Posted on: 24/05/2005 23:28:12 - 12 comments
Tagged in: blog.
I'll be honest; when I first got the phone I really wasn't sure about it. For a start it is wider than you actually imagine. It isn't that much bigger in height and width than my Samsung. The major difference that sets them apart is that the Samsung has rounded corners which makes it appear smaller. Aside that you can quite easily see why it is called the Razor when it is in your hand. It is SO thin, as in thinner that you expect a phone could ever be. It has to be said it is the most stylish phone I have seen, the whole thing is made of a metal alloy and not just plastic which makes it feel designed when it sits in your hand. It is comfortable to hold and use for me but then I have large fingers, I could imagine it would be awkward for dainty hands. The keypad is unlike any other, it's flat with only the slightest of raised bumps to remind you where the button is but it actually feels and works a lot better than the usual raised buttons.
Just for second I'll tell you what is a let down about this phone. The camera is nowhere close to being as good as the one on my Samsung e700 which was a biggish let down. With only three predefined resolutions you have the choice of massive, crap and tiny. The quality when looking on the handset itself looks bad but when you send them off to something with a larger screen you realise that the quality isn't that bad when all said and done. There is no option to add effects like on the Samsung but that doesn't really matter that much. It is ok in most lights but starts to fail in low level lighting quite a bit, no worse than my Samsung though to be honest.
Call quality is good, not brilliant but not bad at all. No different to any Nokia I have had.
When you first switch it on you are confronted with what seems like a "hold your hand" OS, which it is and this put me off but you can dig in to it and start to make all the adjustments you need to have it suit you. One thing that I was very chuffed about was the ability to set the soft keys yourself. No longer are you limited to having what they think you'll use the most. You can set them to what you use the most so if that is texts, easy, camera? No problem, email? Yeah it does email properly which is one of the sole reasons I will probably decide to keep it and not send it back. I can even set this to collect it when I want automatically (currently set to one hour) and so I get my email (send me some now!?) on-the-move without the need to log on anywhere. Cool stuff. Usually you can't set the outgoing mail to what you want, like your own smtp server, well you can with this phone which means firstly that your number is not sent as the email address and you can remain professional looking as it is actually being sent from your proper email outbox. Even cooler, no more lost emails as people respond to an address that simply doesn't exist. Text messaging on this phone OS was new to me. I have always had the luxury of the T-9 dictionary which I must say I am used to. Well for anyone that hasn't used iTap I suggest you give it a go as it outclasses the T-9 one by a long way. You can actually see your choices without having to go through them one at a time, genius and better still it moves words up in the most used order so after a few days of sending texts I was typing them even faster than I ever had as all my most common words had been shifted up the order. Sending MM messages wasn't a problem either and the inbox is a combined one which makes finding messages easier than it was on my Samsung where I had separate inboxes for both types.
The phone book stores 1000 entries and as usual you can assign pics to each entry that will display when the person rings; or you can just have a simple list. Plenty for anyone. USB port offers the ability to hook it up to a PC but you can also use Bluetooth for it as well. I had the Jabra BT200 headset delivered with the phone and it was easy to set up and pair with the phone. Your connection is encrypted so nobody can hook in to your Bluetooth signal and listen in. It paired with an Ipaq I tried it with in two secs and gave me the ability to share sound, video and picture files that were on the phone. I have since added a huge amount of mp3 effects files to the phone in order to make it more mine. Which brings me to a geeky point. I found that themes for the Razor are in short supply on the web and aren't really offered anywhere. So I went hunting for an SDK for the phone and to my surprise found one. I can now make my very own themes which only amount to wallpaper, ring tone and screensaver but none the less, it is better then what most phones have to offer (you'll need XP, J2ME and Java frame).
It plays videos pretty good but no option to take video and the one thing that is missing from the Razor is memory. 5megs for media is just not enough these days and I know you can just dump your pics (medium res' pics have file sizes of around 10kb) when the memory is full but it just feels like its not enough memory for this day and age. The playing of sounds (mp3's) is good too considering it is a phone.
It does indeed have a speakerphone for talking hands free when in a quiet private place and it works pretty well; though not having had one of these before I wouldn't know what was good or bad.
All in all it is a good handset but if you're thinking of getting one I would go to a shop and ask to see one working as it defo' isn't everybody's cup of tea and I have till tomorrow to decide if I am keeping it, though i think I am. It has things on it that suit me and so I would argue that it's functionality outweigh the lack of memory space, awkward width and medium quality camera. I've been saying for a long time that if you really want decent pictures get a camera that is for doing that; mobile phones are a PHONE it just happens that the Razor can do all the things I want and need it to.
Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.
I'll post some pictures of it when I can be arsed.
Posted on: 19/05/2005 14:05:48 - 2 comments
Tagged in: blog.
Big thanks to Neil for passing the Baton on to me. I only realised you'd posted this meme type thing today. I wasn't so sure about what to put as my taste in music is wide and very varied. I also have a LOT of it. Strictly speaking I love techno when I am out and about but when at home I prefer more eclectic stuff, stuff that people actually write and perform. On my way to work it I have my little MP3 player that serves up the finest Drum & Bass and Techno, it helps me wake up and forces me to walk at speed so I am not late. It really works!
So anyway...
Total volume of music :
In the region of a terabyte across my network and various other devices
Last CD Album I purchased :
Mindset by Acidrockers (a friend of mine, he releases a lot of stuff through Skint with Tayo)
Track playing this minute :
Rameriez (Reactivate)
Five tracks that I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
Rameriez (Reactivate, React)
Inside (Mindset, Blueroom Records)
Precient 13 (Accidental Heroes)
Now Generation (Majik & Sonic)
Know Your Enemy (RATM)
Three cool people who can take this baton from me :
Bumble - (www.justspank.me.uk)
Kev - (www.ratatak.com)
Skeddy - (www.skeddy.net)
Posted on: 18/05/2005 11:07:02 - No comments
Tagged in: blog.
Once again that lovely Googlebot has come and literally hammered my site (from 10 different IP's no less) and chewed a healthy 100meg out of my bandwidth. I'm not concerned as it is its first visit to this domain but man; it spares no bytes. The company Google bother me though, like a lot of "good" things on the web it is in the throws of potentially turning bad. The one thing I have noticed about Google is that they are very good as low level PR, rumours seem to turn in to fact whenever people talk about Google. People are obsessed with it and that is not a good thing. It is a decent search engine, even if it starting to be affected by all the same problems that other engines have. However that is what it is, a search engine and rumours of a Google Browser is not a good thing, we have enough browsers. The new web accelerator is not good either, just like Microsoft soon Google will have the ability to utterly track whatever who uses the service is viewing and let's not talk about the problems that struck the new service and had Google withdraw it.
Caching is something that has always annoyed me greatly, when you run a dynamic site you'll understand how frustrating it can be. Couple that with the fact that the cache they created with this "web speeder upper service" means that say I cache a page on it, say my comment page, if someone else makes a query to the cache it serves the very SAME page up to the other person. Now add the fact that I am the owner of the site, from now on that page when requested will be given anyone wanting it. People are no longer coming to my site to see that page, indeed Google is now serving it up to them. This does not make me very happy, I don't pay for a domain, web hosting and put time and effort in to making a site for someone else to cache it and start serving it up. That is just plain wrong. Useful when it is cached as a record for the past but wrong when it is the here and now. Does Google believe itself to be the next "internet", it is starting to seem so. Think AOL and you might start to get the long term picture. Google browser, Google content caches, Google Maps, Google online shopping, Google e-mail. Am I the only one seeing this?
You see where Google once pandered to the geeks it is now pissing them off. Take one of it's other service, AdSense, you display ads that are relevant to the page they are displayed on. I'm a freelance developer and so I'd like to display ads. Except I daren't as the ads will be that of other developers (you only need to look at risingdragon to see it in it's full stupidity. Of course let's not talk about the inappropriate ads that have been witnessed, not good.
Ok so I appear to be Google bashing but that isn't my point. My point is that Google and it's services are starting to waver in my eyes. Lot's of thing just simply don't work properly or work with only Google's idea of how things should be with no care for anyone else. Even there idea of page ranking is starting to favour business not actual results that are relevant. All this is happening under everyones nose but many fail too see. I remember engines like Metacrawler which used to be the favourite engine to use amongst the majority of people, they went the same way Google is. They are simply trying to hard instead of really refining the service they ought to; which is searching. Everyone is cooing about the Google Maps, yes it is good... for all of five minutes and they you realise, and it is of no use to you whatsoever. If you can find a use (other than amusement) for it then please let me know.
McGoogle will be the next thing, drive through surfing.
Posted on: 17/05/2005 11:56:25 - 6 comments
Tagged in: blog.
As from tomorrow the Motorla V3 Razor (in black) will be mine along with one of those Bluetooth head sets. Not bad for free aye? I have a pretty expensive contract with them so I guess that is why they're more than happy to let me have this stuff for free, they don't know it yet but once I am in possession of the phone itself I shall be changing my contract to a much lower one heh, never blag the blagger himself. I've been happy to pay the current contract for the last 12 months as it has boosted my credit with them, allowed me to get a new (top of the range ish) phone for free and has paid for the Samsung e700 that I currently have.
I decided on the V3 for it's keypad size to be honest. Between that and the Samsung d500 there wasn't much spec difference so it really boiled down to usability. For a long time I was hooked on Nokia's as they presented the best interface for me personally; but I was bored of them by the time I got the 8910 model, small and easy to use but a little too small and also they seemed to had dumbed down the software for the masses and this was even the business class model. The one thing that you can't beat Nokia for is text messaging. They rule hands down but the look of the new Nokia's is something only a blind person should desire. I like a phone to do it's job and the look really doesn't bother me (though I did admit in my last post about the phones that I liked the Razor's look), I liked the e700 when I got it but only until I plugged it in and charged it. Once presented with the child-like (read not geeky enough for me) interface I soon grew to hate it, loath it in fact. I kept it though as all I really use it for it too take calls (the shock?), text and send moblog pictures to the site. It did its job; I just hated the software for it. After using Nokia's for sometime it took months to get used to the space button having been moved to the opposite side, what was once rotate word was now space, yeah a few unreadable texts were sent.
Let's hope the V3 has a better interface aye? Or it might have an accident.
Posted on: 16/05/2005 09:47:31 - No comments
Tagged in: blog.
After a really nice weekend of weather it would seem that the North of England has once again returned to its full raining glory. Rain is for Sundays not Mondays damn it! Wet trousers and having to sit in work do not mix very well. I have submitted my job application for another position at work and so I wait to hear now to see if I get an interview (I'm pretty hopeful though) and hopefully the job.
I've done some small additions to the site this weekend. One of the new things is that you can subscribe to comment threads. You will get an email each time someone else comments on the thread. This isn't totally sorted as yet; I need to tweak it as it sends an email to you as you subscribe. However it works the way it should apart from that. You can easily un-subscribe by visiting the web address that comes in the email each time. The email address it subscribes you too is the one you have in your user account. This means only valid users (who are the only people to are allowed to comment now) can subscribe.
Chief Barley noticed a bug (cheers dude) and in posting it in the board also had me notice one. Usernames and spaces, for some reason if you have a space in your username it renders your profile look-up useless, I'll fix this bug tonight; it's just a matter of url encoding and the fact I stupidly forgot to check for it doh! Aside that I think the site has been working as it should for the week that it has been up! Woo!
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