Cragnet

The App police at it again!

2011-12-24T01:55:00.001Z

I have already in a previous post talked extensively about my contempt for apple a lately pulling apps not long after approving them. Again this week we find quickpick and imame being added to this list .

I wasn't so worried about imame as its just an emulator for arcade machines and whilst it can open Roms it may be useful in the future. But quickpick a bit similar to launch centre again was pulled as it didn't meet the guidelines for the notification centre, then launch centre itself was not approved for same reason and was rewritten purely as a standalone application. TUAW explains more here. I was luckily to get quickpick and have set up some shortcuts to enable me to get to settings quicker until apple stops this when the next version of IOS is released.

What is actually getting up my back is these applications are being approved, I buy them as they are useful, the media catches on then before we know it apple retracts them. I am allowed to continue using the application but need to ensure it has been backed up to iTunes because if I ever delete it without doing this I will lose it forever. When the app is pulled you are no longer able to download it, it is removed form iCloud for backing up and restore. If there are bugs and unless the developer changes the app, resubmit and gets it approved. You are totally screwed as it can never be fixed and you will need to find an alternative.

I have bought other applications such as which allowed me to clear my ram on the iPad. This is no longer available to purchase and I can't get an updates, all because apple thought the ram clear process was unnecessary. Although I have found and bought an alternative how long will this one last for?

I accept that they have rules and these should be adhered to, but all I ask is don't approve the applications in the first place as I buy them, you pull them then I am totally fucked because the whole support structure with the application just disappears.

I have paid a lot of money for some applications such as Navigon where i spent over £80 on the additions or offers and for full western europe maps. This scenario may never happen but what if apple either brings their own navigation and decide to cancel all other sat nav apps I the app store? Or a feature that is used in an upgrade they refuse to accept. Effectively each time I purchase something I am taking a chance that it will still exist tomorrow.

Screw you Apple I want a Cuban Cigar!

2011-11-30T20:06:00.001Z

This is one of those weeks being an Apple user that I want just want to bin the devices due to Apples archaic over bearing out right dumb policing policy. There's been two instances this week that they've hit the press for.

Itether the tethering application that they first approved then pulled hours later either due to pressure from the mobile networks or realised they had approved it in error. The second instance removing the shortcut trick to most system settings.

Itether didn't really bother me as I use the tethering built into iOS on Three's AYCE One plan. But it really grates on me that people bought the application then it's removed so no further updates especially after approving it.

The second item of the shortcuts is one of the best tricks I have seen in along while that doesn't need a jailbreak and is really useful as it removes the need to navigate the cumbersome settings screen. I can understand from a security
perpsective they might wish to remove the URLS that are used incase it can be exploited and begin damaging a device. But overall it just enhanced the usuability of the iPhone.

I've been very tolerant since owning now 3 IPhone devices putting up with the outdated interface. I am more than happy having a launcher just to run applications and the notification revision in iOS 5 was a welcome refreshment.

But the latest decision to reverse the shortcuts and the removal of the tethering application are just two recent examples Apple are out of touch with reality.

When Lion was announced the Mac App Store was launched, again I feared the same policing and the Mac changing into another dumb interface. Just look at mission control a complete waste of resource and code. I have found applications in the Mac App Store dumbed down when compared to the same piece of software available on a publisher's website. One example being an application removal tool that is able to move items to the trash but not delete due to App store restrictions. But the equivalent web version out of the app store has features that are missing.

Apple has announced sandboxed applications for next year in the application store. Will this mean any application I buy that no longer fits the rules will be banned and I will need to buy it again outside of the walled garden to get updates?

I remember the quotes of Edgar Friendly in Demolition Man about the Cuban cigar.

Here it is in full:

Edgar Friendly: You see, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think; I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I WANT high cholesterol. I wanna eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-o all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener".

You know:

I want choice on all my devices.

I am happy to use them as you intended but please don't tell me what I can and cannot do.

Please don't take away functionality to make it an expensive brick and worst of all stop being a hypocrite with apps like Itether.

Listen to your customers as we can think, can make decisions and don't need to be told what's bad for us!

Lovefilm for iPad

2011-09-28T13:40:00.001+01:00

I have been a subscriber to the Lovefilm DVD rental service since the beginning of the year and have thoroughly enjoyed getting the films and watching them. Another addition to the service has been their streaming service of which I originally ran via a mac mini under my TV but am now watching it via a Sony blueray player. The choice is limited and it's rare you will see a blockbuster that is recent but with over 5000 films to choose from there is always something to watch.

Today, their iPad application has been released that leverages the streaming service but direct to your tablet. Being as the iPad doesn't use flash this is a welcome addition and means I can now drop my cloud browse application service of which I was using with an iPad app to attempt to stream films but didn't works as the servers are based in the USA.

The restrictions to the service is only 2 devices so my Sony DVD player and my iPad are the only 2 devices I can have registered. It would have been nice to register more devices such as my partner's iPad and an iPhone should they ever bring out an iPhone application.

The other caveat is it only works over wifi but using the 3 ayce 30 day sim only plan for my iPhone and tethering to the iPhone I can stream the films and around this restriction.

It's early days but this is a welcome addition to IPad where I have been suspecting if they would release an application for a long time after an update to their main application and calling Lovefilm by Post.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

My new electric car AKA iPad 2

2011-04-18T19:45:00.001+01:00

My ipad2 finally arrived one week earlier than expected but really didn't have the opportunity to put it through its paces until the weekend that has just gone. A lot of people have said the iPad 2 is just an incremental upgrade with cameras, a5 processor and extra ram and would just miss this iteration for iPad3.

The only issue I had with the original iPad was it was limited when using it's multitasking when wanting to switch between several applications. With only 256mb of ram there would be occasions when an application would just close and you would need to reopen it. Applications such as flipboard were notorious for this where i am assuming it was due to the fact it was using a lot of graphics.

I have found the ipad2 to work a lot more smoothly and even switching between applications such as zite or flipboard whilst web browsing have been more responsive and not prone to closing as on the first generation. Even when connecting to Citrix server using the Citrix receiver was a lot smoother than on the iPad 1.

For me the upgrade was both necessary and worthwhile due to the above where I can now begin the prospect of leaving my mac book pro at home in favour for the iPad 2.

The only thing that ruins the whole experience for the iPad is the tethering to iTunes to activate, backup and sync. Until this chain is severed the iPad remains me of an electric car. You can't really travel on a long journey without having to plug back in to fuel up. Android has already severed this link and has been like this ever since android 1.5 if not earlier. Whilst there is a lot of people saying that iOS needs to upgrade it's UI and notification system, I honestly believe as a priority I needs to severe the cable tethering first. Even if apple were to allow wireless syncing next I don't believe that this is enough. If I go to a shop and purchase an android tablet I can take it out of the box, power it on, connect to the internet and begin setting it up. With iOS devices this doesn't happen until activation using iTunes and a cable.

In summary I am happy overall with my choice of upgrade but am still bound by not being able travel far with it and the need to be near a PC or MAC in a post Pc era so I can re-activate should I run into problems that require this.

What a refreshing change

2011-04-02T13:35:00.001+01:00

I have recently moved mobile phone network operator from o2 to 3 due to a number of reasons such as lack if 3G signal were I work, value for money and a couple of incidents over the past two years related to the unlimited data debacle and more recently the filtering of web sites even non adult sites.

I have been on a contract for over 10 years on and off swapping after each term has run out to a newer contract. However I don't really make calls now or receive many and having a smart phone has meant my usage has changed to other mechanisms.

It was about time I moved with the times and checked out other deals. Payg was never an option for me as I wanted good data tariffs, a decent number of minutes and texts. I was originally on an iPhone sim only 30 say rolling contract for £20 per month. This only came with 500mb of data but I was able to change my habits to only use this when away from wifi.

In early march 3 release a payg all you can eat data tariff with 300 minutes, 3000 text and truly unlimited data. Albeit you cannot tether on the payg variety of this tariff. And all for £15 every 30 days. Well with my mind made up I transferred my number which went smoothly.

Since the beginning of this week I have had nearly constant 3G in most places I would expect 2g from o2. In some places at work I have had edge but this is faster than 2g. But it has allowed me to begin using my smart phone as intended with data and I have even found Skype works very well especially considering I pay for SkypeOut. I do hope 3 never drop this tariff or change it but fear being on payg this could always happen.

So today I am happy to be a customer again rathe than a donkey as I felt on o2 just paying and paying and really getting nothing but grief.

Galaxy Tab and its successor

2011-02-16T23:16:00.001Z

I have tried a galaxy tab and immediately wrote it off after have three other android tablets and figured I could get an iPad for the same price that was a more complete product. The problem I have with the tab is the phone version of android on a tablet that looks like an oversized kiddies toy. The ipad might have its limitations but has always felt a more complete product.

I am still tempted by the galaxy as I like tinkering where this is something the ipad doesn't really allow me to do. However with the recent announcements of the galaxy tab 2 and the htc flyer combined with the price hike of £450 from a shop,o I figure the tab will either be reduced in price soon or will be left by the wayside.

I have had samsung products before and they do not support a product when they deem it as obsolete. There has not been any concrete announcements from mwc 2011 that the tab 7" will get honeycomb or if samsung will continue to support it. Samsung have announced there will be no more 7" devices and reading between the lines I am thinking an impulse purchase will be a bad decision.

The Ipad has worked 50/50 for me whilst away being flawless on battery life and good for consuming media but there is still the element that its not a full machine or something that I can switch on as a full machine when needed. I really wish that the tab could plug this gap but if my previous android tablet experiences are true, this device will also be a failure.

Which brings the topic around again- what is an appropriate device?

Any prospective iPad 2 will really need more ram as applications close too often on the ipad 1 due to low memory. On android there are really no rich applications when compared to IOS which use the tablet form. Nokia with the n900 was nearly there but again there wasq no applications that offer that real world PC experience. PsiXDA could be another prospect but then you have the problem of a PC in small form factor.

It really saddens me to say that the Psion range of machines have only ever fitted this gap and anything else is just a poor comparison. The latest devices may be ale to play media, do push mail, go online when required or route me around a city but they have never offered a complete solution out of the box. The n900 was nearly there but poor battery life and lack of rich applications made it a failure. Both Android has the interface and IOS has the applications but there is nothing available with a real mix

I know you have to move with the times and cannot dwell on the old but there is still a gap in the market that could be filled.

I can recall being able to get my email, browse the web, run full blown applications and still be able to restore my Psion without the need for a Pc. Android nearly gets there but falls down on the applications. IOS plugs the other gaps with the number of applications but is too locked down and requires a PC for restore.

Seeing nokia recently focus on windows 7 instead of symbian shows the market is becoming fashion driven as opposed to functionality. S60 was never as good as epoc or s80 but was good for multitasking and feature rich applications. Sadly if nokia had been quicker developing their UI or purchasing Palm for WEBOS I honestly believe symbian would still be a viable alternative.

However this is all water under the bridge and we are left with the blackberry, IOS, android and windows phone 7 leftovers. Android has the potential to become more rich where I believe honeycomb will decide this when the numerous tablets are released this year that have been announced. But I feel eventually they will all have the same functionality and it will be the hardware looks that will set them apart - if we are not there already?

But even after all of this I am still left with the dilemma if I should just impulse buy a tab? The issue of not having a laptop to hand is driving me crazy. But I don't want another net book and would still like to purchase the tab to try it. There has been many bloggers say it is the best thing since sliced bread and that it will replace their smartphone due its size and remove the need for a laptop or iPad. Ideally this is the device I wanted and had thought the n900 could have done this for me. I don't make many phone calls so VOIP is ideal for me and the 7" size would be suitable as the ipad is too large. But it means android again on 2.2 which hasn't really got any better since the nexus I imported from the USA whereas IOS seems to be gaining in strength.

My usual cavalier attitude is "fuck it" I will just buy the thing and get rid if I don't get on - the last contender for this was the advent vega only after one week. But then if I purchase the tab I have both and then need to decide which one to keep - the ipad or the tab.

So for the moment painful as it is I will stick with the iPad as I know what It can do. I will decide in the future that any device shouldn't really be an ipad replacement or have to prove itself that it is better in tests. This device should be able to hold its own without comparisons and just fill the niche that I want.

Previously Psion did this but who else is able to pick this challenge and just deliver?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The portable firewall of China

2011-02-15T21:31:00.001Z

I am currently away on training in London so made the drastic decision to travel light and only bring my Ipad and a mifi. Okay I did bring some more gadgets but settled that I only should require the Ipad. My thoughts will be blogged after the week is up.

The mifi itself has been a god send as I put it in my back pack attached to a battery extender which gives me wifi for 8 hours. More than enough to get me through the day with my devices.

I no longer subscribe to a contract for the mifi but have opted to purchase data sim cards from EBay or other outlets dependent on what best deal I can get. Recently I have been purchasing Vodafone sims from eBay at £8 for 3gb as the signal strength has been very good and the speeds acceptable.

There has been a few reports in the Press that vodafone has been blocking Voip and I reported recently that Cydia had been blocked on my Ipad

However I am finding that more sites are being blocked by vodafone content control for example Iplayer streaming, twitgo and yfrog and even Skype. Now all it takes is a phone call to customer services to remove the lock but because I am purchasing new sim cards this is too much of a pain as it requires registration each time. Now you could say why don't get a contract but the prices are poor for 3gb and I am saving through what I am doing.

To get around these restrictions so I can post to twitter with pictures or use Iplayer (I have paid for the bandwidth!) I am using a VPN. Through jail breaking my iPhone and ipad I am running a tool called Guizmovpn and for 4.99 € I can run an openvpn connection over SSL to an openvpn provider. Because this encrypts and tunnels my traffic I am able to do my tweeting with photos using a service called freedomvpn for 8€ per month. Unfortunately whilst cheap it does not allow me to connect all devices at once on the cheapest tariff. Therefore I am now trailing a VPN pro package with Hidemyass.com for £7.66 per month. This allows up to 3 devices to be connected and they offer openvpn, pptp and l2tp VPNs. I have yet to still try their openvpn offering but pptp works fine. I am looking at setting up a VPN at home and using my home broadband to save in the monthly subscription. The only technical issue I have is the iPhone disconnects automatically and doesn't reconnect when its not in use. Whereas Guizmovpn stays connected all the time and reconnects as and when required.

The VPN services are also useful in free wifi areas to hide my credentials from fire sheep wanna be kiddie script hackers so I can ensure I am secure.

What has surprised me is how much Vodafone is restricting especially sites such as yfrog, twit go and Cydia. None of these sites causes problems albeit they may argue Cydia means jail broken devices. Whilst I understand they want to protect their networks and consumers from bad things they seriously need to need to re-evaluate their filters. Ultimately I have paid for a connection to the internet and expect a level of service that allows me to use it. However I feel each time I pass wind there is someone over my shoulder saying you cannot do that.

I accept there are terms for using their network but this recent example feels like big brother gone mad or it's a preemptive trial for charging more for certain types of traffic.

Thankfully my technical skills helped me out here but what about your normal user in the street?

I believe as Vodafone and the other networks follow suit with this Orwellian approach to traffic management that VPN and other proxy based solutions will become more prevalent.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Backup and Restore

2011-02-07T20:20:00.001Z

I am away next week in London on training and I want to travel light instead of taking my mac book, work laptop and iPad. I figured the iPad will do all of the functions I need on trip. It's preloaded with media, my course material and can certainly cope with my Internet activities. However one thought came to mind what ignite crashes. The same with my iPhone what if it crashes. I am stumped as I need a PC or mac with iTunes to restore.

Both devices are jailbroken and I use pkgbackup on both devices to backup and restore from Dropbox which works flawlessly. However if the devices die I cannot rejailbreak as I need a Pc or mac. I cannot restore as I need iTunes. I don't know what apps I have installed so I mentally need to keep a note.

Anyone who follows me on twitter I have been an android and Symbian fan.

Now I have found with psion, windows mobile, symbian on nokia and android I can take on device backups. This would either use built in functionality or a new application. I can then restore and all without the need of then Pc or mac.

So I have a dilemma, although I am enjoying iOS, have all the applications I want, can work without the Pc or mac that is until shit hits the fan.

It's as this point I get a reality check and am considering the Galaxy Tab or an android device as a backup.

Apple restores using iTunes work great but if you don't have the luxury of being able to tether or do online backups to the cloud.

You are stuffed until you can hook up again.

We sent a letter to your old address

2011-01-28T19:37:00.001Z

I have recently changed my address with two companies who deal with my pension and life assurance and am shocked by their processes.

Both companies security checked me over the phone and allowed me to change my contact details for correspondence. The checks were random asking for information only I knew. After confirming my new address they said they would send me a letter to the new address as a final confirmation.

I have no issue with being security checked on the phone and am happy that they changed my address.

What really gripes me is both companies failed to tell me that a letter would still be sent to my old address advising me again that my address had been updated.

It would appear first hand that the companies are looking out for my interest. I accept it is the 21st century and that ID theft is ripe. Therefore I can certainly understand if someone was impersonating me and did the change maliciously this service would be useful.

However, I think they are just covering themselves.

Firstly if I hadn't had post redirection I wouldn't have known these letters were sent out.

Now you may be thinking what's the issue?

(1) Firstly they are assuming straight away I am not who I say I am even though I passed the security checks.

(2) They don't tell me their full intentions and what letters will be sent out.

(3) Now I am not accusing the person who moved into property as being malicious but.... What if this wasn't the case, they opened the letter that was sent, called the company, passed the security checks but then said the address should not have been changed. How do I get to find out?

Although nothing malicious has happened it has left a sour taste in my mouth. Two separate companies I deal with have indirectly not trusted me but I am expected to trust then with my money.

If they were that bothered about security then they could have asked me to provide proof such as a passport, driving license or proof of my new address all of which could have been couriered at their expense more securely.

Whoever came up with this practise of sending a letter to the old address really needs to go back to the drawing board and have a rethink. I would go as far as calling both the policy implementors and the policy itself stupid.

It's another sad example of companies not trusting their customers and implementing bad policies which probably adds no real value, just the impression that things appear secure.

I would like to see the real statistics to prove if this practise has protected people versus people who were a victim of ID fraud because of these letters being sent to their old address.

We now live in a time where there is a heightened sense of security and are advised to shred documents that can be used to identify us if they are no longer required.

However I am of the opinion this is another sad example of a good intention that clearly has not been thought out or even risk assessed correctly. It is a practice I would like to see disappear and a better process of identification put in its place.

I don't have all the answers but am happy I have not been affected by fraud as a result of this practice. However I do not like the fact that although I took the time to update my contact details there an element of mistrust in me.

Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

The Pharmaceutical Race

2010-12-28T14:15:00.001Z

My first tablet computer was an Archos 5 Internet Tablet 5 towards the end of 2009 which ran android 1.5 and also played a variety of media due to the Archos's extensive codec library. It was during the short time of me having this tablet that I could see the potential of having a hand held computer that was not windows based, could be instantly powered on, had a large screen and could take the place of laptop, desktop or even smart phone for my daily internet activities. This story was short lived when the Archos 5 decided to die on me, reset itself and lose all of my files and settings. This left a sour taste in my mouth if I could rely on this device when at any minute it could potentially do this again.

In January 2010 I saw the Ipad, laughed like other people at Apple's arrogance that they just invented the world again but still thought that it would be an android based table that I would end up with. I purchased a cheap table from Hong Kong via Ebay for about £130 called an Eken M001 which was 7", ran Android 1.6 and had a resistive screen. The technical specifications were similar to other tablets that are coming from the far east and are now available for about £100 over here. Although this tablet was okay for ebook reading, minor browsing or reading your emails, again this was short lived because the keyboard was terrible for typing on.

It was after these two instances and after recently purchasing an Iphone that I decided to purchase the Ipad. The purchasing itself was not easy after being nearly ripped off on Ebay and after reserving one in PC World to only turn up and find out it was not in stock that I nearly gave up. Although at the end of January Apple showed the world that they had invented Tablet computing, my perception was they just brought a device to the market that worked, was well specced and had lots of applications that would differentiate it from calling it a large iphone.

Towards the end of 2010 we have seen the release of the Samsung Galaxy Tab at around £450, many have called an Ipad competitor and more recently the Advent Vega at £250. I got hold of the Vega from Pc World because the specification was good, it was running Android 2.2 and had a capacitive screen. My conclucisons on this device are it is a steal for £250 compared to the £100 tablets mentioned ealrler. But you really need to apply the Performance Pack supplied by modaco to extend the device to include the Google Market and other services. I would have kept the device if it wasn't for a bad episode with a 16gb SD Card which would not just work in the device. After 3 formats and and rebuilds of the Vega I had enough, it was wiped, photographed and boxed to be sold on Ebay. It sold within 12 hours. Although this would could have been conisdered a bad memory card issue, it was very similar to my Nokia 5800 problem again with a 16gb SD card back in January 2008 of which I concluded was a hardware issue. After dealing with this problem for several months I got shut of the 5800 and likewise I thought I am not being a slave to this problem with the Vega so subsequently sold this.

I was considering the Samsung Galaxy Tab and saw the device in the flesh, briefly used a colleagues and liked the keyboard but I settled on a second Ipad due to a video I saw on youtube of the Google Mail application on the Tab. Unlike the Ipad, the Tab, like the vega, like the Eken and the Archos 5 do not use the screen real estate where ultimately the applications available for Android are all geared towards 800x400 or smaller. You can argue the Ipad which can use IPhone applications at 2x the resolution looks terrible but there are more Ipad applications available that make use of the higher resolution.

So , since December 2009 Android hasn't really developed on tablets and even google had said that until version 3 of Android it will not really be ready. Whilst Samsung have done a sterling job with the TAB, with a 1024x600 resolution the size of text on the screen in poroporiton to the screen size make it look like a childrens book with large writing. Also the price of £450 approx is ridiculous and personally I wanted a product I know that will work for me, has a plether of applicaitons that are tablet aware and offers a welll rounded package.

The next version of Android needs to be an evolution, not lose its phone roots but show a distinct difference between a tablet os and phone os. Google need to remove the restrictions of not allowing manufacturers to use the market place because a tablet with Google is about as functional as an etch a sketch. Whilst "WIth Google" is an important trademark, it shows consuimers that this is a virgin device with no manufacturer tweaks, it needs to be freely available for any tablet that is to be launched.

Applications, applications and more applications need to be released that can take advantage of the screen real estate and offer more funcitonality than theiir smartphone os based versions. Sadly I dont believe this will happen until mid 2011 until the new version of Android is released that will allow higher resolutions and allow more diversity in devices so that they can make use of the Google services.

The hardware of the Advent Vega is the beginning of this evolution but the OS desperately needs to catch up. The Samsung Galaxy TAB shows what can be achieved with the right mix of hardware and Software, but it could be better as it is shameful that you have to rely on Samsung to enhance the OS with a skin to supply a well rounded product. This is reminiscent of the HTC Sense on WIndows Mobile 6.5 where a skin was required to provide additional functionality. This also the starting point of where Windows Mobile started to go wrong with manufacturers skinning the core OS, trying to hide the ugliness and lack of features which would always fall foul of when the OS was upgraded as it would mean you need to either purchase the new model of hardware to get the new OS or wait endlessly for the manufacturer to update their skin.

In 2011 I dont know what devices I will have, but wouldn't have said in January 2010 that I would be typing up this blog on a macbook, use an iphone and own 2 ipads. Whilst Android was and is still a market leader in mobile OS, Apple with have caught up on the hardware and OS and have certainly overtaken on the tablet front.

CES 2011 will be happening soon and this will set the scene for the rest of the year where one does not have to think hard that there will be a plethora of tablets on show. However I do believe that unless Google changes the way they are developing Android, restricting the minimum specification that allows manufacturers to use the whole Google package or begin to encourage developers to create a tablet version of their software; that android could over time certainly go the way that Microsoft WIndows Mobile went; if they are not already heading down that path.

As with all races this is not just a two horse dash, there is the Blackberry and Palm offerings where I believe the Blackerry Pad will be business focused and the Palm We OS offering whilst technically fantastic will also fall foul of here being no applications due to lack of developers and low uptake of the Palm Web OS just like the Pre now.

But as with any race we will not know until the end of the year to see who has won and who has fallen by the way side.

Snow, snow and more snow

2010-12-24T20:40:00.001Z

Two weeks ago I started Italian lessons which was organised via work and an external tutor. For the course we were following a book called Talk Italian by BBC Active. I found a very good deal on the book from Amazon for £7.44 which included the book and the 2 course CDs and free delivery.

3 lessons on and 2 weeks later I am still waiting on delivery for item which was expected to arrive on 16 December. I know that eventually it will be delivered and this blog post is not a rant about the UK, lack of infrastructure and being unable to cope with snow.

But it got me thinking. I own several electronic devices such as an iPhone, iPad and MacBook and previously had an ebook reader. However I could not find for the life of me either a digital version of the course book or an mp3 download of the CDs as a legal purchase or torrent which I could have used on the course as I have all of the peripherals put them on.

I can see christmas 2011 being different from this year as 2010 has shown one thing about online shopping. You are still at the mercy of the weather and local delivery companies. For one thing next year I will prepare a lot earlier when purchasing presents or elect to purchase gifts that don't rely on local infrastructure for delivery.

As we move to a more connected world with devices to enjoy media such as the kindle for books, ipad for media consumption and the ipod for music. The major companies who control the actual content need to drastically change and not hold back and allow it to be used on all of these devices. Prices need to become more realistic to reflect that there is no physical item for example ebooks costing more than their paper counterparts. They also need to ensure that older content is available digitally. People will always want the physical content as it feels like they have purchased something that they can hold. Whereas if it was digitally available it could be delivered even in adverse weather conditions and at times like now when I really need it and can really benefit from using it whilst on my course.

I now get all of my magazine subscriptions via zinio, use google reader for my news catchup and twitter for news alerts. I cannot remember the last time when I purchased a magazine to read and am already contemplating another iPad as my other half uses the one we currently have.

There's nothing special about the iPad, it is a large iPhone but as a package I just works. There will be many more tablets next year such as the palm pad, the blackberry pad and numerous android tablets. Irrespective which side of the fence you are on, one thing that will happen is they will change the way we consume media but only and I stress only if we can get hold of it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

There's an app for that but it will cost again

2010-09-15T17:23:00.001+01:00

Over the past year I have jumped between mobile devices and various operating systems and have purchased a lot of software as I like to ensure consistency between my devices that I have the same if not similar applications on each one.

One thing that I am doing more is using my device more for data and media consumption rather than making phone calls. This is why I am now looking for a data only tariff that will allow me to use voip for making outgoing calls but also allow incoming as I will have a sim in the device.

Having being predominately a symbian user in the past using both s60, s80 and uiq in its former days I found that any application that I purchased could not easily be transferred to another device without having to make the purchase again. Whilst I can understand this for pc based os such as windows and Mac os x when I upgraded from s60v3 to s60v5 I found the same rule being applied by many software houses. More recently I have found this with meego/maemo with an application such as docstogo or sygic maps both of which I have owned on previous os such as s60.

Like s60 you will find the same restrictions with android and ios where If you purchased one application on android you will sometimes need to purchase the same one on ios to continue using it. However there has been one difference with these devices, should I own more than one device such as an iphone 3G and 4 and a nexus and htc desire, you are able to install the paid applications onto both devices. Now with ios I believe this is part of the license agreement although you may find applications that you need to purchase twice to get full functionality. Whereas with android you will need to refer to the license agreement with the software.

I will add where I have two or more devices and want the same applications on them then if the license dictates that I must purchase separately then I will do this, for example i do this with the ipad and iPhone as there are usually differences between the two applications.

On thing that has become apparent to me is that when upgrading either an android or ios device how easier it is than symbian as there is no messing with license keys when reinstalling the software. After spending many hours setting these devices up this has been a godsend and made the enjoyment of owning them a lot more pleasurable.

Now Nokia have announced two exciting devices this week the n8 and e7 where it is the latter I would love to purchase but it is on symbian ^3. However I am being held back by my previous experiences with symbian and applications as I would expect to have to make another purchase in order to upgrade. Whereas htc announced the desire HD and desire z today and I know if I bought them or if a new iPad/iphone was released tomorrow then I would be able to use the applications I had already purchased and not have to spend my money again.

The hardware features of both the n8 and e7 are excellent but for now usability and the application store experience is becoming a more key attribute when selecting my next device in addition to specifications.

I have found the Ovi store to be a kludge and very unusable, slow and painful when either trying to install or purchase applications So unless Nokia can ensure that the Ovi App store experience improves to the standard of android or iPhone then I will not be rushing to get a new symbian device.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The new twitter

2010-09-15T01:39:00.001+01:00

Twitter relaunched their website today with a new look and more features to allow users to interact with the site. Through signing agreements with 16 media companies you will now see embedded pictures and videos in the site without the need to move to another window.

The ui has also been changes to have two panes - one with the timeline an the second with further detail showing the embedded media and other detailed information such ad conversations.

The changes were made to improve the user experience as over 50% of twitter updates are done via the website.

The changes are slowly being rolled out globally.

You can find out more here http://t.co/E9Dbh0H

Is there a real voip solution for mobiles so I can have a data only tariff?

2010-09-10T22:11:00.001+01:00

My mobile contract is due to finish in November and I am contemplating where to go next. I currently pay £65 per month that gives me 10gb of data, 500 text , free national phone calls and 600 minutes of talk time for other numbers.

Since getting broadband again my data usage has dropped to under 3gb, I only send under 100 texts a month and I hardly make or receive any phone calls. Therefore I am thinking should it be payg, sim only or mobile broadband. I know I don't want a contract and to pay for unused call time.

I was thinking that I want a data only tariff and use a voip service such as Skype or Truphone for making calls and send text. However I am not convinced that voip over a 3g network is mature enough to be a viable option. If google voice had been available then I could just keep the data tariff and have one number for incoming but assign several numbers to it for example the mobile broadband. Whereas I have used Skype and it only runs really on the n900 whereas I am currently using an iphone and have found it to be a kludge.

My objective in all this is to save money but have a cheap reliable service to make and receive calls when needed but also be able to send/receive the few texts but have a 3gb data Bolt on. Ideally the calls to landline numbers should be free after paying a subscription such as my £3.30 per month to Skype. But the problem with the latter is I cannot text. With trephine I can text but their call tariffs are not as cheap as Skype

I will continue to do research over the next few months before I decide but ultimately a talk time and text tariff are a waste on me as only data is needed. But again the data only tariffs are very poor and I don't believe I could transfer my existing mobile to a mobile broadband only sim.

So I am between a rock and a hard place but hopefully I will find an answer soon.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Infinifolders

2010-08-27T06:40:00.001+01:00

One of the best things with ios 4 was the introduction of folders. This has meant my application icons rather than taking up several screens can now be placed in a folder.

I now have all my applications organised on one screen in separate folders depending on the category.

Apple replaced a restriction of only 12 icons per folder which is okay if you don't have many applications. But being a heavy mobile user I have a lot of applications installed.

Through jailbreaking I have been able to install an application through cydia called infinifolders.

The application is priced at $1.99 but has removed this restriction and now allows more icons in a folder and you scroll to locate them.

The following video shows this in more detail and the various options infinifolders has.

This is a very cheap and recommended enhancement if you have jailbroken.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

In my fathers house there are many rooms

2010-08-16T19:11:00.000+01:00

It was good to see a recent jailbreak of the iphone 4 where all you had to do was go to a website, click on the jailbreak me switch and within a few minutes it was all done. However there are serious security implications of this jailbreak as all it required was to download a pay loaded pdf file which then allowed remote code to be executed which effectively compromised the phones security within seconds. Whilst apple believe a controlled environment can always ensure a more secure safer experience this is a prime example that this philosophy is not always true.

I also believe that because apple cannot easily roll out an over the air update to fix this issue if there were several hundred iphones within an enterprise to update then hooking up to itunes via USB is just not practical.

There are two distinct types of iphone users now the jailbreak has come along, Consumers and customisers. A consumer will use a phone how it has been designed and will not venture far from doing stock processes on it. Whereas a customiser is usually someone who has had another phone and knows how much apple have locked it down and what jail breaking can do to release it.

Whilst in church many years ago I can always remember the verse "in my father's house there are many rooms". I believe in the iphone church that the two distinct types of users above are in two rooms - consumer and customiser. Since jail breaking my iphone and showing my colleagues who are living in the other room as a consumer, I have shown them the phone is capable of becoming a mobile hotspot, I can filter calls and SMS automatically, I have access to my calendar on the lock screen, I can multitask with any application, I can receive notifications on the status bar instead of the annoying messages that are pushed and I can also control my ip connection with the firewall application.

Whilst some of the applications I run are specialised such as the firewall and mobile hotspot; from demonstrating the cosmetic changes to the notifications and lock screen summaries using intelliscreen and notified, my colleagues are beginning to see how much of a blinkered life they have led.

Recently I have also purchased the wifi sync app which removes the need for a USB cable and again mouths have just dropped in belief as they thought this was impossible.

Apple are a marketing goliath and whilst they have been successful In the marketing of the iphone and iPad they should be looking to the jail breaking scene and embrace it like palm did Through banning applications such as the wifi sync, camera+ from using the volume button as a camera button and tethering applications they have really limited the device. Although their domineering approach to approving applications is known as being ruthless, even if they allowed these applications into the app store they could still ensure rules are not being broken or that consumers are being set up to fall.

My iphone is a great device with decent hardware and battery life. Now it is jail broken it is a more useful device that I am more akin to with android, maemo and symbian.

It may never happen but I am excited to spread the good word that jail breaking is beneficial other than what is perceived and being marketed.

Wifigate Part 2

2010-08-12T20:09:00.004+01:00

Those of you that have been following me on twitter know recently I have been having issues with my IPhone 4 and WIFI. My Ipad using the same applications and access point downloading the same podcasts does not struggle whereas the IPhone 4 does. The files it really struggles with are the Phones Show chat and Video.

Recently I have stopped with a friend for a short break who gave me access to the Internet via his netgear router. I wasn't really expecting anything better than I currently had at home in terms of performance of the IPhone over WIFI but I was surprised - the phone just worked as it should do. I did some testing of the podcasts that has previously caused issues and it just worked.

I subsequently checked my friends settings and found they were all similar to mine and started to look around on the Internet for answers. From reading it began referring to threshold settings for the wifi and retransmit values to try but I found my router did not have this level of configuration.

I already have 2 wireless routers on my network set up as access points to ensure I am connected as I move throughout the house. These are not using the WDS (wireless distribution system) as they are not compatible. However I have found using both my netgear DG834PN and the supplied O2 wireless box III neither work well with the IPhone 4.

I decided to test a third router I had lying about - a Huawei DMR100 which us a 3g router. I configured this as an access point and to only use the DHCP server on my main router. This was then connected to my LAN using homeplug over a 11mb connection. To my surprise it is performing just as it did at my friends house and is downloading the podcasts with no issues at an acceptable speed. Whereas connecting direct to my main router or the wireless box when I used this both was very slow to the point of not usable.

So whilst I am lot happier to have found the issue and been able to get a workaround it does prove one thing - the IPhone 4 is certainly picky on what router it wants to connect to and after trying 5 I am glad to put this problem to bed. It also has the plus that I will now keep the phone for a little while longer.

The shackles have gone

2010-08-02T08:46:00.001+01:00

Last night I went to the site http://www.jailbreakme.com on my iPhone 4. After a few minutes I had successfully jail broken my iPhone and now have the cydia store installed.

Apparently this is possible due to a bug in safari when downloading PDFs, but I have no further information on this.

The first app I loaded was mywi which has allowed me to use my iPhone 4 as an access point. This will allow me to use the extra data I pay for for tethering. I have also installed backgrounder which allows apps that cannot multitask to be sent to te background. These two apps out of the hundreds available are a reason enough to jailbreak.

It's early days, the jailbreak didn't work on my iPad and there's a rumour that mms will no longer work on my iPhone 4. I don't care about the latter but really want to jailbreak my iPad.

So let the games begin.

Iphone 4 wifi issues

2010-07-29T21:50:00.001+01:00

I have had the iphone 4 since the launch on June 25 and have been happy with its performance overall. The only niggling thing that has been annoying me has been the poor performance over wifi.

As I download a lot of podcasts over a month as I follow 16 separate shows this can usually mean over 2gb in downloads. Originally I used to do this over 3G but since getting broadband at home and wifi I have been attempting to use this instead and preserve my 3G data usage.

Originally I was using podcaster and then drivecast to download the podcasts but was swapping forwards and backwards between the applications due to the poor performance of each application crashing or slowly downloading over wifi. It even got bad with some podcasts in that I elected to switch back to 3G which was totally defeating the object.

Recently I have purchased an iPad. Again using the same drivecast application via the same access point I am getting expected download speeds over wifi. This in my eyes proves the issue is with the iphone 4. I have also observed using the good reader application to access my google documents accounts that the ipad is quicker than the iphone 4.

Although I am aware of the death grip issues and am happy to receive a free case I haven't really experienced any issues of this nature. However the wifi on the iphone especially since the 4.01 upgrade has seriously degraded the phone. There was mention that the wifi on the ipad used to be terrible but I never saw this first hand as I upgraded to the new ios on the same day I got my iPad.

I do hope Apple like the issues with the death grip also get the wifi issues sorted soon as it's just plane useless for downloading my media direct to the device. Further I believe it tarnishes my usage because with this phone at the moment I have no other major complaints.

Follow the ISheep

2010-06-03T22:51:00.002+01:00

I have decided to put my nexus, n900 and android tablet on EBay to buy some new kit but to also remove the pain these devices are giving me at the moment.

The Nexus with Froyo doesn't work for me because all of my apps aren't available in the App Store or just don't work.

The N900 is still too rough around the edges 6 months on and I believe Nokia alately seem to be distancing themselves from it thus making it a niche product.

The android table whilst cheap needs a higher specification to be of any use.

@gerrymoth on twitter asked well what phone next?

To be honest the HTC Desire looks interesting but I am waiting to see what Apple delivers in the Iphone 4G. I am expecting my gadget sale to be able to fund an Ipad but I am still wary of Iphone OS. Maemo, Symbian and Android have meant I have been PC free for 2 years but the Iphone since the 2G doesn't seem to have moved on because it requires Itunes.

So I am challenging anyone reading this to convert me to Iphone OS and find me applications that allow me to still be independent:

Podcatcher - an application to download podcasts over 3G and be able to play them locally without ever seeing an itunes installation

SMB/WIFI network browser - To allow me to side load files through SMB network browsing that I can use locally on the phone in applications again without the need of a PC and off device conversion

USB Disk Mounting - the ability to mount the local phone storage as a USB disk on a PC without the need for Itunes

I know a simple form of multitasking is coming and I know that Cydia store is available if I jail broke, but out of the box using the stock rom can IPhone OS do this?

The bells and whistles of the UI are great but when you start peeling back can it work how I want rather than having to convert myself back to a PC dependent world.

My fear if I was to revisit IPhone OS again after getting a 2G phone several years ago is whilst it has lots of applications and great hardware I will be expected to conform again rather than the device confirming to what I want.

Knowing that I have expectations of which I don't think are our too extravagant can the IPhone OS do what I want or do I have to become another clone?

Froywoes

2010-05-26T08:54:00.001+01:00

I was very pleased to see that google released froyo quickly as it reaffirmed my commitment to having a google experience phone. If I had a HTC phone I would still be waiting for them to update their senseui to run on froyo before it was released.

I have being using a cynanogen 5.06 rom on my nexus because of 3g issues. Recently the nexus has been hanging especially when the battery was low so I decided to try froyo. I completed a nandroid backup so I could restore everything back quickly.

Well what a bad decision this was....?

Because froyo is new half of my paid applications don't appear in the marketplace. Then any applications I have installed must be unstable because the nexus is just hanging on the launcher force closing all of the time. It was nice to see the ram boost given by froyo by enabling the second bank of ram as does the cynanogen rom.

But Google should have warned both people and developers that applications would either need updating to run on the new os even if you don't use the new features. They should have also given more time to ensure this happened before the release of froyo to allow time for the changes just like Apple is doing with v4 iphone os.

Then my nandroid backup of the cynanogen rom must be corrupted as any video playback doesn't work now.

What this means for me is now a unusable phone as I have to invest time to rebuild my nexus with a cynanogen rom again or wait until my applications are supported in froyo.

Either way I am not happy about this and am now back on my n900 contemplating either an iphone 4g or desire....?

When a sat nav is useless like CoPilot

2010-04-20T18:42:00.001+01:00

I have been the proud user of CoPilot for android since my HTC magic. Recently I am using it on my nexus one and have to admit I want something else.

Take a trip recently to Reading it frequently lost its signal. The live traffic was only reporting narrow lanes even though the I had been in my current jam for over one hour and when/if it detects a traffic issue it expects you to manually route around it rather than just get on and reroute like other sat nav solutions I have used.

Again relying on CoPilot to get me to Chester tonight meant losing its GPS even though when selecting the dialog message it can see 8 satellites and is communicating with them. Plus opening Google maps at the same time CoPilot still cannot find the GPS signal yet Google maps does.

I have put these questions to CoPilot support and have yet to hear why their product just fails. Thankfully I have my n900 with Sygic maps with me for the return home.

Satellite navigation is something I expect to work especially considering I have paid for it. Even back in the days when I ran tomtom on Windows Mobile 3 with an externally connected Garmin GPS it worked, so why not today on better hardware.

Personally I cannot wait for Google navigation to come to the uk. For the interim if CoPilot cannot fix their bugs and sort out the automatic routing the last journey it will be planning will be to the garbage can.

Digital Economy Bill

2010-03-30T19:37:00.003+01:00

I recently contacted my MP about the Digital Economy Bill and got a response from his colleague as follows:

......As Members of Parliament are bound by a strict parliamentary protocol, they are not permitted to intervene in matters which have been raised by the constituents of other MPs. I would be grateful, therefore, if you could provide me with your address .......

Whilst I am glad they have taken the time to write I cannot believe my MP is not prepared to do anything merely citing a canned response to my query.

My response to this was as follows:

....Whilst I look forward to receiving the reply I am somewhat surprised by your response.

As my local member of Parliament, irrespective if the questions have been raised by other constituents I am asking My Farrelly to look at this bill, its implications and to ensure that a full debate is completed rather than it being rushed through as a knee jerk reaction.

Working in the technology arena I understand the arguments on both sides however I do not believe this bill is the solution. Through putting pressure on ISPs to administrate the legislation will increase prices of which will be passed onto the consumer. The tracking of someone's activity via their IP address is flawed as the address changes regularly thus requiring ISPs to procure additional measures to administer and log this. Lastly the proposed body that will arbitrate in any offence after 3 strikes should be done by a court of law with a jury and not an unelected body of peers.

Whilst Mr Farrelly may have more pressing engagements that he has to deal with he also needs to put this issue high on his agenda.

Should the bill be passed it will take a period of time to amend and possibly even remove off the statute law.

I believe there will be further incidents of wrongly accused people and the increased costs will have a negative effect on the initiative of providing broadband for all.

Further do we need these extra costs when the economy is just beginning to improve.

When there are major market players such as Google and TalkTalk that are against the bill it surely demands some of Mr Farrelly's time to ensure it is given the appropriate amount of debate.
I sincerely hope that Mr Farrelly will take the time to look at the bill, its implications should it become law and ensure that it gets the required time to provide a proper solution.....

I may be asking for too much and do hope my MP does take this request seriously but I am am some what negative that this will happen.

I will update this blog as and when further communication is sent.

Emails have been edited

Spring Clean

2010-02-25T15:32:00.004Z

Yesterday I made the drastic decision to get rid of all of my phones except the following:

n900 - I am still interested to see how this develops
E63 - a nice cheap phone that is being used as my work phone
5800XM - I am keeping this as a sat nav

I am getting rid of the following because I want a nexus one and an ipad later this year but here is a summary why:

HTC Magic - Great android starter phone but limited on specification
HTC Hero - Compared to the magic this is a breath of fresh air with the sense ui but HTCs lack of Android OS updates has shocked me. The magic is already on 1.6 whereas the Hero is 1.5 and newer applications I want to use are on android 2. HTC will update the Hero in march 2010 to Android 2 but my fears of not rolling out frequent updates where correct and as such I am abandoning non Google based Android handsets. I am of the opinion HTC either want people to upgrade to their new HTC Desire or Legend to use Android 2. Whilst this is their prerogative they have in effect stuck the two fingers up at existing owners. March isn't too far away but I believe this is a sign of things to come and I don't want to be party of it At least with a google phone I am guaranteed more frequent updates as Google develop the OS. SenseUI on the hero is great but does not bring that enough benefit to keep me on Android 1.5
N810 - I now have the N900
E75 - A great work horse but the 5800XM will now fill that position as being a back up device. The E75 is kind of phone you would either take out at night or away as the hidden keyboard really does make it look like a normal boring phone.
E90 - A great communicator and specification on a phone on par with the E75. I a sad to see this go but I really haven't used it for for over a year.
Palm Pre - There is a lot of potential with WEBOS but like the first generation iphone as there are no applications, the hardware is becoming long in to the tooth and now other phones such as the N900 and Hero with SenseUI no integrate with other social networks there is really no use for synergy. Should there be more applications that are more productive based I may look at WEBOS again. But for now, my conclusion is, it is nice to use but there is no substance due to lack of applications.
Palm Treo 680 - An old phone I had just lying around doing nothing. Again, nice OS and lots of applications but long in tooth for me.
BeBook Ereader - Not a phone but it will be replaced with the ipad or an android equivalent. I have not really used it and whilst it great on battery power I don't read many ebooks. Further its PDF support is limiting on the emagazines I read in that it is slow and does not render the pages well.

The replacements:

Nexus One - To replace all of my phones with its larger screen and Google android based OS. Because I have already purchased a lot of android applications I can quite easily port them over to the new phone.
Ipad Or an android equivalent - I am interested in a tablet device after using the Archos Android Tablet where the Ipad has caught my interest. However with the Dell Mini 5, ICD or a Tecra based Android tablet there will be others to look at.

Although 2010 might end up as 2009 with me purchasing many devices my intention ebaying the old devices is to fund the new purchased but also ensure I am not collecting clutter. I should hopefully have the nexus one within the next couple of weeks so will no doubt end up posting about it then.

Nokia spolit my fun.

2010-02-08T18:43:00.001Z

Today Alk finally announced Copilot 8 UK Live traffic for Android and several other platforms at £19.99 per year. This is something that I have been waiting for since last year where I really could have done with it a few weeks ago on a long journey. However since it has only come out I had to resort to my trusty Navman S50 with traffic alerts on this particular trip.

I am also waiting on Sygic Mobile Maps for the N900 as the onboard OVI maps isn't really a satellite navigation solution. I believe the application has been submitted to Nokia for the past several weeks for approval but still nothing on when it will be launched or an indication of the actual cost.

Both of these announcements would have meant me rushing to purchase them straight away as I believe traffic announcements for Copilot are necessary and the N900 having an onboard mapping again enhances the use of the device.

However, old news as this is. I recently blew the dust off my old 5800, upgraded the firmware using windows 7 (another story some time) and installed the free Ovi Maps. I originally subscribed for 3 years to Nokia Maps (as it used to be known) when I first got my N95 because it worked out cheaper than getting 1 year. Since the subscription elasped I purchased Garmin Mobile XT for S60 another good satellite navigation program with freentraffic and cameras. So when Nokia announced that Ovi maps would be free my expectations were high but I was anticipating it to be no better then when I had initially subscribed.

Well how wrong could I be, free traffic alerts and rerouting. Free safety camera warnings. 3D landscapes rendering quickly. Lane guidance. It took me on my journey with the 5800 in landscape mode and didn't falter either on the routing, no delays in dispalyed or spoken instructions and the landscape display was large and clear to view the onscreen map.

Now the excitement of copilot and sygic has gone because I now have everything I need albeit in another phone but it is free. I only need to swap my sim as and when required.

So whilst nokia might have spoilt my fun because I really want to test these two software products, I am now getting all these features for free.

I will probably get Sygic for the n900 because it needs the software to make the device more useful especially considering this is now my main device. But I do hope Ovi Maps is extended to the n900 with free navigation.

All of the satellite navigation companies really need to wake up and smell the flowers, At the moment Ovi Maps for me is more cost effective than both Copilot and Sygic mobile maps because I have access to more mapping regions which can be stored on the device and free traffic/safety camera updates. It will be interesting to see how the satellite navigation business pans out in 2010 especially when Google extends their free navigation.

Today, my advice to anyone looking for a satnav is purchase a 5800 or another Nokia phone with free Ovi Maps Navigation.

Mini me

2010-02-05T21:22:00.002Z

Recently I have purchased a lot of high end phones but today my VX1-mini phone arrived from ebay which is on the opposite end of the spectrum at only £20.

The phone boasts 90 hours standby and 100 hours talktime on a 400ma battery. It does sms with t9 has several ring tones and a built in speaker phone. The display is clear and the buttons very big for the times you cannot see the keyboard. Its also sim-free and dual band so no 3g here.

In all it is a back to basics handset for the times when I don't want to take out a high end device. The other use I have is to leave it in my car with a payg sim card for emergencies.

Because I rely on smartphones I have noticed that should I need to make a simple call, not forgetting this could be an emergency call. I am either fighting with a smartphone OS or a ridiculous boot up time all of which could be vital needed seconds.

Pessimistic as this may sound but the last thing on my mind insuch a situation is if I have hit the right key or if I cannot get a GPS lock when all that I want to do is a make a call.

The phone is functional, fulfills a purpose and could be useful to take away on holiday thus parting with my myriad of other expensive handsets I would normally take. It is also a handset that I can afford to lose or damage on a night out.

But I do honestly hope I don't get the chance to use it in an emergency. However if I do have to use it, I can trust that I am not waiting whilst looking at a manufacturers logo and the time is ticking......

Cross mobile platform exchange syncing with repeating events.

2010-02-02T21:32:00.001Z

Back in the old days I used to sync a nokia 9500 and a Sony Ericsson P900 with outlook over a cable. I was pretty confident in that it worked and all appointments and events including repeats where duplicated correctly on each phone. It wasn't until my permanent move to linux that I needed to find a cross platform solution that didn't rely on a PC.

I had always used exchange and had found the S60 and windows mobile exchange syncing to be fine but there could be issues with duplicates or missing entries. I would then spend valuable time tweaking them until they appeared on both devices correctly.

Recently I have expanded the syncing to an android based HTC Hero, Maemo n900 and WEBOS Palm Pre. I have always sought to have a devicer with exchange syncing.

Today on looking in my n900 calendar a recurring birthday hadn't synced. I tried a full resync then extended my search to my other devices to see which one it appeared on. My E63 and Palm Pre synced the event fine bit both the hero and n900 hadn't. Further investigation on the E63 revealed the repeating annual event was started in 1994.
Now whilst you may argue just delete and recreate the event I was determined to get to the root of the issue.

The reason for starting in 1994 was because my old Psion 5 allowed me to create a start date for events and as such would advise me how old the event was. Hence I could work out some one's age. The P900 also allowed me to do this.

It would appear that both the hero and n900 exchange sync cannot cope with this. On changing the repeating start date to 2009 the event synced on all devices. I tried this also with an event from 2003 where I had an issue and again changing this to 2009 allowed it to sync across all devices.

Whilst birthday functionality has now moved from calendar back into contats it is amazing how something so little can cause an issue. It shows how mature both the webos and s60 exchange is compared to the newer platforms. Lastly it also proves that all exchange solutions are not 100%

Take the tablet in 4 hour intervals

2010-01-29T21:38:00.001Z

Like many others I watched the Apple announcement on the 27 January to see what other revolutionary device was being brought to life. I am not an Apple fanboy because the only device I have ever owned was a first generation iphone for 2 months and I promptly sold it because it just wasn't for me. But I have to admit I am becoming bored of buying devices which either don't work, the manufacturers are not supplying updates or there are no good applications. Therefore an iphone 4g with multitasking would have been welcome.

I have previously owned 3 tablets an n810, an archos android 5 and now an n900. The n810 is a good web browser based device but to use it would mean carrying a phone of which can also do the same as the n810. The archos was better than the n810 at playing media but the android support was lacking in both applications and stablility. The n900 is a good compromise between these devices but is still really in beta.

I also own a netbook, a larger laptop and a bebook ereader and whilst all have their own merits from using the archos I have really enjoyed using a tablet form factor. The wider screen is good for reading on screen, you can tweet, reply to an email and play media.

Now whilst I can use these devices I should really be satisfied that I have this choice, but for me they do not offer the converged convinence that a tablet can give. On the netbook I lose real estate on the screen, on the laptop I have limited battery life, on the ereader I cannot web browse and my n900 has a small screen. A tablet should be able to plug all of these holes for me.

So enter stage left the ipad, a mobile internet device with a 10" screen in tablet format running iphone os not mac osx. Apple's view is that it sits between a smartphone such as the iphone and a mac laptop. Netbooks which would normally take this placed are merely viewed by Apple as a small laptop so aren't really new technology.

The ipad has the potential to be a complete failure like the newton, but unlike the newton it is riding on the back of the successful phone. Also because it will be using the infrastructure of the iphone app store and itunes it already has a working solution in place.

Now we have been here before with UMPCs and tablet devices running Windows Xp. I had a vega umpc but quickly got rid of it as the touch input was archaic with an onscreen keyboard that had to be used with a stylus. For longer text entry sessions I had to plug in a usb keyboard which then defeated the portability aspect. As a device for playing back media it was okay but a little under powered which showed with wrongly encoded video files.

There will be more competition for the ipad this year with android tablets such as the dell mini 5, windows based tablets such as the msi tegra and there will no doubt the myriad of clones to follow. Now I do believe these devices running windows and android will be more functional but do I want the windows nonsense of crashing. My previous experience of android on a tablet was disjointed because I couldn't access paid apps in the app store. The google experience had to hacked into the archos and ultimately the tablet was ridden with bugs.

With the ipad I get the iphone os experience, I get access to all of the applications which work, it is stable and tested and I have access to itunes although I will probably use other means to put media onto the device.

The only thing that puts me off is Apple's reluctance to open up the architecture so I am not restricted by their antiquated policies of policing the app store and restricting the device resulting in running a dumbed down OS on a high spec. We know it has the potential to multitask and do more because of the jail breaking scene on the iphone.

But it is this what I am fighting with because I don't want to be told how to use the device, what I can do with it and what I can run on it. The apple experience for a normal user is great because it ensures the device will always run at its optium and should be intuitive to use. However I am technical enough if it breaks to reflash and fix it if this is the resolution and it this option I want. My Palm Pre, HTC Hero and N900 offer me this.

So I am sitting on the fence as I want the ipad because it can complement the other devices I use but I have been stung by the apple experience before and know how limiting it can be.
The ipad like the iphone should in theory have an upgradable OS so even if I kept the device for a number of years I should be able to upgrade. With a windows based tablet it will no doubt stop working at some point. With android you are at the mercy of the manufacturer where my recent experience of aHTC with the hero there is a lack of regular upgrades and patching. A Google based android tablet might be different but I have already referred to the disparate experience you get on the archos android tablet.

Because the ipad is a device I want to pick up and just have it work the apple experience might be my safe guard. I have my other phones and laptops to tweak with whereas I see the ipad being the device I pick up and use if I want to sit and read, browse or email whilst on the couch having a coffee. I don't see as a device for outside the house but the potential for mapping applications is big, but I would look quite a prat using it as a satnav in the car. I don't want to make calls on it or need 3g as I have a mifi.

The writing is on the wall that I will probably get one and I am slowly finding reasons to justify it. My only challenge is do I want to be locked into Apple for apps, drm and being told what I cannot do.

The days of wearing clothes with my name in and gloves on a string so I don't lose them are long gone and I don't need to be reminded of this each time I sit down with an ipad. I also don't mind reading the instructions for example when taking tablets because I could harm myself if I get it wrong but then I am grown-up so do understand.

But do I want to take the apple pill?

N900 - To be or not to be?

2010-01-21T08:57:00.006Z

There are a lot of n900 reviews online talking about specifications of the hardware/software and how all of the applications work to the nth degree of detail. My post is from using the n900 as my main device for a period of 4 weeks (the length of time will become significant later).

Before Christmas 2009, after much deliberation I decided to purchase an N900. The phone was bought through a reseller where the price was competitive with what they where being sold for on eBay. When the phone arrived I promptly unpacked it and charged it up but within 1 hour of use it rebooted. I over looked this and promptly set about configuring the exchange sync, my email accounts and looking at what applications were available. I used various sources from NokiaAddict.com to allow me to access all of the development and testing resources and twitter for recommendations which gave me access to more applications. Previously being an N810 user I was aware of the issues around using test applications and that you might cause the device to become unstable, but I didn't care. For my N810 I have completely repartitioned the internal disk to increase the available installation space which has lead to the device being more usable. Considering I usually push things to the limit the enabling of these repositories was just another "walk in the park" for me.

Over the first few days I began experiencing several reboots a day which initially because the device was new I wasn't worried about but it got the point of becoming annoying. Doing investigations through searching on the web and posting to twitter wasn't really conclusive as there were two camps. People who were returning their n900s for replacements as they believed it was a hardware fault. This went to the extent of people commenting on how long they charged the battery from when the device was first switched on to discussions of battery replacements, battery charging voltages, what types of chargers were being used, the variety and quality of components inside the n900 and even people suggesting it was applications from the testing repositories. Other people were suggesting it was something to do with the device being in the middle of a process and trying to go into idle mode where it would force it to reboot.

The error I was getting of which could be displayed in a command prompt using "cat /proc/bootreason" was wd32_to.

Through following the link I was able to disable enable_off_mode which whilst reduced the battery life as power management had effectively been switched off it made the reboots from 8 a day to 0.

After 12 hours use I also came across another issue related to the reboot count where each time the device reboots due to the above it adds a value of 3 onto the reboot count. When the reboot counts goes over 50 and the phone reboots it will not load the OS, merely sitting at "2nd dot " of the "5 dots". Effectively the n900 was bricked where I had to reload the firmware to restore it. Again there was a fix for the reboot count. Recently I have managed to brick the device again but used this link to resurrect the device without the need for a reflash.

So whilst all of this was happening up until the first week of January 2010 through trying to use the device daily, I had come to the decision that should a fix not be released shortly then the device would be on EBay.

On January 12, a small fix was released that essentially allow the larger update to be done over the air when this would be released. Sadly, this fix didn't resolve the reboot issues and I had to resort to the workarounds mentioned above. Again, I was of the same opinion if no reboot fix was to be issued then the device was bound for EBay. It was fun trying to get this firmware on due to the fact I had filled the root filesystem so had to remove applications to make space in order to load the new firmware on.

PR1.1 firmware was released on 14 January, again this would not go on so was forced to take a backup, reflash using a cable and restore from backup. Firstly, the backup/restore was flawless in that it both restored all of my data and reinstalled my applications - although it had to download these again. This was nice to see bearing in mind I had seen some concoctions over the years claiming to me mobile backup solutions but wasn't any good. I had to laugh about the application reinstall because to my horror it needed to download 670mb of data so there is no wonder I filled up the root filesystem. The other advantage was any garbage that had been installed previously had been removed and my root filesystem is now back to a reasonable size although I do question the partitioning considering there is over 32gb on board and to only use a minimal amount for rootfs is ridiculous. In the forums it has been said my rootfs has gone due to me installing test applications of which are not installing to the correct partitions but this is just an excuse. Should someone repartition the n900 and provide instructions in a similar vain to my n810 then I will do this.

Now to the question did it fixed the reboots?

After reading up on the issues around the reboots I came to the conclusion it looked like a software bug as the workaround was to disable power managment. I also had assumed that this could be fixed through software. My conclusions were correct, the device since the firmware updates is getting zero reboots to the extent I was proud to publish an up time of over 24 hours on my twitter.

Daily I am enjoying using the n900 for Internet web browsing, Instant Messaging, Twitter. Email - in fact everything it was intended to be used for. The keyboard and form factor are great and as a two handed device it really works for me especially considering I am a fan of the Nokia Communicators. It could be used in portrait mode and there is movement to make more applications and the OS to work in this form factor but I am not convinced. Other than the phone application I see no need for this feature as it is just as easy to pull out the keyboard and work in landscape.

The main issue with the n900 is lack applications even though the device is new. Whilst there is a back catalog of Maemo 4 applications these all need porting. Because the web browser is full featured you can use this instead of applications for example you can use Google Docs, Google Maps, Twitter and edit your blogs without the need for dedicated applications. But because the browser can be resourceful having several windows of web open can slow the device down and ultimately when web crashes it closes all of the windows. Whilst the screen resolution is wide enough for browsing again everything within an application can seem cramped so you either have to zoom in/out. But until applications are released you have an alternative available.

After spending over two years gradually converting form windows to Linux through having to find alternative solutions to things that I naturally accept within windows I can be patient with the n900. Through this approach should I not be able to find an application I know there will always be an online alternative that I can use within the web browser. On this basis, I am keen to tell people who are looking at the n900, that should they accept this shortcoming, realise the device is a work in progress still then they will enjoy using the n900. If they are looking for something to work out of the box and do everything an iPhone currently does then n900 isn't for them. Whereas if you are looking for a device that has the potential to do everything an iPhone can and are prepared to wait then the n900 is for you.

I have found that you begin using the n900 for example Twitter, I can tweet, post pictures, post vide, post audio and complete searches but I am using a combination of the built in conversation/IM app, a python application called Witter, another application called MAKU and the web browser. Not exactly seamless but working. So you can begin doing something on the n900 but suddenly find you cannot complete because there is some missing functionality in your current approach so you have to find a workaround.

Another example of this is the OVI Maps solution. This isn't a satellite or personal navigation application on the n900 as it is on other symbian solutions. Currently there is no other navigation application available, however Sygic are making an application to fulfill this void. Hopefully this will be released soon. Google maps can be used with real time GPS navigation using this guide where I had to use this yesterday because OVI Maps was completely useless. Again, in time this will change.

There is an argument that the n900 is not a phone it is an Internet tablet. I have avoided using the reference to phone within this post as I believe it is a new breed of device. The n900 being one of the first devices with this blend of phone, Mobile Internet Device, Navigation Device with a high specification that can genuinely multitask has the opportunity to set the bar from which other devices will be judged. It can be compared and will be compared to the IPhone but they are aimed at two different markets. The n900 can hold its own without connection to a PC whilst the IPhone needs Itunes to benefit using all of its features. For example, I can take 350mb encoded divx file, put it on the n900 and it plays whereas the IPhone needs conversion to be done. Being niche is where the n900 might not be as successful because people want simplicity where lack of functionality and customisabiilty can occur. Most people want to be told what they can do within an application for example, send as an email or mms, whereas the n900 offers more choice share over bluetooth and share via a pipe where they can be extended without having to wait for the manufacturer to build in the functionality. Therefore the N900 has the opportunity to set the bar for this breed of device it also at the very beginning of a new open culture for Mobile Technology which needs to be embraced or it will fail. Android, Windows mobile and Symbian are very similar in that they can potentially and already do everything the n900 does but if you use the n900, look at the possibility that device can be a fully functional computer in your hand and wait (the key factor) here for the applications to be developed then you will recognise the potential and how far beyond the other mobile OSes this
can take you.

However, remember this is the future and not now.

Archos 5 Android Tablet - I went up a hill and promptly fell off a mountain

2009-12-28T17:05:00.001Z

The idea of a large tablet device is nothing new to me because I used to have a small 5" touch screen pc running windows XP home. For playing back videos it was okay but pretty useless as an internet tablet because it needed a usb wifi or 3g dongle to provide any connectivty.

I now have 2 android phones a HTC Magic and Hero. I really like android and feel its potential can grow beyond a phone either to a desktop or notebook computer. When I saw the Archos tablet I was interested because there was finally a large screen android device.

QVC had a deal on recently to try the tablet and return if not happy. Normally I am not bothered by such deals but as I was interested I took advantage of the offer.

Whilst waiting I looked online for reviews or any kind of hacking. Now some might say that this where my issue started but please read on. Gareth over at mobiletech addicts also got an archos where you can read his experience here. There is also the podcast here where you can hear his experience. Whilst Gareth didn't hack the tablet he did find it unstable with thr stock android.

Because the tablet isn't a google approved device you are automatically locked out of the applications marketplace and a google experience. However through following this simple guide.

Whilst this really opened up the device because I could install more applications and really experience the internet the onscreen keyboard was bad so had to be replaced. The device was very quick at multitasking and switching between applications. But you couldn't access paid applications so although applications like roadsyns could install, work and provide an exchange experience you couldn't buy them through the application marketplace and dataviz never responded to my email requesting assistance. Push email, contact and calendar sync are all a reality.

Reading pdfs in full screen and ebooks using fbreader would mean I no longer need my ebook reader. This coupled with the media player and dvr facility make this device a great convergence possibility. Lastly the large satnav screen with traffic updates it was all looking great.

Then it crashed, constant reboots and then I had to wipe it. The wipe removed all of my media. In the end I packed the device up and sent it back for a refund.

I have been here too many times in the past, recognised the same issues again and promptly walked away.

In summary its a great device with potential and really shows what an android tablet could do. But, archos need to iron out the bugs, get official google experience onto the device and bolt on a 3g modem.

Then it will be a killer device.

Holding out for a HTC Hero

2009-11-29T13:21:00.001Z

Excuse the lame title but this has really been a long wait. You may ask am I referring to the review or a phone that I can finally get on with? Well the answer is both.

I had always decided to avoid Android because I wasn't impressed with the lack installation space available and because you cannot install applications onto the SD card. After beginning to get numb over Nokia and their poor release of the n97 plus the boredom of the e75. I thought that I would take a punt at android and get a phone. As there was now more choice over the g1 I was looking at either the HTC magic or hero. Again because I didn't want to spend too much and because I thought a Google version of Android would be better than HTC's implementation I purchased the magic.

At first the experience was great because I wasn't running out of space for installation. The phone worked smoothly and I enjoyed having a central location for application installs just like on the iPhone. However what I did find over time is the magic lacked RAM and was prone to slowing down. Plus the more I was reading and listening to about the hero I should have really got this phone.

I had always enjoyed playing around with a palm pre emulator with the synergy integration and out of the box experience with exchange. To get this on the magic meant purchasing applications but it was built into the hero natively. I tried rooting the magic and ran into issues with cooked ROMs so left the stock Google Rom on. Plus this meant I could get ota updates to android without having to reflash the phone each time.

But I still missed the synergy experience and multitouch so I went out and bought the HTC hero sim free from carphone warehouse. The price was acceptable over the counter considering it would only be a little cheaper online.

Unboxing the hero it feels about the same weight as the magic but the actual feel of the phone is not smooth but like a rubber texture. Also I believe the screen has a special texture that doesn't retain the grease from your fingers. Before setting up the phone I flashed it with the latest Rom from HTC. Again this was quite painless but wasn't as easy as the magic which did an ota update. I really do enjoy not being tied to a pc to do things with smartphones. Unlike the iPhone where you need itunes I do at least get some independence with Google android albeit not as much with the HTC version.

Set up was less painless than I'd thought because as soon as I entered my Google credentials mail started syncing. Whereas with the magic I had to enter the o2 apn details for internet and mms with it being a Vodafone handset. On entering the app store I could see all of the apps that I had purchased. I then spent several hours installing over the 100 applications that were previously on my magic. I was very surprised that other than copilot the apps I had bought could install again to another handset without asking for codes.

Initial thoughts were how fluid the HTC sense UI is. I have some social networking integration similar to synergy on the palm. I was disappointed to see although the hero has more RAM and it ran smoother than the magic, that the application install space was less than the magic. I have yet to get to no free space. Whilst it was a barrier stopping me getting an android handset, it still needs fixing and like symbian allow installation to the sd card. Further android needs to allow root access out of the box without the need for cooked Roms which then gives me access to tethering and more configurable options.

The whole ethos of an open os is to allow openness in my mind and I hate the sandbox approach of closing the door in my face. By all means like the n810 and palm make it a special key access to switch to the mode but give me the option. When Google removed the option of dev g1 phones not being allowed access to the app store for fear of copying is just plain stupid, but I digress.

The hero keyboard works well and responds quickly in both landscape and portrait. Sometimes if there is an app hogging the CPU it will slow the phone and the keyboard entry. But I have found that if you use a task killer app you can manage this. Android manages the applications currently running like windows mobile. Should it need more RAM it just closes applications down. All very well but I want the choice and I would hope like symbian there was a mode to run an application as a system app which ensures it always stays resident. In theory each app within android runs in its own virtual machine. You can leave a background process running for example a pod catcher which downloads your podcasts. This process uses little memory and when you want to play the podcast it will load the full fat application. Whilst this model sounds good on memory usage I have found I am never confident an app stays resident and when the phone boots it loads up everything. An application like start-up auditor can help manage the boot time applications without the need for root access but again I am not confident it works after mixed results.

After one month of use I am still enjoying the phone. The ability to share media with Twitter, Facebook or email with a few clicks is a breeze. I use twidroid for Twitter the pro version which is about the best and will hopefully soon be on par with gravity on s60.

For Google news I use newsrob which allows me to read offline and share the news. This then is picked up by feedsproxy to send to my Twitter. I am using a free app called blogaway to blog and is what I am using to type this post on. Copilot is installed for navigation and whilst it is good it lacks traffic alerts. For email and calendar I use the native apps. For web I use the native browser as it has multitouch. I use gbackup to send my sms,mms and call information to my Google mail. I have recently purchased mybackup to backup my phone to sd.

Each day is like an adventure where there is always an upgrade that needs doing via the app store or I can tweak the phone a little more. Even with this flexibility I read somewhere that people see android just for techies. Yes this is partially true but even out of the box with no tweaking the phone is usable for normobs. A friend of my who after using my hero has just got one. He had a Nokia 5800 like me back in January but returned it due to the lag during use. He is not a power user but knows a fudge when he sees one. I paid the same amount of £400 for my 5800 (as my hero) because I imported it from Hong Kong. Compared to the hero for money or let's say the cheaper magic it is still bad. Although recent firmwares have fixed some issues it still lacks RAM. This, the n97 fiasco has moved me away from s60. I still have 4 nokias but they are now back up phones. Only my e63 issued daily as a work phone.

Again I want to try the n900 but don't want to pay for the privilege again to avoid expensive disappointment.

The weak points of the hero are the camera. You need to get an app such as fxcamera zoom or snap photo pro but the latter doesn't really work. These apps improve the camera when taking pictures but the hero could do with a flash because in poor light the pictures are bad. I use an app called scan2pdf to photograph documents and convert them to pdf for emailing. A flash would brighten the pages. I use dogcatcher as my pod catcher which has a facility to stop and bookmark my place in the podcast when I turn my car engine off whilst streaming.

The built-in speaker is moderately good but could be louder. But when using the Bluetooth over ad2p for streaming audio it is terrible, but not audio wise. The phone connects to my car stereo but still insists although connected playing the sound over the internal phone speaker. This results in havoc where I either have to reboot the phone or switch Bluetooth off and back on again. The Bluetooth stack is a pain and I am slowly getting to the point of using an audio lead.

I have just bought an extended battery which claims is 3000mah where the supplied one is 1350mah. The phone is a little thicker but as I use it each day as my internet tablet I kill the battery easily. I am mainly browsing over WiFi at home and hsdpa and find it responsive. But I have found the WiFi sometimes needs manually forcing to connect just as the Bluetooth through the recycling of the option.

The browser that is built in is very capable and the multitouch is excellent and a lot better than the magic's zoom buttons.

I have documents to go installed so there are full rich apps available and hopefully more will appear such as a proper banking solution like ms money. The built-in pdf reader will read a 100mb pdf for viewing.

The phone could do with an audio and video editor and a lot more media apps like the iPhone. But like the iPhone I like the simplicity of the app store, the cheap prices and choice of apps including free ones that are available. I have bought many symbian apps and have found good ones are available for android that are free or a lot cheaper. The gaming scene is quiet where there is nothing as flashy as the iPhone but then I only play simple addictive games such as solitaire of tetris.

In conclusion the hero has been a good choice. Sure its rough on some edges and can be improved hardware wise. Whilst some issues can be fixed in software such as missing functionality and installation space (or lack of). For now Android is the future for me and has certainly been a dark horse. I will definitely sing its praises to people. I have just ordered an Archos Android tablet to see how it works in this form factor so will post a review of this soon.

O2 Unlimited again another example

2009-11-02T20:45:00.001Z

Another story online about o2s inability to say how much unlimited web data really is. http://ping.fm/HrI7w

HTC Hero

2009-10-23T18:38:00.002+01:00

Due to delays in the n900 and the lack of software both in this and the Palm Pre application catalog I decided to purchase a HTC Hero.

There was some hesitation wondering if I could easily transfer my original HTC Magic software over where kind soles on Twitter indicated this should be easy.

I opted to get the sim free version from carphone warehouse. Setting the phone up took a couple of hours as I had over 100 applications to reinstall. Thankfully from entering my Google credentials the app market recognised what I had purchased and allowed me to download and reinstall the apps again.

Overall I am happy with the phone and find it a lot more responsive than the magic. This is no doubt helped by the additional RAM available for the Hero.

The other difference is the application installation space is smaller than the magic.

However the changes that HTC have done to Android including built-in exchange support and the sense UI make this one hell of a phone. Also the multi touch on the browser is great and really should be standard on Google Android now

Whilst ota updates are not supported yet, the current rom seems stable and it is good to see what Android can do when you give Android some track with which to accelerate by not being restricted by Google.

Long term there is potential but the snap dragon based Android phones are looking more appealing over the pre and n900.

Compared to the Hero these will certainly have some catching up and overtaking to do now the Hero has set the pace on that track.

Back to the Future - O2 Part II

2009-10-04T01:45:00.003+01:00

As part of the excessive usage on unlimited web for O2 in addition to the text warning you get a letter. The letter was from the Credit and Risk department. I called them up to try and find out some more information and whilst it was a pleasant conversation the information again was conflicting to what I was told the previous week.

On this occasion I was told the make of phone was irrelevant and the fact that I was using my HTC Magic instead of the E75 I got on my new contract. The issue was still the amount of data that I had downloaded. If you can recall it had been 6gb the previous month where there was no issue. This month it was 1gb and this is what had triggered the cease and desist text and letter.

During my conversation I said I liked to manage my bill so I am not over using my allocated allowances. Bearing in mind the Internet is defined as unlimited web with an excessive policy where you cannot tether the phone to a PC, use VOIP or stream video/audio and download via P2P.

Before moving to unlimited web when I got a simplicity SIM I asked about download podcasts and was told it was okay to do this. Again I was encouraged to use the service even though I said I do use it a lot. Then, before I signed up for another 18 month contract to get the E75 I had the same conversation again and the answers were the same.

However, I am now being told that my downloading podcasts to listen at another constitutes streaming but they were not prepared to argue the technical differences between downloading and streaming. As you know streaming is either listening or watching a live broadcast. Whereas what I was doing was no different than downloading a file and using it a later date.

Also in the previous week I was told they had no high usage packages available where unlimited web was the highest they did. However now, they had 3gb for £15 and 10gb for £30.

Whilst I have changed my habits quite easily to reduce the load on their network from my usage by using other mobile broadband packages I have. For example I have just purchased a 3 Mifi with 5gb at £15 of which proves in itself O2 are not competitive.

I am of the opinion O2 need to wake up and realise they are selling smart phones of which can fully function and replace a PC. The Iphone, the Pre and many Nokias can do a lot more than the feature phones they are also selling. The customer care were surprised that I had managed 6gb on a phone without tethering and didn't appreciate what you can actually do on a phone.

Its a real shame as a network they have very good smart phones but neither understand what they are capable of, restrict what one can do with them on their network and then don't appreciate and really understand the technologies available. Since when did download an audio file to listened to a later date constitute streaming?

It makes me wonder if their network can actually cope with the influx of smart phones and as more people demand to be online all of the time.

When I hear podcasts (not streamed) of the USA where the networks either have all you can eat tariffs or you pay for 5gb and you can actually use this for video and audio streaming as long as you don't go over your allowance. I sometimes wonder if we in the UK are actually ahead of the pack or merely following.

For the interim I will abstain and not over use my allocation on the network as I do need access to the Internet. Its not that much of a problem as I used to do this before I moved onto web unlimited. But it really feels like a step back in time.

The day they offer a proper grown up tariff that is an all you can eat is when I will bite their hands off for it. However, as soon as my contract is up I will be shopping around for a sim only deal. I really only need data on my tariff because calls and sms can all be done over data. I also cannot wait for Google Voice to come to the UK.

But until this time comes I will wait to see if anything changes....

Ten Pence Mix

2009-09-21T17:20:00.002+01:00

When I was young I can remember going to the newsagents and asking for a ten pence mix. The shop owner would count out ten sweets (or the equivalent) and I would hand over ten pence and then have a bag full of sweets. Back then you knew what you would you get when you paid the money and would be able to sort out any problems should there be a sweet missing.

Today shouldn't be too dissimilar in that you pay for service and you either get it or you don't. There are always issues with the quality of service thus you have to look at the terms and conditions.

Now take O2 where I have been a customer of theres' for a number of years. I pay so much a month I get 600 minutes and 500 texts. If I use them the usage decreases until it gets to zero then I start paying.

I used to pay for their data bolt on called data max at 3GB a month where I knew I had up to 3GB of data allowance. Through being made redundant and reducing costs I decided to go to O2 simplicity where I was told the web bolt on was "unlimited" but subject to either a fair usage or excessive usage policy. On enquiring with the O2 customer advisor I pressed the person to try and get an actual figure explaining I use my phone for web, email and podcasts where the latter does use a lot of bandwidth. I got told you will be okay sir there is no limit. So I used this tariff for several months downloading between 2 and 4GB per month. I upgraded in May and got an E75 and pressed them again on the limit as I had changed my tariff explaining why and was told again no issue sir. So the latter months I have been using the phone to download and listen to my podcasts. Bearing in mind that I try to download out of hours because there are 10 weekly podcasts that I follow, you can understand I use a lot of bandwidth. I don't use my phone for tethering as I can do everything I need to on my handset.

Three months ago I used 3GB, the month after I used 4GB and last month I used 6GB.

I have now been sent a text that I have gone over my data allowance where I need to either cut down or get a bigger Bolt On to keep using the Internet.

Now this is where my issues start, firstly the web unlimited bolt on I have been told today is the largest they have therefore they cannot offer me an alternative.

On asking for the actual max amount I can download I am not being told a figure only that it is unlimited. However, I was then told not to download too much as I will get another text and might have my service restricted. I iterated that this is like driving down a road where there is a speed camera and then you get caught for speeding. However no one can tell me how fast I should be going.

This is an absolute joke and how they can advertise an unlimited tariff even with an excessive or fair usage policy and they cannot tell me what this is, is beyond belief. They are happy to take my money and police what I am doing but give me no clear guidance or indication on what the limit is.

When I used to pay for 60MB per month a few years ago I managed my usage to ensure I did not encure any charges. I would like to do this again but they they cannot help me.

Further as the conversation progressed it turns out because I using an HTC magic this is not an approved O2 phone so for an other reason I have been told to curb my usage. If I had either used the original E75 or had an IPhone then this would not have been an issue as O2 are aware they can potentially use a large amount of data and as such would not have said anything. I explained I like technology and will change my phone several times a year. However on this basis they could not sell me an upgrade as I was not due. I find the latter argument rubbish because @gerrymoth is on O2 and was on their Sim only deal and I know he switches the handsets he is testing and he to got a warning.

Therefore reading between the lines on this are O2 only telling me I can use the handset I have bought on their network, or are they telling me I can only use approved phones.

They could not put me onto an IPhone tariff, they cannot tell me what the cap is or the reporting levels through the month so I can manage my usage, they can only tell me it is unlimited.

Whilst I can make changes to my usage as not to engage the wrath of O2, it is about time there was a shake up in the industry and they gave clear guidelines on what unlimited means rather than advertising complete hogwash.

The gadget show ran a campaign on home broadband that was successful in getting the major ISPs to change their T&Cs and actually come clean on what they mean.

A similar shake down needs to happen in the mobile industry to all of the networks including O2 and be clear on what I am buying or at least offer a true unlimited tariff for more money of which I would glady pay for.

Just like my ten pence bag of sweets I know when the bag is empty I can either buy another bag or wait until next month. Rather than being told halfway through the bag that I am eating too much.

To Hell and back again

2009-09-04T00:12:00.004+01:00

The HTC Magic has been driving me mad today. It has taken me over 5 minutes to write a tweet to the extent I ended up slapping the phone through frustration. Although this calmed my nerves I ended up looking at cooked roms for the phone hoping it would speed it up.

After advise from people on twitter I downloaded a recovery image to put phone into a mode where I could back it up to SD. I also used the Astro file manager to back up my apps as well to SD. Then using Linux (Ubuntu 8.10) I re flashed the phone and went upon my way restoring it.

The Asto File manager was bad in that it would allow me to bulk select all apps for backup, but I had to individually restore the apps back onto the phone. Further even though I had restore the apps individually the market application would not acknowledge this. This means I would not be notified of any application upgrades unless I reinstalled the application via the market place. This, coupled with the phones failure to sync again using road sync prompted me to restore the phone from the backup I had taken. Further the all of my settings had gone so I would need to input logins and passwords again etc....

Before installing the cooked rom, I used an emergency recovery rom which used a mode call fast boot and an application called nandroid to backup the android to SD. I merely reversed this process to restore the phone to its previous state. But again, the applications although restore from SD card would not show up in the market place. Through using an application called App Manager this somehow allowed me to go into the market place, rebuild the database of installed applications so I could complete the online upgrades. I have removed the offending application hoping this will resolve my speed issues.

I am still humming and ahhing about the N900 and wonder should I impulse buy, but in the interim my Magic is what it once was. I will observe the cooked roms and choose another in time what should assist with my speed issues. Lastly, I believe Android 2 will be out soon so multitouch will be available and hopefully speed bug fixes.

The lesson(s) from this tale are, don't use cooked roms unless you know what you are doing and don't run too much on your android unless it dies....

I will root the phone on the original rom that is installed so I can tether and run scheduled reboot applications on the phone. But looking at the windows mobiles, Palm(s), S60 and UIQ phones I have had in addition to Android. All of them are bad when backing up and restoring as they do not restore the phone fully. They always miss something.

I can only recall my old Psion 3 series and 5 series over 10 years ago where you could run a scheduled backup. The battery would die and you would loose you main system disk data. You could then power on the device, run a restore of which would restore the device perfectly.

The question is we now have User Data Protection areas (UDP) on phones, flash memory and external storage, yet none of these devices whilst slightly more sophisticated than the Psions still cannot do a complete restore.

Thank goodness for the cloud as this is where I store my data. But as I have said before, the cloud is a great backup but always ensure you have another parachute (additional backup) incase the first chute fails.....

N900 Do I or don't I?

2009-09-02T20:56:00.004+01:00

I have been an N810 user for over a year where I originally made the purchase of the device as I was disappointed using a converged device like the E90 as there were always issues browsing the web. I thought the idea of going back to two devices with a less powered mobile phone and using this to tether with the N810 would be ideal. Although the N810 was a good device, from being used to a converged device for a number of years the idea of carrying two devices again was daunting. Further while the N810 was good for web browsing it was slow. In the end I ended up hacking the N810 to utilise the internal 2gb of SD space to allow me to install more applications but ultimately it has been gathering dust and is either used as an ebook reader for my emagazine or if I want to tinker. The last word 'tinker' is quite important because in reality this is all I can do with the device.

There aren't really any productivity applications out there other than abiword and gnu sheet for business use. The mail client although been upgraded is still crap not being able to really view html pages. The web browser does work but is slow and the replacement fennec browser again is really slow. This coupled with the poor battery life, terrible multimedia support without encoding to a usable video format and poor low volume don't really sing any kind of praises for the device. Yes, I can carry it in my pocket, it does have a keyboard but the design of the keyboard as a slide does not work for me. Further there is a sudden lack of syncing either to exchange or google. For exchange the recommendation is to use OWA but why do I want to log into a web browser to read my email. For Google sync there is a client of which needs installing and again it is somewhat cumbersome. However I had always thought the marrying of the N810 with a phone would be a good idea.

This leads me onto the N900 of which this concept is now a reality. But... The battery is smaller than the N810 where realistically you would only get 4 hours from an N810 on constant use. The screen is resistive where after using the N810 it is usable but capacitive would be great. But again, because the device does need a stylus you cannot exactly have a capacitive screen although someone is working on a stylus that will work with one. 32gb of storage is good, but how much of this like the N810 can we use to install applications? the N810 could have upto 32gb with micro sdhc cards, but the actual storage space with the internal flash ram, the swap file and preloaded OS meant you were still limited. The camera at 5 mpx is great, HSPA built in is great but again and little things like USB charging are welcome.

But wait a sec..... haven't we been here before with the N97 - the flagship device? Now there is the mini N97 again all of the N97 problems pre packaged in a smaller tin.

I currently have an HTC Magic, a welcome relief to S60 and I have been amazed of how much I am enjoying android. Later in the year the Palm Pre will hit the UK, again another device that I have tried with the SDK emulator and like but let down through lack of software.

So getting back to my question, part of me wants to order the N900 to see if it is what I have been looking for. The idea of a mobile computer with telephony rather than the other way around is for me the correct specification. However, recent Nokia announcements and hype such as the N97, 5800 and S60v5 and through previously owning an N810 are seriously putting me off. Lastly the N900 will cost £499 to order - that's half a grand.... I can go away for this, pay my mortgage and bills for one month or even save it. I was stung last year being eager to get the I8510 another all singing all dancing phone in spec but let down with bad firmware and support from Samsung.

Nokia will no doubt fix any problems the N900 quickly as they appear or at least there is the maemo community to do the work for them. This in itself will help the device become successful.

But overall, I think through writing this piece that I will wait as Q4 has many other things that will be happening. There was once a time I would have pressed Buy Now for example the Nokia 9500, E90, E71 and E63. But now I am more wise and frugal I will take a back seat let the cloud of hype surrounding the launch settle and wait to see what actual users are saying rather than the spin machine.

I may be wrong but ultimately that £500 can stay in the bank earning a little interest then when and if an opportunity of the ultimate device shows itself I can consider a purchase.

Copilot Live on Android

2009-08-26T07:29:00.003+01:00

I will be posting an initial impressions blog of my HTC Magic in a few days but this morning I was using the phone for sat nav and it was a major failure. On my normal route to work a road was closed where I was forced to go another way. Because I was not familiar with the area I fired up my Co Pilot Live 8 Sat Nav on the HTC Magic and this is where it began screwing up.

For some reason it insisted it needed setting up again with my local language, choice of voice navigation, imperial or metric measurements then to accept the disclaimer. The last time this happened I managed to select maps of Italy that required a complete reinstall. Considering I was using the sat nav at the weekend why did it do this?

Then the icing on the cake it already had my route in from the weekend (several stops) and insisted on routing me to these destinations. Trying to clear each one out (it has to be done indivdually) resulted in slow menus, bad response and general sluggishness as it was trying to calculate the route at the same time I was trying to clear it.

ALK need to put a cancel route button on the first menu page and get the above issue sorted to ensure the product is a success. Like always, when it works it is great but on this occasion it was a major fail.

The idea of using a combined phone and PND (personal navigation device) is appealing as there is only one piece of equipment. But when there are other factors of the phone such as bad software or rouge processes hogging it this can seriously affect the navigation part. It is at this point why I like stand alone PNDs preferably built into the car as they only do one thing but these do cost a lot.

So for the interim I will have to grin and bear the pain if it screws up again....

A photo from my HTC Magic

2009-08-16T15:09:00.001+01:00

The first picture taken on my phone. Can anyone identify the beetle and how to get rid of it?

The android cometh....

2009-08-14T14:06:00.001+01:00

I have recently got back from holiday where I used Garmin maps on my E75 to redirect me around the traffic enroute to home. Garmin with google maps and occasional use of Ovi Maps was great on holiday for getting about. A quick lookup on google maps to find places then using the postcode in garmin to get me there by car. Or using the same postcode in Ovi maps for walking navigation. One wonders why we ever need maps. Well, due to the lack of 3g coverage and because I hadn't preloaded the Ovi Maps I still either needed a paper map or the preloaded Garmin maps.

On the journey home it was different because my phone required 5 manual reboots because Garmin kept freezing. I had even removed all of my memory hog applications to give it room to breathe with no luck. It worked fine taking me to my destination using this strategy until we neared the location. A swift stop and reboot fixed this, but why did I need 5 reboots yesterday. For this reason I love dedicated PND (personal navigation devices) They only do one thing of which is navigate and rarely crash. Whereas smartphones of which includes UIQ,S60 and windows mobile all have fits. If someone calls you they frustrate whether to take the call or carry on navigating to the extent they stop doing both. Then they rarely switch back to the navigation application after handling the call.

Finally I decided when I got back that I would look for an alternative device again. Whilst the E75 is a good device recent issues like this, the device slowing down (I only hard reset it 2 weeks ago) and now the slider is wobbling and the chrome surrond broken. I need a break from it so again its a good opportunity to try the competition as it will probably take a few weeks to repair, then its the usual 6 hour reinstall. I had bought 3 plastic surround cases to protect the phone but they all broke so off it will go back to the shop over the next few days.

I had rejected the thought of an android device earlier this year as there is a lack of space available to installed applications. However after listen to a recent podcast it is now possible to installed applications to the sd card if you either root the phone or installed an application to assit with this process.

Looking at the equivalent androids applications that I use on s60 the only missing ones are sms and call filter and an accounts manager like flying money. However I didn't have time to survey the homebrew libraries to see what is available there.

Looking at the phones for a little extra than a G1 I could get a G2 and recently the HTC hero is out. On reading about the hero, HTC have bastardised the Android OS for the better, but it does mean when Googke update Android you will not be able to update it OTA (over the air).

For this reason I decided to go with the G2 ie, Vodafone branded HTC Magic. I have ordered all of the accessories and it should be here over the coming days. There are several applications that I need to buy such as an Exchange sync, Ms office editors and sat nav but hopefully can test these beforehand.

The cupcake Os aka android 1.5 now looks more mature and it is possible to root (jailbreak) the phone. However there may be issues purchasing applications from market. But as usual these are all challenges ahead.

At this time I cannot comment if the device will last me. I had thought the E75 would have done but I have already said I am tiring of this. My 5800 is going on Ebay to part fund this purchase and possibly either the E75 or E90 but alas I do like the last device a lot. Nokia have really missed the boat with s60v5 so I seen no point hanging onto the device. 8 months on it is still slow, severe lack of ram and clunky to use. The G2 may well end up the same as my first iphone of which lasted only 2 months.

Later on in the year the E72 looks promising and the Pre is just around the corner. I have tinkered with the Pre Emulator and am imprest with the UI, how easy it is to set up and the general feel when using WebOS.
However there is a serious lack of applications available of which doesn't seem to be increasing in number. I am beginning to think until either the device reaches the rest of the world or if we wait another year, like android. Only then will we see more applications.

So the andoid finally cometh to me.... But how long will it stay?

Profimail Issues

2009-07-21T17:14:00.003+01:00

For an email client on all of my 4 symbian phones I use Profimail because it provides a desktop like experience, is highly configurable and support rules for filtering. I have been using it for over a year and pride in using it over the standard nokia email client including the new nokiamessaging client.

The number of issues with nokia messgaing over the past months have had me laughing at people who use it and the number of times it failed. However today we the profimail users were the ones to be laughed at.

For some reason we could not collect email for the majority of the day and we were getting weird connection 300/301 errors please contact the application vendor messages. At one point I had a blue screen of death (BSOD) which whilst common in windows was most unwelcome on the phone. But I had to laugh at least I didn't need to reboot.

Anyway the issue was because the software we had purchased couldn't connect to the registration server to see if we had a legitimate version. Apparently there is an option to have his removed but you then lose the portability of being able to move the application to a new handset.

Eventually at the eleventh hour after the forum here was clogging up with message and after several emails the application began working. LCG responded with the email below:

Dear customer,
we acknowledge that our registration server was down today for few hours, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused to you.
We tracked and fixed the error. We'll also put more failsafe code into future version of ProfiMail, so that any problems on our side don't harm you as customer.
Once again our apologies, and hopefully you'll love to use ProfiMail in a future.

Best Regards,
Lonely Cat Games Team

So it turns out there is no acutal redundancy available in their Registration server which effectively means the application will stop working. Why on earth it needs to check in with this server each time I collect email especially after I have paid for the software is beyond belief. Then there lack of acknowledging there is an issue either via the forums or using facebook or twitter is very poor.

Being in IT I know you get engrossed in the issue at hand but you also need to remember your customers as we are the ones who pay you.

The issue of checking the license each time reminds me of the WGA issues in Windows. It is a shame when a company needs to police the ones who have purchased the software. I appreciate they have to look after their interests but there are better ways. When I purchase the software they have my imei so they can supply a key. They could even employ a check each time an update is completed to see if the install is legal. Lastly, they could even use twitter with NAGIOS or provide a simple web page providing server update statuses.

Whilst I could use other email clients available to me I will still continue to use Profimail for its featuresn and hope that they change both the way they treat their customers in not providing updates of issues and that the license check is permanently removed or a alternative is found.

Multitasking or switching

2009-07-19T14:37:00.001+01:00

I can recall the first time I used a HP UNIX computer at De Montfort University back in 1991. The screens were huge at 21" where for back then both these machines and screens would have cost thousands of pounds. The workstations themselves had a RISC processor and 32mb of ram and a hard drive. Previously I had used a PC with Windows 3, an Atari ST and Apple MAC. All except the atari could run multiple applications concurrently but unless you had enough memory on the PC, like the apple mac it would task switch. This meant the application in the foreground would run and other applications in the background would sit and wait until they were brought to the front to continue processing. Windows had a 386 enhanced mode which would allow mutlitasking and you could set the priority times for dos applications. The HP UNIX boxes at university could multitask properly with all of the applications. I could be compiling, on IRC, doing FTP downloads, emailing and possibly some text editing all together over a 9600 baud link that was shared with several 1000s of computers at the university. Back then I could see the benefit of multitasking and when Psion brought out the 3a I eventually got my first PDA (a psion 3c) and was running many applications at once.

I recently posted on twitter that I run 12 applications concurrently on my phone. I also had to chuckle when I read Engadget where the editor was struggling to do several things on his iphone. Possibly if he had several phones with him he would have been able to accomplish his tasks more easily and quickly.

If I look at my usage I will always focus on the one task and occasionally switch between applications if I know an email has arrived or twitter has updated. But there are times such as when I am using flyingmoney to reconcile my accounts whilst the web browser is open. Or, if I am in the middle of doing something else and I don't want distrurbing then my call handling software will take control - all happening in the background and without the need to close down applications.

Apple's recent idea of using push notifications is good in principle but after hearing that people are stopped in the middle of their current task. They then have to manage the notice, then can carry on. But if they receive for example several messages they have to deal with each one separately whereas I can just ignore them.

There are many reasons why we should not multitask because not focusing on one task makes us unproductive. Reasons not to multitask. I find having the flexibility of being able to do several things together I can still focus on the task at hand and switch as the need dictates.

Mac os used to task switch where background tasks used to stay still until they were brought to the foreground. Whereas windows applications would in a round about way multitask but not really properly until windows 95. Before Windows I also tried Os/2 which was definitely more grown up. As some of you are aware some of this technology underpinned Windows Nt. I also recall seeing a piece of software called Deskview X which would allow you to run concurrent Os way back in the early 90s and I decided back then that this would be useful but was sadly too expensive for me. It is only in the last few years with virtual machine technology that has allowed me to do this properly. I would envisage that we will also will be able to do this on our mobile devices in the near future.

Many commentators have been knocking Nokia for the S60 UI saying it is outdated and not as intuitive or elegant as the iphone. Whilst there is some degree of truth behind this, I do believe that the UI of S60 can and will evolve into something better if not comparable to the iphone. Again symbian the underlying OS like the iphones OS both are very powerful, can multitask if allowed and are very robust. Whilst I would welcome changes in the S60 ui I would hate to see it limit the devices just like the iphone has, to the extent that it was too simple and it reduced the functionality of not being able to multitask. While I understand Apples approach in trying to limit the number of applications running to ensure the consumer experience and battery life are not affected. Should this ever happen to Symbian then I will be moving to another platform.

In a way the current mobile market is like history repeating itself. In the early days the Psion was the technical superior device. Because it did not evolve and change as the consumer wanted colour screens and form factors such as the palm this could contribute to Nokia's and ultimately Symbians stagnation. At this moment in time I will avoid the word downfall as both Nokia and Symbian are larger players in the market than Psion ever was. They are making structural changes to their organisations and to the partnerships for example the Symbian Foundation, Nokia and Intel partnership, Maemo and QT, Open sourcing (not Saucing.) and Horizon for application development. But what we are not seeing are new and innovative devices just rehashes of old technology.

Nokia have always had two major lines of products with E series and N series. These at some point in time may converge but again I would hope to see that any converged devices whilst simple to use, still allow power users to multitask and work with the machines internals and not like the iphone where the walled garden approach is nice to look at but you are not allowed to stray beyond the fence or walk on the grass.

The E75 still lives on

2009-07-05T22:17:00.001+01:00

It has been over a month now and I am still using my E75 and it is going strong. Even with the v10 firmware the phone is solid. In hind sight I have made the right decision to avoid both the E97 and Omnia HD. It also proves how mature s60v3.2 is to provide a good user experience.

I have read many reviews of the N97 and all have commented saying the build quality of the phone is exceptional but actually using the phone is bad.

I have already blogged about the low memory even before the device came out and I was right. After using the 5800 of which like the N97 is not for power users. Probably in 6 months time when there have been several revisions of firmware the n97 might be worth reviewing especially when the price comes down.

What surprised me recently with the omnia hd was samsung actually have released new firmware. Even after owning the i8510 for 6 months, getting rid of it and then 6 months later there has been no firmware. Because of this I no longer will have a samsung as I cannot afford to spend a lot of money on a feature rich handset which has faults and never gets fixed. A chap I am following on Twitter has an Omnia HD. Being an avid E90 user he thought the N97 was a joke so got the samsung. He is having issues but is persevering.

Looking back over my phone choices over the past year the nokia E series have been the best in terms of build and stability. It is just a shame Nokia cannot release a converged device composed of the e series build and stability with the high end features of the n series.

The E75 is quick to respond, has a good camera for stills and video, great for messaging and is comfortable to type on.
Everything I have thrown at it works and it continues to surprise me that I have actually found a good work horse. Okay, there is no wvga, no touch, no stereo speakers and no 3" screen. But after having and trying several devices with this configuration and being disappointed. What am I missing? Just the hassle of these not working.

When I had my E90 I thought wouldn't it be great to have a smaller device with an integrated keyboard. That's why I got the 5800 but I soon got bored because of its limitations. The E63 and similar formats are great to use but a little bulky. Then enter stage left the E75. Both the size and hidden keyboard make this phone an ideal form factor.

My only criticism is qvga where I didn't think it would bother me. I do get sick of scrolling or squinting when trying to read. If there was a device with a full screen and then a slide out keyboard then that would be the next one to consider.

But until that time the E75 is still the choice.

Digital Britian

2009-06-17T08:09:00.001+01:00

The following report on Digital Britain that read about on BBC News is 245 pages of drivel. It was commissioned in October 2008 and is still yet to be completed. From skimming over the report it looks like a preface on what they intend to do in the actual report.

My fear is by the time it is completed and actioned it will be far out of date and as such will require another report. Whilst they are claiming 2mb broadband links for everyone other countries such as South Korea already have 50mb.

Whilst companies such as Virgin are putting fibre into the home, BT are still using copper, are asking for more money yet still take £12.50 per month rental for a copper wire to deliver these services. This in itself is too old hat and I don't have a choice if I just want broadband and not telephone.

Until their monopoly and stranglehold on our telecoms is removed I believe we will never be leading the Digital revolution merely following.

The next generation

2009-06-15T20:12:00.001+01:00

June is slowly becoming a month like christmas where everyone is waiting for announcements on the next generation of phones. This June already we have seen the release of the nokia N97, the Palm Pre and will shortly see the Apple Iphone 3GS.

Initially when the N97 was announced last year I had thought this was the ultimate Nokia to have. However after having a 5800 and almost killing the device expecting too much. My appetite for the N97 has been waviering. Initially I heard rumours of a slow processor and then memory issues. This in addition to me using an E63 influenced me to look at the e series devices again. I have had an E90 for over two years and recently blew the dust off it to use instead of the 5800 and before I got the E63 then the E75. It is still set up to go as a backup handset as soon as the newer ones fail me.

However looking at the recent next generation handsets the specs of a keyboard, hsdpa, built in gps and 3 megapixel autofocus camera are almost exactly the same. So when I look at the G2, the phone 3GS and Pre I find myself asking what else have they to offer. My E75 has the same specification and I am enjoying using this device because of the form factor plus it is smaller than the E90 for everyday use.

I have already mentioned that I have avoided the N97 due to memory and I am not prepared to part with my cash for disappointment.

The iphone 3GS whilst better specs with hsdpa, video recording and finally cut and paste is of no use as I need multitasking. What also surprises me is if you jailbreak an old iphone it can do video recording, mms and cut and paste. Why do apple force people to upgrade for new features when the current versions can do it?

The G2 whilst it looks interesting the number of applications for Android is too small.

Nokia haved just updated the e71 with the e72 which is of a similar form factor has a 5 megapixel camera, s60v3.2, a slightly modified keyboard, 3.5mm jack and a digital compass. It is a real shame this device wasn't announced a few weeks ago as I would have got this instead of my e75. I really do like the form factor and the spec of the device is excellent.

This then leaves the Pre. I am following this one closely and am hoping a gsm version will be released some time soon. Stuff magazine believe we will see this device in September 2009. Palm have been around for many years and have reinvented themselves with this device which will hopefully see them as pioneers again. Whilst the pre has a similar spec to the e75 and iphone 3gs minus 32gb of storage. The new webos in the phone is based on linux, can multitask and has a new gesture control system for driving the phone.

The pre has already been jailbroken and it will be interesting to see if palm follows other people's route of plugging the holes. Whilst there are security issues because of issues like this, I believe that the process of jailbreaking the iphone has contributed immensely to the application markets. Also with the pre being based on linux I am hoping just like the nokia internet tables such as the n800 and n810 that updates to the OS will be dynamic just as in linux, without the need to completely reflash the phone.

For me, the pre offers great web browsing, multitasking, ability to install 3rd party applications and is feature packed hardware and best of all has a keyboard. I loved the iphone web browsing but the rest of the device was too restrictive and there was no multitasking. I am expecting the pre to deliver the same experience and plug these shortfalls.

I have heard there are some technical issues with the pre and before I look at parting with my money I will investigate. I did this before the n97 and am glad I didn't jump in first and be disappointed.

Synergy on pre sounds really cool where it takes all of the contacts and calendars from google, exchange and facebook etc. It then consolidates these on the phone as one list. Again Palm is leading the way but it will be good to see if other manufacturers come up with something similar.

Being a multiple device user I am keen to see how the pre copes with updating and managing my exchange calendar and contacts alongside my nokias.

I recently tried the google sync for S60 again now it syncs calendar and contacts using mail4exchange. However it didn't want to work on the E75 so I canned the idea after an hour. I switched back to exchange and it just worked seamless. However my hosted exchange provider mail2web is now on exchange 2007 which does not work with evolution via owa. Owa only runs as the light interface via firefox. This has left me now running Outlook 2007 under crossover professional on Ubuntu using RPC over Http. Whilst I can view entries I cannot amend them. So one problem of syncing all my phones goes away so I am not tied to a Pc. But now I cannot view my info directly on the Pc without a half baked solution.

Anyway, after that digression I believe the Pre could be bigger than google android this year but could make or break palm.

Apple, Nokia and Android will continue to get stronger because they are big players. Palm has the potential to be big again but a gsm version of the pre needs to come out soon so the rest of us can try it. Should Palm not be successful with the Pre they should open source the web OS then hopefully this might help it take off. Failing that android and web os might merge but that is just wishful thinking.

Now looking to the second half the year I hope Nokia provide a touch screen version of the communicator with 8 megapixels and 32 gb storage. Hopefully Palm will increase the storage on the pre or add an SD slot. Possibly apple might crack the Iphone with multitasking through their push notifications.

Either way 2010 looks an interesting year already.

How many?

2009-05-19T22:27:00.001+01:00

I have purchased three phones this year already a Nokia 5800, an E63 and recently upgraded to an E75. All of them have three different from factors, features but all run symbian s60. O2 my provider had already contacted me to advise me that I could upgrade but as I was in no rush I wanted to wait.

I was toying with the idea of either the E71 or N97 and bought the E63 as a halfway gap to help me decide if I would like the form factor of the E71. When I originally saw the E61 I just laughed at the size of it which was probably hypocritical of me considering I had a Nokia 9500 and E90 before. However I braved my hypocrisy and got the E63.

First impressions where good where I loved the thumboard and found I can use it either one or two handed for typing. The only real let down for me was the Nokia Maps software which didn't make use of the screen real estate. Therefore I was really close on getting an E71. When NokiaExperts on Twitter got hold of an E71x with S60v3.2 So I then wanted to hold off again and get this. However being a NAM only device I didn't know if there would ever be a EURO model.

So the E71 was looking to be my E90 replacement for the next 18 months.

The thing that surprised me about the E63 was it handled everything I threw at it and just worked. Bearing in mind it is a low priced device it performed better than my 5800 which would either run out of memory or slow down.

I was going to wait for the N97 but after listening to a recent All About Symbian podcast it sounded as if the processor speed and memory issues that plagued the 5800 are present in this device. However this will be confirmed over the coming months.

Because I just want something that works I decided to skip this device and settle for an E series phone because of my experience on the E63, the build quality and the longevity of my E90.

So E71 is still looking good until I looked investigated it further. In a nutshell I dropped this device for the E75 due to its weak camera in terms of quality and lack of 30 fps video recording.

I phoned O2 who could only do the E71 and then I received a phonecall from carphonewarehouse who could do the E75. So I bit the bullet and ordered one.

The build quality is excellent but I am still getting used to the keyboard. As an E90 replacement I am not too sure as I do hope Nokia do release a communicator replacement. However I will persevere with the phone blogging and twittering about it.

I have purchased and loaded all of my sms, call filtering, call recording and other apps such as profimail, officesuite, wavelog and gsync. This weekend I will test the gamin sat nav software instead of the nokia maps. So whilst there is still a lot to do I will hang onto the 5800 to see if the touch improves or the E63 if I just want something that is robust.

The phones do get a good workout from me as I twitter, email, blood browse and occasionally call on them instead of using a Pc. Also I have just started to download all of my podcasts direct to the handset where last month I clocked up 1gb of data.

People ask me how many phones do I have and need. My answer is one at a time as I do like to change and the set I have at the moment allow me to do this comfortably.

In conclusion, it will be interesting to see now long the E75 lasts me and if I do change again soon. Should there be another communicator then that is where my money will be.

Nokia 5800 v21.0.25 and web

2009-05-10T00:59:00.001+01:00

I have recently dusted off my 5800 and updated to the latest firmware over the air (ota). The download was a suprising 4 mb where when I have uswd pc suite it has downloaded over 100mb. Why the latter cannot use the small files, 4mb is better than 100mb over 3g when considering costs!

The download was quick and within ten minutes the phone had rebooted, installed and retained my data.

The touch seems more responsive and web works better but it still has some way to go. When browsing on some sites it takes ages to render them sometimes just as long without pictures being displayed. As I use a phone for internet this is still not acceptable so the phone will be switched off again until the next update.

My e63 which cost less than the 5800 has more storage and ram and works better for web. Whilst I keep going back to the 5800 as I love the touch interface I will not get rid of the phone just yet. There are other browser such as opera mini, ucweb or bolt but these don't use the touch interface too well. That just leaves nokia to pull their socks up and get on and fix it or opera to come up with a better solution.

The 5800 like the n95 in its infancy will require several more updates to fix the storage and memory issues. But for now I will wait and see.....

Jaunty Woes....

2009-04-29T23:12:00.003+01:00

Since putting Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)on my dell laptop there are already issues with a cpu core running at 100% due to Xorg.

I followed a guide to revert back to a previous display driver from Intrepid Ibex but it did not work.

To resolve the issue I found that by switching off remote desktop (vino-server) as suggested here has actually sorted it. Although I did not use 'sudo apt-get remove vino-server', I just went to 'System->Preferences-Remote Desktop' and switched off remote desktop here.

Also the desktop effects would not enable so I could not use Compiz so I fixed it using this where whilst it may cause further issues, for the moment it is working and better than what it was.

The issues are related to the Intel chipset where there is a more in depth explanation here.

However, I will be patient and wait for the issues to be fixed now my laptop is running cooler and not peaking on a CPU core for no reason.

Bring it back!

2009-04-28T19:12:00.002+01:00

I have been an MS Office user since 1991 but over the past 2 years I have been using Open Office. Whilst saw Office 2007 in beta I thought whoever re-designed the interface has been on something especially to come up with the big Fisher Price Buttons. Why change it if it is not broke?

After having to use Office 2007 along with Vista (I am of the same opinion here as Office 2007) for my new job I just cannot get used to the big buttons and illogical layout. It is taking ages to find things especially when I have to roll out documents quickly.

I had heard of a way of bringing the old menus back so did some investigation and found this where you can download a tool to do just this.

Whilst it does not completely replace the Office 2007 menus it adds another menu option called menu. On clicking on this you get the standard office 2003 menu bar and toolbars. I like this idea as it allows me to learn Office 2007 (as I need to) but have the backup of being able to use the old options.

However once I have got used to prepping the said documents in Office 2007 I will be going back to Open Office to see how it copes as I have found the Word/Open Office translation to be fiddly at times.

Hardware Restriction - E220

2009-04-19T14:01:00.005+01:00

I hate it when I buy a new piece of hardware that has intentionally been restricted by the manufacturer or provider to control how it should be used.

Nokia will only allow signed software to be installed onto their phones where a developer has to go through a convoluted process to obtain certification to allow their software to be installed. I have come across freeware that I wish to install but it needs me to get it signed beforehand. Apple lock their phones down so no background applications can run which could potentially hog the CPU and disrupt the experience when using the phone. Then you get mobile network providers that intentionally lock their phones/USB Modems to the network and charge an extortionate fee to unlock them.

Thankfully both the Nokia and Apple phones can both be jailbroken to get around these restrictions although it might be deemed as illegal by each Manufacturer (just google for information).

I have recently switched from a 3 mobile contract to PAYG but the modem was still locked to Three. Seeing as I was out of contract, now owned the modem and didn't want to part with any money to buy the unlock code, I decided to Google for any potential solutions of permanently unlocking my Huawei E220 modem so I can use any sim card.

I came across the following site http://www.unlocke220.blogspot.com/ which has simple instructions for windows (I ran this on Windows XP under vmware on linux). I had an issue trying to complete the flash.bin dump to a file so switched to a windows 2000 machine under vmware, however it should work okay under windows on a dedicated PC.

Now the restriction has been removed I have tried an O2 and Virgin Mobile SIM in the modem and they both work.

It is nice to be free again!

Lets twitter the night away with senoritas who do sway!

2009-04-16T22:08:00.001+01:00

Recently I have set up a twitter account which I have integrated into this blog and to update my facebook. In essence it simplifies things by only having to update in one place.

I was originally using fring to do this but it was consuming too much ram on my 5800. I tried several java clients but did not like them so stuck with Fring.

Then two new clients came on the block a bit like two buses turning up. Gravity and Twittix are both cheap under $10 where I ended up purchasing Gravity first, then trying a trial of Twittix.

Gravity from Mobileways looks very professional, allows multiple twitter accounts to be added and also allows direct posting of images to twitpic or mobypicture.

Twittix cannot send images but again allows multiple accounts but allows you to look at user profiles and follow people direct from searched tweets, two things gravity does not do.

You can do the usual twitter actions of direct messages, reply, follow, retweet or add favourites with both applications. Twittix interface is clean and simple, you get it to auto connect/disconnect, alter the refresh interval and get it notify you on updates. Whilst Gravity has a nice responsive interface it lacks the connect, refresh and notification features of Twittix. Gravity periodically checks for updates, but sadly you have to remember to look at the app for these rather than telling you.

The winner for me is Gravity as I can save searches for topics of interest. Whilst Twittix can search, any searches are not persistent if you close the application down.

Searches in Gravity are persistent and it means in addition to rss I can use twitter as an alternative to give me notifications of news. Also like Twittix it allows me to go direct to the web page if it has been tagged.

I am also using Gravity on my E90, read my previous post about the issue with my 5800 and web browsing.

In conclusion it would be good to see the features missing from both applications in each other, which over time may happen. Whilst both apps are great for twittering, if you are really into twitter for searching then Gravity is the winner. If you want to send pics to twitpic then Gravity is the winner. If you want to use twitter more for messaging then Twittix is best due to notification, connection and update controls.

E90

2009-04-11T14:15:00.001+01:00

Well after some deliberation and the recent issues with the 5800XM I have blown the dust off my Nokia E90 (over 18 months old), reflashed it and then spent three days reinstalling it after two bundled attempts.

The previous atempts failed due to the memory card where I had similar issues to my 16gb card. I had previously used the 16gb in the 5800 but it would not work and became corrupt. A similar issue happened in the E90 the first time. I then tried a 8gb card and the same issue here happened.

Looking at both card they were both class 2, so I tried a class 4, 8gb card on the third attempt and everything now works. When I had the class 2, 8gb card in a N95 it slowed the response of the phone right down. So the moral is, class 2 for devices like ebook readers, cameras or mp3 machines. Class 4 for pdas or mobiles. The 16gb has gone in my camera and the 8gb in my N810 for extra storage.

The E90 is like holding a shoe to your ear when making calls. However it has lots of memory, quite fast processor, can multitask, has a keyboard, large screen, gps, 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo, ad2p, wifi, bluetooth and ip telephony, Whilst the 5800 has all of this minus the hardware keyboard, the 5800 really slows down when doing too much.

You may ask what have I got running on the phone:

Push email
Ip telephony
Gravity for twitter
Push sync to exchange
Sms filter
Call filter
Call recorder
Sms gmail sync

Even with this running it still leaves enough ram for web browsing, blogging and the odd phone call.

The iphone can only do one thing at a time according to apple, however when I jailbroke my 2g iphone I was running ssh, php, web server, call notification software in the background and other apps in the foreground.

I have heard that apple will be be allowing push notifications to the phone where by rather than the phone periodically checking for updates or having a constant connection to the server, apple will notify the phone when something has updated so the phone can connect and make the updates. If this works, it will be a new way of doing push notification and will reduce on data being transferred from having to keep open a constant connection.

So whilst I have been looking for a phone that does everything I want I have had it for the past 18 months stuck in a drawer!

However, looking at new handsets at the moment the contenders are now E90, E71 , N97 or the palm pre. Matt Miller reports the keyboard on the N97 is poor in comparison to the E75 the device he is now favoring. You cannot use a virtual keyboard to input on the N97 as there is no software keyboard unlike the 5800, so you have to flip open the device. Whilst like my E90 I have to do this in order to type it would be good to see both options available like on the N810.

So whilst I am waiting and reading the reviews, I am typing this blog using wavelogger on the E90 as I know I have the yardstick in my hands. Should there be another communicator announcement from Nokia then the N97 will be ball parked until the communicator comes out for comparison.

As the phones cost a lot it will be worth the wait as they do stand the test of time - or at least me!

Which phone next?

2009-04-10T18:22:00.001+01:00

Well the nokia 5800xm has reached the point of another hard reset. Web has died where it will not even load mobile versions of websites. There are two other browsers available such as BOLT or OPERA MINI but these either crash or are too cumbersome with a touch screen

I am pondering the 3g iphone now it has grown up and will finally be able to do copy and paste, mms and sat nav later this year. But I will probably want to jailbreak and then it will be on ebay for sale.

The N97 is due soon and whilst I like the form factor it still has the bad s60 browser. I will need to see the reviews before I jump as I am getting tiered of buying stuff that just doesn't work.

There is windows mobile but there is not much to say on that
The G1 or G2 but again lack of software or memory kills this for me.
I have tried two devices but find it impractical and the n810 I have again has a bad web experience.
Netbooks are too large to carry around all of the time to just get out and use.

So I am on a fence as to what to do?

Some people cannot understand why the phones just fail me. Ultimately I just use their features, buy software and run it on the device as this is what they are designed to do.

So will it be an iphone? At this moment it is a hot candidate as I just want something that works. However I will look at the new phones mentioned above over the next few months before I jump!

New social media apps for 5800XM

2009-04-04T22:53:00.003+01:00

Finally Shozu is available for the 5800XM so videos and pictures can uploaded to a variety of social networking sites including direct blogging and twitter updates.

I have also purchased a native s60 twitter client for s60v5 called Gravity which allows you to update your twitter, to follow other tweets, to complete searches and to respond to direct messages and post pictures. It only cost about £9 including VAT and is worth the money.

Shozu is free, however it is not working very well with my youtube account where I have raised a technical support query with them.

This including Fring means you no longer have to be tied to a pc and you can complete and follow updates whilst you are on the move.

Although these applications can all run in the background I have found they are memory hogs and if you are using other applications in addition, these will slow the phone down. I have found it better to close these applications when trying to use the builtin web application because of the memory limitation.

For x = 1 to y do.....exit loop

2009-03-27T04:10:00.006Z

Its 4am, I haven't really slept well due to my cold, man flu or whatever you so choose to call it. The strategy of the curry and whiskey only partially worked where I should have gone for the vindaloo. However I concede that it will go in its own time.

I was thinking of what to write for my next blog article and I have a few ideas but this week is coming up to a special occasion. As of 29 March I will officially be unemployed for 6 months. Its amazing how quickly the time has flown and to think I have been looking for work for this amount of time. People I have spoken to who also left my last company have found work and some even had two jobs.
It is difficult to gauge why I haven't. I have revised my CV which in itself is an ongoing project to try and reflect who am I and what I can do. I even paid someone to make it look professional but with no luck. I have applied for many jobs and had a few interviews where the last one concluded I was technical this time but too senior (not age) for the position. It scares people when they see someone who was paid well taking a huge pay cut in order to get into a company. They start asking questions like why are you taking such a cut? Will you cope financially? Whilst they do have a right to ask these questions it makes you feel a numpty. When I apply for a job I do so because I want to, I can do it and am aware of the financials and risk that go with taking a lower paid job.

In my last interview the role would have subsquently led to taking over the position of the person who was interviewing me. So you are interviewing someone you like, know they can do the job, will eventually have my job to allow me to move on within the company and I am getting more experience for my dollar. However I think you are too experienced. So whilst I am getting more value for my money I am not going too select you due to this.

So now I have had experience of both scenarios where I was not technical and now I am too experienced. I do hope the next interview will be successful and I can join the ranks of employment again.

So you may be asking why for x = 1 to y do......

You may have seen the film groundhog day where the same day keeps repeating and Bill Murray uses this time to learn new things such as play the piano. If I was to categorise the film I would use a repeat until loop as he as to keep doing things until he gets the girl. A while do version of this film would be, he has the girl but he needs to keep her and not lose her. A for loop version would be, he has to repeat something several times such as, he has the girl but he will only for a finite time, hence the count.

Since being out of work each day could have been categorised as a for loop as I was expecting to only be out of work for a finite moment in time, However, coming up to 6 months this project is over running and is slowly becoming a repeat until. That is, repeat whatever I am doing until I find work.

During this repeat until loop I am slowly extending the code to include new strategies to the various sub routines I call for example:

Repeat

Goto procedure find work

Until

Where the procedure find work is now including things such as revising the cv to make it more specific to the role and looking at retraining. At some point I would like to make it a bit more OO based to ensure flexibility in the future to cater for more events.

Whilst been off I have found it necessary to be busy to ensure my mind is active and I am not slumming it. Because the situation may be a longer than anticipated I am gearing myself up for this so have decided to sell my house and car with a view to reducing any risk in the future. Whilst this might be painful it necessary to cut my losses now and get over it so I can move on. They are only things and these can be bought again.

It reminds me of my time when I moved to Holland as I was working out in the german business. In the august I had got rid of my house, car and belongings so I could move overseas. I had already met someone over there and was looking to settle down (finally). However what I was not anticipating was the company was going to be closed and I had a choice to either stay put or move back. To aid with my repatriation back to the UK a role was found for me where for three months until the final move I travelled between germany, holland and the uk to sort out my affairs. The moral of this story is I have been here before where everything material has gone but it can be bought again. To put it another way it also gives me a chance to upgrade all of my gadgets again!

So, in a few hours I am back signing on where the the same questions are being asked - how is your job search? The advisors whilst courteous cannot really help but are there should I need it. I have already looked into retraining where I am interested in either lecturing or gardening (some will laugh at the latter) and have spoken to a teacher friend of where to find information.

For some, this time is painful especially when you do not know when the loop will end. To others they cannot be bothered and some remain optimistic. I am in both camps. As Bill Murray, whilst the general format could be the same I am using this opportunity to use the time constructively and complete all of the things I should have done.

Fortran 77 was funny language a bit like BASIC and modula 2. It could not handles loops well and rather than exit a loop naturally it would just force an exit. Currently, I am hoping that this situation will end soon, if it doesn't I am preparing for the long haul; if it does I will be exiting using this construct of the exit loop as soons as the right opportunity shows itself.

Mythbuntu - the media centre? "it does what it says on the tin"

2009-03-11T00:15:00.002Z

The PC in my front room was originally a Windows Media Centre (MCE) PC from HP. A few years ago I upgraded the RAM to 2gb and dropped in a dual core processor. Hp insisted the machine could not be upgraded to a dual core and that I needed to purchase a new machine at £1000 plus. However I knew the motherboard would accept the x2 chip but the bios would not. After a bit of reading around I found a way to re-flash the bios, remove the HP fudge and put on the original BIOS upgrade to support dual core. I located a seller and bought the chip for £100. Chip arrived, it was installed and was recognised by the BIOS and then by Windows. Because I had altered my internal hardware I was on the phone late one night to M$ to get a new code to reactivate Windows. I have to admit since moving to Linux that I really am glad that I don't have to do the activation rubbish any more. In principle I can understand why they M$ went down this route but working in the enterprise it was such a pain having to phone up.

Anyway, this machine last year had removed and opensuse 11 installed. I decided I didn't like this on a desktop (its on my server) so I put on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) which has worked okay although I really wanted to make use of the DVR facility as I have a DVB (freeview) card in the machine. I tried MythTV which was installed via apt-get but it insisted on not working correctly with the DVB card. The remote did not work but the DVB card worked with other software such as kaffeine or ME-tv. So while I was troubleshooting I downloaded a mythbuntu 8.10 ISO - AMD x64 version to give this a go.

My troubleshooting was a waste of time, I burnt the ISO to CD, rebooted and reinstalled Mythbuntu over the top of my machine. I figured I could rebuild the original quickly if needed.

After some initial set up, it recognised my MCE remote control, the DVB card and works brilliantly. I can search the freeview EPG for keywords, genre or channel list. It will record, pause and rewind TV. It saved me £150 purchasing a decent DVR and will be useful for the nominal time I watch TV. Further I can add plugins for weather, stream music or view RSS feeds - something MCE could do but was very clunky.

My original MCE set up impressed me to bits, the way the menus worked, the EPG, being able to play music whilst watching a slide show. I extended the system to stream tv online, allow me to schedule programme recordings through the web and I automated a process to convert the recorded video to DIVX for offline viewing.

The thing I hated was the EPG was prone to crash out, you would then lose your channels which in turn would stop your recordings. It would crash out each time it updated and no matter what fixes I put in place to back up the EPG refresh the MCE services periodically it was a waste of time. I was looking to Vista but this had the same issues so I blew MCE and the idea out of the window.

However, it was a colleague of mine that introduced me to mythbuntu and it was only a year later (today) that I actually installed it. If I think of all of the lost time trying to fix MCE, through installing Mythbuntu would have saved these for more important things.

Its early days for Myth andI will post more as and when I use it of my experiences but initial impressions are "it does what it says on the tin"

MGF,Bugatti Veyron or Audi TT???

2009-02-27T16:35:00.005Z

I was in Newcastle Under Lyme today and had parked up in preparation for my usual visit to the job centre to sign on.

In the car park there was a vehicle that had the colours of a bugatti veyron, a simiar shape to an audi tt but looks like it was sitting on an mgf chasis...

Here are the pics of the original vehicles against the pictures I took.

Bugatti Veyron

Audi TT

MGF

Netbook Woes and linux to the rescue

2009-02-23T21:13:00.003Z

I recently had to send my EEE PC (904ha/xp) back to Asus to resolve an issue. Unlike other laptops I have had in the past there seem an issue with this machine in that the battery was never 100% charged. I read online about the issue and they all referred to contacting Asus for a swap out.

Although the laptop was on charge for over 48 hours constant, or it is was being used on the mains the led light for the power was always red/orange. On reading the manual it said that this colour indicated the battery was between 80-100% capacity. A solid green indicated 100% capacity.

After several emails to Asus it was agreed to send the unit back for repair. I prepped the machine for delivery by backing it up with Ghost as I didn't want to waste three days rebuilding it again. Wiped the hard drive clean and sent it back. Two days later it was returned...

The note inside from the engineer said LED lights displaying correctly, no OS on Hard drive so reinstalled OS.

This is where my confusion started...... I called Asus on a non 0870 number obtained through www.saynoto0870.com and got through to the wrong department. After conversation with an engineer he advised that the manual for the laptop had been rewritten and that the operation of the LED was correct. So the hassle of returning it was a wasted exercise.

This is when the fun started with the restore.....

Because I had 4 partitions - 1. Windows XP, 2. Ubunutu Boot, 3. EXT3 of Home and 4. of restore disk for windows xp.

Although ghost had backed up everything the restore would not be straight forward as I needed to boot into ghost to restore partitions 2,3,4 then restore 1. However I needed to have partition 1. up and running to get partition 1. restored. Because there was no cd drive I couldn't boot a windows set up cd so "I was up a stream without a paddle"

On looking for a way to create a bootable windows partition on USB I came across a concept online of using a host linux OS with a VMWARE Windows session with direct access to the local hard drive. It would work with me booting into linux, running a vmware product which was a windows installation that would then have raw access to the local c drive in the machine. Because the vmware would use ISO files of the CD installations this would get around the issue of no cd drive.

I opted for easy peasy linux 1, on an 8gb memory card with Sun Virtual Box installed. I had to create a virtual hard disk raw file pointing to the local hard drive in the netbook. Albeit slow, I was able to restore the original parition 1 using a symantec livestate demo cd iso. Reinstall the original bootsector and MBR with a windows recovery session (again in virtualbox) to both remove GRUB and allow the original windows to boot.

Before booting back into the windows I recreated both ext3 linux partition (2 & 3) as blank areas. Booted into partition 1, restored partition 2,3 & 4 using the ghost. I then rebooted back into linux and ran the livestate cd to reinstall partition 1 again to ensure GRUB was installed.

Overall it took over one day and has been a success. Further I now also have a bootable memory card which can be used as a bootable USB stick. This will also allow to run a windows environment under VM (as long as the host PC is powerful enough) to run either Windows or Linux utilities.

AV and Spyware - Free or Commecial?

2009-02-19T08:43:00.004Z

I was at a friends last night giving their PC a check over - I would call this more akin to a yearly car service. My friend asked the question I usually get - what security protection do you use?

Nowadays being a linux user I have AV installed but don't use it in realtime and either use the built in linux firewall or rely on my router's firewall. Due to the lack of linux based malware or viruses I am confident this will keep my machine clear but am still wary what I either download or click on. In time this may change as more people begin to use linux but now it is relatively secure. I mentioned this to my friend but did say on the two windows machines that I have I use freely available products such as Free AVG and spybot. Using these and being wary what is either being downloaded or clicked on are usually sufficient to catch most things.

My friend was running McAffee that was bundled with his broadband provider but costs per year. He was quite surprised to find that Spybot found something and then asked why did McAffee miss it? I explained this could either be that his AV doesn't know about it or is not set up to catch these items. I reiterated my first point that I do not see the point in paying for these products when there good products freely available.

When I was managing the IT within a business I have used enterprise products from Symantec, McAffee and Sophos - Whilst they all "sort of" worked there were many issues related to not downloading the updates to the machines correctly, sometimes stopping machines from working or the AV not working at all because one of the critical components had not started. I have previously written scripts or created bespoke systems to resolve some of these issues after becoming increasingly frustrated with the supplier not being able to give me a working resolution. I believe if there were free AV and spyware tools available for the enterprise which included deployment and management tools that these coupled with a managed locked down environment, that this should be sufficient to tackle most malware/virus threats.
However there isn't and of course the big companies have invested in their products so need to make their money back and continue to provide a service.

For the home user I have found my strategy of using the freely available tools and with a little education then this should be sufficient. I am not saying people should not purchase the commercial tools, but have found these tools put a false sense of security on people that they will magically resolve all issues when realistically people should manage their systems. It is a like having a car, you take it for an mot, you take for a service and then you usually look out for noises or other signs that the vehicle might not be working correctly. Again this is the same with a PC and people should look out for issues and seek professional guidance when they are unsure. My friend did this, we found something and now everything is okay.

What I really hate about the commercial tools is their over complexity and reliance on so many components in order to run. Whilst I know viruses/malware are becoming more clever, is it really necessary to make these tools more complex so that they can fall over more?

Spybot and Free AVG are examples of simple tools that just work and there is nothing complex. They cover the basics in security but it is a real shame that the commercially available security tools do not follow the principle keep it simple.

Facebook Part 2

2009-02-18T08:35:00.002Z

You then need to convert your atom feed into an RSS one. I used feedburner then followed the below.

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/creating-rss-feed-for-your-blogspot-blog/

Face Book

2009-02-18T08:18:00.002Z

I have just followed this guide to see if I can add my blog updates to face book.

http://weblogs.about.com/od/socialnetworking/ht/AddBlogFacebook.htm

This is a test to see if it works

Nokia 5800 16gb micro SD HC compatibility

2009-02-18T07:07:00.003Z

I have recently started a new topic post over at my-symbian about the 16gb compatibility of the Nokia 5800XM.

The link to the thread is http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=359029#359029

It appears there are several others having this issue but I have not seen any official postings/news items regarding it.

Whilst I can use my 8gb card in the phone it does limit how much I can store and render the 16gb card I had as useless. However it does ask one question is the phone genuinely compatible with 16gb or higher or can it be fixed in a new firmware?

Lets hope we hear something soon.

Suv Tent

2009-02-14T12:31:00.001Z

My car is a Nissan X-Trail 4x4.

I have often thought the back is big enough to sleep in but it would be nicer to have a litte more room.

I came across the following link on the x-trail digest for a suv tent.

http://tinyurl.com/SUVtent

Although it is expensive I like the idea and hope they do come down in price.

Sent from my Nokia Tube

So do you touch or point?

2009-02-09T23:13:00.005Z

I have now had my nokia 5800 for 3 weeks but it has been an up road struggle.

I have always enjoyed touch screen phones where my first was a p800. Before this I had a catalogue of touch pdas such as the psion 5,7 , the palm v, the handspring visor, hp jornada 629, compaq ipaq, hp jornada phone/pda so I have some experience when it comes to tapping a screen.

I got an iphone last year shortly after they came out in the uk to see if I would like it. For me, this felt like a heavy weight boxing game as I hadn't had an apple device before, I have big expectations from mobile devices as I am a heavy user and there was a question if the iphone could cope with me. Lets just say it was short lived and after 2 months it was back on eBay.

I loved the interface, the web browsing was perfect and it was great to type on. I hated the closed environment where you were locked into Itunes and the Apple way of doing things. With my other devices such as Windows Mobile or Symbian I am somewhat free of this and can choose my own route on how I want to accomplish things. I jailbroke my iphone, installed a web server with php, ssh server and ftp server so I could shuttle files forwards and backwards. The only other issue I had was Linux where I would have to connect both the PC and iphone to a wireless network, ssh onto the iphone then mount the iphone filesystem over ssh in order to copy files onto it. Sounds great technically but a total headache in reality. I eventually got rid of the iphone after it decided to wipe my data from its disk even though itunes knew it had several gigabytes of "other data", but could not access it. Only a reflash would fix this issue and this is when it was packed up and flogged on ebay.

The thing that Apple got right and set a bench mark was the touch interface. They have always been at the forefront of GUI interfaces with MAC OS X and carried this over to the iphone. I have to admit after years of using point and click interfaces on psion, palm and windows mobile with a stylus, it was both novel and practical to be able to use a finger and thumb to get things done.

I enjoyed my time using Palm PDAs such as the Handspring Visor because I loved the simplicity of Graffiti for the entering of text. This was carried over onto the Sony Ericsson UIQ phones such as the P800 - P990 (this was a total disaster) . However both UIQ and Palm have totally dried up in terms of current hardware and Windows Mobile is the old elephant on top of a mini and it just a fudge. Even with the current crop of phones such as the HTC Touch or Touch HD whilst the Flow interface masks most of the windows mobile junk underneath you still cannot get away from the legacy interface.

As I like symbian, I needed a phone then S60 was a good choice. I previously had an S80 device such as the Nokia 9500 which if used today is like putting a shoe to your ear. I upgraded to a N95 running S60 which got me used to this new OS and its limitation in time for me getting my Nokia E90. This to date is my favorite all in one device with a keyboard and whilst it does not have touch it is a great workhorse. Because Nokia have been slow to bring out further high end devices - the N95 8GB and N96 weren't really upgrades in terms of hardware I got a Samsung Innov8. In terms of spec 3G HSDPA, GPS, 8M Camera, WIFI 3" screem and 16GB on board all running under S60 then this is the dream phone. However the big mistake here is the compatibility with current Nokia S60 software that is free due to the certificates not being available. All About Symbian have recently discussed this on a podcast and have said that they are looking to developers to provide the correctly signed software so it runs under Samsung S60. This has been an issue since the phone came out in August 2008 and it is still not resolved. Needless to say this phone is now on ebay as I had enough of contacting suppliers just to ask when are they bringing out a version for the Innov8. This coupled with samsung#s reluctance to release firmware to fix annoying bugs was too much and this is when I began looking elsewhere.

So in summary, I now want a device that has a keyboard, is compatible with S60 and a touch screen. ........

Now enter from stage left the Nokia 5800XM aka Tube. I got mine from ebay which originally had been sourced from Hong Kong. The phone has already been reflashed by me with the new v11 firmware and the product code changed. Again, I cannot understand why Nokia insist on phase releasing firmware at different times and areas across the globe. Again, take a leaf out of Apple's book who just get on with it and release it worldwide at the same time. I understand Nokia have a huge catalogue of phones but why should I wait several months for something.......

Since having the phone it has been hard reset four times and now I can reinstall it under two hours. However it does refuse to boot with the memory card in so this has to be removed and inserted when the phone has booted. I know there is something on the memory card stopping it but cannot be bothered to fault find as I just want it to work and have a workaround. Also the Web Feeds within the browser have screwed up with no fix in sight other than to wipe the phone again. Luckily Google reader works quite well albeit the touch interface on the web browser sometimes finds you reaching for the hammer!

So do you touch or point? Well with S60v5 it is a question of both. Whilst it is S60 underneath and the menus and buttons have been resized so you can use your finger there is still a lot of work. The S60 browser might be able to show flash unlike the iphone, however it is both slow when zooming in and out with your finger and rendering a page. Thus when you try and move the page about the screen with your finger it frequently does not happen and will move when it is ready to catch up.

The onscreen keyboard is great but I miss the auto correct feature as on the iphone. It is also
annoying to have to keep rotating the phone to type on the full size qwerty keyboard. There are occasions you need to resort to using the stylus (point) that comes with the phone to select things or use the tip of your finger nail if you have any!

But looking past these small things that can be fixed in software upgrades it has a better camera, and can record video and is more open so I can do more with it. For example SymSMB allows me to both connect to Microsoft networks or share folders on the phone. This means I can hook up my linux laptop and copy my podcasts over wifi, access my pictures or MP3s all without a cable or pc suite. It will be great when they finally get the OTA updates working so finally the cables can be burned other than for charging.

This phone will be a transition similar when I went from the 9500, to N95 to E90. I will be moving to the N97 where I am hoping this should do me as an E90 replacement. It has the keyboard, the camera, the capacity and the screen/interface.

If it will be the iphone killer, all I will say is - there is an opportunity but at the moment Nokia have a lot to fix and need to start innovating rather than following. Palm have recently done this with the pre - another contender of which I will be looking at

Lets hope they can remove the need to point and improve on the touch.

Google's answer to Push Sync

2009-02-09T22:55:00.002Z

For all those who are interested I have just read on lifehacker
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/EUyt7C_M7Qo/google-sync- keeps-contacts-and-calendars-in-sync-on-your-mobile-phone
that google has started a new sync service for mobiles.

The instructions for S60 can be found at http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=98230&topic= 15015

Currently the service only support two way contacts sync using syncml.

What is unusual that they make use of an exchange service for syncing with the iphone and windows mobile handsets using activesync. However, this does not work with Mail For Exchange but Google says it will support this soon - http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138784&topic =15014

I have previously tried services like Goosync and have found them hideous especially when syncing across several devices with different OS. Examples being All day events not showing correctly.

I will be interested to hear from people how they have found the Contacts sync using this method. Before when I have used this I have found the Google contacts to be very restrictive eg, no duplicates and as such lost a lot of information.

How to Sell Me?

2009-01-30T12:36:00.004Z

I have already mentioned I am still looking for work but am having no luck. All we hear in the news at the moment is not good and that it is getting harder each day to find work. Personally I am trying to maintain a positive attitude that eventually I will find something that I both enjoy doing and somewhere I want to work. Over the past few months I have mainly done my applications online gradually tweaking my cover letters and CV but no luck. I even paid a cv consultancy to make my cv represent me but still I have had no luck.

When I used to work abroad as "IT Support" neither the title or the job description fitted each other. In essence my remit would be to catch a plane turn up at the premises and do whatever was required. This could mean desktop support, pc moves, server administration and upgrades to managing a networking cable infrastructure installation. As most of the overseas operations were small and finances restricted there was an ethos that if you could do a job you got on with it, if you knew nothing about it then there was an opportunity to learn. After having 12 years of this ethos, I have gained a lot of skills from my experiences to the point I enjoy and can do a variety of IT work. I can always recall one of the overseas commercial directors once said to me that if his work required him to sweep the warehouse because there is no one available then he would. Again, I have always looked on work that I am not familiar with as an opportunity even if it means picking that brush up!

Returning to the title "How to Sell Me?" , when I returned to the UK and had to look for a job again, people interviewed me and said okay you can do x,y or z however our positions are only for x or y or z not all three together. Because I find all of my skills complement one another I see this as my main strength so whatever I am doing I can see how it fits together at a high level, but can also drill down to the detail. However, today when I am looking for work I find that either a targeted cv for my specific skill set/job it is not working or if I send a cv with everything I can do that is related to the role then this to does not work. The perception I believe people are seeing is "Your are too broad so you have no depth" or "You do not have enough experience of this type of work" irrespective that you can have done the work before or "You cannot have done all of that so I don't believe you".

To describe me and my skills words like hybrid, multi skilled or jack of all trades come to mind where I feel the last one can suggest you are bodger so I try to avoid this in conversation.

In times like these when people are cutting back and they are losing specialist staff they need people who are hybrid/multi-skilled and can keep the boat afloat. As previously mentioned when I was abroad and money was restricted we used multi-skilled/hybrid people to keep costs down. Then when the business had sufficiently grown this is when the specialist would come on board. If we look today you notice a similarity where money is restricted however, the jobs that are being advertised are not hybrid roles but still specialist. It seems that the hybrid concept either no longer exists or has been forgotten.

So going back to the question one last time "How to Sell Me?" A colleague of mine once said you should put on your CV you can do anything that it is IT related, this way they will either think you are a "big head" and talking rubbish or they will just invite you in for an interview to actually see who you are. Sadly this strategy did not work! So the issue is how do you advertise yourself as someone who can do x and y and z to someone who only wants x or y or z.

My answer is I don't know but will keep trying each day until there is success, possibly then I will post the solution.

The next minute - I am not technical!

2009-01-27T14:09:00.007Z

Well it is finally now official after several years of procrastinating I have finally made the jump and created my first post (this is my second) from my Nokia 5800 aka Tube. There are many times when one gets up and say today I will.... but that is as far as one usually gets where we find a multitude of reasons of why we should not do something rather than putting the energy into actually doing it.

I have been out of work since September last year after taking voluntary redundancy and as things globally have gotten worse I have been looking for "IT" work without much success. I have done the usual of posting my CV to several job boards, vigorously applying every week for jobs but no really no positive response. I get the occasional phone call from agencies seeing if I am available or following up applications I have made usually with a reason of why I am not suitable, I have switched Push email on my phone using IMAP IDLE with Profimail and jump each time I receive a mail hoping... However I believe it is times like these that you have to remain confident, continue looking but also remain actively doing things.

My passion as you have probably guessed is technology and people who know me will always say what has he got next, have you broken it or what are you looking at next. Since my early years I have always been interested in technology but still to this day I don't know really why. My brother was always into computers and had a Sinclair ZX81. I can remember him putting the motherboard in a proper keyboard and having the opportunity to play games such as 3D monster maze or pacman (represented by letters) on the machine. It was used on a 4 inch b&w TV and was fantastic, there was no sound, poor graphics but bloody good to play. I will never forget the time he showed me a program which produced sound on the ZX81. Those of you who know the equipment will recall how? as there was no speaker. To do this day all I can remember is that you recorded your voice to tape, stored it in the machine then it would try to modulate the TV picture in someway to recreate the sound. There were lots of lights flashing on the screen and we would turn up the TV volume and try and make out if it was our voice that we could hear.

Thereafter I had my own ZX spectrum where back then I would enter the log list of machine code programs in to the spectrum via a hex editor to produce 2 channel or more music, speed up the loading of software from tape or write simple demos but nothing what I would consider state of the art. It must have been around this time that I got urge to always push things to their limit. I had a break from computers for around a year until one Xmas where again my brother had an old Amstrad PPC512D with 1 x3.5" floppy drive, a CGA screen and would run on D batteries. This thing was considered a laptop but by today's affairs with MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) it was big! I learned about msdos and the various commands of copy files, formatting disks etc and was a real introduction to command line. Also at the time I had an Atari ST of which an old friend helped me purchase. Again, I would do my usual of pushing my machine to its limits and always trying to find a way around things.

During my entry to university I used the Atari with a Hardware PC Emulator called supercharger which would allow me to run both the Atari and PC at the same time. I learned more about DOS and someone at Uni showed me about FTP, usenet, IP addresses, the JANET network and it is here where I interested in the Internet (1990 & 1991). At University in my second year our IT lab had HP UNIX workstations with 21" colour monitors, 32mb workstations & RISC processors running HP UNIX with X Windows. These machines were like heaven where it is only recently with Linux I have been able to find a comparison..... I could email, download, compile a program, print, write or run a script all at the same time and it just worked! I had my usual fun of locking the machines up but they certainly opened my mind to what a workstation could do.

When I built my first PC I was looking for an OS. In 1993 the only choices were OS/2, Windows or Deskview X. I tried Linux but I neither had the time or resource to learn about it and when I needed to run Ms Office back then I was severely limited. In 1994 I became a Windows 95 (aka Chicago) beta tester and at one point had linux, os/2, dos and windows 95 all on one machine. I event tried to boot windows 95 under an OS/2 Dos VM although could not get it working! As I was used to running several OSes at once I could not use OS/2 as it caned the machine when I ran Windows Apps, I could not stand DOS/WIN311 as it was a fudge (or elephant on top of a mini) and I couldn't get on with the interface restrictions so and I couldn't find anymore information about DeskView X - so Windows 95 seemed the choice. Although Windows 95 was not powerful enough for me. Typically I would use a wordprocessor for assignments and whilst we were writing and testing our code I would have to do screen shots. MS word at this time could not cope with me. I would take a typical screenshot in DOS - two colours and have to reduce the colour depth from 24 million colours to two so it could cope with the picture in word. When you have several of these it grinds to a halt. I tried MS Word for NT (a 32 bit app) as I thought more address space would be available for the application to run. It worked in Windows 95 just but was slow. When you include the fact I would use word indexing, contents, header formatting and frames Word would just collapse. Back then and still now I am of the opinion word is bad for long documents when you begin to use all of its features. I originally used to use Wordstar 4 in my pc emulator (remember CONTROL KK or CONTROL KB?) and would leave a blank page, print out my screenshot and physically glue it to the paper of my assignment. This worked, whereas word would grind to a halt. I found it is easy to use word for text editing than use a dedicated DTP (my first being Fleet street publisher on the atari) to do the layout.

Part of the beta testing program was also to test Office 95 which was better than word for NT and I loved the inline spell check. So it was windows 95 for the next few years until I discovered NT 4 workstation. This through my work took my to NT server, W2K, W2k3 and even had the opportunity to use IBM AIX and build two IBM RS6000 H70 for my company. Again, the latter is a great OS that just works even allowing you to resize disks online whilst people are using them - technology of which WINDOWS has only seen in the past few years whereas I am talking about this being available in 1997.

My next venture into Linux was 2006 where I tried to convert myself from my Windows blinkers to linux 100% but it failed because I was expecting too much. Because I had two mobile phones S60 and Windows mobile (private & work) I would exclusively sync with Outlook to PST folders. I would not keep anything on the exchange server purely using it as mailbox for email. Linux has never really had any good syncing clients and it wasn't until a year later after switching my XP desktop to lighter version that I made the switch to ubuntu. I chose this over Fedora or OpenSuse because I wanted something to work out of the box but would allow me to roll up my sleeves and get under the hood if I needed to. I decided to VMWARE my pc using VMConverter. I then ran ubuntu and my old pc under VMWARE for the next 18 months until I took redundancy. This in itself was an "age of discovery" as I had the best of both worlds where I gradually stopped using the full blown MS APPs and used Open Source alternatives such as OpenOffice, Firefox and openproj etc.... There were some issues with formatting in OpenOffice but as longs as I accepted I would never get 100% compatibility I could work with it. I never really switched off my vmware PC until I left work because of the syncing to outlook and still to this day it is a bug bear of which I will post another time.

Linux whichever flavour now runs on all of my machines as the default OS. I use opensuse 11 on my server as I find it is more suited for a file server. Things for example using YAST show more options and allow me to do more detailed things whereas Ubuntu hides them from the users. I know this is a generalistic view but I want to be able to set more detailed options inside of a GUI as it is usually quicker (not always) then CLI. Whereas I use ubuntu on my desktop and laptop as it has just the right level of configuratbility I need for a desktop OS. I also have a MID (mobile internet device) a nokia N810 which runs maemo linux which I use for browsing and other things where I don't want to boot a full PC. Lastly, there is the EEE PC which started the linux adventure off at home. This is now running Easy Peasy Linux (ubuntu) which is used as a device midway between my laptop and N810.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1525 with upgrade hard drive to 320gb and upgrade ram to 3gb. Vista lasted two days and was wiped off after installing ubuntu. I run VMWARE of XP and W2k when needed as I use MS Money but have not found a decent Linux alternative. I have tried GNU CASH etc... but cannot get on with them.

Lastly, my data is in the cloud where I use this for my diary/contacts/email. I don't use google calendar and contacts as it has a long way to go. But as mentioned earlier I will blog about this sometime later because whilst it is a bug bear, mobile tech is still a passion for me.

In conclusion, I still laugh at a comment in an interview that I had where I was told I did not come over as technical.

However I will let you decide what you think.

The beginning

2009-01-27T13:59:00.000Z

Can I blog from my mobile?

Sent from my Nokia Tube