HTC Blackstone Flaws

Nah·det Masr asked me to explain why I was not satisfied with HTC Blackstone. Before I will answer, let me share with you a suggestion for HTC: 

• If you want to test your product, find somebody who has never had Pocket PC before. 

Why? When you see a "feature" for the first time, you cannot believe it. But after some time you think that flaws I will be describing are normal (at least you can live with them) and after some time you even think that these are normal features (this is where I'm).

There are flaws related to HW/drivers, to Windows and to TF3D:

• One of the reasons why I decided to buy Blackstone and not iPhone was Bluetooth A2DP. I do several hours of confcalls every week. The most comfortable setup for me is cell phone + Bluetooth heaphones. My handsfree/heaphones work perfectly for example with Nokia phones, but there are several problems with Blackstone. It might be that there is a way how to reconfigure the whole thing, but I was not able to do that. Also I believe that the behavior described below is the default:
• After you pair phone and handsfree, phone should discover and connect to handsfree automatically whenever I switch them on. With Blackstone I have to do that manually (Nokia does that for you).
• Presume that I'm expecting a call, both phone and handsfree are on and linked. It takes several seconds before sound/mic functionality is routed to handsfree. With Blackstone it works like this: you pick up the call, you use the phone normally (as without handsfree), after several seconds the sound is finally redirected from phones's speaker to the handsfree.
• After you pick up the call/call to somebody, display is sometimes automatically turned off for a couple of seconds and this "feature" can not fixed. Obviously there is a light sensor that should take care of this, but the display is turned off even if the phone lies on the table in front of you. What I typically do is that I call to the conference and than want to go on mute - but you the display is black and you can not use Mute button to do that.
• Screen rotation is switched off for all the applications except photos album and Opera. There is now way how to mark an application that it is capable of handling that. This problem can be partially fixed by Gyrator (rotation is allowed for all the applications).
• The official name of Blackstone is HTC Touch HD, therefore you would expect that you can use your fingers to use it, but you get a hybrid instead (this is why this "touch" phone has stylus).
• Keyboard (phone/compact/full) shows keys you press under your finger, therefore you don't know which key was actually pressed (compare with iPhone).
• Transition from TF3D to Windows and back is unbelievable. It is schizophrenia. From finger friendly environment to stylus environment and back. You may try to use nails :) in Windows, but sometimes you simply have to use stylus (the best test of your skills is alarm setup using fingers). 
• Applications/task switching use also pretty unusable. The suggested way how to do that is to use the Programs panel (because at most one instance of the application can be run). Of course this doesn't work - for example Opera opens new tab. Therefore what you must do is to click Home hardware button, move to the Programs panel and click the target application icon. Fortunately there is a fix for this - TaskFacade (pattern that used for example by HTC Hero/Android).
• No battery status indication. To determine the status of battery go to Start, Settings menu item, System tab, Power icon. I fixed this using dciBattery.
• I also don't like Windows alarm system. There is no list of missed/snoozed alarms as you know it from Outlook or SonyEricsson. To find a missed alarm, you have to start with a balloon next to the Start menu, you click the ballon, then you get to the status screen, click alarms icon, and finally you can see alarms one by one (no list). Pretty complicated.
• If you download an (opensource) application, that is just extracted to the card, it cannot be added programs in the Start menu or Programs panel. Shortcut must be created first (otherwise it is impossible). But there is no way how to create a shortcut in Windows. You have to download an opensource tool that is capable of doing that. In my opinion this should be one of the basic utilities shipped with Windows.
• Order of favorite contacts in TF3D's People tab cannot be changed. It also disappear whenever you need to resync with the contacts with Outlook.
• ... and more ;)

This is what I still remember. I fixed several problems already and some of the flaws became features ;) Hopefully somebody will find this list useful.

HTC Blackstone: PocketCM Keyboard

Blackstone has finger unfriendly keyboard - it was designed for stylus and thus it is almost unusable with touch display. As usually there is a fix - PocketCM keyboard ;)

GoogleWave Sandbox Account

I'm there ;) martin.dvorak at wavesandbox.com

HTC Blackstone

HTC Touch HD is my first pocket PC. I never had smartphone or pocket PC before. Obviously I had to decide what to buy, the selection was - iPhone 3G (3GS was not released yet at that time), G1, Nokia 5800 and HTC Touch HD. Obviously the final choice was subjective :)

• Day 1: I understood what is the difference between ergonomicity of iPhone and WM6.1+TouchFLO3D shizophrenia.
• Day 2: I decided to sell that damn thing!
• Day 3: I discovered XDA Developers, did a couple of customizations and decided to give Blackstone a chance.

A couple of links and applications you may find useful:

• HTC Blackstone @ XDA developers
• OZI Explorer
• dciBattery
• Jeyo Mobile Extender (not free)
• RSS Reader
• MS ActiveSync (Windows XP)
• Support/patches/fixes @ HTC
• Advanced Config
• Calcolatrice
• Facebook
• Google Maps
• Gyrator 2
• HD Soft Reset
• HD Tweak
• Iris Browser
• PHM RegEdit
• Shortcut Maker
• Task Facade
• ceTwit
• Fring
• T9 14 languages update
• Paul's must have free software

Stay tuned ;)

A Dose of DnB

Best DnB buy 2008 is As far As we Go and Back Again (SpearHead). I bought this CD because I wanted to get Lomax's BrainFreeze track, but I keep listening the whole CD again and again and again...

I rediscovered DnB old dogs and I listen to various tracks of Omnitrio, Seba and LTJ's Earth CD series - back to the roots :)

For some time, I was not amazed by anything new - I mean a track that would be comparable to the smashing Commix debut. A couple of weeks ago I have finally heard something very special - Chase & Status remix of TopCat Ruffest Gun Ark that was played by Fabio in his show. The link above is unfortunately to the live version of the tune. It is also comming on new TopCat and Friction (Shogun) albums. There are several other remixes (even dubstep one), but Chase & Status did the best job. I like these old school/new sound track. Actually TopCat was the first jungle CD I bought back in 2000 :-P

There are several other tunes and albums (both old and new) that are also on my radar screen: The Trip, Toy Down, Cosmonaut, PJANOO by Logistics (Hospital), new Subfocus (Ram) album and Gold Rush, From bath with love by Danny Byrd (Hospital).

JAlbum to Picasa

JAlbum2Picasa - my new OSS project ;-)

Filip Ospaly @ ITU WCS Promo Video

Filip Ospaly spotted on ITU World Championship promo video. Click the button with national flags below the video player and enjoy Filip who is passing two of his competitors ;)

MR to Hit 10.000 Downloads This Month

Thanks to lifehacker.com and several other sites, my spare time project MindRaider will hit 10.000 downloads this month only at sf.net (April 2009). Despite the fact that there is no doc, UI is a bit chaotic and I work on it just for my personal pleasure it seems that the result is not that bad :)

SLS3 Dilemma

After being injured twice this month (left and right carf, tentacle's tendons), I bought SLS3 compression socks. I was skeptic, but because I was in trouble I decided to give them a shot. The arguments sound reasonable and Paula Radcliffe (my woman runner idol) wears them several seasons - so they must be good, right? ;)

I did tempo workouts and a long run (>20 miles) and I'm pretty sure that it works. I feel much better, especially the recovery is significantly faster. The socks are designed properly, so I do not afraid of blisters even in the marathon. I look funny when I wear them, but at least I do not have to shave my legs :)

The problem is that I have a dilemma right now - should I wear them in my next race or not? Will see...

1/2 marathon PB: 1:29:27 > 1:23:16 > 1:21:59

I have improved my half-marathon best two times this year. PIM - first I cut more than 6 minutes. Check very nice race simulator (Google maps mashup). Pardubice - I was injured week before the race, I got a wrong number due to organizers fault, I had to make Jeff Galloway's walking break intermezzo... despite of that, I set my new personal best and cut more than minute to 1:21:59 ;)

Kubik also finished his first big race in Pardubice. He was riding tuned Specialized hotwalk and obviously had his personal pacemaker.

Prague International Marathon: half marathon, 1:23.17, 125th place/4537 runners.

Pardubice Half-marathon (Czech championship): half marathon, 1:21:59, 87th place/826 runners.

Kara did not win, but...

This is not a fake ;) Can be seen at Universal Sports (2:44.25).

MindRaider 7.6 Released

After several months of development here comes new MindRaider. The main feature of this release is sharing. You may import or export any outline you want and share it with your colleagues or friends. In addition to that Note templates for various types of meeting and auto coaching templates are provided. Check also new shortcuts and visual linking feature.

You may download distro for Windows, Linux or Java from SourceForge.

Enjoy!

10k PB: 37:25.68

After fighting a sickness for 2 weeks I unexpectedly improved my 10k personal best. Great race, unexpected meeting with my "one glove" friend and beautiful weather. Pececka desitka: 10km, 37:25.68, 68th place/436 finishers.

In addition to that I did nice run to ruin of Baba the very next day. What a running weekend ;-)