BlackBerry Playbook

I currently own an iPad 1, wife has an iPhone 4S and I have a Windows Mobile 7 Phone, so I have enough devices to do what I need on the go. I have been looking at tablets for a while now and a few caught my eye such as Sony Tablet S, Blackberry Playbook and the Motorola Xoom. The end choice is always about money, splashing out £400 for an iPad 2 was too much money in my books and even the £329 price points of Android Tablets seem a bit high. The two machines that are at the £200 price point are the Blackberry Playbook and Arnova 9 G2.

Buying on Impulse

I had watched some YouTube videos already and was in two minds if this device would suit my needs or not, I was standing in the store and had they no 32GIG models in stock (as the online site told me) I would have happily walked away but they had 4 in fact. I bought the device on the grounds that I could take it back for a full refund, this would allow me to try it out fully and see what it can really do.

Packaging & Initial Boot

The box that it came in is very well presented and contains the Playbook, Neoprene Sleeve, Micro-USB Cable Cleaning Cloth and the Mains Charger. There is a piece of paper that tells you to make sure you have Wi-Fi Coverage, press the power button and follow the steps on-screen. The initial steps including connecting to a Wi-Fi, setting up a Blackberry account, country based settings and finally checking for updates. It took a while to download and update the device, nothing major but until this is complete, you cannot use the device. The last thing it does is take you through a guide on how the device works.

Specifications

• 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor (Cortex A9 Processor), w/ GPU
• 1 GB RAM
• Memory: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions to be available
• 5300mAh battery
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

The Device – Connectors

This is a 7 inch tablet, a lot smaller than the iPad (9.7”) and it runs the screen at 1024×600 which compares nicely to the iPad 1024×768. There are very limited connectors on this device; there is a power button along with volume up and down and a play button on the top. Underneath we have a Micro HDMI, no lead is supplied but you can get this cheaply online. Given the low cost of the cables, I am not sure why RIM did not include this in the box? Next this this we have Micro USB connector and I guess another connector for the Dock you can buy.

Hardware – Camera, Speakers & Microphone

The Playbook has a better front camera than most tablets have back camera. Both cameras can do full HD (that’s 1920×1080), the back camera of course been better quality. They are rated as 3MP front and 5MP back (2592×1944). The microphone is just amazing and can pick up very clear and loud audio. Finally the speakers, unlike most tablets, they have placed them on the front and they are loud and have good bass, perfect for playing music. If you want to think of this device as a HD Camcorder, then that is money well spent in this regard and of course it can do so much more.

The Web Browser

I have tested many sites on this device and I would say that just about all of them work as they would on a normal desktop web browser. I could happily view a stream on Justin.TV and access many of the file sharing sites. The one site that did not work was soundcloud, I could not press the arrow to start the music playing for some reason. I noticed a lot of the applications were in fact just a short cut to the web site, for example BBC iPlayer. Using TVCatchup website allowed me for example to watch TV live which was handy. The reason why most work? Simple, it has a fully functional adobe flash built right in and in no way did the device slow down because of this.

Application Store

This is where the device starts to fall down, there are a lot of applications that are just not there and a lot are things you have to buy. I failed to find for example a decent Twitter program, teamviewer, Skype and so on. One of the reasons why there are applications missing is simply the fact you open a web page and do the same thing, such as Tweetdeck.

Gaming

Battery Life

This is one area where I heard was not so good and it is claimed an 8 hour battery life. With general use throughout the day, I went from 100% to 56% and that was with using it heavily. I agree the iPad has a longer life which means it can last for a whole week without charging but maybe as the iPad does not fully multitask and has no flash is the reason why. I did not feel the battery life was an issue since using this device over the last few days, maybe as I was plugged in via USB half of the time and it trickle charging it?

OS2.0 Beta & Android Applications

I followed a guide online which was as simple as going to the Blackberry site, typing in your PIN number plus email address and I soon had an update flagged on my device (511MB) to the beta OS, which is due out Feb 2012. Before I went ahead with this, I wanted to make sure I could go backwards and again on the same site, it tells you how to do this. One major update here was the fact that wireless which was previously connecting at 11Mbps was now at 65Mbps. You can side load BAR files (Android apps) via a tool called DDPBInstaller. I tested a handful of Android programs and some worked 100%, some looked like they were working but did not function properly and finally some just crashed straight out.

Using this method I was able to get Citrix installed and connect to my work Citrix farm and access the desktop without any major issues. I tried Skype but that failed as well as teamviewer. DS File & DSAudio (both Android Applications to access files from my Synology NAS) worked 100% and I was able to stream any of my music or watch any movie on my NAS box (as long as the format was correct). Doing some testing as to what video formats it can play, it copes with MP4 just fine, it can also play WMV & MOV formats as well. AVI and MKV was a no-go and instead of playing them, just copied them to the device instead.

Bluetooth Keyboards

I used the Apple Bluetooth keyboard as a test and set it to search for devices. It found the keyboard (I held the power key on the right hand side until the LED flashed) and asked me to type in a number on the keyboard. I typed it and pressed enter and the keyboard was paired. I tested an IRC application and was typing away at full speed. Any Bluetooth keyboard would work of course as would a headset.

Comparing it to iPad

Before I compare devices, remember that a 32GIG iPad 2 is currently £479 and this device only cost me £200. The iPad is bigger (9.7”) but no much more screen estate (1024×768 vs. 1024×600). As iOS has a wealth of application, you can normally find just about anything you want but the reason it needs applications in the first place is due to the browser on the iPad not been able to do flash or air stuff. A good example of this is either Ustream or Justin.TV, both need an application on the iPad (which is the iPhone version) while the playbook can not only use the proper website but also stream using the built in camera & microphone. If we add the ability to use Android applications then this opens up the playbook to a more level playing field.

Conclusion

I bought this device with the express thought that I could take it back should it be a waste of my time and for the first couple of days, the “swing-o-meter” was edging towards “take it back”. In fact I almost put it all back in the box and took it back just the other day as I felt it did not do what I wanted out of a device, this was until I placed 2.0 Beta and side-loaded some Android application. Ask yourself this question; what else is out there that will cost you £169, £200 or £329 (16GIG, 32GIG, 64GIG) for so much hardware? I looked at the ‘cheap’ android tablets (Arnova 9 G2) and that cannot do half what this can do plus only has 8GIG ram and costs the same price (£200).

The plan is simple, I keep using this device for another week solid and by time Saturday comes around, if I feel this is just a mere toy and a waste of my £200, I shall flash it back to production OS, wipe it clean and take it back. If it lasts the full week then I shall keep it plus buy myself some much needed items such as a case (which doubles as a stand) and a mini HDMI convertor.

The one last thing to mention is this device has no GPS which means it cannot really function as a replacement SatNav in your car which is a shame as it wound have rounded the device off nicely.

****** UPDATE 10 Jan 2012 ******

I grabbed the device last night to sit down and chill out, I had problems, lots of them. The video player just quit half way through a movie, the browser would hang for a long time on flash related sites and the Android Apps would crash out for no reason. I followed the guide to bring the device back to 1.8.0, cleaned it up and re-boxed it “good as new”. I took it back to the store today and got a full refund. If you do buy one due to this review, the device might work out better for you but I cannot wait until RIM get the software working correctly, maybe this is why they are so cheap?

Google plus has been open a while now, the initial wave of people were mostly the Geeks who were only to happy to jump on a newfangled social media ‘thing’ and to further there so called circle of friends. What is missing is ‘normal’ people, here is a comment someone posted:

Now, if I filter out Internet Friends, Following and Acquaintances from my main Google+ stream… I SEE NO UPDATES.

Why have the masses not jumped ship from Facebook or Twitter yet? What use does G+ actually have and how about the future?

What Does G+ Give you?

The first ability is to add people to Circles, this means you can group people as you see fit and the latter part allows you to only send a message out to a certain group for example. Facebook had this for a while in a sense, I used to use this all the time on facebook so that only people at work for example seen certain posts.

The next is the posts themselves, these can include pictures, videos, links and your location. What happened here was people used this function to post cat pictures by the bucketload, this function reminds me of Tumblr in fact.

The Hangout is the ONLY feature that allowed G+ to live beyond the experimental stage and if marketed right, is a killer application on it’s own. I saw a drop in the number of people prepared to start or be in a hangout as time has gone on though, maybe the novelty has worn off?

Why are people still on Facebook?

Facebook & Twitter have clients right on my phone, on my iPad and computer, I do not need to keep visiting a web page to see what has been written. If you are already on a site or service, unless the new place offers something new and exciting – they why would people move? I have people on my G+ from work but they never post anything, it was just something they joined as it was new but once they saw nobody they knew was either on it or posting anything, they quickly forgot about it.

What needs to be done?

Like I mentioned above, there needs to be application on everything so that at any given notice I can see if there is a Hangout happening, a new post and so forth. What about better ways to filter the information? For example do I really need to stop following somebody just because they post a constant stream of junk? Why not allow me to hide this info but keep them on my books so I can hangout with them if needed?

At the end of the day though, it is up to you  to make your friends and family come across and use it, we cannot sit and wait for Google to sugar coat it. At the moment I see it as two things:

1. A Glorified Twitter
2. Skype on Steroids

I have never really been a great fan of Social Media, I just fail to see the bigger picture on what it is meant to do for you and in my eyes just lets everybody know your business. When Google plus came about, it was exciting at first but as time moved on, it just became the very same as the rest, people spamming stuff on there and touting there business. What caused me to pull back once again from my chosen social sites? What made me drop contact with people I respected and treated as friends? What made me jump right back to Skype?

 Twitter

I recall having about 3 Accounts in my time with Twitter and I dumped them all a long time back, I did come back to Twitter with the name of LiquidTV and used it to tweet out every-time I posted a new blog post. There was two things I noticed though, some people used it only to tweet about there business and of course they did this frequently and the other was an almost constant stream of links to blog posts. I am not interested in either of them subjects and you may say “Well you tweeted about your blog posts” – you need to understand I write one every now and then and I have even took this plug-in off now.

It all ended with me removing a handful of people, blocking all the bots that were following me and locking my account down.  I have noticed Bots tend not to try and follow accounts locked down and only those who I allow can see what I am writing.

Facebook

Still to this day my account remains disabled, my wife still uses it and I can understand now why I got rid of this thing, it is almost like waiting for some gossip to come along rather then some great family photo’s. I do not miss people walking up to me at work and asking about what I wrote about on facebook, if people need to get in contact with me, they email me (which they do).

Google plus

This was the most exciting of the media sharing things out there and at the start the Hangout Feature with max of ten people was brilliant. A Friday night was the venue for Beer and a good laugh with a circle of people but as time moved on, people started to drop off, either by choice or if we happen to upset them.

The problem started with the same people spamming the same crap on G+ as well as twitter, no point in seeing it twice right. Some people just posted that much that by the time I come to have a look what was going on – the important stuff probably dropped off the front page. I first got rid of all the people that I never knew, I then turned to the people who were not following me back and finally removing the people who spend there life it seems posting on G+

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

I have a problem with text based chat such as MSN, IRC and others – not only do I have to read what is been typed but I have to type my response back. In other words it takes me away from what I am doing at that time. I can understand if the room I am in has loads of people in there and it relates to a live show but when you have like 3 active people, I fail to see the point. I kept one server on my list for the odd time I may jump on there but the rest have all but gone.

Conclusion

Technology comes and goes as do people, remember that the people you meet and speak to on-line – you do not really know them. The difference between on-line and reality is that it is very easy to just stop using the services or remove the people from the list and you no longer have anything to do with them.

I have removed tweet deck from my mac, the windows 7 gadget is also gone, removed it from my phone and at the moment just check it using the website. I still look now and that at Google+ but rarely see any hangouts these days, if at all. I am back to running Skype when I am around and fancy a chat with people as I can carry on working while chatting and if needed, put myself on Do not disturb.

The bottom line is I want a service that lets me communicate with people, If I wanted to know the news there is a lot of sites that provide this, gadgets and widgets galore. It like reading about somebody giving away money in Peru for the next 30 minutes, pointless for me to read about that right.

Google gave a fantastic tool not so long back to the chosen few called Google+ and unlike Buzz before it, this one actually could look like it will work. While the rest of the product is some fluff that on it’s own would be no different to twitter and such, it’s the hangout’s that are the cream of the crop. At the moment in Beta, there is limited control in who does what and it is pup to the people in the hangout to keep control somehow. I have started to see cracks though forming as people revert to more traditional methods (such as Skype).

The Early Days

I remember when almost everybody was having hangouts as part of there live show, a means to overcome running Skype on each machine to get a panel of 4 and generally everybody talking. There was the odd time when a person came in and caused problems and the only solution to this would be to block that person or just remove them from your circles or even create select groups for hangouts.

Lack of control

If we look at say Skype, if there was 5 people in there and one person was a problem, it is easy just to drop that person out and refuse them back in, problem solved. The problem in Hangouts was, just like real life when a group of people talk, if one person is talking over the others all the time, this presents a problem. Google have given us the Mute button but the person can just un-mute and carry on talking.

Streams and Multi posting

Sometimes you follow the same people on Twitter, the websites they run and Google+ and when I have found is they post the same stuff right across all of these formats, which I find annoying to say the least. I find that Google+ is used to post pictures, videos and stories from other sites, not very often do I see a person actual typing a story out, maybe people have grown used to twitter short format?

The case of blocking people

If you block somebody or they block you, when you try and get into a hangout, it lets you know you cannot enter. This is fine when everybody agree’s they want to ignore the same person but is a problem as groups grow bigger and such.

Falling back to the old ways

Once people see less and less hangouts – I feel they will revert to the old ways of Skype, the good thing about this is that you do not need a camera and can have a quick chat then drop off. What are people feeling towards Google+ Hangouts? I still think they are great of course as I chat to people all the time, maybe it depends on how wide your social circle is?

On the 20th Feb 2011 I finally created a new Twitter account and started to use it, before hand I started to use Facebook a lot more than I had before by adding a lot of people from work as well as friends and family. I thought I would pass on my thoughts on both medium and how they are working out, I would also like to get other people views on why they prefer one over another. Twitter is a limited medium in my own mind as it needs extra services such as Twitpic to share pictures and URL shortener to fit links into posts. With Twitter you only get half of the story which means unless I am following everybody on a certain list of people, I miss the tweets if I do not go to twitter account on-line and read the full flow of posts. How does this match up with facebook?

Facebook

If you ignore all the game requests and such, most of what you need to do on Facebook is right there on a webpage, this means I can look at it from work, from home, on my iPad and even my Phone. I can share a story or a picture with either everybody on my list of just a select few as I have grouped everybody on how I know them (Work, Friends, Family). This means I can target a message so that it makes sense to the end people, If I am writing something about work that only work would understand the meaning of – I push out a message to only the group at work and so forth with Family etc.

I get to see the full conversation even If I am not following that person unless that person has gone into the settings and made sure this does not happen, this allows for a more natural flow of conversation. When I do reply to a post, it is stored underneath that post, not on a random time line. I can delete what I have written and the final aspect is I know in real life almost every single one on my profile (I think there is two who I have not met in real life – Yet).

I see Facebook as a place to share information quickly across all of my family and friends, share photo’s of events and catch up on what everybody is doing. I have used facebook to get phone numbers (those that have supplied them anyway) and even a way to chat with people, quicker than email and shorter than phoning them.

Twitter

The issue I always had with twitter is its impersonal, I do not really know the people on my list other than speaking to them on-line at some point (some of them) and the other half are faceless companies. If you have a small following (such as I have) then sending out a message is like shouting in an empty room, yes you got the message out but did anyone hear you?

You can sit and read any persons Twitter feed unless they lock it down, yes you only get half of the conversation but you can almost track them 24 hours a day on what they are doing, as some like to Tweet out every bit of there day.

Some thoughts

Somebody on my Facebook asked me “Are you using this as your personal diary” and they were responding to the fact that I was updating every single day of my gym session along with how I felt later. I removed that person because what they posted was not the same thing? I have cut back on using facebook to document every second of my life but I like to post something now and then otherwise if everyone did that, the time line would be dead really.

Finally – The sites (including Facebook) that allow you to check in to places? I fail to see how this is a good thing. If a person on Facebook told me that they were at a pub in town, that great, no need to GPS co-ordinates and if a person who is on the other side of the world tells me they are at some amazing place – why would I even care? I am not about to join them.

In my time I had I think Three Twitter accounts (maybe even more) and for one reason or another I changed them, de-activated them or just plain never used them. Now my view of Twitter is a pointless exercise in life and I feel the people who use twitter to tell you about every second of there life probably do not have a social life were they interact with real humans. I do not understand why anyone would need to know that I have woken up, eating my breakfast, going to work, arrived at work, having lunch and so forth. Anyhow – I shall have another go at this and as my previous accounts are all now lost, I created a New One – Called LiquidTV. Fell free to Follow, I will follow back.

We all know December is the longest and most unfair month of the year: why wait until the 25th to receive your Christmas presents? We at Gameloft have decided to put an end to this mean practice by offering a surprise gift every day in December until Christmas to all our fans and anyone who is in the festive spirit.

And the best part is how simple it is! Every day Gameloft announce our surprise on our Twitter account (http://twitter.com/gameloft). All you have to do is click on the link in the tweet to enjoy your present. What can you get? A free game to play on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android device, or on Facebook? Exclusive sneak peeks or cool goodies for our hottest upcoming Christmas games? Crazy game discounts? Special, free in-game content? Rest assured you’ll get all this and a little bit more in the end… that is, if you don’t miss a day! So follow @Gameloft on Twitter and, starting December 1, check your timeline every day to discover your gift.

Enjoy Gameloft Twitter Advent Calendar and have a great holiday season!

For today (the 1st Dec 2010) they are offering Driver for the ipod, iphone, ipad and rememebr this only lasts 24 hours – so be very quick if you want this free game.

It has been some years since I have even bothered to look at Hotmail or in fact MSN Live Messenger as it is now called. As I removed most of the Social networks now which includes Twitter and Skype – I thought I would install MSN once again and see if anybody was about for a chat and such. It had been such a long time that I had forgot my password – I went through and reset this to something I would know though still hard to guess. Once I booted up Messenger, it informed me I was already logged in somewhere else and it would log me off that location (very odd). As I had so many email I had not read in years, I set up Outlook to also grab the mails.

Next day….

I logged in once again and fired up Outlook – I saw that a LOT of messages were “Undeliverable” – one to each of my contacts in fact with some link, some badly written English and 100% not from me. I know people can easy spoof emails who they are from – so I checked my sent items and sure enough there was all of the emails I had sent out. I am sure my contacts wonder why I am sending them some email with me swearing as the topic and me sending them a link – I hope none of them clicked the said link.

It makes you wonder though..

I had changed the password yet somehow they managed to do this very thing and the password was pretty intense with Capitals, lowercase and numbers and not even a real word. They sent them today, this means they managed to do this in the last 24 hours but unlike Google Mail which shows you who logged in and from where – I have no idea how to check this.

Removal of all things Microsoft

As I expected, nobody was actually on-line on my MSN List, they have either blocked me (as I thought I had left or blocked them maybe) or they were just not using MSN also. I never use my Hotmail for anything at all and 90% of the messages were in fact Spam, do MS not have a Spam filter like Google then? I de-installed the Live package (which included MSN and such) and closed down my account – or at least tried to. I have to wait 72 hours without logging in to see if it finally is all gone, I personally hope so.

Yet less on-line interaction then?

You might be forgiven to thinking I am trying to disappear from the net – I have since lost all 3 Twitter Account, removed my Skype, deleted all other Social Networking logins / sites and now we remove MSN. I do not even have Chat enabled on FaceBook and if you try and search for me – good luck in actually finding me, I have set the privacy so low that it just won’t come up.

Maybe I am happier that I can choose who to contact and how I want to contact them without every single person known the slights movement I make right? Maybe the people who seem to Live and thrive on these social networking sites have limited outside contact with real humans? Anyhow – lets hope MSN goes away soon.

Ever wondered if all them people your following on Twitter are actually following you back? You could go through the list and see how you can Direct Message of course (if you cannot – they are not following you). A Much easier way is this web site – Friend or Follow – feed it your Twitter name and it will soon spit out who is not following you back, you can then start to remove the crap right.

AlertThingy brings the very latest updates from your favourite social networks direct to your desktop. Send Tweets, update your Facebook status, upload photos to Flickr, post to Tumblr and more. For business users we have Yammer, Basecamp and Huddle integrations. So you can mix work and play.

Plus you get the coolest looking RSS reader on the interweb which makes it easy to share news items with your friends.

Take control of your life streams; With so much data it can be easy to suffer information overload. AlertThingy provides a simple filtering system that allows you to make the data you’re most interested in visually more obvious.

Quickly see all of your friends and contacts from different networks through the Contacts list. Easily create groups of contacts to see only alerts relating to them.