The McKenzie’s Blog…

When I went for my walk tonight I took the camera along. The walk was a short one due to the weather turning bad. You can see the route I walked by CLICKING HERE.

The pics I took have been uploaded to Flickr - CLICK HERE, go and have a look. I’ve geocoded just about all of the ones I uploaded. If you don’t know what means, simply put each photo has been associated to a point on a map.

I’ve also put a some new videos of the kids being kids ..

video 1 - video 2 - video 3

I’m just testing a blogging app on my phone. so far its alright. if this posts I will update in the morning with details of the application.

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Haha ok, well, the posting worked.  I noticed that because the server is on UTC and my phone is on BST the posting actually was “scheduled” for posting 1 hour after I actually hit the submit button.  There might be an option in moBlog for that, I’ll have to have a look.   Otherwise this is slick, I can post blog entries from my phone, including being able to attach images to postings.

I’ve decided to start to use Flickr for my photos and videos.  I will keep the current gallery in place with the pics and videos we have now, but from now on I’ll be putting all new items into Flickr.

You can easily get to our Flickr page by going to:

http://flickr.uk-experience.com 

Here’s a new video of Emma, and more can be found in The Kids Collection on Flickr.

I also shoved all the pics from Mull up on Flickr as well, they are here

Isle of Mull - 2008 album.

No, it’s not yet another new phone, just that I haven’t really said much about this one since I got it.

This is the HTC Kaiser. I won’t rehash everything that’s already been posted by the folks at http://wiki.xda-developers.com. Check that site out, it’s an incredible resources for SmartPhones/PDA’s and the like.

Basically in a nutshell this is the phone:

Specs and Tech Info

• Qualcomm MSM 7200, 400MHz
• Windows Mobile 6 Professional
• ROM: 256MB (accessible 145.24MB), RAM: 128MB
• Dimension: 112mm (L) X 59mm (W) X 19mm (T)
• Weight: 190g with battery
• Display: 2.8″, 240 X 320 QVGA TFT-LCD display with adjustable angle and backlight
• Network: Tri-band HSDPA/UMTS (850, 1900, 2100 MHz), Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Device Control: Finger scrolling and panning, 5-way navigation control, 3-way Jog Wheel
• Keyboard: Slide-out lit QWERTY keyboard
• Keyboard Layout Pictures
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi 802.11b/g, HTC ExtUSB
• GPS: Built-in GPS and connector for external antennas, A-GPS supported
• Camera: 3MP CMOS colour camera with auto focus on the back, front VGA CMOS colour camera (for video calls. No front Camera on AT&T Tilt.)
• Audio: Built-in mono microphone and speaker
• Audio Output: Proprietary jack
• Battery: 1350mAh rechargeable Li-polymer battery, shape: KAIS160 (35H00088-00M)
• Expansion Slot: MicroSD(SD2.0 compatible, MicroSDHC compatible up to 8gb tested)
• AC Adapter: 100-250V AC, 5V and 1A DC

MyMobileR is one of the most essential apps for WM6 devices. This app installs both on the phone and the PC. Once the phone is connected to the PC I can get a window up that allows me to completely control the phone from my PC. I can use the PC keyboard and mouse to navigate and enter messages and what not. I’d have to say it has it’s place in the top 10 to top 20 apps for people with this sort of phone/PDA. Oh, and it’s completely FREE!! Incredible.

My opinion of the device is high, but as with all of these all-in-one devices the battery is what really lets it down. This is not a reflection of the choice of battery installed in the device, it’s very high spec and power, but the unit just consumes so much power it’s unreal. I have a battery monitor installed that will report the current draw on the battery. With the camera on, gps on, wifi on (and connected) and bluetooth on (and connected) I’ve seen it drawing 2100mA, this was briefly reported but still, that’s an insane amount of power for a “phone” to pull. Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) is very nice indeed. Things have really changed since my last WM based PDA which was running 2003SE or something.

The OS generally runs pretty fast, depending on what I have open and running in the background, but I can’t complain. I did have the Blackberry Connect software installed to try it out with my work Blackberry server.. this worked well but it really put a beating on the CPU and battery of the device. I ended up removing that and now getting emails via the Microsoft Push-Email service through the webaccess portal of Exchange. This, while not getting emails to be instantly is a lot better on the memory and battery life of the phone.

The availability of software for this device is off the charts. There’s so much of it out there, much of which is free or at least cheap and justifiable for the cost. This was one of the big reasons I had t get rid of the Blackberry I had. It was good, but getting software wasn’t as easy and what was available was a lot more expensive.  I expect because of the licensing and certification that I think software on the BB has to go through.

All in all, a very good phone and would recommend it anyone that likes to tinker. I can’t say I’d suggest a technophobe get it, there’s just way too much t break and get setup. Now, just have to look at replacing WM6 with Linux on it

Pure genius ..

About this Talk

Clifford Stoll captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides — and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he’s a scientist: “Once I do something, I want to do something else.”

About Clifford Stoll

Astronomer Clifford Stoll helped to capture a notorious KGB hacker back in the infancy of the Internet. His agile mind continues to lead him down new paths — from education and techno-skepticism… Read full bio »

Check this site out..

OK, I’m hooked on .  I was a bit dubious of it’s real usefulness to start with.  OK, there sure are a lot of mindless postings to twitter, but I suppose it depends if they are made by someone you know or not.. you’ll clearly be missing some context.  I am definitely going to be keep on using this great service.

A lot of the people I follow and those following me are ham radio folks.  It’s a slick and instant way to send updates to your followers and friends.   For example, if you were sitting on the radio and calling CQ you might send a tweet¹ to say what frequency you’re on.  Another use might be if you are out working specific squares or counties or whatever you could let folks know which one you are in and what freq you are on.

A lot of audio and video podcasters use twitter as well, they send out tweets to let listeners know if they are on live and a URL where to find them, or just to let their fans know when new podcasts are up on their sites.

It’s also just another form of CB really, you can message with friends around the world while out and about or just at home.

Access to twitter is pretty wide open.. you can use SMS text messages, the main website - http://twitter.com, the mobile website http://m.twitter.com or a host of applications for mobile phones, PC, PDA’s, etc, etc.  It’s just crazy how popular this service is.

Check it out and add me to your friends

¹ - a tweet is what a twitter posting is called

This is just a test of a new Live Writer Plugin..

This is a link to an Amazon S3 hosted image..

04062007016.jpg

This is the image embedded