This is the second of a two-part article about YoPhoto’s photo book printing service. Previously I wrote about the authoring software and the ordering experience. Here I will go into more detail about the finished product.

I placed the order on Saturday 8th March. The dispatch notice arrived at lunchtime on Tuesday 11th and the book arrived on the next day. After waiting two weeks for some of the previous photo books it is refreshing to have this one in my hands less than three working days after placing the order.

• Dear ISP, I am not a target market – “Some things should just not be for sale, no matter what assurances are on offer or who they come from. Regardless of how the data is acquired and processed, and despite the powerful ISP friends Phorm has made since the PeopleOnPage days, spyware is spywa
• Happy now, bitches? – A fair and balanced analysis of yesterdays announcement of the iPhone software developer kit and “enterprise” functionality.
• Polls say 88% want EU referendum – About a year ago the Daily Mail (I think) published a poll saying pretty much the same thing. But they also asked “Do you understand the Libson treaty?” and about the same percentage of people said “No.” (Can anyone find a link?) Is democracy best served

One thing I noted when I first reviewed photo books back in 2006 was that most vendors were based overseas, resulting in quick printing times but a protracted and expensive delivery process. This was true of Apple (both times), MyPublisher and Printing-1. The one company that I tried that were UK based, PhotoBox, was let down by its browser-based interface that was less flexible that the native applications of the other vendors.

I was therefore quite intrigued when YoPhoto asked me to take a look at their brand of photo book as they seemed to offer the best of both worlds.

One of the big technology debates in the US goes by the thrilling title of “Net Neutrality.” In the UK we seem to have skipped this part of the debate and moved on to the next, all without many consumers even knowing that anything has changed. As we’ll see, this does not work out well for many end-users and exposes hypocrisy and dishonesty on the part of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

• Why the Kibibyte is freaking me out – From the “well you learn something new every day” category. Apparently a kilobytes probably isn’t what you think it is…
• Earthquake hits much of England – We actually felt this here in London, although in my half-asleep, half-awake doze I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was real or a dream!
• Danish wind turbine eats itself – To all those that said that wind power was safe…

So Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo. I’ll leave the detailed analysis to people better qualified than myself but I thought that I could add a little perspective simply by looking back and remembering something that happened less than ten years ago.

As you can no doubt guess from the title, the event that springs to my mind is the merger of HP and Compaq. The main problem with HPaq at the time was that merging HP’s loss-making PC business with Compaq’s loss-making PC business just wasn’t a good idea. Fiorina pushed the whole MBA line of thinking: being the biggest player will allow greater economies of scale, lower prices and more profit. Unfortunately, two big losses merged tends to make a big loss also, albeit perhaps smaller than the old combined total¹.

When was the last time that you came across a printer with only a parallel port? Have you ever used one of those two serial ports on the back of your PC?

Personally I don’t think I’ve used a parallel port for over five years and I don’t recall ever having used a serial port despite using computers for over twenty years. So why do many PC manufacturers still include them on new PCs? Would they not be better using the same space for more USB ports, a Firewire socket or even to save a few pounds by simply not including it?

I just read Daniel Eran Dilger’s “Winter 2007 Buyer?s Guide: Microsoft Zune 8 vs iPod Nano” but I felt that it was missing something very important for readers outside the United States.

So to fill that void here is my attempt. I have not actually used any of the new Zunes or iPods but I don’t necessarily feel that this has any material impact on the final result¹.

I just realised that the story of my Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype lacks any form of closure. But before we get there, let’s start with a quick recap in case you didn’t read the original review or its follow-up.

Last year, after realising that we had spent over ?30 in a quarter on line rental but less than 50p on phone calls, we decided to get rid of our land-line and rely only on broadband and VoIP technology. After some thought we went for Skype and a physical handset that connected to our wireless access point. This seemed like a great solution as leaving a computer switched on 24/7 just so we could recieve calls on our SkypeIn number didn’t appeal.

Do you remember where you were when you heard that Diana had died? I do. I woke up on the Sunday and switched on the radio over breakfast. Nothing but slow, miserable songs on Radio 1. And Capital. And Heart. Indeed, every channel I tried — and there are a lot in London. The occasional announcement that “due to recent events it wasn’t appropriate to continue with the usual programming” did little to enhance my understanding of what had happened.