“Living is easy with in-the-cloud backup AND eyes closed to privacy issues”

The reason is simple. It’s a tv show that was 100% guaranted created like this:
Producer guy – We want to make a show that’s Lost + 24.
Network guy – Done.

And thus FlashForward was born and odly enough watching it will make you FlashBackwards to the mysteries of Lost and the intense suspense of 24 all while making you NauseateForward towards the nearest toilet.

Stuff And Tech

Also I like blogspot much better then wordpress. So far anyways.

Finally I review the HTC Hero (because I knew you where holding you’r breath)

The Design - I really like “the lip”

My model is the white one, it has a layer of teflon to deflect nasty stuff like smudges and scrapes. Having been using the phone for over two months now without any visible permanent markings I would say this works well. I have been carefull not to put it in my jeanspocket with keys and change so that may just be sensible use and not magic materials.

Regarding the infamous “lip” that the body sports I have to say I love it. It makes the device rest nicely in the hand and also I now the orientation of the phone instantly when picking it up from my pocket. It also gives a slite flip-phone feel when using it for calls. Also as the last point regarding “the lip” is that it makes it a HTC Hero and not a HTC iPhone Wannabe, wich is very nice and to me quite important in design terms. In short I love the look and feel of the HTC Hero.

The Hardware – It’s OK

The hardware on the HTC Hero is identical to the HTC Magic with 2 exceptions, 5mpx autofocus cam (not 3.2 mpx static focus)  and has more RAM then the Magic (but store bought Magic models have the same RAM now I read in this wiki article). It’s basicly the Magic only more pretty is what I tell myself. The Hero comes with the Sense UI, but I heard that you can update you’r Magic to this so again it’s all about the design. In terms of pure power the Hero is no winner and no looser. The screen is nice, the CPU is ok, the camera is ok, the onboard memory is the biggest problem. As of writing you can not use the SD storage to save applications, no news on when this will come to Android (or from HTC?) but hackers have solved this so I would expect this to come. In any case the onboard space is the biggest drawback for the Hero, otherwise it’s a ok smartphone hardware wise.

The Software – It’s FRIGGIN SWEET!

So the software is what really makes the HTC Hero being worthy of the title “Gadget of the year” by Stuff Magazine (not smartphone number 1 tough). Running on Android 1.5 and sporting HTC Sense it is really a friggin smart phone. I cannot stress how important it is to update to the latest HTC firmware tough. The sense ui is based on 7 screens that you fill with widgets and shortcuts to programs, you start at the middle screen with three screens to the left and three to the right (no adding or deletion of screens sadly). Before the update the movement between these screens would be terribly laggy at times and this made the whole phone seem terrible sluggish (wich it was). Now the screens are much more responsive and you can just fill them up with widgets and cool stuff. The HTC widgets really stand out from the Android ones with being more appealing to look at. The real deal of the sense UI is that you end up with a fully customized interface that does what you want it to do and in the end feels really personal, a really nice feeling if I say so myself. The Android OS has it’s kinks and strange “why isn’t this built in?” moments like there not being any way to check data traffic use (but this is logged so all you need is a market app like NetCounter). Most of these lacks are picked up by Android Market apps, a market that is full of nice and usefull apps and games and also tons of terrible ones, just like on the iPhone. All in all I like the Android OS more then iPhone because there are apparently no restrictions on the apps. Many of them improve on system apps like sms, mms, browsers, mediaplayer etc. wich means that if I don’t like the built in programs I can 9 out of 10 times just replace them with a few clicks. Also you can easily download and install apps that are not on the Android Market, there is no restriction there either. You still have to root (give yourself super user rights) the phone to run apps that mess with super sensitive stuff that can brake the phone, but all in all the market and app policies are much less restrictive then on the iPhone. Sure there aren’t 10000 fart apps yet, but it’s getting there fast enough.

Software wise then the Hero is in my mind just genius and perfect for my taste and preferences. Integration with Google Apps (gmail, calendar, maps) and social apps (twitter, facebook, flickr) is also supersweet and very nicely done.

Nice OS – Open Source OS

The Bad – Windows? Really?

I wanted to update the firmware on my phone to the latest greatest version that fixed the one big flaw with the Hero, the speed. To do this you HAVE TO HAVE FRIGGIN WINDOWS. I do not have Windows. I have 2 macs and a couple of Ubuntu servers. After much hassle I borrowed my girlfriend’s computer with Vista and did the upgrade using the terrible process of downloading HTC Sync (for windows only) and the firmware update (wich required opening the phone and reading the serial number). This was not a smooth and nice process (even tough the actual updating itself was ok enough). HTC should ideally have made it possible to load the ROM from the SD card or at least have a Mac and Linux client solution. This is in my mind the biggest flaw with the Hero as of writing.

The Conclusion – A Nerd Class Hero

I love the Hero, pure and simple. I would recomend this phone to anyone that is considering buying a smartphone. It’s no iPhone and it never will be, but it makes up for this in spades with the Sense ui, google integration and much less restrictive policies when it comes to software on and off the official market. I can’t wait to se what HTC will do with Android in the future and I’m excite to se what other companies will do with it.

Android and Hero as pictured in my mind

Office Live

So Microsoft has launched Office Live which is supposedly their answer to Google Docs. I have tested it for about 5 minutes and I conclude that it is worthless. You need a plugin to be able to edit documents, wich 1) I don’t want and 2) defeats the purpose of online documents in the first place. With Google Docs I just need a browser and the net and I’m all good. If I have to download plugins everytime then I’m back a square one, a online webfolder would be just as much “office live” as that.

Suddenly I remember why I don’t use Office anymore

HTC Hero Update

You need Windows to update you’r Android phone. This is fail in so many many ways. I will someday update my HTC Hero, I have no idea when this will be.

Google Wave IE Quickfix

I’m really looking forward to Google Wave, in the meantime I was delighted to read that Google has fixed the “IE problem” for hopefully everyone by making a plugin that gives IE the power of HTML 5. Check out the blogpost and kudos to Google for fixing IE (hopefully).

]]> http://stuffandlife.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/htc-hero-review-update/feed/ 2 rangor http://stuffandlife.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/from-one-google-account-to-the-next/ http://stuffandlife.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/from-one-google-account-to-the-next/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:51:38 +0000 rangor http://stuffandlife.wordpress.com/?p=582 ]]> These last past weeks I have been running a project called: “Changing Google Accounts”. I’m changing from the lame name+nick@gmail.com email to name.lastname@gmail.com instead. The change has gone quite smoothly thanks to a bunch of small tricks and hacks. Here are some of them that I haven’t forgotten already:

Gmail:

• Activate POP3 on you’r old Gmail and import all your old mail from the new one (takes time!)
• Add your old gmail as a sendmail option in you’r new account
• Forward your old gmail mail to your new one
• Use a filter with is:unread in the “Has the words” field and mark those as read

Google Reader

• Export you’r old feeds and import them in your new one

Google Docs

• Select all you’r items and share them with your new account (buggy!)
• Change ownership (more buggy!)

Google Calendar

• Share your calendars with your new account

Those are the ones I have so far. As for ALOT of other google account stuff I’m kinda struggling trough it. Tasks is spanking new (but still nice) so I’m just copy pasting. Google Sites should work with sharing. All in all the transition was smoother then I had feared and I’m regretting that I didn’t change accounts sooner.

All hail the mighty Google Chrome Browser!

It’s fast

Google Chrome is a very very very very fast browser. Also this is something that seems to actually stay true after several sites loaded and cached (other browsers tend to start out nice and quick and then decide to bog down). Tabs popup as fast as I manage to want them and the whole experience is “fast”.

It’s nice

The GUI is nice and clutterfree. Keep it simple stupid is very true in the interface of Chrome, customizing it with skins and buttons is also adequate for my simple tastes. The nice animations when making new tabs, moving them or closing them is a nice touch that makes the handling of tabs more fluid (why I don’t really know, it just is).

It’s google

If you use bing.com, yahoo.com or plenty of other non-google-related sites then this browser may not be for you, at least not yet. You can change the default search engine, but there is no search-box (you just type non-url stuff in the url-box and it searches) so it’s centered on using one search engine. All the gApps (google apps like gmail, google-docs, google calendar etc.) work very nice and smooth, but integrated Google Gears (for offline gApps goodness) is still not in the alpha.

It’s almost ready

For a alpha release this is very very nice and usable. It crashes from time to time, but that let’s you test the recover function, wich works pretty well. I’m guessing that in 3 weeks (fingers crossed people) Chrome will be released for a wider Mac OS X audience beacuse this build is really really nice.

Summary

Do you like google? If yes then use this browser. Do you like fast web browsers that do what they should? If yes then use this browser. Do you need all of your twenty-something firefox extensions? If yes then this is not the browser for you, at least not yet.

Finally Quake Live is available for Mac. It works very very well and I’m sitting on a crappy 2.0 Ghz Macbook with intel GMA 95 integrated graphics (I do have 4 gigs of RAM tough). It is nice to se a gaming company that pushes the envelope on what is possible with a “web-browser” game (it requires a custom plug-in). Also with more and more nice web-based games like Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms (cooming soon I hope) and Battlefield Heroes I can add games to my list of “it lives in the cloud” systems.