James Gallagher

Mahon Tribunal Report

James — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:44:10 +0000

It seems difficult to reach the website for this, so here it is:
Mahon Tribunal Report (PDF 56Mb)

Android foray: Arnova 8 G2

James — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:24:47 +0000

I have been threatening to get a tablet for awhile. Of course, as one might expect, an iPad has been the object of desire. This remains the case but not because I see this Android experience as a failure. Using a tablet has proven the tablet form factor for me. Even though I’m pecking this out on a soft keyboard which leaves a lot to be desired. Part of that’s probably due to the compromises that brought this €175 price tag. I accept that. The smart text that accompanies my typing just doesn’t seem as smart as on iOS which is down to UX design. It’s good but just not there yet. As an example, typing this I miss the space bar a lot and would expect that to be handled but it isn’t. There’s a good blog post by Benjamin Tseng doing the rounds on Twitter today (actually it was ages ago as I’ve been slow to get this finished). It talks about text and cursor selection positioning on Android versus iOS where the author prefers Android but I’m just not finding that same experience. Again, some of that is probably down to the capacitive screen and so not an entirely fair comparison. It’s enough of a pain in the arse that I’m now completing this, quite sometime after first starting this post, on a laptop.

Because it’s not a Google approved device you don’t get the Android Market by default. This isn’t a big deal as folk are quick to find ways around this. Either via direct installation of the application package or alternative ROMs. Indeed, the relatively young Arnova 8 G2 has two alternative ROMs available; one based on the stock ROM but with the Market, among other things, enabled and one based on CyanogenMod 7. Once that’s sorted you have access and can get hold of the apps you want. The apps I have installed pretty much mirror what I have on my iPhone; the essentials like Evernote, Google Reader and a twitter client for example. However I also have a number of browser plugins installed on the tablet – something which just doesn’t exist on Apple’s Safari and is a major omission. This means my browsing on the tablet is a far more enjoyable and useful exercise when combined with the ease with which you can share from Android apps (noted in Benjamin’s post).

The Twitter apps are quite a ways behind the offerings on the iPhone, I think it’s going to be a long time before you see something of the calibre of Osfoora or Tweetbot coming to Android. That’s still my problem with Android apps; they lack UX polish that you find on other platforms.

Aside from all that though, this tablet satisfies what I’m looking for in this type of device; the ability to enjoy and share content more comfortably and add my own snippets of content from time to time. A lot of table for not a lot of money. There are compromises though by way of a capacitive screen and a shit camera. So, if you want better then you are going to have to pay for that.

Review of iPhone App Image to Text OCR

James — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:10:56 +0000

In the iOS Productivity Apps quick post I mentioned one app from Ricoh: Image to Text OCR and I felt that I needed to discuss it a bit further because it really is a great little app that I think might be quite under rated. When I first went looking for OCR apps I was looking to solve a rather annoying little problem: I’ve been working with Sharepoint Workflows at work and I wanted to document the rules that I was creating. I thought this would be as easy as a copy/paste of the rules from Sharepoint Designer where I was creating them. Alas, no. You can’t select the text of the rules in the workflow wizard. So I decided to look for an elaborate technical solution rather than type them out by hand. I must admit, I’m not a great typist. So here’s what the rules look like:

As you can see this is just a photo from my phone – here’s the output from the app:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If Description is not empty

and Functional Area is not empty

and Expected Business Benefit is not empty

and Metrics is not empty

and Priority is not empty

and Complexity is not empty

and Estimate is greater than 0

and Resource Requirement is not empty

tlHllillffiJiil

and Resources is not empty

and Enhancement Type is not empty

Set Variable: allFieldsPopulated to Yes

onal Branch

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

ImageToText

I was damn impressed with that and that’s how the app ended up getting promoted onto my home screen. The next test of it was capturing a quote from the Steve Jobs biography (hard copy version) which I thought was rather good and I felt says a lot about the direction a number of product based companies take. It’s split over two pages in the book and this is how they turned out:

Here’s how the text turned out:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

. .;,^.,_/-,ml-.r>r^iiT" i v.wpy 11 weu. i ney totally didn t get it.

I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like

IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and be-

comes a monopoly or close to it in some held, and then the quality oC

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

ImageToText

and

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the

great salesmen, because they're the ones who can move the needle on

^-venues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople

end up running the company. John Akers at IBM was a smart, eloquent,

fantastic salesperson, but he didn't know anything about product. The

same thing happened at Xerox. When the sales guys run the company,

je product guvs don't matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.

thappened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it

led when Ballmer took over at Microsoft. Apple was lucky and it

but I don't think anything will change at Microsoft as long

Sallmer is running it.

---'Vntrenreneurs" when what

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

ImageToText

Some minor editing was needed to clean up the text that wasn’t correctly recognised. Now here’s where a simple app design decision came into play and made life so easy: The app integrates with Evernote – when you select an image from the gallery you’re asked where to send it; Mail or Evernote. A sync later and the image plus the parsed text is in Evernote. From there you’re able to view the image and edit the text. With the Steve Jobs quote above I had two notes in Evernote which I just merged and pasted the final text of together.

Of course, it doesn’t work in every situation. Here’s an image which came through quite poorly (image quality was poor enough to start with):

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Security policy loaded: Safety net fo

Col t i ng mpo_po I i cy _ In It for Sandbox

Security policy loaded: Seat be It sandbox policy (Sandb

calling mpo__pol lcy_lnlt for Quarantine

Security policy loaded: Quarantine policy (Quarantine)

Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993

The Regents of the University of California, fl

NRC Framework successfully Initialized

using 16384 buffer headers and 18248 clust

IORPIC: Version 8x28 vectors 64:87

RCPI: System State tS8 S3 S4 S51 (S3)

PFH64 (36 cpu) Bxf18888888, 8xf8888888

10 buffer

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

ImageToText

This app is excellent, I often come across text that isn’t a readily usable electronic format i.e. it’s on paper or it’s displayed on a screen from which it can’t be selected and copied from. It’s also free!

Why aren’t retail stores making more of an effort to sell?

James — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:16:30 +0000

I’ve been in a couple of retail outlets over the past few days and am taken aback by how little effort is put into either selling or upselling. I’m taken aback because we here so much about recessionary times and how hard the retail sector has been hit. This is a bit of a long post as I’m going through the scenarios. Here’s what I’m talking about:
On the way home from work yesterday I went in to Elverys and Halfords. I was on my bike so in my cycling gear, carrying my helmet and pannier. There used to be a cycling section in Elverys but that seems to have disappeared. I didn’t need anything per se but was keeping an eye out for some padded shorts, cycling gloves and leggings for jogging/under my cycling overtrousers. So, I had a discretionary budget in mind of 50-75. I could only see one other customer in the store (doing gait analysis with a member of staff), one other staff member was on the shop floor briefly before joining another at the checkout and there was a security guard tidying up a jacket that was off its hanger and hung in the wrong place. I wandered around looking at the gloves they had and trying to see if they had a cycling specific section. Didn’t find anything and no one came near me – the only person who seemed like they wanted to help was the security guard. He looked like someone on the verge of asking ‘are you looking’ for something but I guess assumed it wasn’t his place as there were ‘sales’ staff around. I left and opted for Halfords. Found some padded cycling shorts there and went to pay. Another customer was also waiting to pay and the staff member told them they could pay downstairs (I think he may have been in the middle of selling a bicycle). So I followed that customer downstairs. The checkout desks are at the front of the shop and were unmanned. We waited a couple of minutes and then spotted a staff member at the counter at the back of the store. When I got there another staff member appeared and asked me if I needed help – I said I just needed to pay for the shorts. He brought me back to the front of the store where he took a couple of minutes to get logged into the POS/till. My issue here is that they made it hard to complete the sale. It would’ve been a lot easier to buy online – but we’re supposed to make the effort of supporting local shops (which I do believe strongly in). This morning I went for a haircut, it’s a barber shop I’ve never been in before and they do various things like hot towel shaves and piercings (!). In the chair beside me was a guy getting a hot towel shave; the shop advertises a haircut and hot towel shave for 25. Great job on my haircut but what surprised me was that they didn’t try to upsell the offer. I generally don’t shave during the week as my skin gets irritated when I’m cycling so I looked in real need of a shave. Haircut was 14 and upselling would potentially have doubled, effectively, that take to 25. Final scenario was a visit to Petworld for cat litter. The shop was busy and a member of staff on the floor came to open a second POS/till. The staff member I paid said three things; 1) Sorry for the delay, 2) Thanks for waiting and 3) Was there anything you couldn’t find? Courtesy and making sure a potential sale wasn’t left behind.

These all seem like simples sales skills? Sure, none of them were big money and I’m not looking for people to fall over themselves – I’m not looking to cash in on recession and demand that I be indulged.

iOS Productivity Apps

James — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:20:21 +0000

This isn’t a particularly deep and insightful post, more of a share. These are the apps that I have in my iPhone Productivity folder currently. Feel free to suggest others.

(Links are to relevant websites, iTunes link is second).

Evernote | App

Pages | App

Dropbox | App

Units | App

Nozbe | App

Using Nozbe to manage projects/tasks i.e. GTD

James — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:54:06 +0000

I’ve followed the GTD threads on sites like lifehacker.com for awhile but was never really able for the minimalism and perhaps the discipline required to follow true GTD. I had found a decent task manager in The Hit List but the hot and cold behaviour of the developer behind it means it’s a tool that I don’t feel I can depend on. It’s also Apple only (iOS & OS X) and I wanted one tool for everything. Having a hunt around I came across Nozbe. My first reaction was ‘Meh’ but a second look made me realise what a great app it is. This isn’t going to be an in-depth review and discussion of GTD; I’m not up to that :) What this is, is a look at how I’m using it.

It’s primarily a web-app with iPhone/iPad applications as well as an iPhone/iGoogle mobile site , a more general mobile version and an Android version coming. There are beta Windows and OS X desktop clients. I primarily use the web-app and iPhone app. The free version gives you “up to 5 projects/contexts + 1 MB storage” which I filled out on my first day of testing. That led me to paying for the Personal plan (I took the monthly payment option) so that should give an indication of how much I liked using it with just a couple of hours testing. Here’s why; tasks are simple and straightforward, you can just add one and leave it at that. So, task entry is quick which is key for me – if there are too many steps I’ll just end up ignoring it. However, you can assign the task a Context (I haven’t mastered this yet but the defaults are Work, Home, Computer, Errands, Waiting-for and you can change or add to these), set a date and optionally a time for task completion, the expected duration and whether or not it’s a repeating task. Tasks can be organised into Projects and indeed converted to Projects – handy if you find that something spins out to a larger project than originally anticipated. For me a good example of this would be a task to answer a customer query which then turns into a software change request; so you then have various deliverables and actions associated with it that are more complex than a single task. You also have ‘Labels’ for Projects which can be used to group projects – in my case I use labels to split out projects as either ‘Work General’, ‘Work Projects’ or ‘Personal’. All good so far, now the killer feature for me; Integration. Nozbe allow you to integrate with a lot of other apps that you’re probably using. In my case it’s Dropbox, Evernote and Google Calendar. If a Dropbox file or folder has a project’s name in the filename it will be linked to your project. Similarly an Evernote with a tag matching the project name will get linked. Finally, you can have your tasks appear on your Google Calendar. The end result is that things I’ve been doing already with these apps are supported by Nozbe – the snippets of code I might throw into Evernote are now there in my project ready to be referenced when creating the associated tasks. The document I want to review from home and stick in Dropbox is attached to my project.

This is an app well, well worth a look.

[Project] My Day On Twitter

James — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:58:03 +0000

In an effort to get working on some code and improve that aspect of my skills I started to look at jQuery. This was largely inspired by seeing what @suth did with Social Timeline and borrows heavily as well as learning lots from his work. The idea behind My Day On Twitter (MDOT) is to have a simple dashboard (buzzword alert!) of my day’s twitter activity; conversations, mentions, favourites, new followers/followees. I’ve filtered mentions so that only ‘free standing’ mentions are included i.e. those which aren’t a reply (as these would show up in the main conversation timeline). It’s built on the Thinkup (by @ginatrapani) API so as of now only posts data is accessible. This means only conversations and mentions from the functionality list above are included. MDOT makes use of the excellent Embed.ly to provide a preview of any linked content in a tweet. So, posted images will show up as well a Google Map preview when I tweet from @cyclemeter

This is what it looks like in action:

I have it running on http://mdot.jamesgallagher.ie and you can get it off github at https://github.com/tisjames/My-Day-On-Twitter . You will need to be running Thinkup > 1.0 which is the version currently available for download – I added a fix for an API method (yes, I’m rather proud of that commit as my first ever to an open source project!).

Kona Dr. Good Review

James — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:32:40 +0000

I’ve had this bike (official product page) since December 2010 so I think I have had enough time cycling it to be able to post a review.

My Beloved Kona Dr. Good, kitted out for the commute

Prior to riding this bike I’d been on a Free Radicalised, Electra Townie which is a fantastic bike (currently sitting in the shed disassembled from the house move in February). However it seemed too heavy for the daily commute when I wasn’t using it as my primary transport any longer. I’m lucky to have a great LBS (Local Bike Shop, in case you’re wondering what that oft used TLA is) in Moycullen Bike Works who don’t push you when you go in for a chat. Garry (MBW) was initially suggesting the Norco XFR 4 (as he also rides a Norco XFR among other bikes) which appealed with the relaxed frame and front suspension. I was considering the front suspension due to my wrists being painful for several weeks after a tumble on my older Raleigh hybrid and the roads along the route from Moycullen to Dangan (Galway) being in such a shocking state of disrepair. Eric (MBW) also had a Kona 2011 catalogue and knows of my interest in internal hubs as he did the wonderful conversion on my Electra Townie. That was it, the Dr Good was perfect for me as soon as I saw it in there; internal hub, front disc brake and rear roller brake on a relaxed frame. Depending on the Sterling exchange rate you’ll pay about €700 for it (that’s the price I paid).

The struts fixing the rack to the frame, re-using supplied mounting clips to affix to the rack itself

Six months on, it remains the perfect bike for me. I’ve made three modifcations to the bike; replaced the handlebar stem, added a rear pannier rack and mudguards. The rack and mudguards are obvious, it’s a commuting bike in wet and mucky West of Ireland. Fitting the rack and mudguards weren’t entirely straightforward. The rack has struts which are supposed to screw onto the frame but weren’t an exact fit. This meant a bit of fiddling to find a way to attach them but got the job done in the end. The front mudguard was difficult to fit due to the disc brake.

Mudguard struts affixed 'high' on the front fork.

Replacement Handlebar Stem

The disc brake calliper assembly mounts on the forks where the mudguard struts would normally go. So, I had to mount the struts higher on the fork meaning taking a hacksaw to the struts.I’d recommend, on reflection, buying a mudguard that doesn’t have mounting struts but secures to the top of the fork solely. The stem replacement is less obvious and relates to my preference to sit as upright as possible on a bike. The factory stem is non-adjustable so your handlebars will always be in a fixed location, relative to where you sit, at a fixed height. I bought a replacement stem which supports a variable angle of adjustment for about €35. It took about 5-10 minutes to fit to the bike.

Riding the bike is a joy, it’s light and the internal hub gears are perfect for urban cycling. The wheels are 700 x 32 so there’s a nice balance between grip and lower rolling resistance. I’m perfectly happy with the stock tyres (Continental CityRIDE 700x32C) which stand up to commuting just fine. I haven’t had too many punctures (around 5 in 7 months of cycling, covering ~1300km) and anyone who knows the Galway City streets, knows they are in poor repair and frequently littered with broken glass. The handlebars supplied (Handplant Bar) are reminiscent of a cruiser and extremely comfortable. The only maintenance I’ve had to do on the bike (aside from oiling the chain and punctures) is:

Push the rear wheel back in the dropouts as the chain stretched out
Adjust the tension on the rear brake cable as it stretched
Adjust the gear cable again due to stretching
Replace the rear tube (see the next paragraph)

There is one significant issue that I did encounter though. It occurred in the past week as it happens and was when I found myself needing to do a roadside tube replacement on the rear wheel. With an internally geared hub you have a cable connected to the wheel hub. The Shimano 7 speed hub with a roller brake (it’s a drum brake) fitted you have another cable connected (on the opposite side of the hub to the gear cable) – see the images on this Inter 7 product page and you should understand what it looks like. What this means is you can’t simply lift the wheel from the dropout and slide the tubes on and off. After a lot of head scratching I figured out that you could remove the roller brake assembly from the hub and so remove the tube. I suspect a lot of people would not be comfortable with this level of disassembly. This isn’t a defect on the part of Kona’s design obviously, nor is it really Shimano’s issue. It’s a downside to the configuration which makes the bike really simple (the roller brake is very effective in all weather conditions, like the front disc brake) but you do pay a price in the ease of maintenance for this convenience. It’s not a big deal when you know about it – knowing about it is key though and it’s not going to be common knowledge.

I love cycling and this is a great commuter bike. Kona sell a wide selection of frame sizes so you can get this bike in a size that’s just right for you and that makes a huge, huge difference to comfort and safety.

Disclosure: The nature of blog reviews these days is that the independence of the author is now questioned by default. So here goes; I have no relationship with Kona, Norco, Xtracycle, Electra or Shimano. In all cases, bar Norco, I’m simply a consumer who bought one of their bikes through a reseller (I haven’t bought anything from Norco I just looked at some of their bikes from the XFR and VFR ranges). I’ve spoken in glowing terms about Moycullen Bike Works here and in person to lots of people (I think the quality of Eric’s work as a mechanic is second to none and say that). I get on really well with Eric and Garry from the shop and see them around Galway a lot. When I lived in Moycullen I would often stop by and chat about cycling. I’ve had work on my bikes done by them and bought the Dr Good as well as various accessories. On pretty much every purchase from them I’ve been given some sort of discount, ranging from €2 or €3 on accessories to reduced labour costs on repairs. On the Dr Good, Eric quoted the price as around €700 when converting from Sterling and we left it at that when I paid. I’ve never asked for (directly or indirectly) a discount or any other consideration (neither asked/offered) so I can’t see anything that would suggest me ‘shilling’ for them. I take ‘€20 is grand’ when the register says €22 as the norm of small business dealings in Ireland. I’m happy to discuss any queries if I’ve left anything out.

Blogging Cycling

James — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:45:57 +0000

I realised that I have a whole load of cycling related stuff that I really should be blogging about. Now, I’m not necessarily talking about the kind of stuff that we talk about over on http://GalwayCycling.org but maybe more of the happy, review type stuff. I’ve been building up kit and getting happier with the overall setup so maybe it’s time to start referencing some of that. Maybe, just maybe instead of some of the shite sales directories that appear on Google when you search for something will be replaced by my sweary goodness.

Ah no Android, you’re grand thanks.

James — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 09:31:35 +0000

This is probably best described as a partially informed review of Android. I’m a techie who uses a lot of Apple products so I’m coming from using a MacBook and iPhone 3GS daily. I generally keep a passing eye on Android developments but that’s about it. When it comes to phone I typically have at least two with the additional phones serving as backup or travel devices i.e. one phone will have my regular SIM and I’ll put either a local or Maxroam SIM in the other phone when I’m travelling. Since I gave my Nokia E71 (from Lebanon) to my girlfriend after she lost her phone I haven’t had a secondary phone. This has been fine as my travel this year has been almost nil. Recently I was back in Lebanon and wanted to give Maxroam a trial there but had no extra phone. So I decided to use this opportunity to pick up a used Android device and see what life was like on the more open platform that people rave about and use to slam the iPhone. It didn’t quite work out that way as I didn’t get the HTC Hero until I was back in Ireland. Still, it meant that I could trial it in an easy environment.

So the HTC Hero is now a reasonably dated device but it is and was a significantly cheaper device than the iPhone. So it’s important to accept that you can’t do a like for like comparison on the hardware. A fairer head to head would probably be the HTC Desire. For a good discussion on the Desire, check out @eske‘s post here

The Hero that I got was running Android 2.1 with the HTC Sense UI overlay. This is a useful feature of the Android platform for device manufacturers and Sense is pretty decent. I didn’t think all that much of some of the HTC apps on there: Peep is a good example of a Twitter client which I really didn’t like but in fairness it’s easy to setup and will suit the casual Twitter user. I spent a bit of time with this setup – using the phone and installing apps like Seesmic, Tweetdeck, Foursquare and Facebook from the Android Market. However I was much more interested in trying out some of the more interesting features in Android 2.2 like WiFi tethering. HTC aren’t taking Android on the Hero any further so you’re into the root and reflash the ROM world. This is a pretty trival task with plenty of guides out there on how to do root without requiring any thought on the users part. Similarly there are plenty of Android 2.2 ROM choices out there which are just as easy to get onto the device. I went with FroydVillain as it was the ROM I’d happened to read about most recently. This gives you a stock Android 2.2 with the latest Google Apps. I took the SIM from my iPhone and used it in the Hero so that I could make sure network performance was the same. I also experimented with the default kernel as well as overclocked kernels with the 768MHz failing to boot fully but the 652MHz working just fine (doesn’t seem to drain the battery excessively either).

Once you’re done flashing FroydVillain (rooting and reflashing is less than 10 minutes end-to-end) you’re presented with a device which behaves like new. This means you get to run through the setup where you can setup your Google Account, signing up for one if you don’t have one already. It works just fine with a Google Apps account so that was a positive straight away. The device then just syncs away and you’re soon up and running with mail and contacts, etc. This is where the Google integration rocks – it’s quick and easy and you know that even if you wipe the device you’re going to be back up and running in no time with another sync. Running the new ROM makes no difference to the way you interact with Google services or more importantly the Android Market and application updates. VillainRom also offers an update service so you can keep up-to-date without fear of losing your root/custom ROM. This is obviously the best example of the open nature of the Android platform over Apple’s tightly controlled iPhone/iTunes environment. It’s huge and you can’t underestimate just how much power over your device this gives you by comparison.

With this more cutting edge setup I felt that it made things fairer and I felt prepared to love Android. It’s important to now get out of the way that I hate the touchscreen on the Hero, in comparison to the iPhone/iPod Touch it feels unresponsive and clunky. I’m putting this down as part of the cost differential – for your money, Apple give you a touchscreen that rocks – it’s quick and feels like a natural extension. That said, when input registered the response from applications seemed a little sluggish. So that out of the way we’re down to the Android applications – my experience was effectively 100% Android Market driven (will talk about the exception later). I’m not a fan of the Android Market – right now it just seems chaotic and hard to get to the genuine, quality applications. You really need to be following app guides to be productive – browsing the marketplace really didn’t cut it. @misterebby was kind enough to point me to this one . I find myself in agreement with this assessment via @gruber which takes Angry Birds as an example and highlights the number of ripoff apps you will find on the Android Market. This can only make for a poor user experience, particularly for those who are just getting started in the smartphone world via Android (by all accounts this is a sizable number of people based on reports of Android marketshare). While I have a serious dislike of the way Apple arbitrarily expels apps from the iTunes store I think the Android Marketplace is on the other extreme and places a burden on the user to determine the genuine quality apps to download and in some cases pay for. Many of the apps are also quite poor versions of those that exist on the iTunes Store; Facebook and various Twitter clients being the best example. I really did expect the apps to be on a par – I mean, the lessons have already been learned on the iPhone of what works so why aren’t the improvements to be found already on Android? In the Facebook app I couldn’t add favourites to the app home screen the way I can in the iPhone version. Tweetdeck on Android feels like it’s 6-12 months behind the iPhone version. The Android Market app had lots of problems with downloads appearing to start then experience issues like stalling, immediately failing or duplicating in ‘Downloads’ and simply disappearing from the Download list. This happened both on 3G data and WiFi (both the same as what the iPhone is used on). iTunes App Store can have some similar issues but you can, more often than not, attribute this to a specific event like a new update or a newly popular app not having the capacity for uptake. Typically these resolve with a short amount of time but the issues on the Android Marketplace seemed more random and thus frustrating. Again, this is going to come down to Google having a long hard think about Android Marketplace and making the appropriate fixes in policy and delivery. They’ll get this right I’m sure but it will take time. Explosive growth and a less forgiving userbase than us Apple fanboys might make this rougher though. The open approach does yield big wins though, WiFi tethering under Android 2.2 didn’t seem to be ‘out-of-the-box’ on the Hero but the Android Marketplace provided Barnacle which does a wonderful job and is a testament to the open platform. This worked a treat and also highlighted a hardware win over the iPhone as well as the obvious Android Marketplace versus iTunes App Store openness. 3G performance on the HTC Hero kicks the arse off the iPhone 3GS – I got consistently better performance tethering with the Hero than with the iPhone 3GS. This shows that device manufacturers like HTC can beat Apple on the hardware front and at a lower cost.

I’ve now gone back to the iPhone 3GS as my primary device, simply because the apps on there are so far ahead of their Android counterparts and because the iPhone is clearly a better piece of hardware overall than the Hero. However, if I was to take a device like the HTC Desire HD I think the hardware experience would be very different and I strongly suspect that when I come to replacing the iPhone I will be going the Android route. I am hoping that Android has improved significantly by the time that comes.

While thinking about this blog post another observation came to mind: Custom ROMs and what that offers. The likes of VillainRom.co.uk are amazing resources with paid features like ROM and Theme Kitchens where you can get custom setups. This made me think that an area for independent revenue would be industry/use case specific ROMs which would have high appeal to small and large businesses. The custom ROMs these type of sites offer usually have various applications already in there and I could see a tailored setup for specific professions being a serious selling point. There’s also the possibility of custom Marketplace implementations that would offer vetted applications to more restricted environments.