Steve Litchfield

Every time I try and contact a lot of people on my contacts list, I keep hearing 'They're in a meeting' 8-( Ah yes, meetings, I remember those. When I worked in Aerospace, I remember that these seemed to be the main point of each working day, a way of getting through each day without actually having to do any work, just lots of talking. Since going self employed 14 years ago, I haven't had to attend more than three or four actual 'meetings' and as a result I'm soooo much more productive, per day, than I used to be. And now meetings are stopping me getting through to people I want to talk to.... grr..... I HATE MEETINGS!

No, not an anti-iPhone rant, but a few links to put the new 'connect, wide-screened, iPod' into perspective. Tomi got me thinking, with his predictions piece on how the iPhone's release will signify a welcome change in attitudes of mainstream media towards smartphones. He's absolutely right, though both he and I are also taking every opportunity to point out to anyone that will listen that many of us having been doing almost everything the iPhone can do for several years now on much cheaper hardware. The Nokia N95, for example, knocks the iPhone's specification into a cocked hat and is available now and much cheaper. And it's arguably just as easy to use. Talking of hardware though, what device do I really rate, which one do I recommend people save up for? It's a controversial choice, but I'd argue an awful lot of people should start saving pennies for the Nokia E90 Communicator . One device to do everything except make the tea? Oh, hang on, there's...

I can't stand it! I know I've ranted before about teenagers swearing, but this is almost as bad.... Listen to the average 8 to 16 year old talk these days and somehow extra words have crept into their grammar. And there are rules. Every sentence has to have three 'You know's in it, every noun has to have the word 'like' in front of it and every verb or adjective has to have 'sort of' prefixed. I'm guessing that once the kids grow up and have to earn a living, they'll discover a world of mature adults who don't waste every other word. Sigh. I know, I know, I'm getting old. Maybe I'll emigrate to a country with a less easily mangled language? Is there one?

Sorry to sound like a toy shop pedlar again, but a brief plug for a new toy my daughter's bought - the VMIGO virtual puppy - coming with a docking station , it plugs into the TV and lets her interact with the puppy on the colour screen. Only problem is that we can't now watch TV much of the time. Solution: get her a separate portable telly, down from the loft!

OK, so I'm gadget mad. I started a site three years ago talking about gadgets that fit on your keyring, you know, torches and tools, etc. I revisited the HTML today and found that half the links were broken... grrr... I've put the Keyring Tools page back up again now but the pages look a bit emaciated, watch this space for more gadget reviews.... once I've actually bought some more! ooh, ooh, raid the gadget fund all over again... 8-)

Testing the waters - is the E90 compatible with Blogger's code? For more on the E90 see www.allaboutsymbian.com

Just a pointer to folks coming in from the Carnival of the Mobilists - this is my personal blog. The May 2007 Carnival will be over at 3-Lib, my smartphone/palmtop site . Only one click away, don't worry!

It struck me that trying to move house is unlike anything else in this life. For most tasks, you start, you put lots of effort in and then you gradually reach a goal. At any point you can say the job is xx% done. But when trying to move house, you put your house on the market, you tidy it up and get 20 viewers round over a month, you get an offer, you eventually find a new house that you like and put an offer in, which is accepted. Sounds good so far? But then the person buying your house can't sell their house and the house you want is snapped up by someone with no 'chain' behind them and in one fell swoop you're back to square one, effectively. Dozens (or even hundreds) of man hours and if things don't then come together pretty quickly then you might as well have just not bothered in the first place and it'll be time to try again next year. Sigh.

Time for another rant. Now, I can understand the point of greetings cards - originally, at least. Those nearest and dearest who were far away, all could be cheered up with a birthday, Christmas or Get well card etc, posted from afar. But what on earth is the point in spending a fortune on glossy cards to all the people who live with you or that you see each day/week? These people can surely be greeted far better in person... And add in Mother's Day, Father's Day and a dozen more 'specialist' occasions and you have an industry perpetuating itself by feeding on people's fears of being seen to be rude for NOT sending a card on occasion X etc. If you want to greet someone on a special day, go give them a hug and spend some time with them - they'll appreciate it far more than a glittery piece of cardboard...

Maybe it's Adobe's Mac background. Maybe it's because they equip all their programmers and testers with state of the art, lightning fast gear so that they never notice speed problems. Maybe it's that they haven't got a clue. Either way, I just hate all the Adobe software I come across. From Acrobat Reader which takes forever to load up all the modules that you're unlikely ever to use, before you can actually read the 2 paragraph PDF press release you've been sent, to Premiere Elements, the most appallingly incapable and inefficient video editor I've EVER come across, it's just hate, hate, all the way. Just say no.

Ah. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/21/better_darts/ - I've been saying this for years. For average players, it's much better to aim at treble 16 rather than the traditional treble 20. If you hit the treble, there's still 48 on offer and if you miss by an inch or so, you'll still get 7 or 8 or treble 7 or 8. or even, if you're miles out, a lucky treble 11 or treble 19 or even a bull. Far better than streams of 1s and 5s! Plus there's the added benefit that the casual player will get a tired arm quickly and it's easier to have a physically lower, rather than higher, target to aim at. Anyway, it's nice to have someone else agree with me after two decades....

Like most people, I hate queues. Of people, of cars, just generally waiting in line. Now, I recognise that some degree of queueing is inevitable. Waiting for food deliveries in some poorer parts of the world springs to mind. And in a shop you can't have 100 assistants standing around needlessly all day just so that no customer has to wait more than a second to be served. On the roads, you can't have 10 lane motorways everywhere so that noone ever gets caught in a traffic jam. But ultimately, long queues are signs of inefficiency. On the roads, long jams are easily noticed and usually rectified in the end with slightly bigger roads, one way systems, flyovers, and so on. But to go back to my retail example, regular, long, frustrating queues are simply poor planning by the shop owner. To have to wait for 20 minutes just to pay them some of your hard earned money makes no sense whatsoever. That'll be one customer who thinks of your store and decides to go somewhere else to av...

I admit it, I'm only a part time iTunes user. I only really keep it on my PC to keep track of a few podcasts (including my own Smartphones Show video podcast ), but I'm appalled by iTunes' interface. I've lost count of the number of times that I click on something (or try to right click on something) and find that nothing happens - I then try clicking somewhere else, and eventually discover that I needed to double-click, no, not there, over there, on that particular spot, in order to make something happen. And how do I make playback of that video larger? Try everything in sight.... No buttons or icons or menu functions.... eventually work out that I can drag the playback window away from the left column..... I get by with iTunes, but it's a hate-hate relationship and I really must get round to finding a replacement...

Why do so many fast bowlers (I'm talking cricket here, you can switch off if you're not into it!) use such wierd and inefficient bowling actions? Yes, I know many of them are entertaining, but they're wasting energy. Look at Michael Holding, from the 70s and 80s, poetry in motion and superbly efficient, reputed to have bowled the fastest over ever . I don't bowl much these days myself, but I do try and bear in mind Michael's classical action when I do. Other bowling greats with efficient actions, by the way: Dennis Lillee and John Snow.