Combining the Eee PC with the N95

How could you improve on the Eee PC? Give it mobile web (broadband quality - through which I could stream the BBC's Flash programmes):

Whilst it is important to check your mobile operator's pricing policy (I needed to up-grade from T-mobile's web 'n' walk, to web 'n' walk plus), the steps are fairly easy...once you find the right pages to follow on the web:

1. Enable accessing the full-desktop mode on your Eee PC.
2. Add your N95 network

Whilst it is suggested that you need to be "fairly comfortable at the linux shell prompt" when it comes to adding the N95, everything you need to do is fairly intuitive.

How on earth did we manage before people posted everything online?

nb. obviously if I suddenly find I have a bill for hundreds of pounds I will change the post accordingly. It is worth noting that whilst I upgraded my plan online, I had to phone T-mobile to get the upgrade today rather than on my next billing date.

T-Mobile Favouritsm

I awoke this morning to be greeted with the cheery message that I had got 5 free song downloads from the T-mobile Mobile Jukebox. Unfortunately my girlfriend, who has the same phone and T-mobile contract, was not greeted with the same message. For some reason I got the distinct feeling that she felt that I was to blame for such favouritism. Thank you T-mobile.

It's the first time that I have used the T-mobile Jukebox, but I can understand why people do. It's so quick and simple you find yourself tempted to buy songs that you already have on CD just so you don't have to go through all the hassle of uploading them to your computer before putting them on your phone. Unfortunately it failed to fill in all the song details correctly on my N95, so they are currently listed as artist and album unknown.

The big limitation I found was that my N95 didn't seem to want to let me set any of the songs as a ringtone, which was a bit of a shame as I had always wanted Amy Winehouse's Rehab as my ringtone. That the songs are only valid to be played 2 billion times on the phone seems less of a problem.

Have T-mobile persuaded me that I should be downloading all my music to my phone? Personally I will be waiting for Nokia's "comes with music" package rather than paying for individual songs.

Bloglines after a Christmas break

If I don't look at my Bloglines account every few hours the number of items soon starts getting out of hand. If I don't look at it for a couple of days I find myself putting off the inevitable confrontation. Returning from Christmas in Norway, after not looking at Bloglines for a week, I find myself dreading the task in hand. Would I really miss out on some important item of note if I ditched the 1,358 items I am told I haven't looked at? Probably not, but there is always the fear/hope that there will be something really interesting buried amongst the rubbish.

The only web story I came across whilst I was away was the Royal Channel on YouTube (every news channel seemed to discuss it), although I also noticed advertising on the BBC web site for the first time outside the UK (whilst checking the football scores). Both good examples of traditional institutions adapting to the modern world.

Unfortunately not everyone is as up-to-date as the Queen and the BBC, T-mobile's current data plan could quite easily see many people dragged off to the poorhouse when travelling abroad: £7.50 per Mb of web browsing! Admittedly you have to be pretty foolish to not pay close attention to these things before travelling, but with 3G connections the Mb can quickly add up. My solution was to simply not use the web on my phone whilst away, but really it is time that the phone companies' caught up, we aren't looking at WAP anymore!