Zagg invisibleshield vs gelaskins for iphone

I have tried both a gelaskin and zagg invisibleshield skin for the iPhone 4 and the difference is astounding!

The gelaskin is nicer to look at, but offers only the most basic of scratch protection.

If you are really worried about scratching your phone the invisibleshield is the one to go for, it covers more of the phone, it’s slightly thicker, basically indestructible and when fitted correctly is pretty much invisible!

When you first fit the invisibleshield it looks like total crap, smeared and a few bubbles etc, but after leaving it to settle in for a day or two all the bubbles disappear to leave your phone fully protected but without close inspection looking like it just came out of the box!

iphone 4 bumper can damage your phone!

I got a shiny new iPhone 4 just after launch, and like most people suffered from a loss of signal strength. So apple sent free of charge a rubber and plastic trim for the edge of the phone they call a ‘bumper’.

So I fitted the bumper to my phone and it certainly cured the signal problem, all sorted I thought.

A couple of days ago I removed the bumper having not touched it for about 3 months and imagine my surprise to find that tiny particles of dirt had worked their way under the bumper and had badly scratched the aluminium edge of the phone!

I call ed apple customer service and explained the problem, I was told…

“I’ve never heard of that happening before…”

Which I suspect is a standard answer and total bullshit as there are hundreds of examples of this on the Internet!

Today I took my phone to an apple store and they swapped it without batting an eyelid, also confirming that they are well aware of this problem.

At least they swapped the phone but now I won’t be using the bumper/scratcher so I am looking for another solution to apple’s design balls up.

Lord of the rings online for free

Turbine have been delaying the European release of Lord of the rings online (LOTRO) free to play. However there is nothing to stop you using the US servers, simply log on to http://www.lotro.com/?lang=en_US& and create an account, download the game (about 4 hours…) and you are done…enjoy!

UPDATE:- The UK servers are now also free to play look here http://www.lotro.com/free.php?lang=en_GB&

Predators reveiw

Ok, predators is sort of a re-hash of the original, using a few of the same scenes, for example a tumble through the forest ending in a fall into a river. The twist being that the humans do not know each other before hand and they soon realise they have been taken to a different planet.

The acting ranges from poor ( Aiden Brody) to above average (Lawrence Fishburne), the effects are good, though no better than the original.

It’s ok for a change but to be honest you are better off with the original or predator 2, though it is miles better than the dreadful alien vs predator spin offs.

6 out of 10.

PS3 80029564 firmware is corupt error code

When you install a new hard drive in your PS3, in the newer models you will need to install the firmware from a local drive (USB stick). Under certain conditions might get one of two errors. The first error is “no update found”. The second is the update is corrupt error code 80029564.

The steps you need to take to avoid these errors are:-

1. Make sure your USB stick is formatted in fat32. The PS3 won’t recognise NTFS.

2. On the blank formatted USB stick create a folder called PS3 (you must use CAPITALS!)

3. In the PS3 folder create another folder called UPDATE (again must be in CAPITALS!)

4. Download the firmware DIRECTLY to the USB stick. DO NOT download it to your PC/Mac and copy it to the USB stick, this is what corrupts the file! Make sure you download the correct firmware for your country, the US firmware won’t work on UK console.

5. Turn on your PS3, connect a joypad into one USB port and put your USB stick in another. Press the PS button on the joypad, then press start and select together. Your firmware will now install correctly.

PS3 corrupting downloads from the playstation store

When downloading something from the playstation store, under certain conditions the data will seem to have downloaded correctly, however when you try and install the file it will progress so far and then say the data is corrupted and the install will fail.

There is a theory on the Internet that if you download the file again without selecting download in the background this cures the problem, unfortunately this is a myth. The problem can occur wether background downloading is selected or not.

The problem is actually caused by interference from knotted cabling and transformers for other electrical appliances. All you need to do for a successful download is make sure you have a good Internet connection..preferably wired and make sure the PS3 is away from any transformers, power adaptors or bundles of cables. Delete the corrupted download, download it again and everything will install correctly.