I said I would write a little more about the iPhone once I had used it for a while. I have been enjoying it quite a lot and it offers a lot of the functionality that I have been waiting for in a phone for a long time now. It is far from perfect and here are a few of my gripes. The battery is dismal, basically it lasts a day and I have to put it on charge every night. If I don’t, it will usually be almost dead by the time I wake up in the morning. The GPS is pants for any kind of navigating. It seems like a cool feature at first but don’t rely on it when trying to find something. Me and my friend were visiting Wolverhampton one weekend to visit another pal and we were trying to specifically find a street whilst driving and it was useless – completely. We ended up using the pretty good GPS/maps feature on my mates Crackberry. For the price of the phone the camera is just shit. I really don’t use the camera on any phone I have had so it does not really bother me but at this price level it is pathetic. So what do I like? I like the OS and user interface as it is very intuitive. I have never really used any browser on any of my past phones because it was just a crap experience whereas it is pretty nice on the iPhone. I like the amount of decent applications (there are plenty of crap ones as well) and how easy they are to find and install from the device. Pretty much all of the core features that I use you can get on the other top phones from the other manufacturers but for the reasons above I just prefer the iPhone. I do like Blackberry’s and a lot of the other smartphones and have played around with most of them. I find that the problem usually with the others (with the exception of the Blackberry) is that don’t seem that polished to me, especially after having used an iPhone and Blackberry. The Blackberry phones are really nice in both software and hardware and after witnessing my friends in action I was impressed. My preference of the iphone between the two is based solely on my own use, but I admit that I wouldn’t hesitate in buying a Crackberry in the future. I just like my iPhone more.

Here are some screen shots from my iPhone showing which applications I have installed. Some I have installed but never really use as they are just for those moments down the pub. My most used apps tend to be in screen order for quick access.

Well if you are reading this post then you are doing so from my new MediaTemple hosting account. I have managed to move over all my applications and have even managed to update all the software to the latest versions. I might as well kill two birds with one stone hey

I am already pretty impressed with the MediaTemple software and so much so that I will be moving over SmellBeautiful.co.uk sometime soon before I finally open (about time) the store. I’m just trying to work out a plan for how it is all going work. As always, everything tends to be a lot more complicated that you originally thought so I need to make sure that I have everything covered before release. Most of my thinking goes into how to spend the advertising money wisely and that usually means trying to come up with something clever to gain the most amount of eyes without using the money required for the traditional methods. I will of course be using some of the traditional advertising method, as they are proven and they do work – just for more money than I would hope to spend right now.

I find myself apologising once again for the lack of posts in recent time. Unfortunately I do not have access to t’internet at my flat (but it might be coming soon) and I am usually too busy at work to actually post something (until now that is ).

Well as you all probably know by now, I am currently in Germany and working at Intergral on a new analytics product. You can read a little about the intitial rough release here if you want to know more about it. I was originally only meant to be here until September, but there is the possibility of going to France for 9 months or staying here for a further few months to work on a new software as a service product. Only time will tell which one I actually end up working on.

I must admit, after living back in Stoke for a while after having lived in Cambridge and then coming here to Stuttgart I do not particularly want to go back, so I might start looking for some opportunities that would allow me to move away again. I can’t see myself staying in Germany for ever, but I definitely do not see myself living back in Stoke either. Plus I need to get back to work with Johnny eventually, once we both have the money to continue.

I am now officially a certified Flex developer having took my exam last week at a prometric test centre and passed. It’s something that could come in useful in this media rich web world as I see more and more jobs that require knowledge in Flex/ActionScript. The company covered all expenses and obviously, trained me in the first place so I can’t complain .

They have also been very good by getting me a new laptop for personal/work use. My boss ended up buying my macbook pro from me and they did a deal for the rest. So I managed to get a new Dell XPS M1730 which was very very good of them to do. It is pretty much fully spec’d and cost around £1800 so you can imagine that I am very happy about that. I have not taken delivery of it yet, but Dell shipped it last Friday and it should be here come Wednesday.

I have spoken to John and things are going very well with his Stellant contract. He is going to America for a training course sometime soon and now has his blog listed on the Oracle blog list, which I can imagine is no easy task. Although reading his blog is now a hard task, having to filter through all the Stellant advice to get to the personal stuff .

I hope to keep posting as and when I get the chance. Hopefully this could be sooner rather than later if t’internet is installed in my building within the next few weeks. Until then, keep safe.