The phone that I was most keen on last month when looking to upgrade was the V602. It takes beautiful pictures and has a nice clean design. I would have picked it up for sure if only it could get a signal in my office. That said, when I stumbled on this over at Engadget today, I found it rather amusing…
Naked-watching is not officially endorsed by Vodafone.
Good to know. I’ll have to warn all the girls at work.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been using Shiira as my main browser for a while now and today I finally got around to playing with the Search Engines window. I was aware that the search field could be customized but had never bothered playing with it. Then this morning, when searching for some things on MacUpdate I found myself wanting the OmniWeb style address bar searching. Well surprise, surprise but you guessed it, Shiira can do this for you right out of the box.
What do I mean by address bar searching? Let’s take a look. I’m not sure if the Omni guys where the first to do this but OmniWeb is where I first encountered it. What it does is allow you to type something like “google shiira browser” directly into the address bar and have it search Google using the term “shiira browser”. Okay, the search field does this already so what’s the big deal? Well, it becomes really cool when you can simply type in “imdb tom cruise” or “macupdate itunes library” and have it load your search results without having to hit the site in question first, type in the search term and hit the search button. It’s just too convenient not to love!
So here’s how to make this work in Shiira. First, open up the Search Engines window from under the Window menu. Now in the window that appears, click the “New” button on the lower right hand side of the window. A new empty row will be added and selected in the table. Hit the tab key to jump to the name field and fill in the details for your search engine. See this screen shot for an example. Be sure to click the little checkbox in the table that turns this search shortcut on.
The keyword field is where the magic happens. By filling in this field you enable Shiira to search from the address field as well as the search field. Just use this keyword as the first part of your search to let Shiira know what you want it to do. Check out this screen shot and then give it a go. Hit command-L, type “imdb zoolander” and hit return. Now isn’t that nice!
For easy copy and paste…
Internet Movie Database - “imdb” with this template…
http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=All&for=%@
Additional shortcuts you may want to try…
MacUpdate - “mu” with this template…
http://macupdate.com/search.php?keywords=%@&os=macosx
VersionTracker - “vt” with…
http://www.versiontracker.com/mp/new_search.m?productDB=mac&mode=Quick&search=%@
This image courtesy of my friend Jeff who told me to look on the side of my fast food take out bag. The shop in question is called Lotteria and it’s very much a McDonald’s clone with extra salty fries. I don’t care for the place much but the packaging rocks!
I’ve been using Shiira as my main web browser for a month or so now and I have to say that I’m quite happy with it. It’s a very solid showing for a beta level application. By the time it reaches 1.0 it should be pretty impressive. The tab implementation is probably the best I’ve seen yet. This is how I would like Camino’s tabs to look and work in the future. The toolbar icons that ship with it aren’t the most attractive so I recommend grabbing this theme by Jon Hicks and installing that. I would also recommend running the latest nightly build if you want to see the cool new things like Growl support.
I’ve set up a separate site to deal with specific announcements related to my software development efforts. I don’t expect anybody to read my personal thoughts here so it makes sense to have a company related news page where people can see what’s new with the software they may have purchased. It’s running the latest release of WordPress (1.2.1 at the moment) and I’ve set it up to use the Kubrick theme from Michael Heilemann. If you haven’t seen Michael’s work check it out, very clean stuff.
The state of the mobile phone. In Japan it’s amazing how ubiquitous the mobile phone is. It seems that everyone over the age of 15 is probably carrying one around and even some who are younger. I had never been a big fan of them myself and lasted a full year here without one. Eventually I had to bend though, and I picked up a P11 model from Tuka, the cheapest of the cheap and relatively uninspiring from the technological point of view. I had a phone and was now reachable I thought, and that should be enough.
Now, closing in on 3 years later, I have finally upgraded and changed providers in the process. I’m sure I’ll be paying more for my new P505iS but here, at the 3 week mark, I have to say I’m feeling pretty satisfied. First off, a quick overview of the available providers and then my initial thoughts on my new phone. Just keep in mind that this is from my personal research and errors may be plentiful.
DoCoMo - Generally seen as the leader in the Japanese mobile phone arena and with good cause. They tend to have the widest coverage and the best reception. The designs are generally pretty good and the prices aren’t too out of line. They offer service on two separate networks, the older MOVA and the newer FOMA. They both have their ups and downs though. The big idea with FOMA is that it makes more intelligent use of the available bandwidth. This results in cheaper downloads and clearer reception. You pay less per packet most likely because they are routing data based on what it is. If this is indeed the case it means that they can give priority to talk-connections and things like email and sending of photos won’t bog down the network. The downside with FOMA is the signal strength. All the FOMA phones I played with failed to get reception in my office which is in the basement of a large building. Every MOVA phone I played with worked swimmingly, even underground.
AU - The only provider (that I know of) to provide a phone with a stylus. I didn’t experiment with it so I can’t say much more about it than that, except that it’s big. They are incorporating Bluetooth into some of their phones and they have the biggest camera available in mobile land at a whopping 3.2 mega pixels. Yes, that’s on a mobile phone! The rest of their lineup is decently designed and their monthly charges are very similar to DoCoMo. Their coverage isn’t as good as DoCoMo but the reception in downtown Kyoto is arguably better.
Vodofone - In my opinion, these guys have the nicest designs. Very clean lines and a very nice feel to them. They offer TV reception on some models and FM tuners as well. The quality of the photos that I saw from these phones was also excellent. Once known as J-Phone before a buyout/merger with a British telecom giant they have the unique benefit of full English manuals and service lines for those of us more comfortable exploring and inquiring in something other than Japanese. The major drawback and eventual reason that I didn’t go with Vodofone is that I couldn’t get a signal in my office. Unfortunate but a definite deal breaker.
Tuka - The little guy in the market, Tuka isn’t known for its technical prowess. What they do have is lower monthly prices on relatively simple models. Like all the big boys these phones will handle email just fine. They don’t offer much in the way of cameras though and what they do have currently tops out a 0.3 mega pixels. If what you really want is, you know, something to make calls with, then Tuka will get the job done. In the end though, they didn’t pass my office reception test.
What it came down to for me was pretty simple. I wanted a phone that could get reception in my office and take decent photos. I tend to leave my digital camera at home most days but I’m rarely without my phone. While Tuka had served me well for the last two years, having to step outside the office to check my messages felt like something of an insult. That left me with only AU and DoCoMo to choose from. My flashy little P505iS is from DoCoMo. I think I may even be a happy camper.
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