Willow Design

Archive for the ‘Mobile communication’ Category

I invite you to look at this recent article in Personal Computer World, a magazine I used to respect back in the old days but which now seems to have gone very lightweight…

http://www.pcw.co.uk/v3/analysis/2264659/apple-ipad-business-device

Take a look at the article above in which they discuss the iPad as a business tool… and then come back here. I’d have commented on the site but there is no area for comments amazingly… how can anyone get things so wrong?

" does not play well with much existing enterprise IT infrastructure, although it can link to an Exchange mail server via a VPN."

Rubbish – I can access Exchange in the normal way just as with any PC or smartphone – I have full access to email, contacts, calendar and tasks with no VPN whatsoever. You do need a separate app to get NOTES but as that’s only a couple of quid…you can also get an app to Sync ONENOTE.

"This requires each iPad user to download and install applications themselves, rather than being provisioned and configured by the IT department, as is standard practice with other platforms such as Windows PCs or even many smartphones."

Anyone who can’t install apps on the iPad or iPhone doesn’t deserve to own one – it’s a one-finger button-press and password entry – THAT’s IT. Upgrades are similarly trivial – you press one button to get all upgrades automatically with no user input.

" Moreover, the only way to purchase applications from the App Store is via an iTunes account, whereas most organisations prefer to negotiate a volume licence agreement directly with the software publisher."

For heaven’s sake – the apps cost 59p for the most useful which is "Goodreader" – hardly any apps cost more than a few pounds. It’s not worth the effort.

" Perhaps more serious from a business perspective is that it is difficult to get files in and out of the iPad other than via email or by synchronising with iTunes on a PC or Mac."

Absolute rubbish. Goodreader and other apps allow you to input files fia FTP, straight from the PC, via an internal webserver, via BOX.NET, Google Docs and other means. It is simple to import WORD, PDF, EXCEL and other documents.

" This means that users can pull down documents from enterprise collaboration portals such as Microsoft’s SharePoint, which is rapidly becoming almost ubiquitous in large organisations, provided they have installed a tool such as Apple’s iWork suite for the iPad that supports these files."

You most certainly do not need iWORK suite to access Sharepoint – you can do it with the web browser or with Goodreader.

" The iPad does not provide any way for users to access files on the device other than through the application they are associated with."

Rubbish – Goodreader and others allow cross-application transfer of files.

" We purchased and downloaded Pages, and were pleasantly surprised by how usable it was as a basic word processor, although using the touch-screen instead of a mouse to highlight and select text did not work the way we expected and took some getting used to."

Having never used a MAC before it took me all of 30 seconds to figure out how to use PAGES.

" Another potential concern for enterprises is the Safari browser. Although this offers a good browsing experience on the web in general, it may not be compatible with some web-based enterprise applications. For example, we were unable to access V3.co.uk’s web content management system using Safari."

AT LAST, a valid point. Given the popularity of iPhone and now iPAD surely the answer to that is to talk to V3

So you’re an Apple enthusiast, you probably already have an iPhone – and now you’re considering the iPAD – but which version? Do you go for the WIFI only or get the 3G version and land yourself with ANOTHER contract?

Well, there may be another way. As it happens I have a Vodafone 3G dongle allowing (fair use) unlimited access to 3G signals to supply broadband to the laptop.

That won’t work, I hear you say, it’s a USB dongle and  the iPAD won’t handle a USB dongle! True, but, as I found out this morning, the SIM in the Vodafone dongle works in a phone – at least, for data anyway. I just happen to have a Nokia e65, but any old phone with WIFI will do… head on over to Joiku where they have software for most phones to turn the phone into a WIFI access point. You run the software, it makes the call – and supplies a WIFI signal for your laptop. Which means of course – your iPAD. I’ve yet to try using this to provide a signal for the iPHONE so that I can use SKYPE (which refuses to work on 3G or even 3G with a VPN) – but that’s because I went out to do my testing with a flat phone battery and just managed to knock off a couple of emails to prove that it all works.

More on the SKYPE episode later but if you can lay your hands on a suitable phone, the only downside to using this as against the dongle – is that you end up with something else to keep charged… but rather than adding another contract that surely has to be a worthwhile compromise?

Peter Scargill

Having had the iPhone 3GS for some weeks now, it is well past my normal “novelty-wearing-off time” in which the greatest NEW thing normally becomes somehow… normal – and yet I still feel that somehow life has changed irrevocably in a small but worthwhile way.

The problem is in the title “iPhone”. In reality these devices have been so much more than phones for some time. I’ve been using Microsoft smartphones for some years and recently there have been times when I’ve left the laptop back at the office and relied on the mobile for email. This works only so well because of the limited keyboards but it sure beats carrying a huge laptop around. The MS phones are also ok for the odd game of backgammon on the train and the addition of WIFI makes them handy for receiving RSS news – ie BBC news etc. But that’s about it. They soon become out of date and Orange don’t exactly fall over themselves to encourage updates.

Exit MS phones, enter the iPhone. Their real innovation is the APP store on the phone, not that horrible iTunes program on the PC. Not only can you idle the hours away looking for new APPS but you’re informed automatically of any updates to existing APPS which then come in pretty much without any attention (preferably on WIFI but I’ve updated a few over 3G without problems). So what is actually happening here is that your “phone” is evolving on an almost daily basis without being connected to any PC.. and that’s part of what keeps up the interest.

Every couple of days I see something new, some new idea that might never have occurred to me – or some gripe I have with an existing app simply goes away due to constant improvement. Who would have thought you could use a phone to monitor sleep patterns or to identify stars or point to restaurants using the camera or remote control your media centre or measure distance or go shopping… the list is never-ending and continually growing.

I have over 120 APPS on my 16G iPhone and the biggest of the lot is TOMTOM which covers all of Europe – yet looking at the graph below as you can see, I’ve used only a small part of available memory, under 3GB out of 16GB on APPS.

I can see where it might be worth getting the 32GB version if you really want to carry around a bunch of videos and thousands of tunes as well. Personally I’m happy with access to thousands of radio stations and my entire music collection back home as long as I have a 3G connection…. yes, a decent 3G connection is perfectly adequate for streaming music to the device.

And that’s really what this is… it’s an “iDevice”, no longer a simple phone but a portable entertainment system. Does this make it any less valid as a business tool? Hell no, email handling is superb, I have multiple email accounts in there along with the ability to read business documents (WORD and PDF as examples) with ease – within the limitations of the screen size of course. The copy and paste ideas implemented by Apple are superb and until you’ve seen them in action along with the associated magnifying glass, it’s hard to describe other than to say they are completely intuitive and need no training to use unless you’re very, very slow.

Let me say that the phone itself is NOT perfect… the battery life is ATTROCIOUS, fortunately there’s a way around that and so my phone is permanently carried around in a MILI sleeve which fits snuggly over the phone and includes a battery, taking the combination to well over 24 hours operation and removing the need to use the ridiculously complicated Apple connector in favour of a bog-standard mini-USB socket. Thankfully the iPhone power supply is one of those mains plugs with a USB connector on the bottom so it’s just a case of ditching the Apple lead (curiously white even though I bought a black iPhone) and replacing it with a usb lead.

From serious business using multiple email accounts including MS Exchange (which the iPhone handles flawlessly including email, contacts, notes and the all-important calendar) through novelty business applications to full-on gaming this is in my mind currently the best option for a mobile device – loving every minute of it.

Anyone for GOLF?