The Eagles - One of the American supergroups from the seventies, they should be crap right?
So how come I love listening to them?
I suppose part of it is a nostalgia for my my youth - The little remembered "New Kid in Town" was a favourite when it was out and reminds me of freezing mornings delivering newspapers as a 13 year old saving up for a new racing bike.
But there's a lot more to that and listening to the very cheap and widely available 'Best of' double CD, I'm struck by how many good tracks there are (far from always true even of some of my favourite 'artists').
One of these Nights, Lyin' Eyes, the iconic Hotel California are all great, but so are Desperado, Life in the fast Lane and Best of My Love and loads of others.
Great guitar work without being pompous 5 minute solos, gut wrenching (or plain obtuse, but memorable) lyrics and tunes which despite coming from a black hole of music (on the whole) don't seem to have aged horribly.
So, there you are, a recommendation (of sorts) for you to go out (or just cruise to Amazon) and buy an Eagles CD (Greatest Hits is just £4.49 as I write this!)
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Friday, 6 May 2011
The National Gallery, London
I'm not an art expert or especially an art lover, but for a few years now (since my young son returned full of enthusiasm for a school trip to the place) I've felt I should perhaps stop in and see the collection at the National Gallery in London.
Dominating the backdrop to Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square the Gallery is easy enough to find and a grand building with an impressive columned entrance.
Entrance, thanks to the enlightened policy of some governments over the years (It's not always the case) is free, which probably explained the number of people on a Thursday lunchtime in April.
The collection(s) is (are) set out by period, with some as early as the 1200s, through the early 20th century (anything newer is in the Tate Modern - Also worth a visit).
To be honest, the early stuff was only of interest to me for its age and impressive condition. Most of it is religious in nature and naive in its composition and simplistic in colour. It doesn't really stack up to the later works, but it's interesting.
Interestingly though an odd painting here and there will startle with its naturalism (for example, the 16th century Portrait of Andreas Boulengier) in contrast to the icon-styled religious art.
There are a lot of Dutch and Italian works in the museum, including some incredibly detailed works by Canaletto of historic Venice, which caught my eye for their detailed draughtsmanship, incredible number of figures and for how unchanged Venice is.
There are Turners, Constables, Stubbs, Van Goghs, Monets, Manets (including one frankly dreadful painting of a woman that looked like it was painted by an amateur!) and dozens of other famous paintings.
Standing inches from "The Hay Wain", Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire", Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" or Renoir's "The Umbrellas" was slightly surreal. These are such incredibly well known images as to almost feel unreal and yet there they were.
Personal favourites were "The Umbrellas", Akseli Gallen-Kallela's "Lake Keitele" (An artist and painting I'd never heard of!), Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield, with Cypresses", Gainsborough's "Mr and Mrs William Hallett ('The Morning Walk')" (If there's an artist I DO like it's Gainsborough oddly, having been made aware of the skill of his technique on a visit to Petworth House some years ago) and Francisco de Goya's famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington (With awards added over the years).
Above : Lake Keitele
Above : Cornfield with Cypresses
I only had an hour (my lunch break) to spend in the Gallery and I wanted to spend longer, but it was a great place to visit and somewhere I recommend anyone with even half an hour (or a whole day) to visit.
Dominating the backdrop to Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square the Gallery is easy enough to find and a grand building with an impressive columned entrance.
Entrance, thanks to the enlightened policy of some governments over the years (It's not always the case) is free, which probably explained the number of people on a Thursday lunchtime in April.
The collection(s) is (are) set out by period, with some as early as the 1200s, through the early 20th century (anything newer is in the Tate Modern - Also worth a visit).
To be honest, the early stuff was only of interest to me for its age and impressive condition. Most of it is religious in nature and naive in its composition and simplistic in colour. It doesn't really stack up to the later works, but it's interesting.
Interestingly though an odd painting here and there will startle with its naturalism (for example, the 16th century Portrait of Andreas Boulengier) in contrast to the icon-styled religious art.
There are a lot of Dutch and Italian works in the museum, including some incredibly detailed works by Canaletto of historic Venice, which caught my eye for their detailed draughtsmanship, incredible number of figures and for how unchanged Venice is.
There are Turners, Constables, Stubbs, Van Goghs, Monets, Manets (including one frankly dreadful painting of a woman that looked like it was painted by an amateur!) and dozens of other famous paintings.
Standing inches from "The Hay Wain", Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire", Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" or Renoir's "The Umbrellas" was slightly surreal. These are such incredibly well known images as to almost feel unreal and yet there they were.
Personal favourites were "The Umbrellas", Akseli Gallen-Kallela's "Lake Keitele" (An artist and painting I'd never heard of!), Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield, with Cypresses", Gainsborough's "Mr and Mrs William Hallett ('The Morning Walk')" (If there's an artist I DO like it's Gainsborough oddly, having been made aware of the skill of his technique on a visit to Petworth House some years ago) and Francisco de Goya's famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington (With awards added over the years).
Above : Lake Keitele
Above : Cornfield with Cypresses
I only had an hour (my lunch break) to spend in the Gallery and I wanted to spend longer, but it was a great place to visit and somewhere I recommend anyone with even half an hour (or a whole day) to visit.
Monday, 2 May 2011
Eken M009S (MID) Android Tablet
OK, let's start by saying the Eken is no match for an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy Tab.
I paid £80 for mine, when Galaxys are £250-300 and iPads another £100 more, so my expectations weren't of comparability, I'm smart enough to know you don't get Ferrari performance for Nissan Micra money, but I had certain requirements for my Android tablet.
I picked the M009S for 3 reasons.
1. It was cheap for an Android 2.2 Tablet.
2. It had a 7" screen, which is a format I like, about the size of a paperback book.
3. I wanted it to read Zinio Publications and Kindle eBooks on, whilst allowing me to check emails, facebook updates and surf the net when the mood took me.
As I said, I only paid £80 for this and my initial impressions weren't bad on receiving it.
It's fairly flimsy and plastic feeling compared to an iPad or a Galaxy and the buttons have a cheap 'click' to them, rather an nicely cushioned feel, but it doesn't look or feel likely to break. Good value, at first sight, for £80.
I powered it up and found another cost-cutting point. The screen requires a solid push on it to react, unlike that on my HTC Desire phone or costlier tablets.
There's none of the swishing through through lists with a gentle brush of the finger, but it works ok.
The screen is a little muted in vividness too and only has 800x480 resolution. Stand alone, it doesn't look bad at all, but it doesn't compare side by side with the HTC Desire's lovely screen.
There are a couple of small speaker on the lower edge (when held in portrait mode), along with a power in socket, audio out socket, a slot for a Micro SD card and a longer slot which is allows fitting of a provided adaptor with two USB ports and an ethernet socket.
At the other end, there's a power on/off button and a "Menu" button and volume control on the right hand edge.
There's a button on the bottom front face, which works as a 'Back' button.
My first big disappointment came when trying to find my favourite Apps (as used on my HTC Desire) on the 'Android Marketplace'.
The included Marketplace was most definitely NOT Google and the vast majority of Apps I wanted were not included. Worse still, most of the Apps on the marketplace were in Chinese, rather less than useful to me...
Worse still, even installing many apps that work fine on my phone manually, they refused to work with the Eken's firmware out of the box.
Most importantly, neither Kindle or Zinio would connect to my accounts, even though I got them installed.
As a basic e-reader/media player/web browser it worked OK, but that's not what I'd bought it for and I was beginning to feel I'd bought a dud and was on the verge of sticking it on eBay for £50.
That I have persevered and have writen this review is testament to the efforts of Roger Calver on the Slatedroid.com forum.
Through searches I found his excellent Vestinious M009s Firmware which provides a whole new OS setup for the M009S.
There are risks in 'Flashing ROM', but I found the Vestinious 1.1.5 ROM worked flawlessly and I was able to restart my tablet with this OS installed in about 15 minutes of downloading it.
This transformed the device.
There's a Google Market (although, oddly, it seems to be missing some of the Apps I can find on the market on my phone, something I'm stumped about at the moment) with nearly all the apps you could want.
I quickly got most of my favourite apps installed, like Astro, Advanced Task Killer, Facebook, Better Keyboard 8, etc and set to work installing Zinio on it.
There is no Marketplace Zinio App yet, but some enterprising soul had pulled it off a Samsung (or other tablet it's bundled with) and posted it online. I'd had it working on phone for some weeks, with a few minor niggles.
It installed easily (even with the original Firmware), but with Vestinious I was able to connect to my Zinio account and download my magazines.
They read fine and a problem that I have on the HTC with the app crashing when switching orientation hasn't appeared on the Eken/Mid.
The 7" screen's a bit tight for reading on with my eyesight, but the neat TEXT option in Zinio lets me read the words in a text only form if the light is poor and I'll live with that for the convenience of the 7" format over the iPad's 10", which I'm sure would be easier to read.
I also put Kindle on, but initially couldn't get it to offer to register the device. I put this down to some problem with having a hard wired ethernet connection (using the adaptor) as once I disconnected that I was able to reinstall Kindle and was immediately offered a login.
Once this was done, the device appeared in "Manage Your Kindle" on the Amazon website and I was able to download all the books I'd got to the M009S.
The reader app works fine here and it even seems to remember where I am in a book between the HTC and the Eken which is rather a neat feature.
So, I now have a usable, valuable, functional Android Tablet for £80 and some time and effort.
I still have some minor issues with it, beyond those I mentioned previously.
At the moment it won't connect to the wi-fi hotspot on my HTC handset as that is an 'Ad-Hoc' network apparently (I believe this isn't too hard to put right) and the battery life is pretty poor (I reckon I get about 3 to 3 and a half hours from a charge reading magazines, considerably less with the wi-fi on) - EDIT : I did later get it work on the wi-fi on my HTC with no issues and it works well with my Mi-Fi from Orange.
I also can't get any barcode scanner software to work so far, but that's not too much of a problem.
If running BBC iPlayer is important to you, I wouldn't recommend this tablet. It runs, but it's like a series of stills rather than a flowing video. Odd, as it has no problem running AVIs at all, which look and sound pretty decent - So, it's pretty good if you want a stand alone media player.
I suspect the problem is the processor's a bit slow as it takes a few moments to switch orientation too.
Also, as you'd probably expect of a device this cheap, there's no GPS sensors, so no apps that uses that will work. More surprisingly, there's no Bluetooth connectivity, so you can't add a keyboard that way, if such is you want.
There's no multi-touch, pinch to zoom capability either, but I've read that there's a green LED version around (mine has a blue LED which illuminates when it's switched on) which does have this capability.
Would I buy another cheap M009S now, knowing what I do?
Absolutely, as it's doing what I bought it to do, but I can imagine there are a lot of rather frustrated people out there saying "Buy Cheap, Buy Twice".
The truth is, if you understand your requirements of an Android Tablet and this can satisfy them (hopefully I've cast some light on that), and can follow some fairly simple instructions you can get a pretty useful device for a cheap price.
Of course, if you can stretch to an iPad or a Galaxy Tab, you'd probably avoid all the complications I went through!
I paid £80 for mine, when Galaxys are £250-300 and iPads another £100 more, so my expectations weren't of comparability, I'm smart enough to know you don't get Ferrari performance for Nissan Micra money, but I had certain requirements for my Android tablet.
I picked the M009S for 3 reasons.
1. It was cheap for an Android 2.2 Tablet.
2. It had a 7" screen, which is a format I like, about the size of a paperback book.
3. I wanted it to read Zinio Publications and Kindle eBooks on, whilst allowing me to check emails, facebook updates and surf the net when the mood took me.
As I said, I only paid £80 for this and my initial impressions weren't bad on receiving it.
It's fairly flimsy and plastic feeling compared to an iPad or a Galaxy and the buttons have a cheap 'click' to them, rather an nicely cushioned feel, but it doesn't look or feel likely to break. Good value, at first sight, for £80.
I powered it up and found another cost-cutting point. The screen requires a solid push on it to react, unlike that on my HTC Desire phone or costlier tablets.
There's none of the swishing through through lists with a gentle brush of the finger, but it works ok.
The screen is a little muted in vividness too and only has 800x480 resolution. Stand alone, it doesn't look bad at all, but it doesn't compare side by side with the HTC Desire's lovely screen.
There are a couple of small speaker on the lower edge (when held in portrait mode), along with a power in socket, audio out socket, a slot for a Micro SD card and a longer slot which is allows fitting of a provided adaptor with two USB ports and an ethernet socket.
At the other end, there's a power on/off button and a "Menu" button and volume control on the right hand edge.
There's a button on the bottom front face, which works as a 'Back' button.
My first big disappointment came when trying to find my favourite Apps (as used on my HTC Desire) on the 'Android Marketplace'.
The included Marketplace was most definitely NOT Google and the vast majority of Apps I wanted were not included. Worse still, most of the Apps on the marketplace were in Chinese, rather less than useful to me...
Worse still, even installing many apps that work fine on my phone manually, they refused to work with the Eken's firmware out of the box.
Most importantly, neither Kindle or Zinio would connect to my accounts, even though I got them installed.
As a basic e-reader/media player/web browser it worked OK, but that's not what I'd bought it for and I was beginning to feel I'd bought a dud and was on the verge of sticking it on eBay for £50.
That I have persevered and have writen this review is testament to the efforts of Roger Calver on the Slatedroid.com forum.
Through searches I found his excellent Vestinious M009s Firmware which provides a whole new OS setup for the M009S.
There are risks in 'Flashing ROM', but I found the Vestinious 1.1.5 ROM worked flawlessly and I was able to restart my tablet with this OS installed in about 15 minutes of downloading it.
This transformed the device.
There's a Google Market (although, oddly, it seems to be missing some of the Apps I can find on the market on my phone, something I'm stumped about at the moment) with nearly all the apps you could want.
I quickly got most of my favourite apps installed, like Astro, Advanced Task Killer, Facebook, Better Keyboard 8, etc and set to work installing Zinio on it.
There is no Marketplace Zinio App yet, but some enterprising soul had pulled it off a Samsung (or other tablet it's bundled with) and posted it online. I'd had it working on phone for some weeks, with a few minor niggles.
It installed easily (even with the original Firmware), but with Vestinious I was able to connect to my Zinio account and download my magazines.
They read fine and a problem that I have on the HTC with the app crashing when switching orientation hasn't appeared on the Eken/Mid.
The 7" screen's a bit tight for reading on with my eyesight, but the neat TEXT option in Zinio lets me read the words in a text only form if the light is poor and I'll live with that for the convenience of the 7" format over the iPad's 10", which I'm sure would be easier to read.
I also put Kindle on, but initially couldn't get it to offer to register the device. I put this down to some problem with having a hard wired ethernet connection (using the adaptor) as once I disconnected that I was able to reinstall Kindle and was immediately offered a login.
Once this was done, the device appeared in "Manage Your Kindle" on the Amazon website and I was able to download all the books I'd got to the M009S.
The reader app works fine here and it even seems to remember where I am in a book between the HTC and the Eken which is rather a neat feature.
So, I now have a usable, valuable, functional Android Tablet for £80 and some time and effort.
I still have some minor issues with it, beyond those I mentioned previously.
At the moment it won't connect to the wi-fi hotspot on my HTC handset as that is an 'Ad-Hoc' network apparently (I believe this isn't too hard to put right) and the battery life is pretty poor (I reckon I get about 3 to 3 and a half hours from a charge reading magazines, considerably less with the wi-fi on) - EDIT : I did later get it work on the wi-fi on my HTC with no issues and it works well with my Mi-Fi from Orange.
I also can't get any barcode scanner software to work so far, but that's not too much of a problem.
If running BBC iPlayer is important to you, I wouldn't recommend this tablet. It runs, but it's like a series of stills rather than a flowing video. Odd, as it has no problem running AVIs at all, which look and sound pretty decent - So, it's pretty good if you want a stand alone media player.
I suspect the problem is the processor's a bit slow as it takes a few moments to switch orientation too.
Also, as you'd probably expect of a device this cheap, there's no GPS sensors, so no apps that uses that will work. More surprisingly, there's no Bluetooth connectivity, so you can't add a keyboard that way, if such is you want.
There's no multi-touch, pinch to zoom capability either, but I've read that there's a green LED version around (mine has a blue LED which illuminates when it's switched on) which does have this capability.
Would I buy another cheap M009S now, knowing what I do?
Absolutely, as it's doing what I bought it to do, but I can imagine there are a lot of rather frustrated people out there saying "Buy Cheap, Buy Twice".
The truth is, if you understand your requirements of an Android Tablet and this can satisfy them (hopefully I've cast some light on that), and can follow some fairly simple instructions you can get a pretty useful device for a cheap price.
Of course, if you can stretch to an iPad or a Galaxy Tab, you'd probably avoid all the complications I went through!
Sunday, 13 February 2011
HTC Desire Smartphone
The company I work for (who shall remain nameless) provide us with Blackberry phones.
They're are pretty good for sending emails as the little keyboards are quite tactile and easy to use with some practice, but the models they give us have small screens and as I get older I'm finding it harder to read the screen than I did. They also are rubbish at sending and receiving images with text in (they compress them to a stupidly small size which is unreadable) and the mapping/GPS system is useless.
So, after waiting in vain for over a year for promised iPhones, I decided I needed a proper Smartphone, with a touch screen, zooming, etc, etc, etc.
Partly I envied my colleagues cool iPhones and partly I was fed up with the last decade functionality of the Blackberry.
So, I started looking. I fairly quickly discounted the iPhone. Firstly I'd heard lots of people complaining about faults with them, secondly I'm not keen on the way Apple tie you into iTunes software and thirdly (most importantly) I couldn't find one for under £35 a month.
Looking at the options, I quickly decided the HTC Desire (rather than the new and bigger HD or the smaller Wildfire) was the phone that fitted my budget and requirements (including portability and a decent sized screen) the best.
I've had my Desire, through Virgin Mobile, for a few months now and it's changed my perceptions of handheld devices quite a lot.
It looks very smart and professional, if not quite so jewellery like as the iPhone, which I rather like.
The screen is big (3.7 inches) and bright and the few buttons easy to use. The navigation, using these buttons and the touchscreen (which seems to work unerringly well) is logical and easy to get to grips with even without detailed instructions. I have printed out the user manual and found a couple of more obscure setup options using it, but it's very flexible and all the basic stuff is very easy to configure.
It was a doddle to get it pick up my work email, calendar and phone calls (although the latter was an option on the Blackberry to forward all my calls to my new number) and my Gmails come through to the Android Gmail app.
I installed a few free apps, including an App Manager and File Manager and was impressed with toys like the Compass, Barcode app (which lets you scan a barcode and then lookup a product online for price comparison or more details), various G-Meters (fun if not especially accurate) and the like.
After a couple of days familiarisation, I installed Amazon's Kindle e-reader software and downloaded a few, free classics. It's surprisingly easy to read books on the HTC Desire's screen, although you get a paragraph, rather than a page, of text at a time. Whilst I wouldn't use it to read books full time, it's quite handy to kill 5 or 10 minutes sometimes reading Dracula or the Legend of King Arthur.
The eBay app is good too, reminding me of when auctions I'm watching are coming to an end, something I'm pretty poor at without reminders!
On the way to a meeting, I opened the invite to the meeting from my calendar to find the address as I came out of Regent's Park Tube. If you're like me, you can find the nearest tube to somewhere easily, but don't know London well enough to know which exit is best or where to go once out on a first visit.
In this case, the tap to see the full address instead showed me the location on a map and a symbol (using the GPS) to show where I was. It was simplicity itself then to follow the map to the meeting (at a brisk 4.6 MPH according to the Speedo app!). An excellent solution that worked superbly.
Some of my iPhone loving colleagues wonder why I have a separate MP3 player (my excellent Cowon iAudio 7 reviewed earlier and still going strong even though it's now out of production, sadly), but I've always found the sound quality of the Cowon so much better than the Blackberry or any iProducts that I've preferred to keep my music on there.
However, I thought I'd try some music on the Desire, just for those odd times I've forgotten the Cowon or it's out of battery (not that it ever has been...).
The sound is not a match for the Cowon, with a thinner sound and no way to adjust the Bass, but it's pretty decent for a phone and listening to a couple of albums wasn't the chore it would've been on my old Palm or even the Blackberry.
The inbuilt 5 MPx camera, too, is pretty decent. In good light it delivers crisp, sharpish photos with decent colour tone, although it suffers a bit in lower light and the flash only works well close in. However, for a spur of the moment, fun night out camera it's pretty acceptable, certainly much better than the Blackberry's 2MPx camera, which took lousy photos even allowing for its lesser resolution, and as good (if not better) than iPhone photos I've seen.
I played the included Teeter app which is a game where you try to guide a ball through a maze without it falling into holes (like those old fashioned wooden games), which was frustratingly addictive. I then downloaded Need for Speed Shift (which I love on the PC) and found it a worthy contender in terms of game play and graphics quality to Gran Turismo on the PSP. Given the difference in price (A factor of 5x more for the PSP game!), it's hard to see why you'd want to spend so much on the PSP...
So, I'm wondering if the HTC Desire is pretty close to the perfect device.
It works as a phone and handles my calendar and emails (from multiple accounts) with aplomb. It's great for surfing the internet (via the web browser or specific apps) whether over 3G or wi-fi connections and can even act as a wi-fi hotspot for my laptop! In fact, I often don't turn on my home PC when I get in and just browse and read e-mails on the Desire connected to my home wifi network.
The camera is perfectly good for those spur of the moment snaps and it plays MP3s well enough for most people. It even acts as a pretty decent handheld games console.
I've only experimented briefly with the video camcorder and not watched any long videos on it yet, but it seems pretty usable in both respects, if not bleeding edge.
Whilst I'm not yet ready to throw away my MP3 player or Digital SLR, it's hard to see why many people would bother buying separate devices when a smartphone like the HTC Desire can do so many things so well.
So, is there any negative about the Desire? Well, typing is a bit of a pain with no tactile feedback and a small 'keyboard' especially in portrait mode. The battery life can be quite limited too if you use a lot of the features, in my first few days I had to charge it every day, but that's down to every other now.
Other than those issues, though, the HTC Desire seems a great smart phone which does pretty much everything you would want a mobile device to do!
They're are pretty good for sending emails as the little keyboards are quite tactile and easy to use with some practice, but the models they give us have small screens and as I get older I'm finding it harder to read the screen than I did. They also are rubbish at sending and receiving images with text in (they compress them to a stupidly small size which is unreadable) and the mapping/GPS system is useless.
So, after waiting in vain for over a year for promised iPhones, I decided I needed a proper Smartphone, with a touch screen, zooming, etc, etc, etc.
Partly I envied my colleagues cool iPhones and partly I was fed up with the last decade functionality of the Blackberry.
So, I started looking. I fairly quickly discounted the iPhone. Firstly I'd heard lots of people complaining about faults with them, secondly I'm not keen on the way Apple tie you into iTunes software and thirdly (most importantly) I couldn't find one for under £35 a month.
Looking at the options, I quickly decided the HTC Desire (rather than the new and bigger HD or the smaller Wildfire) was the phone that fitted my budget and requirements (including portability and a decent sized screen) the best.
I've had my Desire, through Virgin Mobile, for a few months now and it's changed my perceptions of handheld devices quite a lot.
It looks very smart and professional, if not quite so jewellery like as the iPhone, which I rather like.
The screen is big (3.7 inches) and bright and the few buttons easy to use. The navigation, using these buttons and the touchscreen (which seems to work unerringly well) is logical and easy to get to grips with even without detailed instructions. I have printed out the user manual and found a couple of more obscure setup options using it, but it's very flexible and all the basic stuff is very easy to configure.
It was a doddle to get it pick up my work email, calendar and phone calls (although the latter was an option on the Blackberry to forward all my calls to my new number) and my Gmails come through to the Android Gmail app.
I installed a few free apps, including an App Manager and File Manager and was impressed with toys like the Compass, Barcode app (which lets you scan a barcode and then lookup a product online for price comparison or more details), various G-Meters (fun if not especially accurate) and the like.
After a couple of days familiarisation, I installed Amazon's Kindle e-reader software and downloaded a few, free classics. It's surprisingly easy to read books on the HTC Desire's screen, although you get a paragraph, rather than a page, of text at a time. Whilst I wouldn't use it to read books full time, it's quite handy to kill 5 or 10 minutes sometimes reading Dracula or the Legend of King Arthur.
The eBay app is good too, reminding me of when auctions I'm watching are coming to an end, something I'm pretty poor at without reminders!
On the way to a meeting, I opened the invite to the meeting from my calendar to find the address as I came out of Regent's Park Tube. If you're like me, you can find the nearest tube to somewhere easily, but don't know London well enough to know which exit is best or where to go once out on a first visit.
In this case, the tap to see the full address instead showed me the location on a map and a symbol (using the GPS) to show where I was. It was simplicity itself then to follow the map to the meeting (at a brisk 4.6 MPH according to the Speedo app!). An excellent solution that worked superbly.
Some of my iPhone loving colleagues wonder why I have a separate MP3 player (my excellent Cowon iAudio 7 reviewed earlier and still going strong even though it's now out of production, sadly), but I've always found the sound quality of the Cowon so much better than the Blackberry or any iProducts that I've preferred to keep my music on there.
However, I thought I'd try some music on the Desire, just for those odd times I've forgotten the Cowon or it's out of battery (not that it ever has been...).
The sound is not a match for the Cowon, with a thinner sound and no way to adjust the Bass, but it's pretty decent for a phone and listening to a couple of albums wasn't the chore it would've been on my old Palm or even the Blackberry.
The inbuilt 5 MPx camera, too, is pretty decent. In good light it delivers crisp, sharpish photos with decent colour tone, although it suffers a bit in lower light and the flash only works well close in. However, for a spur of the moment, fun night out camera it's pretty acceptable, certainly much better than the Blackberry's 2MPx camera, which took lousy photos even allowing for its lesser resolution, and as good (if not better) than iPhone photos I've seen.
I played the included Teeter app which is a game where you try to guide a ball through a maze without it falling into holes (like those old fashioned wooden games), which was frustratingly addictive. I then downloaded Need for Speed Shift (which I love on the PC) and found it a worthy contender in terms of game play and graphics quality to Gran Turismo on the PSP. Given the difference in price (A factor of 5x more for the PSP game!), it's hard to see why you'd want to spend so much on the PSP...
So, I'm wondering if the HTC Desire is pretty close to the perfect device.
It works as a phone and handles my calendar and emails (from multiple accounts) with aplomb. It's great for surfing the internet (via the web browser or specific apps) whether over 3G or wi-fi connections and can even act as a wi-fi hotspot for my laptop! In fact, I often don't turn on my home PC when I get in and just browse and read e-mails on the Desire connected to my home wifi network.
The camera is perfectly good for those spur of the moment snaps and it plays MP3s well enough for most people. It even acts as a pretty decent handheld games console.
I've only experimented briefly with the video camcorder and not watched any long videos on it yet, but it seems pretty usable in both respects, if not bleeding edge.
Whilst I'm not yet ready to throw away my MP3 player or Digital SLR, it's hard to see why many people would bother buying separate devices when a smartphone like the HTC Desire can do so many things so well.
So, is there any negative about the Desire? Well, typing is a bit of a pain with no tactile feedback and a small 'keyboard' especially in portrait mode. The battery life can be quite limited too if you use a lot of the features, in my first few days I had to charge it every day, but that's down to every other now.
Other than those issues, though, the HTC Desire seems a great smart phone which does pretty much everything you would want a mobile device to do!
Monday, 18 October 2010
More e-Reader
Interesting ad for Kindle - Buy a book one and read everywhere...
Yeah, everywhere you have an electronic device of some sort to read it on...
This is exactly what you can do with a REAL book, but it doesn't require batteries or mains power or software installed...
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Panasonic Viera update
Just before Christmas 2009, I bought a Panasonic Viera Plasma 37" TV.
I was very pleased with it, but said that I would have to reserve ultimate judgement as I didn't have access to HD signals.
Well, that changed a few months ago when I got Virgin Media to upgrade me to HD with a V+ box.
The V+ box is much better than the standard Virgin cable set-top unit, pretty much a match for Sky's box of tricks but with the added bonus of a third tuner that lets you watch a channel and record two others - You'd be surprised how often that happens in our household.
The Viera has proved to be a great match for the V+ service. Although it's only an 720 format TV, nothing is broadcast in anything higher and the clarity of picture in the HD form is nothing short of stunning with all the virtues that made it such a good choice initially.
If was buying today, I'd be buying exactly the same TV.
I was very pleased with it, but said that I would have to reserve ultimate judgement as I didn't have access to HD signals.
Well, that changed a few months ago when I got Virgin Media to upgrade me to HD with a V+ box.
The V+ box is much better than the standard Virgin cable set-top unit, pretty much a match for Sky's box of tricks but with the added bonus of a third tuner that lets you watch a channel and record two others - You'd be surprised how often that happens in our household.
The Viera has proved to be a great match for the V+ service. Although it's only an 720 format TV, nothing is broadcast in anything higher and the clarity of picture in the HD form is nothing short of stunning with all the virtues that made it such a good choice initially.
If was buying today, I'd be buying exactly the same TV.
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Brothers in Arms : Hell's Highway
I'd played a couple of earlier BIA games (Road to Hill 30 and D-Day on the PSP) and enjoyed them.
Whilst Hell's Highway is essentially a WW2 FPS, you have the added feature of additional squads (Variably between levels Base of Fire, Assault and MG Teams) which you can direct to engage or suppress enemy forces.
It's not as 'up close and personal' on the whole as most FPS games although there are a few sections where you act alone to clear a building or rescue a comrade, but there are more tactics involved than games like Medal of Honour or Call of Duty.
You soon learn how to suppress enemy forces (a red circle shows above unsuppressed enemy units and gradually clock style segments go grey as the unit is suppressed) either yourself to allow your assault team to attack or using an MG team to allow you to flank suppressed enemy.
You will need to do this as one of the beauties of the game is that you just cannot run at the enemy and kill them. A few hits on you and you're dead, so another element (use of cover) is essential. You need to bob in and out of cover, hitting or suppressing enemy and directing your units to do the same, which is a refreshingly different gameplay experience to the usual WW2 FPS games.
The graphics are OK without being astonishing by the latest standards, but there are few areas that I didn't enjoy that much.
Firstly, there are agonisingly long cut-scenes featuring an ongoing story about the death of some comrades in one of the D-Day based episodes of the game. These are presumably to add a depth to the game, but after a while I found them rather tiresome personally.
Secondly, there are a number of levels where you guide a tank. These are, on normal at least, far too easy and lack the team interaction element that makes the rest of the game unusual.
To me, these sections were an unwelcome (if thankfully short) distraction, much like the aircraft sections seen in some Medal of Honour and Call of Duty games.
As with Road to Hill 30 and Earned in Blood, you fight as a member of the 101st US Airborne, this time along the road towards Arnhem, fighting through various Dutch towns in an attempt to reach the British paratroops holding the final bridge across the Rhine.
Most people with any interest in WW2 FPS will probably know how the game will end, but it does afford the opportunity feature some different landscapes (rather flat) and architecture including windmills although they're not put to particularly imaginative use in terms of gameplay.
The game starts with you in an abandoned hospital, avoiding (and engaging) Germans with one team mate (over whom you have no control) and then flashes back 4 days.
The next stage sees you searching for a glider crash site and getting to complete some fairly simple exercises with lots of guidance from the game, which acts as a training level effectively.
After that, the levels are somewhat samey, with 3 options. Engage the enemy - usually in a village or town - as a team, clear a building on your own or knock out the enemy with a tank.
The whole game is rather short. I finished it inside a week of irregular play.
Overall, the Brothers In Arms games are a refreshing alternative to the usual FPS games in terms of game play (like a more involved and flexible Rainbow Six : Vegas in the use of additional squad members), but are a bit of an acquired taste.
I suppose a good measure of the enjoyment I got from the game was that as it finished with the words "To be continued..." on the screen (and a hint to the next instalment being snow bound, presumably Bastogne/Battle of the Bulge based) I was on Google looking to see if there was any news of the next instalment being released.
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