If you know me, then you’ll know that I wasn’t really ever into flashy phone hardware.  To me, a phone was something to make phone calls and send text messages.  Even though I would consider myself an early adopter of most computer technologies, I just never really had that with mobiles. About fourteen months ago I finally traded in my old Motorola for an Android phone.  Specifically, I bought the HTC / Google Android Developer Phone.  I love that phone, and have hacked it many many times over the last year. I installed new ROMS from jesusfreke and cyanogen, and even cooked my own ROM with the applications I wanted installed.

The hardware in the Developer Phone is wonderful, albeit very slow.  The processor runs at 528MHz and there isn’t enough memory to easily allow the newer versions of Android.  The screen is also showing its age as it only runs at 320 x 480.  With that in mind I decided a month ago to update it to a new model.  So I bought the HTC Desire. I’d imagine you’ve seen this phone advertised or on the internet somewhere but don’t know as much about it as you should.  First of all, it has a huge 16.7 million colour AMOLED touch screen.  At 480 x 800 pixels the 3.7” WVGA screen is incredibly crisp and dominates the front of the phone.  The entire phone isn’t much larger at 119mm x 60mm x 11.9mm, and it feels light but strong in the hand.  The case is metal and hard plastic and it doesn’t feel particularly fragile which is a great thing.  I have accidentally dropped it, but slowed it with my foot before it hit the ground and it escaped unharmed.

It is incredibly fast.  The ARM Snapdragon processor runs at 1GHz and has no problems with anything I’ve run on the phone so far.  Screen transitions are crisp and smooth, and CPU-intensive tasks such as Flash video run without stutter.  HTC have enhanced the Android experience with what they call Sense, and it changes the operating system from something functional and good looking into something very user centric and highly visually appealing.  One of the things that pissed me off with the Dream was that I couldn’t play background music at the same time as doing pretty much anything else.  That just isn’t a problem with this processor.  I have used Google Tracks to track my movements continuously in the background while playing music and looking through maps.  That’s a huge win for me, and supposedly the operating system is going to get even better when HTC release froyo in a couple of weeks.  Froyo is short for frozen yoghurt and is Google’s codename for Android 2.2.

As is typical for Android phones these days it has a 3-axis accelerometer,digital compass, proximity and ambient light sensors, as well as the ubiquitous A-GPS receiver.  It also has a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with a LED flash on the back of the phone.  The camera has the ability to detect faces, though I have to admit that there is no indicator for that feature and it doesn’t seem to change the depth of field when taking a portrait.  The A-GPS can tag photos with the exact location they were taken, which is a great feature, though one that would be a battery drain should you take a lot of photos with it enabled.  The photo quality is pretty nice, and several examples of photos from this phone can be seen here, or on my Flickr page.

I haven’t had any problems with the phone quality.  I can’t really type a whole paragraph about it as it just works. It’s quad-band so will work everywhere on earth except large swaths of North America.  Data connectivity comes in the form of 3G (HSPA / WCDMA / EDGE), GPRS and WiFi (up to 802.11g).  It has Bluetooth which I’ve never used, and internet tethering for a laptop through a cable.  When Froyo comes out it’ll get the ability to act as a wireless access point which means I can power my laptop from it when on the road.

The model I bought isn’t carrier dependant.  Our carrier is Alice, which is a MVNO on the O2 network, which was later bought out by O2.  I don’t “have root” (the ability to install programs that require privileged control), but that’s because I just haven’t needed to root it yet.  That’s how good sense is on it… there just isn’t a need to root the thing to install extra software.  Anyway, when I upgrade to Froyo I’ll either root it or not, depending on my mood.  The process is relatively easy, though a little time consuming.  The nice part about it is that (unlike some other phones) the software I install won’t invalidate the warranty.  Its my phone and I can install whatever I want on it!"

I gave my old Dream to Anna, who is completely addicted to the hard keyboard on the thing.  Unfortunately she just doesn’t use it for anything except texting and phone calls.  I think there’ll be an upgrade for her to the HTC Vision in the future, which will have the same (or better) specifications as the Desire but with a larger and more comfortable hard keyboard!

So.  Fast? Check.  Great screen? Check.  Connectivity? Check.  Sensors? Check.  Open and upgradable? Check.  What are you waiting for then?  Go get one!

Right, so back in the depths of time I wrote a post about installing Windows Vista from a USB key in order to speed up the process.  I thought I had updated that for Windows 7, but apparently not.  So, as Windows is installing on my desktop machine right now, I decided to update that post for the new version.

When Microsoft released Windows 7 they also released a small tool to make installation from a USB key far easier than it was in the past.  This tool is called the “Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool”, and there are two pre-requisites to using it.  You must have access to a downloaded ISO of Windows 7.  You can’t use this method to burn a DVD to a USB key.  You can get the USB Download Tool from various places on Microsoft’s website including this page.  The second condition is that you need to have a PC whose BIOS is capable of booting from a USB key.  Most modern PCs can do this.

You need to obviously do this before you kill Windows on the target machine, or do it on another PC. (Interestingly I was going to suffix that sentence with “that has a USB port or DVD ROM, or an internet connection.  However what PC doesn’t have those these days?)  Download and install the Tool, and then run it to begin.  When it loads, you will see a screen like the one below.  Use the Browse button to navigate to your ISO of choice and select it.

You will then be asked whether you want to copy the files to a USB Key or DVD Rom.  Select USB Device.

The next step is to select the destination USB Key.  In this case I have actually two keys; One for my ReadyBoost data and one which I’ll use for the installation.  Make sure you choose the correct key if you have multiple USB devices.

When you click “Begin copying”, the program will do just that.  It can take a while depending on the speed of your PC and USB Key, but the cumulative time to image the key and install Windows is less than the time to install from a DVD, so its a worthwhile exercise.
 

When it has completed you will see this screen.  You can then remove your USB key (don’t forget to eject it) or restart your PC if you are installing on the same machine.

Today, Google launched their public DNS project into public beta. The results are in, and they’re okay, but only okay. Over 1,003 queries for random domains from a pool of 10,003 Website addresses. I used Silverwolf’s excellent DPT to perform this test, and the results are below.

My ISP’s DNS Server
Number of Successful queries : 1,003.
Best Query Time : 62 Milliseconds.
Worst Query Time : 1,061 Milliseconds.
Average Query Time : 220 Milliseconds.
Timeouts (Not Counted in Stats) : 25.

Google’s Open DNS Server
Number of Successful queries : 1,003.
Best Query Time : 15 Milliseconds.
Worst Query Time : 1,186 Milliseconds.
Average Query Time : 167 Milliseconds.
Timeouts (Not Counted in Stats) : 32.

As you can see, the average query time is about 25% faster than my ISP, but there are more failures and a slightly higher worst query time. However, the best query time is 15ms from Google, which is pretty good in comparison to my ISP. Of course, results will vary depending on where the nearest Google data centre is to you, but its worth giving it a try.  It should be noted that certain content (streamed content for example) may actually be slower, as the servers that decide where to send you a stream from may think you are actually in a different location. I think I’ll configure my router with the new DNS now.  By the way, the addresses of the Google DNS Servers are awesome – 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (IP addresses actually owned by Level 4 Communications).

By this point most of you will know that Microsoft have just released Windows 7.  It should be appearing in the shops within the next couple of weeks, and by some accounts is already available in some places.  I have been using it for the best part of half a year I think, and I find it to be far better than Windows Vista from many perspectives. This has left me in a very unfortunate position, as I actually had to go out and purchase copies instead of getting them free.  You see, Microsoft gave me a free copy of Vista Ultimate for taking part in the beta test for that version, but I didn’t get invited to the beta test for Windows 7.  At least I’m not alone in that, and there were many complaints at the start of the beta test from people who expected to get invites not receiving anything. Rather then doing a large-scale beta like previously, they released two builds to the public; an early beta, and the first release candidate.  Like those of you adventurous enough, I had to download both of these, and have been using it mostly without problem since.

So, what’s new?  Well, the UI has been tweaked a little since Vista, and a lot since XP.  The Start button is different enough that I’m going to have to get a new tattoo.  When you click it, you see something similar to the Vista start menu, albeit one where the search function is taken to a whole new level.  For example, when opening Visual Studio, instead of clicking Start… All Programs… scrolling down to Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and then clicking on Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, I simply click Start… type “vis” and hit Enter.  The results are shown on the left (click the picture to show a full-size version), and you’ll notice that this is really just an illustration as I have Visual Studio pinned to the task bar at the bottom of the screen.  It is a highly visual illustration of just how much the search feature in Windows 7 has been improved over previous versions.

The next great part of Windows 7 is connected, but a little separate.  The taskbar (the bit down the bottom of the screen to the right of the Start button) has undergone some subtle changes.  First and foremost, you can now “pin” documents and applications to the taskbar, which has been missing from Windows for a very long time.  Don’t get this mixed up with the "Quick Launch” toolbar from previous versions.  It is the same, but also so much more. Applications that are pinned can have what are called Jump Lists.  An example of a Jump List is seen if you right-click the Media Player icon.  Instead of the usual Copy/Paste etc options from previous versions, this click now brings up a special menu for Media Player containing a list of previously played media, which can be clicked on to re-play. Its an incredibly useful (when you remember that it can be done!), that I find myself using more frequently than I had expected.  Also on the taskbar, the notification area to the right has been cleaned up and organised a lot more than before.  MDI or multi-window applications now have a great feature added to them. Instead of switching to the application as an entity and then looking for the document within that application, you can now switch directly to the document.  If you look at the image to the left you’ll see that I have the mouse cursor hovering about the internet explorer icon, and an image has appeared of each of the open web sites.  I can switch to a specific one just as easily as I would switch to a different application.

The general desktop experience is far better than Vista.  In addition to a bunch of new features such as Aero Peek which allows you to look at the desktop and widgets without minimising everything else, several features have been added or enhanced.  Task switching with alt-tab is now much better.  When you press Alt and hit tab you see a new window appear with an image of each open window that you can switch to.  Additionally, after about a second, all of the other windows fade into the background (like the image on the right) with only the selected window showing in its true colours.  Its a simple and exceptionally handy feature that makes it incredibly easy to obtain information from another window without taking your fingers off the alt-tab keys.  There are a bunch of improvements such as these in Windows 7 which I’m not going to go into in detail, for a couple of reasons. Firstly it would take too long to write, and secondly if you really want a good review you should check out some of the better written versions on the net.

One of the biggest problems with Windows Vista was that it was slow, at least before the first service pack was released.  A lot of the speed issues were perception rather than reality, simply because Vista was so much more complex than XP.  When SP1 came out, it really came into its own with regards to speed, and that increase was carried forward to Windows 7 too.  If you compare fresh installs of Windows 7 and Windows Vista on the same hardware, Windows 7 is faster.  I believe that the same is true of a fresh install of Vista with SP2 slipstreamed into it too, but I haven’t verified that for sure.  In any case, while there’s a definite increase in speed, there’s also a significant perception of a speed increase.  This is partly because your first indication that things have changed is with the startup speed.  In comparison to Vista, its blinding.

I didn’t intend to go on about it as long as I have, and I’m going to stop now because I don’t really want to actually write a significant review of Windows 7.  Suffice to say I like it, and I bought it for all of the machines in the apartment.  Its going to be all over the place soon, so if you get a chance to score a demo copy then do so and give it a try.

I often have to generate GUIDs (Globally Unique IDentifiers) for applications, and I’m sick of the process of googling “guid generator”, and then going there.  So, instead of simply adding a favourite, I built my own.  Its here.  Knock yourself out.

VPC images of Windows, with IE6, 7 and 8 have been released by Microsoft. They are very useful for testing different browser versions on web sites. I use the latest one with IE8, Google Chrome, FF3, Safari 4 etc.  The next image gets IE7, FF2, Safari 3 etc.  Getting all three images allows a full browser suite test to be done in relatively short time.

IEBlog : IE Testing VPC Images Updated

I’ve been looking for at getting a new phone for a while now. Not actively, and not seriously, but it has been on the back burner for a while now.  Its interesting, I was talking with Dave last week about this, and I realised that I have never actually bought a mobile phone for myself before.  My sister and I got our first mobiles from our parents when we were younger (could have been in ninety three or ninety four, and I think it was a Nokia 2110i, the pre-GSM version), and before the contract had expired and I had a chance to change phones I had moved to London.  There I immediately got a company mobile, and have had two or three different models over the years. 

They were all fairly basic though, which perhaps explains my reluctance to use a mobile for anything other than making calls and sending texts. I’ve always been of the opinion that mobiles should be used to make calls, and perhaps tethered to get your laptop online.  I like the large form factor, or so I keep telling myself.  So, I was never really that interested in the funky new things that the cool kids could do with their mobiles. Until recently that is. In the last six months or so, I’ve been looking at the mobile market, and how the technology is evolving.  I believe that it has gotten to the point where tiny devices are in a position to be actually useful. 

Let me illustrate that for you.  I’ve always carried around a PDA, because my memory is crap and I need to be reminded of things.  I use it for notes, lists, contacts, appointments etc.  In the beginning I had Palm Pilots, which were brilliant even though they suffered from relatively crappy desktop connection software.  At some point I replaced mine for a Windows CE device, and stuck with that platform for the Outlook integration.  With that, I could schedule a meeting in Outlook, and have it automatically sync with our Meeting Maker system in the office, and my PDA.  If I created meetings on the PDA, they just appeared in the right places.  It was great, and I went through a bunch of them over the years, culminating in the HP iPaq hx4700 I have right now.  Had up until recently actually, as it stopped working a couple of months ago.  I’ve been fucked without it too I have to say.  There were lost scraps of paper in numerous pockets with tasks that were never going to get done because I never found the notes.  It really was time for a change.

There have been a bunch of different options I’ve considered over the last while.  Getting an iphone is obviously not an option for me.  Windows Mobile was something I have considered many times over the years, but having used a PocketPC for such a long time I can honestly say that the platform isn’t stable enough to rely on for making phone calls.  Nokia have come out with a couple of interesting phones recently, but again nothing really inspiring. Then there’s Android, the new mobile operating system developed by Google.  The only available handset at the moment comes from HTC, and is called the Dream.  Its a touch screen model with a keyboard that slides out beneath the screen.  Its small enough to still be a phone, and yet the screen is large enough to easily read emails and web pages with.  There’s another one coming out soon, called Magic, which will have an updated Operating System and no keyboard.  I really wanted the keyboard though, so the Dream was the way to go. 

Unfortunately HTC have just been sued in Germany.  They are very probably going to have to stop selling their handsets here until they pay an extortionate amount of money to a patent troll company (albeit one who have already successfully sued Nokia for fifteen billion dollars recently). This meant I had to get the phone soon, before they stop selling it here.  My choices were simple; contract with T-Mobile, or developers handset direct from Google.  There was no contest really, I bought the developers handset, because it was completely open and can be used on any network.  I currently get DSL, landline and four mobiles with free calls between all of them from Alice here in Munich, and I’m mostly happy with their service.  I didn’t see any reason to change, so I bought the handset from Google, and it arrived last week.

So far I’m loving it.  It comes bundled with Gmail, Contacts, GTalk, Calendar and Maps, all of which are synced with their counterparts on Google.  There’s a bunch of other apps installed by default too, such as the mobile version of the Webkit browser that powers Chrome and Safari, the ability to search Google by voice, media player, YouTube player and the Android Market.  With the market you can download new applications, both free and by paying for them.  Paid apps aren’t currently available on my version of the phone, but they’re coming with an update to the OS next month which is nicknamed Cupcake.  Let me give you an example of how cool it is.  Yesterday we were in Ikea in Eching.  After looking around the shop and arriving at the checkout, we decided that we should get a CD shelf to hold our CDs and DVDs.  However, we would have had to track back through the store to find the right shelves, and that would have taken ten or fifteen minutes (its a HUGE shop).  So, out came the phone and I searched for “cd regale” (cd shelves) on ikea.de.  The one we were thinking of was called Billy, and we found it in short order.  I know that seems a bit lame to anyone who has used the net on a mobile before, but for me its like the second coming!  Yes, of course I have searched on a mobile before, but always with WAP, or on a phone with such a crappy screen that it made no difference. This is the first time I’ve seen web pages rendered on a mobile device in such a way that it all starts to actually become useful.

Before we decided to go to Ikea, we needed the address.  All we could remember was that it was in Eching, but we needed to program the GPS in the car for that. We could have used the phone too though.  Opening the Maps application and searching for Ikea gives a list of results that you can scroll through either in a list, or on the map as you can see in the screenshot.  Clicking on the result for Ikea Eching brings up a list containing their address, directions from the current location, a link to the web site and the ability to call them direct from the phone. Its a small thing, but incredibly useful.  For me, there would be typically an intermediate step there, which is finding something to write the phone number on, or copying / pasting it into notepad or something.  Removing that intermediate step is a small thing, but a thing of brilliance.  I don’t know if other phones have this feature, and frankly I don’t care all that much to be honest.  The simple thing here is that I’m new to all this, so I’ll get delight out of the smallest thing.  Oh and yeah, I can copy and paste those details to somewhere else too.  Take that iphone users!

Today I started a new German course.  I guess its official that I’m not actually a beginner at this language anymore.  This course is for middle tier students, which is pretty cool when you think about it.  Sure I took some classes in London, and they were a great foundation, but I never really considered myself anything other than a beginner before.  I believe that after I have finished this course that I can take the official “Look mommy, I can speak German” test.  This is the official test that you get a Government certificate for!  We have the same teacher as last term which is good. 

We’re experimenting with using Moodle to enhance the course, but I have to say we’ve been relatively unsuccessful so far. This is mainly because of a lack of discipline on my part I think.  I take notes on my PC every class, and transcribe them into better German / English later on when I’m studying or doing homework. I should really be using Moodle to ask questions of my teacher, but I find that its easier to simply look up the information I need on the net.  I use Leo, Chemnitz University’s excellent Beolingus service and a couple of other online resources to do things like this.  I also have a rather large paper dictionary at home that I turn to should the online research bear no results, or indeed should I not actually be online.  Not online: What a quaint idea.

There’s a new build of Windows Live Writer available now from Microsoft.  This version includes a very nifty tagging system as shown in the screenshot on the right. It works really well with BlogEngine.Net, but you need to have the latest build installed in order to see this functionality. One thing I have noticed is that I finally have the complete set of tags available to me from Live Writer.  Before now, when I clicked on the “Tag” button I was seeing only the tags that had passed the minimum post threshold specified for display in the blog.  So, if you can’t see it in the tag list on the left then I can’t see it in the software.  Its a minor irritation that requires me to open the blog in order to post to it, which is of course what this software is trying to get you away from. Now I can at least view them by typing the first few letters of the word.  Its not perfect, but its certainly getting there.  So, bitching about BlogEngine.Net aside, lets get back to Live Writer.

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Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate - Windows Live

If you’re anything like me, then you tend to like keyboard shortcuts over the mouse.  Your mouse isn’t a very efficient way of getting around to be honest, but it takes time to learn all the keyboard shortcuts.  This was illustrated really well for me today when Anna went to download some files and copy them to a different machine on our network.  She downloaded them, then selected them all with the mouse, right clicked and then left clicked “cut” on the menu.  Then she navigated to the folder she was looking for, right clicked in the folder, then left clicked on “paste”.  It all makes perfect sense until you think that she could have selected the files with Ctrl-A, cut them with Ctrl-X and pasted them with Ctrl-V. 

The reason this isn’t so intuitive is that you need to move your hands out of the normal typing position in order to use the mouse.  When your hands are straight in front of you in typing position, typically the mouse is around 30cm to the right of your right hand.  That’s with a typical 104 key keyboard.  Check it out for yourself if you’re sitting at a desk right now.  Have a look how far to the right you need to move your hand to get to the mouse.  Now, when you’re navigating around an environment such as Visual Studio you’ll find that you can get things done a lot faster if you use only the keyboard as opposed to the combination of keyboard and mouse.  Of course there are exceptions, and things that are far more intuitive to do with a mouse than with a keyboard.  For the most part however you’ll be writing code.  It makes more sense for you to be able to do the job without having to break your train of thought with the additional movement necessary to get to the mouse.

Visual Studio has a myriad of hotkeys available, and the actual quantity varies on the version you are running.  I use the Pro version, in which there are five hundred and one shortcut keys.  The amount will depend on the version you are running.  For example, the Team System versions will have more for their SQL editor. That list is generated with the macro on Sara's page, which I won't publish again here for the sake of brevity.

If you are a programmer who uses VS.Net it would be very much worth your while taking some time each day to learn some of these macros. Over time you will build up a speed and knowledge of the IDE that simply cannot be matched with your mouse alone.

Sara Ford's WebLog : Did you know… There’s a macro for listing out all the keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio? - #370