Shandy's Blog

I got this idea at 06:30 on Saturday morning when my i-mate alarm went off. I need a decent alarm application on my i-mate. One that differentiates between weekends and weekdays! So my first application will be a small, simple alarm that can handle different alarms on different days and has a snooze facility.

Watch this space!

I have downloaded the Tutorials for Smartphones with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software. The installation was pretty seemless. I just downloaded it to my tablet PC which has Active Sync installed on it with a partnership established with my i-mate. I ran the downloaded file which autmatically downloaded a CAB file to the i-mate and then installed the tutorials for me. To access the tutorial I just selected Start, Accessories, Tutorial.

the tutorials have similar information available in the manual that comes with the i-mate but having them on the i-mate saves having to lug the manual around with me.

I was hoping to get hold of a copy of the Windows Mobile 5.0 Developer Evaluation Kit, which Microsoft are offering to developers via a DVD that can be ordered on-line. Well by almost all developers. Not me though :( You need to give credit card details and the address where your credit card statement goes has to match your the details you enter AND (this is the gotcha) the shipping address has to be in the same country as the credit card statement address. Needless to say my credit card statements go to the UK but my shipping address would be Sri Lanka.

I'll speak to my credit card company and see if I can get the address changed on condition they do not send any statements to Sri Lanka (I will probably never see them if they do or around 6 statements will all turn up at once like my bank statements did once). I actually do all my banking on-line now so I have no need of paper statements but I really want any other correspondance to go to my father in the UK as he kindly sorts out my post for me.

There are some times when living as an ex-pat is a real pain in the ass ;-)

I've spent a day yesterday researching playing around with my i-mate SP3.

I spent around an hour chatting on MSN Messenger and I have to say this worked well. The only problem was using the keypad to type messages which still takes me quite a long time, even utilising the T9 modes.

I found the BBC news web site had an excellent section for mobiles. I used this to keep track of the cricket score between Australia & England. The web site was pretty easy to navigate and I think I shall be using this web site as my main news site.

I set up my vbCity email account on the mobile and receiving of emails seemed to work pretty well. I am still having some problems sending emails and am working on sorting this out today.

The cost of using a mobile on the internet over here is pretty reasonable. I used up 70 rupees in total yesterday and that included a couple of 2 minute phone calls and half a dozen text messages as well as the internet access.

I used the built in camera and took a picture of the view from our balcony, where all this research was taking place. (see below). Using the camera is pretty easy as is transferring images to my laptop.

I personalised the phone a bit by adding a keypad locking code so that the keypad locks after a minute of inactivity.

The battery life seems pretty good as the battery was around half used despite all the activity going on with the mobile. I charged it this morning in just a couple of hours.

One problem I am having is that numbers calling me are not showing up when the phone rings. It just says unknown so I need to look into why this is. Conversely when I ring my wife's number my mobile number does not show up. I have correctly set the Caller ID as per the instructions in the manual so I am assuming I may need to speak to DialogGSM with this issue.

I did get the voice activation working within just a few minutes. I now just press a button on the side of the i-mate, say my wfie's name, Helen, and I can be speaking to her within a few seconds. Cool :-D

The handset itself is pretty light, the screen is easy to read and the navigation to the various facilities such as internet, email fairly simple.