/bin/tim

I’ve been using my new Blackberry Curve for about three weeks now.  I have been pleasantly surprised with the experience.  Actually there’s nothing I regard as negative vs my HTC Excalibur except that it feels slightly more flimsy, and the trackball feels breakable.  I wanted a titanium coloured one but got silver

The good news is that it starts up and is ready to use as a phone in about 6 seconds, as opposed to the 10x delay with the Excalibur.  In fact any WindowsMobile device could only dream of starting that quick, most are just about finishing displaying the inital splash image.

The GPS is good and works well,  even with the limited Maps application, but at least it accurately shows you where you are right now, anywhere in the world.  I tested this in london and San Francisco and both have been very accurate.  Also, the battery life is better than any WindowsMobile device I’ve had so far.

The really good news actually shames WindowsMobile, and that is I can connect to more than one Exchange server simultaneousl.  Why Microsoft can’t do this is for WindowsMobile beyond me, they don’t even do it for the desktop Outlook client.  The Curve seamlessly manages multiple email sources whether they are Exchange, Hotmail, GMail etc.  The only downside is that whilst it provides separate source folders for each new mail service you add,  it doesn’t separate your original mailbox out, which is left in the consolidated view.  This is an omission I am sure they will fix as its done in some third party themes already.

Anyway, it my summary is it does what I need and it just works andshows how far Microsoft need to go to catch up with the BlackBerry experience,  and thats something I didn’t think I would say.

Some interesting updates on SQL Server 2008. FILESTREAM allows you to store large unstructured data items (BLOBS) outside the database in the native filesystem.  This is really handy as the BLOB no longer impacts the database itself for either performance or reliability.

However there are a couple of things to be aware of as Database mirroring and Snapshots aren’t supported.  Otherwise, FILESTREAM is implemented as a varbinary(max) and can be used as if it were a normal but importantly it is not limited to 2GB in size, rather to volume size (although thats no a good measure).  A cool capability is thta you can access the FILESYSTEM onject directly from the Win32 API,  you can’t delete or rename and object but you can read and write to it.  However NTFS security is applied and by default only the SQL Server Service has access permissions.

I tried hard to get on with spiritual successor (in my mind) of my HTC Excalibur,  but I have failed.  The problem is its just too quirky.

Firstly, the biggest problem.  For reasons which are impossible to fathom, Samsung decided to install WM6 Professional (PocketPC Edition) on to this device, despite it clearly being a WM6 Standard device.  This turns a perfectly good single handed device into a clumsy two handed version with none of the benefits of the PocketPC.  Unbelievably it ships with a stylus, and uses the wholly inappropriate Pro UI with drop down START menu and touch screen.  This is just craziness.  I recommend they make a WM6 Standard firmware update asap.

The GPS … what can I say?  Mostly it didn’t work,  when it did the accuracy offered was in the kilometre range, at one point offering me an accuracy of 5563 metres!

Now to put a tall hat on it they made it slightly too wide and made it with an ultra slippy shiny case that squeezes out of your hand like a wet bar of soap.

Completing my day, they use a non standard interface for power and connectivity instead of USB.

Funnily enough,  I got used to the trackpad, but not the cursor it drives which is all but invisible in sunlight.  There is a simple reason why WM6 Standard on a front facing keyboard candybar is the right OS, simplicity!

So, its gone back in the box, probably never to be used again.  What a disappointment!

The first time I saw there was going to be a cinema release of the animated Star Wars series I was a bit non-plussed.  It didn’t look like it would be special in any way, and what I love about Star Wars is the graphics and the sounds, not the storyline or acting.  So I surprised myself when I was browsing upcoming movie trailers on my Apple iTV.  I watched the trailer in HD and was immediately impressed with the detail and the way the images are drawn (or rendered).  So I am now looking forward to the release.

It also put me in mind of the SuperThruster video EP from Sly and Robbie.  Well worth getting on DVD for its manga and thumping baseline.  Here’s a horribly compromised and dark copy I found on YouTube.

… no its the UK banking industry warping into the 21st Century with the new Fast Payment system.  Almost unbelievably, we in the UK can now do same day electronic payments, well almost;  some banks are lagging and some are only doing transfers of less than £5(!),  but despite me still pinching myself, it has actually worked today.  At least there’s no going back now,  with direct debits to follow soon, and who knows where it will stop, cheques next?   In reality, this of course comes not a minute to soon in case PayPal and others start to steal their money transfer business.

Of course as we all know, balance and karma must be maintained in any industry, and banking is no different,  and on the very same day, Barclays restored the balance by informing me they are not going to improve their online banking system which currently limits your transaction history to 60 items or 60 days.  So if you are running your business on Barclays you can’t even see enough data to do one VAT quarter let alone a whole year.  Barclays problem is that they are basically running a system designed 10 years ago and never touched since.  Back in 2001 I was advising they stored statements online as PDF’s which could be downloaded, and provide secure communication to your branch or specific Barclays staff, but alas it seems that they have been unable to do any of this, and sadly, not for the foreseeable future either.  

I have finally given up after 7 years of trying to jostle Barclays into providing a service that is more than just a payment system as there is a disconnect between customers, branches and the owners of the Internet banking group who really seem not to want to know what customers think.  Here’s the process I just went through which took a month;

• I register complaint with PC Banking about 60 transaction limit with India
• Call is escalated to PC Banking help in Coventry
• Operator very understanding but can do nothing to help and offers to escalate to Central Complaints
• Receive letter next day saying they will respond in 21 days
• 25 days later I call to follow up with Central Complaints
• They inform me there is nothing they can do and offer to escalate to PC Banking help in Coventry
• Hmmm … surely that’s a closed loop system
• … and of course thats where it ended, back at square 1, just a month later.

Whats crazy is that me and other concerned customers are just trying to help and be part of the solution for them but theres no way to interact with anyone who has any influence…. and … whats more one of the many times quoted reasons about lack of storage is easily overcome, and rapidly if the desire is there.

If it was me in Barclays PC Banking, I’d accept the limitations of the current system and exploit the existing security platform for authentication but extend the system with an online analytics data processing farm that could create on demand reports as PDF’s (or better still, an altaVENTE protected document) which could be downloaded.  Voila! a cheap, fast to implement solution that would keep the service acceptable whilst a new system is delivered.

The real solution ?  Well sadly, and despite every other effort their only option is to move to a bank with an online banking system that actually gives you full reporting and analytics, or reporting at least.  But if anyone from Barclays does read this and want my feedback then just let me know.

I want to be able to use my Wii from different rooms.  Getting the video signal piped to different rooms is no problem, but what about the controller?  Can it work in a different room?  could we even play from different rooms with multiple bars?

There’s a few articles on how to extend the length of the bar cable, but I haven’t found anyone who has successfully split bar inputs?  I’ll update when I’ve succeeded.

This is a good idea that could be great.  TrainTracker gets realtime train running times from the live departure boards data feed so you can get accurate info on the train you are running for.

Why isn’t it great? Well, a simple update to being able to use the station short codes via the keypad would be great.  Right now it uses voice recognition, you know the sort of thing ‘Did you say Machester’ right after you actually said London.  Couple this with standing in a loud busy place where you can hardly hear then you see the problem,  its worst just where you need it most.

However, the idea and sentiment is great. Anyway, all stations have three letter codes like airports, so for instance CHX is London Charing Cross so I should be able to call Train Tracker and type in 249 (CHX).  Hopefully they will add this real soon as its a no-brainer.

0871 200 49 50

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/passenger_services/info_on_the_move/traintracker.html

As any of those who know me will attest, I’m a UI design freak.  I may not be able to draw properly but I know what looks good and works well.  So,  the following tagline about the OpenOffice 3.0 beta immediately caught my eye.

‘New, Fresh-Looking Icons’ - OpenOffice.org 3.0 got a new set of fresh-looking icons which makes OpenOffice.org a lot more fun to work with.

So, flush with anticipation to see what their 2008 take would be on an Office UI compared to the Ribbon from Microsoft I eagerly went straight to that link preparing to be wowed.

WOW, was the right word.  Surely these are the icons that shipped with Windows 3.11 somewhere back in the early 90’s? 

Not sure if they are really clever and this is retro chic to combat the Ribbon, or maybe that’s how they really think a modern UI should look…. as to being fun to work with, I can imagine it wil be a game.

Your reputation in a box? We guarantee it.  Every Time!

So goes the motto of CityLink, well I’ve had more of this than I can take recently.  Poor delivery service used to be the domain of parcelfarce, but CityLink (no funny name change) have recently snatched that prize.  The problem seems to be that CityLink have got quite popular and don’t have enough drivers or vans to meet demand.  This means that the drivers are forced to meet their quotas by ‘carding’ (v).  This is the practice of pretending to have made an attempt to deliver and finding no-one home leaving a courtesy card saying they had called.

Now this practice is abused where the delivery is not even attempted but rather just ‘carded’.  This allows the driver to get home on time and not have to do all of his deliveries. This has happened 3 times to me in the last month.  Each time it appears that it has been a temporary driver who has carded me.  The regular driver even asked me last week if the stuff he was redelivering had been ghost ‘carded’.

Actually CityLink are pretty good in normal circumstances,  they just can’t handle the load.  Today I was waiting for my urgent delivery and was ‘carded’ at 09:10 strange because thats exactly when DHL were here.  Clearly none of us saw the invisible CityLink van turn up.  Obviously he must have passed through a trans dimensional shift in the time continuum which is at the end of my drive and entered a parallel universe.

Ironically Ebuyer had upgraded me to a pre-12 delivery (without my knowledge) which further compounded the problem.  The more tight the deadline, the more likely you will be ‘carded’.  I spoke to the customer support staff who were very helpfull and they have offered to redeliver tomorrow pre-10am … warning Will Robinson, warning! Unfortunately I’m even more likely to get carded. When I enquired why he couldn’t do it today on the pickup phase I was shamefully told that he was ‘too busy, and wouldn’t even finish the remaining deliveries he had to do”… whoops, so no wonder I was carded.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow …

Fret no more!  its The Rumble Strips - Girls and Boys in Love. 

Got the delivery date for my Wii Fit in a letter today.  Its April 25th!

We just ran out of photo paper for the Cannon Selphy photo printer which we use for printing family photos out.  I just checked with PCWorld and they have stock and its a whopping £30 for a 100 pack, that’s 30p per print, assuming no failures.  Vicky pointed out we can go online and get prints next day from Tesco for 5p each so why bother buying a cartridge from which we always get a few failures,  and it would take until next day to print 100 photos.

 I had to agree, and apart from emergencies I can’t see we would not continue to use Tesco for photo prints, although I have to admit I had not really considered it before…

I was surprised to read the editorial in BusinessWeek that we shouldn’t worry (Americans that is) as the Fed has a whole kit bag of solutions to stop the financial crisis entering the real economy.  I just don’t believe this, I think in some ways its already too late as the rot has set in.  The banks don’t trust each other and won’t inter lend so that’s going to be even worse for the rest of us in the great unwashed public, and we already see that here in the UK with the withdrawal of thousands of Mortgage offers and deals.

Soon, this will migrate to restricted lending on non-mortgage loans and finance which means cars, household goods, home improvements holidays, in fact everything expensive.  So as soon as we can no longer get finace for a new car we won’t be able to buy them, which means car manufacturers can’t sell, which has a knock on through the supply chain and then onto other supply chains.

Somehow the solution has to be got going now and I believe that to be a fundamental massive increase in liquidity for banks to get back to offer us all finance and stops the wheels of industry seizing.  Ultimately even the rich countries like the oil states, China etc will get dragged in, probably after they have bought all the major US/UK organisations for knock down prices.

I know increasing the liquidity supply could just allow the banks to make more money (or lose it) but thats the lesser of two evils when compared to global stagnation in the way Japan was hit.

Anyway, here’s hoping… 

I really liked this track shame it didn’t really get the airtime it deserved to make it a bigger xmas hit

What is StartKey? Everyone is talking about it right now as if it were something new.  Well probably from a marketing point of view it is.

Common consensus is that StartKey is not actually the Windows OS on a USB key, but rather your profile.  Its not likely to be like a ‘Live’ Linux because Windows is not quite as nimble.  In fact you can have Windows on a USB stick right now, albeit in cut down form.  The Windows PE 2.0 edition will boot to a pared down version of Windows Vista that has some basic functionality including network access.  But it is cutdown,  so its not the rich (albeit heavy) environment that user expect from Vista, but it does work and serves it purpose for maintenance and fixed function activities.

In fact you can build a full Windows XP (but yet Vista) to boot from USB Key or DVD using the Embedded Edition.  The trick that embedded edition performs is that it has a special driver which prevents writes occurring back to the registry which is most undesirable on USB keys (whose memory wears out) and impossible on DVD/CD media.  Windows (especially Vista) is very chatty to the registry, writing to it all the time, even when at standstill and the filter driver removes this roadblock.

So given that booting and running Windows from USB key is already possible (albeit very slow), then StartKey must either be a repackaging of these technologies (unlikely because of licencing) or a way to transport your profile including My Documents etc, like a domain roaming profile.

There is already a similar technology out there today called Mojopac which virtualizes your Windows installation http://www.mojopac.com/portal/content/hellomojo.jsp which is worth checking out.