Monthly Archives: January 2011

Make your iPhone look like it’s running Windows Phone 7

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

I am not convinced that many of you will want to try this, but the attempt to make iOS look like Windows Phone in the video below is very clever. More details are here for those of you who are bilingual.

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Google topples Symbian from smartphones top spot

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

One glimmer of goodness that Nokia has been able to hold on to over the past year was still being number one in terms of sales in the smartphone industry. Google has now taken that glimmer away from them. Thanks to Jah.


From Reuters / Yahoo- Google’s Android dethroned Nokia’s Symbian as the most popular smartphone platform in the last quarter of 2010, ending a reign that began with the birth of the industry 10 years ago.

Research firm Canalys said on Monday phonemakers sold 32.9 million Android-equipped phones in the last quarter, roughly seven times more than a year ago, compared with Symbian’s sales of 31 million.

The landmark piles pressure on Nokia as it struggles to reassert itself at the top end of the mobile handsets market.

The success of the open-source Android operating system, which has become the standard for most phone makers, leaves Google well placed as cellphones are due to surpass computers for accessing the web. Among key players in the industry so far only Nokia, Apple and RIM have not resisted using it.

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QOTD: Digital money?

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

Do you manage your finances on a desktop or mobile computer / smartphone? I use Pocket Money on the iPhone every day and found it invaluable for seeing what money is being spent on. I don’t want to check my iTunes spend anymore, it is depressing…

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Shield Skin for iPhone 4 (full body protector) review

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

Some smartphones are designed to be seen and the iPhone 4 is arguably the best looking phone in the world at the moment (I am sure some of you will disagree). Protecting an iPhone 4 is thus not an easy task because you may want to ensure it is protected, but not cover it completely with a case. You also have to factor in the requirement to cover the edges where the antenna is because of signal degradation, something I experience to this day, and this leaves you all confused and befuddled.

Zagg is well known for producing the invisibleSHIELD range of protectors for the iPhone 4 and many other phones, but my experience has to date not been good with them. I have owned 2 full body protectors so far and both started to fall off after a few weeks- it seems that sweat and hot environments cause this problem and so I have steered away from making the same mistake 3 times. They currently retail for $24.99 (or £15-£19 in the UK) and come with all of the required components to help you make a decent fist of installation.

Shield Skins makes an alternative iPhone 4 full body protector which sells for $16.99 and which also comes with the components required to install it with a minimum of fuss. There are also comprehensive instructions which you really should read. Comments like “Once the adhesive gets dirt on it, it cannot be cleaned” make you realise that you need to take care when installing the protector. So, it was with trepidation that I began the installation process.

In the package you get the instructions, a bottle of application solution, a squeegee card and the shield itself. The shield is made up of 11 different components to ensure as much of the iPhone is covered as possible so give yourself at least 20 minutes to do the install. In an unusual move away from standard ‘man behaviour’ I read all of the instructions and got started.

It all looks quite straightforward when you start and follows a very similar process to the other full body protectors, but there are some caveats that you need to be aware of. It is relatively difficult to install the front and back protectors because they are stickier than competing products. This is actually a good thing because it means that the resulting attachment feels very secure. Don’t be scared to liberally apply the solution, but be aware that too much could potentially damage the iPhone if it creeps into places it shouldn’t. Once I had finished spraying the front protector I spent some time applying it, to the point that I needed to respray the protector again. So, use the spray with confidence and you will be OK. Whatever you do, do not try to attach these protectors without any spray because the whole process will not work.

The other caveat is to be aware that there will likely be a haze underneath the protectors once you have finished. This is disconcerting, but it does state to expect this in the instructions. It also says to leave the phone turned off for 24 hours after installation which someone like me would never do. I can barely turn my phone off for 2 hours let alone a whole day. Anyway, most of the haze dried away overnight with just a small circle left- this drifted away about a day after installation and I was left with what looks like a pretty decent protector that is almost invisible to the naked eye.

I can’t judge how well the protector kit will work over time because it has not been installed for long enough, but it does seem to be much more secure than the Zagg offering and perfectly proportioned for the iPhone. The exact proportions are the reason you need to spend time installing it and like most things, a little time will pay benefits in the long run here.

Conclusion

I have to say that I am somewhat impressed by this protector kit because it looks great and is literally invisible. However, it is not for the faint hearted and the installation process needs to be done with care and you need to have patience to wait for it to settle done and become clear.

All in all, it represents good value for money and I would use this over the Zagg offering any day.

Available from Shield Skins for $14.95.

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Physical media: dying

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

This is a subject I have written about a few times in the past, but my earlier predictions concerning physical media and its lessening popularity now seem to be coming true, at least in the UK. Recent news reports have raised the continuing problems the company is having with its financials and there are many aspects of the story that will lead many to presume that the company has no long-term future. HMV is going to be closing some stores and also some Waterstones stores as well which is even more worrying. Does this signal a steady decline in the purchasing of CDs, DVDs and traditional books? It probably does and when you consider the competitive elements working against bricks and mortar media stores, you soon start to see where the problem lies-

iTunes, Amazon MP3 store and the rest: As we move away from CDs and start to want the instant gratification that these online stores offer it is difficult to see how the CD has a long term future. Pricing is one aspect and to this day I still see some CD’s in HMV priced at ridiculous levels.

Torrents: These sites are potentially damaging for music sales as well as films and many other physical media forms and it seems as though they are growing all of the time.

Online shopping: This was brought home to me last week when I went to my local post office to pick up a parcel I had missed. As I waited in the queue I noticed all of the boxes neatly arranged on shelves behind the counter and was surprised to see that over half of them bore the familiar Amazon logo and packaging. It was astonishing just how many had been sent by Amazon and brought home to me just how much lost business this image represented to the shops in the town centre, not 100 yards away.

If HMV was to disappear from the high street, this would leave a gaping hole because all of a sudden the outlets for CDs and DVDs reduces to virtually nothing. I live in a fairly large town with a huge shopping centre (that would be a mall to some of you) which sells almost everything you can imagine. The old curiosities remain such as why O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Carphone Warehouse, 3 and Phones4U choose to situate themselves all together and why the jewellery shops do the same thing, but despite a selection of hundreds of shops only HMV sells CDs and DVDs in a number worth thinking about. WH Smiths makes a tame effort with music, but only if you like easy listening and Jazz (shudder!) and it prices the CDs accordingly which is very high indeed.

If HMV went away I would have to go to Amazon, Play or another online retailer to buy a CD or DVD because there would be no other choice. And if this did happen it would drive me deeper into iTunes and Amazon MP3 thus completing the circle and eventually killing off physical media for good.

I am curious though as to if this situation is unique to the UK or if it is happening abroad as well? Feel free to let us all know via your comments.

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Thought of the day: MP3 inconsistencies

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

“Why, when I buy music from iTunes, is the volume and general quality of the sound so inconsistent? I don’t tend to notice it when using headphones or through a docking station, but when using an FM transmitter in the car some tracks are barely audible whereas others are perfectly clear at a much lower volume.”

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Epoc runs perfectly on Windows 7

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Shaun

Paul sent in an interesting tip which will be great for those of you, like me, who still look fondly upon the Psion range of PDAs. With a simple download you can now have a fully working Psion on your Windows 7 desktop, netbook or laptop. Full details are here and here are Paul’s simple instructions-

“If you want to see what the fuss is about concerning AGENDA, then you can download the psion epoc emulator for windows only here.

Unzip it and run setup, then you should have some start menu items which will fire up the virtual epoc device. Give it about 20 seconds to boot the Psion operating system, then click on AGENDA.

Remember this was running on a pocket device with a touch screen, and 35mhz arm processor 10 years ago.”

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Amazon Kindle Magazines and Newspapers on Android review

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Shaun

The news that Amazon was bringing magazines and newspapers to Android, via its Kindle app, caught many by surprise. Some presumed that it would head to iOS first and others were just elated by the feature coming so soon. So what is it like to use on an Android smartphone?

Well, to call this an unfinished content offering would be to understate the issue. I eagerly checked the newspapers to see which were available and noticed that all of the main newspapers in the UK were listed which was a good start. However, when I tapped each one the same message appeared time and time again- “This publication is not yet available on Kindle Reading Apps.” Every single publication had this problem.

A jump to the magazine listing brought up a similar problem, although not quite as bad. I managed to find some that were available (roughly a third), but was then presented with a choice of subscribing for a nominal fee or buying single issues. In my opinion the cost of the single issues was on the whole way too high and in most cases almost identical to the cost for the real magazine. And you can guess that the real magazine experience is superior to trying to read one on a smartphone, no matter how large the screen.

I took the plunge, however, and subscribed to Technology Review. You get a 14 day free trial with each subscription and it was only after I cancelled the subscription after 1 hour that I realised that the first issue was still loaded on my phone. That is either extremely generous of Amazon or a flaw in the system that lets you grab issues for free…

The presentation of the magazine itself is almost perfect for a small smartphone screen and brings easy to read text and images perfectly proportioned for a smartphone. This is, however, the biggest downfall of all. A multitude of apps offer perfect presentation of text and images for the small screen so where is the magazine experience? There is virtually no ‘magazine’ experience at all apart from the title page which is just a downsized title page. I my head I cannot justify paying the same price as the paper edition for a smartphone edition of the content- that may sound silly because it is of course the content that matters, but when you sell a magazine people expect to receive a magazine. They don’t want a cut-down experience which looks like a website app.

The iPad has shown that magazines can be presented with flair, imagination and the content enclosed in such a way as to make each issue feel more like a magazine than an app. As it stands, the Amazon experience offers none of this and is currently very much in my ‘fail’ category of services that are supposed to pave the way for digital publishing.

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Free iPads for all Imagine employees

Posted on January 29, 2011 by Shaun

I got a free diary, a small one, from my employer a few weeks ago. I am not bitter- it has a map and everything in it, but every Imagine Publishing employee has been given a free iPad! That is highly impressive and seems well suited for the industry it is in.


“In what must be a media first, Imagine Publishing has today announced that as part of its pioneering commitment to digital mobile publishing it has given a free Apple iPad to all its employees. This unprecedented gift allows everyone who works at Imagine to appreciate and enjoy the company’s iPad apps and digital editions, and it hopes it will also lead to a new generation of apps and new iPad-only magazines.”

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QOTD: The next great phone?

Posted on January 29, 2011 by Shaun

Who, in your opinion, will make the next great smartphone? I guess the obvious answer is Apple, but something tells me that Samsung is about to unleash a monster…

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Progress

Posted on January 29, 2011 by Shaun

I was pondering my decade long fascination with finding the perfect smartphone device the other day and came to the conclusion that most of the high-end smartphones have gone past the level of perfection that I was always looking for. They do so much and in a manner that takes away most of the aggravation we associate with computers that they soon become a part of our lives that we just use on a daily basis. We don’t think about what they can do, we just do stuff with them.

If I consider that the modern smartphone has moved beyond what I expected in terms of capability I then look at what I expect them to do in the future, and what they are not so good at now. The one area that strikes me more than any other is the physical limitations the size of these devices now present when contrasted with the software and their multiple abilities. This explains the trend towards larger screens and the fact that no matter how much software developers make efforts to squeeze desktop style functions into the small screen, there will always be limitations.

As the functionality of smartphones increases and the ability to navigate, socially network, communicate in a variety of ways and do almost everything else you want to becomes normal the hankering for a bigger screen to do these things on will increase. There will be a constant battle between software and hardware similar to what we have seen in desktop computing, which has seen a steady rise in resolution and screen size over the past few years, but the difference is that smartphones have to be limited to a certain size limit to even be considered phones.

Part of me wonders if we will even use phones in the future and if small tablets will become the norm with a headset to make and receive the ‘occasional’ voice call. It could be that voice calling becomes as strange to watch someone undertake as Bluetooth headsets are for people to wear. It’s just one more step away from personal communication and a few more steps around the circle that we are currently revolving around. Phones get bigger and turn into PDAs and so it will all start over again.

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COTD: The Cloud

Posted on January 29, 2011 by Shaun

Donald has come up with today’s comment of the day regarding The Cloud- “Companies go out of business, free services become paid and the cloud occasionally fails. Give me a 100% rock sure guarantee that you’ll be around for the next 50 years and that you’ll never go down or start charging me for free services and then I’ll take the cloud more seriously.”

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The eBook revolution is speeding up…

Posted on January 29, 2011 by Shaun

It seems as though the eBook revolution is really starting to kick in now. Amazon has reported that Kindle editions are now selling in higher numbers than paperbacks and the Man Booker judging panel now expects submissions to be submitted in digital form as well as paper. It has taken some time, but finally the eBook is starting to enter the conciousness of the masses.

From The Guardian- “Publishers entering books for the £50,000 Man Booker prize are now being asked to make all submissions available both as physical books and in digital form. This year’s judging panel – which includes writers Susan Hill, Matthew d’Ancona, and politician Chris Mullin as well as the Daily Telegraph’s head of books Gaby Wood, and is chaired by former M15 chief Stella Rimington – have been issued with e-readers. The move will help them prepare for the 2011 prize longlist, to be announced in July, without hauling around back-breaking numbers of submissions.”

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400 million Android phones… from Nokia

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Shaun

Ewan from MIR has made a bold prediction, but sadly even he doesn’t seem fully convinced by it. The idea is that if Nokia decided to go full force with Android it could sell 400 million Android phones within 2 years. The number is perfectly reasonable if Nokia decided to do such a thing, but I guess the chances of it even starting to happen are low. The number does put some perspective on the volumes sold by others though in the smartphone market.

“A Nokia strategy that sees it move it’s entire production of 400-500 million devices to Android within 2 years? That’s compelling. (I know there are SO many issues with this, but go with me).

All of a sudden, Nokia would be sitting right at the top of the mobile industry table (they’re right there already, just ignored). The company would be relevant once again. And all of a sudden, the investments in Ovi — particularly the now capable Ovi Store infrastructure — become particularly compelling. I could see the Ovi Store on Android being a much better alternative than the Android marketplace…”

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Mobile Phone Market Grows 17.9% in Fourth Quarter

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Shaun

IDC has published its fourth quarter report and some big changes are starting to happen. Take a look at the table below- ZTE is now in the top five (jumped over Apple) and RIM is not. That didn’t take long for either to move in opposite directions.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. Jan. 27, 2010 – The worldwide mobile phone market grew 17.9% in the fourth quarter of 2010 (4Q10), a new quarterly high driven by smartphones. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 401.4 million units in 4Q10 compared to 340.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009. Vendors shipped a total of 1.39 billion units on a cumulative worldwide basis in 2010, up 18.5% from the 1.17 billion units shipped in 2009.

The strong quarterly and annual growth comes after a weak 2009, which saw the market decline by 1.6%. A stronger economy and a wider array of increasingly affordable smartphones helped lift the market to its highest annual growth rate since 2006 when it grew 22.6%.

“The mobile phone market has the wind behind its sails,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. “Mobile phone users are eager to swap out older devices for ones that handle data as well as voice, which is driving growth and replacement cycles.”

It’s not just smartphone-focused suppliers that capitalized on the mobile phone market’s renewed growth last year. ZTE, a company that sells primarily lower-cost feature phones in emerging markets, moved into the number 4 position worldwide in 4Q10. It is the first quarter the Chinese handset maker finished among IDC’s Top 5 vendors.

“Change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year,” added Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. “Motorola, Research In Motion, and Sony Ericsson, all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smartphone market who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010 are well within striking distance to move back into the top five list.”

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