ZEE4 » reviews

Nexus One Experience

admin — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:59:28 +0000

I’ve been using a Nexus One for about the last month on Fido’s network. Overall it’s a good phone and quite a step up from my previous, semi-indestructible, smart-phone; I say “semi” as, though the Nokia E62 handled being dropped numerous times onto pavement, torrential Toronto rain eventually did it in.

Nexus One is the AndroidOS phone that Google sold themselves up until last month, though they’re now looking to sell it through carriers over here as they’ve already started with mobile companies in the U.K. and points east. I haven’t had any real problems running on Fido, so based on my experience, putting it officially on Rogers/Fido would be a natural move – plus it’s a higher-spec. phone than Telus’ current Android models.

Setting up on Fido
While the Nexus runs just fine as a phone on Fido as soon as you pop in the SIM card, it’s not a Rogers/Fido phone so you have to set some things up yourself. For getting G3-speed data running, Brill Bappin has a great page at: brill.pappin.ca on getting the Nexus working on Fido.

Impressions
Overall, the interface is not as polished as the iPhone, but it’s definitely got more stuff in it. A case in point is WiFi; I use the free WiFi that Second Cups offers with BoldStreet networks, the problem I kept getting though with my iPod Touch was it seemed to get them confused when visiting several different Second Cups over a week. This wasn’t a problem with Android, in the odd time it got confused, I just hit the “forget” button under the connection to make it forget the old connection. On the iPhone my best guess is the Forget must be buried somewhere under the settings. On the downside, a lot of websites that seem to be only checking for iPhone and sending up the regular web page.

The camera shoots photos/video quite well during daylight. It has a auto-focus and a LED-flash, but that still doesn’t do much for night photography. One interesting thing is that it records location using the phones build-in location sensors. Using WiFi and the camera will eat up battery life and I find it needs to be charged about every other day with normal usage, though you could probably extend this by turning off WiFi/Bluetooth and background data-sync – all easily done from settings.

Software-wise, you can download apps right onto your phone – in fact, this is one of the things you get used to: not having to plug your phone into a computer to update files. Both Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare have free apps now.

Finally, one problem I had early on was with the on-screen keyboard going wonky. Google recommends: 1) make sure you’re not touching more than one place (including your sleeves), 2) turn off Nexus completely (hold down power switch, select Turn Off).

SitePoint – Better looking with age?

admin — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:02:03 +0000

About 4-5 years ago I picked up this book, Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists by Melbourne-based SitePoint, billed as a check-list of things a website should have to be successful. Well it was a lot of lists, a lot of the material was useful, unfortunately the book itself looked like it had been typeset in Word and then printed off on a photocopier.

Fortunately I think they realized this too and in the last few years they’ve really improved to the point where the look of their books matches the technical material. In the Canada and the U.S. they have been distributed by O’Reilly publishing since 2004 and I wonder if that had some influence on their more inviting look.?

If you’re interested in web design I’d suggest having a look though some of their recent titles.

Links to Reviews:
http://yyztech.ca/reviews/book/principles-beautiful-web-design
http://yyztech.ca/reviews/book/sexy-web-design
http://yyztech.ca/reviews/book/everything-you-know-about-css-is-wrong

review of Mafiaboy: How I cracked the Internet

admin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:54:18 +0000

It’s the story about a young teenager in the West Island of Montreal who hacked website like Yahoo, CNN, eBay, Dell and others in year 2000. The book follows Michael Calce’s involvement in hacking, from his early adventures on AOL, launching the attacks on Yahoo, CNN and eBay in 1999 to the resulting investigation, trial and sentencing that followed. The second part of the book covers a bit of his life afterwards but is mostly on how hacking has changed since his Mafiaboy days and ways for users to protect themselves online.

http://yyztech.ca/reviews/book/mafiaboy-how-cracked-internet-why-still-broken

The Principles of Project Management – what’s in it for you

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:41:26 +0000

SitePoint’s got a 200 page book that covers the mysterious world of Project Management. Written by GeekManager blogger Meri Williams this covers what PM is, isn’t and why it’s good to know.

Like many of the new SitePoint books this book explains a complex topic with a few illustrations and a clean layout…For a topic I was quite unfamilir with when I started, I’d recommend this book as a good overview to the topic.

Google App Hacks: Turn your Spreadheet into a CMS system

admin — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:50:41 +0000

Besides that hack there’s a whole lot more on gMail and rest of the Google eco-system (Blogger, YouTube, etc.)

One of the new style O’Rielly Hack books, this one looks at how to use Google’s applications through a series of short examples (aka hacks) covering, not just the office applications, but many other applications under the Google banner. For web designers, there’s a lot of material here too on how to integrate Google’s services into your own website.