Posts by James Foreman 23 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2007
Previously I would have seen this as a big problem - but the BB Gmail app has been feeling more and more geriatric of late. No priority inbox, no way to move mails to folders, no functionality beyond being able to read emails, basically.
Gmail used to be horrible on the blackberry browser, but I tried it today and it's now pretty usable. The downside is that you don't get a notification light flashing when you get new mails like you do with the app, but that's not a major problem for me. I can see that it would be for some people (I only use Gmail for personal emails that don't need to be answered promptly, rather than anything critical to getting things done in the day).
I will be sad if RIM does get killed off - I can touch type on a Bold keyboard, don't think I'd be able to manage that on a touchscreen phone like everyone is meant to love these days...
Bright clown colours are a good thing, for at least some customers. My wife only buys shocking pink phones now, because they show up better in a dark environment and so they're harder to accidentally leave in the back of taxis than black oblongs.
Come to think of it, maybe if all the Civil Service laptops/phones/USB sticks were in full-on clown colours, they wouldn't get lost so easily either...
I tend to be in agreement with the arguments Charles Stross puts forward; but perhaps I'm biassed because I like his writing. Where e-books are more interesting for me is when I feel I'm being gouged by my local booksellers - in Hong Kong, a paperback that would cost 7 or 8 quid will retail for 2-3 times that amount.
Now, you might wonder whether you're being stuffed in the UK with higher prices, but it's not so clear then: you can't get a cheaper version of the same book posted to you from the other side of the world and *still* have it cheaper than going into your local bookstore. If an e-book costs as much as a hardback, then *maybe* you're being ripped off, but *maybe* that's the tax you pay for wanting to be one of the first people to read it. What's the pricing like on the books that have been out for a year?
(Then again, I'd pay more for an e-book version of Anathem, because I think it would be more comfortable than having to carry around several pounds of dead tree. But that's longwinded authors for you...)
Well, I suppose the desktop wallpaper is purple by default...
It doesn't look that Mac-like - look at Gwibber for a start - all the buttons look cartoonish. Banshee is much the same. It certainly doesn't feel like they've provided a nice, clean look and feel to all the applications (and I'm running a vanilla install of UNR 10.04, so it's not like I'm complaining that I've downloaded a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn't look the same).
On the positive side, it doesn't seem to die when I turn my netbook's webcam on (unlike 9.10) and the boot screens look a lot less cartoony than 9.04 did. Feels a bit snappier than 9.10 too; launching applications always felt slow on 9.10, even though they ran fine once they were up.
That's well and good, and it's nice not to have every article on the Register saying that Apple Has Done It Wrong, but do you think the audience this is aimed at are going to be so happy with a (claimed) 10 hour battery life? Somehow I don't think the beautiful industrial design will look quite so great when you have to hang a power brick off it...
The plant will be ended? Is that anything like being closed?
I've never suffered the denizens of the warranty department at Dell, so perhaps others can make acerbic comments about educating North Carolinans in schools to repair Dells, but I suppose this is just one example of a larger trend in the US; I was reading the other day of Toyota designing entire curricula for local high schools based on kaizen...
Sounds to me like a few bitter, disagreeable people are envious of somebody who has the misfortune to be attractive, blonde, female and Oxbridge educated. And independently wealthy as a result of heading up an internet start-up. A silver-spooned, speech impaired nobody? Whenever I spoke with Martha, she's been quite comprehensible. And a bucket shop that has never made any money? Well, that's an accusation that's hard to evaluate, given that Travelocity bought lastminute.com for a value more than zero, isn't it?
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see that not being able to save the preview image is that big a deal. You're still going to be able to mess around with exposure settings when you've got the RAW file in Lightroom / Aperture / whatever - and is the LCD going to be the best way to review a shot?
You can on Cathay - as soon as the wheels are on the ground here in Hong Kong, the announcement goes up that you can use your phone - you just can't get up and stampede the aisles in a bid to beat the queue for the exit. And as far as I remember, that's true in at least some parts of the US (people were happily using their phones as we taxied toward the terminal at Seattle last month).
Sarah,
I hardly feel you can take the moral high ground over the anonymous coward there. Do you have a transcript of what this woman is saying? Are you clear that it's "just" a tantrum and she isn't highly disturbed, whether emotionally or mentally? Looking at the comments on Youtube there's a whole series of mocking and racist comments, and what I've read here seems little better. Oh, but it's The Register, and so effortlessly superior to the blogosphere echo chamber, so you're all right, right?
Having had it for just over a week, not so impressed. The finish really does show off every single mucky fingerprint, the D pad is a real pain to adjust to after the perfectly good joystick on previous Sony Ericssons, but worst of all, those soft keys - just don't give the right kind of tactile feedback. Possibly they're cheaper, or they fit into the design aesthetic that they're looking for, but I really miss the positive feel of my old T610 - it's somehow much more difficult to lock the keypad, amongst other common actions.
Nice battery door though.
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