Despite the wow factor of the iPhone interface I’ve been sticking to my old Windows Mobile XDA IIs as I find several things lacking on the iPhone - non removable batteries, phone and sms features are a bit primitive, no 3G, can’t be used as a modem, no cut and paste - if you ask me no phone should call itself a “smart” phone if it can’t even do something as basic as cut and paste. Add to that the fact that I have several windows mobile apps which I can’t do without that can’t be found on the iPhone (I guess Bill Gates or rather Steve Ballmer owns me).

The newer HTC phones hasn’t excited me either, they all seem like redesigns of the XDA line. But thank god for Sony Ericsson deciding to go with a Windows Mobile phone in the Experia X1. And the specs, holy canoly I think Sony Ericsson’s designers decided to throw everything in the Experia X1 except the kitchen sink. It even has an optical joystick! Just don’t ask me how that works as Sony Ericsson doesn’t seem interested in telling us in their lousy product video. In fact I thought it was a video ad for origami or something.

Anyway, the Experia X1 will be out 2nd half of 2008 so that gives me about 3-4 months of not eating lunch to save up money to afford this phone.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA TM X1 - At a Glance

Camera

* Auto focus
* 3.2 megapixel camera
* Photo light
* Video recording

Music

* Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)
* Media player
* Music tones
* PlayNow™
* Windows Media Player Mobile
* 3D games
* FM radio
* Java
* Video streaming
* Video viewing

Internet

* Internet Explorer® Mobile
* RSS feeds

Communication and Messaging

* Polyphonic ringtones
* Speakerphone
* Vibrating alert
* Video calling
* Email
* Picture messaging (MMS)
* Predictive text input
* Text messaging (SMS)

Design

* XPERIA™ panels
* Optical joystick navigation
* Navigation key
* Picture wallpaper
* Touch navigation

Organiser

* Alarm clock
* Calculator
* Calendar
* Document editors
* Document readers
* Flight mode
* Handwriting recognition
* Notes
* Phone book
* Tasks
* Touchscreen

Connectivity

* aGPS
* Bluetooth™ technology
* Modem
* Synchronization
* USB support
* WLAN

Windows® Mobile® Operating System

* Microsoft® Outlook Mobile: email, contacts, calendar, tasks
* Microsoft® Office Mobile: Word, Excel, PowerPoint
* Internet Explorer® Mobile
* Windows Media™ Player Mobile
* Windows Live™
* Exchange ActiveSync®
* Voice control
* Utility Applications: file explorer, calculator, pictures & video, notes

Facts and Figures

* Size: 110 x 53 x 16.7 mm
* Weight: 145 grams

Available colours

* Black
* Silver
* Main screen: 65,536 color TFT
* Resolution: 800 X 480 pixels
* Size: 3 inches

Memory

* Phone memory: up to 400 MB
* microSD™ memory card support

Availability and versions
Networks

* GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
* UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA 900/1700/1900/2100 MHz
* UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA 850/1700/1900/2100 MHz

Philippines
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT)

Score Card:
Limits BitTorrent bandwidth: No
Tier 1 partners might shape: No
Proposed Encryption Level: 0
Limits bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume: Yes
Limits bandwidth during certain times of the day: No
Prevents Seeding: No
Prevents/filters .torrent download: No
Causes Unsolvable NAT problem: Yes
Offers no real flatrate: No

So far it’s only PLDT that’s guilty of doing this in the Philippines. I suspected they might have started to do this as recently I hardly get over 50k download speeds anymore when before I could get 400k(using a 3.6mbs connection). I guess this confirms it.

I don’t know about you but we should be up in arms about this. It’s akin to a restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet but they only give you a teeny weeny plate and tell you that you have to stop eating after five trips to the buffet table.

The aim of the game
Your mission is simple, protect your elements at all costs. The creeps will try and walk the path to your elements, if they make it they will pick them up and head back to the start. If they remove all of your elements in one go the game is over!

Note: In Blogspeak this post is also known as “blatant attempt to funnel traffic into another site owned by blog owner and at the same time transfer some PR juice”.

This is the 2nd time that there has been a pagerank update ever since I started blogging, at first I didn’t get all the teeth gnashing (and crowing) that came with the updates but as I went along I got a better understanding of all the hoopla.

For those who don’t know what pagerank is well I’ll give you a long answer and a short answer.

LONG ANSWER

Google PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

SHORT ANSWER

Google Pagerank is the internet equivalent of a penis!

The bigger it is the better you feel about yourself and the more other people think you’re a stud. Guys who have big penises probably get more action since people think they’re better in bed, it’s also the same way in the blogosphere. Blogs with high pagerank get more action (comments, links) in the hopes that they get a backlink in return (and get a taste of that pagerank juice).

Just as there’s a whole cottage industry involved in penis enlargement (99.99% of spam probably falls under this), there’s a plenty of sites offering advice on how to increase your pagerank. In both instances money paid out is required, whereas in penis enlargement scams require some form of purchase of pills or pumps the pagerank increase schemes asks you to pay for links or directory listings.

And lastly, the best illustration that pagerank functions as a penis is that when Google downgrades your pagerank it feels like your penis just got cut off. Ouch!

Everyone wants to be more like Facebook these days, and Yahoo is no exception. Google’s strategy is Open Social, a set of open APIs that allow third parties to embed stuff on other third parties. The cornerstone of Open Social for Google is Gmail, where all the action happens for a user (and to a lesser extent Orkut and iGoogle). Yahoo’s going in much the same direction, it seems, by making Yahoo Mail the center of their new social networking strategy.

Whoopeeedooo, more useless info to clutter our inboxes. Not only do we have to deal with spam, and IM messages in our email client but now we have to suffer through all those “social announcements” from our contacts most of which fall into two categories namely BORING (”Thinking of what to wear tomorrow…”) and SHOWING OFF (”Just read Umberto Eco latest book and my interpretation is that blah blah blah”).

Don’t get me wrong, I think social network apps has its uses but do we really need to have everything and anything hooked up to the “social network” ?

Ford Motors Engineer: “We just had a breakthough! We’ve created the first car with zero percent pollution emission!”

Ford Motors Marketing Dude: “Yeah ? But does it have social aspects ?”

Ford Motors Engineer: “Uhh, no”

Ford Motors Marketing Dude: “Then we can’t sell it…”

If you ask me, just give us our simple email client app back. I don’t need social email, social this or social that. In the words of Greta Garbo “I vant to be alone!”