Which mobile email solution to choose?

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Posted in E-mail, Gadgets, Internet on November 29, 2007 at 7:59 pm

Nokia e61i, Blackberry 8820, Apple iPhone, Windows Smartphone or something else?

In our business email has reached critical mass and the time has come to take it mobile. It’s a revolution in our little world almost as big as the introduction of the mobile phone itself. We already implemented Exchange Server 2007 but now I need to decide which direction to go for our field based personnel. Currently they have a mix of old but reliable Nokia based phones that pretty much just make and receive calls and send and receive SMS - but email on the road is rapidly becoming a requirement.

Looking at what’s available and even more importantly what I can get my hands on for testing I have this shortlist.

• Existing standard mobile phone (I have a Sony Ericsson K800i)
• Nokia e61i (we already have one in test)
• Blackberry 8820 (I recently won one in a prize draw)
• Apple iPhone (someone I know has one that I may be able to experiment with)
• Windows Smartphone (I may be able to get my hands on one for a while)

So the choices are there - unless there is a device I’ve missed of course.

Moving forward I guess the first thing is to decide what we want to achieve:

• make and receive calls
• send and receive SMS
• Send and receive email - preferably using Push with Exchange Server 2007 (preferably headers with the body an option)
• Use Wi-Fi if available to keep the costs down
• Have a decent battery life
• Be easy to use
• Open Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and PDF files
• Keep costs low

As we already have Exchange Server 2007 I am leaning towards using Exchange with Direct Push. The Nokia has a downloadable sync feature with Exchange and I am currently experimenting with that however the end user is using the standard pull facility for email (not without the odd quirk such as deleted emails remaining on the device!). The Blackberry, I believe, requires a dedicated node (BES Server) which could become a problem and the iPhone is on a single network at present which limits its appeal somewhat - though to use one is almost an emotional experience! I have always found battery life on Windows Smartphone’s to be somewhat short but I admit I haven’t used any of the recent ones (I gave up with my iMate JasJar last year because it was just soooo slow).

Have you successfully implemented a mobile email solution? Have you any advice/tips? Have you field tested or are you using any of the above (or any other) devices? If so, how have you got on with them?

Rated: 100% (4 votes)

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Why we love our digital photo frame

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Posted in Gadgets on at 4:57 pm

Dusty cupboards, spider filled lofts, coffee stained photo albums, unopened boxes from yester-years house move, and buried under the coffee table. That’s where you’ll probably find most photographs. I know ours used to be. Not anymore though. Not since ‘it’ arrived. Picking up on Simon Brew’s Blog post “Should we declare war on the digital photo frame?”, in July, I thought I would explain why we love our digital photo frame.

In fact, ‘it’ is the only technological development that’s got my partner any near being remotely interested in technology (excluding of course Sky+). ‘It’ is of course our digital photo frame which is now 6 months old. My partner loves our digital photo frame and can often be found uploading new pictures to the memory stick - a feat that would never have even been considered prior to its arrival. I got nowhere with an iPod, a PDA lasted about a week and even the mobile phone was only used for calls and texting – but the digital photo frame – that’s different – that changed everything. The knock on effect has been that she has also started using her laptop which used to gather dust in the cupboard, the 3 mega-pixel camera in her mobile phone is also in regular use. She even asked me the other day if she could Bluetooth photos direct from her phone to her laptop. What? Have I moved to Stepford? This person previously shunned technology and now I have to check my facts on the Internet. Wow.

So now we now have all (literally thousands) of our photos nicely scanned in, copied to a memory stick (that cost less than a fiver) and they are all appearing on a sideboard in our living room at 10 second intervals. It’s always a good feeling to look back at old photographs and sometimes we even switch the TV off to watch the pictures go round – bearing in mind the sheer number of channels on TV these days and the very little watchable content then anything that’s an alternative has to be a good thing - especially since the kids have arrived. They love it too and can often be found fiddling with (fighting over) the remote control to get their picture with granny or gramps up on view

Our 10” digital photo frame has become something of a talking point for family and friends who often find themselves popping up in pictures - so much so that digital photo frames have become very much a must have item on family and friends Christmas lists. We are even planning to get a second one. Plus it’s an added bonus to know we’ve got a backup of all our beloved photographs in a safe place (other than Snapfish) that can be grabbed at a moments notice should an emergency occur.

Our digital photo frame also plays music so it has all our sentimental music tracks and audio recordings of the kids ready for playback. It also supports video – something we are really hoping to take advantage of when we get our digital camcorder this year. So if like us you have your photos in a dusty pile or locked away somewhere in a rarely used photo album then I would really recommend a digital photo frame.

Rated: 100% (1 votes)

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Lessons in making a multi-lingual website

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Posted in Programming, Languages, Internet, E-Commerce on November 23, 2007 at 4:57 pm

I confess - I only speak one language (excluding programming languages of course!). Some people might even tell you I have difficulty with this one. However, I was still asked to work on the technical angle of converting a website to a multi-lingual website - to include French and German language variations. The actual “language” side would be handled by someone else - phew I thought, oh and apparently the project would be a breeze. Now, the older I get the more worried I look when people tell me things are going to be a breeze because more often than not they aren’t. This was to become no exception.

Finding a translator was simple enough, our local chamber of commerce were very helpful in this respect. I was a little concerned when there was no project meeting, discussion or even email communication to lay out the requirement but as the “language” side was being handled by someone else I was not too concerned. As long as I received the text then the technical implementation should be quite straightforward.

It took just over a week for me to prepare a notepad file full of text to send to the translators but then a number of Word files arrived via email and to my surprise the job was declared complete. It seems the translators and the person handling the “language” side had decided to approach the translation by saving pages from the website into Word and translate them directly. “Now all you have to do is load them up on the web server and you’re set”. No, I’m sorry I reply - but we are far from “set”. You see the website is dynamically loaded and uses ASP with HTML templates and the content can change following a browser refresh (and some during an image or link hover). In addition, a large amount of text is saved as images to ensure that it is consistent - the translating people didn’t do any translation of image and left them the way they were – ouch.

I still managed to muddle through the French version but the German version had a bunch of missing text which turned out that someone had marked portions of it as hidden text in Word - by default Word doesn’t appear to show hidden text. After several dozen emails back and forth we discovered the problem (by accident as it turns out) but the delays were still there. As I was preparing the notepad file which eventually never got used I also realised something quite important. Certain phrases don’t translate very well and the impact (and sometimes even the meaning) of words and phrases can be lost and even worse much of the content is aimed at the UK market and so refers very much to the UK and to UK guidance and regulations. Of what value, interest or use this might be to someone in France or Germany - I am left to wonder!

So what is the moral of the story? If someone comes along with a job and tells you it’s going to be a breeze - look busy, for heavens sake, look busy.