Andre

Doing a recap of the past week regarding my Twitter experience, I've concluded that this service could be a great travel reporting tool if you keep using the same phone but it totally fails when you don't do so.

• The first half of the week I spent in China, so I registered my other mobile card with Twitter before going there. It worked just fine.
• Returning to Hong Kong, I initially forgot to update Twitter about my mobile card changes so I couldn't post updates. Lucky me, there's always either a coffee shop with Internet access or a wireless network around so I switched from there.
• Two days later, I went to Macau and again totally forgot to update my Twitter records when switching mobile cards so I lost a great opportunity to comment on many things I encountered during my trip.

Twittering from a mobile phone is a great tool to keep track of one's adventures and publish it in real-time to the world but if I can't remember to update my Twitter settings, it's useless. It's often necessary to switch mobile cards: some cards won't do roaming, the fees might be too high so a local rechargeable card would be better...

Guess I came along a bug in the SMS handling of HP's iPaq hw6965. I noticed this strange behavior once before but quickly forgot about it until this morning when exactly the same happened again.

Using a 3 (Three) rechargeable SIM card, I get a text message (SMS) from the service provider when I am under 10HK$ after making a phone call. Going below 10 by sending a text message won't trigger that notification (at least I never had that experience). Anyway, the point is that if the balance is below 10HK$, outgoing SMS won't work anymore. A standard error message from the phone pops up telling me I first have to subscribe to the service before I can use it. Doing a recharge enables text messaging again and there won't be a problem if I wouldn't want to re-send the previously failed message.

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After "oceanpark" and "disneyland" comes "wifi wonderland". I wonder what will be the next title for Hong Kong. According to the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA), 5,228 Wi-fi hotspots had been installed at 3,055 locations through the city, making it an international leader in providing wireless broadband.

This is nice for those in need of a quick online session but it's not to be confused with other technologies like mobile phone network-based such as 3G. WiFi restricts you to your currently logged-in hotspot and moving away from it will get you disconnected. Furthermore, WiFi is quite a "fragile" radio signal such as a simple wall may reflect or break the signal with ease. Navigating within the theoretically operational radius becomes a challenge in a concrete and steel environment.

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For as much as the term "googlishly" doesn't make sense, so doesn't Google Maps' (for mobile devices) version counting.

Running version 1.2.0.13 on my HP iPAQ hw6965 (Windows Mobile 5), it works all well until I zoom out too fast and too far. Then this error message pops up: "You must install a new version to use this programme."

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I've gone through a lot of mobile phones over the years. I'm surprised to see most of these phones here again because I (and everyone else) remembers me using always the same ones for many years.

Note: Some phones are missing because I can't remember their brand and/or model name. I'll update this post once I find them.

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