Convergence (again)

As per the expansion/contraction of the universe, this blog is being converged with its mother-ship

Reason: email updates are easier on blogger than wordpress.

TNN

Review of P1i

I’ve had my Sony Ericsson P1i for about four weeks now, and I’m ready to give my verdict. Bear in mind that I have been an Ericsson fan for a while, and the P900 remains one of my favourite smartphones of all time. I’ve also owned a variety of Palm devices (IIIc, m500, TX) , and other windows based smartphones. So I reckon I’ve a good position to give options from.

First impressions of the phone were highly disappointing. Within a couple of days I was pretty much wishing I could ditch the thing. Firstly there was this ‘combination’ of screen and keypad usage that is just not intuitive. But what is intuition other than that based on some element of previous expectation? For example, to answer, mute or end a call, you do not use the hard keys, you press ’sensor’ buttons on the touchscreen. Then there was the Mac iSync debacle. Oh yes, a half-hearted attempt at allowing Apples to sync with the phone results in no Task syncing or Notes syncing. So evidently this is a WINDOWS phone. Another initial niggle was the way the calendar does not show a nice ‘week view’ that you can get a quick glance at with vertical days. Its more like a grid view of a week, which isn’t ideal to see free slots.

Anyway, as time went on, I began to explore the phone more and here is the result from Luxemborg…

Jog Dial : this has made a welcome return to the P-range, and its almost back to its best. Fabulous. Very useful to quickly navigate the various menus.

Keyboard : this continues to be the WORST part of the phone, its just not quick to use. Sure some people will be able to hit the right side of the rocker switch. But I find that I am hitting neighbouring keys which slows down typing.

SMS : pretty much the same as it was on other UIQ3 phones. The only snag is no t9! Yep, you have to use the QWERTY rocker-switches for everything. urgh.

EMAIL : Ok, so this is getting better. Download from any POP server, download just headers, or download emails smaller than a configurable size. Additionally, the scheduled download of emails is back, so you can grab mails at set ‘intervals’ alas not at specific times. Its easy to read and compose, but I do wish it ’saves’ emails frequently – just get a call and sometimes it all vanishes

WEB : This is getting better. Based on Opera it has configurable cache, and screen behaviour. The bookmarking is OK, allowing for folders, but you cannot delete the silly pre-set bookmarks. Options to not download images is there, to save on GPRS tariffs.

CALENDAR : The key to a smartphone, and the P1i’s weakest feature. Firstly, as the earlier gripe suggests, no easy week-vertical view, as pre in outlook. Secondly, get yourself some meetings and you better remember to silence your phone. Unlike windows smartphones, it does not automatically adjust your profile based on appointments. So you could have your embarrassing ringtone go off in the middle of a key meeting. So its not THAT smart.

TASKS : Oh my, what a disaster. If you want to use your phone to help you Get Things Done, forget it. Go get a Palm or a Treo, this device does not let you manage tasks flexibly. Firstly you have no chance of doing this on a non Windows platform, and secondly you might as well drive from Outlook and not the P1i when you are on Windows. A real disappointment. Priorities, due by, overdue, are all there but in a very odd and unusable manner.

EASY VIEW : there is a easy view of the key events on the home screen of the phone. But it doesnt really shrink its font small enough to see the right things on the screen at once. So, its about 70% usable, but a nice touch. Not as good as the new Windows VARIO smartphones though.

UIQ3 : the key to the phone is its OS – based on Symbian UIQ3. Not the fastest OS on the planet, menu launches and application launches take some time. Does this affect usability? Well in a tight business day, not a great thing.

Conclusion: its not great, but it is an improvement on the P900i. The iPhone remains the device of choice for now.

Productivity and New Years Resolutions

Beware the desire to sprint through the rat race. There is much more to be said of a slow and steady progress through life.

For those who are money minded, read this : http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php it illustrates why 40 hour weeks might actually help productivity.

In Box Nirvana

Some of you may know that I am attempting a getting-things-done approach, otherwise now evolved to life-hacking.

This site: http://www.43folders.com has a lot of information on this.

Essentially I have the following tools:

• Hipster PDA – for offline and quick notes
• Sony P1i – for office calendar and mobile smart phone stuff
• Work email and Mac email
• A filing tray at home

I have achieved In Box Zero – a state much like nirvana in that everything I need to do, and am doing, is in its place and is managed. All new input to life is therefore more easily dealt with.

Its taken about 3 months, but its worth it. Have a go, 43 folders is a good place to start.

Eudora for Macs via Thunderbird

Yes, you read that right – Eudora, that popular and highly functional email client is once again being revamped for the Mac platform via an unusual route.

Mozilla Thunderbird is wrapping up the codebase and merging the functionality.

First impressions are it looks impressive.

OMG – are american corporations serious?

Look at this article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scan31aug31,0,2715647.story

It appears to suggest that corporations in the US are wanting ot RFID tag human employees.

Its like when we tag, whales, pigeons, and DHL parcels really isn’t it?

But who tags the taggers?

The new era of schooling

Much is said about schooling quality and teaching styles.

Have a look at this and see what you think a school would be like in say 10 years time. Remember, its probably not that long ago since you were at school – so change is fast!

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9033821&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top

Monte Cassino School’s decision to give its seventh and eighth grade students a new Tablet PC forced Nancy Stutsman, director of technology, to quickly tackle two issues — tight server space and the lack of an easy way to store and retrieve files when away from the Tulsa, Okla.-based school’s campus.

Stutsman selected the School Web Lockers hosted online storage system from San Diego-based Networld Solutions Inc. to provide each of the students with 100MB of storage. The service will also be used to provide Monte Cassino faculty members with and school administrators with 1GB of storage, Stutsman said. She estimated the cost of the service at $1 per user per year.

“We have server storage problems all the time, so we wanted an alternative place to [store] and back up files,” said Stutsman. In the past, she said, students were only allotted 10MB of server space on the school’s network.

Linux OS – beats symbian init?

  – a linux os based mobile. Its for hackers..you see.

OMFG! – Quick, have a look at this

You will not believe this – but I really feel for this guy. He’s absolutely right – you try to do the proper thing and people laugh or trample you. So might as well stand up tall and say – check me out!

 You will not believe it – its crazy.