Archive for the ‘F’ Category

3 day review of the iPhone

Monday, October 8th, 2007

I’ve been using the iPhone for a little over 3 days now. I’m still in the honeymoon period, but below is a first impression review. I’ll do another post with the bits I really like - there’s too many to list here…

Things that I’ve Missed

Below is the list of stuff that I have actually missed so far. I’ve recently being using a Samsung D900 so unfortunately the bar is quite low and the iPhone surpassed most existing functionality by miles.

A better way to snooze the alarm

I sleep with my phone under my pillow so snooze is within easy reach when the alarm goes off. I want to be able to whack anything on the phone to snooze. My old Samsung D900 was good at this, you could press any of the buttons anywhere (even the volume ones) and it snoozed.

With the iPhone you have to exactly press the Snooze button right in the middle of the screen, which requires you to be at least faintly lucid, of which I never am when the alarm goes off. If I could tap anywhere on the iPhone screen that would probably be better. Since you have to swipe to stop the alarm so you couldn’t accidentally sleep in and then get stuck in traffic.

UPDATE: It seems that I might have been delirious when I first tried to snooze. I tried again this morning and all of the buttons did indeed snooze the alarm. Excellent.

 (more…)

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Woohoo, the FCK editor doesn’t scramble handwritten HTML in WordPress

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

Wohoo, I’ve finally found an editor for WordPress that doesn’t scramble handwritten HTML. I’ve been trying to get some Google Gadgets and Picasa Web Album links working in posts, and the standard editor for Wordpress would scramble both cases - even when using HTML mode. Very frustrating.

The FCK editor (no not the naught word f*** but rather the unfortunate initials of the author) as part of the ChenPress plugin to WordPress seems to work a charm.

I can now happily cut and paste the HTML source from either Google Gadgets or my Picasa Web Album’s and not have to magically rejig when I click save.

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Subaru Car Usability Goodness

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005

With having an interest in usability it was good to find that someone had put some thought into the interior functions of my new Subaru Legacy GTB.

Driving home the front window started fogging up (the interior had just been groomed so was still a little damp). I looked around for a button that had the front demister icon on it. I found it easily because it was pretty much the closest button to the driver on the center console. I pushed the button and it did all of the settings needed to demist the window and voila, I could see again. Fantastic - no more fussing around with the temperature, fan speed, and vents.

Then when we picked up some fast food on the way home. I opened the drinks holder and put the drink in. I wondered why, when I pulled out the drinks holder, it swung away to the left. As soon as I needed to demist the window again I knew. They move just far enough to the left that you can still access the the demister button and the Auto and Off buttons for the climate air controls. Double fantastic. Small things like this give me a small fuzzy feeling inside. Much better than that frustrated feeling when something is completely hopeless to use.Well done Subaru, I might just yet be a Subbie convert yet - like just about all of the other people who I have talked to whom have owned them.

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Finally got the phone back

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

We’ll I’ve finally got my phone back. It’s only been 5 weeks give or take!

Pretty silly really. I mean how long should it take to repair a broken microphone. Scheesh!

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