LogMeIn at 50% off right now

LogMeIn is one of those apps that are likely to be on your list of "must haves" but the rather expensive retail price (around £20) may well have put you off in the past.

It's Apple's top-grossing third-party app and I use it most days to access and control my machines when I'm out and about.


Right now for "a limited time", you can pick up LogMeIn on iOS or Android for half the cost of the standard price. Be quick as I'm not sure when they will stop this -- my guess is they will revert to the old price sometime next week.

The Android version can be picked up for £9.69 and the iOS version now costs £10.49.

To access your machines on your mobile device, all you need to do is install the client on the relevant desktops.

All I wanted was a diet coke

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I've arrived into Barcelona for EIBTM, Europe's largest and most influential business travel meetings event (I'm speaking at the CEO summit on the topic of mobile).

I didn't bother with a diet coke at WH Smith in London Heathrow as I presumed British Airways would be able to offer that on-board. However since the flight departed at 730am this morning, someone at BA presumably thought that serving tea, coffee, orange juice and water was sufficient. It wasn't.

So off the flight I came and spied many convenient "snack time" vending machines. Wonderful. Stocked to the brim. I could use a diet coke. I gave a moment's consideration and then glanced at the payment section of each machine. Yeah. Shit.

You know the score. Coins only. And flipping Euro-bollocks coins too. Not even a credit card swipey thing.

I look forward to the time when I can wave my MasterCard-Approved NFC-compatible BlackBerry Bold 9900 at the "snack time" vending machine and be able to buy a diet coke.

I just need to wait a billion years for the mobile industry, the banking industry and the vending machine dullards to sort it out.

Shoulda done WH Smiths.

Stop everything and get your free 50GB Box.net account

I had cause to download the Box.net iPhone client today just to check it out. I'd already registered a business trial account and then I saw the message below. As per the message there, everyone gets a free 50GB Box.net account of you register via the app. I tried this out and I can confirm it works. This offer is apparently valid until 2nd of December.

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Somebody get this man a tablet

I've done this myself quite a few times. There's nothing worse than seeing other people having to use their laptops like this. It really doesn't look good. It's bad at the station but it's even worse at the office. How many readers have at least one person in their office who wander around with their laptop open like this?

Fair enough, by the way, if it means you can avoid a 15-minute 'sleep then wake' process thanks to all the rubbish the IT team has installed on the machine for 'security purposes'.

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Bet this chap rues the day he bought a smartphone

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Hello from the BA Lounge at Terminal 5.


This chap is using one of those new breed smartphones that we are all
buying. It looks like a top of the range HTC Android -- from the back,
anyway. The brand doesn't matter. All smartphones suffer from this arse.


Our collective problem is that we still seem to expect our phones will
perform across the business day.


When it comes to unusual and unpredictable situations, the problem gets
worse and worse -- because at least when we're going from home-to-office
and vice versa, we've made provision for the shit battery performance
(usually with chargers at each location).


This chap is actually sitting on a table in the BA lounge because it's the
nearest position he can find where he can charge his phone.


You just know, too, that he's only going to get about 10% additional
charge once he un-plugs and gets on his flight. Because he's actually
using the phone whilst it's charging. In fact he's been on and off an
array of conference calls -- so the phone is probably white hot by now.


It's such an arse, battery performance.


I'd be hugely frustrated if it was me. But then again perhaps he -- and
the rest of the nation -- just accepts this... I'm seriously considering
swapping to a mobile telephone (and carrying a smartphone or iPad) to free
myself from the battery trauma.


This chap is lucky he remembered his charger. That's second in importance
to forgetting your passport nowadays isn't it?

Cannot Get Mail: The most annoying prompt on the iPhone?

Is this the most annoying prompt on the iPhone? I think so. For all it's brilliant user experience innovations, you'd have thought they could have fixed this by version 5 of the operating system. For those unaware, if you are out of signal range and try checking your email, this prompt helpfully appears. If you made the mistake of adding three or four accounts to your email settings then you can experience the added joy of this prompt repeating itself four times. Every time you're out of signal and looking at email.


Almost as annoying as the 'what connection bearer would you like to use' Symbian message along with the 'are you sure?' app install prompts.

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How long until train times are automatically surfaced to your UI?

Being able to query train times via phone without having to speak to an operator is one of the most exciting functions I use regularly. It might not be flash but it delivers significant utility. However I'm still irritated that I have to locate the app, run it, wait for it to think, then select a station and then select a train and so on. Given that my device knows I'm heading into London (from my calendar, and from inferring via past actions) it would be nice if correct train times were displayed in the background or faintly, waiting for me to bring them into focus. How long before we have a user interface and ecosystem capable of supporting this? What I'm referring to definitely isn't 'app centric'. It's 'service centric' -- so iOS won't handle this too well until a significant iteration. I could imagine BBX and Android being able to handle it alongside Windows Phone 8 or 9?

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