Category: mobile-technology

Been meaning to write this one for a while, specially now Sam helped me solve both connection problems I was having in one go without even knowing it. So if you follow this guide and you should be able to do most of what you want with the windows mobile phone.

However there is a problem with some phones like my TouchHD. They have the wrong MTU setting and this sometimes depending on how you got your machine setup can make it unresponsive when trying to access the web. So if you have the problem of being able to ping but not access the web correctly now check the MTU size. I also got everything working with Bluetooth too instead of USB but its a lot more complex and battery life becomes a problem when you got Bluetooth on for 3 hours straight during a train journey.

Tethering on a Windows mobile phone is pretty simple and as far as I know its pretty much the same on Windows and the Mac. I know you can get those USB dongles but do I really want another contract? Not really thanks. Its a shame that Microsoft didn't give this platform much more attention because its actually pretty good in parts. I mean I couldn't imagine buying a phone which can not be tethered for internet access and mass storage.

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I expected a bill of about 120 pounds but not 220 pounds. The killer part is the roaming costs for data while in Las Vegas. I spoke to Orange about this bill and in the end grudgly they dropped 60 pounds off my next bill. Some would say I should have pushed for more but I couldn't prove I had not used the phone for data myself because I had installed and used a certain amount of data.

Be careful when roaming, I only used it to grab a couple of maps and twitter. Cory write a comment about his bill from India which was 1200 pounds.

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Steve Ballmer talks about Windows Mobile 6.5 at the Mobile World Congress today. Pretty screenshots float around the web but honestly where the innovation and new features? Good thing this is a point release otherwise I'd be even more critical. I mean a cloud service for windows mobile phones? So what? I already backup and sync with both Plaxo and Google. A application store (because we never saw that coming) yes well ok nice, good there also keeping it open like the googlephone appstore. New version of Pocket Internet Explorer? Ummm Opera is well ahead of you guys and fenric (Firefox) is just days away from beta. New style lock screen and home screens? Why Microsoft haven't just bought the Point UI? I just don't know.

Don't get me wrong its all reasonable stuff from Microsoft. They have moved up a gear but there really not cooking on gas yet. Windows Mobile 7 better have some serious changes in it. Its frankly embarssing to move between the Touchflo interface and the standard Windows mobile interface. One minute your browsing around using your thumb next moment your using the edge of a finger nail because of the legacy windows mobile interface.

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So I have a new phone to add to the line up (watch the unboxing), the HTC Touch HD (far left). Its not like I'm collecting them, the ipod touch isn't really a phone at all (I just use it for reading rss feeds and ebooks but that may change now I got the Touch HD). After that there is my old phone the HTC Kaiser/Tytn II and finally my work phone the HTC Touch Diamond. Yes I like Windows mobile phones but I'm certainly still interested in turning the Kaiser into a Android phone some time soon.

So far the HTC Touch HD is good, the touch flo3D interface is so much faster that the Touch Diamond. Its also so much more usable with its extra resolution. Browsing the web using Opera is much more like the iphone browsing experience. I'm still typing faster with the stylus that my fingers right now, but I'm sure that will change soon. Thumbs up to the Touch HD right.

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This time things are less interesting. Because I'm on a 18 month contract with Orange and only done 15 months come Feb 14th I can only upgrade within the Orange range of phones. This isn't such a problem because the only other network I would consider switching to is Tmobile and thats only because they have the Google G1. I already found out that O2 and Vodafone don't let you use your phone as a modem, actually the guy in the Vodafone seemed shocked why I would do such a thing. I explained I don't want two contracts and a modern phone can do everything those USB modems can but then he tried to bulls**t me about the speeds of 3G/HSDPA, claiming I would struggle to reach a fifth of the speed.

Anyway the selection is pretty poor from Orange, there coming soon phones really don't fill me with amazement. The only phone worth upgrading to is the HTC Touch HD and I got to say i'm having douhts about that choice even. Don't get me wrong its a very nice phone but I'm quite liking my HTC Kaiser with its keyboard. If I had any choice I would upgrade to the SonyEricsson X1 or the Touch Pro. To tell the truth the only interesting phone out there outside of the previously mentioned is the Palm Pre and who knows when the UK release will be.

So it looks like I will end up with the HD Touch HD from Saturday.

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Everything was fine, Plaxo would sync to my windows mobile phones via there propitery sync application. And I could grab the specially crafted ical feeds for use with Evolution. Then Google released Sync for mobile devices. My world would never be the same…

Synchronize your contacts. Get your Google contacts quickly and easily to your Windows Mobile phone. With Sync, you can have access to your address book at anytime and place that you need it.

Get calendar alerts. Using your phone's native calendar, you can now access your Google calendar, and be alerted for upcoming appointments with sound or vibration.

Always in sync. Your calendar and contacts stay synchronized whether you access them from your phone or from your computer. Add or edit contacts or calendar entries right on your device or on your Google account on the web.

I tried to add Google Sync to Evolution directly, but evolution seems to get hung up on the fact theres no mail attached. Once I find a way around that, every single device I own will be syncing with Google Sync. I'm really going to have to consider what I use Plaxo for in the future.

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When new technology comes along and disrupts, its hard to grapple with the questions and answers. I've been thinking about Google Latitude for a while since I got it working on Friday night and decided theres quite a lot of complexity to this new distruptive technology. Here's what I've been thinking

• In Google Latitude you can turn the share my location off but what about those who you want to show your location. There's no fine grain control over what your friends can see it would seem.
• Even if you could control what each friend saw, it would be a pain in the ass to change each time. Maybe in the future some kind of grouping would make more sense.
• Following on from that, it would be good to see a more Fireeagle type response, where I can say to a group of friends I'm in this city, while to the public I can say I'm in this country. And of course to the selected group of friends, which street I'm actually on
• But also following that, will friend get funny about only being able to see which City I'm in instead of the area or street. Maybe they will only share what you share with them?
• Maybe it even makes sense that you can only share what that other person shares with you? so if I share only which city I'm in with all my friends, I can't see which street there on. Reforce the friends factor?
• I've decided not to add close work mates to my friends list because I really don't want them to know where I am. And yes I can turn it off but then theres the whole, why did you turn it off? Were you hiding something?
• Using your mobile with cell trianglation is pretty good but with additional GPS you can track right down to a small range of house addresses.
• I didn't agree to Google Latitude getting my updates from Jaiku, even if they are public. But hey its not bad little feature
• Where's the public view of Latitude for some of more darling types? And talking of which, where's the API, ical feeds and georss feeds?

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I finally got Google Latitude working on my own HTC Kaiser and work's Touch Diamond. Only a couple of my friends are on it right now but its not bad. Its like Fire Eagle but with a pre-build example/application. I do wonder if you can actually get the geodata out like Fire Eagle? Because I might be not be so interested in the application, but I am interested in the where am I part.

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My bill came through from Orange just recently, I expected it to be very high because I had used it over Christmas and New Years pretty much non-stop while in Bristol. Most of the usage was using the phone as a modem for my laptop and of course microblogging from the phone its self. Anyway, bill came in at about 50 pounds which is quite a bit but not the amount I was expecting. What I found interesting was the Summary's for December.

Talk Summary: 80:08 (I get 100mins free)
Text Summary: 148 (I get 500 per month for free)
Data Summary: 2741.6411 (yes almost 3gig of mobile data)

Next month my 18 month contract comes to a end, and although I'd love to have the Android phone, I don't want to switch network to do so. Tmobile do have a simular data plan as Orange (I currently pay 6 pounds a month for unlimited evening and weekend data) but I think I have my head set on the rather big but futuristic HTC Touch HD. The only thing it doesn't support is a flash for the 5mpx camera and a large internal storage drive. But seriously thats being very picky.

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For all the talk about the Apple iTunes going DRM free, I do wonder if Apple will ever open its hardware up.

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