Smartphone Blog

Supporting Palmtop & Mobile Smartphone Users
"20 years experience with handheld mobile devices"

BBC News emailed to you

07/09/09

The BBC offer a free service, where you can be sent a daily email with select news summaries and a link to the full news story including pictures etc where applicable. Visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/email to create an free account and configure what news categories you’d like to receive in your email and at what time; my daily BBC News email arrives daily at 06:00hrs so that during the week I can catch up on news whilst commuting to work. This service is a great cost/time effective way of keeping in touch with news in the UK and Worldwide from the following categories: Top Stories, UK, Americas, Middle East, World, Asia-Pacific, South Asia, Africa, Europe, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, UK Politics, Science / Nature, Education, Business, Technology, Entertainment, Health, Education & On this Day. The subscription service can be simplified with just text so that it can be received on lower spec email enabled mobiles/smartphones. At anytime, your subscription can be amended, free of charge. You can also share news by copying & pasting a particular news summary & link and forward via email/text to a friend/relative/work colleague that might be of interest to them. With the busy lives many of us live, in my opinion it makes good sense to be ‘pushed’ information such as news rather than you finding time to find it or having to buy a daily newspaper to read the news. You can also subscribe to several newsletters including: Breaking News Alert, BBC Sport Newsletter, Newsnight Newsletter & Panorama Newsletter. Emails ‘pushed’ to smartphones or in my case, my Blackberry is just great.

eBay on your Smartphone - Don't miss the end of that auction

03/09/09

These days all smartphones and many mobiles have standard internet/web browsers that enable

ebay

you to log in to eBay easily and search for, bid and buy items for sale. PayPal also works well on mobile devices. Don’t miss that auction deadline while you’re away from home/work, win more auctions, give it a try, it’s easy.
http://wap.ebay.co.uk is the best eBay URL for use on a mobile phone, as it’s cleverly scaled down for use on a small screen; as shown in the screenshot from by Blackberry.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/mobile is the best eBay URL for use on a smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile device), which again is smartphone/PDA screen friendly; this being a screenshot from my iPod Touch.

Q&A: Nokia E71 or Blackberry

30/08/09

Question: Ok, so you want to upgrade from a Psion to a smartphone and have chosen either the Nokia E71 or a Blackberry.
Answer: Both devices basically have a full suite of PIM (PIM) tools, e.g. Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes/Memos, Email, Web Browser, Music/Video Player and will sync with Microsoft Office; they also both have available Word/Excel/PowerPoint reader/writers.
The main difference is with email functionality: the Nokia E71 being set to periodically ‘pull’ emails from one or more email servers, whereas the Blackberry’s email is set up online for multiple accounts to be ‘pushed’ as soon as they arrive in your mailbox(s); I’ve currently got 7 set up!Psion Data (Agenda, Data/Contacts, To-Do, Word & Sheet) can be converted on to either the Nokia E71 or a Blackberry via a sync into Outlook and conversion using PsiWin v2.3.3.
So a choice between the two is down to a personal choice: Price, Contract/SIM free, Size/Shape/Colour.

Mobile Internet Sites

30/08/09

Although many internet websites these days are quite fancy with sound, moving images and video and too powerful to view on a small screen mobile device; there are many useful websites designed for browsing, for a starter, check out:
BBC – News, Weather and lots more! - http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/i/index.shtml
All About Symbian – http://mobile.allaboutsymbian.com/
Bluewater Cinema Listings - http://www.britinfo.net/cinema/cinema-listings-1004108.htm
eBay - http://wap.ebay.co.uk
Google - http://www.google.co.uk
PayPal - https://www.paypal-marketing.co.uk/sendmoney/send_to_a_friend.htm
National Rail Enquiries – http://realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/ldb/sumdep.aspx?T=GRV&S=CHX

Recommended sources of PDAs/Smartphones

30/08/09

Over my 20 years as a Palmtop computer/Mobile Smartphone user, I’ve probably got my devices from all the available options including: High Street shops, Cellnet/Mobile Provider/Operator (via new mobile contracts or upgrades), online retailers, eBay, Loot and private sales.So what’s my preferred choice, having tried them all?Well it depends on many things, you can get the best deals on new-6mth old smartphones with a new mobile contract, due to the heavily subsidised discount provided by Mobile providers (e.g. Orange, O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile). Alternatively, some good deals are up for grabs if you’re prepared to ‘haggle’ with your Mobile Provider, based on your loyalty being with them for X years and threatening to leave them unless they give you the shiny new smartphone for a good price or even free! The good old saying stands, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. SIM/contract free devices are so generally all very expensive. My preferred online retailer has been/and remains from the start, Clove Technology (http://www.clove.co.uk/, c/o Chris Love). Having started primarily with the dear old Psions, Clove now sell a huge range of devices across all OS (operating system) platforms: Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, iPhone and Blackberry; not to mention all the accessories, software and more! Another two to plug are Total PDA (http://www.totalpda.co.uk/) and Expansys (http://www.expansys.co.uk/).High Street outlets include Currys Digital, PC World and the Carphone Warehouse, BUT beware, sadly their sales staff don’t get trained anywhere near well enough, to provide good technical advice to meet your needs. Not focusing on your needs being just primarily to have an electronic address book, up to full sync with Microsoft Office (Inbox/Calendar/Contacts/Tasks/Notes, Word & Excel) and email on the move; rather the sales person wanting to sell you their top of the range, all singing and dancing and most expensive device.The level of product/technical knowledge of the average High Street salesman is SO poor, it gives me the reason to hang-in-there with what is in fact a hobby behind http://www.palmtopman.com/.Keeping the long standing Psion community going are my friends at POS Ltd (a.k.a Pinnock Organiser Services, c/o Paul Pinnock), http://www.posltd.co.uk/ and PsionEx (http://www.psionex.co.uk/), c/o Nick Hunter & Matt.On the second-hand front, although I have picked up some bargains from eBay (http://www.ebay.co.uk/) and Loot (http://www.loot.co.uk/); I now prefer to buy Palmtop computers/mobile smartphones from the chain of CEX (Computer Exchange) stores across the UK or online from them at http://www.cex.co.uk/. The benefit of CEX over eBay/Loot is that CEX give you a 1yr guarantee, as though it was new!One source of devices that I’ve never managed to be lucky with is promotional freebees from manufacturers or mobile operators; even though I’ve been supporting them for 17 years!

IM+ Skype for Smartphones

30/08/09

IM+ for SkypeSkype is probably one of the top VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) programmes around these days and used by literally millions of users online over the internet, to keep in contact with friends, family, associates and business contacts all over the world.
If you haven’t heard of Skype before, it’s a programme that works over a connection to the internet (preferably broadband) and lets you send/receive free text messages (similar to MSN Messenger) and make free voice calls and free conference calls with up to 9 other users!

IM+

Conference calls being a very eco-friendly way to hold meetings without the trouble/expenses of travel/transport. Skype also enables you to purchase credit for very cheap calls to be made from Skype to conventional landline telephone numbers. With hardware that has a video camera onboard, Skype also facilitates video conference calls. Most Skype users use the PC version (see www.skype.com) of this great programme but for some time now, Skype applications have been available across most of the mobile OS platforms such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and iPhone. When you log into Skype on a mobile device, all your contacts come across, to show you who’s online and if they’re available or not to receive text messages/voice calls. Most mobile versions of Skype also show your status as being ‘mobile’.IM+ for Skype is by Shape Services (www.shapeservices.com) but is readily available from the ‘Blackberry App Store’ and from the Apple Store for iPhone/iPod Touch users.

The Phone Show

30/08/09

video-player

Formally known as ‘The Smartphone Show’ is a great site c/o Steve Litchfield (3Lib, http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/) that contains video presentations and some interviews covering the whole range of different mobile devices running all OSs (Operating Systems) including Symbian, iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and the new Android. The video quality is great and can even be downloaded for viewing on a mobile device. The impressive thing is that I believe Steve still records his shows on Nokia’s popular N95 smartphone! The shows are to date up to episode 86! And cover some very interesting and informative advice about the latest devices. Well done Steve, keep the shows (http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/sshow/) going!

Facebook on Mobiles & Smartphones

30/08/2009

These days ‘social networking’ sites are very very popular and being talked about all the time amongst the computer/internet savy community. My family have found it, shall I say interesting, to keep up to speed on what our Son’s been up to whilst away at Uni for his first year!! Say no more

Facebook is probably one of the biggest ‘Social Networking’ platforms and is also available on many mobile and smartphone devices.I’ve used Facebook on an iPod Touch (over a Wi-Fi connection) but now use it primarily on my Blackberry 8820. Facebook is freely available from the ‘Blackberry App Store’ and Apple/iPod Store. When you open Facebook on a mobile device, it refreshes, to show you latest highlights of what your Facebook pals have posted, in the form of “What’s on your mind”. It also facilitates: View Status Updates, Notifications, Upload a Photo, Friends, Add a Friend, Write on a Wall (be careful, this is open for others to read!!!) and Send a Message. Being virtually permanently online with Facebook on a Blackberry, it’s another good way of being in contact with friends and loved ones and you’ll get alerted as soon as someone makes contact with you on Facebook.
Facebook v3.0 now available on the ‘Apple App Store’.

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