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Monthly Archives: July 2009
Free For All: Le Tour 2009
Ok, I’m not a mad weekend cyclist, I mean I ride the couch much more than I get my bike out. The annual Tour of France cycling event, has always fascinated me though, and this year there is also some added relevance concerning Windows Mobile.
For the first time this year, the Columbia, High Road Sports team, is also sporting the HTC logo. HTC are the largest supplier of Windows Mobile devices, *cough Android cough* worldwide. So bringing the brand to a high exposure sporting event like the Tour seems like a smart move. Have a look at the Team Columbia – HTC website!
Quick Look: Skyfire Browser
Alas, the never ending search for a desk top browser experience on the smallest of screens, your phone. Once again prompted by updates, I’m having a look at the Skyfire browser for Windows mobile.
With this latest update I’ve decided to go a bit deeper into the application, so let’s see how it goes.
Skyfire is one of those browsers that is not completely dependent on your device, but uses cloud technology to serve you a compressed version of the web through their own third party servers. Much like Opera Mini, and recently, the Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta.
First up I’d mention that this will work equally as well from a storage card as installed to your device, so if you are being miserly with storage space [like me] you’ll already appreciate this. You may also notice, from the screenshot above, that since Skyfire came out of beta, it’s received even more update love. Every tweak helps right? It’s good to know that this is a well supported application,
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The first screen or option you’ll be presented with is a choice to make Skyfire the default browser, I chose no for now, knowing I can change that later, to test with other apps. First up though, I want to see how it performs on it’s own. One of the most striking things about Skyfire is what it comes with/ the default bookmarks, that give you access to all sorts of services with no set up at all.
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There’s also a today screen plug in included in this iteration, a nice touch. One of my little negatives with Skyfire has always been the fact that you cannot import bookmarks to the browser in any way. Well unless it’s a very elusive option. You will have to manually enter the URL of all of your most read sites, something that may be off putting to a lot of users.
BUT, and it’s a big but, for usability and intuitiveness, Skyfire goes all the way up to eleven for me. The amount of settings/options you have to configure are as minimalistic as I’ve seen
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Everything else is configured through the browser interface and shortcuts, and it’s really self explanatory. All of the menu shortcuts go no deeper than two levels, keeping with the simplicity of the program. Performance though is what everyone is going to judge this app on, so I.ve done a screen cap video that gives a relative speed comparison for you to look at.
Overall, performance is the key, Skyfire plays video, is really quick to load and even runs JAMM 3.0 with it’s animated home page, no other WinMo browser does all of that. Another performance not here is that it’s doing all of that on my Tilt/HTC Kaiser. If you are looking for a better internet experience on Windows Mobile you have to give this a try
Skyfire is available for free, for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices
What is it about Love?
If you have been reading my blog, this will appear well off topic. Sometimes though, you need to let your feelings be known. Today I had to make a really hard decision. For the first time in seventeen and a half years, I feel lonely. This morning, my constant companion for that period of time, passed away.
Passed away, is not the right description, and I feel some conflicting emotions over the decision I had to make. Diva has been my family, for the whole of that time, and today I said goodbye to her. Something went wrong with her earlier this week, From a Dog that was lively and alert for her age, she became distant, unaware. She wouldn’t eat or drink, and she wouldn’t walk.
I took her to the vet this morning, and I had to carry her there. He asked me some questions, and checked her out, and he just said to me, “I think it’s her time”.
She went to sleep at about 11.30, this morning, July 3, 2009.
