How tough is your Smartphone / Tablet.?

Tuesday 19th April at 17:00 I arrived home & realised I had misplaced my Samsung Galaxy tab. My Eldest son Andrew had just spent the day in work with me, which always brings some degree of distraction to me..! ;-)

Anyway I rang my colleague Marco, who was still in work & asked him to look for my phone (thought I had left in my lab..). Marco looked for it & even rang my phone few times but in vain.. (this is an important detail for later in this story).

7pm, I decided to go back to work to look for it myself. When I got there, I had a flashback of what had happened to it in the car park.. At around 5pm when getting into the car, I was fully loaded with bags and the Android phone tablet in one hand. The car space on the passager door was very narrow for Andrew to fit in, so I put down my bags & phone (on the windscreen of the car) to help Andrew to get in the car, I then  picked up the bags & drove off and of course forgot all about my Galaxy Tab on the corner of the windscreen.

When I realised what had happened I drove back & forth between Work & Home to try to locate the tablet on the side of the road but in vain.. At that stage I had wished I had installed “where is my Droid” application which can make your phone ring even if silent & can also provide GPS coordinate when texting to it (now on it;-))!!

Needless to say that my tablet had all relevant security SW installed & enabled to prevent theft but still I was very distraught of my misfortune.. I reported the incident to O2 which disabled phone & SIM card straight away, I also reported incident to IBM security hoping that someone would found it & return it back to me, but I did no hear about it during all day Wednesday & at that moment I really thought my phone tablet was gone for ever..

To my surprise (and good fortune), Thursday morning, Marco got a phone call from a gentleman named Mateusz stating that Marco’s number came up when turning on a Smartphone he had found! Amazingly the Galaxy tab was able to display the last missed call on top of the screen at the same time the PIN code is to be entered (see pic on left). I did not know my phone could do that, can yours do that!? So anyhow, Mateusz took the number down & rang Marco. 

What is even more amazing, is that Mateusz explained that he had found the tablet about 7km away from IBM at the Dunboyne/Rataoth roundabout (an exit off the M3). As he drove around it he saw something shining in the middle of the road, which he thought looked like a iPad & cars were driving over it, the last car that he saw driving over it was a jeep!! When he told me that fact I was expecting to do some extensive repairs on my Samsung Galaxy tab, but he said it looked like it was still working (did wonder what this exactly meant)..!? And as the tablet was right in middle of the road he had to stop all the traffic of the roundabout to pick it up (A courageous act from Mateusz!)..

And even more amazing, Mateusz happens to be the husband of Monika who works in IBM, and that evening he was on his way back home to Dunboyne (where I live) after collecting his wife from IBM (where I also work).. Double Wow!

Thursday 4:30pm, I met Mateusz & Monika outside the IBM building where I was handed over the Samsung Galaxy Tab and to my surprise the phone had not a scratch on it, not even a small one! In return, to express my gratitude, I gave a well deserved “thank you” gift to Mateusz for being my guardian angel that day!! 

Yes this is as good as it gets, even after been thrown off of a moving car & driven over by several cars the tablet is still in one piece & with not a single scratch whatsoever (see pic on right)..!!

 

..Now, tell me, how good is your Smartphone / tablet.!? lol ;-)

 

del.icio.us Tags: galaxy_tab,android,smartphone,tablet,tough,test

Setting-up Galaxy tab for screen capture (used at ILUG2010)

This morning, I had the rare privilege to be “co-presenter” with Kevin Cavanaugh during his keynote speech at the ILUG 2010 in Belfast, showing demos of new products that Lotus has just released or is about to. One of my task was to set-up & demo the Notes Traveler application running on the Android Galaxy tab, with the help of my colleague Karen Brent & few useful websites, we got it working, here are few tips I’ve picked-up during the setup..

1. Launch ddms.bat from SDK “Tools” folder (wherever the sdk is installed)

android-sdk_r07-windows\android-sdk-windows\tools

2. Once in application, press “ctrl S” to get screen capture app to appear on screen

3. keep galaxy tab horizontally with “Samsung” logo on the right, so that screen appears the way it should.. then keep pressing the “refresh” button, to show screen change on the device.. (you need a third hand (or Kevin ;-)).

Notes: to get “Galaxy tab” recognised, need to install android USB drivers (can be downloaded using the SDK app (from “available packages” view..) - also need the “Kies” SW to be able to see device as storage, phone or modem..

Plenty more information on this page web called “How to take screenshots on the Samsung Galaxy Tab”

del.icio.us Tags: ILUG2010,ILUG,belfast,android,galaxy_tab,tab,galaxy,lotes,traveler,lotus

June, let the (mis)adventure begin..

I have not blog for good while, reason for this is that I was on holidays, which ended up with a stay in a French Hospital..

Thursday, June 3rd, took the boat from Rosslare to Roscoff,  Blackberry phone died, & no micro USB cable to recharge phone!

Friday, June 4th, drove down to south-west (6 hours drive), along the way stopped few times @ different hypermarkets & other specialised shop to buy the USB cable but no luck, looks like in France you cannot get a micro USB cable unless you buys the phone with it!!

June 5th, 6th & 7th, spent 3 days to try to get WIFI working from site where our chalet was, a holiday site which advertised “free WIFI”…

Tuesday, June 8th, finally got a work around. After ringing several people in IBM, my friend Colm, found the solution which he dug up from the IBM intranet, some AT&T VPN settings that needed changing..! (THX Colm ;-)).

I finally got into my mail, to discover that “my silence” cost me few nasty mails & lost of few IP opportunities. Great! And you think things could not go worse, external IP Lawyers wants prompt detailed reply from me ASAP. so more nasty mails flying around, oh yeah I am loving it, NOT!

Wednesday, June 16th, (2nd last week of my “holidays”, 2 days before going back) weather was not great, so we decided to go & do some acro-branch (going from trees to trees through cables & nets in the air). see “the start, middle & end” pics on right & below.. 

In meantime it had started to rain but we’d managed to do most of the circuits, I had one last “obstacle” to do to reach the ground, just one little tarpaulin slide to go down.. 

Well, the landing was not what I had in mind, the left ankle slipped to the left but the leg did not follow, there was a “Cracking” noise, followed by some howling & moaning noise (pretty much same injury as in the “misery” movie!;-)).. So the adventure ended in the fire engine truck, which rushed me to hospital, where I was diagnosed with a dislocated ankle & a fractured fibula.

 

 

 

Thursday, June 17th, I was  operated during which they performed a ligamentoplasty with insertion of screws, & topped that up with a lovely blue cast (on left pic).

Friday, June 18th, my wife & kids drove back up to Roscoff to take the boat back to Rosslare..

During my stay in hospital, I had no mobile phone & no WIFI, but again with the help of my friend Colm, I was able to inform all relevant IBMers of my current situation (some did not really registered it till my return!?). Prior my holidays I had planned a visit to EDF in Paris, so my airplane tickets & hotel were already booked for the following Wednesday week, so I had to get out on Tuesday the latest..

Monday, June 21st, after a lengthily discussion with hospital doctors, they’ve agreed to let me out on Tuesday afternoon. A point to note: For any airlines to take on a passager with a broken limb in cast, they need a clearance form filled by hospital certifying injury with “fit to travel” as well as having an “open cast”.

Tuesday, Jun 22nd, Hospital filled all relevant forms & opened the cast with a pretty little circular saw & Tuesday afternoon I took the train to Paris (Saintes –> Nior –> Paris), 5.5 hours after I arrived in Paris worn out by the journey..

Wednesday morning, John & I went to EDF, met with Samuel to discuss Project & PoC demo Lab, all went good. 17:30 took taxi to Paris CDG airport. spent 20mins in airport walking around on crutches & with my heavy bag pack before I could get to the wheelchair that the airline had promised me, after that all went smoothly & I eventually arrived at home around 22:30. Took me few days to recover from those 2-day trip.

Today, apart from still being on crutches, it is pretty much all back to normal, still need to catch-up on some undo work but hoping should not take too long. the cast will come off end of July, Screws end of August then physio, I am hoping to be back on my two legs for the 2-day Extreme Blue Expo that I am currently preparing due on the 14th & 15th September..

I would like to say thank you to all people that have helped me to get through the last few weeks, acting as my personal IT, secretary, chauffeur, Porter, Guide, etc.. I hope I will be able to return the favour some day. THX all! ;-)

Yet another “interesting” migration Experience (BB Curve to Storm)

Hopefully Blackberry fans will be interested by this post (IBMers or non-IBMers)..

 

First let me say, I always liked blackberry products, but I love even more the Storm 2!! And yes I do like iPhones too but from a mobile working perfective I truly believe the BlackBerry outperformed the iPhone! (And I am not being bias lol ;-))

 

Some Background..

I have being on a curve 8310 for almost two years now & I didn’t think I would change for another device till the Storm 2 came to life.. Last Thursday I’ve got my upgrade to Storm 2, and I knew that I would have challenges to get some of the IBM applications working on it but I was determined to move whatever it cost.. Oh Boy! what was I thinking!? ;-)

 

The Migration

So last Thursday (may 27th) I started 1st phase of migration – both of the Device were on OS5.0, & therefore I thought to myself (naively) the straight easy route was to just use “application transfer” feature from the Desktop Mgr.. once transfer complete the Storm kept freezing on a application permission request (see below) which I had posted on PinStack.com. as explained in that post, the Desktop Mgr could not see the 9550 BB device anymore, tried battery out/in few times, etc.. nothing worked, finally gave-up at 2:00AM!

 

Friday afternoon, after spending lots of time searching for a solution I finally got my hands on a Free SW called BBSAK (BlackBerry Swiss Army Knife), small little app but very very powerful, it has everything a developer / advanced user would need (see screenshot below)! I was able to wipe everything on the BB & re-installed the right OS on it. I then re-run the “Transfer Application”, this time, selecting only the work related ones such as Sametime, LC client, Quickr, LotusLive, W3 mobile BP, n.Fluent, SWG Mobile Product Guide..

Unfortunately things got worse for me, now device stopped during boot-up, so access to it from PC using BBSAK at all, at this stage we are already Friday evening back home, after spending several hours to try to “resuscitate” this “new” zombie device, I got it detected again by BBSAK (old trick I remembered from my old days as network admin re:FTP). I wipe the whole thing again, gone to bed at 1:30AM with new & clean OS on the Storm (once again!!).

 

9:00AM Saturday Morning, gave-up on the “transfer of application” & decided to install all Apps one by one. So 1st thing I had to do was to compile a list of all URL for all the apps I needed to install, OTA & non-OTA, & get BES profile activated on the new device, this took me a good few hours to find..

 

LotusLive Mobile for BB & iPhone

https://greenhouse.lotus.com/lotuslivemobile

All other SW such as twitter, facebook, linkedIn, etc..

http://mobileapps.blackberry.com/devicesoftware

 

Here is what my Storm2 looks like now after installation of all relevant SW. After few days of usage, I love the “SurePress” technology, I am now as fast or even faster at typing messages (updates or mails) and/or using shortcuts such as copy/paste, move. etc....

   

(note: the new LC2 & Quickr clients installation steps are provided by the authorised sources)

del.icio.us Tags: blackberry,twitter,storm,curve,migration,stt,sametime,lotuslive,mobile,upgrade,facebook,linkedin,BBSAK

The king is dead (Viavoice), long live to the king (Dragon NaturallySpeaking)

So last week I had set one of my "techy" goal as “to install Viavoice” to try to improve efficiency of mail messaging work as well as improving my patent disclosure write-up (keeping up "typing" speed as fast as the flow of my thoughts..).
Here is a recap of what I went through to get “enabled” for STT technology (Speech-To-Text)

Mon:

- Time ot find latest version Viavoice (10.5), took about 1 day & half to find it between day-to-day work – spent about 1h altogether searching on web.

Tue:

- After installation, I’ve discovered there was an issue with sound driver detection , right at the start when viavoice set-up wizard starts-up. Searched again on web for solution, took me about 4 hours to find that many people had same problem as myself but NO solution found!

Wed:

- searched on internal IBM sites, found Viavoice forum, same problem had been reported but no solution given.

- used an new internal app/tool & I’ve found people related to Viavoice, sent mail to them. Got one response, was given the name of the expert to contact.

Thu:

- Received reply from expert, the possible work around was to purchase a USB microphone..

I was not very hot investing in something that may not work, so at this stage the only thing left for me to do was revert back to my initial choice (fully working solution), which was Dragon SW but this meant a cost to bear.. Hmm, Do I really want/need this, how much this SW will help me..!?

To my surprise, on Thu evening I’ve received a mail invitation to participate in the Alpha pilot of D-NS (Dagron NaturallySpeaking) deployment in IBM.

WOW! Whoever is up there looking after me, “You are doing a great Job and I Thank you for it! ”

Fri:

- Installed SW on Friday night, trained the SW, tested the SW (from 7pm to 2am)

Sat/Sun:

- Did carried out more tests whenever I got the opportunity..

Results / feedback to date on “first” experience, take too much time to capture my words, I ended up having to speak very slowly. In fact I typed faster that the SW, so no much benefit to me, but… I am thinking that I may have been too fast at training the SW. During my reading, I have made mistakes & repeated words, (kids were also around making noise) )so my plan for this week is to create a new profile & do a “proper” training (noiseless) then will report outcome here in next few days..!

del.icio.us Tags: speech-to-text,dragon-sw,tts,text-to-speech,dragon_naturallyspeaking,viavoice,stt,d-ns,tools,apps software,voice_recognition

A little help in current times & Interesting facts about la Chandeleur, (Candlemas aka “Pancake day”)

Either among Romans or Celts, the period of the year corresponding to our current month of February was the occasion to celebrate the fertility and the “exit” of the winter. At the latter, the peasants traversed the fields with their lit torches requesting their Brigid goddess to purify the grounds before the sowing.

In the 5th century, this pagan festival was recovered by the pope Gelasius the 1st and was associated with the presentation of Jesus to the temple and the purification of the Virgin Marie. In the churches, the torches were replaced by blessed candles.

It was at that time of the year that the sowing of the winter started. They thus made use of the exceeding flour to make crepes, which became a symbol of prosperity for the year to come. The Candlemas (festivals of the candles) had been born.

On February 2nd thus became traditionally the day of crepes. The Ritual want that on this day, you must make your pancakes jump of the right hand, while holding a coin in the another hand so it brings you prosperity & good health for the year to come…

The ancestral prediction which stated “With the Candlemas, the winter dies or takes strength.” It seems that this year winter is here to stay for another little while. And as per the current climate (economical & environmental crisis) I would strongly recommend you all to keep making crepes with your coin (at this stage, a big bar of gold would be advisable) in the other hand.. ;-)

God bless you all!

del.icio.us Tags: chandeleur,candlemas,pancakes,crepes,RA,economy,winter,climate,crisis

TV interview re: Is Social Networking contributing to employees productivity or not?

Watch below the "IBM Social Networking" TV interview carried out by RTE (Ireland’s national broadcaster), it went out on the News nationwide same day! Great promo for IBM in this space, confirming his leadership in Social SW..

Beehive at Work..! ;-)

Technorati Tags: enterprise2.0,web2.0,beehive,IBM,Lotus,social_networking,social_software,interview