I’ve been following the Android Linux phone phenomenon with interest since it began, even going so far as to download the SDK and start learning to write Android apps. All I had left to do was choose the Android phone I wanted for myself. First I wanted the HTC Magic, but then I saw the Hero video on-line and fell in love. Since Australia is the A$$ end of the world as far as tech companies are concerned, it took so long for the Hero to arrive here that before they did, I fell in love with the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, it had twice the screen resolution twice the CPU power, a fantastic camera with flash and a flashy interface. I wanted one badly. When it was announced, it was the most technically advanced android phone on the market.

Fast forward months and months and I don’t have one yet. Why? because nobody else does either. When Sony-Ericsson announced the phone, it’s features were unrivalled. Now however, it still isn’t out, but it’s features are no longer outstanding. Motorola’s Droid, the Google Nexus one and others have most or all of the features of the Xperia X10, the main difference being that you can actually buy a Droid or Nexus one right now if you want to. (not in Australia yet, but you get the idea.)

An added sting is that the Motorola Droid (2.0.1) and Google Nexus one (2.1) are shipping with much newer versions of Android than the Xperia X10 (1.6) so in some ways it’s behind the 8 ball before it even joins the race. Why have all the other phone companies that wanted to, been able to design, manufacture and release outstanding Android phones, except Ericsson? There is already talk about Snapdragon 1.5ghz CPU Android phones, so unless the X10 gets out the door really soon, it will totally underwhelm the market when it finally does arrive.

Don’t get me wrong, the specs on the Xperia X10 still make my mouth water, particularly the screen and the camera, but if I’m going to spend big bucks on a phone, I’ll want it to be at the forefront of technology for at least a few months and the way it looks to me now, by the time it does get here, it will already be outdated. This phone had the potential to change the game for Sony-Ericsson, and now it is likely to under perform. Not because it’s a bad phone, just because the hype is gone and it isnt’ really special anymore.

Sad really, I had my heart set on one of these things and now I’m looking into buying a Google Nexus one.
Sony-Ericsson have had a hard time of it lately and if this is any indication, it’s not difficult to see why in my opinion. Building hype is great, but if you don’t actually sell the phone at the hypes peak, it declines. That is what happened here, the Xperia X10 took so long to come to market that it was overtaken by Motorola and Google who are now beneifiting from much of the hype generated by the X10 video’s and reviews all over the net.

I think these phones and the iphone are the future of the web for us, or at least a big part of it. There are a lot more mobile phones in the world than there are computers so the market is huge for the mobile Internet. My prediction is that 5 years from now, 60+ percent of the smart-phone market will be running on Linux/Unix based phones. Most of these will be used for browsing the net as well as social networking. It’s worth making sure your sites look OK on them.

The German Government has actually recommended that people stop using Internet Explorer until Microsoft can release an as yet unwritten patch to close a major security gap. If you must use IE they recommend using high security settings. While the BBC article mentions that all browsers provide security risks, this one appears to be a significant hole as Chinese hackers used it to attach Google computers apparently.

I don’t use it simply because I don’t like it myself … but if you choose Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, go update to Internet Explorer 8 today.

I have been a HUGE fan of notetab text editor for many years now. Buying it was the single best purchase I have ever made in computer software — I use it hourly in so many ways I cannot even try to explain them, but they include:

• manipulate data – I use it to sort, move, make delimited files, examine, replace and repair text
• code html, javascript, perl, php — one of it’s greatest shortcomings is that it doesn’t have custom or language syntax highlighting except for html, but get over that shortcoming (there is a way to see syntax highlighting if it is really important), but it isn’t really if you know the language involved
• read simple stuff simply — formatting of documents makes them big files
• control other programs, for example I have it auto-fill form fields in certain web pages using data out of an excel spread sheet

One of the most difficult tasks is getting a new user going. Writing clips is hardly intuitive. I have decided to try some video tutorials to show the most basic of functionality. As I get going, I might try to write a clip to do more tasks. In fact, have something repetitive that you need done on your computer with data? Write a comment and let’s see if we can fix it with a clip.

Here are the first few tutorials:
How to create a new clip library
How to create your very first clip – hello world

I wanted to use JingProject (http://techsmith.com) to create a small tutorial for one of my favorite programs. I could not get my microphone to work. Help under start>control panel>speech suggested that I do this:
“Open Speech in Control Panel, and then click the Speech Recognition tab.” Only problem is I didn’t have such a tab!

I found a post on-line where numerous Dell owners were complaining that Dell laptops don’t support external microphones. I was getting worried, when I came across a post that solve the issue. It said:
1) unplug your external mic
2) open volume control
3) switch it to recording control (menu options/properties/recording)
I then ticked microphone, plugged my microphone and tried Jinging it — woo hoo, it worked and my tutorials now have sound.

Google is always my friend! If you are having trouble getting an external microphone working with a Dell laptop, try the above procedure.

Has Twitter peaked?

According to eMarketer, three different digital actuaries declared that Twitter traffic has performed a slight plummet.

While comScore suggested a drop of 8.1 percent in October and Compete estimated 2.1 percent, while Nielsen, that apogee of accuracy, declared a 27.8 percent decline between September and October.

Cite

I don’t get twitter really, and probably never will. Too much information — and way too much noise to content. I really expect it to be a dying fad with time. Will some still use it? Sure. Aim, all the rage? Not any more. Nextel walkie-talkie? Not any more. People eventually use more efficient means of communication — and twitter is in my opinion not efficient.

Yes I realize I am missing a market segment … but I think it’s worth it. Time will tell.

Firefox has a CPU usage issue and, consequently, can cause overheating problems in some laptops, particularly ultraportables. That’s what I’ve found over the last couple of years.But don’t take my word for it. This is documented on a Mozilla support page entitled “Firefox consumes a lot of CPU resources.” The page states: “At times, Firefox may require significant CPU [central processing unit] resources in order to download, process, and display Web content.” And forum postings like this one about a Dell Netbook are not uncommon: “Mini9 would get way too hot.”

Cite

I’ve noticed my laptop a tad warm of late, and this may just explain it as I have a lot of FF resource in use at many times. Anybody have a solution that doesn’t involve:

• less tabs
• giving up on firefox — which I happen to love
• buying a new notebook … not ready to pay for it yet

Thanks for your suggestions …

For many people updating an existing version of WordPress is daunting. Especially if they have not upgraded in quite some time it can be scary. I have teamed up with another person who specializes in professional blog migration and updating of WordPress installs to form a new entity called BlogWranglers.com

Blog Wranglers has also seen a significant drive by people on Moveable Type as their content management system to migrate or move to WordPress. Why? Easier to use, better SEO results in many cases, hundreds of free themes to choose from. We often help people take a standard theme and update that to a custom theme.

We are this week concluding a transition from Moveable Type to WordPress of a long standing blog that has over 100 different authors and tens of thousands of posts and comments. We will achieve the migration from Moveable Type to WP without dropping a single post or comment. We also moved all bio information for all users.

If we can be of service to you, please let us know.

Did you know that more of the top 100 blogs in the world use WordPress as their platform, more than any other software?

Did you know that we have driven HTMLFixIt with WordPress for about four years now? We started with a static site and then evolved and now have been through many renditions of WordPress on the backend of this site. Franki is a nut about staying current, so we always adopt early when a newer version of WP rolls around.

Not that I plan to be going anywhere around here, it’s just something else where there seems to be a need, just like there was a need to help with basic HTML when we started this site.