In a somewhat more generic article than usual, Symbian's David Wood talks about the importance of not overlooking basic organiser functions in today's smartphones. Here's his latest Insight article.
Read on in the full article.
Managing your life on a smartphone
David continues his Insight musings over here, being interviewed by The Register.
Steve
Interesting Insight article - makes you think if David Wood is keen on organiser functionality, he must be happy with using a Symbian phone as an organiser, in spite of the rather deficient capabilities?
Turns out from the Register interview he is still using a 'Psion 5'! Isn't it a little strange/worrying that the 'Executive Vice President, Research' of Symbian still isn't 'eating his own dog food'?
alistairj wrote:Interesting Insight article - makes you think if David Wood is keen on organiser functionality, he must be happy with using a Symbian phone as an organiser, in spite of the rather deficient capabilities?Turns out from the Register interview he is still using a 'Psion 5'! Isn't it a little strange/worrying that the 'Executive Vice President, Research' of Symbian still isn't 'eating his own dog food'?
Yeah!!! Symbian phones are good, but he keep using a old EPOC device... Make us thinking.
You probably know this, but EPOC is effectively Symbian OS, just a slightly earlier version. He is eating his own dog food, he just admitted that he had so much data locked away in Psion Data files that he couldn't see a way of bringing it all into the modern age.
Loads of other people are in the same boat, Psion Data had its own way of handling embedded carriage returns. It made sense at the time, but it plays havoc with getting data out of the files easily.
Steve
slitchfield wrote:You probably know this, but EPOC is effectively Symbian OS, just a slightly earlier version. He is eating his own dog food, he just admitted that he had so much data locked away in Psion Data files that he couldn't see a way of bringing it all into the modern age.Loads of other people are in the same boat, Psion Data had its own way of handling embedded carriage returns. It made sense at the time, but it plays havoc with getting data out of the files easily.
Steve
I know, EPOC 32 --> Symbian! But he could do a effort to pass for a more modern 9300i / 9500, or something like that... Because if he stays with Psion, all of us, can say that kind of things, again!😉
Yeah, it is a shame that Symbian isn't sufficiently close to EPOC that we can't still run Agenda, Data, OPL etc. on our shiny Wifi/3G/Bluetooth phones. Then we would all be happy and not have to still carry around 5mx, Revos etc. with our phones like David Wood does.
All so much bullstom.
The problem here is portability (Proprietry actually). If you put your calendar details into any phone, you cannot get the fekkers out again without special tools. Once you change phones you have to magicaly transfer them. They may not even be compatible data formats, even for symbian phones. This extends to the ways you can use that information on your PC. Outlook?! i ask you, has anyone the time to set that up, even if they were foolish enough to buy it?
It's possible he has access to tools that us mere mortals cannot touch, that allow him to move his information between symbian versions and machines, but thats doubtful.
Proprietry is the key issue. The contact/calendar data cannot be accessed without special tools. No real export/import. The first time you get burned with this problem, is the last time, because you wont be so foolish again.
eh? PC Suite's sync to Outlook works *perfectly* these days. In the last 3 weeks, I've moved my PIM data between 4 different smartphones, all via PC Suite, and I've not lost a single character of info.
No need for special tools or lost data. And even without PC Suite (e.g. if you have a Mac) there are on-board tools on each device to manage the data transfer.
Steve