chrisbramm.co.uk » Gadgets

Wordpress for android

wiz — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:45:03 +0000

A new application hit the Android market today called Wordpress and this is a specially one because it now means that I can now write blog posts on the move like I am doing at this minute.
The application itself is very nice and covers all of the most used features of the desktop admin page. I can add new posts and edit older ones. I can also save drafts that I can finish writing some time later. Comments are also very easy to moderate and overall it is very similar to the iPhone app.
There is however one major problem and this isn’t the application’s fault and is instead an Android problem and that is the keyboard. At a reasonable typing speed, something at which an ipod touch/iphone would not struggle with, the keyboard seems to lag quite a bit and as a result symbols and full stops keep being put in where I do not want them and so I really hope the keyboard is an area which HTC improve in the coming 2.1 update.

Dolphin Browser

wiz — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:07:15 +0000

After a recommendation off the crave podcast I downloaded dolphin browser from the Android market late las night with high hopes that it would replace the standard browser.
Now don’t get me wrong, the Android browser works as it should but the way HTC have skinned it for sense means that the browser is full screen so you don’t see the status bar at the top. Now you’re probably thinking no big deal but it means that as you’re browsing you don’t know when the signal drops out or slows down, which it seems to do regularly on T-Mobile. Anyway on the the dolphin browser.
Needless to say the browser is not full screen so you always know how fast you are connected at. Dolphin also brings gestures so push a button at the bottom of the screen and a window pops up and you can draw on. For example draw an m and you add the page to your bookmarks and there are lots of other shortcuts that you can customize gestures for however I have yet to find out how to add gestures to specific bookmarks but if they add that it would be awesome.

Flash also works pretty well having sat in maths today and listened to a couple of billy Joel pieces (that I hadn’t heard for a while) off youtube.

Overall it is a well built application with an extensive feature set and settings list and a pleasure to use, much better than the standard android browser.

HTC hero

wiz — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:43:43 +0000

I was 18 a week ago and decided that I wanted a phone for my birthday. I started off by trying to decide between an iPhone or a palm pre and then after following a few people on Twitter found the HTC hero and I have to say the phone is beautiful. It arrived last Tuesday and I have had a week to play with it and here are my impressions of it.
Even though t-mobile market it as the G2 touch it is the HTC hero. Running android it makes it probably the strongest competitor to the iPhone. HTC have also tweaked android slightly so it also runs the sense UI which means that it has multi-touch on a gorgeous 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen
The market gives access to many apps and because there is no gate keeper like Apple testing every single application it means the is a lot more scope of what apps are allowed to do. For example I have a brilliant sms app called handscent which makes sending mass sms a lot easier.
Background apps also mean that other things can be running and left to control the phone. Power manager can be left running to monitor battery levels and when it is depleted to a certain level, it then changes the settings of the phone to conserve battery.
I do have a few niggles with it though. First of all is it asking which network you would like to connect to. Now I have a t-mobile sin in the phone so I am not going to want to connect to the O2 network, if I try it just says “can’t register on network” so stop asking me whenever the signal drops out. Then sometimes when the list comes up t-mobile isn’t there and so it doesn’t get a signal. Then if let’s say the list comes up when you are inside and can’t get a signal you can’t manually force it to connect. And finally, although its good you can run background apps, it is probably over eager to leave them running in the background. When the camera is not on the screen then there is no point running it in the background and so without taskiller the phone would slow up and be unusable. Other than them three there are a few things that I would change. A stronger vibrate would be nice so you can actually feel it along with a way to make the clicked in the keyboard louder and the same with notification sounds but phone and sms rings are loud enough
Other than that it is a brilliant phone and would recommend it to anyone. Well worth the gadget of the year award by stuff magazine.

Peggle

wiz — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:07:17 +0000

Last week, after a recommendation from a friend I bought Peggle for my iPod touch and I have to say that in the sale and for 59p it is well worth it.

the aim of the game is to bounce your ball off the pegs to hit all the orange pegs but you only get ten balls which fall out at the bottom of the level. the blue pegs are there just for the level and you can score from them. the orange pegs are the ones you need to clear, green give you power-ups and the purple ones give you high scores. If you manage to land the ball in the hole at the bottom then you get an extra ball and the same if you score 25000 with a single ball. There are also other bonuses for things such as sliding the ball or bouncing it into the hole off the wall.
The game starts off with 10 so called masters each with their own power-up. Each master has 5 levels each with their own difficulty and tactics. The great thing about the game is that there is an element in skill in aiming the ball but once you press fire the game becomes more of luck and chance and hits will happen without you predicting them. Overall the game is very addictive and is well worth it for 59p however I am not sure what the original price is but it is still worth it.