/bin/tim

July 31, 2007

Can software be obese ?

Filed under: Microsoft, Office, Vista, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 11:28 pm

The answer has to be yes.  Anyone who knows me will be aware of my obsession with making my apps smaller and more optimized, its a legacy of memory constrained systems I grew up with computers like the 1K ZX80 and Apple ][ and CP/M systems with 64K RAM.  I can’t stand software bloat, and it shows in altaVENTE apps with our players and viewers are generally about ~300KB in size even though they do amazing things.

So, imagine my disbelief today when I was told that adding a Vista compatible set of icons would double the average size of our players!  That is software bloat gone mad!

Of course the reason for this is the support for all sizes of gorgeous Vista icons right up to 256 x 256.  I love these icons but because we need to place them as resources in our apps they just bloat them completely.  I wouldn’t mind if we could ship the icons as a separate file if the user wanted them, and keep them out of the EXE, but we can’t, as Explorer relies on being able to enumerate the icon from the EXE…

So, the solution ?  Well, my plan is to go to an 8-bit grayscale icon, which can still look gorgeous, but is svelte as well.  Less is more if you know what I mean.  We’ll do some prototype and post them for feedback soon.

July 30, 2007

Spare T-Mobile Mail

Filed under: Mobile, WindowsMobile — tim CARMICHAEL @ 11:31 pm

I’ve been trying to get a spare T-Mobile Mail to replace mine.  Its a brilliant device and WM6 capable and looks gorgeous in total black from T-Mobile.  the only problem is T-Mobile UK won’t sell spares to anyone.  Thye have it listed at £139 but no way to purchase.  I found these guys http://cgi.ebay.de/T-MOBILE-MDA-MAIL-SMARTPHONE-BLUETOOTH-USB-HAMMERPREIS_W0QQitemZ190135222020QQihZ009QQcategoryZ22343QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem selling new german spec devices at 199 euros, about £145.  No idea if they are reputable or not. The only technical downside is the QWERTZ keypad.  You can change the locale to UK and flash it with WM6 for use in UK, but you can’t escape the different keyboard layout for the german market.  Anyway, its an option and I could get used to it ….

July 23, 2007

Replaceable variables

Filed under: altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 10:29 pm

Following on a customer question today, all altaVENTE apps including compilers for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Media and PDF support replaceable variables.  So, when you want to compile a document for a hundred users and still mainatin individuality you can use these to personalise each one.  These are the ones we support, they are case sensitive:

%presentationtitle%  - The title of a PowerPoint presentaion

%authorname%  - The licenced username (the author)
%authorcompany% - The licenced company
%authoremail% - The licenced user’s email address
%companyemail% - The licenced company’s email address
%companyurl% - The licenced company’s web site
%companytel% - The licenced company’s telephone number

%presvalidfromtime% - The valid from time for the document
%presvalidfromdate% - The valid from date for the document
%presexpirestime% - The expiry time of the document
%presexpiresdate% - The expiry date of the document

%recipientname% - The target user you have licenced/registered the document to
%recipientcompany% - The target users company
%recipientemail% - The target users email address
%licensetitle%  - The title used for the licence (EULA/NDA etc)

So in youe EULA/NDA you could write this to replace the variable info from a batch list:

CONFIDENTIAL this document is intended for %recipientname% of %recipientcompany% by %authorname% of %authorcompany% and wil expire on %presexpiresdate%

Please try it out!  it works very well and in Rhapzode, protExcel, Qosmosis, Movi and Trapeze.

July 19, 2007

Nildram is a great ISP

Filed under: Tech — tim CARMICHAEL @ 10:23 pm

I continue to be impressed by Nildram as an ISP and can’t imagine changing.  My ADSL is normally rock solid but it failed completey the other night and was gone all day.  I duly logged the problem with Nildram and BT duly fixed it within 8 hours.  What impresses me more though is Nildrams follow up where they phone to check everything is ok, amazing.  I had one query, my service came back 8096kb when it was 8192kb before, apparently it should nudge back up over the next few days, but the rep was saying how lucky I am getting over 8MB, especially since I don’t really use the capacity, she had one customer that morning who was struggling to get 512kb, and I realised that sometime you have to be grateful for what you’ve got. 

July 18, 2007

I still keep trying …

Filed under: Mobile, WindowsMobile — tim CARMICHAEL @ 10:11 pm

I was in London today so I thought I’d take my HTC P3300 ‘Artemis’ with me as it has built-in GPS with TomTom 6 and would help me get to the street I was trying to find in the city.  It was newly pipmped up with a WM6 upgrade so I thought this was a good chance to see how it performed and once again try an overcome my aversion to the PPC format (and PDA’s in general).

Everything was fine on the way up on the train, the Artemis functioned perfectly as a phone and gave no problems except using the stylus is the only way to get accuracy.  However, (and there always a however with PPC), as soon as I needed it when I stepped out of the tube station I was hit by multiple problems. Firstly the screen was almost impossible to read in full daylight glare.  People must have been amused by my squinting at it a few inches from my face trying to read the display, well apart from those eyeing my distress to mug me for it.  Eventually I could make out the display, ‘No GPS Signal’.  In my hour of need, without a map, and now without GPS, I was forced to rely on a string of passers by for a breadcrumb journey to my destination.  The signal never returned until I reached my destination.  Fortunately I could just follow my sweat and tears to find my way back to the tube station, so I didnt bother trying to use the GPS again.

Back on the train home the Artemis functioned fine as a phone, albeit with careful use of my fingers on the touchscreen and eventually succumbing to using the stylus for accuracy.  So, I still can’t embrace PPC, but I won’t stop trying…. 

July 11, 2007

aargh … the madness of T-Mobile!

Filed under: Mobile, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 11:22 am

Every mobile operator has at least one fundamental flaw which makes you wonder who, back in deep staff, came up with that decision or policy.  Well I’ve now identified T-Mobile’s flaw, for me anyway and it seems thousands of other people.

The flaw is exposed in a very simple way, T-Mobiles insurance scheme is run by a third party, and like any other third party arrangement its twice as much as it needs or should do.  With T-Mobile that’s a whopping £9 month which is a super whopping £192 per 18 month contract including first excess charge.  You can buy a new more replacement handset for that (or get one off ebay). 

But wait! I hear you cry,  what happens if you lose or damage your phone 2 or 3 times during contract, surely the insurance becomes worthwhile?  Well that’s a matter of opinion, because every claim incurs excess charges of £90.  Plus  … the third party insurer only commit to giving you a refurbushed unit or near equivalent, not a new unit. 

Best policy is to never lose your phone, a policy I’m happy to say I have stuck with since my first NEC P3 back in 1991.  So most people don’t buy the insurance because its so expensive.  So why am I upset about this?  Well I wanted to buy a spare MDA Mail to replace an MDA 3 which I was testing WM6 upgrade on, so I phoned up T-Mobile upgrades and asked them how much?

They told me I could not upgrade or downgrade the MDA 3 but could buy an ’offline’ MDA Mail for £135 but they could not sell to me direct, so they gave me the part number and sent me to CarPhone Warehouse who supply T-Mobile offline phones.  CarPhone warehouse wearily told me T-Mobile didn’t supply the MDA Mail to them so they couldn’t help.  T-Mobile customer services then sent me on a fruitless waste of time journey to my local T-Mobile store who informed me they are not allowed to sell offline phones.  A policy that they thought was crazy, as they have to send uninsured customers to local Carphone warehouse to buy replacement handsets and lose money by not completing the sale.  This apparently leads to huge customer dis-satisfaction, and of course the opportunity for CarPhone Warehouse to steal T-Mobile customers by cross grading their contract.  You can’t even buy it as a spare part as they have no way to bill you.

So back I went to T-Mobile who have now ultimately said the easiest way to get a replacement phone is to buy the cheapest contract with the MDA Mail free on which is a Flext 25 12 months which is £300 and dump the SIM or give it to someone…. this is madness for them and their customers!

So the  bottom line for anyone losing or damaging their phone and wanting a T-Mobile model is to get another cheap contract and give the SIM and a cheap phone to your gran.

Also, for anyone buying from T-Mobile business,  when they say Free 24 hour handset replacement, they only mean warranty replacement, not loss or damage, which they conveniently omit to mention.  

Come on T-Mobile, let your stores sell offline phones!

July 10, 2007

Its just a phone! Unboxing the Motorola MotoFone F3

Filed under: Mobile, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 1:56 pm

Every self respecting geek should have one of these to compensate for over exposure to smart devices.  I think the beauty of the MotoFone F3 is in its utter simplicity, its just a phone, no camera, no wifi, no Internet, no GPRS, no MMS, no HSDPA, just good old fashioned voice and text. Its not even got internal memory so no built-in phone book or SMS store,  all that has to come from your SIM.

Its only tilt towards hi-tech is the E-Ink ‘electronic paper’ display but tempered with only two lines of six characters in uppercase only (except when they have a descender) and only -,?@ as non alphanumeric characters.

However all these limitations belie an underlying beauty through simplicity.  Its thin, but not the thinnest at 9.1mm and feels good to use and carry.  Designed for emerging markets, its cheap at £23 + VAT and can be bought at Expansys http://www.expansys.com/d.aspx?i=139429 unlocked.

Don’t expect any more from it than a simple phone and you won’t be disappointed.  Its a great phone to use when you are going somewhere that might be hazardous for a smart device and where a longer battery life helps.  There’s a dedicated page on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Motofone_F3 complete with secret cheat codes.

its a tube not a box silly!

F31

The ‘inner tube’

f32 F33

Feels good

f34

Quite thin compared to the HP iPAQ 500

f35

Compared to other similar style phones (SLVR, F3, SPL and iPAQ 500) its the thinnest!

f36 f38

Compared to bigger devices

f37

July 9, 2007

HTC Easy Network Setup

Filed under: Mobile, WindowsMobile, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 11:33 pm

I just found a simple but incredibly useful tool on the HTC site which automatically sets up your operator settings on your device.  You run it from Windows with your device attached and it asks you your country and operator, then sends the settings direct to your device over ActiveSync.  This is so useful if you have a non-standard device like a Dopod, and takes all the work out of remembering and setting the correct configuration.  I was browsing through to see if anything new was available and this was listed for the S710, but I just used it on my Excalibur (Dash) and it worked fine and quick too.  This reminds me of a previous generation tool we built at DAT for HTC a few years ago as an in-ROM tool, but its much more flexible as a Windows/ActiveSync app so it can be easily updated.  I’m looking at how we altaVENTE could integrate this into our Mercury device security platform as a lauchable app, as its jolly useful.

It supports these countries/operators

    • UK operators (O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Virgin and 3)
    • France (SFR, Orange, Bouygues…)
    • Germany (O2, T-mobile, E-plus, Vodafone…)
    • Italy (Vodafone, Wind, TIM, 3)
    • Spain (Movistar, Orange, Vodafone)
    • Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland

 htcwizstep1

You can find it here http://www.europe.htc.com/support/software/htcs710.html

July 8, 2007

HP iPAQ 500 Mini Review

Filed under: Microsoft, Mobile, WindowsMobile, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 10:28 pm

Well, I have spent nearly 2 days with the iPAQ 500 now and I am far more impressed than I thought I would be,  but there are some annoyances too.  Despite my earlier reservations about the size I have found it easy to use, hold and carry.  In fact Vicki has been threatening to steal it to replace her beloved Qtek 8500, so it appears to work for girls too.  In the end it only took 45 minutes to charge, and I only know that because I heard a strange buzzing which turned out to be the iPAQ finishing charging.  I love the fact that it set everything up for T-Mobile straight away using the wizard and I didn’t have to do anything extra.  Although the screen is low res its quite pleasing and more than adequate.   Battery life seems good,  better on balance than anything else I have (which is most everything WM).  It uses a standard mini-USB for charging (great!) and even better, has a separate headphone mini jack.

However, there’s a few things I don’t like;  There is no separate on/off switch, you have to use the End Call button which has the knock on effect that the Home key becomes Quicklist and most frustratingly (and stupidly in my view) the Call button becomes the keyboard lock.  Why HP didn’t keep End Call as lock, and use Call as power on is beyond me (and rationality).  What this means in practice is that you can accidentally make a call whilst locking the keyboard….doh!

The other minor irritant is that the right soft key is not Contacts by default,  its called Shortcuts, and true to the name, it takes you to a ladder menu of 9 shortcuts (which you can change) of which contacts is option 0.  This means performing 2 keypresses to get contacts.  Once you get used to it its ok,  and in some weird way, strangely logical and useful,  but its different, and takes getting used to. Lastly I don’t like the irritating startup music which I haven’t found anyway to disable.  I mean it just wouldn’t work for Jack Bauer whilst hiding from baddies, he be found straight away!

Other than that I really liked it, not as much as my Cavalier or Excalibur, but well worth it when you consider you can buy it from Expansys for £161+VAT. http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=146093

The Tour

Filed under: General, Places, Travel — tim CARMICHAEL @ 6:28 pm

 We went up to the village this afternoon to watch the Tour De France come through.  From the time we arrived, it took about 2 hours before the riders appeared.  In that time no-end of ‘procession’ cars, vans and trucks came through at high speeds.  No end of french police bikes and in cars as well as more brit bike police than I imagined were in the whole country.  In fact I’m sure that if you laid out all the vehicles and bikes end to end for the whole procession, the actual riders would be only 1-2%. The riders came and went in about 3 minutes first to last, when they did arrive it was mayhem, everyone traveling at 30+mph consuming the whole road space, anyone stepping out would have been killed outright.

tour_de_france_logo

July 7, 2007

unboxing the HP iPAQ 500 SmartPhone

Filed under: Microsoft, Mobile, WindowsMobile, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 10:30 am

Just got this new WM6 smartphone from HP.  I’d kinda forgotten HP as a WindowsMobile vendor and this certainly brings them back to the front of my mind.  Its cheap too, about £150 + VAT.  Comes in a small neat package, different to the HTC packaging model, this is outer box and egg crate, not sleeve and preformed card.  I’m going to use this for some compatibility testing on our new Mercury WindowsMobile security product.

hp1

Small neat package

hp2 hp3 hp4 hp5

Not many bits inside, but its all there, neat and tidy

hp6 hp7

And the phone itself feels good in my hand. initially, when I read that it was 16.3mm thick I was considering whether I would need to get a backpack to carry it round in, but I was pleasantly surprised at how neat and compaq it feels in my hand.  I’ve left it on charge now like a good boy because there are dire warning about charging for at least 4 hours prior to use.  I suspect that’s over the top but I fell like being good.

I’ll update this when I have had a chance to use it more.  At least the battery cover fits well!

July 6, 2007

New Movi update

Filed under: altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 1:03 pm

We just completed an update to Movi with a new Aero Basic look for the player.  Here it is playing the trailer for the 20th Century Fox movie Die Hard 4.0 , unfortunately we can’t show the film image due to copyright, but believe me its there.

DH4

Same proven Movi capabilities of protecting content with EULA, authentication, licensing and valid from/expiry dates.  Check it out at soon at http://www.altavente.com

MS Gold Partner Update July 2007

Filed under: Microsoft, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 12:26 pm

Just got the July 2007 monthly update for Gold Partners from Microsoft.  Here’s the contents as they arrived and the DVD’s as a stack.  We get all we need downloading from the partner website so I’m not sure why they continue to ship physical media.  The product downloads from the website are always up to date as well.

july stack

July 5, 2007

HTC Support Site

Filed under: Microsoft, Mobile, WindowsMobile, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 12:26 pm

So I’ve registered all my devices at the HTC e-Club http://member.htc.com/member/login.aspx?fm=eu&ln=en , but there’s no Wm6 updates there yet.  I think HTC need to put more effort in getting this up to date.  There have been WM6 builds available for the Excalibur (S620) for over a year now in various beta forms and in release form for a couple of months from T-Mobile (US but not UK).  So where is the update ?  They did promise it for June back at MEDC.

Interestingly the site also accepts my QTek and Dopod devices which are made by HTC, but not HTC devices branded by operators like Orange, T-Mobile and O2.  I can understand why, but they should really work with the operators to provide links to relevant updates.

July 4, 2007

WindowsMobile, IE and auto detect settings

Filed under: Microsoft, Mobile, WindowsMobile, altaVENTE — tim CARMICHAEL @ 9:29 am

I change my phones frequently and always have to reset my operator settings each time.  Its onerous and I usually forget something.Today I was testing a new WM6 smartphone device and was really having problems with it.  I could get push email from my Exchange server but couldn’t browse the web … starnge.  The GPRS was coming up.  I’d turned the HSDPA option off, rechecked the APN and still nothing. …until one of my colleagues reminded me that IE has a setting that was probably affecting me ‘Automatically Detect Settings’.  Sure enough it was not checked and worse the selected network was MMS!  Anyway, as soon as I updated this sure enough IE started working.  That’s one to add to my checklist!

July 3, 2007

Bloody Awful, Bad Attitude, Blissful Arrogance …

Filed under: General, Travel — tim CARMICHAEL @ 5:36 pm

These are all interesting possible alternatives for the BA acronym (British Airways) who are in appalling state from a customer perspective.  in the last 10 days I have spent £30 in phone charges on their money making 0870 number waiting to get through to their sales/customer service line.  One call was 55 minutes on hold before I got a representative who said they didn’t have enough staff.  You cant even complain because there is no-one to complain to except the reps who agree.  How can i be angry at them? To add insult to injury, we, the consumer have to fund the call time in order to use their service. And even worse customer service and sales and enquiries are all on the same number. They only keep their lines open until 20:00 so you can’t even ring in at a quieter time.  It could seem to someone uncharitable that the might make more money from the 0870 number than from the fare… I certainly hope they sort things out, but since there’s no-one to complain to there’s no way to even be sure they know there is a problem.

Come on BA, sort it out!

 Update:  I managed to get through by contacting the web support team on +44 8708508504 who put me straight though to a rep.  By then my bookings had all expired so I had to do them again, and I had to bite my tongue when asked why I had let them expire.  Hope that numbers helps someone else.

July 2, 2007

Cracking!

Filed under: General — tim CARMICHAEL @ 2:12 pm

Vicki bought me an electric fly swatter and despite it only being powered by 2 x AA batteries it works really well. Catching an annoying fly with a quick swipe results in a satisfying crack and a small spark.  Best for those small flys that continuously orbit your light as catching a cluster fly is a bit to random and you can easily spend 2-3 minutes chasing just one fly.  The swatter looks like a small tennis racket with a wire mesh instead of strings. The mesh lets through small insects including mosquitoes, unfortunately.  The mesh is not live unless you press a conveniently situated button on the handle, and the voltage is too small to be noticeable to the touch.

Anyway, very good tool.

Update: Although its only 3 volts the mesh managed to give me a heck of a bolt that I could feel for an hour afterwards as a burning sensation up my arm.  Now I know why the flies catch fire.  You have been warned! don’t touch the mesh.

July 1, 2007

WM6 File Encryption

Filed under: Microsoft, Mobile, WindowsMobile — tim CARMICHAEL @ 2:12 pm

There’s a new security feature on WM6 devices to encrypt files on storage cards inserted in the device.  Using this option which is in Settings|Security renders your files unreadable on another device.  the process uses the device IMEI as the decryption key so that if the decryption is not done on that device it wont decrypt.  This is just another small step in providing security on WindowsMobile.  Bigger advances will arrive with next years release called Photon which will give us proper FileSystem level encryption on the device and maybe even limited discretionary access using an ACL model.  Its taken a long time, but Microsoft is finally putting some substance into the security model for WindowsMobile devices. 

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