Anledningen är en uppdatering av Android TTS (Text To Speech) och om man går in i menyn i telefonen och återställer språket till Engelska i stället för Spanska så fungerar det utmärkt igen.

Inställningar -> Språk och inmatning -> Test-till-tal-utdata

Tryck på inställningsknappen bredvid “Google TTS Engine”, välj sedan “språk” och till sist “Engelska (USA)”.

Nu fungerar Google Navigate utmärkt igen.

I have for a long time looked for the perfect To-Do application. I have looked at very complex software on the Android platform such as Astrid, I have looked at some of the more simple ones such as Taskos but I have in time stopped using them one by one.

The reason is that they are not working with me, they are working against me. I used to love Remember The Milk but when I got the smartphone app it started dwindle. It just gets too fiddlesome and after a while I stop maintaining the database and then I might just as well do with good old pen and paper.

Until a couple of weeks ago when I found the perfect to-do manager that works as my brain works. I have now tried it out for a while and I am really happy with it. So happy I want to share my joy with you!

I have tried to follow the Getting Things Done scheme of things, different focus and various perspectives, never felt very natural to me. I have a more geometric kind of memory, i have no problem remembering numbers, figures and symbols, I also know roughly in which pile I have put something. Even if my home folder looks disorganised I know how to find my stuff pretty quickly. But the Getting Things Done (GTD) scheme just clashes with my frontal neo-cortex somewhere.

Enter the fantastic “Do it (Tomorrow)”. It’s so simple it is brilliant. You have a notebook like app in your phone (and on the web) which has two pages. It has a page for TODAY and a page for TOMORROW. Everything you want to do today you put on the TODAY page and everything else on the TOMORROW.

Every morning all tasks ends up on your TODAY page and you quickly dismiss all you can not do today, all you do not want to do today, and those that you think you won’t have time for by pressing the right hand arrow and they just whiff off to the TOMORROW page. What is left is your todays task list.

As the day progresses you probably find new stuff you need to add. Make a decision, either put it on todays list if you seriously think you will handle it today or put it on the TOMORROW page if you want to do it tomorrow (or later).

It wors brilliant because this is exactly how my brain organises tasks naturally. It has pretty much two compartments for not finished tasks and they are “now” and “later” which corresponds pretty well to the TODAY and TOMORROW pages.

I have also realised I put far too many tasks in the GTD schemes and similar, it’s no use. Things that ought to be completed in november should not be in your task book in June. Just let it mature for a while. Maybe in October it is a candidate. But keep it simple, that really works – for me at least.

The android, iPhone and web versions can be synced. Just input your email address and a password of your choosing (does not have to be the same as your webmail password mind you) then it will synchronize automatically across platforms.

On the smartphone app you switch between TODAY and TOMORROW by swiping. Moving a task from one page to the other is done by touching the arrow pointing to the opposite side. You can also arrange the order and delete them completely, just touch the EDIT button first and you will see how you accomplis that.

To tick of a task when it is done, simply touch it. A pencil-line crosses it out and you are done. The next morning it is gone if you ticked it done on the TODAY page, if you ticked it on the TOMORROW page it will be moved, already ticked off, to your TODAY page and sit there for a day. Quite simple.

Find their home page now or if you have an Android phone you can download it form Market immediately. iPhone users find it in the app store or from the home page on the web first.

Den fungerade mycket bra. Den har kanske inte alla finesser hos alla betalapparna men den gör det den skall väldigt bra. Navigationen är mycket smidig och det är lätt att hitta alternativa vägar om man vill jämföra lite olika vägar till sitt mål. Den är väldigt snabb på att räkna om rutten ifall man väljer att köra en annan väg än den föreslagna (läs: kör fel) och jag är väldigt väldigt nöjd med den.

Jag har tidigare testat ett antal olika navigationsappar för Android men de flesta har fallit på antingen orimligt pris (ofta får man en 30 dagars prövotid eller liknande) eller så har de helt enkelt fungerat rätt dåligt. En som har fungerat bra för mig är annars NDrive men jag kommer nog inte nyttja den jättemycket nu när Navigate fungerar så bra.

Jag har inte hittat fartkameradata och liknande till den ännu men skall undersöka vilka add-ons som finns där ute.

Android 3.1 SDK new Open Accessory API

The new Android API, primarily for tablets (let’s hope it will be used on smartphone devices soon as well) means it will be much simpler for hardware manufacturers to connect peripherals to your Android device.

The API allows any device with host USB functionality to connect to a multitude of USB devices and interact with many different kinds of devices from music devices, exercise equipment, input devices such as joysticks, standard USB keyboard… you can almost find no end to the stuff that you could potenmtially hook up to your android.

Lovely.

When registering I got buttons to select imperial/european units but none of the buttons seemed to work when I pressed them and in the end I had to chose to move on. When I did so I could not find another way to go back and change the settings, nor could I update my personal data such as weight and so on.

Today I took it for a test run and I used other tracking software at the same time. After about 2/3 of the way the iMapMyRun software stopped recording it seems and instead it just plotted the last position when I turned it off at my finish. Therefore it just went in a straight line for the last 1/3 of the run. Definitely something fishy was going on there. Neither did it record the GPS elevation data for some reason, the accompanying web site says “There was an error retrieving the elevation”, I have no idea why. Of my 5 km run this app recorded only 3.

Both other recording apps (Google Tracks and Endomondo) worked fine through all this. On top of all that it feels unintuitive and quirky and a little backwards but that may be just me expecting things from being used to the other apps in this field.

When the workout finished I got a ridiculous question about peanyut butter, an ad that felt intrusive and out of place. Peanut butter is hardly the stuff for athletes so it felt rather misplaced. The whole app and the accompanying web site is riddled with ads. If you are viewing your runs, you have to upgrade to the payed version or wait 15 seconds before you can see your run. Again it is not on the level with the competing softwares in this respect.

My recommendation is to wait and see if this app matures. In the mean time check out BuddyRunner or Endomondo, both very mature and well working GPS tracking apps for runners.

It gets one running shoe out of five for now.

I recently got an email from what appears to be the manufacturer of an app I am using on my Android phone. The app in question is the GeotagPhotos Pro, which records GPS locations and time to a database, then when you take pictures using your digital camera (not the mobile camera) providing the camera’s time is set to the same time the GPS has it will then be able to geotag your pictures after you have downloaded them from the camera.

I have used this software for a few months now and out of the blue I get the following email from what appears to be a legitimate email from the manufacturer:

Dear Geotag Photos Pro user,

recently, we got information from Android Market / App Store about all licences of Geotag Photos Pro. When mathed with users in our database, we were unable to find valid licence for your account. This can be just bug in licence database, so that please if you are sure, that you bought our application officially, please send us your order id. You can find it in orders history in Google Checkout (for Android) or in iTunes (for iPhone). We apologize all legal users for this inconvenience.

If you downloaded our app from another source, than official store (Android Market or AppStore), please consider of buying  official full version. To help you with this, we will make “licence amnesty” this Wed, April the 6th, when Geotag Photos Pro will be offered with 50% discount – for $1.99 instead of $3.99.

Please contact our support staff, if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Jindrich Sarson
CEO of TappyTaps

I find this deeply disturbing. All the signs of a bad phishing attempt is here, the bad spelling (however the manufacturer is a Czhech company which may explain that in part, but the idea of sending payment credentials from the Android Market and Google checkout is deeply disturbing to me.

I have contacted the manufacturer to ask them to verify that they actually are who they claim to be but if they, as they claim, have a problem with their licencing database they should be able to verify the data with the raw payment data from Google Checkout that they as a seller receives.

There is also no information about this problem on their home page and this leads me to suspect foul business and that this is not legitimate. Otherwise I should think that there would be at least a mention about this…

We will see what comes back…

Most users of their smart phones have realized that althought the phone can do a lot, battery time is definitely a problem once you start using it streaming music with Spotify, surfing, watching movies on youtube and so on. The reason is that the processor needed to run these applications needs to be quite spiffy and being spiffy means it will use a lot of power.

Since there is a limit to the size of most phones, there is a limit to the battery size that can be used and so the phones with the fanciest processors are left with low battery times – unless you keep them in standby most of the time but then they are not so bad and might last a couple of days actually.

But what is the fun in that, you bought the phone to use it so you want to use it but you still wish you could avoid depleting the battery before that important call comes through. Or what if your youtube watching escapades drained the battery just before you really needed google maps to find the address in the old town you where looking for?

Solar charger

There is a solution for that and this is to get a secondary power source. There are plenty of different versions out there, some with solar panels that claim to charge themselves in the sun light and then you can connect your phone to them to charge the phone. They also have an internal battery so you can let them drink the sunlight in the day time and charge its internal battery, then later connect your phone to charge it. However I have tested two different brands of these and it does not really works.

First of all it takes forever for it to charge the internal battery. On the box and in the manuals it says 6-12 hours of sunlight ought to do it. Well, not in Sweden, not even in the summertime, in broad day light the charging is acceptable but not more. Even after three days in the windowtill trying to charge it was not good enough, in the summer with a really nice weather. Fortunately that one could also be connected to a USB port and be charged by the computer. And on a clody day you won’t charge enough to keep the internal drain on the battery at bay…

Powerpack pre-charged

So unless you live in a country with a scorching sunlight, just avoid the solar charged power packs. What you want is something that can be charged in the car, from the computer or from a wall socket and carries enough of amps to charge your phone at least twice.

A lot of the modern phones can be charged on the USB port of an ordinary computer. This is good because it means we are finally seeing some kind of standard for charging small appliances such as MP3 players, phones and even camera batteries. So a power pack should have a USB port or perhaps 2 even.

My Powerpack

The site is in Swedish but the facts for this power pack are: 2xUSB ports that can do up to 500 mA (which is standard USB current) each. The pack contains 5000 mAh (or 5 Ah if you want) which is more than twice that of my phone pack which also has a lower voltage. I should be able to get 2-3 charges out of this pack and now that I have tested it for about a month I am really happy with it.

It is small enough to fit in my pocket, only thing I need to take with me is a USB cable to charge the power pack or the phone as I want. I usually charge it from a USB wall socket charger and then just use the standard data cable for the phone.

The powerpack can be charging at the same time as you put 2 more appliances to charge from it. This is really good cause you can thus use it to charge your phone while at the same time you charge the power pack.

I found more or less by mistake how to make a screen capture on the Galaxy S Android mobile. Other such instructiond requires the installation of an SDK or similar but this anyone can do really.

Go to the screen you wish to capture. Then press and hold the back/return button for a couple of seconds and then hit the middle button. A camera shutter sound is played and the image is captured.

The picture can then be found int he gallery of the phone as would any normal camera picture be, it can thus be uploaded, shared with face book, blogged (actually I wrote this on the phone using a WordPress agent straight from the phone)

From Jonas comment below I would conclude this is a Galaxy S specific feature that is not android 2.2 common unfortunately.

All of us who like the Android and writes about specific software on the android would love to have this feature implemented so I will suggest it to Google and see what happens in the coming versions on Android.

This is a fantastic development, when I got my Android phone I missed that kind of application and there was some hacks that could be used but nothing that worked this good.

It does not require a root:ed phone, it just works. The software will soon cost a few bucks but it is well worth it if you want to be able to use your phone as a gateway to the internet.

It also uses the phones built-in firewalling capabilities protecting your laptop from attacks from the outside by filtering various protocols. You might even filter UDP ports (except DNS requests) if you like.

(links are coming)

Resetting an android phone may be a hassle, especially if you do not remember all the names of the apps and widgets you are using. If you are having any data on your SD-card and you want to make 100% sure it is saved, remove the card when you reset the phone. So far it has never touched the data for me on the SD card but then again I might be lucky.

The reset is performed by:

1. Remove the battery from phone
2. Install battery again
3. Press and hold “home” key and power on key at the same time.
4. Phone starts and when the logo or boot symbol is displayed, press both buttons again.
5. You will get into a menu where you can wipe your phone.

If you have your contatcs, appointments etc in the cloud, i.e. synced with Google then it is not such a problem but you will loose all your nice downloaded applications.

However, the first time you log back into the Market app to download new apps it will still have your old apps in the “My Downloads” list. However, if you download new apps and then leave the market app and come back they are lost. But the first time you can quickly get your apps back!

However I have recently started listing things again and I just wanted to share this wonderful site for everyone who likes lists:

Remember the milk

It’s just lovely. And they have mobile phone clients for iPhone, Android and so on as well. Really nice. Keep as many lists as you want.

My favorite list app on the Android is Astrid — she will remember the things I forget and haunt me (she is a ghost after all) if I don’t do them in time. Great stuff everyone! Astrid can be used with or without syncing with rememberthemilk.com of course. And Astrid means “Android Simple Task Recording Dashboard”. We <3 Astrid.

Astrid. We love Astrid.

The iPhone version apparently stops playing in the background something Apple demanded it should do, but on the Android background playing works GREAT so now I can strem music while I jog and can set up the playlist on my computer at home or pretty much everywhere and then just sync it with my phone.

So now the phone not only tracks my workout times and distance using the GPS, it also plays the music to my mood and this is something I have been waiting for some time now.

Time to become a premium member, the ad-financed version of spotify does not cover the mobile version but I don’t care. 99 SEK for a month is nothing compared to the joy it is bringing…

HTC Magic, Android powered Google Phone

]]> http://www.ichimusai.org/2009/07/22/i/feed/ 0 http://www.ichimusai.org/2009/07/12/what-would-you-use-for-reading-ebooks/ http://www.ichimusai.org/2009/07/12/what-would-you-use-for-reading-ebooks/#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:04:16 +0000 Ichimusai http://www.ichimusai.org/?p=2649 I need a good ebook reader. I love ebooks and the idea is great, I even bought several ebooks on fictionwise, a great site for ebooks and I used to read them on my Palm III, then my Palm IV and later my Palm Tungsten device when I got it. However the Palm is such an outdated platform today and I rather not carry the Palm around any more since my mobile can handle most of the functions of the palm but there is one thing it does not have yet, and that is a decent ebook reader.

There are several text file readers and it can also do PDF but the formats offered at sites like fictionwise usually means you need something more efficient than just an ordinary text file reader, you need something that can understand iSilo format and Mobipocket and several others preferably also Microsoft LIT files and so on. There aren’t many great options out there and dedicated ebook readers are expensive these days as well as they are proprietary, not open source, large and clumsy.

I want one for the Android platform. And I want it now.

These softwares are CardioTrainer and BuddyRunner, two wonderful applications to help you run well when doing exercise. Both offer similar features and are mainly aimed at runners that want to keep statistics on their exercise and perhaps also their competitions.

The Cardio Trainer Android application

But what do they do? To make a long story short they are both personal trainers and logging instruments that can upload your running data to a web site where you can review what you have done and compare runs over time.

They are using the GPS in the phone to log your position periodically and thus can calculate your speed. They also measure the time and therefore knows at all times your speed and pace, the distance you have ran so far and in what time you did it.  If you are using earphones and listening to music on your Android mobile as you run they will muffle the music or silence it completely and announce the running data periodically.

Feature-wise they are very similar, CT offers more settings to smooth out GPS positions during a run which can be good if you get bad measurements occasionally but won’t really help much in the long run, so to speak, but after testing the two producs side-by-side I can only conclude they are very similar in the distance they measure when running. The distance on both of them is perhaps a bit on the conservative side compared to distance measured on map or with a really good outdoor GPS (Magellan eXplorist XL) which shows a slightly longer track most of the time. Not certain why this is but they seem to be on the conservative side. My 2 km track registers as 1 850 meters roughly and that is 7.5% on the conservative side.

CT has a huge disadvantage for us Europeans, the tracks it records are shown in metric units on the handheld if you set it up to do so, but on the website everything is by imperial measurements which is really sad because it is otherwise a very good application. I have written them and they are looking into developing it. In fact there’s been two new versions of CardioTrainer released recently both with some small improvements.

The Buddy Runner

BuddyRunner however has a really wonderful web site where you can see the run on a Google Maps interface, statistics on your run such as pace for each part of the run, and elevation. It is interesting to see the elevation go up and the pace time per km increase at the same time. You can compare several runs (up to three) download your running track and it keeps tracks of your records, longest, fastest and so on. Over all it is a much more developed web site than CardioTrainer has. However the application on the handheld is less sophisticated, it does not have the same filters and settings as CardioTrainer does and when it speaks to you it always abruptly pauses the music, the CardioTrainer can lower the volume but keep the music running which is better if you are trying to keep your pace to the music.

In the phone however both applications are very similar however and the settings screen also offers settings to change the announcer frequency and the contents of the announcing messages. BuddyRunner performs well int he background but CardioTrainer wants to run in the foreground, otherwise it pauses. CardioTrainer can also automatically play a certain playlist of music for you while BuddyRunner just leaves the music player alone.

Example of the website for Buddy Runner, click to check it out in reality.

Sharing your things with others is easy on the BuddyRunner, the application and webside can write RSS feeds to your Facebook, Twitter or Friendfeed site and so on, you may show your dashboard to anyone you like, they can’t manipulate it unless you log in but they can leave a comment on your run if they want to.

CardioTrainer has a secret passcode to the webside, you can not display it without this code and when you enter the code you may also remove runs and modify the content, so you would not want to post that publicly. There is also right now no integration with Facebook, Twitter and similar sites, no RSS feeds and the tracks can not be downloaded from the site.

In the end the factor that is the most deciding one for me is the website. BuddyRunner has a much better web site and I love the feature that you can download your runs in GPX format to have them displayed on Google Earth or some similar mapping software if you like. Great stuff!

Det finns nu en uppdatering till applikationen Scandinavian Keyboard som kan laddas ned via Android Market och installeras.

När detta är installerat går man in i “Settings” letar upp “Locate & Text”, kryssar i “Scandinavian Keyboard” där. Sedan under fliken “Scandinavian Keyboard” väljer man svenskt tangentbord.

Det sista man behöver göra är sedan att man står vid ett inputfält och gör ett långt tryck. Då kommer en meny upp där man kan välja “Input Method”. Välj detta alternativ och sedan “Scandinavian Keyboard”.

Nu har du ett ersättningstangentbord som kanske fungerar bättre.

1. It does not matter if you are running any special software or not but I recommend you put the phone in the desktop home state.
2. Make sure you are standing in an open space, preferably out doors, away from power lines, rail roads, large magnetic objects.
3. Hold it flat with the display facing the sky. Hold it steady and make sure you do not drop it in the next moment!
4. move it in front of you in large figure-8 patterns in five complete rounds.
5. Hold the phone upright with the display facing your belly.
6. Repeat the figure-8 movement again for five complete rounds.

The calibration of the compass and accelerometers should now be pretty good.

If at any time you feel the compass is not showing you the right direction or seems “stuck” even if you are turning, then repeat this calibration and it will come alive again. Certain applications such as the metal detector application may also screw the calibration and you might need to repeat this after using such software. Om du som jag har använt dig av HTC Magics inbyggda kompass ett tag så har du kanske märkt att den inte alltid visar så rätt. Här nedan följer en procedur hur man kan få den kalibrerad enkelt och visa rätt igen:

1. Det spelar ingen roll om du kör någon sorts mjukvara eller inte men jag rekommenderar att du stänger av program och låter den vara på den vanliga desktopen.
2. Se till att du står bra i ett öppet område, helst utomhus och inte i närheten av kraftiga magnetiska fält eller objekt.
3. Håll telefonen platt i handen med displayen rakt upp mot himlen. Tappa den inte i nästa moment!
4. För telefonen i stora åttor framför dig i åtminstone fem hela varv.
5. Håll telefånen nu med högtalaren rakt upp och displayen mot din mage.
6. För telefonen återigen i åttor framför dig.

Accelerometrarna i telefonen skall nu ha hittat sin jämvikt och kompassen bör stämma relativt väl. Du behöver göra om denna kalibrering ca 1 gång om dagen i normalfallet. ]]> http://www.ichimusai.org/2009/06/20/how-to-calibrate-the-htc-magic-compass/feed/ 7 http://www.ichimusai.org/2009/06/18/htc-magic/ http://www.ichimusai.org/2009/06/18/htc-magic/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:20:36 +0000 Ichimusai http://www.ichimusai.org/?p=2587 What I have used before…

So this is my new friend and toy. I have previously been an Ericsson fan until they released the ridiculous K600i telephone and then I switched to Nokia N95 for a short while and I detested the Symbian OS completely. So then I tried a Windows Mobile based HTC the Dual Touch model and my current work provides me with a HTC S740 which is also a windows mobile but with some nice features like GPS and so on. Last thursday however I went and bought myself the first big Android phone released in Sweden, the HTC Magic through the operator 3.

Just WOW!

I can honestly tell you that this mobile has become one of the best gadgets and most useful tools I have ever possessed and in a very nice package. The mobile looks a little bit like an iPhone, slightly smaller display area and with a few more buttons on the front side. However when it is started it is obvious that it har borrowed even more from the iPhone in terms of the interface but also it is far from the special locked down feeling that I get from all Apple’s stuff.

The great Google Mobile! Picture shows a Vodaphone mobile, mine is without that logotype but otherwise the same.

Connector

First of all the multiconnector contact on the phone is a slightly modified USB connector. The modification is only there so that you won’t insert audio connectors into a normal USB but they will fit your phone. However normal USB cables will fit the phone so you can connect it to any laptop or desktop PC or mac just like that with any normal USB connector.

The phone charges over USB and syncs really well. This has been the standard for HTC phones for quite some time now and I hope that other makers of phones will abandon their special connector solutions and just use a normal USB plug or a lightly modified one like HTC does.

Battery time

The battery is depleted quickly if you are surfing a lot, streaming music running the GPS and so on but if you are using it in stand-by mode it will keep you happy for a couple of days at normal use. In the beginning you will probably – like me – need to charge it nighly because it is just so fun to try all the features and bring up the GPS assisted maps, stream YouTube when you are bored and so on. Of course using heavy applications and lots of 3G and HSPA data networks will definitely use up the battery quickly.

But I have no complaints really, if you are conservative with you will probably not have to charge it more than every second or third day. It also recharges pretty quickly if you use the wall plug charger. Charging over USB from a computer that can only deliver 500 mA maximum takes of course much longer.

Software

The software for syncing and backing up is included on the phone. Connect it to your computer using the USB cable, then mount the SD card that comes with it and the sync application, manual et cetera is showing up on a removable disk volume. Just install the software straight from the phone and you are ready. Or look something up in the manual.

Adding your MP3 music is just as easy, just drag them to the music folder on your phone, allow the copy to finish and then you are done. The copying is pretty fast as well, seems to be USB2 which is so much faster than my older HTC mobiles that was taking forever to store music.

Oh, and the mobile can be used like normal whilst connected to the PC with the USB.

Android OS and Interface

The Android OS is developed by Google and this is obvious from start when setting up the phone since it asks for your Google online username and password. Once given to the phone it syncs the calendar and mail account with the online GMail and Google Calendar and many other services you might be using such as GTalk and so on. Lovely stuff if you like the G approach to online life then this phone is definitely for you! It also have mail applications that can handle Exchange mail and normal POP/IMAP accounts as well of course though I have not had much use with these yet and gmail is doing the job rather nicely for me.

The interface is smart, sleek and very fast. I have not been able to make the phone slow down yet with the applications I have been running. The menus just slides out and back again really smooth and nice. The settings in the phone is very logically arranged and it just takes seconds to find something you don’t have to hunt around in an obscure menu system and most of the things just works out of the box.

The on-screen keyboards

There are several of on-screen keyboard to chose from and whenever you touch something to type the phone gives a tactile response by a very short vibration. This is really great because most touch keys are difficult to see if you hit or not because even if the key gives a visual response the finger usually blocks the view! Great thinking here.

Swedish keys are located on one of the keyboards directly and in the others you will have to press the A button or O button down to bring up a row of accented characters and then slide your finger off to the Å, Ä or Ö characers as desired.

Sky map

The mobile features a GPS receiver, a magnetic compass and accelerometric sensors that can tell how you are holding the phone. And of course google has released a real killer app to go with that, the google stars. Go out on a starry night, give the GPS a few seconds to locate your position (or use the cell towers to triangulate your position down to a few hundred yards accuracy) and then start the Google Stars app and hold the mobile up to the part of the sky you are viewing. Instantly the mobile will show you the stars and their names, constellations, where the polar star is and show you the positions of the planets and so on. I can’t really tell you how fun this is – you just got to try this out yourself. Incredible!

Navigation for car and by foot

Oh I already mentioned the GPS. It loads information over the network where the satellites are so it aquires a position within seconds when outdoor. If it can not find a GPS fix it will still give you pretty accurate position based on information from the cell towers if your operator supports this. The magnetic compass shows where you are heading and the GPS plots your current position on Google Maps. Now just find where you want to go and it will take you there. Really good for finding addresses, stores, shops, people… searching on the map ties in to many other databases on the Internet and usually gives you really accurate information. I am a jogger as you might have come to know by now.

One of the more esoteric application is a metal detector that detects ferro-magnetic materials. It’s quite funny and uses the compass of course to do this but it is great fun. It may even be useful to locate  stuff in walls…

Geocaching

The phone with GPS and magnetic compass also have applications for Geocaching through the Application Market (where most apps are free) and I have tried out the GeoBeagle application which is a really great app. Press a key and it will take you to the Geocaching online site listing the closest caches for you that you have not already found. Select one of them and then press view as a google map and GeoBeagle snatches it up, shows you a directional compass where to go, distance, accuracy of your position and you are ready to go.

When you find it you just press a key to log your find (or DNF, did not find, as it may be) and you have logged another cache. So simple

Cardio Trainer application

Yesterday I found another killer app that you can use that plots your running on a google map, keeps track on your progress in tempo (minutes per km or mile) and distance and time in km or miles and minutes. The application can also be set to regularly announce the tempo you are currently keeping and how many kilometers you have been doing so far and on what time. So, with the built in MP3-player and this application I sat off. One minute later the mp3 music fades slightly, then a voice announces that I am doing 6:30 minutes per km. Later on when I reach my first km running the voice tells me that I have now done 1 km in 6 minutes and 52 seconds and so on. Makes you really aware on how fast you are going, if you are keeping a good tempo or slacking off or if you are pushing harder than you wanted. When finished you can upload your track to the web to have more information about it there, share with people or just compare several runs with each other.

I really really like this!