business
Skype 30,000 feet in the air? Yeah, sure!
AshMan Says…
I’m going on exchange to Slovenia over the Winter holidays to study at the University of Ljubljana. However what surprised me was for a country of just over two million people and a capital city with just a mere three hundred thousand people, the country has one of the largest universities in the world.
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
One of the big decisions which I had to make was to find a way to get myself from Australia to the little southern European country. After doing a number of searches online and trying a number of different travel dates I had found the dates I wanted to travel on, now all I had to decide was who I wanted to fly. I had worked the options down to two airlines, Singapore Airlines and Emirates Airlines. With having a 28+ hour flight I wanted to make sure that I was going to try provide myself with the best and most comfortable flight (as I also have a history of not sleeping much at all/if any on long haul flights).
Emirates A380
This is where I started to do a little bit of research on what both airlines offered and was surprised to see how far inflight technology has come. I was particularly hoping that Singapore Airlines had improved their inflight entertainment since I last flew them to Europe in 2008/2009.
I discovered that Singapore Airlines has come a little way in updating their entertainment hub with a new remote control and an updated screen, however apart from that things haven’t really changed. What really blew me away was the inflight technology which Emirates offer on their A380’s. Offered is access to wireless internet via WiFi as well as the ability to complete calls and send SMS’s via your GSM Mobile. Unfortunately the A380 is unable to currently land in Brisbane so takes the direct flight option out of the equation for me, though the 13 inch screen, 1200 channels and the power adapter for laptops are the icing on the cake from what I have heard to be the Emirates Experience from fellow travellers and might just be enough to entice many.
Emirates ICE System
What really got me thinking however was the overall embracing and improvement of technology; and how it enables passengers to use what was once considered a very dangerous device to even have on board with the wireless feature is disabled! What is a huge plus too is that the technology and speed of the wireless service is really good. A friend of mine during State of Origin Game 1 was streaming the game online, and didn’t experience any serious buffering issues, which flying almost 30,000 feet in the air traveling at approximately 900km/h is pretty impressive to me.
Emirates and Wireless a match made in the skies!
Makes me wonder why I still can’t get good 3G speeds when travelling on the bus to work in the city! Thanks to another technology (that being YouTube) I was able to find a copy of the inflight entertainment system which Emirates has on their planes and I think sums up pretty well just how far that technology has come! Enjoy the link below!!
And by the way…I made the decision and AshMan is flying Emirates!
Office 2010 Beta – Available soon!
AshMan says…
The web page for the Office 2010 Beta has gone live and is showing three different versions which will be available for test.
Office 2010 Beta Page
Home and Business is one of the versions available and probably will be the most popular of the downloads, and it includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote,Outlook, and Office Web Apps.
Professional is the next version available offering Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher and Office Web Apps.
The final version which is available of the three is Professional Plus which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Access, Publisher, Infopath, Communicator, SharePoint Workspace, and Office Web Apps and it mentions that it is only available to Volume License Customers.
All three are expected to be offered in both 32 and 64 bit, and if you are a MSDN or TechNet subscriber you can already get access to the download from your normal download area. I am downloading my copy and will report back with a review shortly.
HTC Snap – the smartphone that goes and goes and goes
AshMan says…
HTC is known for making mobile phones with a great number of features and fantastic build quality. The HTC Snap follows in that tradition.
HTC Snap Breaks The Mould
When first holding the phone you realise just how thin and light it is (weighs only 120grams). The phone isn’t a touch screen based device, but does feature a fixed QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is a lot better than any other QWERTY device I have used before with the raised keys assisting you to select the key you want therefore significantly reducing typing errors.
Super Thin HTC Snap
The 2.4-inch QVGA display has an LED backlight which really is great for using in a number of different locations, both bright and dark. The screen feels like it should have been just a tiny bit taller as when surfing some websites you cannot see enough information on the screen at any one time.
The phone comes boxed with Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard but HTC has released the upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard. Even though there are no noticeable changes with the upgrade straightaway, the addition of Windows Marketplace and Microsoft My Phone are definitely there.
The Smartphone features 256MB of ROM and 192MB of RAM which is plenty for this device to happily multitask and the task manager is always available if you need to clear up some memory. The HTC Snap seems to have missed out on the usual HTC make over it gives to all of its other devices, but Windows Mobile 6.5 seems to be pretty good on its own as the navigation is controlled by the scroll wheel and buttons.
Scroll Wheel and QWERTY Keyboard
New users of the scroll wheel system will take a little bit of use to familiarise themselves, but Blackberry users will feel right at home. The default sensitivity setting of the scroll wheel doesn’t feel sensitive enough and will require some tweaking to get the perfect sensitivity for web browsing and for scrolling through large numbers of emails or text messages seamlessly.
A new feature to the HTC Snap which doesn’t appear in any other HTC device is the Inner Circle button located at the bottom right hand side. This button will launch an email application which only displays emails from contacts which you select to be in your inner circle. This application is great in some instances but a downside is that if you use your phone for personal and business use (which most people will) they won’t be able to view family or friends separately to business contacts.
The HTC Snap comes also with a wireless antenna supporting b and g, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP for wireless headsets, GPS and HTC extUSB (which serves as the USB connection and headset connector). It features HSPDA with 7.2mpbs down-link and a quad band radio.
2.0MP Fixed Focus Camera
Battery life is outstanding for the Smartphone with a light test (includes an occasional phone call and the Wi-Fi being turned on for one hour a day) seeing the phone run for almost 6 days non-stop. For the heavy test (includes Wi-Fi being turned on full time and an hour phone call each day) the phone lasted just under 2 days.
The 2.0 megapixel camera on the back is fixed focused and provides an average image quality; which is understandable as this phone’s appeal is targeted towards the business users who wouldn’t be using the camera that much in essence.
In the end, the HTC Snap is a very capable phone with a good keyboard and an outstanding battery life. If you are after a QWERTY keyboard mobile phone this is certainly a strong contender.
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