donald kelly fused, the blog of donald kelly.

Flickr View All » iPhone 3GApple In-Ear Headphones

Apple In-Ear Headphones (Review)

Let’s all face it, You can buy a pair of Shure monitors, or a pair of V-Moda Vibe Duo’s which will sound just smashing, but the company with the most headphones in use?

That award probably goes to Apple, simply because of the amount of iPod’s and iPhone’s they’ve sold. Every single one gets a pair of white earbuds, which, since the start of the iPod line, have been of sub-par quality. Seemingly more a design after-thought then something the Apple design teams paid much attention to.

That is, until late last year, and the introduction of new iPods and the new iPhone 3G, seemingly un-noticed in the swhirl of news coming from the keynote, was Apple’s introduction of some new “canalphone” style white earbuds, but these werent the normal “pack-in” style, They’re a £50 (79.00USD) accessory those wishing to upgrade from the stock earbuds can purchase.

I’ve recently been in the market for something more compact to take along with me when on the go, It’s more common then ever to see people on the bus, or just out and about tuned into their iPod’s and iPhone’s, and yet, I had nothing better to use then the stock iPhone/iPod pack-in earbuds.

So on I mission I went. [Read more →]


Oh. Hello again.

If your subscribed to this blog (which I highly dobut you are.) then you may have noticed that … Its been down… quite a lot. Basically, This was caused by a more or less “rushed” server move, which is just another way of saying, I had to ditch the GridServer account I was on at MediaTemple.

But, worry not, Fused is back, but now on WordPress.com, until I manage to get it moved onto a new provider for the blog… called Fused Network. Fused (this blog) will be going on a Fused1 package for a while, until I decide to return to MediaTemple on my own, or find a better solution for this blog.

But, as of now, none of that matters. I’ll be posting up new content in a few days. So keep watching, Please? Pretty Please?

(P.S – Images are going to be acting quite strange for the next few days, Don’t worry about that either.)


The (new) fused

If you notice somethings seeming a little different, Its because fused has been moved. To try and save a bit of money overall, Fused has been moved off MediaTemple (along with IAmPearce, the blog of former fused owner, George Pearce.)

Content wise, nothing has changed really, everything is the same, and posts have been moved over, Some images will be acting a bit strangely while they’re moved to Amazon S3, but besides that, its the same fused it was a few days ago.

As for an explanation to the sudden quiet, I really don’t have one. There has been a lot going on in my life, leaving little time for this blog, but I’ll be working on returning to it soon. In the mean time, You can see some of my photos on Flickr.

(P.S – My previous domain, DonaldKelly.co.uk now redirects back to Fused. This is by design, and is part of my plan for how to continue to move Fused forward.)


Posted
12 May 2009 @ 2am

Tagged
Everything Else

Comments Off

Judge: BlackBerry allowed in Ottawa Mayor Case

Canada’s capital city of Ottawa has recently gone through a bit of a shake up, The current mayor of Ottawa Larry O’Brien is accused of bribery, for attempting to get another candidate in the 2006 Electoral race to drop out, in exchange for “support” in undisclosed matters.

This all surfaced in 2007, after a nine mont


_xdakx | the tour

_xdak | the tour | 2009 | starting august 2009

_xdakx, the tour, is an idea a few mates and myself thought up a long time ago (in 2008, not really a long time ago.)

the general idea is to visit a set list of locations, and have something like a miniature ”bar camp” of sorts, using something like yahoo upcoming to schedule them, and the rules are, that there aren’t any rules, almost anyone with an interest in the “emo/alt rock scene” can come along, it doesn’t matter if your wearing rocking skinny jeans, or a vinyl kilt (although, we would really appreciate it if you didn’t wear one of those, they don’t look good in promo pictures.)

as of now, “were” not letting out much detail in regards to how everything will be setup, but we have decided to use my blog to release a “draft” location/date list. which you’ll find below.

August 2009

1st and 2nd – San Francisco Bay Area

5th through the 7th – Seattle, Washington

10th through the 12th – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

12th through the 21st – Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

25th through the 27th – Tampa, Florida

September 2009 – The UK Series

1st through the 7th – London

9th through the 12th – Cardiff

14th through the 17th – Manchester

17th through the 21st – Scotland … Somewhere … We’ve not decided yet.

The “tour” will end somewhere in Scotland, which is where we’ll be having or closing party, This is part of the reason why we don’t have a set location as of yet. We’re looking for a venue with sufficient capacity for us.

Re: Ireland - We’ve not forgotten Ireland, but as of now we don’t have any plans to continue on into Ireland, We simply don’t think the demand for a continuation is justifiable based on how much it would cost us to get there and have everything set-up, much less the hassle it would be.  If we do this again in 2010, We’re going to look into possibly having an event in the Dublin area, because we know we can get a proper location which would be sufficient for our needs.

As I said earlier in this post, all of this is a “draft” and not a final version, or even close. Some uncertainties have been raised about one of our UK planned locations (Cardiff) and so this list could change, but stay tuned to fused for updates.


The Curve 8900

What if you took the design of the BlackBerry Storm, the features, and some smaller design elements of the BlackBerry Bold 9000, and then put them all into the form-factor of a Curve 8300 series device?

You’d end up with the Curve 8900, RIM’s second newest consumer oriented BlackBerry offering.

The Curve 8900 has been available across many parts of Europe since early/mid 2008, but wasn’t announced or officially offered by a carrier in the states until CES 2009 in January of this year. When it was announced as RIM’s “Thinnest and Lightest Full QWERTY BlackBerry Smartphone”

And for once, the PR statement actually holds true (rather then being an over-hyped line dreamt up by a drowsy PR-bloke at his desk.) the Curve 8900 is, shockingly thin and light, most photos online fail to do it justice, and is actually a very nice device to hold in hand as well as to actually use.

The QWERTY keyboard may be a bit small for some with larger thumbs (but the Curve 8300 series is still available for those who need a keyboard with larger spacing between each individual key, but you do loose somethings such as RIM’s new 4.6 operating system).

The selling point on the device for many, would be the screen, Its a 480X360 Half VGA screen featuring 65,000 Colours, It wouldn’t be too far fetched to compared this display to that of an iPod Touch or iPhone, Colours show to be a bit warmer when compared with the display on the BlackBerry Storm, but this, in use, is really a non-issue. Photos display brilliantly on the device, colours pop and the display manages to show a nice amount of detail, while remaining crisp. Video is nearly the same story, Ghosting or “artifacting” is no where to be found while watching videos on the display, and it was extremely easy to watch a 27 minute telly programme on the display

The 8900 also features a 3.1 megapixel Camera, with auto-focus and an LED flash, Photos from the device are equally as impressive as the screen you’ll view them on. Once downloaded to your PC (with the included BlackBerry Desktop Application) or Mac, the photos are even more impressive, managing to compare to those off a Nokia N-Series device, or Motorola’s ROKR E9, Resolution for photos when quality settings are set to maximum, and compression settings set to minimum, are 2048 x 1536 for Portrait, or 1536 x 2048 for Landscape, and will size to be between 375KB to 650KB once downloaded. The 8900 supports a MicroSD card of up to 16GB, so this is again, not an issue. It should be noted that the right-side of the device features a two-stage user-programmable connivence key, which by default is set to the Camera, Depress the button slightly to focus, and depress fully to take the photo, just like that on many modern day cameras.

Battery Life from the D-X1 battery does vary depending on your usage, I’m more of a texter (Sending, on average, 10-12,000/month) then lets say, a web-browser, meaning I’m not using the device’s radio constantly, rather, using it for a few seconds at a time to send an SMS to the network, I’m able to go an entire day, to a day and a half without a recharge, Those using the device more, or using more draining features such as WiFi or Bluetooth may experience shorter battery life. It seems to be an internal policy that the mAH (or capacity) is never listed on RIM’s batteries, but its generally accepted that the D-X1 is 1600 mAH. You can expect a recharge time of 3.5 to 4.5 hours when charging from the “Low Battery” threshold (when the battery reaches about 10% of its fully charged capacity).

Now to the part that seems to grab the attention of some, The 4.6 version operating system, OS 4.6 was first introduced on the Pearl 8220 (also known as the Pearl Flip) and has now been brought to RIM’s other devices, Version 4.6 is the first “drastic” change in the operating system since 2004, It features a highly modernised look and pre-defined folders for Downloads, Applications and things like Settings. Some may like this change in navigation, but some may not, as it does mean your forced to scroll about a bit more to get to where you wish to go in some cases. Personally, I like it the new UI, I feel the update was far past due, OS 4.5 which shipped on the previous Curve/Pearl models was showing its age, in more then one front.

The Conclusion

The 8900 is a welcomed update for a device which was beginning to show its age, its chock full of new features, some not even mentioned here, like GPS, video recording, support for the playback of different video standards, and quite a bit more. The new design is a refreshing change from that of the 8300, following RIM’s recent change in styling for its devices (Black and Silver, with subtle yet interesting differences between each device.)

The Curve 8900 is certainly not something that should be compared with the Bold. The Bold is RIM’s current “flagship” top-of-the-line model and its apparent in almost every-way, from the faux leather back-plate to the brushed-aluminium BlackBerry logo below the camera.

The Curve 8900 would be an ideal choice for someone who wants a higher-end device, without the larger overall dimensions of the Bold, while still wanting the high resolution display, full QWERTY keyboard, and GPS mapping functionality. I’m not one to assign “stars” to a product, but the 8900 would be provided with 4.5 to 5 stars by me.

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 is available in the UK on O2 for between £0 and £235 (depending on your contract, tariff and selected data plan.) and is also available in the US on T-Mobile USA for US149 on the basis of a two-year agreement.



Dear Rogers, Why must you be such s…

No, the title of that post *didn’t* get cut off, and Yes! I am calling Rogers Wireless in Canada, a load of shit.

Canada isn’t really blessed in having a wide selection of wireless carriers, The “main” carriers (the one’s with market share, and the customers.) are Telus (Telus Mobility), Rogers (Rogers Wireless) as well as a few such as Fido, the mainly French oriented Télébec Mobilité and SaskTel Mobility (SaskTel, based in Regina.)

But, Back to the point of this post, Why do I feel the need to call Rogers a load of shit? Well, Its because I have to deal with them, not from a customer or subscriber point of view, but from the point of view that my fiancee is stuck with Rogers childish and poor operating antics and lackluster network quality (among other things.)

My fiancee for example, is on Rogers pay as you go service, She has 0.11 in available service credit, and when she attempts to send me a text message? She’s provided with this, highly informative error.

“Message sending failed, Check details.”

…. What. The. Fuck.

In all honesty? How much does it honestly cost to have some Finnish bloke sitting in a chair, programming error messages and network response codes into a handset?! Mind you, I’m assuming that this is something done by the handset manufacturer themself’s! Rather then the likely culprit, Rogers, which means that the cost is even more reduced, to have some bloke in Toronto sitting on his fairly large ass programme an error which simply states,

“Unable to send, Service balance insufficient, Refill or contact Customer Care

Wow! That error message told us that our account doesn’t have enough credit remaining to send our message! Hmmm, Its odd at how informative that is!

The other point of this post is the cost of sending a text message, or in fact doing much of *anything* that makes use or network connectivity. I’m not entirely one to make a statement on this, as I’m unaware of the current pricing for things such as SMS, MMS and calling, but Rogers seemingly finds it acceptable to charge for things that UK and American carriers include as standard, The ability to receive a text message sent to your device as an email? (##########@pcs.rogers.com for any Rogers Wireless customer.) is an optional service, and for those of you with a voice message (or voicemail) system? Rogers customers need pay for that “feature” as well.

Part of the reason that Rogers is able to get away with this, is the fact that they’re Canada’s only main-stream, mass-market carrier to use GSM, which means they’re basically the only carrier who uses SIM cards, Rogers blatantly takes advantage of this fact, which usually means services are 5-7% more expensive when compared with competing networks.

In the UK, Rogers would be completely dead, or at the very least, completely free of customers. Their business practices are … non-existent, and they seemingly lack intelligence in the operations of a wireless network. They seemingly have many of the qualities their former parent company American Telegraph and Telecom (AT&T) has, and in closing.

Dear Rogers,

Before you pick up an exclusive on the next BlackBerry, or that new Nokia N-Series Multimedia phone, why not pick up an exclusive of something your customers would enjoy far more, a brain.


This is (fused)

Well, Hallo there!

This is Fused, The new blog of Donald Kelly, which replaces his previous venture(s) into blogging, such as ChaosInspired, and DonaldKelly.co.uk, If you’ve visited fused in the past, and you’ve noticed it looks different, Its because Fused was previous owned by George Pearce of iampearce.com

As of now, This site isn’t really… “active” as I’m still working on it and getting things ready, but your still free to look around. Or you could always browse back to his old blog, DonaldKelly.co.uk