December has passed us by and a new year is with, so as ever, it’s time to look back over my posts from PCWorld for the last month. Below is just a selection of some of my posts made, including details on Dell’s rumoured upcoming Android-based tablet, and a feature detailing five alternative operating systems to Google’s upcoming Chrome OS. You can find more of my posts from PCWorld on the GeekTech blog or directly via this link.

• PQI Bring The Speed With 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drives
• Panasonic’s New Battery Designed with Safety in Mind
• Need a 24GB Memory Kit? That’ll Be $1300, Please
• Toshiba Announces 64GB Flash Memory; Perfect For Next iPhone
• Five Web-Centric Alternatives to Google Chrome OS
• Dell To Reveal Android Tablet At CES?

If you want to read more from GeekTech then be sure to follow the blog’s Twitter account, and of course don’t forget to follow me up on Twitter too! Be sure to check back next month for more posts.

I just wanted to make a short blog post wishing all my readers and subscribers a Happy New Year. May 2010 bring you everything you hope for.

What are your plans for the year, have you made a list of goals for the the next 12 months? If so be sure to link to your blog post in the comments, or just tell us your plans directly here.

Yes, it is the second of January, I’m a day late I know, but it doesn’t matter, my kind warm message still rings true. Have a great 2010!

(Photo by Rob Dray)

I finally joined the masses and grabbed myself a 32GB iPhone about two weeks ago. Ever since then I have been hunting around for the best apps and downloading a fair few, especially game and utility apps.  I will probably do a round-up post detailing the apps I have soon, offering my recommendations.

However, this blog post is to ask the question - Is there a way of running a diagnostic on my iPhone while at home? The reason I’m asking such a question is due to a recent problem I had with my new phone:

I recently took the phone out of my pocket only to find the device was turned off. This struck me as odd, as not only does the iPhone require a button hold in addition to an on-screen action in order to turn it off, but the battery was also showing a 60% charge around two hours prior to this happening.

After several failed attempts to power up the device I was somewhat concerned. Luckily, I was in Liverpool for the weekend visiting family, and an Apple store was close by. I popped in to seek advice and was told by the stores staff that the new phone “looked fine” and that I should try plugging the device into one of the many charging stations in-store. Having done this, and failing an Apple employee repeated the process in another charger, this time to some success. The device powered up, however it took over 3 minutes to reach the home screen, it had worryingly also lost around 30% of it’s charge.

The helpful Apple staff at the Liverpool One branch suggested that a rogue-app may have been the cause of the problem, adding that if this (currently isolated) issue was to happen again that I come in to have the iPhone checked.

So do any of you guys know of a way to run a diagnostic check on the iPhone, at home? I would like to see if any of my apps are sapping away my battery or causing my phone to crash. Any comments or emails on the issue would be highly appreciated.

Another month has passed by so it’s time to update you all with the blog posts I made over at PC World this month:

• Dell Offers Custom Chromium OS Download For Mini 10V
• Buffalo Brings SuperSpeed To Blu-ray With New External Drive
• Ostendo’s 43-Inch Curved Monitor: The Ultimate Gaming Display?
• Intel Core i9: Six Cores Of Speed
• 1TB SSD Drive Available Now; A Steal At Just Over $3,000
• Google Chrome OS Source Code Now Available For Download
• Google Chrome OS: Rounding Up The Rumors
• Rumor: Four Arrandale CPUs Coming In January
• Motorola Droid Laid Bare, Reveals All In Teardown
• OpenOffice Introduces Multi-Button Confusion With New Mouse
• Green Computing: The Good And The Bad
• Intel Promises SSD Firmware Fix
• Windows 7: First Service Pack Details Emerge

As you may know I’m an avid fan of using Gmail’s web interface, despite peoples best efforts to get me using Mac OS-X’s Mail application. One thing I have been envious of for a while is Mail.app’s ability to insert a signature of choice at a click of a button.

Thankfully, there is relatively simple solution to using multiple signatures in Gmail! You may be asking why I would need a magnitude of different email signatures? Simply put I use my Gmail account to send and receive email from over ten email addresses. So for example if I’m replying to a work email, I would like to use a more work orientated signature, including with it my work email address, where as when replying to personal emails I will want to use another signature, possibly with a link to my own site.

How to get it done

• Head over to the Settings page, in your Gmail account. Then open the ‘Labs’ tab,
• Enable the Canned Responses feature. (CTRL or CMD + F to find it quick!)
• Once activated, go and compose a new message.
• In a blank email write out your signature.
• Use the Canned Response menu to save your signature. Giving it a name such as ‘Personal Signature’ is advised.
• Repeat this process for each signature you desire.
• When writing emails, simply select the signature you would like to use from the drop down Canned Responses list.
• Done!

This is something that had been bugging me for a while, so I was pleased to find such a simple solution.

I have neglected my blog a fair bit this past month, so I figured I ought to update it with what I’m up to at least. So below is a list of my recent posts over at the Geek Tech blog on PCWorld:

• American USB 3.0 HDD Debut To Come Courtesy Of Dane-Elec
• Firefox 3.6 Beta ‘Test Build’ Available For Download
• First Look At Google’s Chrome Browser Within The Chrome OS
• Future Versions Of Firefox To Detect Screen Orientation
• Microsoft Planning 128-Bit Version Of Windows 8?
• Buffalo Shipping External USB 3.0 Hard Drives This Month
• Active Media Launching USB 3.0 External SSDs This Year
• Dell Offers Free Windows 7 Upgrade To Vista PC Buyers
• Eleven Years Of Google: A Look Back

The above is just a selection of what I have written for the Geek Tech blog this month, you can find more of my articles on the site. I intend to update my blog, in a similar fashion to Daniel Ionescu, with a summary of my posts on a regular basis, so be sure to keep checking back.

Many of you may have seen that Microsoft have been attempting to encourage people to host there own Windows 7 launch party, which alone is a pretty crazy idea, but this video really takes it to the next level. I mean, really Microsoft?

I have been using the release candidate of Windows 7 on my main desktop PC and it’s a real improvement over Vista, but unfortunately it’s not enough to warrant a full blown painfully geeky forced party.

Yesterday a friend pointed me in the direction of Vibealicious’ Notify, a really neat clean alternative to Googles own Notifier. The application is for Mac users only, and all you need is a Gmail account.

Notify works in a very similar way to the official Google Notifier, but has some added touches that sets it apart for me. It has Growl notifications built in, along with support for multiple accounts via a tab interface, and an overall better user experience for quickly getting a glance at whats in your inbox. You can set the the app to check for new mail at a number of set intervals, and I have mine set to check every minute.

Of course a lot of Mac users will opt to use the Apple app ‘Mail’, but for those that just can’t break the habit of using Gmail on the web then Notify is a slick solution to knowing when you’ve got mail. If you give it a go, be sure to let me know your thoughts.

Social Media is no fad, and this video proves that with a variety of interesting facts and figures, check it out: