Interesting Links for 1-2-2011

[andrewducker]

• Boots to start selling paternity tests over the counter. 1 in 25 fathers to get unexpected news...
  (tags: parents children)
• Finally, an Android tablet that's not a huge pile of poo. (Seriously - what is it with all the shit Android tablets?)
  (tags: android tablet archos)
• IPv4 enters exhaustion phase
  (tags: ipv6 internet)
• Egypt shuts off its last ISP. I can't see this lasting much longer.
  (tags: egypt internet)
• Artemis - a computer game where 6 of you take control of a Star Trek-like ship, and have to work cooperatively. Awesome!
  (tags: computer_games startrek)
• Android overtakes Nokia to become the world's leading smartphone platform
  (tags: android mobile_phones)
• New Age terrorists develop homeopathic bomb
  (tags: homeopathy funny terrorism)

Comments

[andrewducker]

I'm just glad that there's widespread competition, rather than Apple getting all of the developer love.

I'm not likely to go back to Nokia unless they massively overhaul their interface and get a lot more developers on board.

Meantime, I'm very happy with my Desire, although I now seem to have replaced all of the interface except for the Dialer (and am tempted to change that too, I keep playing around with alternatives). The sheer fact that I can do so makes it for me (although there are a lot of other things I like too).

[matgb]

Absolutely, the entry of Android has forced both Nokia and Apple to up their game, and will continue to do so. The N8 appears, by sales, to be a success, and there're apps for it that I really want (I rang Orange, I can next upgrade on my contract may14th, I shall be doing so). Developers are there, but whether they'll get enough is another thing.

Ultimately, a phone has to suit you and your purposes--Android I can see is good, but for use primarily as a phone, not good enough. Yet.

I suspect this may partially be due to different phone use cultures in the US compared to the UK/EU--we use SMS more from what I understand, and don't pay to receive them (I mean, really, WTF?).

But Jennie's Desire not loading all her contacts to Google like it said it would, then rebooting and deleting all the data, really was bad--she had her karate club AGM last night, but couldn't actually ask anyone for a lift there as she's not seen any of them to get phone numbers back as she's still not allowed to actually do karate yet. If a phone can't be trusted to keep the phone numbers it's had uploaded to it, it's not a functional mobile phone, even if it's an unusual glitch, it's wrong.

I really hope they continue to improve, and especially get the 'phone' aspects fixed. I also suspect I'll stick to Nokia for a bit, but continuing to have multiple choices is good.

[andrewducker]

I have to say that if it had eaten all my contacts I'd be very fed up with it too. So far it's not done anything like that to me (and, indeed, the way I got my contacts _on_ to it was via syncing it with Google Contacts).

Works for me just fine for SMS though - I'm curious what problem you/she had?

[matgb]

Specific, yesterday she tried to use it for the last time to text all her contacts with her new number (might as well use up the free texts).

One of the numbers was wrong. It kept retrying to send, was unable to send, and then reattempted it. We couldn't find the outbox, couldn't tell it to stop sending, and eventually just turned it off then put it on silent.

Nokia and Sony phones I've had always ask to retry if there's a problem number. Whether it was a one off or similar, it was still daft. And sure, finding the outbox is something you know how to do or not, but Nokia's have a logo shortcut whent here's something in there in the status area.

[andrewducker]

How odd. I don't get failed texts often, but when I do they pop up in the notification bar to tell me they've failed, and then I can choose to resend them or not. Having said that, that's through a different SMS program, and I can't remember what the original is like. In any case, that must have been horribly frustrating.