Daily Archives:October 16th, 2006

Convergence

Well, this post comes via a 3G network, using my Nokia E61.

I’ll write more about this device soon. It does so much more than my Blackberry – better sound, wifi connectivity, VOIP calls, lovely big screen and pretty decent keyboard, to name a few – but some aspects are noticeably more flaky or obscure.

I had my Blackberry up & running and doing what I wanted very quickly, whereas I’ve been playing with this device all weekend and still haven’t quite got it as I want it. But that’s partly because there is so much more you can do with this… I didn’t spend much time configuring my BB to connect to my Asterisk server via wifi, for example! But the BB is basically an enhanced phone, where this is a very capable PDA, almost a tiny laptop, with a whole new operating system to learn – Symbian, in this case, which I’m much happier to have on my phone than anything from Redmond.

The main reason I wanted to try the E61 was to get 3G connectivity for my laptop, and it does that very nicely. It’s also better for doing blog posts from the breakfast table!
But for general ease of use, it’s hard to beat a Blackberry.

“The Device”

The DeviceThis is very cool and I wish I’d thought of it first. It will…

…keep track of several things that need metering. That includes anything from “CPU Usage” to eBay Auction Status” to our personal favorite, “The Current GDP of Uzbekistan.” From what we can tell, “The Device” connects to your Windows machine (Mac / Linux support is coming soon, apparently) and displays some piece of data generated from your computer or culled from the internet.

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser