Touch Me, Feel Me

The advent of the iPhone has generated more blog postings and technology column inches than any other single item of technology in recent memory.

Having been in the fortunate position to have a "play" with an iPhone from the lucky few who not only managed to get hold of an iPhone in Dubai but more importantly who were willing to spend hours trawling the web to be able to unlock it to work - I salute you.

It is an excellent device. The problem I have with all phones like this - is that you need two hands to be able to use it. This is an issue in daily use when you want to make a quick call or check that sms that has just come in. Also I know I shouldn't really say this - but how can you make a quick call with two hands if you are driving and your forgot your hands free kit?

To this end - while I will inevitably end up with an iPhone - I really want an authorised product that I can update with all the new features apple will undoubtedly release as firmware/software updates. I put the purchase on ice for now.

I have been in the market for some form of mobile media player - my current video iPod while capacious at 60gb and while it is great for Podcasts, music and audiobooks what it really is not good at is video. The tiny screen, while clear, is just to small to watch anything on for any reasonable length of time - all it ever gave me was a headache. Which is a shame as watching your own selected TV/Movies is a great way to while away the time on a flight.

The PVR market is awash with offerings now - Archos has a wide variety of models as does Creative. Also a host of Far Eastern manufacturers have some very nice offerings. But the choice was easy for me, iPod Touch:




While it might not have the largest capacity, biggest screen or most features. It has a desirability, usability and all round coolness that makes you want to pick it up - play with it. Then play with it some more.

The 3.5" screen is crisp and clear and bug enough not to turn my brain to mush should I choose to watch an episode of heroes on it. The mutli-touch interface that it shares with the iPhone is a work of genius - and like the click wheel innovation on the first iPod - will go down as a miracle of 20th Century interface engineering. Though Apple should really include a handy cloth to keep the finger prints off.

The moment of joy when one of your friends discovers how to zoom out a photo with the "pinching" method is pure gold. The effortless browsing of albums with "cover flow" as you flick it with your finger to select your mp3 of choice. The fully functional, fully zoomable web browser. The instant re-orientation of the screen depending on how your hold it. Built in wireless. The youtube.com application. All go to make this the coolest, most funky media device on the planet today.

Others have tried and give you more functions. But none will grab you the way this does. Beneath its child like simplicity of operation is a sophisticated touch controlled media platform. Without doubt the add on applications coming to it will add to its usability - but for now I just want to play. The prices in the UAE are a little dear - 1399AED for 8GB and 1799AED for 16GB. I am glad I got mine from the US - the 16GB model costs $399.

10/10 - The ultimate iPod/mobile video player/mobile web browser. You touch it. You will want it.

Small Object Of Desire

Go into any Carrefour or Geant in Dubai and the gleaming glass cubicles displaying the latest Sony Ericsson/Nokia/Motorola/Samsung mobile phone delights are often crowded two or three people deep.

Last week I found myself at one of them in a desperate effort to buy a new phone....."what another new mobile phone?" well yes. Let me explain. A little while ago I blogged at length about the goodness of the W950i with the me and the phone even making an appearance in Stuff. However some months of let me update my review with the "long term" test comments:

Original comments in italics.
Pros:
No joystick - but you have to use a stylus which I kept losing and 95AED for three is crazy.
Lightweight and slim in size - agreed
Walkman branded and 4gb storage means it is a great mp3 player - not really the Sony software has a horrible user interface - it is just not iTunes
Much better for messaging email/SMS - The biggest flaw with this phone is that it is just so slow, using the SMS and email applications is like treacle. All sticky and gloopy.
Stereo bluetooth headphones are a great boon with awesome sound quality - they are great though you can not use them when the phone is in "flight mode" so you still need either wired headphones or your iPod on flights. The bluetooth headset is fantastic for conference calls.
Usable PDA functions - if you like it s l o o o w
A wealth of third party applications available - I want to get World Clock and a MSN instant messenger program - I never used them
Reasonable battery life - with a little use of the GPRS for email the battery was soon gone and it would only last a day on average.

Cons:
No camera - I really missed it
Need to get use to the touch keyboard - very hard press the keys with great accuracy
Need a new SIM card to take advantage of 3G - too hard to get from Etisalat with a company SIM card
Loading applications other than the "Walkman" is not snappy - very true and was the final nail in the coffin
Need to find a case to protect the large screen - I never did and it has now seen better days

In summary after using this for a good few months - it turns out that the battery life is poor, the phone is slow (application launching, email, contact search), I kept losing the stylus and once you get used to having a camera on a phone it is hard to go without again.

New overall rating for the W950i - 6/10. Could use a faster internal processor, built in camera and a decent keyboard.

Having decided that W950i was now resigned to the phone graveyard I was still convinced that I wanted a Sony Ericsson. The user interface for me is very natural. The choice was straightforward - the svelte and slim Sony Ercisson W880i. After forcing my way through to the to the front of the busy display counters the I left empty handed as it was hard to get one with an English only keyboard. This led to a two hour hunt around Ibn Battuta and eventually I located one in my desired silver finish. Here is a short review of the phone:

W880i

Pros
A true object of desire
Slim and Light
Great Battery life
No Joystick
Excellent crisp/bright screen
Snappy in use
Raised keys makes SMS'ing easy
Email application is quick
Camera does well for 2mp
Track ID - a small music recognition application works brilliantly

Cons
No flash for camera



Overall an excellent phone - I am giving this 10/10 until I get an iPhone...

Marina By Night

With the purchase of my small Canon Ixus 850 it has more or less relegated my rather nifty Sony DSC-R1 to dust gathering duty, particularly on some of the 4x4/camping trips I have been on recently. It is just so convenient to have close at hand due to its size.

After a lot of looking at the photos on Picasa - I felt that there was something "missing" from these photos. On first impressions they looked good - however on real inspection they were somewhat disappointing. So the other evening in an effort to avoid upgrading immediately to some form of Digital SLR I dusted off the Sony R1 and took a few night shots of the Marina. For me the results were startlingly. Here is my favorite and currently my windows desktop:



This and a couple of other photos I took can be found here at their full resolution. In comparison with the same picture taken with the compact canon (it is here )- the difference is basically night and day. The megapixel count is not too far apart (10.1 vs 7.1) - but you just can not beat great glass.

(Prediction - I will be writing something similar about a Digital SLR vs a fixed lens digital camera in the not too distant future)

Offers Me Protection

In a storage sales environments, often the leading question is what are the two most important elements in your company?

Typically the top two answers are 1. Our People 2. Our Data - not always in that order though. For me if I look at the data stored on my PC the single most important collection of files for I own is my photo library. Shortly behind that are my email archives, my personal documents and even my collection of bookmarks (while not critical it is always a pain if you lose them)

For relatively small amounts of data (less than 650mb) - then a combination of burning CDs and using an online storage services such xdrive or idrive will suffice.

However the challenge I was facing with 18.5GB of photos and 9500 files is that on a 512kb upload speed it will take days to upload that much data and equally as long to retrieve it. In fact Jonathan Schwartz illustrates this point very well in a recent blog posting.

I have tried to do this online backup in any event by opening up a pro account with flickr.com. This promises unlimited online photo storage but in reality limits you by allowing you to upload only 2gb a month. Sadly the other problem with flickr.com is that currently Etisalat has this excellent photo sharing site blocked in the UAE. So not the best solution at the moment.

With my move to Dubai I have seen my photo folder nearly doubled in size in the last ten months caused by
1. lots of things to photo
2. images at either seven or ten megapixels

The use of a single 4.5GB DVD is simply not enough and copying to multiple DVDs is a tedious process with fresh photos being added regularly. The other option is to copy them to an external hard drive however hard drives sadly fail on occasion and I have had suffered this a couple of times. Also I have yet to find an easy to use backup program to replicate folders without in depth knowledge of the ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) process.

That was until I recently read about Foldershare.com. This essentially allows you to replicate folders between PCs. It relies on a small application download and a little configuration on a website which is nicely described on lifehacker.com here.

The underlying technology is encrypted P2P which gives me the added benefit of being able to access my files anywhere via this site. I applaud Microsoft for making this application free to use following their acquisition of ByteTaxi a few years ago.

Now with the use of this I am replicating both my photo and document directories between my two home PCs, my work laptop and even my iPod. A little extreme but it is nice to have local access to my photos on all my devices. Sure I should make regular DVD copies, but with such a high level of replication and zero manual intervention I am much happier than just a few weeks ago. Like most people, I imagine, previously I had no cohesive backup strategy for my most precious digital memories.

To quote David Pogue from the New York Times - "There are only two kind of people - those who back up their computers and those who will"

Facelift

I have finally migrated to one of the new Blogger templates last night. This gives me the distinct advantage of now being able to use their "layout" facility. This means that I can make some changes to my Blog template without being a HTML/Javascript guru - hence you can see a Blog Roll listing and My Media lists in the side bar now.

As an aside from this, the template refresh finally gives me permalinks for each post, has generally tidied up the appearance of the Blog and made it easier to navigate.

Good job Blogger/Google - now please give me a better editor then I will be really happy.

I Like to Fold It, Fold It

I have been involved in distributed or GRID computing for sometime now and was actually involved (in a small way) in the GRIDs currently running at the University of Nottingham and also at the University of Sheffield.

A long time ago I tried SETI but looking for ET seemed a little empty for me so I then tried United Devices which was for more worthwhile causes however at the time I found the client would use up all my system resources then refuse to give them back. A little frustrating. With that I left it until the recent release of firmware update 1.6 for the PS3 brought with it a Folding@Home client.

What is that I hear you ask?

Answer: Folding@home is a distributed computing project designed to perform computationally intensive simulations of protein folding. The project’s goal is to add greater understanding to protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. Such diseases include BSE (mad cow), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, among others.

Folding@home does not rely on powerful supercomputers for its processing; instead, the primary contributors to the Folding@home project are many thousands of personal computer users who have installed a small client program. The client runs in the background, and makes use of the CPU when it is not busy. In most modern personal computers, the CPU is rarely used to its full capacity at all times; the Folding@home client takes advantage of this unused processing power.

The Folding@home client periodically connects to a server to retrieve “work units.” These are packets of data upon which to perform calculations. Each completed work unit is then sent back to the server. (text taken courtesy of the overclockers distributed computing forum)

Below is an illustration of the graphical display (hardcore users do not use this and go for console/text installs):




To get folding on the PS3 was just a short download and very easy setup and it is now folding full time - which is great seeing as it all it did before was mostly gather dust under my TV.

Gripped by the fever of success I then installed the client on my 2 desktop PCs and my work laptop. With all this dual core processing power at my disposal, the fact that the Windows OS can barely take advantage of one of these cores and seeing that my DEWA bill is a paltry 100AED a month I figured that this is a worthwhile cause - and of course the folding clients are now well behaved.

I am folding for Team ID: 10 which is a British based team who have been folding for a number of years and are ranked the 33rd folding team in the world and have nearly 900 members. I am amazed at the top contributors who must have their whole corporate desktops folding for them!

I would encourage you to participate as the average desktop PC runs at less than 5% utilisation so we can all spare the compute cycles and when I looked at the global map of IP contributors there only appears to be one for the UAE. Now this maybe because Etisalat only presents that one IP address to the rest of the world for the UAE - but nonetheless lets get the UAE on the folding map! (this plea is to the 40% of visitors to my humble blog who reside in the UAE)

Happy folding.

Fab-u-lous

The amount of resources and technological achievement that goes into making a microprocessor is often taken for granted. As I write this blog the AMD processor at the heart of my PC is performing hundreds of thousands of calculations a second that allow me to instant message, blog, email and listen to a mp3. It was with some excitement that I took a trip to the place where this is all comes alive and that is the AMDs Fabrication plant that is located in Dresden, Germany.

The site is huge with hundreds of of square meters of "clean room", its own water supply and two on site power stations. If both power stations were to fail they are able to use the local grid - I can imagine most of the lights in Dresden dimming if this were to happen. As fabrication plants are high security establishments I was unable to bring my camera. Below is an aerial shot to give you an idea of the scale of the facility:




We enjoyed a tour of the facility, and even glimpsed the "Clean Room". The levels of quality assurance, design and pride in which the employees here take in their work is remarkable. We were shown atomic level pictures as we were lectured in depth about "sub-atomic" gates and the nano technology. The work that goes into producing a modern day microprocessor is staggering.

Once the tour was over we got a chance to take a walking tour around Dresden. A lot of Brits like myself wonder what there is left of Dresden following the amount of bombing it received during World War II - the answer was baroque architecture and history to rival anything in Western Europe. Despite being exposed to a bitterly cold wind for two hours it was worth it while to see Dresden by night. It was hard to hold the camera still in the cold but all my pictures are here. As an example here is the Hofkirche or Church of the Royal Court:



Following the tour we went for dinner at a traditional restaurant which proved to be a very entertaining evening. Here is the team photo:




There was a nice band playing some background music. Later on in the evening the vocalist from the group got upstaged when my colleague Nthabeleng displayed her remarkable singing talents with soul-inspiring renditions of "Killing Me Softly", "You Make Feel (Like A Natural Woman)" and "Some people want it all". Here is Nthabeleng in full flow:



Looking back on the event - the tour, the key note by Brian Wilson, the tour of Dresden and fun and song filled evening we had with our customers and partners - I came away remembering why I joined Sun Microsystems over six years ago. We always wanted to be different.

Into the World of Blu

Since acquiring both of the competing next gen high definition video format players (Blu-Ray on PS3 and HD-DVD on xbox 360) I have been wanting to experience just how good these formats are.

HD-DVD was easy as the xbox drive ships with King Kong - and while the movie is not my favourite the picture and sound are excellent. Sadly the PS3 ships with not even a demo disc - so Blu Ray quality had eluded me until this weekend.

While browsing the new release DVDs in Virgin Megastore (Mall of the Emirates) I noticed they have a small selection of Blu-Ray movies. In a rush of excitement I grabbed a couple of discs - making sure not to buy something I all ready owned - and took them home to audition the competing format.

The first Blu-Ray disc I played was fittingly titled Into the Blue. As expected the picture quality was eye popping though I may have been swayed by the numerous scenes featuring a swim suit clad Jessica Alba, the sound quality was also equally as impressive.

Huge debates rage on message forums across the web as to which is better on any number of factors. Sonically it is hard for me to choose between them so my criteria is as follows -

1. Whichever is cheaper for the movie I want
2. Whichever the format the movie is on
3. If both of these are the same - then Blu-Ray wins as I prefer the PS3 user interface

I will watch with interest the format war - but if given a choice I am going to be buying Hi-Def DVDs of one sort or another whenever possible.

Stuff ME

If you have been reading my blog you will have noticed that I could easily be descried in the "early adopter" or "gadget man" categories. I enjoy reading various blogs and magazines about what is happening in the world of technology.

So it was with great pleasure when I recently asked to make a small contribution to Stuff Magazine Middle East in a regular "Joe Gadget" column featuring a regular guy (me this month) to talk a little about their favourite piece of technology - I chose my Sony Ericsson w950i. I want to thank Paddy (the Editor) for putting me in print and kindly agreeing to let me reproduce the article here - and at only 10AED an issue it sure beats paying the 40AED for the UK or US editions.

A fellow blogger and friend of mine Chris made it into the inaugural issue - below is my appearance in issue 4 - currently available at news stands and all good book stores.

To Wii or PS3

Just prior to Christmas Nintendo with their Wii and the Sony PS3 went head to head for the "hot" new console of the year. The battle was over really before it had begun with the latest figures showing Nintendo outselling Sony 3:1 - which shows that playability and a low price seemed to have more appeal than graphical eye candy and Blu-Ray movies.

Dubai being a consumer playground both consoles were available the day after the release. Some stores were charging as much as 6000AED for a 60GB PS3 - similar to the launch of the Xbox 360. Post the festive season the PS3 in Dubai can now be picked up for almost half that - making it close to the UK launch price. The same is not true for the Nintendo Wii while only $249 in the US it is still consistently 2500AED everywhere I have looked. So going against the market I brought a PS3 and will import a Wii from the UK for more sensible money.

The PS3 has received a lot of criticism since its launch for being too expensive, too heavy, needs firmware patching out of the box and a poor selection of launch titles.

However I look at the PS3 as providing -

1. A quiet Blu-Ray player - the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 just makes too much noise (great picture though)
2. A simply stunning photo album style slide show - putting to shame anything even Apple has delivered
3. 1080i/720p - is excellent for gaming on large screen displays
4. Resistance: Fall of man - is a great game and will be a classic - I prefer it over Gears of War the stand out title for the Xbox 360 right now
5. Breathes new life into my old PS2 collection

I also can not wait for the first lot of triple A titles - Tekken 6 and Heavenly Sword in particular. In the mean time anyone know where I can buy Blu-Ray movies in Dubai?

Blog Upgrades

Earlier today I took the opportunity to migrate this Blog from the regular www.blogger.com application to the new Google Beta Blog application. While this keep the blog looking more or less the same the new version has some really nice features which improve maintenance of the site:

1. Labels - finally I can categorize my posts and I have now labelled all of them
2. Instant publishing - once I have made a post I no longer have to wait for the whole blog to be re-published. Only the latest update is published
3. Template editing - a whole new drag and drop interface for this

A worthwhile upgrade and probably now approaching a Web 2.0 application.

Postcard from Marina

As I replaced my camera phone with a smart phone without a camera I thought I would get a point and shoot ultra compact.

The first digital camera I ever brought about seven years ago was the original Canon Ixus. Looking back at the specs it was 2.1MP, 2xOptical Zoom and had enough battery life to take about 40 pictures. It was excellent for its time and it continues to take a nice photo and has nearly bullet proof construction.

Its modern counterpart the Canon Ixus w850 offers 7.1MP, 3.8x zoom, wide-angle lens, image stabilisation and even movies up to 4gb in size. There is a very comprehensive review here. I thought I would try it out with some rather testing situations.

Dubai Marina at dusk :




and a couple of shots in the evening - which really tests these small cameras:



Could probably use a tripod here to reduce judder on the long exposure at night:




I am suitably impressed. The key thing that this little Canon has over the phone camera and the old Sony T7 ultra compact I had is that it has really good performance in low light conditions.

Overall - small, light, great photos - 9/10 (the battery door is a little flimsy)

World in mp3motion

A little while ago I got the K800i Sony Ericsson phone. It has been a real pleasure to use. The screen was nice and clear, a 3 mega pixel camera has taken some nice photos (a lot of them posted on this blog) and I could even remotely blog using it.

However the other day the curse of the stuck joystick started to become evident. This problem has continued to plague me with previous Sony Ericsson phones I have used. Now while I can go and and get it fixed under warranty it is more than likely it will occur again.

So as "stuck joystick" syndrome as an excuse I got myself the newly released (at least in Dubai) Sony Ericsson w950i.

This phone uses the latest UIQ 3.0/Symbian interface and is very similar to the M600i I considered when I chose the K800i. The main difference with the W950i is that it contains an internal 4Gb of storage. This is enough to make it a very functional mp3 player which is enough space for a healthy choice of albums, audio books and podcasts.

There is a nice review of the phone here but from my standpoint after a couple of days use:

Pros:
No joystick
Lightweight and slim in size
Walkman branded and 4gb storage means it is a great mp3 player
Much better for messaging email/SMS
Stereo bluetooth headphones are a great boon with awesome sound quality
Usable PDA functions
A wealth of third party applications available - I want to get World Clock and a MSN instant messenger program
Reasonable battery life

Cons:
No camera
Need to get use to the touch keyboard
Need a new SIM card to take advantage of 3G
Loading applications other than the "Walkman" is not snappy
Need to find a case to protect the large screen

Overall - still getting use to it - but the flexibility of this smart phone is really great. Probably time to ditch the iPod
9/10

Shiny and New

Prior to coming to Dubai I was quite a hardcore PC gamer - but with the hectic build up to moving and the subsequent hassles of setting up in a new country has left little time for games - PC or otherwise. The bug has bitten me again as I settle in and I wanted to have a dabble at a few of the newer titles and having brought and played them I was not overly impressed that my "state of the art" system seemed to a little bit of a laggard in its performance.

Marketing people would classify me in the "early adopter" category. Often on the bleeding edge of technology. In search of said technology I went shopping in Dubai for the latest in graphics card technology.

I was not really surprised when my first options in Mall of the Emirates and IBN Buttuta yielded only a small and expensive collection of older cards which did not fit the bill. A quick trip back to the apartment and 20 minutes on google gave me the answer - Computer Plaza in Bur Dubai.

Problem 1 - how in the name of all that is technical do I get there? Without Sat Nav I am a little out of my depth so I decided on the fallback plan of looking at the Dubai Street Explorer. The journey while a little longer than expected and with only two additional u-turns I found myself parked outside the neon of Computer Plaza.

I have been to a couple of places like this in Hong Kong and KL - the difference in Dubai is that there are not loads of people pressing pirated DVDs and software onto you. Computer Plaza consists of twenty(?) or so small independent PC resellers. Needless to say I was delighted and spent a little while window shopping until I found a chap with the largest selection of graphics cards. The conversation went like this:

Aaron "I would like an ATI X1900XTX please - do you have one how much is it?"
Clerk "X1900XT - yes sir - I can get"
Aaron "no an X1900XTX"
Clerk "Certainly Sir - I get for you now"
Pause - while a conversation on a phone happens in an unknown dialect
Clerk "Please have a seat - we get now"

Wait for five minutes - not a problem as the shop is like an Aladdin's cave full of cheap chinese PC peripherals. Sure enough the young lad sent to fetch the card came back with one reading "X1900XT"

Aaron "This is not correct. I am looking for the X1900XTX"
Clerk "Certainly Sir - I get for you now"
Pause - while another conversation on a phone happens in an unknown dialect
Clerk "Please have a seat - we get now"

Sure enough and after another five minute wait - the young lad returns with the card proudly proclaiming to be the "X1900XTX"

I was rather pleased to see this and after a brief bit of haggling I walked out the shop having paid slightly less than the best UK Internet "pre-VAT" price I could find. It is now safely installed in my PC and working like a charm.

My lesson for the day was - in Dubai if you perseverve just a little you can ultimately be rewarded with just what you want....driving home however was a little different - the highlight of which was some guy tailgating an ambulance though heavy traffic so he could get to where he was going just a little bit quicker.

High Def

On leaving the UK I donated my vertiable Panasonic TH-42PW6 to my mom - I made some feeble excuse that "it would never survive the shipping" or some such nonsense. If the truth be told I had been hankering after a real HD plasma and the move to Dubai seemed like a perfect excuse.

In between running around Dubai sorting out the red tape - it is hard not notice the many electrical stores selling large screen plasma and LCD displays. It seems also that Samsung, LG and the occasional Sony seem to have the majority of the retailers display space. Not much in the way of Philips, Panasonic or Pioneer to be seen - they are there just not as the common as the afore mentioned brands.

Even with fairly few brands to choose from the choice is still bewildering - LCD or Plasma? What about DLP? How big? How many pixels? Wall mount or desktop stand? How much does it all cost? Well after some a lot of staring at the same High Def demos on a whole bunch of screen I went for the age of trade off - how many inches can I get for the least amount of money?

I decided I wanted a wall mount solution - so that put DLP out of the picture. After 37inches LCDs start to get really expensive and so currently the biggest screen for the least amount of Dirhams led me to a 50inch LG plasma. I had been hankering over the 50" Panasonic but in the end it just did not justify the extra 3000 Dirhams as it contains the same panel as the LG.

The nice thing about buying a plasma here in Dubai is that when they deliver they are also happy to install it onto the wall - pretty much unheard of in the UK without paying vast amounts more. Also once they were done they took the huge box away with them as well.

The plasma is installed and looking handsome - the pictures via HDMI on my DVD player are excellent and in 1080i mode Xbox 36o games are simply jaw dropping. The best bit though is that this 50" High Def plasma cost £2000 less than my original non high def 42" plasma - technology is indeed awesome if you are on the right side of the curve.

Photo Me

My vertible Sony Ericsson K750i was looking a little battleworn - the battery had seen better days and even after having the joystick repaired it did not feel the same. Iwas lucky at work and got given a Nokia 6680. This seems like quite a nice phone (if a little large) - but after using it for about 10days the difference in the user interfaces between Sony Ericsson and Nokia were making me a little crazy. Though the excellent camera in the Nokia was just the ticket for taking snaps of the unusual things I see in my first few weeks in Dubai.

Driven to distraction over the Nokia user interface I felt it best to end this pain and procure a new Sony Ericsson. My choice was essentially between the K800i and the M600i both very different beasts indeed.

A local retailer let me have a play with both of them. The M600i is based on the OS used in the P900 and is really the epitome of the smart phone. The M600i itself is very slim and lightweight with a great screen. I felt that the response between applications was slow and you really need two hands to make a phone call (not ideal) - also the lack of a camera made my choice for me.

The K800i that I ended up buying has really impressed me. Aside from the awesome 3.2Megapixel camera and flash it has, the battery life is awesome and the UI improvements make the phone a pleasure to use. The new M2 memory format was a bit of pain - but on seeing the size of 1GB card I was startled. The card is small, really small - I think if you were to sneeze on it you would never see it again!

I always like to rate and review things and I thought I would do this for the Sony Ericsson phones I have owned:

T68i - First colour mobile phone, super slow menus - 6/10 - just for pimp factor at the time

T610 - 65k colour screen, poly ringtones but poor joystick design - 7/10 - poly ringtones were all the rage at the time

T630 - a good upgrade over the T610 in terms of screen and design - still suffered the same joystick failure issues - 7/10

P910 - good smart phone, but really needed two handed use and a bit on the large size - 6/10

W900i - mp3, 3G and big display all in one phone - sadly the swivel design and chunky build made it feel more Fisher Price then Hi-Tec - 3/10

K75oi - the first "real" camera phone for me - 2 megapixel and an attempt at a flash, mp3 and duo memory stick support makes this still a great phone - however it continues to be plagued by the joystick issues of the T610/T630

K800i - 3.2 megapixels and now branded as a "Cybershot" by Sony-Ericsson - improved UI and it uses the great screen from the W900i. The joystick designs seems to have improved as well but only time will tell if it holds up - 9/10 (so far)

RIP Darvos

For those of you who know me - one thing that has occupied vast quantities of my time is the seminal MMORPG World of Warcraft. I have played since the week after its Euro release back in Feb 2005. The thing that kept me really hooked into the game was the "Guild" I belonged to.

Through this Guild I have met some fantastic people by playing this computer game and this friendship extends passed simply gaming and are bonds I intend to keep. If I can do this then that will be more valuable than killing any end game boss.

Over the passed 18 months the guild evolved merged, grew and allied. This allowed me to partake in some of the end games raid content that I could only have dreamed about at the end of last year.

With my recent move over to Dubai and the different working week and +3hr time difference I have realized that I am simply "incompatible" with the raid timetable. For me raiding was all that was really left for my characters to do - while levelling a character can be fun I am loathed to do it again.

So at least for now - I have put "Darvos" to rest for the foreseeable future till I can get some regular pattern in my life and I can find the inclination to play again.

/target account
/cast cancel account

Boom! shake-shake-shake the room Boom!

I am currenty staying a hotel for up to 30days and I realised how much I was missing listening to music - sure I could play it through my laptop but the speakers are so tinny it actually puts me off - the other alternative to walk around my hotel room with my ipod and earphones on isn't entirely practical so I decided I wanted some external speakers for my iPod.

While on holiday in Vegas a friend of mine brought a Bose Sounddock - and very pleasant sounding it was as well. The only drawback I felt with that unit was you couldn't fill it with batteries and essentially use it as a mobile ghetto blaster. Also after some research at the ilounge (THE seminal iPod site) I decided that the Altec Lansing IM7 was the one for me. I managed to locate one at Carrefour and was impressed that it worked out £10 cheaper than if I had have brought it from Amazon.co.uk

I had it up in running in about 30 seconds and I was impressed straight away by the clarity and nice tight bass lines it produced. Thinking back it has the edge over the Bose unit in terms of sound quality and overall volume. I also really liked the hidden rubberized handle for lugging it around. I am now tempted at looking at other smaller products in the IM Altec Lansing range to carry in my laptop bag for when I am travelling on business.

Overall 9/10 - sounds great, limited distance for the remote control (well I couldn't give it 10/10)

It is just the small differences

My second day in Dubai was much better than my first. After a rather restless night as I recovered from a little stomach bug I woke up feeling a lot better than the day before.

My mood also improved as I have been able to "borrow" a wireless internet connection so blogging from my hotel room has become a lot easier as has staying in touch with my nearest and dearest back home.

After yesterday's little trip to the Mall of the Emirates I thought I would sample what Deira City Center had to offer. I had a pleasant afternoon mooching around in there and was surprised to find a couple of sort after Nintendo DS games namely Metroid Pinball and Magentica. The giveaway black boxes they came in shows their US heritage and that works for me.

I found Deira City Center the type of Mall I would actually shop in as opposed to Mall of the Emirates where I would probably just gawp and stare at all the designer shops there. Also Deira I think has the upper in Electronic goodies - but I think I need a second viewing of the Mall of the Emirates just to be sure.

I am still in that odd stage where I keep trying to convert everything back into UK sterling and then deciding if something is cheap or not. Here are the things that are staples to me so far:

xb0x 360 Game - Hitman Blood Money- UK £50 /Dubai 259 AED (£40)
One Pint Strongbow - UK £2.50 / Dubai 22 AED (£3.40)
One 20 minute cab ride - UK - £20 (in Surrey) / Dubai 32AED (£4.90)
BK Whopper - UK £3 / Dubai (£2.80)

I hear from the expats that have been here a while that Dubai is getting more expensive all the time. Well from where I am standing it still seems quite reasonable especially considering the huge price of cars and petrol in the UK.

I feel that Dubai seems to have everything I need - except I have managed to leave my hayfever firmly back in the UK.

Two Screens are Better than one

Yesterday was the official launch day for the Nintendo DS lite I have to admit for falling for the hype and picking one up. Something that I am now very pleased that I did. I have owned a Sony PSP for sometime now having got one before the UK launch. The difference between the two is quite remarkable.

Sure the PSP is a marvel of engineering with a great wide screen display, super crisp 3D graphics and the ability to view photos/movies and listen to mp3s - it is just that none of the games I have played on it have really "grabbed" me. Not that I am short of PSP games I have over 20, but perhaps I have just not found the right ones.

The Nintendo DS lite on the other hand is a model of simplicity. The dual screens and touch screen are used perfectly in the few titles I have played. The games really have grabbed me and have refused to let go:

1. Mario Kart DS - all my old favourite tracks from previous mario kart versions and a whole bunch of new ones - just the best Mario Kart ever on any platform
2. Brain Training - some software that had introduced me to the word of sudoku (completed my first 5 sudoku puzzles ever) and has me enthralled with trying to improve my brain age
3. Advanced Wars Dual Strike - just an awesome turn based strategy game

And I haven't even tried Phoenix Wright:Ace Attorney or Metroid Prime.

I will be keeping the PSP and exploring some other games on it - but for me the hand-held that goes in my hand luggage this Wednesday is the Nintendo DS Lite. In addition to my video iPod of course.