Jay Eye Sea

3 reasons to upgrade to RoadSync 4.0 (for Exchange 2003 users)

DataViz, recently brought out version 4.0 of RoadSync, their MS Exchange client for several Smartphones (but with an emphasis on the S60 platform used by Nokia and others). I used version 3 on an Nokia E51 against Exchange 2003 for most of last year, and was fairly happy with. When I looked at the new feature list for version 4, my first reaction was that there wasn’t much reason to buy the upgrade, as most of the enhancements were only supported on Exchange 2007.

However, there are three good reasons for Exchange 2003 users to shell out the 29.95 USD for the new version, namely:

It’s easier to change connections – this is now a menu item under options->settings. Useful if you want to save money by switching to a WiFi connection when you’re at home / in the office.
It supports task synchronisation – no need to run Mail4Exchange as well, just to do this.
It syncs the body / description of calendar items – this alone is worth the money, as we often put con-call dialin details in the body of calendar items – no more desperate texting to my colleagues to get the number at the last minute!

: The meeting description / body is now synchronised

: Tasks are now synchronised

: The ‘Change Connection’ menu item is now more easily accessible.

Click on the screenshots for more details.

Mr T-Mobile, I want my money back

Published 15 January 2009 Android , Rant 1 Comment

I recently bought a T-Mobile G1 phone, only to discover that if I were to use an alternative voicemail provider I would incur an excessive diversion charge.

Ordinarily I would be charged 12 pence per minute for my voicemail calls. Diverting my calls to an innovative voicemail provider such as HulloMail or SpinVox would incur a diversion charge of 17 pence per minute. I would go so far as to suggest that the cost of the diversion to an alternative voicemail service may be considered to be anti-competitive.

What really annoys me is how can a full voicemail service cost 12 pence per minute, whilst a diversion charge is 17 pence per minute. This is clearly unrepresentative of T-Mobile’s marginal costs.

A copy of the full letter can be found below:

View this document on Scribd

Things to do with DNS

Published 6 January 2009 Kind of technical 1 Comment
Tags: DNS, Search, Wikipedia

I came across a great entry on the immensely diverse ‘Make’ blog to day:

MAKE: Blog: Wikipedia over DNS.

David Leadbeater created a service that distributes Wikipedia entries over DNS using TXT records. Simply looking up a TXT record for any subdomain of his service will pull a summary of the Wikipedia entry for the title of the same name.

The idea is pretty simple (like all great ideas), and works like this: DNS is basically a giant directory service – normally our computers use it to look up particular kinds of information that make the internet work, the most well known being:

MX records: what server should I connect to, in order to deliver mail for a particular domain (like jayeyesea.com)
ALIAS records: how to find the numeric IP address that is required for your browser to load a web address like http://blog.jayeyesea.com

DNS servers tend to work in much the same way, with much the same features (this is probably a good thing, as the internet would stop working badly if they didn’t all answer standard queries in the same way). But I’ve often wondered if they could be used to do more.

Continue reading ‘Things to do with DNS’

My New Year Wish List

Published 2 January 2009 Geospatial Technology , Google , Microsoft , Mobile Working , Rant Leave a Comment

I’ve done a lousy job of posting lately (no original posts since August – sorry), and I’m even too late to put in a Christmas wish list – so here’s one for the new year…

1. A decent Google mail / calendar client for the Nokia E-series phones.

2. Decent task management functionality on the Nokia E-series.

3. Tasks in Google apps and a decent contact manager.

4. An off-line PC client for mail, calendar, contacts and tasks.

5. A coherent strategy for Picasa web albuns and Panoramio.

6. And finally…a ‘new’ Nokia 6310i.

Continue reading ‘My New Year Wish List’

My Christmas Wish List

Published 24 December 2008 Android , Cloud / Utility Computing , Google , iPhone Leave a Comment

Dear Santa

I have been a “good” boy all year and now it’s payback. I waited patiently for my Android phone – not being tempted by the 3G iPhone (oh I was so tempted). Was it worth the wait? Yes, it does have many drawbacks – but I wouldn’ t give it back. More importantly, what am I hoping for in my stocking this year (in no particular order)?

1. Gdrive

2. Virtual keyboard on Android

3. Android on a netbook

4. An explanation of twitter in less than 500 words

5. New Google Contacts

Continue reading ‘My Christmas Wish List’

Desperate OEMs demand Chrome exit beta

Published 10 December 2008 Google , Microsoft Leave a Comment

Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, announced today at LeWeb 2008 that Google Chrome would leave beta “before the end of the year”. The reason? Because OEMs were unwilling to offer the browser until it is in full release.

There will be those who demand the release of a Mac/Linux version and a version which will allow for the inclusion of extensions similar to Firefox. What I find most striking is that it is the OEMs who appear to have demanded that the roadmap for Chrome to be accelerated to exit beta.

Could OEM PC makers be in such a bad way that receiving large sums of money from Google to install Chrome be the only way to stem their unprofitable businesses. Could Google also be fighting back against the recent agreement between Microsoft and Dell who agreed to pre-install the Live Search Toolbar on the latter’s PCs – scrapping a deal which Dell originally had with Google.

This development demonstrates the far reaching impact Google is having beyond its search business into hardware.

UPDATE: Google Chrome (BETA) has gone live but has it changed? It appears to have gone from 0.4.154.33 to 1.0.154.36 – I eagerly await the changelog!

Opera brings T-Mobile’s G1 to the masses

Published 24 November 2008 Android , Google , iPhone 1 Comment
Tags: Android, iPhone, Opera

Whilst this might appear to be an overly wild statement I truly believe Android’s open platform has notched one up on the iPhone tonight. Opera has launched Opera Mini 4.2 for Android (see Android Market) – something that iPhone users will have to wait for – and if reports are to be believed it may be a very long time. Recent discussions appear to indicate that Apple is more than a ittle reluctant to let a rival browser on its precious mobile phone.

But this will be Apple’s loss. Why? Because Opera Mini is a very special browser – its not really a browser – it acts as a proxy and Opera’s servers do all the grunt increasing the load speed for web pages – for more details see the Opera site.

But why my excitment? There are two reasons, both of which make the G1 (and iPhone) more accessible to the masses:

1. For those who don’t have 3G access (like me) this makes the user experience much better; thus making the G1 a real alternative on non 3G networks.

2. But more importantly, I can now use Opera Mini as my default browser and switch to “use only 2G networks” thereby extending the battery life of my G1 – which ironically is more important to iPhone users who can’t “hot swap” out their batteries.

Whilst I have had little time to play with the beta version, my previous experience of Opera Mini on a Nokia has been great, I look forward to quicker and more browsing, care of, our Norwegian friends.

UPDATE After a few hours testing, it seems a little slower than expected and the “back” button on the G1 seems to dump you out of the browser more frequently than I would like – but being an early beta I am willing to give it some slack – but I am looking forward to the next beta.

PENS versus Podcasts – What’s the best way to publish e-learning content?

Published 25 September 2008 Articles / Papers , Learning Technologies , Reprint Leave a Comment

There is a defacto standard for moving content between e-learning authoring tools, content management systems and delivery / tracking systems is call PENS. But I do wonder why the authors didn’t use an existing Internet standard such as RSS or ATOM as the underlying protocol.

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Android – It’s all about the chin!!

Published 26 August 2008 Uncategorized 4 Comments

Today the Android Guys have tracked down the technical drawings of the new Google phone. As they highlighted there are a number of surprises which had not been previously identified.

Andy Rubin is no mug – he has worked at Apple and was one of the founders of Danger Inc which designed the Sidekick – a device concerned with function over form.

So what’s different about the G1? The chin. The G1, it’s all about “the chin”. Continue reading ‘Android – It’s all about the chin!!’

Open Source, Email threading and Gmail Labs

Published 8 June 2008 Google , Open Source 2 Comments
Tags: FOSS, Free Software, Gmail, Internationalisation

The Free Software Foundation’s philosophy lists four freedoms, the final one being “…The freedom to improve the program…”. Thus FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) gives users the opportunity to fix bugs or add enhancements as and when they need to. Even though most users don’t have the skills to make these changes themselves, on most active FOSS products, bugs fixes are implemented quickly after being reported, as are many enhancements.

Free on-line services (e.g. Multimap, Flickr or Twitter) are slightly different. While these are generally provided free of charge (although users may have to ’suffer’ advertising), users lack the freedom to make even the simplest changes.

This is probably a reasonable trade off: after all, users don’t just get free software (zero marginal cost) but free hosting, bandwidth and storage as well (real costs to the service provider). However it can be very limiting.

Continue reading ‘Open Source, Email threading and Gmail Labs’