Alfred's musings

My primary acquiring a Xoom, was to allow me to travel and work more productively while traveling. I already mentioned the VC and second screen bonus , but yesterday was a good opportunity to put it through it's paces and test it on a "field" trip. Yesterday, I traveled from home to Heathrow (taxi) to Munchen (fly) to Salzburg (train), had a long (productive) meeting and came back the same route. All in all, I travelled about 12 hours + 3 hours of meeting, and during the travelling I was working on the Xoom most of the time. So, it was working hard! The key observations were: The Xoom's battery life pretty much matched the Nexus S. At 10am, power was down to 75% on both devices, 60% at noon, 40% at 3pm and dead about 6pm (12 hours into the day). I could replace the battery in the Nexus S with a spare, but that's not an option on the Xoom. The screen and display of the Xoom was beautiful and always usable in all light conditions. The folding case disa...

I've done two things to physically protect my zoom, and both feel like a bit of a compromise: a) I've added a screen protector and b) a folding case. For the screen protector, I bought something like the thin plastic stick-on screen protectors you get for other phones and devices. On my Nexus One and Nexus S, this worked very well. But with the 10.1" screen of the Xoom meant that fitting it was *much* harder. The alignment is harder to get perfect, and getting all the bubbles out was hard work. And then, despite meticulous cleaning, a dust particle or three still got stuck under the surface, some very visible. I'm not criticising the product I bought, but rather the trade-off. I might very well remove this from the screen soon, the remaining bubbles, dust and corners that curl up where it does not sit perfectly is too great a cost I think. The folding case is the original Motorola accessory, and it's OK. It's very rugged, so would probably save the Xoom ...

I got my Xoom primarily for a work-while-you-travel device... something to ensure I can be more productive on the road. It's living up to the expectation thus far mostly. (One gotcha is that I've got wifi only, and even if it had 3G, I'm frequently traveling abroad where I can't roam without paying a fortune.) But today I was struck by another benefit: This *second screen* next to my laptop is very handy. Especially for VC (through Google Talk Video) is awesome. The UI is good and the video & audio quality  is exceptional, even compared to using the Mac. Also - I find myself glancing at the tablet's home screen with next meeting & other such headline info... which is really valuable as a second screen. Loving it! And I shocked by Samsung Apple debacle . As some might consider it close to home, I will rather not comment!

I received my shiny new Motorola Xoom on Friday, and I'm loving it! For those uncertain what it is... it's a Android 3.x Tablet... think iPad 2-ish, but with less apples and more Googleberries. I'll try and post my experiences with this new device as it happens, so that you can get a sense of what it might be like. I came in to London to pick it up. It was green! I thought it might just have a green gel cover, but it's green. 2/3 of the back cover is metal and green. (I like it this way, and it reminded me of my first Audi A3 - which was paradise green... a bit glow-in-the-dark green-ish the Audi was!) The power supply is small, and the plug to the Xoom a round one, so I have to carry another (small) power supply on my travels. Then I got on the train back home, and tethered it to my Nexus S... and that worked like a charm. Easy to set up, and all worked perfectly. It's heavy-ish - it's really best to use if you can rest it against something. You don...

I really can't wait to add all my friends and family (and business partners) to Google plus... We're using it internally and it's just a more logical and smarter way to communicate with people selectively! (Hence the radio silence out here... blogging is now more work than +1, and getting less attention! Sorry!) Really loving my CR-48. I've now switched to a routine where my CR-48 stays at work, and my Mac stays at home, and when I commute, I don't carry a heavy machine along... I use my phone (and hoping to get a tablet soon too, for those hours travelling). The only thinks I can't do from my CR-48, are iPhoto-style editing of the 2555 photos I took a couple of weekends ago (of ballerinas, no less!) some development stuff that require dev tools to be installed (I'm still tinkering with AppInventor and more) VPN for the hand full of resources that Google don't expose without VPN, like our new hire referral program intranet site. "for everyt...

Last week I've been to the beautiful Marstrand at Sigma's Camp Digital event , that was running alongside the Stena Match Race Tour . And what a privilege it was! I've been asked to present, and my presentation was sandwiched between Spotify and Apple :) Sigma are really switched on and very innovative & creative. I enjoy working with them. And as expected, they helped arrange some of the logistics, and offered to "send me a car" to collect me at the airport. And so they did. But not just any old taxi. It was a brand new fully loaded Audi A6, and I was handed the key by the driver, to test drive it back to Marstrand myself! (Audi was a sponsor of the Regatta, and hence the car.) And the journey back was equally exciting in an A7! On both journeys, there were a lot of traffic, so I did not quite get a chance to push the car to it's limits, but stationary traffic offered me a chance to play with the nice gadget sin the car. The most refined new feature for...

There are many articles on how to switch the original CR-48 Chromebook to work on other mobile platforms... with Developer mode and more... but I've just tested on the latest Chromebook software (and originally CR-48), and it's working nicely in the UK (I've got a Vodafone SIM) without fiddling with developer mode. Just plug it in and go! Next: I've got to try this in South Africa.