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Goodbye Windows Mobile…

So I’ve been a faithful user of Windows Mobile since 2002 or so and the SPV 100 first launched, an underpowered but otherwise apparently well specced and capable phone. For me its ease of use, the instant familiarity of the OS and the fact it synched with my desktop were all strong motivating factors, and I was especially fond of the pre-emptive dialling feature, where you typed a contact’s name in numbers and it found it for you and let you dial them from the homescreen… Making it useful as a phone as well as a primitive Internet device – astonishing at the time.

Today, despite having used a succession of ever better designed devices, I bid it farewell. Despite the fact that the HTC Touch Dual, my last phone, was the first phone i haven’t immediately retired on becoming eligible for upgrade, it was no longer up to the job. It wasn’t really geared up for touch, had lagged behind with its Internet capabilities and the newest incarnations have shown little improvement (WM 6.5… Really?) so I’ve had to jump ship. The fact with hundreds of different Windows Mobile devices and millions of handsets, both the iPhone and Android are ahead in mobile Internet access kind of underlines the point, as does the fact that most of this post was drafted on the bus on the way to work using the new handset, the iPhone 3GS, with a Wordpress app. Outstanding.

I’m not an Apple fanboy (seriously, I resisted this purchase like you wouldn’t believe), but for now, this fits my purpose. If Microsoft start innovating again (and not just relying on their hardware vendors to fix the problems in the underlying platform with innovative ’skins’) then I will look at them again (Zunephone, please). But I suspect that both Android and Apple have stolen a lead that MS will never recover from…

Posted in Software, Technology.

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By Armand – June 22, 2009

Come to a festival with us – its gonna be great

If you’re not festivalled out by Glastonbury next week and fancy another one in mid-July, my friend Ben of awesome band Urusen (who I’ve mentioned before) is organising a cool mini-festival near Bath this year. It’s not expensive (£30), will be fun and includes lots of great stuff. See below for more – its a secret, but tell your friends.

Love, A

**

I’m helping promote a mini secret festival in Bath this year called EyeFest, over the weekend of July 18th/19th. They have a great line up of bands, DJs and film for the Saturday. Included in the price is tea and cakes in the afternoon, Hog roast in the evening, and a fry up breakfast the morning after (also veggie options), and all for £30.

EyeFest is not advertising publicly, so it’s all word of mouth between friends to make sure we have a really nice crowd. There’s lots more info / videos / pictures at www.myspace.com/eyefest

If I have sold it to you (yeay!) then here is the link to buy tickets –

The festival is run by some friends of mine to raise money, which this year goes to three watery based charities (more details on the myspace page), hence this year’s theme “Nautical but Nice”.

For those who are super keen, EyeFest are also running an offer whereby you can buy 5 tickets for the price of 4 discounted tickets.

Feel free to spread the word around close friends / friendly who you think might be keen to come (and you would like to be there – I trust your judgments), you can direct them to the MySpace page, or send then the links above.

Posted in Music, charity.

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By Armand – June 21, 2009

I want to read my e-reader…

So despite the fact that the prevailing opinion from my Twitter contacts and friends alike was that I should wait for the Kindle to grace the shores of the UK, the holiday in Denmark with three bulky paperbacks squeezed into a too-cramped rucksack and the impending implosion of my bookshelves into some minor singularity broke me, and I picked up a Sony PRS 505 from Play.com about two weeks ago. I’d seen my friend Rob with one and had a pretty good idea it would be decent, which its proving to be, and I had a feeling that the Kindle would be some time coming…

Here’s what’s good about it:

1) It stores lots of book in a sleek, elegant casing. I’ve shoved a 1GB SD card (at a cost of a not so princely £4) in there, which will cover me for at least 1000 books but potentially as many as 3000 – which is probably more than I’ll need on there

2) It works well with the open source Calibre, even under Windows7 RC1 64bit, which is something of a relief (as I gather the Sony software is its usual bag of decaying tripe)

3) The screen is amazing. E-Ink works like an etch-a-sketch, so reads well in any light. It also makes for…

4) …awesome battery life. Due to the etch-a-sketch nature of the device, it only draws power when turning pages. So one charge (by USB cable), will give you room for about 4000 page turns

5) You can get books. Waterstones has many, even if Amazon is probably banking on the arrival of the Kindle in the UK at some stage.

The not-so-good

1) I’ve already mentioned Sony’s software… the navigation on the device itself is not brilliant, no way to go directly to a page (that I’ve found as yet), not until you’ve made bookmarks (although it remembers what page you were last reading), and there’s no search functionality, ability to make notes etc. I’m also having some fiddling with page alignment (page numbers in middle of page, NBSPs, etc)

2) There’s no wireless connectivity – hence awesome battery life, but hey, if I want wireless, well, that’s what the iPhone I’m planning on getting will do…

3) The page-turning is not that speedy, although its not terrible

All in all, it’s up there with my Netbook in all-time useful purchases. I carry it around daily, have got through two novels on it in two weeks and will probably maintain close to that rate, saving valuable bookshelf real-estate, holiday packing and being stuck on the bus in between books…

Here’s a quick video demo from some dude on Youtube:

Cross posted on Chivalry House.

Posted in Books, Technology.

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By Armand – June 15, 2009

I’m back, baby

It’s a much noted truth that personal blogs go for months without updates, and when the update comes its usually an apology for not posting. And then months pass…

Truth be told, whilst life has been busy, I have been blogging… just not here. I’m currently writing on another blog, named for my agency’s first office, with a bunch of colleagues on a selection of topics – it is not a work blog as such, more an external thought space for us and good practice for my colleagues and I at diving into the world of social media we spend so much time talking to our clients about.

The subject material (from me, at least) is not vastly dissimilar to what I write about here, so you should find me there, although I’ll probably end up cross posting some of the posts at least over here. Especially now I’ve upgraded to the shiny Wordpress 2.8 and installed this luscious new theme for you all (what do you mean, you read me on RSS? Look how pretty it all is!)

Anyway, I’m over on Chivalry House every now and then. Check it out.

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By Armand – June 12, 2009

Autism recovery charity programme

My client Mei at NetSuite supports an autism charity, and she’s asked me to post about an event that’s happening this weekend: an Internet TV programme about autism recovery. It’s not a topic I know a great deal about but Amanda works with some autistic kids and many of the conventional treatments, or family reactions in dealing with it, aren’t quite right. If you’re interested in autism and want to learn more about this programme, visit the site here or watch the trailer here.

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By Armand – April 25, 2009

Q1 review

It’s been an astonishingly busy three months, both at work and at home, and that’s my excuse for crapness. Sorry!

At work, I’ve been working to support a big client event, a major trade show, an uber launch (that had me sit across the virtual table from about 10 CEOs from major tech companies), learning about alternative fuels, talking about Twitter too much, publicising the changing world of work for a major UK media group, and much much more.

At home, I’ve been wedding planning, booking a venue and a date, negotiating with the churches, thinking about colour schemes (ok, not very much here), writing to travel companies, making guest lists, failing to organise an engagement party, finishing the renovations (the Streetview pic of my house is completely misleading now), and trying to maintain some kind of fitness regimen. Oh, and I went to NYC for a weekend with some Airmiles that were due to expire to visit Damo.

Phew. I’m tired just thinking about it. But sorry – will no doubt try to pick up something resembling normal service in the weeks ahead.

Posted in Personal, Update, Work.

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By Armand – March 25, 2009

Windows Mobile 6 Caller ID not working – how to fix

I had this problem when my phone came back from the repair shop rebuilt and managed to find a solution (with the help of Oly from Admiral).

Here’s the problem:

1) If you have your numbers saved as +44 7xxx xxxxxx – caller ID works for text but not calls
2) If you have your numbers saved as 07xxx xxxxx – caller ID works for calls but not texts

You need to download a Windows Mobile Registry editor (like this one) and then find the following in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER bit:
HKCU\Control Panel\Phone\CalIidMatch

Then double click the ‘CallIDMatch’ and change the number in there – in the rebuilt phone I was sent it defaulted to 12 digits, it should be 10 for the UK.

So far, seems to work. Thanks to this MS forum for the advice, and hopefully I’ve made this slightly more Googleable for anyone else troubleshooting the same issue,

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By Armand – March 25, 2009

Windows 7 kicks Vista’s ass from the install

Thanks to Microsoft fluffing the deployment, Windows 7 only became available properly last night (Saturday night) making it much easier for me to nab one of the 2.5 million licenses being made available in the next two weeks. The MS servers crashed at the official release time and they deployed an Akamai delivery network that seemed stable for my download last night.

So far, a much simpler installation, and better hardware support than Windows Vista had… It will be a pain to manage the process when the beta expires.

Although IE 8 seems to suck as much as IE 7 at the moment. Wordpress doesn’t seem to render properly…

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By Armand – January 11, 2009

Bring on Windows 7

I’ve reached a point of incredible frustration with Vista, to the extent that for the first time since Windows 95 I’m going to install and OS beta. Well, assuming I can get one of the 2.5 million downloads of Windows 7 Microsoft is making available tonight… Have already asked around the office to see if anyone with friends at Microsoft can get me in on it if I miss the download window (no pun intended)…

XKCD today therefore made me chuckle (as usual, when they’re not off in the depths of programmer geekery that goes over my head).

And I don’t want to go to Ubuntu or OSX for a variety of reasons. ’nuff said.

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By Armand – January 9, 2009

Christmas Holiday Craziness

Christmas has been amazingly busy so apologies for the lack of posting and hope you all had wonderful seasons and enjoyable new years. Some of the things filling my time:

1) Flights to and from Malaysia

2) Introducing Amanda to about 30 people in my extended family, another 20 in my extended extended family, about 20 additional family friends and a number of randoms and associates. She did amazingly well in overwhelming circumstances and I think mostly had a good time!

3) Visiting Taman Negara in Pahang, where we jungle walked, I spoke Malay to Orang Asli, and we stayed in the delightful Traveller’s Home.

4) Visiting Malacca for a dim-sum fest, travelling on a ferris wheel at the Malacca River Pirate Entertainment Park (consisting of four rides), an interrupted swimming session on the 9th floor of the Ramada Renaissance caused by a brief monsoon shower.

5) Reading: The Reluctant Fundamentalist, finishing the brilliant Bad Science and diving into the Inkheart trilogy, as well as devouring the brilliant ‘Invincible’ Ultimate Collection 1&2 which Arvind bought me for Christmas.

6) Saying “I’m Batman” a few times following Sheila and Dave’s purchase of a full Bat-costume for me for Christmas.

7) Shopping with Amanda for the ‘ring’ and learning from my Aunty Ann about the four Cs of diamond shopping.

8) Three days in the ‘honeymoon’ suite of a less good hotel in Pangkor, including a scenic tour of the Island, some slightly grotty beach, and the most awesome clamshell poolside showers. Flickr will soon have photos. Despite grottiness, was a lovely escape and involved driving down some wonderful plantation road and all the adrenaline that entails (overtaking the lorries involves finding a window and then accelerating into oncoming traffic).

9) A lot of food, including Roti Canai, Dim Sum, Cantonese & hokkien mee, peanut-free Satay, Bhatura, Dhosai, Appom (sp?), and even fish and chips and lamb chops for good measure.

10) Tourist visits to KL Tower, Central Market

11) Shopping visits to 1 Utama, KLCC

12) A lot of jetlag

13) A fantastic Christmas eve featuring the increasingly infamous hat game and the family’s first Secret Santa, a resounding success (I got a Superman Belt Buckle which I failed to work out was from Geets, but she didn’t clock that I’d given her Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker DVD either, so we were even)…

14) New Year’s Eve on Asian Heritage Row in Central KL

…and a great deal more. The first couple of days back have been characterised by jetlag, kitchen construction, a cold, and initial attempts to improve healthiness through swimming and resisting completely unhealthy food. This will be helped by the completion of the kitchen…

Anyway, if you want to know more on any of the above points, let me know and I’ll find some time to write further.

Post holiday email count: 960 in my work inbox, down to 560 after initial pass on Sunday and down to a mere 368 after a second pass early this morning. Fingers crossed for a sane January, but it seems doubtful!

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By Armand – January 5, 2009