Well, tonight I spent the night loading Wordpress 2.5 (which is pretty slick). The main reason for this is that I discovered earlier tonight that some lowlife was exploiting a vulnerability in the previous blogging script to create redirection pages for spam websites.
So…hopefully it is all fixed now, and I begin the long road to clear my domain name of being associated with spammers.
Please do forgive me great googlebot! I promise I wont use old hackable scripts again…
Taking some images of a recent installation in London, I decided to play off the k810 against my freshly unboxed iPhone, actually I took along the old k810 expecting the iPhone to be crap at photography. The images have not been retouched in any way other than resizing. The left is the iPhone the right is the Sony Ericsson k810i. As you can see the difference in quality is quite something.
Of course, I am forgetting that the k810i takes photos about 30% bigger and does all sorts of panoramic and multi-shot stuff and has a flash. But what’s the point in having big images if they look crap?
When asked by Michael Calore of Wired News if the content on the new video store would contain DRM and if it would be cross-platform compatible, Cohen said, “we’re rolling out with some content DRM’d, using Windows DRM.†By this he also made it clear that content from the store would only play on Windows computers. The company seems to have no plans to expand their offering to users of other OSes.
Windows DRM has been completely left behind in the portable media player market. The iPod can’t play content restricted (read: infected) by Microsoft’s little virus, and neither can Microsoft’s very own Zune!
oh dear, the execs just don’t get it…why is napster (the pay service) failing so miserably? because people don’t want to ‘rent’ their music for the same price as they once paid to own it. Especially as it is easier to get it for free!
[via TorrentFreak]
Surely it could never happen in Britain…but apparently in the US Hellmann’s have changed the recipe for their mayonnaise.
[via Kottke]
I have kinda been avoiding IE7 for the previous betas simply due to the tight integration with Windows Update and all the nasty WGA stuff. But since it is due to be released ‘this summer’, and after having read this post about the IE7 release…I figured it was probably time to see actually how much work it will cause me to do and how much stuff it will not work with.
So, I fired up virtual pc (hah! you think I would install it on my main box?) and downloaded a copy of IE7 beta3 from here and ran the installer. First impressions, mmm…windows blue installer, next, next, ok, next, ‘the installer wants to validate this copy of windows’…whatever!, next, next, install…ahh, it would seem microsoft have decided to do away with the pesky progress indicator and replace it with a meaningless xp-startup style knightrider effect. I assume to show windows hasn’t crashed yet, but deliberately not to show how much longer the process will take. Is this because they don’t know how much stuff is going to be installed? perhaps it is only because the software is beta, they will wrap it up at the end…I hope. After quite some time of ‘essential updates’, ‘installing core components’ and whatnot we are finally at the restart your computer screen…
After restarting, I open it up by clicking the spiffy new icon and am immediately taken of and bounced around microsoft.com, msn.com etc…finally ending up at a configuration page allowing me to enable phishing validation and all sorts of other ‘protect me from the internet’ style options. The phishing validation seems to be something IE7 is quite proud of, it sends a url to microsoft which decides whether it is safe or not…hmm, not a wholly bad plan…but I am not sure about microsoft making the decision for me, I think I will leave it disabled for now.
Looking at the screen in-front of me, something is wrong…something is missing, ahh…the ‘file’, ‘edit’, ‘view’…menus are missing…oh no…they have just moved them from the expected top-left, to bottom-right…how handy. I guess most IE users probably don’t use them anyway. Luckily in the (bottom-right) Tools menu, I found it can be turned back on, except it appears below the address bar, instead of above it…now I have 2 ‘tools’ menus, with slightly different menu items inside…although the first few options are the same just to add a little more confusion. Someone didn’t quite think that one through too well…
hey look…tabs, thank god for that…they are all chunky and rounded. The interface for them is quite nice though, a new tab is signified by just a little bit of a tab to the right…which I like. The close button is a little ‘x’ on the tab itself, safari style, (and an essential extension for firefox). My only gripes are the rather naff looking blue sonar loading icon, but that is pretty inconsequential and that none of my favicons seems to be appearing, I guess they must have changed something, bah!. After opening a new tab, there is a nice microsoft explanation about what tabs are and why they are worth using, which I dare say most users will never remove. Also appearing when I open more than one tab is a ‘thumbnail’ button, sort of an expose-style page showing the contents of all your tabs…nice.
Windows Live appears to be the default search engine…and…hey, what a surprise…they offer no other packaged options for searching. Although it was pretty easy to install Google from the installation site, it would have been nice to have the option from the start…I guess Live search will be taking a slightly bigger slice of the search market in the future…I don’t have a massive problem with that, as my sculpture site is ranked #1 for ‘sculpture‘ as a search 
The rss integration is quite nice, I certainly think it will begin to make rss a little more accessible to the non-techie…also it is now called ‘feeds’ rather than rss, probably a good thing to make it look a little less geeky. When you press the feed icon, you are whisked off to a safari style feed template, certainly better than raw xml…
There are now Internet Explorer ‘add-ons’ to rival firefox’s extensions…I doubt they will have the same range of innovation in the short-term (probably not in the long-term either), at the moment they are things like: auto-complete forms, offline browsers and flash players…the sikly-sweet stock photography on these pages made me want to wretch too.
There is also a ‘zoom-in’, ‘zoom-out’ button in the bottom-right to scale the page, (images and all) opera-style, this is something firefox has needed for sometime. It means that I can view big pages (even big pages with liquid layouts) on my little 800×600 virtual pc screen…again, thats kinda nice…
All in all, IE7 (or Windows Internet Explorer as it is now dubbed) seems like a pretty good update to IE6. They have clearly given it quite a bit of thought as to the interface and targeted it specifically at the non-tech who (most-likely)isn’t totally clear on what a browser is, let alone why they should get a new one. It doesn’t really offer anything especially new over the current competition, however it does wrap up some of the nicer features in opera (page-scaling), firefox (tabs, extensions) and safari (rss skinning) into one browser, considering it has been over half-a-decade since the last iteration of IE one would expect this.
It seems to run a little slower than IE6, which is not surprising although it is a difficult call for me to make as I am running it through a virtual pc. As well as the fact that speed refinement is usually last to be done in the software dev process.
Most importantly, So far there are only the most minor changes which need to be done with regards to it’s page rendering engine…it doesn’t drastically screw-up any of my pages, at least no more than IE6, which I am a little surprised about.
Would I switch from Firefox to IE7? No chance in hell…I don’t like to be talked-down to in a browser, I like the non-fisher-price buttons in firefox and there is no way IE7 could have the range of techie extensions which I currently use…oh, and I like having the same browser (with sync’ed bookmarks and similar functionality) on PC and Mac. Are we expecting a mac version of IE7?..doubt it…
Would I recommend IE7 to a non-tech user over Firefox? Now thats a difficult question…It would very much depend on whether it was a non-tech user who wanted to learn, or whether it was a non-tech user who gets angry at having to learn…the former I would probably suggest they enjoy the benefits of firefox, and join the movement to which it stands. The latter would probably prefer a little more cotton-wool between them and the web, so IE7 would be the best-bet. This is a pretty significant change from what I would have said yesterday…the new IE has impressed me…
This is what happens when a BT engineer pulls the wrong cord…
btw, the widget is called Watchmouse (duh!). The best part about it is that if there is a failure, it automatically takes you to a page where the response times from a bunch of servers around the world are listed. Just to make sure it isn’t just your computer/connection that is duff…
This is a very good example of a good idea being used as a little cheap viral marketing. The Tate has a small subsection on their site which allows you to make your very own collection of works, write the captions and print them as a pdf.
Now this could be a pretty neat and forward thinking idea, especially in the whole web2.0 sceme of things. To allow the visitors to the site to explore the vast collection of the Tate, create their own selection of works and display them online; “come and see the Ed Wilde collection” they’ll say…heck, if a collection is getting so much traffic, it could even be shown physically. I can see comments, tags, groups and all sorts of wannabe curators presenting themselves…not to mention the vast scope for comedy collections with humorous captions.
But no…this is just a pretty form which allows you to create a custom pdf file with a choice of about 50 images and some text…opportunity missed? or perfect viral for the website?
After a long period only using the work connection, a local unsecured network and a slooow-ass dialup connection, I am back online!
Kudos to Be, who are providing a connection about ten times as fast as my old pipex one, for a slightly cheaper price. I am still a little amazed at how fast this connection actually is, I can pickup a 150mb episode of something in about 8 minutes…certainly beats the days when I used be happy when the speed reached 3.1kb/s (effectively maxing out a 28.8bps connection).
The Be ordering process was kinda fun too, they have an online checklist which counts down the steps until you are connected. I think you will agree it is much nicer to check a website everyday and see a little progress than to just wait with no information. Also if I can refer 24 people to Be, I get free broadband for life…or until I move.
Moving house is so much fun (hah!), unfortunately it does take it’s toll.
As one would expect gas, electricity and water can be switched from one address to another easily, even BT can get a phoneline to a new address in a few hours (to my surprise) unfortunately it still takes two weeks to get broadband…
One simple question, why cant adsl be enabled on all lines and disabled on the ones that specifically don’t like it? (such as Redcare lines). Surely that would be easier than doing whatever it is that takes two weeks to get one line enabled…
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I am on dialup for a couple of weeks…bleugh!
To me…and my seldom seen right-of-genghis-kahn side this piece of pedestrian flow control isn’t such a bad idea. There has been many a time when I have walked through the entrance to a tube line to find 50+ french students standing in the middle of the most-used piece of the platform, or a human snail blocking the entrance with an oversized rucksack.
I foresee one problem, the above mentioned examples are based around foreign people, that is, people visiting the country and wanting to travel within it…and if you have ever travelled to another country and tried to use their underground system to get anywhere, you will know that looking at the floor and trying to decipher why part of it is painted in day-glo yellow is not going to be that high on your priority list.
Go on, admit it…you clicked on it didn’t you…
The banner ad was spotted on one of my daily rotation of sites, I pressed it (yea yea), firefox blocked the resulting popup (got to love firefox), much to my amusement the computer made a farting sound…
Just an inkling, but I think we may be seeing a lot more banner ads of this style in months to come…I still remember the first pseudo windows dialogue banner advert I saw and thinking, bah! no one would fall for that…heh, then everyone was doing them…
Just a quick note to update anyone who is interested in the phone saga…after the rom update, it all worked fine until Saturday night when it went dark and accepted no button presses (crashed). Then classically refused to boot…damnit!
I am wondering now if the best way would be to have some kind of disk image of my contacts/software stored on the removable memory card, that way I could hard-reset on the fly and not have to get back to my computer before having everyones phone number again.
On the plus side…Since I have installed the rom update, the phone now connects to the computer through USB without requiring me to boot into the clean version of windows (sp2), which was a bit of a pain…
The O2 XDA Mini S is dead again, this is the second time in under a week. Same problem as last time, the phone refuses to boot. What was I doing to it? simply trying to setup the woefully terrible bluetooth support with windows, I am not even sure the bluetooth on this phone works as it hasn’t been able to connect to the pc or the mac, or anyone else’s phone…
Guess it is back to factory defaults again, I have wasted a phenomenal amount of time on this phone…and so far seen little benefit or example of anything truly cool that it can do…
This is pretty ridiculous…the phone is dead after two weeks of usage. It would seem to be a software problem (surprise, surprise) as the phone simply refuses to boot.
It crashed quite spectacularly last night while using internet explorer (yea…who’d have thunk it), to the extent that it required the battery to be removed to power down. As obviously the power button doesn’t work when it is crashed (gah!).
Then when you turn it on, it brings up the o2 screen (normally takes about 30 seconds or so to boot) then the backlight goes off…the o2 screen is still visible, so I am assuming it is crashing sometime during the boot process.
Just on a sidenote, I noticed the lens has already been knackered ipod nano style…guess they made it out of the softest plastic known to man. oh well, guess the camera lens cant get much worse. By the way, it is not like I play catch or knife games with the phone…it goes from my pocket to the pc to charge and back to my pocket, thats it…
Anyway, I am performing a factory reset which I found on this page, hopefully it will be fixed…will update.
UPDATE - 2 minutes later The factory reset worked nicely, I now have to reconfigure windows mobile, install the applications necessary to make it useable, add all my contacts again (thank god I had only added three since the last sync), morn the loss of the first images the phone took and first documents I tried writing with it.
(pt.1 here)
(pt.2 here)
(pt.3 here)
Well, this is the one I chose…the xda mini s or HTC Wizard as it is also known. To summerise, this is a very nice phone with all the built in functionality one could hope for, stunningly let down by abysmal software.
Let me give you an example: To make a phone call. Bearing in mind, this is a device sold in mobile phone shops, not computer shops. It is supposed to be a phone first, and a pda second. Phone is an application, it must be executed and closed like an application. It (like most windows mobile applications) suffers from numerous bugs and design flaws. I have only had it a week, already phone has crashed during a call (when the phone crashes, the on/off switch ceases to work, battery must be removed), irritating!
So, to make a phone call, one must first open the ‘phone’ application, sometimes this works by pressing the green ‘call’ hardware button (great!) but not always. Sometimes pressing this button gives you your contacts, sometimes it does nothing except light up in pretty green. I wonder if one day I will be able to predict what response pressing this button will give.
The second problem with this phone, believe me there are too many to go through here, is the support. There is NO mac support for the o2 xda mini s, none…nothing from microsoft, nothing from apple, nothing (as yet) from any 3rd party. Apparently the reasoning for this is that microsoft ‘improved’ the security in WM5 which broke iSync and the 3rd party offerings (pocketmac and missingsync) to the extent that they have to go back to the drawing board to sync. The os has been out since last april and still nothing…thats pretty bad if you ask me.
Ok, I can put up with only using my pc and bluetooth. Ha! I connect a bluetooth serial port, go through the rigmarole of pairing and…no connection. I must also point out that the activesync program has sound effects while trying to find a device (arrrg!). Now I am somewhat irritated, but hardly surprised, so I connect the supplied usb cable to the back of the pc… ‘installing drivers’, ‘device is ready to use’, zonealarm tells me i have a new network…fzzt! The Pc resets itself. The pc also refuses to boot while the phone is connected…
So, I cant sync with a mac, I cant sync with the pc…what do i do? I try virtual pc, nope…I try safe-mode, nope…I try different versions of activesync, nope…all have the same effect of driver wont start or just straight crash. Beginning to run out of ideas, I installed the dreaded XP sp2 on a spare partition. Thank-god, finally a sync through usb…it really shouldn’t be this hard!
With regards to the phone itself, it isnt that bad…well, I am getting used to it anyway. The buttons on screen are usually too small to press with a finger, so the stylus has to be brought out, nerdlyness ensues. There is something about using a mobile device and a stylus, just needs black-rim glasses fixed with sticky-tape to complete the image really.
The camera seems to actually be worse (although higher resolution) than the 7650 (the very first phone with a camera). The lens is almost useless in low light conditions. The flash/light on the camera is actually pretty useful as a torch, useless for images as it really seems to make no difference in any other condition except pitch-black.
The wifi is kinda cool, only 802.11b though. IE for mobile is ok, it sort of does what you need in a mini browser. I tried opera mobile 8.5, it seems largely the same as IE, except with an irritating ‘this will expire in 40 days’ screen. The wifi connection is relatively stable, it sometimes has trouble getting an ip address (I have had this on three separate networks, so i am sure it is the phone not the individual dhcps), range is pretty good too…even found a couple of networks my powerbook couldn’t see. Such a shame the gprs is prohibitively expensive.
Bluetooth seems to be even more temperamental that the 7650, sometimes it works and can sent to the powerbook/pc, sometimes it just doesn’t want to play. I would guess this is some kind of ms-patched-to-death security fix…
By far the most entertaining part about Windows Mobile 5 is the message you get when you shut-down the phone
Warning: Device will be off,and may lose some data.
Do you want to continue?
Damn, those are some confident programmers…simply powering down the phone may delete all of your contacts, images, themes. It probably doesn’t mean this, but how can you be sure? To a new user this could be pretty freaky…well, if they actually read it.
Windows also seems to have lost the ability to actually close programs. You think I am joking? In windows mobile 5, pressing the x in the top right corner, no longer closes, it minimizes/hides the active window. This is terrible, especially when there isnt a task-switcher easily accessible. I dont know whether this is some kind of ill-fated implementation of the osx style of application management or what, but after a couple of hours of twiddling with the phone you have to go into task manager to shutdown all of the programs you have used. I can see the novice user having great problems with this…as the memory gets used up, the phone gets slower and slower…
Luckily, I am not the only person who has had these problems…after following advice on various forums, I removed the o2 ‘active’ software, this improved the phones performance by about 50%.
I also discovered a couple of programs which deserve to be packaged with every copy of WM5, the first is called spb PocketPlus. It fixes the ghastly task manager problems, it creates a nice customisable shortcut collection and monitors collection on the desktop (or today screen as it is known) and does all sorts of other useful things in the background too. The second is a cool voice-recognition software called fonix voicedial, it basically allows you to do almost any phone operation by voice only and it actually works, first time, with no training…great!
I think I have vented enough annoyances about the phone…so what does it do well? Well, it looks pretty 
The qwerty keyboard is surprisingly easy to use for txting and emailing, it is quite strange to know where the keys are when typing with thumbs though. A nice feature is that txt messages are displayed on screen for a few seconds when you receive them…just enough to quickly read them without having to go through the process of opening etc…The contacts list is nicely organised, and the search is quick and comprehensive. The battery life is good, my first trial lasted for 48hrs with no charge to take it down to about 10% battery, certainly better than my old phone. Just a shame that the only docks available for this phone are plug ugly.
Looking back on my list of things I wanted to be able to do…after a week of usage I am at 6/15. I can connect through wifi, connect through gprs (for £2.32 per megabyte, urk!), send photos to flickr via flickr email (not ftp yet although it is possible), blog via email, vibrate (duh), tetris (yet to find a copy which isnt crap though). I reckon there is software that will do voip, but I have heard it isn’t great. If only I could sync with the mac…
All-in-all, I am relatively happy with the phone, after a week of usage I am learning windows little foibles. One thing I must add though, is that the phone/pda market really is ripe to be iPodded.
All it will take is for some company (hopefully apple, this tuesday) to release a stylish, easy to use mini pda running some well designed, pretty software and they will completely take over the market. Windows mobile would not be any competition, they are on their 5th version of the operating system and it is still dire…they wont get it right anytime soon and Linux is still in the theoretical stage of development.
