marypcbuk

Just yesterday I was commenting to a post by Frank Shaw (recently moved from heading the Microsoft account at WaggEd to heading up PR at Microsoft) that I quite like embargoes (Frank's view is very 'the embargo is dead, long live the embargo'). After all, if it's something as complex as Windows 7, I'd like enough time to hear the details, think about the implications and try the product out before having to get my story written. I write news stories - like the Vodafone 360 piece on ZDNet yesterday - but I'd be the first to say I'm really more of a feature writer and reviewer. I'd much rather give you my opinion of a product than list the facts, ma'am. And I'd like to give you my considered opinion rather than my first, knee-jerk reaction. I'd like to get the same in-depth briefing as other journalists, even if timezones and the practicality of needing time for a spokesperson to actually speak mean that happens a few hours before or after the other briefings. And having been doing this for cracking on two decades, I'd like to do all that and have a life rather than feeling I have to drop everything and write as soon as I get the whiff of a story.

But I also pointed out that when I respect an embargo and get scooped by TechCrunch breaking it, I don't think that having an embargo is a bad thing; I think that briefing an outlet that says it doesn't respect embargoes under embargo in the first place is a foolish thing - and that continuing to brief them under future embargoes shows disrepect for everyone who does honour embargoes. And today I noticed that the next step is to reward them for breaking so many embargoes by giving them an interview with Steve Ballmer. Yes, that makes me feel that it doesn't matter if you break the rules as long as you're big enough not to have to follow them.

I've never broken an NDA. If an editor asked me to, I'd be uncomfortable because to me, an embargo is a contract I've made. But if the outlets that break embargoes are going to get the traffic for breaking the news and access to big-name interviews because they have the traffic, it makes me feel rather the dinosaur for having that kind of moral code. Yes, I'm sure we get access to spokespeople and stories we wouldn't get if we did break embargoes - but we were last offered an interview with Steve Ballmer the week he flew to Europe to negotiate with the EU (and as it happened, the day he flew to Europe, making it rather a shame that sbisson was in Las Vegas). I like embargoes. I like considered, well-researched journalism. But I like fairness and respect too.

I love OneNote on Windows but I'm coming to hate it more and more on WinMo and it was one of the handful of features keeping me loyal to WinMo. I've spent far too long this morning discovering that if you rename a note on the phone it will *never* *sync* *again* - so you create a note, put lots of useful information in it, change the name and can only get the information back to your PC if you copy and paste the content by hand into a new note. Broken, broken, broken. As soon as EverNote introduces cached notes on WinMo I'll switch to that; and once I can get email flags on BlackBerry later this year, there's not going to be a lot left to keep me on WinMo. This is a Microsoft app so I think I'm being perfectly fair saying it's one more way Microsoft is letting Windows Mobile wither away into a has-been platform.

The piece I did for FT Digital Business for the first day of MWC is a round-up of where things were for smartphones and netbooks before the show started and as most of the new devices don´t come out for a while it´s where we actually still are now!

"The long-awaited multi-purpose devices that can play music and video, contain navigation devices and cameras and even act almost as laptops are here at last.

But the superficially similar specifications of touchscreen smartphones, with access to 3G mobile broadband and GPS location functions - notably Apple's iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm and Google's G1 - mask very different approaches to convergence."
read more at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0624814c-fbc8-11dd-bcad-000077b07658.html  

I've fallen a bit out of love with Windows Mobile this week, ever since my shiny Samsung Blackjack II refused to - in order - 1 connect to my PC, 2 connect to email and then (to address 1 and 2) 3 boot. It's sitting there, with lots of unsynched photos and OneNote notes (thanks to 1) that will not survive a hard reset, which seems to be the only option. What a good week for a box of handsets to turn up: shall I defect to the BlackBerry Bold or the Storm or the G1 or the iPhone (2G only, so probably not)? The thing is, I want the best browser I can get, and I like to be able to file messages into Outlook folders, and flag them, and create appointments and invite people to them and search my email on the server - and a bunch of other things I know I can do on Windows Mobile.

Decent browsing hasn't been on that list before with Windows Mobile; not without paying for Opera Mobile and even then, it's the usual what about Flash/Silverlight/a decent data speed question. What is the answer for the mobile Web? Cram the best part of a desktop OS onto the phone? Force us to use text pages or transcoded slice-and-dice versions of pages? Do it all on a big server somewhere? I haven't been a fan of the latter approach in the past - and how much of that it because Opera Mini is written in Java and combines an irritating user interface with an irritating security model, I don't know, but I'm a now bit of a convert.

Not to Opera Mini; to Skyfire. It's not perfect, it's not out of beta and every now and then it jumps back to the page I was trying to leave. But the rest of the time it shows real Web pages, Flash and all, Ajax and all, JavaScript and all. No more desparately looking for a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi to get online to check in; if I can change my seat on a Virgin flight in Skyfire, I'll be able to check in. I even found myself watching Merlin on the BBC iPlayer through Skyfire and I hate the idea of gormless boy Merlin, but the video quality was just so nice... And a small phone screen is just the right match for the quality of most videos on YouTube. For a more considered approach, check out my review of Skyfire on TechRadar

Two pieces up on Tom's Hardware today; mobile search and mapping tools and a notebook buying guide - so you could pick the notebook you want and get directions to go buy it ;-)

When you're on the move, do you want to search the Web the way you would on a PC, or rather look for what's around you? Sometimes you'll want to look up a Web page and read it, but often you want to know more where a movie is playing rather than who was in it, where to get good sushi rather than how to make it, and how long it will take to get to the theater after you've eaten. Read the rest of Simplifying Mobile Search...

Need a bigger screen? Thin and light or mobile workstation, basic budget or high-powered business features, Macs or tablet PCs; today we’re going to tell you how to choose the right notebook for whatever you need. We’re going to go through business, general-use, budget, gaming, ultra-portable, tablet and Mac laptops to show you what to look for and offer some suggestions. Pick the Perfect PC for You...

I've been playing with more phones for IT Pro....

The HTC Excalibur - also known as the T-Mobile Dash - is a smart, capable, lightweight smartphone with multimedia features good enough to let you keep it in your pocket out of business hours. By the time the Motorola Q finally makes it to the UK, the S620 may have stolen its market.
Read on at http://www.itpro.co.uk/reviews/118512/htc-s620-smartphone.html

The first BlackBerry to combine a full keyboard and camera, the 8300 Curve doesn't have the visceral desirability of the Pearl - or the slab-like bulk of the 8800 - but it does have QWERTY and trackball, spell checking and competent multimedia in a small and neat package.
Read on at http://www.itpro.co.uk/reviews/119405/blackberry-8300-curve.html

I like them both and I've stuck with the Excalibur for personal use to replace the Treo 750v - the battery life, the better call quality and the standard connector plus the slimmer size made up for losing the extra software features. If you're a BlackBerry fan - and you have BES - the 8300 is an excellent phone. Incidentally, I wrote the review of it on the flight from San Francisco to Indianapolis...

Somehow the 8800 doesn't have the visceral desirability of the Pearl and it doesn't have WiFi or 3G. But with GPS and a QWERTY keyboard it's undoubtedly a more capable business device, especially if you want a BlackBerry with a full keyboard. Read what else I have to say about the shiny BlackBerry 8800...