I have a new toy, and this time it’s the rather wonderful HTC desire.

It’s something I’ve been after for a while, so on my contractual renewal data, I headed off to my local 3 shop with the assumption the shop would give better service than ringing 3 customer services. I Advised them of the phone I wanted and the tariff. The cheapest tariff was actually 2 quid more expensive than other carriers (e.g. Vodafone) for this phone however I since I my contract wasn’t finished I thought that wasn’t an unreasonable price to pay.

The staff at the shop attempted to process my upgrade, but there was a problem with the computer system. I had to sit there for 30 minutes while they attempted to phone my order (and another customers) through to some internal helpline. After waiting thirty minutes (without the store offer anything like an apology for waiting of anything) I was told I couldn’t have the tariff I’d chosen and I would have to pay other 3 quid a month (making it now five quid more than their competitors) and again I wasn’t offered an apology for the stores mistake. Now five pound a month extra is a lot of money when you consider I’d be paying for the lifetime of the 24month contract. It actually costs more than buying out the remainder of my contact (which had about four months remaining on it) and getting the phone from Vodafone. So I left the store rather angry and without a new phone.

When I got home I give the 3 customer service line a ring to cancel my contract, so I could swap over the Vodafone. However the nice Gentleman I spoke to one the phone, did not want to let me leave 3 and offered me a rather good deal with a tariff that was actually 3 quid less than Vodafone’s and 8 quid less than what I was offered in store, and with a few extra things thrown in too (e.g. picture messages). So I decide to accept the offer and stay with 3, at least I don’t have to worry about getting a new number.

So the phone arrived last  Tuesday. I gave it a charge, and then gave it a go. It’s the first touch screen phone I’ve ever owned (my last phone Nokia E71 having a full screen keyboard) and it takes some getting use to, I’m still getting use to it now a week later. but the phone it self is awesome. It is more like a mini Linux PC than a phone. I am very impressed with how Android works and with how it manages contacts. It lets you merge contacts very easily pulling contact information from your phonebook, GMail contacts, Facebook and Flickr. So your contacts will have an email, phone number and profile picture (where available).

The ability to quickly install applications from the Android Market is very good too. You can even get Frodo (Commodore C64 emulator) for Android, as shown on the picture below.

I’m still playing with it and trying new applications all the time so expect more posts about it soon.

There was a period of time where I would sign up to all the social media websites just to check them out, but nowadays I don’t seem to have time to be one of these cool early adopter types any more. That being said I’ve been playing a couple of  sites, most people used these months ago. Here is what I thought.

Formspring is a questions and answers website. You set up a profile page, from which anyone can ask you questions either public or anonymously.  The questions and their given answers are then published on the your profile page or you can however choose to disallow anonymous questions, and have the ability to block selected people from asking further questions, even if the asker has remained anonymous.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. It seems to be mostly used for by people sending abuse anonymously (rather than actual questions) or people desperately wanting other people to ask them questions.

Foursquare on the other hand is great fun. It is a location-based social networking website and mobile phone application, but a better way would be to describe it as a game. Users “check-in” at venues using  GPS unabled mobile phone (using a device-specific application). They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges. If a user has checked-in to a venue on more days than anyone else in the past 60 day they will be crowned “Mayor” of that venue, until someone else earns the title by checking in more times than the previous mayor. You can add “Tips” to venues that other users can read, which serve as suggestions for great things to do, see or eat at the location.

What I think the genius part of this is, it behaves like an XBox or Playstation game by giving you achievements for doing tasks and unlocking things, but instead of being stuck in the house playing a console game, your are outside enjoying the real world. It certainly tricked me into going outside.

Obviously an application like this could have some Privacy Concerns, but you can set your privacy settings however you want and they default to a setting the lets no one other the ‘friends’ can view your location or where you have been.

I have a small number of Google Wave invites to give away, if you are interested leave a comment below using the address you want the invite sending to.

EDIT: Thanks for all the interest, but they’ve all gone now.

This morning I received a invite to Google Wave, thanks to the lovely IamKat (She doesn’t have invites left, so don’t hassle her with requests). I’ve had a wee play, and my first though is that it’s still got a way to go before it has a hope of changing the way people work. Going forward I shall be having a play with integrating this with WordPress for this blog and ObscureInternet.

It is said that bad thing come in threes, however this is mostly said by superstitious people so I usually just ignore them. What I do know for sure, is that, recently Retro things come in threes.

First of all Tonight the lovely Anna Black is returning to the air waves (or the Internet waves, although air waves is still valid for Wi-Fi, I guess) on Slay Radio with the Anna Black – Anorak  

Secondly Thermostatic’s concent from Wonderland’s Summer Festival Season Warm Up at Storan in Gothenburg, Sweden will be played live on SceneSat radio.  Thermostatic are a favourite of mine and are  known for their SID-packed blip-blop sound with smooth female vocals

And finally Stone Oakvalley, the people who brought us the Stone Oakvalley’s Authentic SID Collection (SOASC) an amazing collection of MP3 Archive (154473 files) of music recorded from real C64s (6581R2, 6581R4 & 8580R5), and now bring us the Stone Oakvalley’s Amiga Music Collection(SOAMC=) project the world’s largest archive of authentic Commodore Amiga music! It’s 115342 MP3 tunes based on 157 different Amiga formats giving a total playtime of 196 days. Here’s a preview video;

It seems like I’ve not had a new phone in ages. I’m not sure how long I have my K810 but I know it is getting on a bit as it’s got a fair bit of ware and tear, and the battery life is now very low. I’ve also got through about half a dozen hands free kits while listening to music and podcasts using it, the Sony Erickson hands free kits seem to have a reoccurring problem with one of the speakers failing. Most importantly my current SIM in my phone doesn’t give me access to the internet which is obviously most unacceptable. So when I saw 3′s offer of the Nokia E71 with 200 minutes, 1GB Internet, and 4096 text messages a month for a meagre 20 quid last weekend, I snapped it up.

I’m so happy I did, as the phone is great. Let me tell you why, but remember I haven’t had new a top spec phone in years so some of my amazement at the phones features may make me look very dated.

First of all, is the Internet, as well as having 3G/3.5G Internet it has the ability to connect to my home wireless network, which means I’m always connected to the Internet while I’m at home. This combined with the Twitter, Instant Messenger and Facebook applications, means I’m can connected all of the time, even when I’m in bed or in the bath  (places that I would take the laptop).

Another great feature is the Qwerty keyboard. It’s great to have a proper keyboard on the phone, so I quickly type text messages or something on the internet without having to user predictive text. A phone with a Qwerty keyboard with lots of free text messages and Ping.fm’s update via text means I can update my status on my social networks as once, and very regular.

The phone also has a good Music Player which also has support for playing and downloading podcasts making it a great portable MP3 Player. Another useful music application is the Internet Radio, So now I can listen to SlayRadio, Radio6581 (I haven’t get SceneSat working as yet) and a number of other Internet radio stations live while on the go.

The final great feature I’ll mention is the built in GPS (Global Positioning System). I’ve downloaded Google Maps to use with it, so I’ve not got an excuse to ever get lost again.

The only problem I’ve had with the phone is Nokia’s typically horrible user interface (I’ve been spoilt by years of using Sony Ericsson great User Interfaces)

Since my Windows XP install has been misbehaving lately, I have been experimenting with using Windows 7 as my primary operating system. I’m doing this as I’ve had a play with the public beta of Windows 7 and I like it, it’s a massive improvement on Windows Vista, and because being an early adopter of Windows XP worked out very well for me.

I did have one rather problematic issue. My wireless router would been randomly become unavailable for wireless connected devices, and I could not connect to the Wireless Basic config webpage via my main PC which has a wired connect to the router. A reboot of router would resolve the problem, but only temporarily.

After a bit of investigation I discovered that the problems was with Internet Protocol Version 6. IPv6 is enabled by default in Windows 7 however a lot of older routers, such as my Linksys WRT54G, do not support it. To prevent this issue I need to disable IPv6 in Windows 7. I suspect this will be a common problem for people moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 so I’ve including a quick how-to guide below.

How to disable IPv6 in windows 7.

Open up the Network and Sharing Center (via the item on the task bar or the control panel)

Under View your active networks click on Local Area Connection.

Click on the Properties button

Untick Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and then click OK.

This will disable IPv6 and therefore resolve any IPv6 related router problems.

Update

Very popular post this, so I’ve added some extra information.

This post was written for people migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7, however the advice above should also work for Windows Vista as it also supports IPv6.

If you continue to have problems check for other devices on your network (Laptops, etc) that may use IPv6 and disable it on them too, if this doesn’t work then check out the Router Manufacturer’s Website. (e.g. WRT54G)

I’ve found out recently that it is possible to use a Wiimote to play PC games, so I thought I would share.

What you’ll need

A Wiimote
A Bluetooth Enabled PC (or Bluetooth Dongle)
BlueSoleil bluetooth software (this method doesn’t appear to work for me with Microsoft’s own Bluetooth Stack)
GlovePie  

Connecting the Wiimote

Make sure your  Bluetooth is turned on.

There should be a Bluetooth Places icon on your desktop. Click it.

Before connectting the Wiimote, it needs to be discovered and added to bluetooth places. This needs to be done once for all Wiimotes you are planning to use. Just click the Search Devices icon. A torch icon will indicate that the software is searching for bluetooth devices.

Now press buttons 1 and 2 on the Wiimote. This will put the Wiimote into discovery mode, so that bluetooth software can find it. A new bluetooth device, called Nintendo RVL-CNT-01 will appear in bluetooth places now. If you have problems getting your Wiimote connected, try pressing “1″ and “2″ on the wiimote first and then click on the “Search Devices” icon.

Right click on the icon and choose Connect.

A window should pop up, stating that the software is trying to connect to the Wiimote. Again press 1 and 2 on the Wiimote.

When the connection attempt is successful, the blue parts of the Nintendo RVL-CNT-01 and the My Device icon will turn green. The Wiimote’s LEDs will continue flashing.

Configuring the Wiimote

You Wiimote is not connect to your PC, so now you need to configure it using GlovePie

Extract the GlovePie zip file to a new directory. 

Run the GlovePIE.exe file you extracted. 

Choose File > Open from the GlovePIE menu, and load the TestWiimote.PIE file. 

Press the Run button. The title bar should say “[Running]“, the Run button should change to a stop button, and the “debug” box should appear next to the stop button. 

Move the Wiimote around and see if the values in the debug box change. They should be horizontal, vertical, and forwards-backwards movement in that order. Gravity also affects them. 

 Go to any program (notepad will work) and try pressing the buttons on the Wiimote. They should emulate the appropriate keys on the keyboard. 

When you have finished, click the Stop button in GlovePIE. 

Once you confirm this is working you can try one of the many other GlovePie Scripts in the Wiimote Scripts directory, or you can define your are own script as I have done below.

These keys can be defined however you want (check  the wiili forum for more details). When you are happy press the run button.

You should be able to configure the Wiimote to do almost anything. You can even use the Wiimote to play emulated games.  Early today my son and I have been playing Wizball and International Karate using WinVice and Golden Axe and Gauntlet using Kega Fusion.

 During this weeks school half-term holidays the boy, my big sister and I visited the Pong To Kong exhibition at Dorman Museum. This exhibition traces the origins of electronic games in 1972 up to the present day.  (The title would suggest it goes from Pong (1972) to Donkey Kong (1981) but I guess they couldn’t find  a modern game to rhythm with Pong)

It has lots of computers, consoles and handhelds on display (Over 100) and even lets you try out some.  Computers such as the Philips G7000 (I had one of these), C64 (surprisingly the king of computers does not have pride of place, or a crown or anything), Spectrum (a 48k rubber keys type, my favourite),  BBC micro, but interestingly no Amiga or ST.

All the major game consoles are also on display in generation order, from Magnavox Odyssey and Atari 2600, to Sega Master System and Nitendo Entertainment System all they way to Playstation 3 and Wii (although curiously the XBox 360 is missing despite the XBox being displayed in the generation before). There is a lots of handhelds from the Game and Watch to the Nintendo DS via the Atari Lynx and the bizarre Nintendo Visual Boy.

The exhibition also has a stand briefly looking at how a modern game is made; the development of the microprocessor; and the history of Blitz Games Studios, a British independent games developer set up by the Oliver Twins best known for creating the Dizzy series of computer games.

The pnly problem I have with the exhibition is that is a bit small, but other than that I would recommended if you are on Teesside before it closes on 28th June 2009 you should go and see it especially if you have kids (the boy loved it).

Not only do I have to install crappy Quicktime when I update iTunes (which I only use because it’s the only decent podcast client available), but you also ask me if I want to install Safari. That would not have been so bad had you not installed it anyway even though I had I clicked ‘no’.

Shove that and your overrated iPhone up Steve Jobs’ arsehole.