Now this guy Allen Stanford has been arrested I bet World Finance magazine is frantically working on getting the next issue of the magazine out a little quicker than normal.

I’ve been playing with the two main connection managers for S60, Psiloc Connect and Birdsteps Connect. The idea of these apps is that they manage the connection your apps use, for example when at home they will prefer the faster wi-fi, but when there’s no wi-fi i.e. when you’re out and about, they switch to 3G.

So they make chosing which connection a set and forget expierence and they also help when you travel as you can remove the GSM access point from the list and only use wi-fi thus reducing the cost.

The Birdstep app is available for free in Downloads on the e-series devices, which is where I first found it. Birdstep’s app let’s your create an access group and uses that to manage your connections, so if you set your home wi-fi as your top access point it’ll allways try that first.

The plus point with the birdstep app, smart connect has an advantage over Psiloc’s app, in that it appears in the access list group as a GSM access point. Psiloc’s app appears as a wi-fi access point in the list, this causes a problem for those apps that only allow GSM access points to be used. The S60 Jaiku app for one, doesn’t work with the Psiloc app as it doesn’t use wi-fi access points. The jaiku S60 app uses the birdstep app just fine.

So with Birdstep you can set all your apps to be managed and use the quiker and less power draining wi-fi whilst at home. Whereas the Psiloc app can only manage those apps that can use any access point.

As regards roaming across access points, I’m not sure if this works for the Psiloc app, but I know it doesn’t with the free birdstep app. I was hoping that it allowed my device to roam seamlessly from wi-fi when I stepped outside and the back to wi-fi when i returned. That doesn’t happed with the free Birdstep app, it just sticks on GSM.

I’m going to try out the full birdstep app, smartroam on my phone in the next day or so see how that deals with roaming. The web site indicates it roams seamlessly and doesn’t require any intervention interms of network selection.

So if you’re always switching networks and want an app to manage the connection selection for you give either one of these apps a try.

We’re off on vacation soon and the kids have decided they now like the kite that was bought for them as a present.The kite which was a present is a single line kite and pretty boring once it’s flying. So I’ve picked up a wing style sports kite from Symphony, it’s 1.2m’s wide and has two lines so can be flown and made to do more tricks. I’m not sure our eldest who’s soon to be five will be able to fly it on her own, but maybe with a little help, might be able to make it do some cool stuff.

Blognation wrote a post entitled Lose Customer Trust in One Easy Step: Volkswagen Demonstrates here

I don’t think that they made it clear what the actual problem was and just sensationalized the story by saying it was VW, when it wasn’t, it was his local dealership.

Anyway I left them the following comment trying to explain where I think they went wrong. I have to disclose I have no relationship with VW whatsoever but have had several VW’s and have just ordered my fourth.

Oliver,

I think you’re being a little unfair to VW here. You didn’t deal with VW you dealt with a channel, in this case a bricks and mortar dealer, who just says “it’s volkswagen here” to make it easier for customers.

Your problem should be with the dealership and not VW themselves. You’ve not thought this through. VW did not ignore your request, The VW dealer in santa monica or it’s parent company LAcarGuy ignored it and you should say that.

Are you going to say I hate Microsoft, if you buy a Dell PC with their demoware on it? No you’d say I hate Dell

Volkswagen didn’t ignore your request LAcarGuy did and you should take it up with them. Nobody would read your post if you said I hate LAcarGuy, but if you say I hate Volkswagen you get a bigger audience, so we know why you did it.

Anyway, don’t give up on VW because a dealer sucks, hit them where it hurts and move to another, but tell them why first.

I thought this post was topical because Chris Brogan had posted about his love for the Saturn another car and how big companies should use social networking. I think there’s enough there for another post on that subject..we should have facebook style directories within enterprises for sure.

I’m sorry Robert, but you’ve just become like any other tech blogger out there.

I think you’ve lost the usp that made me want to read your blog. You blog had weight when you were at MS, I don’t think it has the same ‘weight’ now.

When you were at Microsoft it was really cool to see what was going on in the inside. Living the whole naked conversation thing, the real purpose of blogs, having the conversation between people, whether it’s an individual or a group of people.

So good luck with Tech podcast ..I can’t remember the real name (not a good sign), it was nice knowing you and I’m sure you’ll do great, but you’re no longer on my ‘must read’ list. Maybe I’ll come back sometime down the road, but for now…

Thank you, I had a great time and goodbye.

Technorati Tags: Robert, Scoble, A-List

The new Samsung barcode reading microwave went bang..it’s going back.

Back home at the weekend it’s been a busy week as we’re negotiating a contract clause with a partner. It was down to London Thursday and then over to Paris Thursday evening via Eurostar and then a BA flight back to Manchester on Friday evening.

Friday was just too hectic, a partner kick off meeting for 3 hours, followed by some prep on the contract negotiation then straight into an hour conf call with the Global team and the straight into a 55 minute meeting with another Telco before hoping on the shuttle to CDG.

Glad to be home.

Slightly off topic maybe, but it’s a smart oven nonetheless. It’s got a barcode reader on it and it can read the cooking instructions from the food itself and work out what program is required.

Can’t wait to see the barcode genetically grown in to potatoes and we’ll be away.

The serious side to this is the design. Samsung is making some really cool products and this microwave stood out a mile from the other silver boxes. Even though it was 25% more than the other boxes we just had to have this one.

Technorati Tags: Samsung, microwave, smart+oven

Back at work today.

Hundreds of emails which took me all day to plough through.

Managed to catch up on bloglines too.

Now I’m feeling a bit more connected and in-touch since the christmas break.

I’ve been thinking about a blog overhaul, I’m still making notes, but you may see some changes here over the next few weeks.

Happy New Year.

The blogging clock now ticks over to two and a half years