Bleep - Technology news and reviews from Ireland

Nokia 6500 Slide

The first thing you notice when you pick up the 6500 Slide is the weight. It’s fairly heavy compared to other phones in the same league. The brushed stainless steel finish is the real thing and the cold metal feel to the phone automatically provides assurance at the robustness of this phone. This looks like a smaller and lighter version of the N95 and thank goodness, it has a lot less buttons.

The 6500 Slide has a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens as well as a second smaller camera for making video calls. The camera also has a proper flash. It comes with 3G connectivity and has a microSD expansion slot which provides up to 4GB of additional storage. No WiFi though. There’s a handy TV-Out feature too if you want to play your videos or do a slideshow of your photos. The keypad is very easy to use, something many new phones don’t seem to have figured out.

Software and interface wise all that needs to be said is that it’s a Nokia. As usual with Nokias they get the usability right first go. The only thing that is a let down with this phone is yet again the battery life. Nokias have never had the best battery life and when using 3G it impacts even more.

All in all this is a stylish and desirable phone.

Samsung Q45
Retails at €1300

The Samsung Q45 is a black, shiny and light mobile laptop which weighs 1.86kg. It looks well and performs well. It comes preinstalled with Windows Vista which despite all the flack, works very well for the average user.

The Q45 comes with a 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory, has a 12 widescreen display. When it comes to battery life, it is meant to last 6 hours but for me it lasted on average 4-5 hours but this was working away wirelessly surfing the Internet and processing some videos.

The screen is good and bad at the same time, the resolution is good but the shinyness of the screen can become annoying and difficult to read when it’s sunny outside. Even with the cloudy Irish weather, a little brightness outside can make you squint your eyes when on the laptop.

Weight wise, this laptop is easy to use, even over 4 hours and doesn’t strain the back when carried around in carrier bag or napsack. The shiny black surface though means that it’s a fingerprint display unit and you’ll find yourself wiping off your fingerprints a lot from the laptop.

The biggest weakness of this laptop though is the keyboard. For some odd and I must say stupid reason, Samsung has swapped some of the function keys on the laptop around, meaning you are pressing the Windows and C key when you want to copy and paste. It causes you to relearn the keyboard settings which are standard on every other desktop and laptop. If you can forgive this then the Q45 does the business. Small, fast, and affordable.

Please do come along to Darklight in the morning. I’m going and I’m going to get my book signed by the guy who wrote it. Niall of the Larkins will be on the panel (and he’s the one who gave me the book! .6 degrees of these days) and Legs-a-Jimbo from the Times. I promise I’ll make my contributions tense, edgy and darkly funny. Then y’all can also attend the Web 3.0 talk right after.

[Disclaimer: I received the platinum status appearance fee (€8,327.24) to be on this panel. This post is very much paid for]

Photo owned by Martin Kingsley (cc)

[or maybe not]

Bye bye Inspiron, hello Vostro! Dell has rebranded their business Inspiron laptops & desktops whilst leaving the old moniker for home machines. The 1510 is an Intel “Santa Rosa” based laptop in a reasonably attractive and thin chassis and it won’t break your back at a modest 2.6KG in its default configuration.

This laptop packs all the standard features you would expect but surprises with super quiet operation even when the hard drive is thrashing away. A couple of other nice features are the handy media buttons and the slick new slot loading DVD writer. One awful feature is Dell’s inclusion of a cheap “sticky” touch pad. Also, the new glossy black finish on the back is a finger print magnet.

Mercifully, Dell has recently toned down their need to fill new machines with preinstalled crap. I only had to uninstall the Google search bar and Google desktop apps. The 1510 in its default configuration offer’s superb value for money but please Dell please, put a nice touch pad in the next one!

The Vostro 1510 can be purchased from Dell’s website from €449 + vat and shipping.

Gotta love FOI requests.
Via this FOI (PDF)

So the takeaway points this time round:

1. The Dept of Comms told the EU they didn’t believe a word about future rollouts by broadband providers.
2. They suggested to the EU that the National Broadband Tender should address either (a) areas where providers said they wouldn’t go to AND areas where they said they would (but where the Dept of Comms thought they were telling porkies) or (b) address the definite no go areas first, give the providers a cooling off period and then push the tender to these areas six months later.
3. The EU agreed with the Dept of Comms to go with option (b).
4. Why has the Department of Comms never told us of the cooling off period part of their plan? Is it still part of their plan because the utterings from Minister Eamon Ryan seem to suggest these “blue” or “grey” areas are not being addressed.
5. Is the Dept delaying the NBS because they can’t afford to cover all the bad areas and are delaying til they have the cash and til more of the “blue” areas turn out to have broadband?

This is the Department of Communications talking to the EU about the National Broadband Scheme and the map of areas without broadband. This was 2007:

Page 9:

To identify where broadband services are not being provided by the market the NBS team, comprised of members of the DCMNR and ComReg undertook the following comprehensive mapping process:

Step One
The DCMNR and ComReg contacted service providers and requested details of their current and planned broadband coverage. Representaive samples of the following categories of service providers were contacted:

Licensed fixed service providers
licensed wireless service providers
known licensed exempt wireless service providers
mobile service providers
GBS service providers

Step Two
The data received from service providers was inserted on a broadband coverage map. In order to achieve as complete and accurate map as possible, the NBS team then consulted with the Irish Regional Authorities to ask that they confirm as far as possible, the broadband coverage information provided in the maps and that the list of all service providers included in the mapping process was comprehensive. The Regional Authorities were requested to provide any additional information on service providers in their specific areas.

Step Three
The additional service providers identified by the Regional Authorities were contacted by the DCMNR and details of the service providers current and future coverage plans were requested and included in the map.

Step Four
A number of geographic areas are excluded from the scope of the NBS as the DCMNR has determined that existing coverage is adequate and/or there are already serveral service providers in the area. As a consequence, the NBS will not address the following areas:

The 5 largest cities in the State (Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford)
Areas within which telephone exchanges have been enabled for DSL, subject to a service radius of 4.5km
Areas served by wireless broadband provision, subject to (where appropriate) the service radius defined by licence requirements and having regard to topographical effects on wireless coverage.

The Indicative Map
The resulting broadband coverage map is the “indicative map”, please see Appendix C for the latest version of the map…

“grey areas” are currently unserved by broadband, but where service providers have indicated that they plan to provide broadband services in these regions in the foreseeable future

However they also tell the EU that they don’t believe a word about the rollout of broadband by these providers:

Pg 16

The DCMNR wishes to address the grey areas as it is, in its view, unlikely that service providers planned coverage will materialise. The DCMNR has grave concerns that, in some instances, where service providers have indicated that they will roll out afforable broadband services in a region, there is no evidence that such claims are based on commercial reality.

Now, next doc (pdf)

The Grey areas are now Blue areas it seems:

pg 8

According to the Irish authorities, consumers and businesses in the “green” and “blue” areas are still lacking access to broadband services since they first became generally available in Ireland approximately 5 years ago. In order to remedy this situation the DCENR has informed operators of its approach for dealing with “blue” areas: services providers will be given a reasonable timefreame to roll out broadband services to these areas, after which any unserved areas at that time will be supported by the NBS. The DCENR considers this approach to be reasonable and proportionate and one that balances the needs of consumers against those of service providers.

The “blue” areas will, therefore, be included in the scope of the NBS from the outset and the NBS procurement will seek to keep an option to address these areas. However, the provision of broadband to the “blue” areas via the NBS contract will not take place until the beginning of Q3 2008. Up to the end of Q2 2008, where the DCENR is presented with clear evidence that a “live broadband service” is being provided to users in blue areas, the service provider’s particular service footprint will be removed from the NBS coverage requirements. The Irish authorities have put in place a notification mechanism for operators to inform them about updated service footprints, i.e. the geographic areas where there they roll out broadband. A mechanism to give effect to this approach will also be built into the NBS procurement process and service contract.

[Disclaimer: I was meant to do a little talk at this so my travel and hotel expenses are being covered by SalesForce. I am not being paid to blog this.]

With Facebook making “platforms” sexy and fun, more and more developers are starting to make entertaining and sometimes useful applications for the Facebook platform as well as the OpenSocial platform. Platforms are certainly in. If you’re interested in widgets and building apps on web platforms then maybe the SalesForce Force.com roadshow on Monday June 30th in Dublin would be of interest. I’d love to see some of the talented people who make apps for Facebook actually making money by doing the same on Force.com by building useful apps for businesses.

Force.com also has some nice tie-ins with Google Apps too. Details on their Google Data APIs toolkit.

The breakout session I’m most interested in (as someone who’s trying to get a few apps built) is:

Entreprenuers & ISV Partners:
1:30 PM - Secrets to SaaS Startup Success
2:45 PM - Become a Force.com ISV Partner

I’ve not seen a lot of coverage about this event, though maybe I’m not looking hard enough. If you think some developers or business people you know would be interested in going, please send them a link to the sign-up page.

Photo owned by satguru (cc)

if it wasn’t for the constant fucking spam they send me on a daily basis and the fact I was signed up to their newsletter and mailing lists without permission. So fuck em. I’ll still attend the discussion panel on privacy they asked me to be on though where I’m sure I’ll mention how spamming me invaded mine.

It’s hard to follow up on something which in a way was game-changing. Also with recent strife in Moto, this could be the last of their great phones. Sequels in movies rarely outdo the originals and the same can be true for most phones. The RAZR 2 V8 developers obviously knew this so worked really hard on the design of the phone, both outside and inside. The RAZR 2 is thinner again which is a feat in itself. It now has two screens so you don’t even need to flip the phone to get a lot of usage from it.

The phone comes with either 512mb of built-in memory or else 2GB but the big drawback with this is that it is one or the other, there is no memory expansion slot which is quite disappointing given most other phones offer this. Using the phone itself, you feel like it is a strong and sturdy phone and will survive the usual bumps and knocks of a phone and this is backed up by the quality material put into the phone.

When it comes to the software on the phone, the V8 is very simple to use with an interface that makes sense instantly. The menu options will get you to the main features of the phone almost instantly. Good camera, efficient mp3 player and many accessories. The big drawback for the V8 though is the lack of 3G which is almost a prerequisite in most new phones. If you liked the original RAZR you’ll love this, a fantastic improvement on an already good phone. Well worth investing in if you like thin flip phones.

via the NYT Bits blog:

Google To Announce New Audience Measurement Initiative @ AM 3.0

At 5:00 p.m., on Tuesday, June 24, 2008, at the ARF AM 3.0 Conference in New York, Wayne Lin, Google Business Product Manager, will introduce Google’s latest initiative in internet audience measurement. This public announcement will be followed by moderated panel and audience reaction.

Sony Ericsson W910i

W as in Walkman. Yet another phone from the Walkman range. This latest improvement on the Sony Ericsson Walkman range has seen the software improved and made even easier to use. Music is at the heart of the phone with all other features built out from this. This is a slide phone unlike most other Sony Ericsson Walkman phones and also comes with 3G giving you a lot of access to online services, no matter where you are.

While not as thin as other Sony Ericssons, this is still on the svelt side. What this phone has that you don’t see in most other phones is an accelerometer tied into the menu system. Move the phone to the side and the menu system will reflect this, just like an iPhone but unlike the iPhone if you nudge the phone left or right it skips to the next or previous song and shaking the phone like a polaroid naturally has it shuffle your music selection, presenting you with random tracks. The old shake N’ Vac ads from the 80s come to mind. Design inspiration perhaps?

Probably the best part of this phone is the media software on it, allowing you to create multiple playlists and you can even have the phone react to your mood by playing certain types of music. The motion sensors also react to the speed you are moving or not moving at.

All in all this is a fantastic multimedia phone, designed with multimedia in mind while also giving you 3G connectivity. If you like your music then this is the phone for you. This gets a 5, something most phones will not get.

Welcome to TechWank Thursday. The weekly discussion of all things stupid, useless and totally idiotic that we see crop up every now and then in the world of tech gadgets. Despite the most intelligent people in the world working in the sector and some of the best industrial designers ever, you combine some people and you get the shoddiest, trashiest pieces of crap ever.

Since this is our first feature, here are a few examples and not just one.

A crystal Nespresso Machine. Yeah, diamonds on a bloody coffee machine!

A designer rocket-launcher.

and the best:
A gold-plated MacBook Air.

Bleep.ie got our hands on the HP 2133 Mini-Note lightweight very portable laptop at the HP event in Berlin last week and tested it out for a few minutes. We liked.

The HP 2133 Mini-Note is obviously a competitor/answer to the nerd-popular Asus Eee PC but oddly when you look at the Eee PC you instantly reflect how dinky and small it is, almost like a laptop designed for the little people that fix your shoes at night. It is smaller than the pics show. However when checking out the HP 2133 you don’t realise it’s a mini-pc. Maybe it’s the slightly larger 8.9inch screen.

Unlike said Eee PC it’s pretty configurable, Henry Ford would not be proud. You can get 160GB and 120GB 7,200rpm or 5400 rpms hard drives or a 4GB solid state drive. You can also choose your OS for it. Under the hood is a 1.6-GHz processor, VIA graphics chip, and 2GB of memory.

All in all a great laptop, slightly bigger than the Eee PC (probably a good thing) and at 3.2lbs slightly heavier though it’s still light. Of course it’s more expensive too but for anyone wanting more than a novelty laptop and wanting it for business, consider this. Then again, this is only a 4 minute review.

After spending so much time with the Nokias and iPhones of the world you forget that technology and design has progressed enough to bring us feather-light and waif-thin phones. Hello Sony Ericsson W series phones and a big hello to the W890i.

The W890i didn’t exactly come out of the blue. It’s pretty much an update of the W880 but that’s fine as the W880 was also a great phone, just like this. The best feature of this phone might actually be the thin design when you consider that this is also a 3G phone. You rarely see 3G phones this thin. The brushed metal design of the silver one really rocks. Forget the other choices. I loved this design.

Being from the W series it’s a music phone first and foremost with Walkman Player software version 3.0 on it, 2 gigs of plug in memory for all your music which isn’t a lot when you have an 8GB Nokia N91 or a 16GB iPhone but enough for a few albums at least. One button (on side) access to the Walkman feature displays the tracks in a great user interface. This is the one bugbear I have with phones. Too many of them fail when it comes to the software and the interface. They got it right here. Nice features too for sorting and tagging your music. For the music fascists amongst us (hi!) this power feature is great but 99% of people will probably not use it. We also have a radio on this phone. Yeah, no having to buy an outside jack with a radio at more expense.

Texting is easy on this and very easy considering the size of the keyboard. The areas where this phone is let down are actually the lack of WiFi but it doesn’t bill itself as offering everything and it doesn’t have a flash for the camera which is almost unusual for a Sony Ericsson these days.

Summary:
This is a brilliant music phone, a great 3G phone and a lovely waif phone. Ticks many boxes.

It’s been around for a good while now but since we already reviewed the N81 and wished it were more like the N95, we might as well look at what could be argued is the best Nokia phone on the market. If you want it all and want it with power, the N95 is for you.

For all of those that fell in love with the 7650 (I still have mine) this is the modern equivalent. A 5 megapixel camera means you’ve got a full-blown digital camera with you and a video camera to boot.

Connectivity-wise it can connect using 3g, WiFi and bluetooth. Mobile broadband using 3g
is a gamechanging piece of technology and having 3g in a phone like this helps in changing your digital lifestyle and then add WiFi on top of that. You might not even need to buy a 3g connection were you in any other country in the EU except broadband poor Ireland though to get the most you really do need to sign up to a 3G package.

Then there’s the GPS. Flaky indoors but over the months the maps when you’re on the road are fairly good, apart from the odd snafu. Just as good as the standalone, one purpose only GPS units. But it’s on your phone that already has everything else.

A definite bonus with this phone is that you can install applications on it without having to “hack” or “unlock” it and there are tonnes of these applications that make use of all the inbuilt power features. Take that iPhone version 1 (but maybe not version 2)

There are of course negative bits to this phone. The cluttered interface could really be made a little simpler and there are far far too many buttons on this phone. It’s the forty coats of phones as
a result. Also, this computer in your pocket is too big for my pockets though not massively too big. The biggest issue though is the battery life. It sucks the juice far too quickly especially if using WiFi and 3G. The design too isn’t as sexy as other phones but it destroys the competition when it comes to features.

Despite these bits, this phone is still getting a very rare five out of five rating. It’s that good.

Here are two more pics from the HP event in Berlin

Pictured are the fantastically engaging Rahul Sood from Voodoo and Damien Mulley from Bleep.ie with Bleep.ie shown on the Envy.

Edit: With thanks to Marie Boran from Silicon Republic for taking them.

Well according to the eTenders site, the Telecoms Poodle are

Looking to hire someone to write a report for them on the Digital Dividend:

To enter into a contract (commencing on 31 July 2008) for the provision consultancy advice for the Commission for Communications Regulation (hereafter referred to as ComReg) on a suitable approach to its Digital Dividend strategy. It is intended that the consultants will produce a report, based on experience of other countries, which have begun implementing Digital Dividend, and an overview of Digital Dividend strategies adopted there to ensure that consumers will benefit from the future release of Digital Dividend spectrum.

The Digital Dividend is that spectrum released when analogue TV is switched off. Something that will not happen for years in Ireland I should think, though it’s meant to be 2012 in most places. The EU has yet to make a proper decision on it and some consultation about it is meant to happen later this year.

Ofcom, a proper telecoms regulator started their consultation in 2005 on this and another this month.

Another report needed on the shutting down of GSM frequency bands and telcos moving to full 3G.

The purpose of this tender is to engage the services of an experienced and suitably qualified professional contractor to analyse the technical implications of liberalisation of the 900MHz and 1800MHz GSM bands, taking into account the expiry dates of existing GSM licences on behalf of the Commission.

And finally a tender to Build and run a call centre for ComReg. Ah handy, outsourcing their “Hah, you must be joking, that’s not our problem, go back to your telco and sort it amongst yourselves.” phoneline. Surely a recording would do?

Photo of a previous blogger’s dinner in Proby’s

Conor O’Neill has very kindly decided to organise a goodbye Cork blogger’s dinner in honour of my imminent departure for Spain.

Conor is calling it the Hasta Luego Blogger Dinner (Hasta Luego is Spanish for Goodbye, in case you didn’t know)!

If you would like to join us for a bite to eat, a few drinks and a good time the dinner is this Tuesday the 17th in Probys bistro (afaik) at 7pm.

Head on over to Conor’s blog post and leave a comment there so he has a rough idea of numbers to book, but given that it is a Tuesday night, even if you are late signing up, come along anyway. I don’t see the restaurant turning away patrons!!!

Thanks Conor for organising this for me. Much appreciated.

Blurb:

RTÉ News Now is the only place you can watch the latest Irish news from anywhere in the world.

Watch up-to-the-minute news streamed 24 hours a day, seven days a week with live coverage of special events and full-length current affairs programmes.

http://www.rte.ie/live/index.html?news

Realplayer or Windows Media Player only. Hmm.

I voted in the Lisbon Treaty this morning. Probably my last time voting in this country (as I am moving to Spain next week!).

I’m curious, if I run a poll here and enough people respond truthfully, we should get an accurate exit poll!

So, if you voted in the Lisbon Treaty, how did you vote?

How did you vote in the Lisbon Treaty?
( surveys)

[Disclaimer - obviously this is totally unscientific but it will be fun to compare the answer here with the final answer tomorrow]

Another quick review, this time of the second and much better iteration of the HP Touchsmart. This new one comes with a 22inch screen and looks very like the iMac with pretty much everything built into and behind the screen. Full optical drive. Being all about thin/thick, this PC is 2.6 inches thick, has half a terrabyte of storage, 2.16Ghz processor, Wifi and all that jazz.

Oh and did we mention it does touch? We were waiting for “I touch myself” to play during them showing off the interface but they played some good pop-punk-like song about touching. If you’ve used the touch interface on the iPhone then you know how it works. Flick through photos, play songs, drag stuff around. However it’s still very very basic. No copying and pasting functionality. Only inside the HP TouchSmart software can this functionality work. Big shame.

It’s still rough too in that you have to use the keyboard for copying and pasting and inside the music player you can’t adjust the volume. That’s hardware only. That seems a massive oversight.

Overall giving this a three because of the limited/restricted use for the touch interface which I hope changes over time but on pushing HP about opening up their Touch “platform”, it seems management won’t allow an SDK or API for it. Hello? Imagine every Facebook developer making apps for this? I’d love to see a child’s game made for this for people to play over the net. Get kids playing each other etc. Or fathers and daughters playing online when they are oceans apart.