An application suitable for use on most Nokia phones that have access to the Ovi store that brings content from this site to these devices in a mobile friendly way. It was created with a wizard.
See: Grab the greenhughes.com app from Nokia's Ovi store now!
Today (Sunday 18th July) Techcrunch published a story about how the Android operating system, which is now spreading beyond the mobile phone, is poised to take over China and said this will have global implications. Coincidentally yesterday I took delivery of a device, made in China, that is maybe not too well known: the Eken M001 Android Tablet. This gives you a WiFi enabled Android computer with a seven inch touchscreen that has 128MB of RAM, 2GB of storage and an SD card slot. None of these specifications are particularly remarkable, but what is astonishing was the price: £85 (about US $130) from a reseller on Amazon. Even a 7” digital photo frame would typically set you back £30! (about US $46)
A few days ago WOMWorld/Nokia asked "Have you made an Ovi app yet?" Ovi is Nokia's mobile app portal, similar in idea to Google's Android Market or Apple's App Store. My answer to this question was no, it hasn't occurred to me, but it turned out that a tool existed to turn any RSS feed into an app without needing to go to the effort of doing any coding. I had a spare half an hour so I decided to give it a try to see if I could make an app for this site. The app generator takes you through a wizard that asks you for a few settings, a few graphics and then submits you shiny new app for a review process. A couple of hours before writing this post I got an email to say my new app is now available in the Ovi app store - for free!
Internet video is largely dominated by short clips. YouTube, probably the most popular video upload service limits the length of individual videos to ten minutes for most accounts. So what happens if you just feel like relaxing in front on the TV, kicking off your shoes and just want to be entertained without having to make lots of decisions on what to watch? Fear not, solutions are emerging to meet this requirement and out of curiosity I sat on my sofa and tried two out: the new YouTube Leanback and Redux.com's “Watch in TV mode”.
Being a developer type I couldn't wait to start experimenting with coding on my new HTC Desire. Being Android powered it is very friendly and coding mainly takes place in Java, which I'm familiar with. This class of mobile device is incredibly powerful of course, armed not just with portability and web access but also decent processing power and a variety of sensors. We're still learning about what exactly this means and what opportunities it can bring and so it is very important to be able to experiment, try out ideas and build rough prototypes. This is where the Android Scripting Environment (ASE) comes in, and I used it to build a prototype application to scan a barcode on a book and use that code to see if it is in a library. Handy when deciding whether to buy a book!
Just over a week ago I walked into a mobile phone shop and handed over my own hard earned cash and bought myself an HTC Desire. I'd thought long and hard about what phone to get. The HTC Hero I had on trial last year was great, but had a few problems that put me off. The Desire has addressed these problems though and added more features, so after reading up on it and seeing one in real life I knew this was the phone for me. A few people have been asking about the phone, so I thought I would share some first impressions.
I am delighted to announce the release of a new application for Boxee: “Your MP”. The details and background to this application can be found in my original blog post about it: “An experimental Boxee app to keep track of how your MP votes” and at the time I said that if there was sufficient interest in it I would develop it further and release it. I am really pleased that there was interest and thank you to everybody who took the time to comment, tweet and spread the word about the app, I hope you enjoy it now you can use it! Since the original post I have added a couple of extra features too.
The MiFi is a handy little device from 3 that allows you to have a pocket sized mobile broadband router that can connect to the mobile network to give you access to the Internet while you are out and about. Despite its convenience the unit did cause owners to have a few gripes, it had a status display that was tricky to understand, you could only reconfigure it with the supplied Windows client and its three button operation proved unpopular. Taking this feedback onboard 3 have been working with the unit's maker Huawei to bring out a new and improved version and I've just been to the event in London where the MiFi 2 (also known as the Huawei E585) was shown off to bloggers.
The eighth of July 1989 was quite a proud day for me. On that day I was handed a certificate to mark my participation in the national finals of the British Computer Society (BCS) Schools Computing Quiz. Our team had demonstrated a knowledge of technology (which is now probably in museums) that was almost on a par with the team that won. It was also the last time I remember having any contact with the BCS, despite the fact I work in IT full time and have done for quite a while. This is not due to any bad feeling, I remember everybody I met from the BCS as being very nice, it's just that somehow over the years the BCS faded into the background. Now I read that the BCS is “in crisis”.
An experimental Boxee application that lets you track how your Member of Parliament (UK) is voting on your television.
See: “Your MP” Boxee app Release Announcement