Category Archives: Asides

BlackBerry redux

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Sigh. My Google phone is on its way back to T-Mobile. I write this with some regret, because I had high hopes for it. My GPRS BlackBerry (which is by far the best phone I’ve ever had) was beginning to show signs of physical collapse. And I was really tired of trying to access Google via GPRS, which was like going back to the bad old days of dial-up modems. So I thought: what I need is a proper 3G phone.

But which one? The BlackBerry Storm was considered and discarded, even before Stephen Fry demolished it. To me, it looked like something rushed out to compete with the iPhone, but without proper testing. As an iTouch user, I knew and liked the iPhone interface, but felt that I ought to make a stand because of its non-generativity (to use Jonathan Zittrain’s phrase). So how about the Google Android phone?

Research showed that it was offered by T-Mobile (my network provider). And it met Jonathan’s requirement for open-ness. So I ordered one.

It seemed slick enough at first sight. Setting it up to link with my Google account was a breeze. And it had a real QWERTY keyboard, accessible by sliding the screen up, thus:

The keyboard, though small, was useable in twin-thumb mode, just as the Psion PDAs used to be.

So how was it in practice? Answer: mixed. Very mixed. Battery life (like that of the iPhone) is abysmal if one has the phone permanently online, so I turned everything off and just synchronised Gmail when I needed to update. The camera is, well, dire. The GPS facility is good — really good, actually; but it positively eats battery-life. All of which tended to reduce the phone to a rather more humdrum piece of kit. The biggest problem was that its methods of indicating that messages have arrived was, for me, useless — especially compared with the BlackBerry’s ways of doing things. I need to know instantly when messages have arrived — especially when the phone is on silent. (I spend a lot of time in meetings.)

Composing and typing SMS messages on the G-phone is a tedious palaver. First you have to swing out the screen so that you can type. This requires two hands. So effectively texting on the move is difficult/impossible.

The Android software seems stable and effective. The Apps available on the open ‘market’ are, however, pretty tame compared with what’s available for the iPhone. This may change in time and more handsets become available and the commercial opportunities for Android Apps begins to build. But for now the first G-phone available on the UK market is IMHO just an unsatisfactory beta. If it had come out before the iPhone we would have regarded it as a small miracle. But now it doesn’t cut the mustard. What Android really needs is a slick handset from Nokia or Sony-Ericsson.

So I’m returning to the BlackBerry fold. What the episode has taught me is that easy, efficient SMS and email are the key things I need, plus occasional 3G-speed access to web sites.

Ironically, I will be acquiring a new BlackBerry just as Barack Obama has to surrender his.

The road less travelled

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After days and days of muddy brown light, the sun shone this morning. So I packed camera and lenses and went for a walk in the woods. There was a freezing wind up on the ridge outside Wimpole, so much so that it was painful to hold the camera, even with leather gloves on. And yet it was lovely to be there, listening to the wind sighing through the trees, and picking my way over rotten branches and fallen trees. At one point I was standing contemplating the view and thinking about lenses when I heard voices raised in desultory conversation, and then two horsemen passed me and politely said “Good morning”. After they’d moved on, I fell to thinking of one of my favourite poems. And took the picture.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

LATER: Quentin reminded me of his own poetical venture in this territory!

Yes Wii Can!

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Nintendo had to be tickled to learn that the new White House will include a Wii. President-elect Obama told the New York Times that his girls got one of the consoles for Christmas and that he himself was putting in some time at the virtual bowling alley, with considerably more success than he had at the real-world lanes.

But Obama’s flirtation with the Wii is nothing compared to his deep devotion to his BlackBerry, which his advisors want him to stop using because of legal and security concerns. “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Obama said Wednesday in an interview. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” What’s an endorsement like that worth if Research in Motion had to pay for it on the celebrity market? At least $25 million, maybe twice that, said agents asked by the New York Times. “You always want the celebrity to be a good fit with your brand, and is anybody considered a better communicator right now than Barack Obama, or a better networker?” said Fran Kelly, chief executive of the Arnold Worldwide ad agency. “It couldn’t have a better spokesperson.” This, of course, could all change if Obama can’t find the reset button for the economy.

Link.

Power lunching

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Dubya had a lunch party today at the White House. Guests were his Pa, President-elect Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Apparently it was Obama’s idea. It was the first time since 1981 that all living presidents have been together at the White House.

Photo here.

Whistling in the dark

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Every year John Batelle makes some predictions about the year ahead and — to his credit — revisits them at the end of the year to see how he did. This year he’s clearly having difficulties. And he thinks the recession will end in the fourth quarter of the year. Sure it will. And pigs will fly in close formation.

Mr Fry’s gadget bag

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I always thought that Quentin and I must be the most chronic cases of travelling geeks (in terms of the amount of kit we take with us) in the western world. But I was wrong. We are mere amateurs, nay boulevardiers, compared with Mr Stephen Fry. Here is the list of what he has just unpacked in his New York hotel room.

7 x Mini USB cables: 2 of them are the new Micro type that Blackberry has switched to for the Storm only, the rest are standard.

4 x iPod/iPhone chargers: I seem to use one iPhone exclusively for mad hacking, jailbreaking and frigging about with, another as a pedometer, another for music, another as a – guess what ? – phone. I know I’m putting my botty on the line by confessing to jailbreakage and hackery, but I think Apple (while each update brings a new weapon in their war against Pwnage and SIM-card skulduggery) are man enough to take it.

3 x Hard drives: Took the hasty decision to come to America (I shan’t be back in Britain till late January) with just one computer, one of the new MacBooks. It doesn’t have Firewire. Duh? Maddening, since my favourite hard drive is Firewire only. But at least the MacBook allows a proper connection, unlike the underpowered USB of the original version of the scrumptious MacBook Air. You know that feeling when you have a whole lump of data on one device or peripheral and you want to get it on another and you suddenly realise you can’t? ‘Okay, so I upload it onto a compact flash card. No onto an SD card. Hell where’s my card reader? Right. I email myself the file…’ etc., etc. That happens to me a lot.

1 Snowball USB Microphone: just in case I have the sudden yen to record a podgram. You never know.

6 x SIM cards: Orange, Vodafone, 2 x O2, T-Mobile, AT&T. My UK mobile number is Orange, that’s my regular number, but one needs to swap and shuffle and use other networks in order properly to play. I know. I’m weird. I’ve long accepted it. But weird is just another way of spelling “wired”. I drew weird in another way and got wired.

1 x Blackberry Bold
1 x Blackberry Storm
1 x HTC G1 Android ‘Googlephone’
1 x Pocketsurfer
n x iPhones (too many, you’d only laugh or snort with derision if I told you the exact number)

Assorted CDs

Assorted Manuals and Quickstart Guides.

Mind you, he probably travels by private jet. Try getting that pile of stuff past a RyanAir check-in.

The Gmail diet

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Chris Nuttall of the FT has become a Gmail user.  (He’s on the run from the dreaded Lotus Notes.)  He’s posted some helpful notes on how to make Gmail more efficient. I’ve learned some tricks I hadn’t known. Gratias!