I am still liking the interface of Facebook on Xbox Live. The one draw back that I would consider a change is the inability to send a comment to a friend. Now having an iPhone available with a Facebook app is handy but why go to two different places to get a simple take done.

That being said I find the overal experience very good fast and friendly. Having the chat pad does make a big difference of course. Now I am not the biggest poster in the world, and I doubt people are reading this itself, so I am not sure how well it works with a large number of posts and friends.

But having the ability to switch from a game and see posts on a bit TV is great.

Reading some of the comments online about integrating further with the pop up messages that say your friends are online is a good idea. However, this would need to be an option as getting an update on every comment and posting will get annoying.

Still liking it so will maybe do another follow blog post.

I was just accepted to the beta of the Xbox 360 Dashboard update. This update gives the Facebook, Twitter, Zune, Last.FM and news update.

I have to say that my first impressions are really good. The Last.FM has a great interface. Of course the service itself is great and does an excellent job of finding music that fits the stations you set up based on an artist. I’ll try out more of the features as I go. Having the pictures show up based on the song you are listening to is OK. The other section of finding the artist is great and seeing all the bacground info.

Facbook is good and I am impressed with the speed on getting photos and info. Will spend time using that combined with the iPhone app.

Twitter is a good interface as well and does a nice display job of tweets. The ability to go into a Tweet and either Retweet something do a direct reply etc is slick. Of course the one thing you miss out on is the ability to view links with no Internet access on the Xbox 360 itself.

One thing that is a must I think is a chat pad for easy posting.

Maybe now I’ll post more on the blog here with further thoughts.

Posted via the iPhone app

As an update to my previous post on installing the Windows 7 Beta on the old laptop. I have to say that using as a simple web browser and other simple tasks is just fine.

The only difference between the old laptop and a newer machine is the graphics as far as I can tell. In this case I lose the glass effects and the preview pop up on task bar items. This is no big deal if you have more than one web page open rather than a preview of the page popping up you just get the text description.

I have had a few crashes but that seemed to be with the wifi card driver. That was uninstalled and then reinstalled. This looks to be resolved now.

The new RC 1 version has some other nice features. More to post.

So I now had this old Satellite Toshiba laptop, P4 mobile with 40GB hard drive and 750MB RAM.  Now the drive needed to be wiped out anyway so I decided to install Windows 7 Beta 32 bit edition.  I have to say that the install was smooth, and took about 35 minutes from start to finish.  There appear to be a couple of driver issues but nothing that is affecting the performance of the system.

In fact I am very impressed in how fast the machine is working with a standard install, but no other real software installed .

I have needed to switch the IE8 compatibility mode on to enable WordPress to appear.

Overall impressed with performance.

Just saw the news today in regards to the Windows 7 Beta RC. Microsoft is either pushing for a Vista upgrade or a clean install. Of course both arebest suited for testing in the real world environment. Upgrading from the current official beta to the RC may have it’s own problems. However, I am not sure that I want to go throughand re-install everything again and setup networks and especially iTunes with an iPhone. Will need to think about this. I did see that there is an edit you can do to the installation files to get around this. I may take that option. I love Windows 7 so that is my primary operating system at present so I do not want to give it up.

If it was not for the fact that my iPhone will then have a fit being synchronized to a new computer I would not be worried. I need to look around the net and find a solution for this problem so do not lose music, apps, playlists etc.

Started playing the game. First impressions is fantastic. Great firefights and intense action. Looking forward to playing a lot more on the game.

I know that I am late to the party on this one but as soon as I have some more game time under my belt I’ll hit the I online action.

I would normally have bought this one but it came out with so many other games I had to pick and choose. This was on my rent list of games and I may just keep it.

The following link is a product that I have been working on and was recently launched.

http://www.globewireless.com/globemobile.php

Also the full press release can be read here

http://www.globewireless.com/pr_2009_03_gw_launches_globemobile_3.php

There was also a fronr page article in www.TheDigitalShip.com in the April edition of the new GlobeMobile solution. 

I was very excited to see this and is being received well in the market place.

After much deliberation I have started to expand on the Linkedin network.  Not usually one for social networking, but this looks like it could be useful for business contacts.  We’ll see how it goes.

Who knows I may even start blogging again about stuff.

I saw that last month NASA was testing the new Orion module. This test involved the landing back on Earth after a successful mission. Unfortunately the parachutes failed and the module hit the ground rather hard.

I am all for space exploration and travel and I know that this will be resolved. But I must admit it made ms smile that they could not get parachutes to work after doing this back in the 60s and 70s and Russia doing this with their craft

I really hope though that the return to the Moon will ignite interest in one of man’s greatest achievements.

So the question is the iPhone a good business tool of a toy?

Most top executives have used the Blackberry for a long time now bug some see the iPhone as a toy. Now I use mine for work and personal.

Having the Exchange push technology let’s me keep up with email. I like to be able to use other functions for work to, the currency converter is handy for example. Viewing attachments such as Excel, Word, PDF and even Powerpoint. As I mentioned in my earlier post I switched from a Windows Mobile phone. I think there is a perception that the iphone is a toy but that would be incorrect.

Let’s talk about email. Yes Windows Mobile had the features for synchronizing and pushing email, I even had a hacked version of Blackberry Connect. But the interface was poor and cumbersum and the data sync had issues such as if you moved email in outlook to a folder it would just stay in the inbox. Viewing attachments was difficult on the small screen. None of this could be said about the iPhone.

But now is web browsing and the app store just toys and for fun. Well it depends how you use them it can be very useful for business as well as for fun. Take the simple Hotels.com app great when you need a hotel at the last minute due to travel problems (FAA systems down today). Forget the address you are heading to, use google maps or search the web.

Now I know everyone is different and some will not give up their Blackberry but the iphone is a legitimate business tool.

But also letting me carry my Podcasts, favourite music, alarm clock, and even a phone in one device is perfect.

Now the iPhone has it’s moments when a reboot is required and backing up takes forever, but it works and is user friendly.

Of course there are many reviews and thoughts on this device but
they don’t look at it from a plain users point of view.

Why does the iphone work? Well reading the Wired article some time ago simply because Apple had control of the design and technology. Something that Microsoft and others can now use to their advantage without the phone companies dictating design and functionality. With all the clones out and coming out I look forward to Android and future Windows Mobile devices. I would not rule out Microsoft just yet.