What happened to this blog?

Weeeeell,

to make is short, I broke my Xphone2.

The long: I finally got fed up with the various "eccentricities" of both the Xphone2's hardware and Microscoff's pathetic OS and I smashed the phone on the pub table.

This was not the first time I had resorted to a toddler-like rage in a not-so-subtle attempt to express my slight dissatisfaction with life, as seen through my phone-abusing habits. It was definitely the last time the Xphone2 had to suffer my Woody Allan-esque attitude about appliances.

So now I have a very expensive paperweight. If I was sure I could completely erase all the pr0n, I mean personal data, from the phone, I might even sell it on eBay or give it away or something.

A Tip for Exploiting Streaming Audio Via GPRS

If you enjoy the BBC as much as I do, here's a tip for speeding up the job of finding BBC Radio programmes:

If you are reading this on your phone, just click on this link to the Text only BBC Homepage.

Other wise, go to the BBC Homepage, scroll down a little bit (unless you have a massive, high-resolution screen) and click on the link that says, "Text only".

Voila!

You'll still have to scroll down a fair bit but at least you won't have to wait so long for the page to load.

Why not use the BBC's own mobile version of its site? Because I couldn't find their radio programme details or schedules ANYHWERE.

Oh, and as of this posting, the link to the World Service's Programmes was producing an error page.

Another silly problem...

I haven't had time to figure out if a piece of non-standard software is causing this problem or not but here it is:

1. Assign a Speed Dial number to an application.
2. Use the Speed Dial to launch an application, or to return to the application in the background.
3. On my phone, this appears to be exactly 50% successful. It works one time and not the next, and so on.

Strange.

That, I reckon, is Microsoft Windows (im)Mobile for you.

More on Streaming Audio...

Well, I successfully managed to pull up my WinSocks yesterday.

It's a sad fact but I had been technologically (and technically?) remiss even by the rather backwards standards of my jungle outpost here.

I am ever so slowly starting to see how the Xphone II CAN fit into a fruitful and satisfying tech lifestyle. The hardware faults will need fixing (headphone jack and frustrating navstick) and some of the OS crap will need to be sorted (if it can), but, alas, I am starting to see the light. More on this later. First, another chapter in yesterday's fun tale.

As you may recall, I finally got flat-rate GPRS. This means I can be "on the net" 24x7 without paying any more than the up-front fee. Suddenly, a whole new release of Xphone II user/ownership has been rolled out across the enterprise of life.

On the way home from work yesterday, I harrassed, harried and annoyed a good friend. I know. With friends like me, who needs an enema?

Friend was sitting at his desk in London, England. I was getting on the ultra-modern, clean and comfortable "sky train" on which I commute. You know, between my tree-top jungle lair and my hollowed-out volcano. Murhahahaha. The meddling fools. I could have saved the world, etc.

I fired up a live stream of BBC Radio Five Live and listened to the same, dreary, old traffic reports that used to drive me round the bend (or not, road way congestion depending) back in Ole' Blighty. Oh how the tables are turned, my old nemeses!!!

Firing up MSN Messenger (without any interruption to my new-found 5 Live pleasures), I chortled down the pipe to the UK, "bwahahahaha...."

Said friend was none too pleased to be reminded that while he sat contmplating his navel and wondering how best to set fire to his cubicle, when on earth it will stop raining, if they'll ever see the sun again and if copious cups of Rosie Lea can really truly ever get the damp coldness out of one's bones, I was reading my email, listening to the radio and chatting with him, while carried in air-conditioned, Asian-babe splendour on my 15 minute journey from the station near my office to the station near my home and, most crucially (for the purposes of said haraasment of said friend) the exquisite palm-tree-lined, outdoor swimming pool of my local gym, where I would soon be several stories above even the aforementioned train itself, laying in the hot afternoon sun like a Columbian drug lord enjoying the fruits of his immoral labours.

Say hello to my little friend.

How To Enjoy Streaming Radio on your Xphone II

I am ever so slowly discovering more of the joys of Xphone II ownership, which is a nice change from the evil chagrin the thing's been giving me more often than not.

I finally plumped for a flat-rate GPRS package from my ISP, oops I mean cellular service provider. Oh wait, what's the difference? I dunno, convergance consmergance.

So you do this:

1. Get flat-rate package. Trust me, unless your cellular company charges about a penny a day or something, you don't wanna start worrying about the mounting cost of being online via your mobile phone.

2. Fire up Pocket Internet Explorer or whatever browser and point it at something like Pocket PC magazine's online links list.

3. Choose something like Radio Show Links or Radio4PDA

4. Find a live station, show or on-demand stream you want. If given the option, choose the Windows Media stream.

Windows Media Player should fire up. In the bottom left of the player, above the "Playlist" soft button it should say "Finding", then "Connecting" and, finallly, "Playing"!

WOOT. Sweet or what?

Now (if you're old enough) think back a decade or so to when people were still being blown away by the wonders of 'The Innernet' and try to recall if anybody ever tried to say that we would one day be able to wander around the streets of (in this case,) Southeast Asia listening to live BBC World Service or Radio Five Live streaming via the net to their mobile phone, with almost no buffering and audio quality far better than anything I can remember "enjoying" from the majesty that was AM radio in the oh-so-glorious 1970s.

Now all I need is a sleeptimer for my new bedside radio, a nice cuppa tea and some digestive biscuits. And maybe a tartan blanket for my knees

ZZZZZzzzz.....

Quick Notes: Great Screen, Shame About So Much Else

Well, I found something to really praise. Yeah, sitting poolside the other day in some truly strong Asian sunlight, I had to admit that the Xphone IIs screen is pretty impressive. You wouldn't see anything on a PSP in that light. My phone's screen is pretty darn easy to see, even in such harsh and strong light.

Well done, 02.

Now, a few other things...

This thing is a jazzy multimedia device right? I mean, it's got Windows Media Player and supports MiniSD cards so who needs another expensive gadget when this thing does it so well?

Well (that's what, three 'wells'?) take this scenario. You're listening to your fave audio files (purchased, of course!!!) and you need to bang out a quick SMS. No problemo, as long as you set Windows Media Player to keep playing, it will do so, even while in the background. Nice.

So you launch the SMS app and start writing your text message. Now, you want to insert the recipient(s) from from the contact list, so you navigate to the To: field and depress the navstick.

BONG!!!!!

That's right, BONG!!!!

I don't know how to describe it. I haven't found a way to lower the volume or change the sound you get when you do this. It's as if it was designed to wake snoozing jumbo jet pilots or something.

To call it ultra, ultra, ultra retarded and worthy of a class-action lawsuit is unfair. It's much, much, much worse. I don't know how else to talk about this without using foul language so I'll have to let rip with chicken, turkey, duck and goose, ok?

Then I received an SMS yesterday. I read the SMS. So far, no problem. Then I received another SMS. The phone locked up and I had to remove the battery. When I had rebooted the phone, both SMS messages had disappeared. Not nice. Again, chicken, turkey, duck and goose for you O2.

I still haven't had time to take the phone in to have the non-working headphone jack fixed and I'm sure the navstick has grown increasingly obstinate in the last couple of months. Man oh man, this phone sucks.

This phone is about 90% perfect but the last 10% is SO ducking frustrating and troubling that I would rather go back to my old Nokia and spend the money on a separate PDA, which is what I plan to do when I have time to do so.

I've been checking the specs and reviews of other HTC products and it looks like they all have some kind of achille's heel. On top of that, bearing in mind the problems with my phone's navstick and headphone jack and I reckon the ultimate design and build quality of HTC products puts them out of contention for my future purchases.

In addition, I have a chance to play with my friends new Nokia Symbian smartphone. Now THAT's a User Interface. The Nokia 6681 may not be perfect and it may have flaws I don't know about but THAT IS HOW TO DESIGN A USER INTERFACE. Microslouch, you listening?

No, didn't think so. Quack, quack, quack, go back to your hot cup of H5N1 or whatever it is that "inspires" your engineers, developers and designers.

Stay tuned for myNewPhoneAndPDA.blogspot.com or something....

Between a rock and another hard thing.

I'm a bit overwhelmed by my workload lately. Part of the problem is getting and staying organised. And, as ruck wood have it, part of THAT problem is the fact that the out-of-the-box Xphone II is such a pathetic excuse for a PDA.

So... I am hoping to try out some highly-rated utilities that mostly have to be paid for.

But again, there's a hitch. I am loathe to invest time and money in any of those utilities because I haven't had time to take the phone to be repaired.

And there's another part of the problem - a crap component. While researching my crappy headphone jack problem, I found other people with the same problem. Many of them have different phones but from the pictures, I can see it's the same component, presumabely produced by the same maker.

Bottom line is:

A. I continue to be unimpressed with the value for money offered by the Xphone II
B. Ain't nothin mo happenin round heah for a little while until I get a properly working Xphone II back in my greezee mittz.
C. I continue to b unimpress with the Xphone II's nojoystick. Damn that thing is wank!

Mooching about with passwords, encryption, thumbdrives etc..

I reached the point ages ago when I could no longer remember all the login ids, usernams, passwords, passcodes, PINs, passphrases, email addresses, credit card details etc., that "modern" techie life entails.

I've dabbled with different ways of storing/recording/saving various details in different forms, in different places, with different levels of not-so-obvious relationships between them so that their use is not immediately obvious. In other words, I dont' write down something like: username and password for the mailserver hosted by Verio: root f9867!%#lf86, namsayin?

But it's high time I worked out a relatively safe, easy to use way of keeping all this stuff organised.

Sooo.. I am fiddling about with some apps that encrypt all such data so that the whole schlemiel can be carried on a secure thumbdrive as well as syncronised with my Smartphone and my Palm and any other PDA I might have, in a way that doesn't mean anybody who steals/finds/buys one of these devices instantly has access to everything in my life.

And, oh yeah, I'm gonna needs some kind of Bluetooth keyboard to use with the Xphone and/or with a "real man's" PDA for those inevitable "the server's gone down and you have to SSH into if over WiFi from a coffee shop and save the day!" moments.

I'll let you know how I get on.