What a refreshing change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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