Archive for January, 2007
(4.0) Ipod replacement batteries at Maplin
(4.0)Victoria’s ipod battery had been for ages, so I decided to try replacing the battery. Maplin’s ipod battery kits are fantastic: it took 10 mins, and works perfectly.
Killer mobile apps
I’m pretty geeky at the best of times, but I’m especially geeky re mobile stuff. I love my N70: it’s bulky and slow, but you can do so much with it. On the bus yesterday I sent a long email using Gmail - last week I won an Ebay auction on the way to the pub.
So I thought it might be useful to share the apps that I think are unbeatable, and the ones that I’ve tried but don’t quite cut it (yet).
The killer apps
- Opera Mini 3.0: I’ve been using Opera Mini for a while now, and have already written about how good it is. However version 3 is even better: it supports RSS, which works really, really well.
- Gmail mobile: outrageously good reworking of Gmail for mobiles - quick and, unusually for a mobile app, looks really good (see right)
- Google Maps mobile: another great one from the Google chaps. I imagine my data usage has rocketed up since I started using this - I can’t stop! Having an A-Z in your pocket is invaluable in London
The misses
- MgMaps: too US-centric, and the ability to switch between Yahoo, MSN and Google maps wasn’t enough to overcome the problems finding anything
- MSN Messenger: works beautifully, but apart from the first day when I was trying it I’ve not really found a use for it. Might just be because I don’t use MSN that much anyway
- Bluepulse & Widsets both promised an alternative to using your browser, but the one thing I tried both out for initially (uploading/syncing with Flickr) they failed on, so I lost patience. Thanks for the tip, Ryan, but I’ll stick with Opera for now.
- Zonetag is a different approach to uploading photos to Flickr - the priority is geotagging photos. This it seems to do quite well, but the upload process itself isn’t good enough (yet)
I’m aware that everyone uses mobile applications differently (if they use them at all), but my priorities are web access (the Guardian site works well in Opera Mini), Flickr integration (still not cracked this due to my network), speed and robustness.
No Sho(zu)
One of my favourite apps when I had my N70 on O2 was Shozu - a great app that allows you to upload photos to Flickr.
It has an advantage over any other Flickr mobile app I’ve come across so far (Flickr’s own mobile app, Zonetag, Bluepulse, Widsets): not only can you upload photos as you take them with one click, but also you can upload any photo in your gallery at any time.
However when I moved over to the 3 network, things started going wrong. Initially it didn’t work well, and then stopped working at all. A quick search over at Shozu’s good user forums shows I’m not the only person this has happened to, so I called Three. Their feeble customer support team confirmed that it’s a deliberate thing that some sites/content are barred from the network.
How crazy is that: they are not only prohibiting me from using a good service, so pissing me off, but are also doing themselves out of charging me for all that lovely image data.
Muppets.