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Technology

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Technology

Goodbye Windows Mobile; Hello iPhone OS!

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Tonight it happened, what I have been waiting for. My new subscription for my new iPhone activated and I can now place my old Windows Mobile phone on the shelf and use only the iPhone. I did so with really no remorse and I can’t say that I miss a single feature of Windows Mobile.

This might seem like yet another iPhone ramble but that is not really my point here. I would like to put up some facts about what it was that made me switch away from a phone running Windows Mobile to be able to give some creative feedback instead of jumping into a flamewar. And to be clear here the version of Windows Mobile which I have been using is 6.0.

My first contact with Windows Mobile was quite a few years ago and what made it appealing was that it could be seen as a mini-Windows in a way and I as a user felt at home with the look and feel. Quite fast it was obvious though that the Windows Mobile was changed aggresivly to fit as many pepherials as possible which made it a quite unfitting plattform for almost everyone instead.

First of all, Windows Mobile today is created to be used using a stylus. This is quite obvious looking at the size of buttons, scollbars, keyboard and the rest of the UI. This was not an issue for a few years ago when smartphones was bulky pocket-machines which used styluses but today when most brands have stopped (or is about to) use a stylus this really makes this a showstopper. A single task as texting to a friend can be utter chaos.

Image from shopping.com

Image from shopping.com

Many phone-producers try to hide as much as possible of Windows mobile (which in it self can tell quite a bit) and HTC which was the producers of ym latest phone tried to do this using their system “Touch Flow”. This UI is quite good actually, the real downside of it though is that Windows Mobile shine through every so often. This is really annoying and also really ugly. Here is a stylish UI and now and then a bulky button with the graphics of Windows 95 pops up. There has to be a major design-flaw in this that someone just hoped would be overlooked.

I love the system of the iPhone, it does what I want it do to (most of the time) and yet it’s kept so simple that I am not forced to dotoo much when it comes to simple operations like calling, texting or surfing the web.

My phone has become the extension of my everyday which I have been looking for over the last ten years.

Technology

Chrome instead of Firefox

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google-chrome-logoFor quite a long time I have been completly loyal to Firefox as my number one choice when it comes to browsers. The possibility to create a configured tool which work in a way I have choosen have really been the functionallity I have loved. For just a few months ago though I started to glance over towards Chrome, the browser which is developed by Google.

To set the record straight right away I have not used Internet Explorer since back in the days when you used Netscape or IE. I never liked the way it worked and the ways you did configure it and quite early I went with firefox instead because it was primarily fast and did a better job in rendering pages in my point of view. Later on when I went into the field of web-design and coding I felt the real wrath of IE when trying to build design which looked good in different browsers. Firfox more or less was the better alterative for a long time.

Lately I have started to notice that my Firefox is running quite slow though. The possibility to add my own plugins and such have made it quite bulky. I know that it is my own fault in many ways but the possibility is there and when I as a user use it the applicaiton can’t really coop with the extra load. This was the main reason I started to look at Chrome.
First times I tried the browser out I was in no way hooked and just thought it felt a bit strange to “learn a new way” of how to do things. To be frank, the only direct differenct between Chrome and Firefox is that you can execute search-queries from the “adress-bar”. This may seem like a utterly small feature but when you have used it for just a day you acctually start to grow fond of it. This together with the shortcuts on your keyboard and you have almost the features which Firefox so strong. The entire Chrome also breath a GTD-feeling where functions can be found where you guess they be. All settings can be reach by clicking the big wrench for example.The browser today has become so much more then a simple browser for content, we use it as a platform in our everyday work and even use it instead of other applications in an ever growing pace. Just as with other tools we take for granted it has to work and be as transparent as possible. As a bonus on top of everything Chrome actually is faster to startup and even to render pages on my systems. This is true both on my computer at work and my computer at home.

So there you have it, the reason to why I ditched Firefox and went for Chrome: Speed, simplicity and GTD-mentality.

Technology

Best online photolab

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Nowdays when almost all photos we take are digital they seem to end up in a complex directory-structure somewhere on our laptop, tucked away. When we then are about to show them for family and friends we have to go through endless of mumbo-jumbo to get the photos from the computer to the tv and so forth. Well, I for one think that we all should send off our best photos to get papercopies now and then. Not only do you get your photos in a better format for show and tell, you also get the feeling that you actually created something in a better sense then just the images on your screen.

The Swedish photo-magazine “Kamera & Bild” had a test in their latest issue about the best digital photolab and once again the winner was – Crimson. This is a company that almost always come up in forums, magazines or discussions when people are to rnak their best photolabs and therefore I would like to throw them a bone here aswell.

I have not personally used this company yet but I’m looking on using their services to get some posters printed using pictures from my last trip on the Transmongolian railway. That’s right, they offer poster-printing aswell!

Worth mentioning is of course also that the cheapest contendant did come in on a whooping thrid place (out of twenty-one) and this was Fuijifilm so if you are to print alot of photos these are defenetly worth a look!

Technology

More iPhones out of the factory?

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I just read a statement from the  head of sales at Telia Sonera about their queue for the new iPhone 3gs is to be finished of durig the coming two weeks. Not that would tell us that the factories building iPhones have started to produce more phones or that new products have emerged from a secret vault somewhere.

No matter which one of the two, I’m quite happy because I guess I will get my new iPhone within two weeks! 🙂

One have to remeber that all the rumours about the next shipment of phones that have been travelling the net lately might aswell have been just that – rumours. Once again the great Apple PR-machine did their homework and was able to kick of one awsome product release. A couple of weeks waiting for the phone is nothing anyone will remember when phone is in their hands.

Technology

Smultron is no more

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When it comes to nifty editors for Mac OS X there was one that I really liked named Smultron, by the swede Peter Borg. I felt that the application had about what I needed for a small-size editor and this morning I noticed that development of the product had been halted.

The reason for this Peter said was due to the amount of time development grab. The project can be reached on sourceforge.net though so hopefully someone else will pick it up so that it can keep on evolving.

Together with Smultron, Peter also noted that his two other projects Lingon and Hallon also was halted due to the same reason.

Technology

“Hardware” garbage-collection

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Slashdot had a story the other day regarding block-rewriting to become a problem on SSD which are becoming ever more used. The solution mentioned is to integrate a garbage-collection into the firmware of the discs so that it can be run every now and then. Personally I can understand how this may solve problems for the everyday user but I can’t really see it as a solution for high i/o units which really have no “time to spare”.

Read the full article over at Slashdot.


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