Headworx

As I posted before, my BlackBerry Bold arrived without any special BlackBerry data plan. Just the smartphone and packaged data plan from the service provider (T-Mobile Poland). This selection turned out to be a disaster for two reasons. First: the way the Bold handles packet data connections (aka GPRS) combined with the way T-Mobile bills packet data (even in packages) results in an average bill to reach 150MB a month (the real amount of transmitted data is far less than that, but BlackBerry applications open and close data sessions very often, so every 3kB or 5kB session is rounded up to the so called "first 100kB"). While this can be handled at home by selecting a large enough data plan (500MB a month in my case), any trip abroad will likely bring you close to Chapter 11... Second: there are a number of very useful applications (namely: Facebook Mobile, Google Talk) that do not work without any subscription to BlackBerry services (BIS - prosumer or BES - corporate). So even...

Having the hardware covered a week ago, today I wanted to touch a little bit on the software on the Blackberry Bold. Hardware - wise the device is almost perfect. How about software then? Well... the first impression - as with the hardware - is it's extremely well implemented, with a lot of attention paid to the details. I started my journey with the Blackberry installing the PC software in order to migrate my contacts stored in the Microsoft Outlook . I did not expect any difficulties here, and they did not happen. Both the installation process and the transfer went smoothly. On thing that can be noticed on the first encounter with the Blackberry PC software is it is designed to help you migrate from one device to a new one. These days we rarely start with smartphones from scratch. Usually we have a lot of data and meta-data to move, and sadly, very often we move the meta data manually. Re-entering passwords, Internet bookmarks, wallpapers, ringtones etc. People hate doing this (a...

So from time to time I make a switch from one platform to another. From one device to another one. From one service to a new, better (do not laugh, please!) one. They are stories worth telling. I wish marketing departments were reading them. Who knows , may be they do? So the Episode 1 of the Switch saga is going to be about my new Blackberry Bold. Faithful readers are probably aware I was a long time user of various Windows Mobile platforms, actually starting from the i-Mate SP3 in 2004 (actually still one of the best phones I had), then moving to the SP5m , and after a short period with JasJar and TyTN, I settled for the Samsung SGH-i600 almost two years ago. It was a great ride with Windows Mobile, unfortunately the platform has been steadily losing its edge. iPhones hit the market and revolutionized the way manufacturers (and users) think about smart phones. I was considering iPhone for a long time. I even got one (the 3G), but as great as the device is, it proved to be somehow p...

It has been a while since I mentioned Qualcomm here. They are pushing ahead on full throttle. A few days ago Qualcomm demonstrated a couple of devices powered solely by their latest Snapdragon chipsets. I posted a short entry on the Snapdragon platform two years ago. At that time it all was like a fantasy... Today the chip is ready and OEMs are building new devices based on it. The specs are impressive: Two 1,5GHz cores (my latest high end laptop has two 1,86GHz cores...) Built-in Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS (no GPS on my laptop!) Mobile broadband (of course, Qualcomm is a modem chipsets manufacturer) Accelerated WSXGA (1440x900) video (same as in the latest 15,4" MacBook Pro) 720p HD Video output 12 megapixel camera Judging by the above, we will hardly be able to call what is built on the Snapdragon a cellphone. With high resolution screen and two application cores, it will be a powerful teleputer. And we should see a number pof these devices flood the netbook market, currently occu...

Multi room audio has been relatively easy to solve. One central storage / Internet audio services gateway appliance (in my case the faithful ReadyNas running the SlimServer software). And a number of players (in my case a number of faithful Logitech duets) connected over the home WiFi LAN. The standard Ethernet / IP network layer has been more than enough to stream high quality audio around. And the standard Ethernet / IP network layer has given the ultimate flexibility in building / converging the network topology. Bringing audio to just another room? Piece of cake... Make sure the room is within the range of the home WiFi network and plug just another audio receiver to an amplifier and speakers. Remote controllers operate over WiFi too, so no problem there either. But when we move to multiroom video, we are far, far from where the audio solutions are present now. The reason is the bandwidth. FullHD, or 1080p uncompressed high definition video stream requires a network capable of car...