Blinking Nora

It is often said that those obsessed with gadgets such as phones etc etc can be a little anal at times and when you see posts like this it is hard to disagree. It is hard to know which is the worst, the guy making the video about the blinking light inside the power button or the person reporting the "discovery" on his site. It's a chicken and egg scenario except the issue is "who is the sadder".

Personally, I think if I ever get to this stage it will be time to call it day for mental health concern issues.

Palm desktop application and the Great White Centro/mystery Centro2

How many people still use this I wonder, what with all the various alternatives? I have had it installed on my work laptop for yonks and had almost forgotten about it but I dug it out yesterday and had a play with it. I was surprised to find that it is actually okay and have now changed my sync settings to swop from syncing with Outlook for the 680. One of the coolish things about it is that it gives you quick access to a lot of the inbuilt apps and 3rd party ones you have installed within the programme itself.

I find entering new appts and todo's easier via Palm Desktop than via Outlook as well and the ability to add untimed events to the calendar as mini todo's is a real bonus for me.

On the subject of Treo stuff, I can remember the days when sites like Treocentral and Treonauts were very much just plain palm o/s focussed but now, the latter in particular, have gone all windows mobile treo and to me, it just doesn't seem right. Obviously you cannot blame them as interest in the palm treo range may on the wane whilst in theory, interest in win mob versions is on the increase but it still doesn't seem right. That is just me being snobby about it though as I find it hard to view sites that used to be staunch palm people and see them posting screeds of stuff about the Treo Pro. Of course, these are sites with advertisers and a real commercial slant so they need to be focussing in on what is perceived to be "hot".

Last but not least, what is this white Centro all about? What an odd thing to finally launch, so long after the original Centro was launched and at £199 from the palm store it is hardly a bargain anymore especially when you consider that you can pick up the Centro online for £134 from eXpansys.

Talking of my treo, check out this mystery new Centro post…doesn't seem very likely does it?

Missing the point?

I think the person who sent this post in has perhaps missed the point. He or she infers that Apple has suddenly relented, having banned Podcaster from the AppStore, and now wishes to make it all up to use by introducing the ability to natively download podcasts onto the iPhone. Unlikely. This, apparantly, will stop everyone trying to jailbreak their iPhones just for the sole purpose of getting the application which again is unlikely particularly as you can in fact buy the app and install it on an un-jailbroken iPhone, as I have done.

It is more likely that Apple rejected Podcaster because they have their own similar functionality application/feature in the pipeline, as reported elsewhere, and as is fairly clear they will not allow 3rd party apps that conflict with the core iPhone applications to be offered via the official AppStore.

X-Factor

My son has started watching this drivel on a Saturday night. I really hate this programme and cannot fathom out the attraction. People forget that one or possibly two of the judges have a financial interest in it and thus are always going to want to ensure there is a next series thus, they are always going to ensure that it gets hyped up by praising as many of the contestants as possible even though the vast majority of them are little more than Butlins/pub singer fodder.

That Louis guy really gets on my nerves. This is a man who foisted the abominations that are Westlife  and Boyzone on us and thus, rather than wallowing in glory on prime time TV, should be led out and shot for crimes against music live on national TV. I find it hard to attach any degree of credence to anything the stunted twerp says knowing his appalling previous track record.

I don't mind Simon Cowell too much, at least he can be amusing and he seems to be the only one who can be honest, if you listened to the other three you'd think every second act was a mix of Elvis/Madonna/Rolling Stones and the Beatles in terms of charisma and talent. Yeah right.

And another thing or two, this programme just plays to the celebrity culture we have regrettably nourished here in the UK over the last few years where every second Tom Dick and Harry, for some unfathomable reason, think they have some divine right to be famous. Most of these talentless clowns need to realise a thing or two, firstly…merely having a good signing voice should not in itself guarantee fame and fortune as there is a little thing called charisma that also counts for a lot and secondly, if they were as talented as they plainly think they are then they wouldn't need to appear on the X-Factor in the first place.

SmartphoneThoughts

Noticed a couple of interesting posts at smartphonethoughts.com on my daily RSS feed and they are to the point. Here is the first one…

I'm just baffled that after the suffering years of abuse via smear advertisements by the hands of Apple regarding Vista that they have still not learned to take Apple seriously. I'm just baffled that after the suffering years of abuse via smear advertisements by the hands of Apple regarding Vista that they have still not learned to take Apple seriously.

And here is the second one…..

 I can understand the need for corporate speak every now and then but hearing it more frequently in regards to Windows Mobile makes me a little afraid that the next version of the operating system will be just more of the sameMaybe Microsoft really hasn't picked up on the fact that users prefer more easily to navigate devices that are fun to use.

I like smartphonethoughts as they are not afraid to dish out a bit of criticism where they feel it is due and they are far less likely to be the fawning win mob fanboys that quite a few other WM sites tend to be. Sites like that are therefore, in my view, more credible when they are praising something.

You do get the sense that win mob users are concerned about what is happening though, I think they would be less worried if WM7 was just around the corner but the fact it is a year or so away encourages a bit of fear when you consider what will be happening in the interim period…next big version of iPhone software, big improvements to Android no doubt and more devices and hopefully hopefully a new generation of Palm stuff. I'm not convinced though that Microsoft has nothing up its sleeve and is as apathetic to the competition as the posts infer, you don't get to be where they are by being dim witted and unresponsive.

MobilityBeat revised site

Ryan has updated his Mobility Site and it now includes a feed for the latest RSS headlines for leading tech sites and is well worth checking out on your mobile. Head over to http;//mobilitybeat.com. There is an iPhone centric version at http://mobileinfocenter.com/fh-pr too. The former gives a good mix of sites covering all the major platforms.

Back to work…back to the Treo and DayNotez

We had a very good weekend break away but it was back to reality today with a thump. As per my recent post, I use the 680 during the working week as it is more suited to doing the sort things I need a smartphone to do at the moment. I suspect that when Docstogo and ListPro become available for the iPhone things will change.

I downloaded DayNotez by Natara and it comes with a 30 day trial period. I'm off to a good start here as so far there has not been one nag screen, I always feel more kindly disposed to apps that just let you get on with things without imposing irritating nag reminders every two minutes on you. I've been after a "journal" style application for a while and this one looks quite promising. Visually it is nice too which I always think helps. I did try Scrapbook a while back but found, for a palm o/s application, it looks and acts more like a windows application. Yuk, I hate apps with that windows "nested folders" approach. What made it worse was that after about an hours playing around I just couldn't fathom it out at all. Many say it is an excellent app but I'm too impatient to take it further, part of the attraction for me of the palm o/s is its ease of use and apps like this, great though they may be, seem to detract from that.

Anyway, back to DayNotez…..this seems like quite a powerful little application which has many features and uses. There is a version with a windows desktop companion but I'll not bother with that. The Palm version has category, template and icon support as well as various views to sort your information as well as decent text editing capability and formatting and the ability to mark entires as private. Importantly too, you can export info out and import info in via the Palm Memo app. I think the export facility is an essential feature for this type of application, you need the ability to be able to share your accumulated info.

SIMable

I sent off for this on Tuesday following a post at pda 24/7 last week so it should arrive in the next few days. It's one of these things that sounds just far too good to be true so we shall see…it claims to work with the new iPhone 3g. My concern with it is threefold:

1. you have to punch a hole in the SIM card which can't be healthy
2. there is a SIM like thing that needs to sit below your real SIM card, is there going to be enough room in most SIM card holders for both?
3. and of course, it might just not work in which case that is £20 down the pan.

I sent off with the intention of using it in the 2g iPhone without checking that it actually works in that model.

SIMable is guaranteed to unlock your iPhone 3G and just about any other
mobile phone for use with ANY SIM in ANY COUNTRY. SIMable is the simple
solution with a no quibble money back guarantee. Over 10,000 satisfied
customers can vouch for this.

Aimless browsing

The amount of time I spend on eXpansys or Clove or other similar UK based online retailers…tsk…I ought to know better. I'm on both on a near daily basis despite there plainly being no new devices available since my previous visits yet for some reason, I half heartedly hope, nay almost expect, there to be something new. If there was something fantastically new and exciting I'd have read about it elsewhere first so why I expect to uncover some nugget out of the blue on those sites I will never know.

I find myself semi-tempted by the cheapness of the MWg Zinc 2 despite it being a windows mobile device. I regard this platform with a deep suspicion these days and see it as a challenge, can I tame the beast that is Microsoft's lardy and bloated "mobile" o/s? Still, for under £200 and with such a decent spec it does appeal even though I know for a fact that after a couple of days I'd realise I'd made another whopping great error. I'm not exactly sure why I fancy it but suspect it is mostly down to the fact it has one of those rubbery, grippy back covers. Such a reason is of course hugely shallow and in no way merits investigating further but…but…just to run my fingers over that matte, sticky cover…wooooohhhhhhh. Perhaps I should just buy a replacement back cover instead, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper.

The Blackberry Bold talks to me on a daily basis but so far I continue to resist the many attractions. The only reason why I haven't bought one yet is that I really grudge paying an extra £10 a month to have junk email pushed to it and I don't actually need push email. That and the fact you could serve chips on it…

£450 is an awfully lot to pay for any device, and especially for one that has no qwerty or no (VGA) touchscreen, some of Nokia's stuff seems over-priced to me and I just don't get on with the o/s either. Still, their devices always look the part which counts for a lot to me. All previous Symbian experiences have ended in tears though…my tears.

How about a mere £900 for a palm based smartphone? I'd never heard of these folk before and you seem to be paying much for Barcode scanning ability. I'm not sure I'd agree with the eXpansys blurb though…"a best-of-breed, rugged, barcode-scanning, mobile computer, while its list price makes it impossible to ignore". Note that they have a wifi equipped on for a measly £1079. Who are these people?

All in all though I can't get terribly excited about the vast multitude of smartphones out there at the moment, none of them really appeal and besides I'm pretty happy with switching between the iPhone and 680 when the mood changes. There's been nothing that has truly appealed for a while now and nothing on the horizon either. Google Android  may be an option although the current model is just plain ugly but I like the look of the way it works and think it could be a grower, it will be interesting to see whether other manufacturers can bring something better to the table. I really think I can hang on now until the next gen Palm based device arrives as I'm sure it will be a better device than 99% of the competition.

SyncMate for mac

There's a new kid in town vying for your syncing attention alongside the heavyweight Missing Sync for Windows Mobile. I haven't tried this as I don't have a win mob device at the moment.

There's both a Free edition and Expert edition, the latter is a paid for app and obviously has more features.

SyncMate

SyncMate FREE Edition is a perfect solution for information management.
It is FREE and easy-to-use synchronizer for Mac and Pocket PC, that will
help you keep all your documents, text messages, contacts, calendar entries
and events and other stuff well organized. Simply establish a connection
between your Mac and Pocket PC via USB or Wi-Fi and synchronize applications
like Address Book, iCal, etc. With SyncMate it is very easy to read SMS
directly from your Mac, check detailed device information (battery state, etc) and visually analyze memory usage.

SyncMate Expert Edition (available for a small fee) grants you even more
synchronization possibilities. With Expert Edition it is very handy to
synchronize time and share Internet between your Mac and your mobile device,
which is very important for all mobile people. Synchronize iTunes and iPhoto
to keep all your favorite music and pictures within a click of a button.
Manage all text messages not even touching your Pocket PC! Send, receive,
create and delete SMS when working at your Mac – that's what SyncMate Expert gives you.

SyncMate Expert provides you with access to all plugins, but is not free,
SyncMate, however, is free and has fewer features than SyncMate Expert. Moreover,
you have an excellent ability to upgrade your free SyncMate to SyncMate Expert Edition.

Updated

Please follow this link instead.…

iPhone 3g battery life

Being up in Aberdeen over the weekend meant I took the iPhone as opposed to the Treo 680 as I needed to have access to a decent browser to keep track of the football scores on Saturday afternoon as I was at one of my sisters most of that day.

I left it on GPRS as getting a semi-decent 3g signal proved futile so surfing away from 3.25pm till 5pm on Saturday afternoon on the BBC Sport live videprinter site was a bit painful in terms of speed…there was not even a decent edge signal. Grrrrrr….what a contrast to when I was in Spain for my holidays and I could pick up a perfect 3g signal 100% of the time.

Anyway, I fully charged the iPhone in the morning and barely used it until the matches kicked off. Then, about 3.25pm I checked the site every 5 minutes or so. By 5pm the battery was down to about 30% judging by the gauge which in my opinion is rather poor. Lord knows how long it would last had I been on 3g especially as it would have been struggling to latch onto a reliable signal most of the time and thus further draining would have happened.

The iPhone is a lovely device but the battery life is disappointing, there is no way of getting around it either. I'm sure the 680 would have had far more juice left under similar conditions with the Seido extended battery installed. Next time, I will take it instead.

A bonus over the weekend though was that the apartments we were staying in had free broadband installed so all I had to do was stick the ethernet cable into my MacBook and I was up and running with an internet connection. If you are ever going to Aberdeen for a stay I can recommend the Skene House apartments. There are three different central locations and they are basically mini flats. Ours has 2 bedrooms, a lounge, kitchen, bathroom and storage cupboard and all for the same price as a hotel room. Plus you get free internet if you go for the "executive' apartments. It's a nice relaxed atmosphere unlike the stuffy formality you encounter in many hotels.

Sony X1

Looks like the Sony is now available to purchase online and in the high street stores. It's a relatively expensive little smartphone which looks lovely but as far as I am concerned does not appeal on a variety of levels.

Firstly, I have never got on with Sony phones in the past and the P1 was in my opinion, a poor marriage of a nice looking and feeling phone with the worst UI I have ever used. The K800 had a great camera at the time but again was a bugger to use whilst the W850 had the worst keypad and smallest, fiddliest buttons ever used.

Secondly, this new phone is running windows mobile which is now possibly my least favourite o/s and you can dress it up however you like with "panels" or whatever it is called but it is still windows mobile underneath and I now haven't got the patience required to fine tinker/tune it. So, there you have it…my least favourite phone manufacturer and my least favourite operating system combined in the one devasting smartphone which surely for me would be a recipe for disaster!

Still, that won't stop me from having a wee play with it in the shops and I am prepared to be proven well wrong, again, on this one but at the moment I'm fairly sub-neutral on this one.

Hearts 1 Aberdeen 1

Good point for the Reds today at a wet and windy Tyncastle. It's never an easy place to come to and get a point but in our present predicament, struggling near the bottom, it is a bit of a bonus. We scored first early doors and they equalised shortly after. Jesus, Darren Mackie scored which was a shock to all concerned.

We hit the woodwork twice in the 2nd half but it sounds like it was a backs to the wall exercise for much of the 2nd period. Late on the ref awarded them a penalty (how many pens have we lost here late on down the years?) but luckily it was overturned after he consulted the linesman. Nice to see a ref finally take the opinion of his assistant who very often, has a better view of incidents in the penalty area.

We're now off the foot of the table after a win and point from our last two games, both away from home. Only problem is that we are back at home next weekend where we have lost 4 and drawn 1 of our 5 home games to date.

Banish the C

My replacement battery arrived yesterday but the special tool needed to start taking the naughty Tungsten C apart did not arrive until this morning. I unscrewed the back cover and had a good gander at the insides, I was trying to determine whether I could find out the source of the loose connection and case but there was nothing obvious. I then tried to prise out the middle section which you need to do to get to the battery…no joy so far so I will leave it a few days and try and find better instructions.

Anyway, I have spent too much on this little blighter in terms of accessories to let it lie there unused and my pride determines that I will soldier on and try and get things sorted. In the brief moments that it has worked in an acceptable fashion, it has been nice to use and I would still like to have the option of using it more often. I still find it hard to get over how big the bugger is, it makes the 680 look svelte which is no mean feat. Still, there is another painful lesson here for me…never buy any add on stuff until you are sure the device works okay and merits some extra TLC accessory stuff. Ouch.

In the meantime, we are off up to Aberdeen tomorrow for three nights. My parents and 3 sisters still all live there and have done all their lives so it will be a round of visits, free teas and lots of biscuits and coffee, could be worse. This will be our first visit since Xmas and in the interim period, as usual, not one of the lazy so and so's has come to see us in Edinburgh. Thing is, we are the only ones with young kids so it is harder for us to find suitable accomodation etc etc yet we manage to make the trip up there whilst they, with no dependant children, seem to find the reverse trip completely beyond them.

Dead Space for xbox 360

Just a couple of days to go now until this game is out and boy oh boy, does it sound promising. I have a soft spot for first person shooters set on spooky abandoned spaceships even though the premise is hardly revolutionary. Doom 3 is still one of my favourite xbox titles, Prey was excellent too and Halo had the odd spaceship moment.

This one though does sound genuinely spooky:

The story behind Dead Space takes place hundreds of years in the
future, during a time when mankind has exhausted all of the natural
resources on Earth. Fortunately, in this dire time, humanity has
mastered space travel, and a process known as planet cracking has been
developed to combat this drought. A celestial body is split into
pieces, and its minerals are strip-mined and melted, returning the
byproducts to Earth for consumption. An entire fleet of ships sails the
stars performing these tasks, and the crown jewel of this mining fleet
is the USG Ishimura, which has performed more planet cracks that any
other vessel. However, on a routine mission, the ship cuts off all
communication from galactic command, which is somewhat strange. To
discover what's going on, a small maintenance crew is quickly
dispatched to the Ishimura from a nearby vessel.

Fantastic Bold bargains at eXpansys

Wow…look how cheaply eXpansys are selling the Blackberry Bold. Now, you can pick this marvel of modern technology up unlocked in the High Street phone shops for less than £400 so why would you pay £624 for it online? Because you have money to burn of course.

As if that isn't a big enough bargain in itself, what about one of their fantastic value "bundle" deals? If you scroll down a bit on the link page you can get a Bold and a charging cradle for a combined £644.99….that's a HUGE saving of £1.99 which equates to around 0.3%. I'll take two at that price!

But wait, fancy a case too? Then take advantage of the super £691.59 Bold and Piel Frama bundle…that's a whopping saving of…errr….nothing. How do these guys do it? They must be taking a real hit on those low low low prices.

Jesus, virtually £700 for a case and phone? C'mon guys, get real.

Palm-Stuff Blog

Just noticed this site mentioned over at PA and I did not know of its existence until then. It is run by Andrew and he reviews apps and various other Palm dedicated stuff. Worth a peruse if you are Palm minded.

oops…

Apologies to Chad from the iPhone Blog as I inadvertently deleted all four of his comments instead of publishing them this evening….major ooops.

Seeing his comments reminded me of what an excellent source of iPhone stuff the iPhoneBlog is and their podcast is one of my top 3 listens. Of particular interest to moi is their weekly software review of a bunch of similar type applications. They tend to adopt a humorous approach to posts and are never afraid to dish out the plaudits or slightly off tomatoes where appropriate. How about this post on how to sync an iPhone on two different computers?

Tungsten C Palm device

My Tungsten C arrived this morning. Man, this thing was manky….the guy I bought it from off ebay obviously couldn't be bothered to even give it a wipe over prior to packing it. I actually felt a bit yukky when I took it out the bubble wrapper and had to give it a bloody good clean prior to even attempting to sort it out. Personally, I always try to ensure that anything I sell on ebay  is more than presentable. The screen on this thing was horrendous and my initial fear, aside from catching some unpleasant disease, was that the majority of "marks/stains" on it would turn out to be scratches but as it transpired, with a jolly good clean, the screen is devoid of any nasty and hard-to-ignore markings.

Yuk. I think this particular Tungsten C has some issues…ahem. Firstly, and the chap did mention this in his item description, you have to angle it into the cradle before it charges and this has proven a bit tricky so far. I also had trouble getting it hot synced for the same reason so I have ordered up a seperate sync'n'charge cable. At the moment, I have to push it down into the cradle to make the necessary connection to allow syncing.

Secondly, and this was not mentioned in his item description….the case appears to be seperating at the bottom which is probably causing the above problems. I need to get a suitable tiny screwdriver and try to tighten the screws to see if that is all it is….if it's not, oh dear. Luckily, I only paid a relatively small amount for it but I am already starting to feel I've been 'ad.

Thirdly, and I suspect this is down to a combination of items one and two, when I place it down on a table or stick it into its new case it switches itself on despite the power button being on the bottom right front of the casing. Great. I'm sure there is something wonky going on inside the casing that needs to be investigated. Sometimes, a message appears asking me if I want to format the external drive??!! I wouldn't want to press the "ok" button by mistake…..

Fourthly…(it gets worse)…when I put in an SD card, it will turn on by itself randomly and continues to make irritating pinging system noises. When I take the card out…things are just fine. Lastly but certainly not leastly, it won't connect to my home wifi network which is a bit of a bummer so far. I see there is a wifi updater prc on the Palm support site so I will give that a shot tomorrow. Crikey, not a very encouraging start methinks and my initial enthusiasm has waned dramatically during the course of the first day.

I'd forgotton how big this thing is compared to the likes of a 680, you can see that from the picture yourself no doubt. At first, I thought the guy had sent me a Blackberry Bold by mistake…..Look how much of a bigger space the keyboard occupies compared to the Treo yet it is not as easy to use. The screen on the Treo is also far better, much sharper than the rather dullish effort on the Tungsten. Mind you, that extra estate should be useful for some applications. Speed wise, this thing is fast, it may even be a tiny bit quicker than the Centro which probably says more about 5 year old Palm devices than it does about 2008 models.

When the battery arrives I'm going to have a stab at replacing the current one which does of course involve taking the thing apart a bit. So, it could be the start of a wonderful relationship or the end of a very short bitter sweet one.

Retro Fest

I don't know what is up with me at the moment but I am going through a Palm retro thing. I was looking on ebay the other night, mainly to see if I could pick up any cheap Sony Clie's and chanced upon a Tungsten C for sale, stuck in a bid or two and ended up getting one for £36 plus £5 postage. According to the guy selling it the thing is in good condition and has everything with it. I think part of the reason for thse steps back in time is my sheer disillusionment with the many newer and supposedly better devices I have spent cash on in the past year. My 680 re-emergence has proved that better specs are no guarantee of a better user experience.

I'm not sure why I have bought this as I had one a couple of years ago and sold it on pretty quickly, mainly because I didn't think the keyboard was much cope. still, that hasn't stopped me splashing out again. When I had my previous one I had no home wifi and no means of getting connected and to be honest, I can't recall being aware that the Tungsten C even had wifi. Well, it does of course and now I have wifi at home so I am hoping this will make ownership a more enjoyable and fruitful experience.

My intention here, I always seem to need to have an "intention" as if that somehow justifies spending, is to use this as a standalone PDA and go back to the iPhone. I know that the TX is a better PDA in many respects but it has no keyboard and I always found myself very slow using graffiti or the onscreen keyboard.

One of the drawbacks of buying an older device is that the risk of the battery being near the end of its life is much higher and so, I am going to buy a spare and try and replace the existing one if that proves to be the case…not an easy thing to do by any means. A second drawback is that accessories tend to be a bit thin on the ground although luckily I have a huge range of earlier charging stuff lying around. I have managed to pick up a metal case from pdahut, the same one that I passed on when I sold my previous Tungsten C on ebay, and a screen protector from expansys. This will be the first time I've had to fit one for ages and is something I never look forward to.

This was a pretty expensive handheld first time around and the specs are pretty decent still. I'm hoping the wifi aspect will give it some extra life this time around. It's not really entirely suitable however as a multimedia device as it only provides mono sound output through the headphone jack and thus it was presented as being business focussed when first launched.