Monthly Archives: May 2011

The Samsung Galaxy S II: it isn’t slow

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

Clove has run some benchmarks on the Samsung Galaxy S II and to call it quick would be an understatement. The full article is here, but the image below says a lot.

As you can see that is incredible and is at least 2 times faster than the original Galaxy S.

Do bear in mind this performance and the results change over time as you add applications and make changes to your device, but even so this is incredible.

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Aged to Perfection

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

I am sure that many of you, like me, look after your smartphones to keep them looking like they did on the day you bought them. However, Remy Labesque has a different view on this and the results are stunning.

“After 3+ years of having been carried in the same pocket as a ring of keys, the iPhone has acquired a polished patina over its aluminum shell. Abrasion of its hard-anodized surface has revealed the raw aluminum within. The camera’s shell has been worn in a very similar way but instead reveals black plastic concealed by silver paint. Slightly less flattering. The camera’s emulated metallic finish is only surface-deep and its wear tends to emphasizes awkward artifacts of the injection molding process used to create it. At this point the Canon camera’s shell looks like garbage while the iPhone’s is starting to resemble something more like an heirloom pocket watch.”

 

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QOTD: How many times?

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

How many times in a normal day do you check Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites? I check Twitter a lot, but Facebook I just don’t bother with anymore.

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Smartphone magazines: someone has finally cracked it

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

If there is one activity I really enjoyed on the iPad, when I owned one, it was reading magazines. The interactivity of Wired and some of the other titles brought what was traditionally a paper format to life and it worked very well indeed. Unfortunately this alone was not enough to make me keep an iPad and so I plodded on with my iPhone 4.

Many magazines available on the iPhone have the content right, but the presentation has not come close to offering a magazine feel and at times the navigation is fiddly and too cumbersome to make the experience worthwhile.

And then Our Choice appeared. The content is good, but what really interested me was the way the images, videos and text were displayed and handled on a small smartphone screen. At last there is a decent smartphone magazine option- we just need the big providers to take notice and jump on board.

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The perfect app

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

Every day I wake up, thankfully, and take my iPhone off Airplane mode and download the Tech News Today podcast. I then check my emails and other notifications and make the kids their breakfast. Next up I fire up TomTom to get me around the traffic on the way to work and play the Tech News Today podcast on the journey.

None of the above takes long to sort out, but what I really want is a way to automate the process. It would be great if my smartphone could turn off Airplane mode when the morning alarm sounds and download the latest TNT podcast. Emails and notifications come in automatically anyway, but then I would like to be able to get in my car, attach the phone to the FM radio accessory and have TomTom automatically plot the route to work and start playing the podcast. I would set it up once and that series of small events would automatically occur every day at the same time.

Automation was possible, particularly under Windows Mobile, but admittedly not to the level described above, but this kind of development would be a huge bonus for people who have parts of their days which are identical. It won’t happen anytime soon of course and maybe it never will. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue to crave such a time saving setup.

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The new Xperia minis: too small?

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

Sony Ericsson has announced two new Xperia minis. The Xperia mini is the world’s smallest Android powered HD video smartphone while the Xperia mini pro is the world’s smallest Android powered HD video smartphone, with a keyboard. Likely to be very nice, but surely too small for serious users? Time will tell.

Enjoy all your entertainment in crisp colours and high contrast on the 3″ Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine. Your HD video recording smartphone comes with a photo flash and auto focus too – your pics stay sharp and bright, even when you snap them in the dark.

On the move? Synch your email and calendar on the fly with Exchange ActiveSync®. And with OfficeSuite loaded as standard on your Android mini qwerty phone, you’ll look smooth over your smoothie as you prepare for that perfect pitch. With the powerful 1 GHz processor you can thumb your way through everything lightning fast.

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HTC Flyer stylus: $80!

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

Best Buy is listing the HTC Flyer stylus for $79.99! liliputing has the details and it isn’t clear at this stage if one will come with the tablet (surely it will), but even so- how many times did you lose styluses during those heady PDA days?

“It’s possible that what we’re looking at is the price of a spare pen, but I have yet to see any confirmation that a pen will come with the HTC Flyer. All we know is that the tablet has an active digitizer and can support either pen or finger input.

The HTC Flyer wouldn’t be the first Android tablet to be largely defined by an optional accessory that isn’t included in the base price. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is notable largely because the Android tablet has an optional keyboard docking station which lets you use the device like a notebook computer — but the keyboard dock adds $150 to the base price of the $400 tablet.”

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The Sophie iPhone ‘Palaroid Printer’ Case

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Shaun

Yanko Design has been at it again and produced another breathtaking concept. The Sophie is an iPhone case that can print out Polaroid style photos without touching a full-sized printer. Love it!

“The Sophie is another concept from the venerable Mac Funamizu. The iPhone dock/case prints photos just like a Polaroid. A QR code and geo tagged map can also be printed to link it to a digital version somewhere on the web like Flickr. Clever and simple. This is a much better evolution of Polaroid technology. A certain company should take notice.”

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Remarkable

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Shaun

From the brilliant Derek K. Miller- “Here it is. I’m dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote—the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive.

If you knew me at all in real life, you probably heard the news already from another source, but however you found out, consider this a confirmation: I was born on June 30, 1969 in Vancouver, Canada, and I died in Burnaby on May 3, 2011, age 41, of complications from stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. We all knew this was coming…” Read on.

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LastPass: another one bits the dust

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Shaun

LastPass is the latest victim of online security problems and if you use the service, you need to read this blog post. It seems that the service is overloaded as well which will stop people changing passwords and deleting accounts. Another one bites the dust for me.

“We take a close look at our logs and try to explain every anomaly we see. Tuesday morning we saw a network traffic anomaly for a few minutes from one of our non-critical machines. These happen occasionally, and we typically identify them as an employee or an automated script.

In this case, we couldn’t find that root cause. After delving into the anomaly we found a similar but smaller matching traffic anomaly from one of our databases in the opposite direction (more traffic was sent from the database compared to what was received on the server). Because we can’t account for this anomaly either, we’re going to be paranoid and assume the worst: that the data we stored in the database was somehow accessed. We know roughly the amount of data transfered and that it’s big enough to have transfered people’s email addresses, the server salt and their salted password hashes from the database. We also know that the amount of data taken isn’t remotely enough to have pulled many users encrypted data blobs.”

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QOTD: Who knows more than you?

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Shaun

Do you know anyone who knows more about smartphones and the mobile industry than you? Sadly I know a few…

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Media tariffs

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Shaun

When you buy a mobile phone on a contract you get bundled minutes, texts and data for a monthly charge. This, however, is far from the full cost of mobile ownership for many people because the market for apps, music and video is growing exponentially and the true cost could be up to three times the network tariff charge.

Here’s an idea-

£50 / month for 2000 text messages, 500 minutes, unlimited data, 20 music tracks, 10 apps and 3 video rentals.

It would complicate tariffs somewhat and no doubt network providers would find ways to make further profits from such a setup, but there could be a market for people who want to know what they are spending every month.

The problem would be that the likes of Apple, Google, RIM and the rest would not want to give up the revenues from individual sales, but that is not to say that it won’t happen at some stage in the future. Network providers are, on the whole, not trusted by hardware manufacturers and are rather seen as a necessary evil to get their products in people’s hands. This does not mean that the networks won’t push to get their hands on some of this revenue- they tried before apps became commonplace and they will no doubt try again.

The question is, would you sign up to a bundled media tariff or do you prefer to buy each media piece singularly?

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Defining app success: you forget it is installed

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Shaun

How do you know when a mobile app is truly worthwhile? You forget it is there. You don’t think about it when you are using it. You just use it every day and it works without complaint.

I have a few apps that fall into my ‘indispensible, but rarely thought about’ category; TomTom, Pocket Money, Week Calendar and Tweetbot are used every day and never, ever fail me. They just work every single time I launch them and I don’t even consider them anymore.

Awesome Note is an exception- I use it multiple times a day, but for some unknown reason I always consider how good it is every time I use it. In fact I marvel at its usefulness and couldn’t imagine using a phone without Awesome Note.

So, what apps do you use every day, but rarely think about because they are ‘just there’ doing what you need them to do?

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Apple Store offline: that’s a curiously good thing

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Shaun

An interesting insight from The Guardian- “If any further evidence were needed to prove Apple has a teflon image it came with the reaction to the Apple Store going offline for several hours on Tuesday. For any other company this would be the cue for a swathe of negative stories about brand damage and dodgy technical platforms. Not Apple. The blogosphere kicked into a frenzy that the outage, for an upgrade, must be for a flash new product, reported the Indy. It was (the new iMac) and so potential negative PR is replaced by the usual Apple fever.”

It is curious how what would be regarded as a fault elsewhere is a good thing for Apple.

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Astraware Launches Four Games for Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Color

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Shaun

Astraware is continuing to push out games for as many products as possible and the NOOK Color is the target this time. By all accounts it is one of the better tablets available.

Staffordshire, UK – 4th May 2011 – Astraware® is excited to announce the launch of four games, now available on Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet. The Astraware games are available through NOOK Apps™, a collection of high-quality applications launched this week for NOOK Color.   As was announced on April 25, 2011 Barnes & Noble issued a major software update that delivered significant new features and content to its NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet including NOOK Apps, one of the most-requested features from NOOK Color customers.

Astraware Mahjong, Astraware Solitaire, Astraware Sudoku, and Astraware Casino have all been optimised to take advantage of NOOK Color’s high resolution screen, and touchscreen controls. Astraware Mahjong is currently exclusive to NOOK Color on the Android platform for a limited time.

“We’ve put together a selection of titles that are ideal for people who like to both relax and use their brains – which will be perfect for NOOK Color owners!  With great features to make the games rewarding to play, and customisation to really make them your own, these will sit perfectly alongside the books, magazines, and entertainment that NOOK Color owners already enjoy!”

Astraware Mahjong includes 30+ puzzle layouts, 4 difficulty levels, and a Daily puzzle challenge where players can compare times with other players worldwide.

Astraware Solitaire includes 12 of the most popular single player card games in 1 pack, including Klondike, Spider, Freecell, Pyramid, and more.

Astraware Casino includes 11 popular casino games in 1 pack including Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Slots, Roulette, Blackjack, Craps, and more.

Astraware Sudoku includes puzzles at 6 difficulty levels, a puzzle generator, puzzle solver, ability to enter your own puzzles from newspapers and books, and a wide range of assistance including automatic or manual pencilmarks, and a smart hints system. It also includes the Sudoku of the Day daily puzzle challenge.

All 4 games can be purchased for $4.99 each on device. NOOK Color customers can easily download each game in seconds from Shop on NOOK Color. For more information on NOOKcolor, visit www.nookcolor.com. For more information on Astraware games, visit: http://www.astraware.com.

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