except with a Nexus 7 2012 back) and physical buttons instead of actually following Google's design guidelines and actually go with an on-screen ones (Granted they actually replaced the redundant menu button with a recents one which they should have done a year ago).

In 2007 Steve Jobs announced the iPhone and with it his reasoning for going with an on-screen keyboard instead of a physical one and these very much apply with buttons as well

Stays there no matter if you need it or not
Do you really need the buttons there all of the time? With on screen buttons they disappear when you don't need them like when you're watching a video and appear when you do.

With physical ones they stay there taking up physical space which they could have got rid of or used for something else

They are the same no matter what application you are in
Since Android 4.0 when you open a legacy application it shows the menu button in the far right of the navigation menu, in the future I can see the same happening with the back button where it will only show it when there is actually somewhere to go back to (like on a web browser)

With Physical buttons those are the same no matter what

Once its out there it's impossible to change or update
This reminds me of the HTC One X and One S, they lacked a physical menu button and because of that they were bashed a lot and because of that they had to add an on screen one through a software update.

Now granted other manufacturers can do the same when they are missing a button but surely it will be easier to have them all software based and then can remove them when they are not needed anymore

As well as this what happens if a button breaks? With Physical buttons someone would have to pay money to repair it whether it is the manufacturer or the customer but with on screen buttons most are fixed through a factory reset

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Hopefully HTC doesn't follow suite and actually takes a page out of Sony, Google and Motorola's Books

My experience with Giffgaff, after almost 3 years of being a member

Goodbye T-Mobile

2 years before switching to giffgaff I was On T-Mobile and overall I was happy primarily because I was on a plan where

• As long as I topped up £10 every month then I can send unlimited texts for free.
• For £5 of that credit I could buy a booster which would give me a months worth of unlimited internet (which was capped to 3gb).

However my feelings for them changed dramatically

• In November 2010 they merged their networks with Orange which I had a bad experience with in the past
• In January 2011 they announced that they were dropping the unlimited texts and was lowering the cap to 500mb (Probably to prevent it competing with itself). 
• At the time I wasn't sure how much 500mb was until I used it up in a week and spent the remaining credit that I had left
• Of course they quickly changed it back for the existing customers but the damage was already done and I dont think I ever got my money back

Hello giffgaff

After comparing alternate networks I finally decided that giffgaff was the best choice for me, so I ordered a free sim, activated it as soon as it arrived and bought a £10 goodybag which gave me 250 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited internet

Upon switching I quickly realised the real benefits of switching which was that I 

• Get £5 upon joining
• Can call and text other giffgaff members for free (As long as I topped up every 3 months)
• Can access the internet for free (As long as I topped up every 3 months)
• Get 500 points (£5) payback if a person used my referral link
• Get 200 point (£2) if I help someone in the forum or recommended giffgaff to them
• Can excahnge my payback points for credit, cash or charity

So within that year I got my sister to switch from Orange, put a giffgaff in my Brothers new phone which he got for Christmas that year and also only topped up every 3 months

Where giffgaff is at now

It is now 2014 and

• giffgaff's popularity has surged (especially in the past year) 
• Like every popular system it every now and again suffers from problems, but when it works, it works. 
• The majority of perks which people had 3 years ago still exist today except the free internet for people who topped up every 3 months
• Now the £10 goodybag has risen to £12 (The current £10 goodybag replaced unlimited internet with 500 minutes instead of 250)
• You now get 100 (£1) points for taking Bronze, Iron and Gold Approved Helper Quizes
• You now get extra money when you become a Super Recruiter (Im an Apprentice)

Overall I like everyone else get aggravated when something doesn't work but I guess the real question is does the perks I listed above persuade you to put up with it and for me it does.

How Google is solving Android's fragmentation issue

One of the things I hear countless apple fanboys bash Android for is it's fragmentation issue where one phone could be running x version while another could have y version and how Google is doing nothing to solve it. That is far from the truth

In the last couple of years Google has been migrating more and more of Android's base apps to the play store

• Browser = Google Chrome 
• Calendar = Google Calendar 
• Gmail 
• Google Maps
• Google search  
• Music = Play Music 
• Play Store 
• YouTube 

By Google doing this they are potentially making firmware updates more redundant, this is unheard of on IOS and Windows Phone.

Sure you will still need firmware updates for bug fixes and new features to the system itself but even then Google can make it more modular like it is with Linux distributions like Arch, Ubuntu, etc

Windows 8 Review Part 2- What I love

Now that we have got over some of the things I hate now its time to talk about the things I love

I love

Metro Apps
Once you get over the metro ui you will soon find that the metro apps that are in the Microsoft Store are actually quite good and how apps immerse you in what you are doing whether it is watching a video, reading a news story in the BBC news app to reading a book in the Kindle app, every app that I have installed and tried is fast, stable and beautiful

Another example is getting stuff done, what I like to do is create chrome web apps of things like blogger, google drive, etc and run them in metro interface (Which chrome has recently added support for) and while in that interface I find that I can get stuff done and this can be thanks to the unobtrusive nature of things like notifications are and don't need to be clicked like before if I ran them in the Classic UI, this is one of the things I love about Ubuntu and it's good to see other companies are adopting the same approach

Microsoft Store
When I installed Windows 8 in the consumer preview I found it lacked applications, however with the RTM there are hundreds of each category ranging from Productivity to Games. Another thing I love is how open it is, in the past Microsoft would have forced you to develop an application in a language they have developed but now you can submit applications developed in HTML and javascript, C++, C#, VB. As well as that if it is developed in HTML then it should be fairly easy to grab the files and run them under Chrome and even on a different operating system like Mac or Linux

I wont call it a success yet until I see Microsoft competitors in the store like Google products like Chrome, YouTube, gmail, etc

Fast
One of the things I was amazed about in the consumer preview was at how fast stuff ran especially on a 1gb laptop which I had lying around gathering dust (because of how slow it ran Windows 7), I even installed it on a 512mb machine and 800mhz pentium 3 and sure it wasn't fast but it ran faster than when I tried Windows 7 and Vista

I then tried it on my Intel core 2 quad machine with 4gb ram, 640gb SATA hard drive and also a 64gb ssd. I  left Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my SSD and installed Windows 8 on the hard drive, once I had fully had it installed I wanted to test out the improved boot speed so I timed how long it took from the boot menu to the desktop (disabled password on each) and even though the SSD won Windows 8 was very close and once it had booted it up it took seconds to get to the start screen.

I have now got rid of Windows 7 on the ssd and put Windows 8 in its place (Ubuntu is still faster though at 11 seconds compared to 8's 16 seconds)

Stable
In the year that I have been testing Windows 8 on my college machine that I was using from 9am to 4pm everyday and then my mother would use it from then on and it only crashed 3 times in the whole year. I dunno if it is luck, good hardware or what but im quite happy with how stable Windows 8 has been in comparison to previous versions of Windows

Wrong stable?

Conclusion
Even though I may not like how Metro ui currently works I will congratulate Microsoft on the improvements to the other parts (Mainly in the classic ui) and because of this

• If you are a person looking for a tablet or some other device that has a touch screen monitor then you should consider on running Windows 8, because Metro ui is meant for those type form factors

• If you are someone like me who is not interested in getting a touch screen device or monitor and is perfectly fine with their tablet or is not interested in getting a tablet then don't upgrade to Windows 8

• Now if a hack comes out that will disable the metro ui and brings back the much loved start menu from Windows 7 then only upgrade your non-touch screen device if it costs a small amount of money or can get it for free because apart from the Metro UI nothing much has changed and its not worth the large amount of money Microsoft normally charges you for an upgrade or as a new install

In the end I will never forgive Microsoft for forcing this upon us desktop users, Canonical did the same with 11.04 where they pushed a user interface on users too soon and I forgive them because in the end Ubuntu is free while Windows 8 is not

Windows 8 Review Part 1- What I hate

So I have been testing Windows 8 for about a year now (since the developer preview was released) and since then I have been in a mixed bag about it where some things I hate and some I love, so lets start with the things I hate

I hate

Metro UI
The metro ui (I don't care if some company has said that Microsoft can't call it that because im not Microsoft) is probably the most major overhaul Windows has had since Windows 95 and for a 1.0 it sucks, here is some examples of what I hate

Interface
I have tested Windows 8 on every size monitor possible from the 15" to the 23" and metro looks terrible on all of them, its full screen, the icons are over sized and most of the colour schemes make me want to rip my eyes out, in the end I had to choose the black background with blue colour scheme.
The only form factor that I see this on is tablets and netbooks and the annoying thing is that metro apps can not run on 1024x600 which is the resolution that plagues all netbooks and tablets from 2010/2011 (and even 2012) and really I don't believe one bit that these apps do not run on these resolutions because this is heavily based off Windows Phone 7

Multi-monitor support
Metro ui lacks multi-monitor support, heres an example I open up the weather app and put it on my 2nd monitor, I go to open up the start screen on the 1st monitor and the weather disappears off the 2nd one. At this point i'm confused and thought maybe it crashed so I open it back up and put it back on the 2nd monitor and yet again it goes away, I tried everything including pinning it to the side and each of my attempts was foiled.
Microsoft most businesses are adopting a dual monitor setup because it boosts productivity and if you want businesses and developers to migrate to the metro uo then you HAVE to support dual monitors, I understand if this was released in 2006 but it wasn't

Fragmentation
Since the beginning of Windows 95 windows has been terrible at creating a consistent experience, in windows 95 some apps we're still using the 3.1 interface and the same applies with Windows 8, there is 3 menus.

1. Classic- When I say classic I mean the menu with file, edit, view,etc. take Notepad for example, it has not changed since Windows 95, why wasn't this updated in Windows 7?. The calculator had an overhaul in Windows 7 but yet again it uses the classic ui instead of the ribbon ui
2. Ribbon ui- In office 2007 Microsoft unveiled the ribbon ui, well since then they have been adopting other applications to use the same interface. First with windows 7 with wordpad and paint and now Windows Explorer with Windows 8. what annoys me is that you're TOO LATE, you just unveiled the metro ui, Your priority now is to make sure all the basic apps are using the latest interface, not to redesign it in the ribbon ui
3. Metro ui- Everything is in full screen and options are in over-sized icons or dropdown boxes, etc, yea, yea, yea I just talked about that

Microsoft you need to speed up development, I understand if you were releasing versions every year but you're not, it's every 3 years. I had hoped that it would be different in Windows 8 but it's not

Device support

When I installed Windows 8, I went into device manager to find that a number of devices was not installed because of lack of drivers available, I would understand if these were old but they are about a year old. Microsoft it is 2012 and you have got all these manufacturers in your pocket, all releasing hardware that is compatible with Windows, the least you can do is make sure there is a central place where all manufacturers can submit drivers and then hardware would be supported out of the box or a driver can be downloaded immediately once connected to the internet through Windows update. With Ubuntu everything was supported except graphics drivers and they were a click away from being downloaded and installed, I understand that some may be unlucky but Ubuntu is free, Windows 8 is not

UAC 2.0

In windows 8 on top of the old UAC they have now added a new one called SmartScreen (Picture to the right) and this would popup everytime you click on an exe that is not in the Microsoft Store and it makes it all seem that these exe's are unsafe because they use words like Protected, Prevented, Unrecognised and Might put your pc at risk. As well as that it doesn't let you run the exe until you click more info. This is effective but you shouldn't have to freak the user out to make it effective

In Windows Vista I would be so annoyed because of the fact that UAC would popup a lot over the smallest of things, in Windows 7 it had improved but now its annoying again with Windows 8 and the fact they have both SmartScreen and UAC tells me how noneffective the old one was that they have to add another dialogue asking if you are sure, I clicked on it didn't I, just back off a bit