Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Mobiles”
April 28, 2013
Life with Surface RT - and why I’ve upgraded to a Surface Pro
I picked up my Surface RT on launch day last year as I happened to be in New York for work. The strong yen made it a bargain and I’ve been living with it since. Because it won’t run most desktop apps, it has seen limited use. It was an excellent video player during flights, but nothing an iPad could not have handled. Word made a passing replacement for Windows Live Writer with it’s built in blogging system, but it wasn’t perfect.
October 28, 2012
AdBlock alternative on Windows RT’s IE10
On the Surface’s Windows RT, you cannot install alternative browsers. This means no AdBlock.
There is a workaround to this, using IE10’s “Tracking Protection”. First, fire up desktop IE10, click the little gear in the top right and select Safety -> Tracking Protection. Click on “Get a Tracking Protection List online…”.
You should see a list of tracking protection lists on Microsoft’s site. You will want to click Add next to the Easylist lists.
October 28, 2012
Why I won’t be returning my Microsoft Surface RT
I’ve picked up a Microsoft Surface RT from the “temporary” New York Times Square Microsoft Store. While the purchasing experience was a bit of a mess (untrained sales staff – I ended up having to type my own details into their POS terminal as I’m not quite sure the guy knew how to type), I managed to make off with a properly boxed (I skipped getting the staff to unbox it and walk me through the “Out of Box Experience”) 32GB Surface, Type Cover and VGA adapter.
March 4, 2012
Using a Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone on Softbank Japan
The only official Windows Phone in Japan is au’s Toshiba IS12T. Not wanting to change plan, I picked up a SIM unlocked Nokia Lumia 800 and put the Softbank micro SIM card from my iPhone 4 inside. If you want a more general guide to setting up Windows Phone for previous iPhone users and what apps should be installed, read Scott Hanselman’s post. Remember to disable iMessage if you are moving from an iPhone.
July 22, 2010
Skype changes its mind - drops 3G call charges
That was quick: iPhone update: now supports multitasking, no additional charges for calling over 3G
Skype has dropped their plans to charge for 3G calls and have released an update to their iPhone client that finally supports multitasking.
At Skype, we believe that better call quality and better availability (which is achieved with an app capable of multitasking and/or making calls over 3G) lead to increased call frequency and longer calls.
July 18, 2010
Skype trying to charge for Mobile
I got an interesting invitation to fill in a survey about Skype Mobile. Skype on iPhone is an application that is deliberately ignored by Skype while they try and figure out how to make money from it. Their recent spat with Fring, who have implemented 3G Skype, background multitasking and video chat on iPhone 4 already, highlights their position on this. There is now no way to use Skype on Android after Fring had to remove the service since Skype refuse to release a client.
May 16, 2010
Updated: Japan iPad 3G is "not exactly" SIM-locked - Steve Jobs says so
There is a massive hullabaloo about Softbank’s exclusive deal with Apple for the 3G iPads here. Currently, you cannot get a 3G iPad without going through Softbank and signing up for a data plan (either 2 years or some terrible 4,000 yen per 1GB “offer”). This is in stark contrast to the fantastic deal Americans get in the US with AT&T.
Softbank appears to be announcing to the press that there will be a “SIM Lock” (SIMロック).
March 16, 2010
No native Japanese text in Windows Phone 7 … yet
The first preview version of the Windows Phone 7 SDK is out and it doesn’t support Japanese (or non-Latin) text in the English ROM. This is a huge disappointment.
One of the major advantages the iPhone has over almost every other smartphone platform (and the major reason I bought mine in the first place – I needed Japanese language support) is the built in support for non-Latin languages and their input methods.
November 24, 2009
iPhone 3G O2 finally unlocked
O2 in the UK have finally properly unlocked my iPhone – no more software unlock needed to run it on Softbank. Hurrah!
****
July 3, 2009
XNA QR Codes
I’ve just pieced together a renderer for QR codes that outputs a texture instead of System.Drawing.Image objects (the Xbox .Net Framework version does not have access to the Drawing namespace). I’ll be using this as a way of uploading times on Avatar Kart to my server instead of copying a code which you had to do in Lines, my previous game. I will release the code once I’ve tidied it up a bit.
July 27, 2008
Mail.app and iPhone encode Japanese as Korean
The latest of ridiculous bugs I have found after my switchover to Mac is that Korean takes precedence over Japanese when “Automatic” is selected as the encoding on Mail.app. It literally sees Japanese text as Korean and encodes emails as ISO-2022-KR (Korean) if both Japanese and Korean are selected under Languages.
Try it yourself: make sure both Korean and Japanese are in the Languages list (so they show both show up in Mail.
January 15, 2008
iPhone improvements for the UK and Japan
El Reg is reporting that O2 has been told by Apple not to release sales figures until Apple say so.
UK carrier O2 has confirmed that Apple has placed it under a gagging order to prevent it from publicly revealing how many iPhone handsets it’s sold to date.
The company’s head of media relations, Simon Lloyd, told Register Hardware that it’s a stipulation within the company’s sales agreement with Apple that O2 can’t release any such details until the Mac maker says so.
April 10, 2007
PocketStackz (PocketPC) review
For Japanese language practice for my course I use PocketStackz by some chaps called “Minddate software”. Its an all-purpose language flashcard program with an emphasis on Asian languages (such as that an Asian Unicode font needs to be installed on your PocketPC).
What sets it apart is that you can immediately see what words you need to study at any point since the program sorts the words into “stacks” from “unknown” on the left to “known” on the right.
April 2, 2007
Japanese keitai flashcards
Update April 2012: Five years later after several server moves, this is no longer online – I’m still hunting for the files. Most likely it wouldn’t work on new keitai’s anyway.
Edo no Tango (Ed’s Tango, エドの単語) is a Flash Lite based Japanese language vocabulary and kanji flashcard utility. Developed to help my study, it currently contains lessons 10 through 17 from the Genki series of Japanese language textbooks.
It uses Flash Lite 1.