Feb 8
Mobile News David
5530, 5th edition, allaboutsymbian, chat, cnet, cnetuk, gravity, lifecasting, nokia, rseven, s60, sms, symbian, touchscreen, Twitter
Writing about Symbian
I’ve been busy on a few writing assignments lately, so I thought I’d do a quick round up!
I’ve had a couple of reviews published on All About Symbian. The first was a co-authored piece about a new cloud service called “Rseven“. This is a sort of lifecasting service, where everything that passes through your phone can be saved onto the Rseven servers. Even if you delete something from your phone, it remains in their servers, but is just excluded from PIM sync. You can even record and upload phone calls, which are then displayed as part of your Rseven calendar. It’s an interesting concept, although I found the website needed a lot of usability work, and my sensitivities for privacy were particularly stinging from the idea of this service.
The second review I had published was for a nice little application called “SMS Chat“. This is a useful application which presents your text messages in the form of a two-way conversation, and has a rather fun interface. Has a bunch of other features too, like scheduling outgoing messages. Also, when I mentioned to the makers about a feature I thought was missing from the app, they went into rapid development mode to get it added in. The only downside, as the comments on my review rightly pointed out, it’s expensive for what it is.
I also have also written a follow up to my Twitter apps for Symbian feature. The comments on my original feature mentioned so many apps and web services I hadn’t heard of, it was clear that I should write a follow up piece. It turned out there are seventeen options for using Twitter on Symbian phones, with a range of 46 individual features. So that meant I had to do a an eye-watering 782 feature checks. I did it though and it’ll be published on All About Symbian on today, read it here.
The nice guys at AllAboutSymbian have also loaned me a Nokia 5530 touch screen phone. This is useful for me in two ways. First it’s a 5th edition S60 phone, I only had 3rd edition phones, so there’s more apps I can review now. Also, I’ve been a touch screen sceptic, so now I can actually get hands-on with one. I have to say, it feels horrible to be spreading finger prints all over its lovely screen all the time 
I’ve also written a review of the best Twitter application for Symbian, Gravity, for CNET UK, which if not published today, I’m hoping it’ll go out soon. You can read it -here- (place-holder for link).
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Mar 2
Editorial David
audio, cnet, cnet uk, forum, mp3, podcast
Formally known as the “Crave Podcast“, the “CNET UK Podcast” is unsurprisingly produced by CNET UK, which you, guessed it, is the UK wing of CNET. This is a weekly audio show, hosted by the members of CNET UK’s “Crave” editorial team (don’t worry if the names are confusing you, you’ll get used to it), shows are usually between 30 to 50 minutes.
Nate Lanxon interviewing Dr Pamela Gay of Astronomy cast for episode 117 of the CNET UK Podcast (Copyright 2008, Nate Lanxon. Used with permission)
Before getting into the content, I’ll give kudos to the guys who produce this for being one of the most ever-evolving shows I’ve listened to. The format of the show often reinvents itself, so the following run down is subject to vary. All that said, every week you can at least expect to hear discussions about a selection of news stories from the tech world, followed by reviews of new gadgets and products from each host, followed up by answers to listener submitted questions from the CNET UK Forum. The podcast has its own dedicated forum section, called the CNET UK Podcast Lounge. Time for full disclosure, I have been a listener of the podcast for so long that they made me a moderator on the Podcast Lounge, so please take my bias into account when I say I think you really ought to come and join the Podcast Lounge where you can discuss and rant about tech to your heart’s content!
The show is currently running a three presenter set up, with Ian Morris (@ian9outof10) and Nate Lanxon (@natelanxon) as permanent hosts. The third host usually varying between Rich Trenholm, Nick Hide, Andrew Lim, Rory Reid, and occaisionally Jason Jenkins.
One last thing to throw in, another reason I enjoy the CNET UK Podcast is that it is one of the very few UK tech podcasts. Most of the podcasts I listen to are American, which is fine, I like Americans, although nothing beats a topic you enjoy being covered with people from your own culture.
At the time of writing, episode 123 was the latest episode, which you can listen to here:
[audio:http://cdn.cnet.co.uk/cnetcouk/podcasts/crave/cnetuk_podcast_123.mp3|titles=CNET UK Podcast Episode 123|artists=Ian Morris - Nate Lanxon - Rich Trenholm]
Now, if you’ve liked what you’ve seen and heard so far, you’ll be needing the following links.
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Feb 17
Mobile News David
cnet, crave, e series, e51, e55, e75, mws, nokia
As you probably know, I’m a very happy Nokia E51 user. Well I’ve just taken a look over at Crave, and there are two very attractive new E series models that are variations on the E51, both have me somewhat salivating. Shame I only buy a new phone once every few years.
Nokia E55
Nokia E75
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Jan 5
Personal David
cnet, cnetuk, forums, podcast
As mentioned on my about me page, I spent a lot of 2008 helping to build up a community on the “Podcast Lounge” forum of CNET UK. In the process, I’ve even made it on to their news pages a few times:
Well, on their latest podcast, episode 117, reviewing 2008, I am proud to say I was given an honourable mention by Nick Hide for one my longest running forum threads, “Tip of the day“. After which Nate Lanxon gave this website a plug and Kate Macefield said I was a nice guy too.
So thanks to everyone at CNET UK, it’s been fun doing my bit on the forum and here’s to 2009!
Now, without further ado, you can listen to an except of the podcast via this snazzy player I’ve just installed (if you want to go download the full podcast, this is from about 27:28 into the audio).
[audio:http://ia310833.us.archive.org/0/items/ClipFromEpisode117OfTheCnetUkPodcastFeaturingAShoutOutToDavid/cnetuk_podcast_117_drg_clip_64kb.mp3]
(Download)
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Oct 4
Website Updates David
blog, cnet, content, miniblog, php, rights
Well, I’ve had little to do with the blog for the last few days. Although you may have noticed that I’ve kept the miniBlog constantly topped up with the latest tech news.
I am pretty much settled that I know what I’m doing with this thing, I even worked how how to pull the database in and out via phpMyadmin, so that’s good.
More
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