PlatySoft

Madness!

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:24:09 GMT

I have played quite a few games on my iPhone, especially after I upgraded to a more powerful (and battery hungry) 3GS. none of the games was as addictive as Tower Madness. I had to actually remove the game from my device to stop playing with it and I’m not a gamer (or hadn’t been for at least 10 years). Today I was wondering why did I enjoy it so much. the reason is a combination of these facts:

I love RTS games.
it has the correct amount of controls for a small screen with no “right clicks”
it’s simple and smooth.

the thing I haven’t been able to figure out is, why did I engage in hours and hours of killing un-armed aliens who will parade in front of my laser guns and won’t even defend themselves and their only crime is their desire to steal my sheep!

iPhone OS 3.0 review

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:56:34 GMT

As I am signed up for the apple iPhone developer thingy, I got the chance to test drive the new yet to come OS 3.0. here is what I think about it:

The good:

The best thing about the new OS 3.0 is, it does some of the things that 2.2 does after jail breaking. to be honest, the copy/paste is done beautifully. It is giving me A2DP and the ipod application has some nice controls for audio books (which is my main concern in regards to ipod app). I could not make the tethering work (maybe because my phone is an unlocked Telstra phone, connected to 3, but I doubt it) regardless of what I did. I spent a whole 4 hours on it, and decided to trust other people: it works (apparently).

I really like the phone-wide search and how it’s implemented, also I really liked the simple fact that installing a new app doesn’t result in putting the app in the first page (even if there is empty slots in there). new installed apps go to second page forward, which I really appreciate.

I also liked the fact that it now syncs my notes with my outlook.

There are other things that I’m interested to see how they will change the future of appstore, like the “turn by turn direction” being “allowed” which I hope will result in having tomtom on iPhone soon.

VOIP is supposed to be allowed.

MMS is going to work (I don’t care)

The bad:

A2DP is totally flaky (let’s hope it’s because it’s a beta version), sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. during the 3 days I had OS 3.0 on my phone, I couldn’t find out what sequence of events makes it not work, but one thing was certain, my car stereo (Sony something something with Bluetooth) was never automatically detected as a music player, just as a phone handset. I had to remind the phone every morning to recognise that the car stereo system could play music. I had the very same problem with my windows mobile 6 HTC Universal as well (and never with my cheap Nokia 6120). Also there was no way to tell iPhone “in the presence of such and such Bluetooth device, play music on IT instead of speaker”. I had to tell the ipod app to redirect music to my Bluetooth device.

Regarding to search, having only 3 days worth of emails from my exchange server, I don’t think the phone-wide search is going to change my life.

The ugly:

There is A2DP, hooray, but where is my bloody AVRCP? (for those who don’t remember what AVRCP stands for: “Audio/Video Remote Control Profile”). I have to take my phone out of my pocket, slide the slider, press pause, before I can talk to someone in the street. with the wired headset, at least, I had the button to press.

There is syncing the notes, but not over the air! so, I have my emails, contacts and calendar syncing over the air, but my notes should wait for syncing with my PC!

Where is my task list sync? I had to pay a total of $27 for two sets of software (one of them didn’t work at all, despite the shiny screenshots they used to see the software to me on appstore), to have my tasks from my exchange server on my iPhone (none of them work on 3.0 by the way).

VOIP is not a first class citizen, meaning, you are on a voip call, let’s say in my case, using pennytel, and there is an incoming call on my “real” phone. guess what will happen? you are right: my VOIP call will terminate (because it’s not a real phone call) and my phone will ring.

So, in bitter reality, my OS 3.0 will make my beloved iPhone operate almost as good as my “free on a $20 plan” Nokia 6120, plus the bloody sexy form factor and bloody addictive and useful touch screen. Honestly, I’m still carrying my 6120 around and if Nokia would come with a multi touch, glass surface touch screen, I would switch to S60 anytime.

GTD tool for outlook

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:43:58 GMT

I had been looking for a good and preferably open source GTD add on for outlook. I happened to find Jello Dashboard 5 and I’m loving it. apart from occasional java script problem that goes away by pressing F5 thus refreshing the page, I have had no problems with it. everything is inside my outlook and exchange. I can even use OWA and search or filter by the tags.

Brain damage

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:13:06 GMT

I have been attending a SharePoint training course whole week and can't feel my forehead. Whoever designed this abomination should stand trial.

I'm back!

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:05:33 GMT

I've been very busy lately, so I didn't get to write or update the website.

here is a list of things to come in the next weeks:

new blog posts about my talk on ASP.Net MVC framework.
new blog posts about the future of Scheherazade s60.
news about Scheherazade for Windows mobile.
plans on Scheherazade for iPhone (this one may have to be limited to jail broken iPhones, due to restrictions imposed by Apple)

Did I mention I love my Iliad?

Sat, 03 May 2008 03:12:09 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I finally convinced myself that I have to buy an IRex Iliad. I started using it with a lot of doubt. for example, I was wondering if paper is easer to read because of the black and white contrast as opposed to the slightly darker background colour of an e-ink display. I'm so used to my Iliad that I don't go anywhere without in now. But before you fall in love with yours, you have to activate shell scripts on it, just go to IRex web site and request it, they push it to your Iliad. after that you can start hacking your Linux based book reader and the fun starts. better pdf reader, more formats including chm and many more. I will write about my hacks later.

Symbian weird Volume control

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:08:17 GMT

As much as I think the new feature in Vista that each application has an independent volume level is cool, the very same feature is NOT cool at all on your mobile phone! Symbian (or at least the only flavour I ever used, S60) has this concept of each application having it's own volume level and I couldn't find a master volume. the result of that is you think your phone is silent and it starts announcing the weather in the middle of a meeting... very embarrassing...

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Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:05:35 GMT

I had a great morning today. It's not everyday that you get to talk to someone who shares your passion for software. Today I got to meet Don Worthley of IT Crossing. Long story short, I decided to use windows live writer to write my blogs and since I use DNN, I found his product MetaPost; then I had some problems with my settings as I'm very new to DNN. The support I got from IT Crossing as a user of their free community product was so impressive that I'm a happy customer of their professional version now. I will recommend their service to anyone I know.