Tag Archives: tweetdeck

Smartphone-free for a day – how did I go?

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Today was an interesting day. For the first time in, well, ever, I didn’t use my smartphone for the entire day. No phone calls or text messages (although these were allowed in the brief), no email, no checking my Facebook and Twitter through Tweetdeck, no web browsing to look up random things, no access to Evernote to write down notes and look up existing notes – I couldn’t even check the time.

Well, that was the idea. I ended up having to use my smartphone twice for work purposes: once to write a tutorial for APC magazine on using Tasker on Android (awesome app, by the way!) and the second time to finalise a feature I was writing for PC & Tech Authority on mobile apps. But that was it! The rest of the time I was cold turkey. The surprising thing was that I didn’t miss my smartphone as much as I thought I would!

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What I’m doing right now: March 2011

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It’s hard to believe that March is almost over! Scary – means I only have one more full month of ‘freedom’ before I step into the ‘parent’ zone! Hopefully I’ll still get to do all of the things that I love, ie writing, blogging, photography, playing with gadgets, etc, but all of a sudden I’ll have another life to take care of! Thankfully my other half is equally responsible, making the idea less daunting! I’m scared, yet excited, apprehensive, yet hopeful. Interesting times ahead!

  • Alas, it seems I’ve hit another dry spell with regards to photography. I blame my increasingly pregnant state – it’s hard to take good photos when I’m at home almost all of the time and am looking at the same scenery constantly! I suppose I could get inventive with still lifes and abstracts, but my motivation to think outside the square is really non-existent at the moment. This means my 365-days photo project has well and truly flopped. Ah well, I can always start it up again when the baby is born – will have an endless stream of baby photos to take then! :) m But I’m managing to take a few photos here and there, like at the Usher concert yesterday.

  • I’ve been going hard with the tablets this month. Ironic given that I hardly leave the house and tablets are best used out of the house (for me anyway – at home, I’d rather use my 27-inch iMac unless I’m sitting in front of the TV or lying in bed), but I’m having fun nevertheless. I traded an old phone on Gumtree for a Dell Streak 5, and I was quite infatuated with it until I found the Facebook bug that doesn’t let me sign-in to Facebook from third party apps like Tweetdeck. Major no-no for me, so I ended up switching back to the Samsung Galaxy S as my main phone. My TEGA v2 tablet also got an upgrade to Android 2.2.1! I had to upgrade the Wi-Fi card in it myself to get the Wi-Fi working in Android, and I can honestly say that it’s the first time that I’ve ever upgraded something myself on a computer before! Go me! I’ll definitely start using the TEGA v2 once I get more mobile – while it’s not the lightest tablet I have, the fact that it dual boots with Windows 7 makes it the best for writing on the go. I still haven’t had a chance to play with a Honeycomb Android tablet yet, but I’m expecting to get a review unit of the Samsung Galaxy 10.1v next week!

 

  • Further tablet news: I bought myself an iPad 2! Yes, I am an i-sheep, hear me baaaa! Took me four hours altogether, but I was able to walk out with the iPad that I wanted: a white 64GB 3G. God bless my partner for coming to visit me in line and bringing a chair – that and a good book on my Kindle made the wait almost pleasant – I was actually annoyed whenever the line moved up and I had to put my book down and move my chair! No, I probably didn’t need the 3G version, given that I have a Wi-Fi network at home and Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities on my iPhone and Galaxy S, and no, I probably didn’t need the 64GB version either, given that I barely passed 10GB on my 64GB iPad 1. But you know me – I need to have the best, and couldn’t stand the idea of friends having a better iPad than me :P Plus, using Wi-Fi hotspot functions on a phone really sucks up the batteries, and I also get GPS functionality with the 3G. Also, knowing me, I’d probably end up using all of the storage if I knew I didn’t have much to use, just to spite myself!

 

  • At the moment, I’ve just finished reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and I’ve started in on the sequel called The Wise Man’s Fear. Fantastic books if you’re into fantasy – lots of magic, demons, etc. The first book reminds me of Harry Potter as a lot of it involves the protagnist’s years at ‘The University’, only so much better than the HP series!

 

 

  • I’ve made one new addition to my ‘barbie dream home’ tech setup in the living room. I now have an Iomega NAS box setup in the living room that’s permanently connected to my wireless router, and I’m now saving all of my movies to that box rather than my iMac. This drive shows up instantly on my Xbox 360, saving me from having to copy the movie to a USB drive from my iMac and then transfer that to my Xbox 360′s USB port. I even figured out a way to download movies to my Samsung Galaxy S, then transfer them to the Iomega NAS so I can bypass my iMac altogether when I’m feeling too lazy to sit in front of the computer. Sweet! :)

Problems with the Dell Streak and third-party Facebook apps

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I’ve been doing a bit more digging into the whole ‘why can’t Facebook authenticate through Tweetdeck on my Dell Streak’ issue, and turns out it’s an issue with the Streak’s browser. I have no idea why it’s not the same as every other Android browser, but according to the post at the bottom of this page, “Dell Streak probably contains implementation of http client which can’t handle http://www.facebook.com:443 urls, which is used by Facebook to log-in via Facebook account to third-party apps. It was suggested to Facebook that all these urls use explicitly https protocol rather than rely on underlying http client implementation and its automatic switch of protocol. But for months with no answer or result.” More on the bug here.

Initially, I thought it was a problem with the Facebook client, because Tweetdeck would launch it to authenticate, and then close again. I tried deleting the Facebook client, and since this is built into the ROM, I had to use Titanium Backup to do this. Once I got rid of it, Tweetdeck began trying to authenticate through the browser, which looked hopeful as this is what it does on my other Android devices. However this was a dead-end too – as the post above mentioned, the URL to authenticate has a 443 at the end, and simply produces an error message whenever I try to launch it.

This shortcoming places me in a pickle with regards to continuing to use the Dell Streak as my main phone. I love this little guy to bits, but being able to read all of my Facebook and Twitter updates in one stream is very important for me to keep in touch with my social communities. I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy Tab for this purpose instead, but then I ask myself – why not just the Galaxy Tab for everything? Sure, it’s even larger than the Dell Streak, but if I’m going to be using a Bluetooth headset for calls anyway, than why not?

I don’t know. I’m going to try and persevere with the Streak for a little longer, just because it’s still got that ‘new device’ sheen. But I think its days are numbered as my “number one” if this issue doesn’t get resolved!

Talking about tablets

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How weird is this – I’m now carrying all three of my tablets for three very specific purposes. The iPad 1 for Words with Friends HD (Android only has an annoying free version that makes you look at an ad after every move), the Samsung Galaxy Tab for Tweetdeck (the iOS version doesn’t include Facebook yet and there’s a weird bug on the Dell Streak that won’t let me add my Facebook account), and the Dell Streak for everything else. And they said mobile devices are meant to lighten your everyday load? If someone could recommend an Android social networking app like Tweetdeck that lets you view Twitter and Facebook updates in a single stream, I could probably eliminate the Galaxy Tab from the equation. Anyone?

A couple of days ago, I got the new Jabra Stone2 Bluetooth headset in so I could try it with the Dell Streak. I was initially using the Plantronics Discovery 925, but the one time I actually used it for a call, the other party said he could hardly hear me because the line was so crackly! That about sums up the experience I’ve had with every other Bluetooth headset I’ve tried, but hopefully the Stone2 will be different. I really like the packaging it comes in – looks like an expensive watch! Reminds me of the Jawbone headset I had a while back. Like the Discovery 925, it comes with a portable charging unit (shaped like a stone – hence the name), and interesting features include the ability to connect to two devices at the same time (perfect for me!), voice functionality (connects to your phonebook so it can announce who’s calling, plus can be controlled by voice commands), works as both a headset and headphones (although you only get audio in the one ear, obviously), and a total of 10 hours call time (2 hours from the headset, another 8 hours from the charger). I’ll post more on my experiences as I use it.

The Jabra Stone2 and its matching charging case

In other news, I came *this* close to getting an iPad 2. A fellow journalist was in San Francisco for the last couple of days (as the editor of Australian Business Traveller, he was testing the new business class service to San Fran for WORK – how lucky is that?!), and I pinged him to see if he could get me an iPad 2 while he was over there. He agreed, even though he was already getting three iPads for other people, so I transferred the money over to him for a white 64GB 3G AT&T model plus pink Smart Cover. He dutifully lined up first thing in the morning when he knew a nearby Apple store was getting more stock, only to be told in the morning that they had only gotten in 32GB and 64GB Wi-Fi iPads! Booo!!! I mean, I could probably suffice with a Wi-Fi model, given all of my smartphones have 3G hotspot capability, but I just hate not having the best of any given product. My rationale is that I can just pay a little more and have the convenience of 3G anywhere I want. Especially with prepaid iPad SIMs available here that last an entire year, it’s not like I have to pay for yet another mobile account every month. Ah well, I guess I’ll just have to line up next Friday with all of the other plebs! Pretty sure they’ll sell out by the end of the weekend!

The perils of procrastination

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It’s amazing all of the little activities and tasks that your mind can come up with in the name of procrastination. It’s 1.30PM here in Sydney and I still haven’t done any substantive work – urgh! In addition to the usual time-wasters like reading Facebook and Twitter (I use Tweetdeck, and with so many contacts, it takes a long time to read every single update!), playing Words with Friends HD, and reading the book of the moment (Fortune Cookie, by Bryce Courtenay, which I’ve finished now!), I was suddenly inspired to do lots of other things that I’ve been putting off, like paying bills, adding important appointments to my calendar, scheduling my car to be repaired, and buying a third bar stool to match the two that I bought on Gumtree a couple of days ago. These were all things that had to be done regardless, but they took on a special urgency in preference to getting some actual work done.

Oh yes, and I’m blogging right now about virtually nothing when I should be working! :P Okay okay, I’m going to clear out all the clutter from my desk and office, and then wash the dishes, and maybe put a load of laundry on, and then I’ll get down to some real work!

Giving Windows Phone 7 a go

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In the name of science (or maybe because I’m a masochist?), I decided to try and get Windows Phone 7 onto my HD2. Again, not an easy process, although easier since I’d already wrapped my head around HardSPL and MAGLDR – it was just a process of following the procedure to load the Windows Phone 7 ROM onto the HD2.

My HTC HD2 running Windows Phone 7

The hard part was getting it activated. Every WP7 smartphone has a unique activation code to enable it to access Windows Live services like Marketplace and Xbox Live, and there’s a multi-part process involving installing the Windows Phone 7 SDK, Zune, the Chevron unlocker, and various other little bits and pieces – plus you have to actually call Microsoft support and request an activation code once all the hacks are in place!

Another four hours (of my life that I’ll never get back) later, I’d finally achieved success with unlocking my HD2 with the Chevron unlocker! Seems you have to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops like changing the date on your PC and smartphone to 1 October 2011, disabling network connections and Skype connections, putting the phone into airplane mode, running Chevron and Tom XAP installer as an administrator, right-click on XAPs to install them (this I had to figure out on my own!), etc – and naturally all of this information wasn’t in the original post with the ROM download – I had to trawl through lots of long discussion threads to find those extra bits of advice!

But once again, several hours of stress and a phone call to Microsoft support later, and I’ve now got a “new” Windows Phone! Which led me to the crazy idea – why not use this as my ‘main’ phone for the week so I can really get to know this new operating system? Crazy, I know, but it’ll be useful for work as well, since I have to write a feature on tips and tricks for Windows Phone 7 anyway – best dive in headfirst! I’ll still be using my Samsung Galaxy Tab – mainly to keep playing Words with Friends – but for day to day use, it will be Windows Phone 7 all the way!

Half a day in, and I’m actually having fun using it! Naturally it doesn’t have anywhere near all of the apps that I’m used to using on Android, such as Tweetdeck, Evernote, Pocket Informant, WhatsApp and Skype, but I’m coping. I’ve customised the homescreen with photo speed dials, frequently used apps and a few live tiles, installed a bunch of software and games (including Amazon Kindle, Facebook, Twitter, Flixster, IMDb, Shazam, Resco Radio and WinMilk), and have started poring over the discussion forums to learn more about this new operating system. Yes, it’s the underdog, but it’s early days yet, and I got my start as a gadget monkey back in the day with a HP Jornada 545 running Pocket PC 2000 – so it’s kind of my first love as well, and it’s nice to see it all grown up now and trying to compete with iOS and Android.

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming OS update and all of the new apps that are coming! Will I keep on using Windows Phone 7 after the week is up? I’m not sure! For now, it’s novel and I’m enjoying using it, but I’ll have to see how I feel after seven days, and whether I can live without all of the apps that I’m used to using on Android!

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