Archive for September, 2007

Multi-tasking on the phone

Today I took a call on my N95 and was able to create an appointment in its calendar while still on the call.

The process was simple. I just put the phone on loudspeaker and kept talking while making the appointment in the calendar application.

That’s exactly the way you want a device like this to work.

From the phone

One of the ideas with the N95 is to be able to blog from it, which is what I’m doing now. I’m using the Wordpress web interface via the Opera Mini browser. There is a snag: Opera Mini removes the section of the edit page with the category chooser, so I am stuck with the default category (Miscellany). What I really want is a mobile blogging client.

I looked for a native (Symbian) app and all roads led to PicoBlogger so I grabbed it and installed it. But you have to register the software via the picostation website before you can do anything and the website has been for more than a week.

Then further searching revealed a Java app called BlogPlanet, which I installed (free nagware version). I configured it to talk with this blog but it can’t successfully connect.

Even the web browser built in to the N95 won’t work: log-ins to the admin interface keep failing (using correct credentials, of course). At least Opera Mini can do that.

(Actually, most of this post was written on my Mac in Firefox. Sigh.)

Got the Net in my pocket!

A week ago I took delivery of a new Nokia N95 smartphone. It is to become my new organiser (replacing a Palm T|X) as well as a 3(.5)G phone that gives me the Net in my pocket.

I bought it outright and have it on $20 per month with Virgin Mobile (no contract), along with $10 extra for 300MB of data. This is the best value for me because I don’t use the phone much but want the Net access. Virgin Mobile uses the Optus network so it has the second-best coverage in Australia.

I’m loving it so far and will blog about various aspects of it as I use it more.