Month: August 2003

Pocket Internet explorer

Why do Microsoft do it? why? oh why oh why?

Pocket IE 2003 renders CSS stylesheets and if that wasnt bad enough it seems to support limited javascript? I think. I visited a site a while back on the ipaq and it left a big dialogue box on the screen. What on earth is going on with this browser?

I am pleading with Opera to realease there amazing micro browser for pocketpc. There seems to be no real altenative browsers on the pocketpc unless you look at using wap

Saw this on code monkey
So, if you have a PDA running PocketPC 2002 or earler, could you do us all a favor and upgrade? And for those of you who don't, could you see what you can do to get whoever it is who makes your mobile browser to upgrade theirs to some modern web standards? It would make everyone's life much, much easier.

Ok why should people upgrade so you can now design using css on a palmtop device?

Theres no solution to this, I just wish I could turn off css on the ipaq. I also think the new palms support css too. Enough said for now!

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Slashdotters meetup updated


Ok, I cant count this meetup, the unexpected happened. I left to go to the slashdotters meetup and got to east croydon by 1800. Great I thought, what I'll do is go via New cross gate and pop up to brick lane via the east london line. Got to New cross gate, boarded the tube and the train suddely stopped. Why? The tube driver said it was down to a signal failure. Nothing new. But no it was more serious than we all thought, and while i sat there between new cross gate and surrey queys. The choas unfolded.

I only found out later when I finally got out of the tube and got a text message from my wife. Did you get to the meetup with the power cuts? What power cut, I was thinking? Everything seemed fine, only realised now I was sitting on a tube while most of the national grid in London had gone down.
The funny thing is I was having a go at my wife about americas power outage last week. Well at least it was only 30mins here not days!

The interesting thing I found thinking about Zeldman's blog, was that the mobile phone transmitters never went down once as I was able to get a gprs connection while sitting there on the tube. I never looked at my 3g phone, but I'm sure it was all fine too.

Anyway back to the meetup as such, I was lucky because the east london line power was quickly restored and I was away, while the other lines were all down. But it was pointless because no one else made it I dont think, plus the fact I got there 1 hour late. What kinda of host am I? But come on the there was bloddy power failure! in London!


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Bluetooth Personal Storage Server

Nizam pointed this out today. Its a nice idea but only uses the bluetooth ftp profile, so streaming wont work I believe.

HOPBIT is a personal mobile server that combines the wireless connectivity of Bluetooth with the storage capabilities of a large capacity hard disk drive. Small enough to slip into a pocket and light enough to carry everywhere, HOPBIT is a powerful personal tool that can transmit, receive and store large volume data sources–including images and music–communicate with digital networks, and provide a new dimension in portable memory for personal information equipment, such as PDA and PC.

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Brazilian Government Continues Push For Free Software

Seeing how I'm hosting the slashdotters meetup tomorrow, I spent a few hours reading up on the news while on the bus to and from work. This caught my attention.

Brazilian Government Continues Push For Free Software. The comments say it all, here some of the best bits


Most of us here have long known the realities of TCO and Microsoft. The only big cost with free software is in retraining staff. And retraining can be done for free – give a hungry man a can of food and he'll find a way to open it.

I guess with all the economic trouble in South America of late, governments such as that of Brazil are being forced to recognise that reality. Microsoft can probably no longer buy their way into Government contracts with 'discounts' and whatever other tactics they might use.


Farming out developement of other software has got to be cheaper than paying M$ obscene liscensing fees. Furthermore, when you hire contractors, you can get a solution which fits better than an out of the package software-suite. At the beginning, they may have to send some of that work overseas, but they will probably find local talent pretty quickly.


Seriously, lets see 'PAY LICENSES' or 'FEED PEOPLE'

Ok the argument is not always about feeding the people. Paying license fees is not what third world countries want to do. I mention this as a start because it will shift to other things other than software, eg Drugs Patents, Copyrights, etc. The West better be paying attention, because people like the RIAA say, “Why do you need bread when you can eat cake!”

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Slashdotters meetup

Ok, this is it I believe. If the slashdotters meetup this Thursday doesnt pull people in, then I'm gonna start slagging off meetup and start rethinking going to them. You know what to give this the full go, I'm gonna be the host this time!

My profile: If sunny, will be sitting outside on a bench sporting a ipaq in one hand a redbull in the other /images/emoticons/happy.gif Yellow trainers and something bright for a tshirt. If cold, look for the meetup sign or ask the bar people.

Good stuff, should do the trick.

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Ups and downs of my ipaq

Recently, my new ipaq has been giving me the metaphorical lip. First of all the sd card started playing up, but it was odd becasue the sd card worked fine but only a few applications picked it up. One of those was pocket music, but others like word, pocketstreets, etc didnt. Some like Pocket MVP saw the sd card but only because they were using the extented file selector. Trust me all this was a pain to say the least.

Anyway, so moving. The biomentric finger scanner doesnt scan too well when its hot or hummid so the pin option was being used during the heat wave.

Then over the weekend the wireless packed up! That was the last straw, i took the battery off the back and replaced it 30 secs later. And believe it or not the wireless came back? Also I put 0 byte file called ignore_my_docs on the sd card and seriously it now works fine. Odd piece of hardware!

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The tablet is back

Over the bank holiday, I reinstalled tabletpc from a fresh back up I did when I first got it. And to my amazement it actually worked. So I have not got my pen and inking back, its a shame I now have to install office 2003 beta once again, but it was time for that beta2 technical refresh anyway. Now if I can just find who nicked the cds…

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Output escaping = bad?

I am so pee'd off, People are saying output escaping is evil, dont use it blah blah. I yes I somewhat agree with the points. But what happens when your recieving a xml stream which unfortually you have no control over? Well? Exactly what can you do? Output escaping is very useful in such a situation. But oh no, its evil man.

The feeling is that like html to xhtml there was a transision, and this also needs to happen in this area too. Until we get finer grain controls in xslt 2.0 and xpath 2.0 then I challenge anyone to solve the issue.

Norman Walsh's – Embedded Markup Considered Harmful

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Syndicating learning objects with RSS and Trackback

On the back of my wonder about what exactly is track back. Comes this. Comes in multiple formats including Quicktime for some unknown reason?

abstract reads like this,

Customized collections of learning objects from multiple repositories are achieved with simple, existing RSS protocols, creating access to a wider range of objects than a single source. This provides discipline-specific windows into collections, contextual wrappers via blogging tools, and a system for connecting objects and implementations via TrackBack

Presentation by Alan Levine, Maricopa Community Colleges.

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