Wednesday 30th April 2008
I saw a small article on MSN about "What your email address says about you..." a few days ago and having an opinion thought I would check for the original article so that I could quote the author. A google search found dozens of items and different perspectives so I guess its more a theme than a single article. Being an I.T. Professional (hmmm note the capitalisation...) I've had a variety of work related email addresses. Being self employed I have my own work email. Being a general I.T. addict I have owned dozens of domains over the past couple of decades. That's nothing special and I'm sure that you too have a sensible email address. What I find curious is working on contracts with other I.T. contractors and being given a contact email @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com or even the semi-respectable @gmail.com. What does it say about the I.T. Professional? Well to me it says "I don't really understand this big I.T. world and not caring about my own professional image, I won't care about yours...".

Most domain names sell for a few pounds a year and allow users to forward email onto "hotmail" if that's all the user can cope with. Yahoo and Microsoft have both started offering "business domains" at a tiny price and using the Live or Yahoo web based email services. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there isn't a place for free email, and I personally think AIM, MSN and Yahoo are excellent sites with really nice services. Look into getting your own domain if you're contracting.. don't let yourself down by not taking the time to make a professional domain. My personal recommendation is www.1and1.co.uk a really helpful and competitive company.

Saturday 26th April 2008
I treated myself to a TomTom Go 520 this weekend. I have been a TomTom fan for years - but this is the first integrated unit that I've owned. Previously I have bought the PDA version and currently use it on my Nokia E61i phone. The E61i has a nice 2.8” QVGA (320 x 240) screen and excellent sound quality and has always been more than adequate for navigating my way around the UK. With a new iPhone on the way I thought an integrated unit might be better than taking the E61i with me just for navigation. The TomTom comes with a cable for my iPod which I haven't tried yet. I wonder if the TomTom's audio output is as good as using an FM transmitter with the iPod and listening to my audio books over my cars stereo.

Of course it only occurred to me later than instead of taking an extra mobile phone in the car I would actually be taking a hulking big TomTom with me. I really can't knock the quality of the TomTom, which is excellent, and the ewase of use of the familiar TomTom interface. Less wonderful is having to subscribe yet again to the TomTom Safety Camera subscription which is frankly too useful not to purchase. The TomTom website is a triumph or form over function - reported updates to TomTom Home being buried deep in the bowels of their site and buying anything being akin to extracting teeth. Oh well, I got there in the end.

While I'm having a snipe at TomTom can I have a quick dig at their appalling customer services? My question to them was: "I have TomTom v. 6 on my Nokia phone... will you be developing a version which is compatible with my Blackberry 8800?" and a couple of days later they replied: "Unfortunately there is no way for me to tell this for sure. I can only suggest you keep checking our website and also sign up for our newsletter to keep yourself up to date."

The great thing about working for a company is that you can ask what mobile devises will be compatible with the next version and does this include the Blackberry?

Friday 25th April 2008
I had a day filled with travel (and indeed seemed to have spent so much time on the road lately). One of the nice things about travelling by car is that you have some time with your own thoughts and I decided I would buy an iPhone. Am I gadget obsessed or what?

One of my fellow trainers on this current project has an iPhone with O2 on a deal which is very much like the Blackberry business offer - 600 minutes and 500 text messages plus all the email and web browsing that you can take. I "had a go" with the iPhone and loved the browser. Prices for the 8Gb phone have been dropped by £100 so I thought there might well be a bargain on eBay. My other thoughts were along the lines that I fancy the iTouch for movies and that is after all just an iPhone without the actual phone.

I found a rather good deal for a 16Gb unlocked iPhone and thought that would be an excellent new toy, and one less thing to carry about since I have an iPod classic (160Gb) filled with TV series that I rarely watch because the screen is so tiny. Now that you can buy TV programs from the BBC, ITV as well as channel 4 from iTunes I think the new iPhone will come into its own. Ok, ok so I'm addicted to gadgets - you were warned!

Monday 14th April 2008
I saw a new lime green and white Sony Ericcson K660i in my local Three shop and just had to have one. My "old" 3 Skype phone has been out of battery power after a few hours (rather than the promised 320 hours standby) which I put down to the sub-standard battery used by Amoi. Ok, so that's maybe a thin excuse for yet another mobile (you ADDICT you!) but the new Lime coloured K660 was just so nice! one of the things that most impressed me with the "Skype phone" was how nicely 3 integrated their data services and I was keen to see how these would be laid out on a fairly standard mobile.

The K660i is really delightful in its 3 livery - a really nice green active wallpaper with small sparkles and the left and right soft keys dedicated to "Launcher" and Planet 3. I've provided I.T. training at Hutchinson 3G and have always had a bit of a soft spot for the company. The software bundled with their phones is first rate and really easy to use... MSN, Skype, Google and Yahoo all work really well. I downloaded a raft of games from Gameloft and EA Sports and I'm enjoying the K660i very much.

Monday 5th April 2008
I've been a massive fan of the Sony PSP and rather dismissed the Nintendo DS. It's screen is too small and I just couldn't see the point of it being so much larger than the Gameboy Advance. I was chatting with a colleague about her DS and was convinced of their merits, at least enough to have a look in the local Game shop. I was seriously surprised at the build quality and the number of games aimed squarely at old people like myself - the whole Brain Training phenomenon.

So I bought the black version of the DS Lite and a pocketful of games and eagerly tried out the Brain Training game... shock horror my brain is apparently 80 years old!!! Ok nice marketing ploy - once you've worked out how you're supposed to "play" the game your notional score quickly improves. 80 years old being the worst and 20 years old being the best... Hmmm I'm really not sure that young peoples brains are in fact better than middle aged peoples. Still the DS is a very nice games consol and whilst not as good for games as my beloved PSP it is still a worthwhile new gadget. I particularly like the DS version of Sims 2. Unlike the PC version the consol versions for PSP and DS have quite different storylines and are very engaging.

Tuesday 1st April 2008
It's a tiny bit sad when April 1st goes by and you haven't spotted a single April Fools! Working up in Bolton at the moment and I've been relying on my Blackberry for contact with the outside world. I've added all my work email addresses (as well as my kiwiberry.net identity) and I must say that I now see how those addicts on the commute into London got so addicted to their Blackberrys. The email setup wizard is really nice and straightforward and the O2 Blackberry service is faultless.

One of the few complaints I have about the Blackberry is the email applications lack of HTML support. Making e-life easier those nice chaps at RIM compress and stream emails out to us which means that some emails end up with html spaghetti in them. I'm trying out the bbSmart Email Viewer which I found on the excellent Handango store for Blackberry - http://www.blackberrymarketplace.com/ .

The email view changes those HTML links into the intended graphic and also changes text based smileys like :) into a graphical smiley. I'll let you know how the test drive goes on.