I’ve recently written a few posts on my experience with the new Android-based phone HTC Hero, as well as its integration with Google’s Gmail/Contacts and Calendar applications.

Below is a summary of issues, from the business user perspective. I think that anybody who is seriously considering a switch to Android/Google and wants to save some time needs to consider these points. (more…)

The other thing that impressed me about HTC Hero is the concept of customizable home screens. The phone comes with a number of widgets that you can choose from and add to one of 7 main screens. So you can add a quick Google lookup widget, next calendar event widget, weather widget (auto-detects your location), flip-through SMS/e-mail widget, etc. It’s a lot more powerful than just having app icons on the home screen, like on the iPhone. Moreover, you can change profiles and have different collections of widgets at work, at home, in a car, etc. The video below illustrates these features.

Time for the positive side. It turnes out, this smartphone can be impressive, even for those like me, who pay most attention to usability improvements & information management features.

And I must say I was shocked after seeing my phone book contacts linked up to Facebook automatically, profile photos downloaded, birth dates pulled down, FB updates showing up in the phonebook, incl. access to friends’ photo albums. Amazing, this all happened automatically and instantly! And what’s important, it didn’t add any new records to the phone without my permission, only extended the existing contacts by adding Facebook info.

I didn’t appreciate this half as much when I read about these things on the Internet. But it’s really hard not to like it, when you see it happen in front of your eyes. This is a an amazing feature!

The best part of it is that if some of your contacts don’t get linked automatically, all you have to do is tweak their names on the phone and next time they will pop up on the list of contacts to be linked upon your approval.

So I’ve used this phone for the entire day now, spent a lot of time testing it, syncing data, loading new apps. And what I can say for sure is… It does look beautiful on the picture:

But… fancy looks don’t last for long. As soon as I plugged it in, tried to sync contacts with Gmail. It wouldn’t connect to Google, even though the web worked just fine. Turns out, for anybody who purchases the phone and puts in a different SIM card than the one it originally came with, a reset to factory defaults is required. Otherwise, it won’t connect to Google. It’s a common issue as I found out , but it’s not documented in the manual. At first, I thought that a firmware upgrade was required, but after a short research I was glad I didn’t flash the thing. Looks like the newest firmware, at the time I’m writing this post, is buggy and causes freezes :/

BTW, it’s not as obvious to figure out how to make the phone seen by the desktop. It gets detected immediately, but it’s not seen by the HTC Sync software, neither does it show up as a flash drive. It turned out, that the user has to open a Notifications tab on the phone and then manually enable the USB memory or put the phone into the sync mode.

Upon synchronization of calendar & contacts I spent a few hours playing with the phone and immediately run into a few issues:

- In the Phone application, contacts that only have Organization filled in (no first and last name) show up blank on the list (only phone numbers), you have to open them up to see the company they’re associated with - this has been an ongoing issue for almost a year. Luckily, this issue doesn’t exist in the People app. So every time you want to call a company you have to go to the People app (extended version of the Phone app), open the contact and then initiate the call.

- Search capabilities are very limited - if you do a search from the main screen, then it will search through everything but your phone data. (Meaning it will search the web.) If you initiate a search from the People app, it will only look through the full name and phone number, skipping the other fields, such as Notes. To me, this single “feature” makes this phone unusable. (I was ready to give up and return the phone, luckily found the app the free Star Contact app, that can be a temporary workaround, until they fix it - supposedly this is to happen with the new version of the OS: v1.6 Donut)

- The phone is somewhat slow. It’s supposedly much better with the new firmware upgrade, but since people say it’s buggy, I’m not installing it yet.

What’s also worth a mention is phone’s usability. It feels like often times a few extra taps are required. This blog mentions some of these Android-related problems.

Soon available in Walmart. Just don’t forget to pick up a UPS device

Scientists at University of California presented a flower beetle with neural implant, that can be remotely controlled from a laptop. It’s not good for “production” just yet, but it’s a good start Flying insects are unmatched when it comes to integrating sensory feedback from the visual system and other senses to navigate and maintain stable flight while using little energy. Why create complicated replicas when you can just plant a tiny implant inside a bug and make it fly wherever you want! What about if we could control other animals this way, like birds, fish, cats or even dogs! Ooops, maybe I went a bit too far See below.

A pretty good synopsis of this year’s hottest smartphone devices:

After years of struggle Palm, forgotten by many, pioneer in the mobile industry, is about to come back. Will they dominate the mobile scene again? Probably not, but it’ll be interesting to watch how much confusion their new product brings to the market.

Palm has been laughed at for the last few years due to their sluggishness. The company that once started the mobile revolution by releasing PDAs in 1996, then rolling out the first widely available smartphones in 2001, at one point stopped innovating, and and gave up most of their market share to the Windows-powered competition.

What’s interesting to mention though is that a few years have passed and Palm OS still has many believers. To me, and I know this may sound funny to some of you reading it in 2008, their old organization sofware is still a viable alternative for business users. Reason? Unmatched usability. No other phone manufacturer has implemented anything that is just as powerful yet simple to use.

So here is why I think Pre can make a difference.

Old Palm OS based Treo smartphones offer Blackberry-like productivity with greater usability. Excellent Calendar & Contacts, threaded SMS messaging, E-mail app with background processes, and brilliant Memo application should mean a lot for an average business user. All these pieces can be easily and quickly operated with just one hand. But… Treos lack hardware features like 3G, GPS and miss even more on the software end: no multitasking, poor multimedia capabilities, archaic web browsing.

On the other hand we have iPhone and I’m sorry to say that (I’m also an iPhone user) but I think it’s just a nice gadget for personal use. Great multimedia though, awesome 3rd party apps, and genius interface for web browsing.

Pre is supposed to have the best of both worlds. While it probably won’t attract lots of iPhone/Apple fans/true believers, it might convert the more pragmatic users no matter what their current PDA/smartphone is. Good luck!

For all Palm OS enthusiasts there is no good news. The company that used to lead the world’s handheld and smartphone markets still cannot find its way of out the trouble. In April 2006, Palm’s CEO officially announced that they would deliver new Linux-based OS platform along with new products by the end of that same year. Almost two more years have gone by and the only news, hardly positive, is that the OS just got the code name..

The earliest estimates for when the new smartphones would ship are, according to Palm Infocenter, February 2009.

It will be interesting to see whether iPhone or other Windows Mobile based devices manage attract those hundreds of thousands, still loyal, Palm OS-based Treo users and make them abandon the outdated platform.

The problems are obviously not only related to the software side. On the outside, the chunky Treos have barely changed over the years. Palm needs new designs, up-to-date hardware modules as well as services that will suit the needs of the business smartphone user’s needs.

World’s most advanced humanoids have recently been very busy working full time at Honda’s Cafe in Tokyo and spending every free moments visiting international events such as autoshows & tech conferences. One of them was even seen at the Cannes festival.

Even though their schedules are filled up, Asimos still found a few hours to get their systems flashed with some practical upgrades. Honda just announced that they can now work together sharing tasks and providing uninterrupted service to people. When one of them decides to take a break and charge up the batteries, the other will automatically take over the first ones responsibilities. Cafes are busy environments so another new feature, which is figuring the best way around oncoming people, will also come in handy.

And just so you know, the Japanese respect rights of their new labor and allow them to play afer hours…

More videos straight from Honda can be found here.