I’m always taking notes. I go to a meeting, and I’ll have a page or two of notes afterwards. When my phone rings, I reach for the Post-its before I reach for the handset. On the rare occasions when I remember to tidy my desk, I’ll find it covered in pieces of paper with my illegible scrawl on them. Notes, notes, notes. I’m pretty good at writing stuff down.

What I’m not very good at doing is organising those notes. I can never find what I need afterwards – sometimes it’s because a Post-it hasn’t stayed where I stuck it, or I threw away a piece of paper by accident, or I just can’t find the page in my notebook. And even if I do find the relevant note, sometimes I’ll discover that I didn’t write down a key point – usually because at the time I’ve thought “Oh, I’ll easily remember that, no need to write it down”…

I’ve tried using my iPad as a notebook, and whilst my stylus is very useful, it still doesn’t quite beat a pen and paper. And for quick notes – on the phone, for example – it’s just not practical to get the iPad out, so I still reach for the Post-its first.

Step forward Livescribe, and their Echo pen. The Livescribe Echo pen does three main things:

1. It records everything you write,
2. It records audio at the same time,
3. It plays back the audio that accompanied any of your notes.

In addition, everything you write/record can be synced back to your computer.

Before I go into further detail, there is one caveat – Livescribe pens require special paper. You can’t just write in a normal notebook, you have to use one of their special ones. On the plus side, they’re not expensive – at the time of writing, a pack of four A5 80-page notebooks costs less than £15, a pack of four A4 100-page notebooks is £17 and four flip notepads with a padded notepad cover is a tenner. They’re the main products – there are a few others, including a pack of six Post-it note pads for just under £15. And, should you need to, you can also print your own paper.

The reason you need to use special paper is because of how the pen works. The writing is done by a regular ballpoint nib; the clever bit is that there is a small camera behind the nib which tracks what you write by looking at a pattern of dots printed on each page. The pattern is very faint, and unique to each page in each notebook/pad within a pack.

So, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at each of the pen’s main features…

Record what you write

Thanks to the dot paper, the pen knows exactly what you’ve written on each page of each notebook. One very important thing to remember – and you do get used to it pretty quickly – is making sure that you turn the pen on before you start writing! You can alter the auto-off timeout on the pen to suit you – I’ve set mine to two hours. It does seem a bit strange having to “turn your pen on”, but it soon becomes second nature. You use the pen like normal – you don’t need to alter your writing style. The clever stuff happens when you sync your pen with your computer via a micro-USB cable. The pen is supplied with the “Livescribe desktop” (Mac and PC) app which copies everything from your pen to your computer, and from there you can then view digital copies of all your notes. Not only that, but all your notes are OCRed – turning your handwritten text into searchable documents! I was pretty sceptical about this at first, and thought it’d never be able to read my scruffy handwriting, but I’m constantly surprised at how well it works. The main thing I wanted was a way of searching my handwritten notes to find something I’d written days or weeks ago – and this works perfectly. So far I haven’t had any cases of it not being to read my handwriting, and I have the additional advantage of being able to review my notes even without having the actual notebook with me.

The pen can do more than just record what you write, though. You can use it as a calculator – write a sum on the paper and the answer will appear on the pen’s display (or use the printed scientific calculator for more advanced calculations). You can upload apps to the pen as well – including a pointless, but somehow cool, piano app. Draw a keyboard on the paper and then tap the keys to play a tune.

Record and playback audio

As if the ability to record your handwriting and search it wasn’t enough, you can also record audio at the same time. This is optional and only starts when you tap the “record” control printed on each page of your notebook, so there are no concerns about the pen recording when you don’t want it to. This is a great feature, as it means that if you’re in a meeting or presentation you no longer need to worry about writing detailed notes – you can write quick notes and then replay the audio to hear exactly what was said if you need more detail.

You don’t even need to replay the whole recording – simply tap a word you’ve written, and the pen will replay the audio from that point. And yes, you can plug in headphones to listen to the playback (plus the recordings are transferred to your computer along with your writing). The microphone is built in to the pen, and works great in a normal meeting/training room, but for larger rooms (uni auditoriums etc) you can buy a set of in-ear headphones that include microphones on each earbud which are apparently optimised for a larger room. I haven’t tried those so I have no idea how well they perform, but the built-in mic has been fine for me.

The amount you can record depends on two things – the recording quality and the amount of memory in your pen. The Echo is available in 2GB, 4 GB and 8GB sizes, each offering around two, four or eight hours recording time.

The pen

As you might imagine, a pen with all these features looks a little different to a normal pen. The obvious difference is that there’s an OLED display on the side, which displays information about the pen, current recording/playback time, battery level, date/time and output from any app you might be using. It also displays the pen’s settings menu. On the top of the pen you’ll find the micro-USB port and the headphone socket. The pen is a bit chunkier than most pens, but I haven’t found it uncomfortable or heavy in use. I can’t say for certain how long the battery lasts – I’d say I get a week or so out of a single charge. The OLED display lets you keep an eye on the charge level, and as it recharges via the micro-USB lead when it syncs, you can easily top it up when you upload your notes.

The software

The Livescribe Desktop software is easy to use. When you connect the pen, it transfers any new writing and audio over to your computer. Each notebook appears in the left-hand column of the app, and clicking on a notebook displays thumbnails of the pages on the right-hand side. A search box in the top right corner lets you search your notes – and as I said earlier, the accuracy with which it interprets my scrawl is pretty impressive. In the screen grab here, it’s picked up “Westgate” successfully.

The Desktop app is how you install apps onto the pen (downloadable from the Livescribe website) – again, a pretty straightforward process. Finally, you can upload your notes to various locations – Google Docs, email, Facebook(!!), the Livescribe cloud service, or the rather brilliant Evernote. For a limited period Livescribe are even offering a free 1-year Evernote Premium account when you buy an Echo pen.

The downsides

There are a couple of slight niggles I have with the pen. My main gripe is that the cap is a stunningly bad design. It’s tiny, and a really tight fit – so tight that I find I never fully close the cap, and always leave it slightly open to make it easier to remove. The really silly thing is that with a moment’s more thought, the cap could have been designed to fix the other problem with the pen’s design – there’s no clip, either. A larger cap, with a clip, would be a massive improvement.  The price is also a bit of a drawback – the 2GB tends to go for around £80, the 4GB for £110 and the 8GB for £140 – but with a year’s free Evernote Premium, it’s actually not too bad at the moment. I managed to get my 8GB one new off Ebay for the price of a 4GB, so keep an eye out – deals can be found. Oddly, the need for special paper doesn’t strike me as a negative – it’s only slightly more expensive and effectively does more than normal paper, and is available in a good selection of notebooks and pads (plus you can always print your own).

Final verdict

This is one of those rare gadgets that actually turns out to be better than I’d expected. I thought the handwriting recognition would need me to write clearly – it doesn’t. I thought the battery wouldn’t last long – it does. I thought the paper would be expensive, the pen heavy, and the software awkward to use. On all points, I was wrong. This is a great bit of kit, and really does work.

Rating: Get it!

After upgrading to iOS 5 on my iPhone, my previously perfect Bluetooth connection to my Fiesta suddenly stopped working properly. After about 15-20 minutes the connection would just stop – the phone still thought it was connected, but the stereo was no longer receiving any audio. In addition, before dropping the connection, the message “Bluetooth audio error reading device” would pop up on the radio’s display every time I used the track skip controls.

Fortunately, there’s a solution – Ford have posted an update on to their Ford Connectivity website here. It’s a DIY fix – download the ZIP file, unzip it and you’ll find a folder called “ford_audio_update”. Simply copy the files from that folder onto a USB stick (make sure it’s not put into another folder on the USB stick), and you’re ready to apply the update.

It’s a simple process but seems a bit flakey. The steps are:

1. Turn off the ignition.
2. Turn on the stereo.
3. Plug your USB stick into your stereo’s USB socket.
4. Turn on the ignition to position II (i.e. the position before you start the engine).
5. The update starts.

After applying the update (which takes about 20 minutes) you’ll find that not only does the Bluetooth connection to the iPhone work again, but track names are now displayed on the stereo’s display, and you can now use the Apple USB > Dock connector cable on it’s own (previously you needed a cable which also connected to the headphone socket).

Apple’s latest iPhone, the 4S, starts shipping this week. As usual, there will be nutters lining up in their hundreds outside Apple stores up and down the country, whilst the less desperate early adopters will be keeping an eye on their online order status.

Some people will have placed an order the moment the online store opened for business. If you’re one of them, then this post isn’t for you. This post is aimed at the person who hasn’t decided yet whether the 4S is the phone for them.

First, let’s clear up one misconception that has been doing the rounds. The most common reaction to the iPhone 4S announcement was “What, no iPhone 5?!??”. The fact that Apple only named their new iPhone “4S” and not “5″ really seems to have upset people – yet Apple never said they’d be releasing a model called “5″ this year. It’s like a car enthusiast’s website saying they’re looking forward to the new Ford Capri, and then getting grumpy when Ford launch a new Focus instead. Or, on a more topical note, all the games fans who expect the next Xbox to be called the “Xbox 720″. Spoiler – it won’t be the Xbox 720. The current one was only called the Xbox 360 so it sounded equal to the PlayStation 3, despite only being the second Xbox. Anyway, I digress – Apple are clearly on a two-year product cycle with the iPhone; which makes perfect sense when you consider that most iPhone customers are tied in to two-year contracts (either from the 3G or 3GS). There’s no point releasing a major update every year when your customers can’t buy it.

So, the 4S it is. But is it worth going for, if you’ve already got an earlier iPhone? Well, if you’ve got an original iPhone, a 3G or a 3GS, then yes. Your phone was released over two years ago, and even if you bought it more recently than that, it’s still a museum piece by modern standards. At least if you’ve got a 3GS then you’ll be able to update it to iOS 5, but you won’t get all the features (and older models won’t get it at all). The improvements of the 4S over the 3G and 3GS are mainly:

• Much faster processor (apps load, quit and run faster, less “jerkiness” in general, web browsing is much faster)
• Better camera (higher resolution photos, video recording in high definition – 1080p)
• Retina display (higher resolution screen – text is clearer, images look sharper)
• Front-facing camera (for video calls)
• Siri “personal assistant” (you can ask the phone to do things for you, like set up reminders, send messages, look up information)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14841692

Some brave comments here from Waterstone’s MD, James Daunt. Whilst I suspect they may be able to design an E-reader that is better than the next Kindle (which itself is a step back from the current model), especially if they partner up with Sony, I don’t see how they can provide a “much better buying experience”. First off, I can buy Kindle books virtually anywhere in the world without needing to use a computer. When I do so, Amazon suggest books I might like with uncanny accuracy, and I can even download the first chapter or so of any book for free to see whether I do indeed like it. On top of that,  I can easily send any item I have purchased to any other device – phone, computer, tablet – and they’ll all keep in sync with my progress without me lifting a finger.

So, can Waterstone’s build a better Kindle? Quite probably. Can they offer a “much better buying experience”? I’m not so sure…

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/

Hmmm. If this is true (and it certainly sounds plausible) then the next Kindle is not going to be as good an e-reader as the last three were. On the plus side, it could be an excellent tablet and the only device so far to come close to the success the iPad has had. I’ll be very interested to see what it retails for in the UK, and how long it takes to get here; and if part of the package is Amazon’s video service (which isn’t available in the UK) then how will that translate to the UK market?

The handset in the charging cradle

In my earlier Summer Infant Baby Zoom Digital Video Monitor review, I mentioned a few things that weren’t perfect. Since that model was released, Summer have come out with a new one – but is it an improvement?

On paper, it certainly seems so. You’ve still got the remote control camera, rechargeable handset and night vision – but now they’ve added talkback (your voice comes out of the camera to reassure/freak out your baby), a temperature display, a touchscreen, a battery base for the camera, a charging cradle for the handset and A/V out.

For the most part, it is indeed a decent upgrade from the previous model. The camera motor is much quieter than the old model; our baby doesn’t notice when we move the camera any more. In addition, the infrared LEDs are no longer visible when they’re working, so there’s no “glowing eye in the sky” looking down on  her when she’s trying to get to sleep. I’m not convinced by the addition of a battery pack for the camera – I suppose it might come in handy on holiday perhaps, but we’ve always found a power socket within reach (and the power lead on this camera is even longer than on the previous model).

The addition of a temperature display has proven very reassuring for my wife, and the ability to output the video to our TV’s Picture-In-Picture mode means she can always see what the baby’s up to while we’re watching a movie – heck, sometimes the baby monitor is more entertaining!

The touchscreen is more of a gimmick than a benefit – I guess it means there’s more space on the handset for a larger display, but since it’s the same resolution camera this just means the picture quality looks worse. There are buttons for volume on the top of the handset, so at least you have quick access to adjust the sound (unlike the previous model). The charging base for the handset is an improvement over the previous model too – plugging in a cable was hardly an inconvenience, but this is very easy to use.

The new camera

On the whole, like the earlier one, this is also a very good system – I wish the image quality was better, but that would mean a more expensive system (and probably poorer battery life) right now – in another year or two it should be possible. And you still get all the benefits of a video monitor – seeing what your little one gets up to when you’re not around is worth the price alone! Without these, we’d have had no idea of the weird sleeping positions our baby chooses during the night, nor would we have seen the “conversations” she has with her dummies and teddy bear – and we wouldn’t have seen the way cute way she looks towards her door when she’s woken up and can hear us moving around!

Rating: Get it!

We looked at quite a few baby monitors whilst waiting for our first child to arrive. Obviously there are ones that let you hear your baby – these are by far the most popular, as they’re the cheapest, but there are other options. You can get monitors that tell you if your baby hasn’t moved – they sound pretty good, especially in these days of heightened awareness of SIDS, but on looking into them further we found too many stories of false alarms causing more stress than the monitors alleviated. This somewhat defeats the point, if you ask me! I’m not saying they’re bad, and I know some parents have found them to be (literally) a life-saver, but we decided not to bother.

Instead, we looked into video-equipped monitors. There are quite a few to choose from – but surprisingly, there are only a few that offer what we considered to be “essential” features such as a digital wireless connection and remote control of the camera.

After looking around at all the options, we chose the Summer Infant Baby Zoom Digital Video Monitor for a number of reasons – I thought it’d be helpful to list them, and say whether it met our expectations or not:

The camera

It’s digital: This should mean it offers a stronger signal and is less prone to interference. Whilst the signal is strong, reaches out into the garden of a typical 3-bed semi, and doesn’t suffer from interference from other devices, it does have a side-effect of causing it’s own interference. Since the camera can be remotely controlled by the handset, there’s a two-way connection when the screen is turned on, and this interfered with our WiFi network at home (both operate on 2.4GHz). After some experimentation it seems the amount of interference may depend on the router used for the WiFi; Sky’s NetGear and Sagem routers were particularly affected, but Apple’s Airport Extreme was not. If you’re fortunate enough to have newer equipment which operates on 5GHz then you’ll also be fine. The interference is most pronounced when the handset is displaying the video feed from the camera; however even just receiving the audio would cause some disruption to WiFi (but not as much). The level of disruption varied from slowing the WiFi network speed (OK if you’re just surfing webpages as a 4Mb ADSL connection would still be faster, but ruins any streaming of video to an Apple TV or PS3) to completely disrupting it. You might feel that some WiFi disruption (which only happens when you’re using the handset, remember) is an acceptable price to pay for the peace of mind such a product delivers.

It has remote pan/tilt control of the camera: We felt this was important as we could foresee various times when a fixed field of view could be inconvenient. The remote control works wonderfully; there’s a joystick on the handset which you just push to move the camera. The camera rotates on the base, and tilts on the “legs”. It can point down at a reasonable angle, and can point straight up; you’ll probably find it best to wall-mount the camera to get the widest range of movement. The only drawback is that the camera’s motor is quite noisy; if the baby hasn’t quite gone to sleep and you move the camera, it can startle them. However, this has come in really handy, as we use sleeping bags rather than traditional blankets for our baby and she has a tendency to roam all around her cot during the night – being able to move the camera to see where she’s gone is very reassuring. And entertaining (more on this later). Speaking of the handset, it has both a built-in stand and a belt clip, so it’s very easy to keep it to hand whatever you’re doing. A button on top of the unit turns the video on or off; audio is always on, although you can turn it down if needed (and there’s a set of LEDs under the display that always flash when there’s noise from the camera).

The monitor

It has night vision: Pretty much a necessity for a baby video monitor! Not all have it, though. On here it works perfectly; it automatically activates when the light level drops too low and gives you a black & white picture. There is, as you might expect by now, a slight downside – the infrared LEDs that enable this are visible on the camera, so when the baby is lying in bed, s/he’s got a big red glowing eye staring right at them. I suspect Frodo’s parents may have used one of these too.

There are a few options we would have liked as well, but at the time of purchase no systems offered all of them – you can’t speak to the baby over the handset, there’s no A/V out (many TVs offer a Picture-In-Picture mode these days), and it doesn’t have a temperature display.

However, those – and the points above – are all minor compared to the benefit of this device overall. I can’t begin to describe the joy this has brought us over the past year or so – watching what our daughter gets up to she’s on her own has been wonderful! Of course, there’s the peace of mind of being able to see her breathing even when you can’t hear her, but seeing her “chatting” to her cuddle toys, playing with her toes, moving to the other end of her cot before returning to where we left her in the morning – none of this would have been possible without a video monitor. The picture quality is surprisingly good – not as good as watching a video on your smartphone, but better than I was expecting (and perfectly good enough to see a baby’s chest moving) – as is the audio. A fully-charged handset will last all night on just audio; using the video will shorten the battery life, but we plug it in overnight and only use it on battery during the day. The flashing lights mean you can turn the audio off completely and still be alerted (also handy if you’ve got guests).

Is this unit perfect? No, but it’s perfectly acceptable, and I definitely recommend it – although if you don’t mind spending a bit more, there’s a newer version which addresses some of the issues with this one.

Rating: Get it!

When you’ve got something as small as the iPad, it really doesn’t make any sense to lug it around in a rucksack designed for 17″ laptops – but until recently, that’s exactly what I’d been doing. However, thanks to those nice chaps over at GearZap.com, I’ve been trying out one of the growing range of smaller bags that are now available. This particular MacBook bag – the STM Scout Extra Small Laptop Bag – is designed to be a MacBook Air case, as it’s for laptops the size of the smallest MacBook Air (11 inch). Of course, this means it’s also ideal for an iPad.

Starting on the outside, the bag has a number of neat touches. The strap adjustment buckle is really easy to use, and the strap can be quickly lengthened or shortened as required (unlike most shoulder straps). There’s a chunky shoulder pad that makes sure the strap isn’t uncomfortable – it looks quite big in relation to the bag itself, but I’ve found it ideal on the London Underground. Quite often I’ll sling the bag from my side to my back or my front, and the large shoulder pad means there’s always enough padding to stop the strap being annoying. I suspect it’s more by chance than design that it works like that, but hey – I like it. The strap is attached to the bag with buckles that rotate 360 degrees – so the strap will always be quick to untwist. There’s also a small loop handle so you can pick the bag up by that instead of the strap, but it’s not really designed to be carried around all day by the loop – there’s no padding on it.

The bag itself is canvas on the outside, and after the recent summer weather we’ve had, I can confirm that it is indeed waterproof (well, rainproof). The material is supposed to be tough and hardwearing, and I can’t see any reason to doubt that. The seams look to be pretty strong and well done, I couldn’t find any fraying or holes, and there aren’t any fancy design flourishes to get caught and pulled off. I suspect this bag will be around long after I’ve upgraded to the iPad 5!

Before we look inside the bag, there are a couple more things to note on the outside. There’s a slip pocket on the back of the bag which runs the full width, and is ideal for a magazine or a Kindle – you can quickly whip it out when needed, and just as quickly stash it away when you get to your stop. There’s no closure on this pocket, but since it’ll be against your body most of the time I don’t think it matters (and I like being able to slip things in and out quickly).

The contents of the bag are protected by a large flap held down by a standard buckle clip. Since the clip is under the flap it’s not an easy target for pickpockets, and it’s very easy to pull the strap nice and tight to keep all your gear inside. Opening up the flap reveals the two smaller pockets on the front of the bag; they’re to perfect size for a power supply, mouse or sunglasses – or, in my case, a bag of M&S Caramels. One of the pockets has a few little loops for pens and so on – very handy, I keep my iPad stylus in there. Behind those pockets we have a zipped pocket which is quite thin – ideal for passports, iPods and the like, but nothing bulky – and behind that is a full-width pocket and the main laptop pocket. The full-width pocket is also large enough for a few magazines, and it’s also where the laptop-protecting flap tucks in. The actual laptop pockets is a well-padded section with a felt lining, and features a flap that folds over your laptop and is secured by Velcro (so your expensive device is double-protected from any rainstorms that suddenly pour down). If you’re packing an iPad or other tablet, you’ll find there’s plenty of space, so you’ll easily be able to fit your sleeve or smart cover or whatever in there as well. A MacBook Air in a Speck shell will also be fine.

Ok, so that’s the design bit out of the way – what’s it like to use? As much as I wanted a smaller bag, I was slightly worried that I wouldn’t be able to fit everything in. I needn’t have been – despite being small, this bag has quite a bit of space (I’m resisting saying “it’s a veritable TARDIS” but it ain’t easy). As well as the iPad, I can fit in an umbrella, Kindle, magazine, specs case, pens, sweets and a few other bits. There’s also enough space for any stuff I need to bring home from work – although to be fair, anything bigger than a large Dan Brown novel probably isn’t going to fit along with the other stuff. But anyway, for day-to-day use, it’s spot on. It’s barely noticeable with the strap adjusted to hold it comfortably against my back whilst walking along, and when I’m crammed into a Bakerloo line carriage it’s not in the way.

Verdict

At £44.95 this isn’t the cheapest bag you could buy, but I reckon it’s one of the best quality ones around, and worth the price. If you’re looking for something a bit bigger, check out the other STM bags.

Rating: Get it!
(What does this mean?)

No.

You’d be forgiven for thinking it does – recent articles like this one from The Register or this BBC report give the impression that the iPhone is compiling a database of your exact movements down to the second. Fortunately  the truth, as is often the case, is nowhere near as interesting – but truth doesn’t sell as many papers. The Register in particular should be ashamed of the line “can be used to reconstruct a detailed snapshot of the user’s comings and goings, down to the second” as this is totally untrue (the full quote – in context – tries to claim that the people who originally uncovered the file are saying that, but they’re not; it’s The Register’s spin).

No fire without smoke

By simply following the instructions in the original blog post that revealed the logging, you can extract the information and see for yourself what’s going on. Ignore the “iPhone tracker” application – it doesn’t show you the actual data from your phone, it’s not precise enough. Instead, follow the instructions at the link I’ve posted.

The data you end up with looks like this (this is a .csv export of three rows):

“234″ “10″ “43382″ “1019432″ “301935119.905192″ “51.51168227″ “-0.4752497″ “1685″ “0″ “-1″ “-1″ “-1″ “70″
“234″ “10″ “43382″ “1004432″ “301935119.905192″ “51.505149″ “-0.47149378″ “500″ “0″ “-1″ “-1″ “-1″ “70″
“234″ “10″ “43182″ “4412484″ “301935119.905192″ “51.48238849″ “-0.51352369″ “500″ “0″ “-1″ “-1″ “-1″ “70″

There are three relevant bits of info in there:

“301935119.905192″ – this is the time, in seconds since Jan 1 2001, of the recording
“51.48238849″ – this is the latitude
“-0.51352369″ – this is the longitude

The rest relate to cell tower information and location stuff, including an estimate of accuracy (which is generally “not very”).

So why isn’t this data very scary?

First, contrary to what some people are saying, it’s not accurate to the second. In fact, the list often includes tens of positions – 20, 30, 80+, it varies – all with exactly the same timestamp. Since it’s clearly impossible for an iPhone to be in multiple places at precisely the same second, it seems more likely that the iPhone simply states when it starts recording positions in a new general location. How big this “general location” is (in other words, what triggers a new timestamp) isn’t clear – I’ve seen locations miles apart with the same timestamp in my records. Since the timestamps are identical, there’s no way of telling the time that has passed between entries – you could have been there for minutes or perhaps days, if the next timestamp isn’t for another week – it’s impossible to tell.

Second, the locations are not at all precise. I converted my data into a .kml file and imported it to Google Earth. There are frequent entries which make no sense; my phone thinks it has been spotted 80 miles off the coast of Africa, for example. There are many other impossible entries for places I’ve never been near, but that’s my favourite (and the most obvious). The important thing to note here is that this isn’t GPS data being logged – it’s nowhere near that precise. The points I’ve given above, for example, are not places I’ve been to – the closest I’ve been to them is the M25, and that’s over one and a half kilometres away!

Third, each location appears to be tied to a cell tower – so the iPhone is basically recording roughly where and when it was when it “saw” that cell. But since towers don’t (normally) move, each tower is only logged once. So whilst the data might show that you were somewhere within a few miles of a location sometime after the timestamp says (but before the next timestamp time), there’s no way of knowing how many times you were there. This also means that the phone isn’t recording a constant trail of your movements – no-one would be able to use the data to retrace your steps around London, for example. What you’ll often see is a number of points, all with the same timestamp, around a town or city – but it could mean that you’ve spent time there, or you’ve simply driven past there – my phone reckons I’ve spent time in quite a few places I’ve only driven past, never stopped at.

Now, those three points are key to understanding why things aren’t as bad as they seem. It’s probably easier if I put it in terms of the common concerns people seem to have, so I’ll do an FAQ:

Does the data show where I live or where I work?
No. Since a cell is only logged once, there is no way of seeing where you spend most of your time. Also, the chances of your phone first encountering any particular cell when you were in your home are remote – you’d have been in range of the cell long before you got home, and that’s when your phone would have made a log entry. My data had multiple points within a few miles of where I live, yet places I’d only been to once had far more entries. You couldn’t tell from my data where I lived.

I drop my child at school every morning – can someone find out which school it is?
Again, no –  the data is so vague that there’s no way of knowing something as precise as that.

Does the data prove where I was at any point?
Not really. It can show that you were within a few miles of a location, but the timing is very vague – in some cases it can be weeks between entries being logged, and each location is only logged once, so it’s not at all accurate.  And it often logs locations that the phone has never been near, so it’s not reliable by any means. It might show that you were near Leeds at one point, but it certainly wouldn’t show exactly how long you were there for, or which address you were at.

Does the data prove I spent three hours somewhere?
No. The most you can tell is that recording in location A started at, say, 10am on the 3rd, and then started at location B at maybe 7pm on the 7th. So there’s no way of knowing if you were near location A for one minute, one hour or one day.

What can I do to prevent this happening?
Short of going back to a normal phone (Android phones also track position data, and I would be surprised if Windows ones didn’t too), there are a couple of things you can do. Apple say that turning off “location services” prevents the data being monitored, but since this isn’t GPS data I’m not certain that would work. You should certainly encrypt your backups – regardless of this location data logging, it’s just good sense anyway. There’s more info on iPhone backups here. This will prevent anyone pulling the file off your computer or off your iPhone.

Hopefully that makes things a bit clearer. By all means make use of the comments section. And please don’t think I’m saying there’s nothing wrong here – as vague as the data is, no data at all would be even better – I’m just saying that most of the news reports about this are scaremongering, based on incorrect assumptions, and that’s what I’m hoping to correct. Data IS being logged, it seems like it IS being reported back to Apple, and potentially someone else could, given enough time and knowledge, get access to it. It’s just that the data being logged isn’t all that useful to anyone, and pretty much every “proper” report has got things wrong.

This post was inspired by a recent conversation we had at work. Not “Which console is best?” – we’re not that sad – but “Which console should I buy for my children?”. It’s an excellent question, and the answer isn’t as difficult as it might seem at first glance.

Which console should you buy your children? Easy – the one their friends have got.

Sure, the geeks amongst us will always want to debate the relative merits of this GPU or that storage medium. And (if we’re dads) we’ve each got our own idea of which console is best, but if you buy your kids a PS3 but all their mates are talking about the latest Xbox game they’re playing, then your children probably aren’t going to be as thankful as you’d like.

I know parents are usually hardwired against letting their kids do “what all the others are doing”, but this is one occasion where I think it’s for the best. Consoles these days are much more social; look at Playstation Home, for example – if your kids are on an Xbox they won’t be able to join in. Even if you’ve got the same game on PS3 and Xbox, you can’t play against people on the other platform, so there’s no concept of it being “just as good” like there was with Transformers and GoBots, for example. There’ll be no ability to share games, and if Little Johnny wants to go round to Little Timmy’s to play Mario Kart, it’ll be so much easier if he can just take his Wiimote round (and it means neither kid’s parents need to worry about buying spare controllers for playdates).

By the way, if you’re wondering which console I’d suggest for kids regardless of what their friends have got, I’d have to say the Wii for younger kids (and family games), and the PS3 for teenagers (due to it having a Blu-Ray drive). My personal preference is the Xbox 360 – I think the Xbox is better for games, but the PS3 is better for everything else.