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Nokia E71 - The good, the bad and the ugly
I've had a few weeks now of living with my new phone, a Nokia E71, including a couple of weeks of being on the road.
I haven't owned a Symbian-based phone for many years, the last few phones I've had have been Windows-based, which despite what most people say, I've been pretty happy with. However, my last phone started to get flaky, so it was time to look for a new one.
I played with the 3G iPhone for quite awhile. While it is indeed as shmick as most people say, the biggest failing for me was the keyboard. I do almost as many emails on my phone as I do on my laptop, and I just couldn't get used to the virtual keyboard.
In the end I was won over by the E71. It's slim, has a great physical keyboard, and the battery life leaves my Windows phone for dead. Now that I've lived with it for a few weeks, I'm used to the Symbian OS and am actually kind of impressed with the thought that has gone into a lot of it. For example, just about everything I've wanted to find shortcut keys for I've been able to, which suggests this has had plenty of user input from previous versions put back into it.
However, there are a few big issues, but thankfully I've been able to find workarounds for each of them:
- Astonishingly, there is no USB charger included in the box. Yes, there is a USB cable, but it is for communicating between your phone and your PC, not for charging. WTF? I travel a lot, and I try to travel light, so I try not to take any device with me that can't be charged by hooking it up to my laptop. Otherwise I'd be lugging around (and no doubt losing) have a dozen power adapters. I went to the local phone accessories store and they wanted to charge me AU$80 for a genuine Nokia USB charger. Thankfully, I found someone selling third-party ones on EBay for AU$2.49 plus a couple of bucks postage. I bought two for under $10 total :-)
- The web browser is awful. Maybe that's unfair, maybe they were going for "retro" as it feels like using Netscape back in the 90's. Thankfully, Opera Mini rode to the rescue. This thing is free and full of awesome-ness. Why the hell would Noia write their own, they should just cut a deal with Opera?
- The included Nokia Maps app for the GPS looks like it was written by the same group who did the browser. Standing out in an open area it took 8 minutes to lock onto enough satellites to show me my location. Download Google Maps. I can start it, find my location, search for an address and start navigating in about a minute. In that time the Nokia app has just got past the splash screen.
With these additions, the E71 is possibly the best phone I've used. Without them, it's got a lot of potential but doesn't quite get there.
Created :
Wednesday, September 10, 2008 |
Tags :
 Phones |
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Software Archeology in Delphi
Over the coming weeks I'm presenting at a few of the ADUG (Australian Delphi User Group) meetings on Software Archeology in Delphi and also doing a bit of a Delphi 2009 Preview. I'll be at ADUG Melbourne on the evening of Monday August 18th, ADUG Sydney on the evening of Wednesday August 20th and ADUG Canberra on the evening of Monday September 1st.
Created :
Saturday, August 16, 2008 |
Tags :
CodeGear, Delphi |
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Beavis Board
Maybe you liked the idea of the Line6 Tonecore DSP thing that I posted about, but the coding part scared you off? Hmmmm, well, maybe the Beavis Board is for you.
It's essentially the same thing, only with breadboards and a bagful of electronic components to do the audio hacking instead of code. Still tempting to be honest, but I need to finish some of the projects I've half done now before I add any more things to the list. Still, would be a cool way for someone to learn more about electronics.
Created :
Thursday, June 19, 2008 |
Tags :
Music |
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Can a dead hi-tech brand live again?
Interesting article here about reviving old brands, the disconnect between reality and what people
remember as reality, and the opportunity that exists in redefining the entire product under a revived brand.
Most
of the examples they give are on products where the reasons for buying
are less technical. ie. clothes, coffee, etc. Even the New Beetle
example they gave comes into this category, I'm sure many people bought
that not for it's performance as transport, but for emotional reasons.
I’m
left wondering what the opportunity in software is, and whether
nostalgia and high-tech really go together. Would a retro name on a new
product, even assuming it shared some of the strengths that made the
old product popular, provide the same value as it seems to here?
Created :
Friday, May 23, 2008 |
Tags :
Software, Spouting Off |
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The Jesus and Mary Chain play The Enmore Theatre
A few weeks back I went to see the Jesus and Mary Chain at the Enmore Theatre. To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect. Pretty much every album from these guys had a markedly different sound, from their earlier, heavily distorted and feedback drenched efforts to the later, cleaner releases (well, clean for the Mary Chain). Which would we get tonight?
Photo by pj_in_oz, used under the Creative Commons license
Well, mostly we got the cleaner version, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as live it certainly let the melodies come through. About the only time they started to dirty things up was during Reverence, and to be honest it's not a bad choice of tracks to let loose on. Still, after seeing Sonic Youth at the same venue so recently, this gig did feel ever so slightly light, and I never thought that's how I'd feel after a Mary Chain show.
Even the obligatory spat between the Reid brothers was over before it really began. Maybe they've just mellowed with age.
Photo by pj_in_oz, used under the Creative Commons license
Re-reading this, it sounds negative, and I don't really mean it to. I had a great time, I guess I'd just built these guys up in my mind and inevitably they couldn't match it.
Still, so far it's been a good year. Sonic Youth and The Jesus and Mary Chain, and it's only April. All I need now is the rumoured My Bloody Valentine tour to come true and I'll be a very happy boy.
Created :
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 |
Tags :
Music |
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Line 6 ToneCore DSP Developer Kit - Hack Your Stompbox, Digitally.
I used to take great delight in hacking old guitar stomp boxes to make them create weird noises. Replacing resisters and pots, soldering in new connections where there were none previously, etc. I was blissfully ignorant when it came to electronics, and as often as not I'd screw it up and have to un-hack it to get it working again, but on the occasions when it worked and came out with delightfully messed-up noises, man, I knew I'd be walking into the next band practice with a killer new toy to show my mates.
Fast forward a bunch of years, and I still enjoy making boxes to emit odd noises from my guitar, just they are all virtual. VST development is a bunch of fun, don't get me wrong, but I do sometimes miss the tactile element. Nothing compares to stepping on that pedal at a climactic moment of a song and unleashing all that beautiful noise.
So Line 6's Tonecore DSP Developer Kit looks really interesting. It's basically the same modular stompbox they use in their normal pedals, but with a USB port and requisite PC software to write your own DSP code and download it to the stompbox. Step 1, hack code to screw up the incoming audio into whatever delightful cacophony you like. Step 2, dump down to stompbox. Step 3, get the girl, kill the baddie and be king of band practice again. Ok, so Step 3 probably needs some more work, but still, I'm so buying one of these. Check out the video below.
Created :
Friday, March 14, 2008 |
Tags :
Music |
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The Street as Platform
Quite an interesting, if slightly long-ish article here describing a day in the life of a near-future street, in particular the data flows between the various entities that interact on it.
Some of these types of articles can have a bit too much gee-whiz about them, but this one I quite enjoyed because a) it was pretty much all tech that exists in a commodity form today and b) all the failures and solutions-not-quite-working-out-as-planned had a certain ring of truth about it.
Created :
Monday, February 25, 2008 |
Tags :
Yesterday's Sci-Fi is Today's Ho-Hum |
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Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation Live Review
I'm a massive Sonic Youth fan, and have been for close to 20 years, but I also know that at their worst, Sonic Youth gigs can run the risk of devolving into self-indulgent art-rock wankery. I've been at Sonic Youth gigs like that. Thankfully, last night's performance of Daydream Nation at the Enmore Theatre avoided this trap, for the most part.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I arrived a few songs into The Scientists' set, and even though I'm not familiar with Blood Red River, the album in question, I was mighty impressed. Kim Salmon was a wailing rock banshee, and the band set the bar pretty high for Sonic Youth in terms of feedback-fueled groove. Definitely will be checking out this album now.
However, good as The Scientists were, we were all here for Sonic Youth, and out they strode in front of a gigantic homage to the album cover, Gerhard Richter's 'Kerze'. Without a word spoken, or even a smile to the audience, they launched into the dreamy prelude to Teenage Riot.
Photo used with kind permission of Vanessa © 2008
At this point I started to wonder if this was going to work. I've listened to this album so many times, it's ingrained. Knowing exactly what song is going to come next, all they way through the gig, could be pretty boring, right? Well, in this case, not at all. No sooner had the squalling finish of Teenage Riot drifted off, than we were flung head-first into the thrash of Silver Rocket. Bloody hell, I'm tired already and it's only two songs in!
This was the tone for the night. One familiar track after the next, not a word spoken by the band, all the way through to the end of Eliminator Jr. On a few occasions I sensed they were about to go off the rails, and prepared myself to go get a drink until they remembered they had an audience, but each time they seemed to pull themselves back from the edge.
Photo used with kind permission of Vanessa © 2008
With the final notes of the Trilogy ringing out, we got our first words from the band, some actual smiles, and they wandered off, only to come back a few minutes later to play some newer tracks. But somehow this was a different band. Thurston was chatty, and once Mark Ibold came on to relieve Kim of her bass-playing duties, she actually danced. Danced! I thought the only time Kim Gordon would dance would be on the end of a rope, but she shimmied like she was trying out for the B-52's. Most of the encore tracks were from more recent albums, especially last year's Rather Ripped, but they dipped into the back-catalog for Drunken Butterfly, which live, rocked like I always imagined it would.
I came home with a sore back, sore feet, ringing ears and a grin a mile wide on my face. Not bad for a bunch of 50+ year olds.
Created :
Sunday, February 24, 2008 |
Tags :
Music |
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New Years Resolution Update : Open Office
A couple of months back I decided I was going to give Open Office another try. As I mentioned, I'd done this a couple of times before but never lasted longer than a week or so, mostly due to issues with Impress understanding Powerpoint files.
Well, I can report that Impress is dramatically better at this than last time I tried. In fact, it hasn't burped for me once. I've opened uncounted presentations in the last two months, complete with animations, etc, without a single hitch. I've also created a number of presentations, shared them with the rest of the Powerpoint-using company, and not heard back a whisper of an issue. Top marks for this one Open Office!
To be honest, probably the only real issue is with Calc, the Open Office spreadsheet. In particular, around its Pivot Table equivalent (sorry, not sure what Open Office calls it). When I first opened an Excel sheet containing a Pivot Table, I was horrified. All my beautiful Pivots no longer worked. After my momentary panic, I discovered that Calc does indeed have a similar facility, it's just seems to not be compatible with Excels. This is a bit of an issue, not just because I have lots of sheets with Pivots created in Excel (OK, I can recreate them) but because I need occasionally to share the pivots I create, and it seems to be broken going from Calc back to Excel as well. Not a show stopper, but one that hopefully will be addressed.
The other issue with Pivots is there seems to be no Pivot Chart equivalent. So, I've had to set my pivot up to what I think I want to look at, chart it, then if I change my mind and mess with the pivot, I have to redo the chart. Clumsy.
Still, not enough to make me uninstall Open Office, so my experiment goes on. Two months of using this in an organisation full of Office users with no major compatibility issues is not too bad in my opinion.
Note, I still haven't sorted out what to do about Outlook. I need a replacement that deals with Exchange, including calendars. I sync my phone directly with the Exchange Server, so no need for ActiveSync support. Thunderbird + Lightning looks like it won't be a solution until sometime after Lightning 1.0. Any suggestions?
Created :
Monday, February 18, 2008 |
Tags :
Software, OpenOffice |
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A Bitterly Cold Dusk in China
© 2007, Malcolm Groves
Created :
Friday, December 28, 2007 |
Tags :
China, Photos |
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