MS Office on smartphones

Folks you might wanna pay a bit closer attention to this one and why I say Windows Mobile is bit of a warning lable if you expect to make good use of your smartphone. Thats right! I said it: its a warning label!

When buying a smartphone, users often presume that getting a Windows Mobile based phone means they would get better usage and support for their MS Office files. Its probably one of the worst myths in the world of smartphones. You cant entirely blame them for this faulse assumption. One would expect "Windows" based smartphone to give better functionality for Word documents, Excel sheets and Power Point presentations. Unfortunately, it doesnt work that way. If only people could google a bit more before investing in a smartphone or better still... read my blog!

Most people would find it strange or might even be reluctant to believe that the first generation of ESeries smartphones came with Nokias own application, Documents, for accessing MS Office files, was so good that not only it was better than any 3rd party software, it was actually better than Microsoft's own devices! Its not just Mobile Review who declared Nokia's MS Office capabilities to be superior to Microsoft's proposition, others have been expressing their frusration with even with just document viewing on Windows Mobile. funny huh? well if you use Microsoft Windows (and most likely you do), its not that hard to believe.

But come on! how hard is it to have a quick browse on the net to find out the most suitable software or using MS files on any smart phone? to figure that Quick Office is probably currently the most popular solution. Until recently, Office 2007 files were not supported by any smartphones, and yes not even for Windows Mobile. But now finally this has been fixed and solutions are availble for most devices. QuickOffice has also just released Premier 5.0 now supports Office 2007 on Symbian smartphones.

Better than that! the ESeries phones like E61 and E62 both come with excellent and comprehensive a built- in full Office suite which allows you to view, edit and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. For both these devices, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes, all of them easily sync to Microsoft Outlook using the included PC Suite. And if you're a power user, you probably already own or at least eyeing the E90.

E61 Screens

The lesson learned? Windows Mobile does not mean it gives better support for MS Office, in fact you might even wanna treat "Windows Mobile" as a warning lable (indulge me a little), specially if you wanna use your Windows Mobile device with Vista.


Bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal

Controlling your PC with your phone

thats right! if you didnt know this before now you do. You can not only use your mobile phone as a TV remote (since ages ago), you can use your regular mobile phone to control sotware applications on your PC (or Mac). Specially if your phone is based on Symbian S60, and even better if you have an E-series phone. In fact the new Salling Clicker software is actually native for E-series phones like the E61. And it uses WiFi or Blue Tooth for connecting to your PC, and does all the detection for you. PRETTY cool!

thats all there's to it. you can control software and send and recieve data and sort of be able to see whats happening on the PC as well.

there's are a lot of possibilities here folks! all depends on how far can your evil mind think. Look at what people were doing with a simple infrared control 10 years ago! consider this: when Palm Pilot was still the rage, car thieves actually used Pilot's infrared port to pick up frequencies of car locks from a distance. then used their Palm Pilot to unlock and steal the cars. this became quite a problem in the UK if I remember correctly.

and I'm not even going to mention what people did with the zero lux infrared capability of the olddd Soney handycams (my blog is PG13 remember?). Point is, we give you the stuff, your devilish mind should do the rest, and there's a LOT of devilish stuff you can do with a kickass smartphone like the E61 and its siblings.

Bilal
http://buzzzword.blogspot.com/

BOOHOO For You!

found this interesting little jap cartoon at Engadget Mobile. its actually about the japanese smartphone makers making fun of western (american in particular) about how backward their phones are. it comes with this "[Warning: Psychedelic video could induce epilepsy]":



so did you get epilepsitic? epileptic? elliptical? episeptic?

boohooforyou.com



Bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal

how to make S60 browse like iPhone

if you wanna get more out of browsing from your smartphone, there's this guy Harri Salminen who's come up with a pretty cool way to make websites think your S60 phone (come on, its about time you found out your phone is running Symbian (or it should!)) is actually an iPhone. and why the h*ll does that matter? well like Harri says, thanks to all the marketing buzz behind iPhone, many major websites have special optimized pages for browsing on the iPhone, when your S60 phone can render pages just as well, or better.

The screen shots give a general idea about the difference between a standard webpage on the phone screen compared with iPhone optimized:

normal S60 browsing

with the iPhone hack

So your Nokia or any other phone running S60 (depending on what model you have) can do just the same with this little hack. You can download the hack from Harri's website below:

S60 to iPhone hack

Harri had actually encountered a little bug which wasn't letting his N95 make the most of this phone, but thanks to another genius, Robin Jewsbury, there's a fix for that little bug too:

S60 to iPhone bug fix


happy browsing!


Bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal/

New grid comparison of smartphones

I was going through some message boards and came across a posting from someone about this really cool grid that calculate the scores of smartphones based on your own preferences.

http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/grid.htm

ok it may not be REALLY cool, cuz of some of the models *you* would want to be see in there may not be there. but think again! there may be a reason why such a model was not put in there in the first place!

I'm not surprised at all about the winner and runner-up in that grid if all criterie are set to preference.

Bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal/

Snakes in Singapore?!

yes I know there are plenty of fork-tongued snakes in singapore, but I mean the slithery crawling reptiles, the real deal. Didnt know they can still be found near homes, and definitely never expect a black cobra to be crawling around in the backyard (not many backyards in singapore to begin with). Yet, while I was getting ready for work this morning, I heard my russian housemate screaming. "She can't be at it with her bf, its way too early for that sort of thing", I thought. I was right, moments later I heard Marcus (her bf) yelling "bilal do you know anything about cobras?!" and I was like "yea, supposed to stay away from them". Apparantly they had seen a black cobra in the backyard. Somehow they figured out the snake is a she (aren't they always?). good guess there roomies!

I quickly grabbed my bokken (graciously given to me by lovely model Carrol), clad in nothing but my shorts and bedroom slippers, Marcus was holding a broom clad only in a sarong ("the semi-nudist cobra hunt", I should have brought my camera downstairs). and there was a really cute cat sitting and watching intently, close to where the lady cobra was now hiding under the thick vegetation. Exciting stuff.

Alas, after a lot of probing and prodding, I couldnt get the cobra to show its head. It seems that the cobra found the earlier screams of my lovely russian housemate too terrifying and high-tailed out of there before we could get acquainted. Hmm... or maybe the poor snake was too terrified of two blokes coming after it in their skimpy sleepwear. Hey I'ld be scared too if I was in it's place.