Gartner acquires Burton Group

Oha, coming home from a 3 days vacation (not even that offline) I stumbled upon this
Burton Group Identity Blog: Gartner acquires Burton Group: "Gartner acquires Burton Group"

Scheduled Sync for the E71

Just when I was about to rant about the lack of periodic or automatied calendar sync on the E71 (over-the-air/OTA via SyncML) I did in fact google for it and found that the Bergamot project on Google Code does provide exactly this.

The program is called SWIM and this is what it does:

Swim is a utility for automatic periodic synchronization of data with internet servers such as Google Calendar (through GooSync), Mobical, Zyb, ScheduleWorld, Ovi or any system running Funambol. It makes use of the existing SyncML support in the system, and adds timing capabilities, something both UIQ and S60 mysteriously lack! You can set it to sync your data every 15 minutes, every hour, every 4 hours, every 12 hours, daily, or weekly.

Swim uses the existing Synchronization functionality and profiles from the E71... which is cool, so there is no difference if you sync manually through the menu or run the synchronization scheduled.

The how-to section is quite ok... here are some tips and tricks from my installation, though:

• For my E71 I needed version 0.41 from the download section. The more recent v 0.50 did not do anything.
  The tricky part is, getting the beast signed using the Symbian Open Signed Online tool.
  This is also well explained in the How To Install section: just upload the unsigned .SIS file, download the signed .SIS file and install this to the phone.
• However, I ran in to the problem that my phone said that the certificate of the signed .SIS file was “not yet” valid. A google search for that revealed that this is a common problem with - as it seems - the clock of the signing server and the phone being too far out of sync. The trick is, to put the phone 1 day ahead, install the software, and the put the phone back today.
  Frankly, I don't really see why I should (self-)sign software at all, if the only way to install it, is with a kludge like that.
• Anyway, after that it ran just fine, I put it to 30min synchronization interval for starts and thats what it did... After a day of observation (without any problem) I put it to 12hrs, which is sufficient to have my corporate (Sun) calender synched with my phone...

So Hooray and thanks to the Bergamot project...

Extra Folder Columns :: Add-ons for Thunderbird

For the Thunderbird 3 users out there:

You'll probably be missing the Total/Unread/Size columns in your folder pane...
To get it back, install the Extra Folder Columns :: Add-ons for Thunderbird add-on.
It was specifically created for TB3, but did not support the latest betas and RCs... Now with version 0.4 it supports the final 3.0 release and also works with the smart folders...

Easiest way as usual: open the link in Firefox (or any browser), open the add-on dialog in Thunderbird and then drag the "Download Now" button from the browser to the add-on list in Thunderbird. Voila. No need to download and open the file afterwards (unless you want to archive the .xpi on your local disk)

Now that Thunderbird 3 is out...

... maybe the extension/add-on developers could update their extensions...

The beta-phase was long enough and gave ample time to update... (like I did).

btw: here are the release notes of TB3 in case you haven't installed it yet.

Austrian eCard vs Citizen Card

The Austrian Federal Government and their e-government guys really want to push the Austrian Citizen Card ("Bürgerkarte") for all online transactions.
One step to - allegedly - make getting your citizen card easier is the online activation for the public healh-card ("e card") almost every citizen owns.
Should be really easy:

• get your smart card reader (like the one I got, even subsidized for ecard holders)
• install the drivers
• install the citizen card SW
• log in to the one application where you already have a validated/trusted login, namely "finanz online", the online application for your (federal) tax declaration and (more importantly) returns.
• and from there you can activate your ecard as a citizencard.
  (if you will: extend the already established trust from finanz online to the new card)
  

Nicely summarized here.

Attempt #1:
My ecard already containt a PIN or some file, which did not allow the activation of the card.
Called the ecard hotline, was sent a replacement card. Very competent, very friendly.

Attempt #2 - with the new card:
Still got an error message...

Die Bürgerkartenumgebung hat bei der letzen Anfrage folgenden Fehler geliefert: Unbekannter Infoboxbezeichner. SESSION ID :

Searched the fora, found some entries, but no solution (other than re-install).

A-trust say, they don't care, because it's not their software... (very supportive, thanks)
However when you call the toll support number (1,09 EUR per minute, !!!) they are willing to help.

I told the call center agent (very friendly, very competent again) the error message, and he immediately went:

Agent: "Do you have a very new ecard?"

me: "yes, like 4 days old"

Agent: "One with the embossed braille printing on it?"

me: "yes, cause my old one did not work".

Agent: "Well the new one won't work either, because they changed the chip on it, and we don't yet support it. You have to wait until January."

me: "Ok. Thanks. But can you please have that info posted to a forum of FAQ?"

Agent: "Oh, good idea. I'll pass that on."

Still major hurdles... I simply cannot imagine my mother [1] going through that process.

So, still way to go for proper e-government in Austria.

--
[1] both my real mother, as well as the proverbial mother that appears in all technology problems.

Facebook app for the E71 - just crap

So I tried the newly released facebook app for the E71. And after the first disappointment, I wanted to post a side-by-side feature-by-feature comparison against the iPhone/iPod facebook app here.

Well, I won't.
Simply because the app is such a crap and lacks every single conceivable feature, that I won't waste the space here with a 50 [1] rows table that only states iPhone "yes", Nokia "no".

Just forget it.

--
[1] roughly, could easily be extended to 120 ;-)

SOAP vs REST

The best explanation or visualization of the main difference between SOAP/WS* and REST

via Geek&Poke

Finally a Facebook app for the E71

Finally, Nokia's Ovi Store has a Facebook app for the E71, not just the bookmark...

Just downloaded and installed it (quite inconvenient, the Ovi store, btw)... Will post results here.

Qando learned how to use the keyboard

Finally, just when I was about to give up on Qando, the mobile info service for public transport in and around Vienna, they fixed their major [1] usability problem on the E71.

Like I reported months ago, they purposely emulated a T9 input even on the full querty/quertz E71 keyboard. So you only could use (by guessing mostly) the numeric keys of the full keyboard...

Finally, they removed that piece of code and seem to rely on S60 and JavaME to handle the keyboard by themselves ;-)

Thanks.
Might become more useful now... I'll be trying it.

GPS still does not work, btw...

--
[1] and we are talking really MAJOR MAJOR here

"Gartner Magic Quadrant" For Dummies

via Geek & Poke

So I Updated My E71

... and now?

As you know it was quite a hassle to even get the update to version 300.21.012 for my operator branded E71... but with some pressure from the operator and finally some competent guys in Nokia, they were able to what to me seems like replacing a broken version of the update files on the NSU server with the correct files... and voila it worked.

Thanks and kudos to the guys at mobilkom who helped.

And what for?
Don't really know.

I still can't sync my email every hour... and that should have been an easy fix, right?

Generally the phone doesn't seem more stable then before... but also not worse...

Only the screen saver no longer works properly... the "none/blank" mode just doesn't. Should go black/blank, but actually shows an animation with the current time... only the "current time" is frozen at the time the screen saver got activated... So if that was 15minutes ago at 10:48 it still shows 10:23...
And this problem is already known since one major release. Quite annoying...

One major hurdle with the update was/is, that for the E71 there is no user data protection (UDP) which would keep the personal user data untouched during the update... not for the E71... So you have to backup and restore everything... and reinstall (!!, no kidding) the applications.
So make sure you check what apps you have on the phone and that you have the .sis and .jar files for them ready.

Free QuickOffice 6 software update for E71

The Nokia E71 blog reports that there is a "Free QuickOffice 6 software update for E71 users!"

And indeed there is.
Just installed it via the applications update mechanism, and still works fine.

Gadget upgrade day ;-)

So, I got a new battery for my E71, because my previous one could only with greatest efforts be convinced to last more then one day... and occasionally seemed to refuse to recharge....
Battery - check

And then my iPod Touch updated itself to Version 3.1.2.
iPod - check

And then I got information from my mobile operator (mobilkom austria) that the 300.21.012 release of the E71 firmware finally got published to the Nokia Software Updater... see my previous rants on this subject... update soon to follow.
So I upgraded my E71 and I'm still working on getting all the software back on it... stay tuned.
E71 Firmware - in progress

Windows 7 launch party ...

via Geek & Poke

The Geek Atlas

This sounds interesting ...

The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive by John Graham-Cumming(jgc).

As mentioned on Twit two weeks ago.

Yet another E71 discovery

... a bit embarrassing, to be honest.

I've been using my Nokia E71 now for about a year now, and only today discovered that I can delete an item in a list, e.g. SMS, eMail, Todos ... simply be pressing the delete button.

Until today, I always went through the menu...

Ctrl-K everywhere

Just noticed the other day, that Ctrl-K (i.e. jump to searchbar) not only works in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but also (tata) in Thunderbird...

Now even more handy with the new indexed full search functionality in Thunderbird 3.0 beta 4....

Yahoo pushing its brand?

Seems that Yahoo noticed that they own flickr...
Well, at least they changed the logo :-)

Open vs. Closed - "Steve Cares For Us"

via Geek & Poke

also see TechCrunch about "Googles Nuke" in the Apple vs. Google Voice fight.

Some E71 shortcuts

Here are some keyboard shortcuts for the E71 I discovered:

General:

• Press & hold * (star)
  Turn on/off Bluetooth... quite handy
• Press & hold #(hash)
  Should switch between general and silent profile,
  but does switch between line #1 and line #2 on mine
  I'd have preferred the profile switch...
  

In text edit / messaging:

• Fn-Ctrl-C [1]
  Clipboard Copy
• Fn-Ctrl-V
  Clipboard Paste
• Fn-Ctrl-X
  Clipboard Cut

Useful... yes, sort of...

But try hitting [Fn] [Ctrl] and [C] (or V or X) at the same time... and still hold the phone in one hand...
Almost impossible... see where those keys are located:



Lucky however, that you don't have to press and hold them at the same time. Fn, then Ctrl, then C/V/X is OK... so you can do it quite easily.
--
[1] Ctrl being Chr/Ctrl or Alt/Strg (on German keyboard) - the key in the very lower right corner