craigs tech blog

1st post from Omnia

Hello all here is my 1st post from my Omnia. I have included a pic of the sunset we are having today. still prefer the iphone interface. and like I mentioned in my previous post the iphone allows you to post multiple pics where the WM devices typepad app only allows one pic. I also found a screen shot application for WM devices, more about that later.

iPhone Typepad App

Ok I am loving my iPhone more and more. I have been banging out posts on mobile devices for the last year and a half. I have used Typepad as my blog and used there apps on Palm,WM and Symbian. One of the biggest annoyances I encountered was I could only post one pic per post. While looking for the WM version of Typepad app for my Omnia I came across a post on iphone Typepad app and it allows you to post multiple pics to a post. Yippee I am so happy. But now I wonder why you Typepad can do the same for the other apps out have for Palm/WM/Symbian. Some geeks like me use more than one phone and hving the same experience all the way round will be cool. Btw I still can't post on my Symbian device keep getting server error 500 :(. Anyway all the pics I posted are just screen shots of my menus on iPhone for test.

Craigs new Omnia

Well I have been wanting to get myself another WM device. So I decided to get the new Samsung Omnia. It's pretty cool compared to the other WM devices I have had but still prefer the iPhone touch screen compared to Omnia. The main difference between the two is that the iphone uses a capacitive touchscreen and the Omnia a pressure touchscreen. So Omnia suffers from the same mishaps as other pressure screens, when you want to scroll it selects or when you double tap nothing happens, frustrating. Also what I like over the iphone is the haptic response when typing. Really cool as you know when you have missed a key press. When I am banging out 30 words a minute on my iPhone I don't always hear the mis click. With a small vibration you know when it misses or not. Also one annoying thing with Omnia is the screen doesn't always come on, have to reboot the phone to get the screen to work. I hope there is a update soon as this bug is annoying me. Other than that the phone is pretty much stock STD WM, I do notice a bit of lag. Hopefully with newer firmware it will be a bit more snappy. Anyway other good features is the generous storage in the form of 8GB on board and the included micro sd card of 8GB. It also comes with a load of accessories like car charger, data cable(pity it's proprietry-only Samsung) travel charger, window mount for car (for navigating) stylus, earphones and only one battery :( other Samsung WM devices come with two, and Garmin software for navigating. It has wifi, bluetooth and hsdpa no IR. It also supports divx and mpeg4 videos. The widgetized standby screen is also pretty cool. Only pity is you cannot make any of the apps into a widget there are only ore selected ones. Other than that it's a pretty solid phone, it also comes with Opera 9.5 like on the HTC Diamond and Touch Pro. Works well but not as good as Safari browser on iPhone. Would I recommend it, Yes. It's still a good device and has all the normal stuff you would expect from a communicator phone. Checkout at www.gsmarena.com and www.Samsung.com.

App update getting stuck on Iphone

It happened to me yesterday when I went into app store and saw there were two new updates available. I selected update all and the 1st app updated no problem but the 2nd app hung. That app was beamME. It shows loading but never loads,when you go to app store it shows update is available and when you click update it stays on same screen. The way to get it to load is to actually tap on icon like you want to open it and then it will start loading. Took me a while to fugure that out but did at last. Was imagining me deleting app then reinstalling. Hopefully this helps you if you have same problem.

Vcard for Iphone

Ok a lot of you have been dissapointed by iPhone not being able to send vcards. The good news is that the iPhone can accept vcards in an email. Fear no more my fellow iphoners. In app store look for application called beamME. The nice thing is it's free and you can setup your contact card to beam(SMS states only and email). To setup beamME you can select your own contact card from contacts if you have one setup or create one, you then sync the info to rmbrme website .You can also input custom message and send. Yes you can't send any of your contacts via beamME but most times it's your contact details you want to send to someone. Hopefully they will update it to send any of your contacts via beamME. So get it and you will be that one step closer to beaming vcards.

Appigo Todo Update 1.4.2

Good news if you use Appigo Todo application for your iPhone it has an update to v1.4.2. I have included changelog in screen shot. So go to app store on device or on iTunes and update :).

The phones show

If you love podcasting as much as I do and if you love mobiles as much as I do I suggest Steve Litchfield phones show. This week his doing reviews Samsung INNOV8 and i7110, and does some info on newly announced Nokia N97 and compares the N97,E71 and newly released X1. Head on over to www.thephonesshow.com or search for it in iTunes.

Newsgator

Well after looking for an app that can sync with rss feeds that I can sync between devices I stumbled upon netnewswire. It's for the iphone and can be found in the app store if you search with netnewswire string. What I like is you can sync with website, in this case newsgator. Not quite google reader but does more or less the same. When you log onto newsgator site you can also read articles there that you have setup. The nice thing is those articles you have read will be synced by netnewswire and also be shown as read and vice-versa. The good thing is they also have an application for wm devices and blackerry. Since I us multiple devices it's really cool. Wish someone could make an app that would sync between iPhone/wm/symbian/Bb and google reader and newsgator. Would make my life really awesome. Anyway if you looking for free rss reader that can sync with a website then get netnewswire and redo all your news feeds from google reader over in newsgator. Head on over to www.newsgator.com to setup an account.

N97 Announced

Looks like our prayes have been answered with one. Qwerty N-Series. It's quite a powerhouse with 32GB of on board memory with option of micro sd card giving you up to 48GB of memory. I am definitely looking forward to this device. Was a bit dissapointed with N96. Hope they have a black version of N97. For specs head on over to www.gsmatena.com.

N85 Software update

Even though the N85 has just been released there is a firmware update for it to V11. There is a changelog posted on the Nokia blog at www.thenokiablog.com .So plug you're newly acquired N85 into the NSU and let the update love start :).