Flash 10.1: Developing for Desktop and Device

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Yesterday Adobe made the beta of its new Flash 10.1 player available for desktop testing via Adobe Labs. The fact that it’s only a point release suggests that it’s a relatively trivial update but that’s not the case. In fact 10.1 is one of the most significant releases in the history of Flash.

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Will you hit the Orange iPhone “unlimited” cap?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Orange’s big unveiling of its iPhone tariffs has caused a bit of a kerfuffle, not least because its prices are almost identical to those of O2. A lot of people are up in arms about the promise of “unlimited browsing”, which in fact comes with a fair-use limit of 750MB.

But, ignoring the terrible decision to put an “unlimited” label on a very clearly capped tariff, is that amount of monthly data actually “fair-use”?

As discussed in this week’s podcast, there’s a very easy way for existing iPhone owners to find out if that data cap would prove troublesome. Just go to Settings -> General -> Usage, and take a look at your Cellular Network Data. I did just that, believing this cap would be encroaching at least a little on my roaming lifestyle, but I was in for a surprise. (more…)

The HTC Magic and Google Android: a Real World test

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Perhaps I’m a luddite but my mobile phones have tended to be, well, pretty basic since my first, screen-less brick 13 years ago. My priorities had been limited to good signal quality, long battery life, the best possible camera and easy-to-use texting. Occasionally, I’d look up the football or cricket scores on the BBC’s mobile site but that was about the limit of my ambitions.  The BlackBerry passed me by completely (I don’t like phones with QWERTY keyboards) and I’d had little interest in the iPhone due to its long, expensive contract options and umbilical connection to the truly loathsome (on a PC at least) iTunes.

And then I found myself tempted by the Apple beast just because I’d come across some teenagers mucking about with theirs, leaving me feeling jealous and inadequate (shallow, me?). So I nearly gave in. But I just couldn’t justify it. I’d either have to pay the best part of £100 for the phone (pay? for a phone?) or saddle myself with a £45 a month contract for two years: that’s an expensive and long-lived mistake to make. (more…)

Why Yahoo’s 2009 is looking a little limp

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

I remember a time when Yahoo was the king of search. If you wanted to find anything useful in the morass of the web, you turned to the friendly editors at the California-based firm and, likely as not, you’d get what you were looking for.

But then a certain Google went and changed everything and Yahoo has struggled to maintain a foothold ever since.

It still is, by the look of things. Yesterday I attended a Yahoo 2009 preview event, held in modest surroundings in London’s East End, where the firm was showcasing upcoming developments and changes. The key message seemed to be that a) we’re still big in search and b) we’re going to be more ‘open’. In fact I encountered the word ‘open’ in its various forms more than 20 times during the various presentations (I was keeping tally, just in case you were wondering).

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The future’s here, and it’s quite retro

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

I just got back after a couple of days off work to find two mobile phone watches have landed on my desk. That’s right – mobile phones, in a watch. Watches that are mobile phones. It’s official, the future is here, and it’s come in the form of a chunky plastic wrist accessory.

What next for Pro? Jet-packs? Flying cars? Meals in a pill? Who knows. All I can tell you is that I was running up and down Tottenham Court road at lunch pretending I was the Hoff in Knight Rider.

This particular one that I’m testing today, which strangely came with no product or manufacturer’s name but can be bought here, has Bluetooth, quad-band operation, video recording and an MP3 player, all controlled by a tiny, tiny touchscreen. Keep an eye out in PC Pro for the full reviews.

Two and a half cheers for the iPhone

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Before the iPhone 3G came out, I was telling anyone who’d listen that I thought it would change the smartphone game. I reckoned it would finally make internet access via mobile phone a mass-market norm – rather than a geeky proof of concept, as it tends to be with other smartphones.

It’s not just that the iPhone actually makes the internet pretty usable on a pocket device. That’s certainly a big part of the formula; but for me, the coup de grâce is that, in the UK at least, it comes with a simple, standard unlimited data package.

That means you don’t need to ration your mobile internet usage. You can use the web the same way you use it at home – for looking around, for trying things out, for exploring. For browsing. (more…)

Do you ever leave your mobile phone at home?

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

We’ve been arguing about mobile phones in the office today, specifically when and where it’s appropriate to have one, and if anyone ever goes out without it. It all started around holidays and traveling – do you really need to take a mobile phone with you; is it an unnecessary distraction, or a useful backup in case of trouble?

Nowadays we seem to have them on us at all times of the day and night. For many people its even the first thing they see in the morning, as they use it as an alarm clock. We are even protesting to be able to use them on planes.

One unnamed debater, who ironically has the loudest and most irritating ring tone I have ever heard, argued that they should be left at home when on holiday at least. Another suggested that in case of an accident you may be grateful that you have it with you.

Personally, I’m terrible at keeping hold of them – I’ve lost several in the last few months, rarely keep them charged and never remember to transfer friend’s numbers to new handsets. It’s currently been around two weeks since I last turned mine on, and the world has yet to crumble around me. I simply don’t feel like I need it in my day to day life. However, when I travel it comes with me and when I go on a long solo bike ride it comes with me – you never know what will happen.

Irony alert: South London teens use mobiles in project on tackling violent crime

Friday, May 16th, 2008

Please forgive me for falling into the stereotype trap here, but in my defence I was born in South East London so feel I do have some right to pass judgement on the place. Anyway, the thing is I got this press release today which was bigging up (that’s me trying to be street, or something, and obviously failing) the use of mobile technology as part of a South London college project to tackle gun and knife crime. The LIFEWISE collaboration involves no less than 200 young people from South Thames College as well as six secondary schools across the London Borough of Wandsworth, who were given 200 Vodafone v1615 handsets with unlimited Internet mobile data access to help them work collaboratively on the project.

Very commendable, but am I the only person wondering how many of them still have those handsets? If the reports that hit the headlines only yesterday are anything to go by, then the answer should be 160, as 40 of them are statistically likely to have been nicked during a violent street mugging. The Design Council survey, on which the headlines are based, revealed that 1 in 5 of youngsters aged between 11 and 16 in London had been victim of a mugging where an item of mobile personal electronics (mobile phone or iPod essentially) had been nicked.

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Mobile phone vs my life

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

I, like a lot of you, own a mobile phone that stores more than just a few phone numbers. Being a BlackBerry Pearl it also has copies of my recent emails, my full contacts lists and all sorts of notes that I find useful. Obviously this information is backed up, so losing a phone is not a problem in that respect. But when this phone’s keyboard packed up I wanted to erase this data before I returned it for replacement.

A quick call to Vodafone and a replacement was on its way, but I had to return the broken one. Fine I said, but how do I erase my personal data on this phone? All its suggestions involved using the keyboard, not much help really. Why not have a reset button on these phone that will clear all the data on them? Better than that, why can’t the service provider ( Vodafone in this case ) send a signal to the phone to instruct it to erase all the data on it, obviously with your permssion?

Is it any surprise that personal data theft is a big problem nowadays when such small devices that can easily get lost or stolen can contain such a wealth of private information?

Come on you phone providers, think about security: the more information we store on these devices the more important it is that this information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Or am I just being paranoid?

How long does your phone take to boot?

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

David Fearon recently lamented the fact that, from the moment he presses the power button, his bleeding-edge PC takes a staggering seven-and-a-half minutes to doing anything vaguely useful. Well, I’ve begun to notice that today’s so-called “smartphones” are becoming similarly sluggish.

I own a reasonably bog-standard Nokia N73. In the smartphone world, this is the equivalent of a 2:1 from an ex-Polytechnic, as compared to say, the first-class honours from Oxford that is the Apple iPhone. There’s a mere smattering of non-core applications installed on the thing – the Opera Mini browser, the Gmail mobile app. No antivirus software or anything else that could potentially interfere with the boot process.

So why on earth does it take 50 seconds to get from pressing the power button to a phone that can actually, well, phone? I always turn my phone off at night to save battery and stop random drunk idiots waking me up at 4am in the morning, when they dial the number their mate Carl had 12 years ago. But should I wake up one night to find my house burning to the ground with only my mobile in reach, I’ll be suing Nokia for the 50 seconds it took my phone to kick into life, display a gruesome welcome message, and blast out that infuriatingly twee jingle, while my family are busy choking on the fumes.

And I bet the N73 isn’t the worst offender, either. Let us know how long your phone takes to wake up using the comments feature below.