At some point in the past I must have assigned my debit card to my apple ID. I think I once bought my sister some iTunes vouchers through it. This now means I can buy stuff without needing to enter any card details.

… and I can do this from my iPod Touch … from anywhere with an Internet connection.

This is really bad, with a few clicks I can buy entire albums and have them immediately.

It’s a really nice device, and I won’t go on about it since the Internet is full of iPod waffle. It’s a much better music player than my N810 (which will now be used as my car’s GPS and portable Skype) and with built in WiFi I can use its browser to go online too

I’ve not made my N180 totally redundant, it’s just that putting music in my iPod is much better than trying to copy files into my N810.

Firstly, before I get onto the good stuff I’ve just received an email from a website containing a login password. Here’s the email:

Your username is: XXXXXX
Your password is: YGb(vIa^)OEK

Now I’m all for unguessable passwords, but adding punctuation into the mix is going a bit too far! And before you wonder, no I don’t really care that I’m plastering a password across the Internet because it doesn’t work any more.

So, today I have just got around to writing up how I have connected my Nokia N810 to my Garmin eTrex GPS so that I can download data from the GPS using GPSBabel (which I had to recompile). You can find the writeup on my main website at this address.

I have also written about how I found an actual use for Twitter!

And finally I’ve finished installing things into the Compaq Presario 486 I was given. It now has the ability to go online and the hackjob 486 DX2/66 upgrade with heatsink and fan seems to be holding too. I will now install Doom on it just as a test. It can then go and sit somewhere with DOS games on. I need to write this up later.

The GEM Desktop, on a Nokia N810

A while ago someone on the Internet Tablet Talk forum posted an image of his N810 running Windows 3.11 in DOSBOX. Since then I’ve thought it’d be fun (if totally useless and impractical) to do something similar.

Being quite a fan of the Atari ST and its radioactive green GEM Desktop, I remember there was the GEM Desktop for DOS too. After a small amount of Googling I found a copy of DOSBOX for the Mac which was all set up to start GEM. It didn’t take me long to strip out the GEM folder and put all the bits together. Follow the link below to see what I did.

Unleash the greeny desktop on your N810

http://www.piku.org.uk/drupal/content/gem-desktop-nokia-internet-tablet-using-dosbox

Me and Amy are in South Wales paying a visit to Jeff and Giles and their menagerie. The weather has been warm and nice all day, making the trip more enjoyable. The route down was fairly straight forward, no major traffic or route finding problems; I had my Nokia N810 and Maemo-Mapper telling me wnere to go.

Apart from paying Jeff a visit, our other reason for coming this far down was to collect The TV - one of the other YakYak forum members known simply as ‘Mr Dom’ had a 46″ rear projection telly that he didn’t want. It needs checking over by a TV repair man, having colour convergence problems, but is supposed to be OK otherwise. In need of a new telly I said I’d have it.

I drive a Fiat Panda, one of the newer ones. Not the biggest cars going. I now know my car’s boot space is exactly the same size as a 46″ rear projection telly. Using sokoban and Tetris skills, we got it to fit… just. My knees almost touch the dashboard. It’s like riding cattle class in a plane.

Jeff’s place is a nice colloection of old and new tech, sheep, llamas and other fluffy things. We’ve been introduced to the beasties and the perculiarities of his giant plasma telly.

The Proclip attachment for my car arrived the other day. I’ve fitted it, and then mounted the N810 car mount onto the Proclip. I had to drill four small holes in the Proclip to accommodate the N810’s car mount since they provide the Proclip with no holes. Due to the positioning of the Proclip I had to mount my N810 in a vertical orientation otherwise the indicator stick and half the steering wheel got in the way. This isn’t a problem since Maemo Mapper can be told which part of your N810 is pointing upwards.

Since I was driving to Amy’s for the weekend I had an excellent chance to test it out. I’ll put up pictures later.

My copy of Count Zero has just been shipped, along with The Guide to Computer Games which is an old 80s computer book aimed at kids, but being the 80s the kids are treated like intelligent people who might understand what RAM is. It can sit on my shelf next to my ZX Spectrum +3 manual and early BASIC programming books.

Also in the post to me is a Proclip car mount for my Nokia N810 Internet Tablet since the current suction-cup mount I have is incredibly wobbly and a great advert to car thieves. The new Proclip mount will fit near the radio and be easily removed. Also, since Nokia provide a proper N810 car mount that fits the Proclip system, I’ll know that my N810 isn’t about to come unstuck and try to escape while driving. I’ve had the suction cup on the current mount fail several times before; either the window is curved too much, or the suction cup is made from plastic that isn’t bendy enough to maintain a suction.

I took my N810 for a walk to test its GPS capabilities. It’s been raining quite hard and I was hoping the river would be up and interesting to look at. Unfortunately the river was low, but my N810 worked very well. Having a built in GPS is very useful.

I have Maemo-Mapper installed, and because it was raining I sealed my N810 inside an Ortleib map case. I found this a really good combination, the map case being totally waterproof and yet flexible enough to allow the touchscreen to be used.

Locking onto satellites is something often commented on with the N810, with reports of it taking five minutes or more to achieve an accurate lock. While it did take a few minutes to find the satellites it wasn’t any great inconvenience - if I were driving and wanting to use my N810 for navigation a few extra minutes wouldn’t really be an issue; I mostly use GPS navigation for long journeys.

Once locked I noticed a strange thing. The GPS always thinks its moving at a speed between 0.1 and 0.3MPh. This is probably part of the way GPS works, but it’s quite odd watching the track drawn by Maemo Mapper. The track ends up looking like a random walk algorithm, centred around a midpoint.

This randomness doesn’t impede normal operation though, I followed a path and the track drawn in Maemo Mapper accurately followed where I was walking, right down to the junction of the path and a main road, and a canal. I followed the same route home and the return track was fairly close to the first.

The other new feature of the N810 is its slide-out keypad. Having experienced the amazing convenience of Skype and Google Chat from anywhere in my house on my N800, making these two things work on my N810 was the second thing I did. Skype text using the onscreen keyboard is just awful, its impossible to get any decent typing rhythm going. The slide out keypad of my N810 has sorted this, I can now tap away at a respectable rate, knowing the device is keeping up. I know you can pair bluetooth keyboards with the N800, but that isn’t half as convenient as having a permanent keyboard attached. OS2008 even has keyboard shortcuts too.

The screen’s “sunlight readable” (that’s transflective TFT to techies) screen really helps when trying to use the N810 outside. Often when driving it was very difficult to follow the map because even a dreary UK day could wash the screen of my old N800 out.

Originally I moaned that I’d have to bin all my memory cards and buy yet more, but in a different format. While this probably will happen, it’s not a complete negative point. Already I can buy a 4GB card for less than what I paid for a 2GB card last year. And since the N810 comes with 2GB internally (of which I have 1.5GB available - my Maemo-mapper cache and a swap file taking up the rest) I’ve not yet needed to buy a memory card. I found it hard choosing 2GB of music to take with me before.

This is really nice! Having a real keyboard makes a lot of difference. I can write properly and at a decent speed. Also no screen is lost to the on screen keyboard. Now some people have complained that the N810’s keyboard is too small or difficult to use. I have no problem typing. There are little bumps on the keys and it’s easy to slide my thumbs over to locate each key. It can also keep up with my typing speed.

Tomorrow I’ll try out the built in GPS.

I’ve ordered my new, shiny N810. Sure it’s cost me £289 quid, which is quite a lot for a portable web browser doodad, but I’ve sold my N800 to my cousin for £100, making it £189. And where did I order this marvel of the modern age from?

Why, PC World in Leeds of course. PC World, that shop of cheap consumer electronics at out of this world prices. It’s partially “must have it now” tech lust, but also the result of ten minutes Internet Shopping. If you use Froogle there are some sites charging a mere £229 for the Nokia N810… but that’s a lie! a dirty lie! It’s the price without VAT and without delivery.

Curiously the cheapest place on the web ends up costing £8 less than PC World by the time you’ve added VAT and £15 delivery. It’s really not worth saving £8 and encountering the hassle of chasing couriers after work to claim new devices from them.

Let’s hope PC World Leeds is just as bored as the ones in Barnsley were. “Here’s your laptop mate, see you”.