Having had a play now for a bit with a iPod touch 3rd generation I can confirm it does seem a bit faster, more responsive.

However, i do admit to feeling a tad disappointed that Apple decided not to incorporate a video camera, internal microphone, compass and GPS capability in the higher end models of a product they seem now to be positioning as a games device, no doubt cos of the success of apps. All these things are in it’s cousin, the iPhone, a phone.

Sure, I understand they need a games unit with entry level pricing, and they have the iPhone at the really top end – but that is primarily a phone and not a games device (and I see the iPod touch as a multifunction apps and games device). i guess the vast majority of people who might lust after a higher end iPod for apps would never consider or have the money to get locked into an 18 month contract with one network operator in any country. On principle even. Were there unlocked versions for sale that would at least be something, but from what I have read, even if that does happen it will be for older, and not the latest, iPhone models.

That said, I have seen a couple of references to Apple not having included a camera in the iPod touch 3G for technical reasons, but that once fixed, the implication being they would rev the product, maybe even in time for Xmas. I think Apple need to be careful here, as anyone who held off an iPod purchase until this latest release only to find a revved version out a few months later would likely be mightily aggrieved.

3.1.1? It has been pretty well ok so far, but on a couple of occasions I have lost wifi settings for no reason; I miss the button double click always calling up the music player, and something they have done has stopped audio working in Mixtikl ( which we have to look into).

Well, I couldn’t wait to get hold of my HTC Touch HD before Xmas, as I wanted to make sure Mixtikl was going to run fine on a WXGA device – and it does btw!

I went for the HTC Touch HD over other WVGA devices, as it just seemed to be a bit better specified on paper, but also ‘cos I was able to negotiate a good deal on it on renewal of my mobile contract (a big factor, no mistake, as these devices are not cheap!).

I don’t plan on going into minute detail about anything, and I am not someone who knows the intricate technical details of mobile phone hardware, how to update ROMs, change registry entries (’cos I don’t) etc. I am approaching my new phone it as would any normal non-tekkie user that has not used a phone without a keypad or navkey (DPad).

NB: Before I had this device, I had a Nokia N95, which I grew to love as it is a great piece of hardware (with a few exceptions – camera speed being a big one, along with GPS “locking” time). I dropped my N95 several times, but it kept working, and I always appreciated that.

Overall, i think it is a cool device. I do (strangely) miss having keys to press, as you know exactly where you are with keys (without looking), and they respond quickly. How does it compare to iPhone? I cannot answer that!

So, LIKES:
- The WVGA screen display is really rather fantastic. I do not watch movies on the Touch HD (occassionally You Tube, see below), but I do use it a lot for browsing, and a big screen is great there (especially as my eyesight is not what it was).
- Battery life is actually pretty good indeed I think, and _much_ better than the N95 (which with Bluetooth on would die in hours).
- Call clarity is good, and i have no probs hearing callers.
- Looks cool!
- Lots of RAM, and SDHC support (up to 16GB I think)
- Weather update and other HTC apps are good.
- GPS seems very responsive
- Lots of connectivity
- Can run apps in the background
- Nice the way you can enter SMS and see the body text of what has gone before (really helpful)
- TouchFlo 3D interface is generally good, visual, and nice to look at

DISLIKES (some of these are probably due to me not yet knowing how to do things yet):
- Call answering. There is a strange way you have to slide a slider to accept a call, and I just cannot seem to get my head around it, and have missed calls (and yes, i have the latest hot fix). I just cannot seem to get this right, so it is either me (possible), or….
- Cannot seem to lock device when in Touch Flo3D; this means I am often mistakenly calling people when I have the phone in my pocket. You can press a button at the top to turn it off, but if you press this by mistake, then oops. The only way around this is to use a SIM lock code. It is so much easier when you have keyboard keys to press to lock/unlock.
- Once you start a call process, is slow to stop it (i.e. of you call someone by mistake!). This does bug me.
- Pressing the end call button seems to take ages to end the call, so you have to watch to know it has ended.
- Cannot seem to set it to disable Data. As I browse often, I use WiFi when at home, but it often seems to end up using 3G because Data for some reason gets turned on, perhaps if I get an SMS (just quessing). I would really like much better control of when I use Data connnection. The N95 was really good in this respect. I am always having to go in and turn Data off.
- The bottom 4 buttons are impossibe to see in the dark, and they are flat, so it is very hard to tell where to press. Why could they not glow, or be raised a little? Because they are close to the softkeys, and you cannot see/feel them, I often find myself pressing the wrong button.
- The side volume control. Sorry, but i find this has not the granularity i want, and it is so hard to feel/find (sure, maybe just me) and that it irritates me.
- When using Opera, you have to tap a link for _just the right length of time_ to select it, or you get a menu item, with no ’select link’ item. doh! I am always getting this wrong, and this makes it a pain (often) to select links (even the N95 with navkey/key pad was quicker to use on occassions).
- I find not having haptics on all key presses (text entry) means i find it hard to get used to entering text. i could enter text much quicker with the phone keys on N95. You cannot really use this device one handed (i.e. to enter SMS)
- Being able to drag a web page round is great, but i am forever fiddling with the zoom and page alignment. i think Opera have further work to do there, but they have made a good start. This one does drive me potty.
- When i have looked at YouTube videos, they only display in landcape, but i would prefer to view in portrait. why not?
- Windows mobile: really does seem not particularly suited to a big screen, as you have to be very accurate to tap certain areas and font sizes are often too small. Onenote Mobile is not particularly easy to use with just fingers, and I tend to resent having to get out the pointy stick (stylus) on a device like this with such a big screen. Just a lot of little things in this area. I hope that when Windows Mobile 6.5 is released there will be an upgrade available for me (as would do Apple for iPhone).
- There is no way I can see to have on the main HTC Touch Flo screen a set of favourite links, e.g. to OneNote, or Comm Manager or even a particular web page. The N95 allowed this, and I used it all the time. Otherwise, everytime you have to drill down to find the ap you want.
- I can find no way to re-order my webpage bookmarks so that my faourites are at the top: you just get an alphabetical list.
- I have tried an app “Pocket Scrobbler” to listen to LastFM over WiFi. This works Ok, but regularly the stream glitches, and i don’t know why this should happen on such a powerful device.
- Can often take a loooong time for webpages to load, even over WiFi, and I recall that they often loaded quicker on N95 (I could remember incorrectly of course).
- I often find with using finger swipe that i select the wrong item, often because it seems to be slow to respond or because finger swiping seems to work in different ways for different apps. EDIT. This happens on the home screen sometimes with icons at the bottom.
- It is quite slippery, and i am terrified i am going to drop it and break it (so i am looking at getting a silicon case).
- I far too often get crashes with a message about “Services.exe” having failed for some reason. Just had one about Shell32.exe.
- Dissapointing internal speaker. I would have thought on a high spec device like this the integrated speaker would be better, and be stereo, too. Reason for this is related to LastFM about, and I dont always want to listen with headphones or plugged into another speaker system. I also find that ringtones are a bit quiet, but I have to experiment further there.
- Has neat MP3 trimmer app, but it does not work with high quality MP3s? (cannot see them for some reason).
- FM Radio. Hmmm. Nice on paper, and prob similar quality on other phones. but i cannot get enough reception to make this worth listening to (and you need to plug the headphones in to act as an aerial, too).
- Why no bundled generic IM app like mundu IM (comes bundled on the BenQ E72 WM Smartphone), as this would be really handy and means you can use any IM system and not just MSN
- Proprietary HTC USB connectors (odd shape). Why?

So, don’t let the (seemingly long) list of dislikes put you off: some of these are pretty minor. Besides, it is always easy to find fault with things and write about those. That means they can tend to outweigh the good things, even if there are plenty (of which there are). And, everyone has different likes and dislikes.

I DO like it, but I am also still getting used to it and to figuring out how to do things.

One thing is for sure, it is certainly a powerful device!

NB: I would love it if the Touch HD could somehow accept audio line input (with adaptor or not) . I would love that cos it would be useful to use with Mixtikl, and I understand a software update on iPhone is going to allow this (I may have got that wrong of course).

Will update the post to add/edit etc as I find out more.

http://www.mobilegd.com/events/mwc-2008-antix-porting-solution.html

Having seen a few demos in my time, and someone sent me a link to this one. What impressed me about this was how powerful a technology demo it was (from UK-based Antix Labs – http://antixlabs.com. A mobile version of Sim City (a well known branded game) was running on PC, and this was sent via bluetooth to a Windows Mobile phone. OK, so far so good, and pretty impressive.

The game was then bluetoothed from the Windows Mobile phone to a Symbian phone, and then played on that!! Wow!

What I found so impressive, was that this was the binary of a branded C++ game (not a Java game) that ran on 3 different platforms – yep, you heard me, the same binary!! I.e. not a different build version for the operating system. Now, maybe someone has seen a demo like that before, but I never have. You could just see how this could set the mobile gaming scene alight.

Well, we are now getting very close to nailing miniMIXA V3. One of the important things we have been asked for, and so we wanted to get in, was synching of microphone recordings. Well, we have done it . What that means is that you now get a count in period before you make a microphone recording – so you can get ready for your take. You can set how many bars you want this to be and how many bars you want to record for, as well as a system latency factor (as all mobile devices have different capabilities) – and the recording then synchs to the bar boundary. It is really useful and great fun!

The miniMIXA++ product will also include an autoloop recording feature. This means you can do take after take and only keep the take when you think you have nailed it.

This feature addition will make it much easier to use miniMIXA for capturing ideas on a mic, maybe as you are riffing or jamming to a background groove. You could then even sing/jam, record and sync harmonies on top.

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I was very privileged to be invited by Microsoft’s Jason Langridge to demo miniMIXA today. This was at the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Press Launch at Weber Shandwick’s offices in London.

From what I saw, Windows Mobile 6 looks absolutely fantastic for connectivity, email, look-and-feel, ease of use and so many other things. Jason also gave some excellent demos of a range of software applications, including Deepfish, and a superb business card scanner (Worldcard Mobile from http://www.penpowerinc.com/. The easy way you can filter and use email, get maps and information to local amenities, greatly improved improved outlook calendar and the new Windows Mobile Device Center (the replacement for Active Sync) etc seemed brilliant. I must admit, on the basis of what I saw today, I am looking forward to buying my own WM6 device!

When it came time to demo miniMIXA on WM6, I did it on an HTC Hermes device. This has a 300MHZ processor with VGA screen. I also briefly showed miniMIXA on an older WM5 HTC TyTN device, and explained that the exact same demo/performance I gave on the touch screen device was just as easy to give on the smartphone with keypad.

You can hear a mono recording of the actual demo/talk I gave HERE

The recording features my commentary throughout the demo. The demo mainly covered the MusicDJ mode, but I also gave a quick showing of the simpler RingtoneDJ mode. To go through all of the capabilities would have taken hours, rather than 10 minutes, so I concentrated on showing a live performance! The audio recording of the demo was made on my Micro BR.

There is a video clip of a screen capture of a similar miniMIXA performance now on YouTube, recorded at 22Khz stereo. This is a mix created with the more advanced MusicDJ mode, which is being used by the Slough Young People’s Center.

The video on YouTube also doubles as a quick tutorial on using miniMIXA++ and MusicDJ mode, as it is annotated to show how to do various things.

The audio output created from this mix was recorded to my Micro BR from the headphone output of the PDA, and the screen capture of the video was recorded on my laptop. I used Microsoft Movie Maker 2 to pull the two together. You can see the video clip below or link to it is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBP97NwG4nU.

In relation to the SYP Mobile Mashup below, there was also a report on Radio 1 Newsbeat during the Scott Mills show, just before 6pm yesterday. You might be able to hear it here for 7 days (it is at the end of the 15 minute report). I understand that Radio 1 has an audience of 2 million listeners, so that is pretty good! When they mentioned it will cost you £200 to £400 pounds, what they meant was that that was the price of a higher end Smartphone or PocketPC – not the price of the miniMIXA software (which is around £10 to £20)! I guess there will be information about miniMIXA posted on the BBC website later.

NB: You might also be searching for mini mixer, mini mix, minimix, minimixer, music mixer, mobile phone etc.

On Saturday I was at the Slough Young People’s Center (SYPC) launch of their 6 MOBILE MASHUP courses. One of these is music mixing with miniMIXA. It was an interesting afternoon and DJ Spencer Lowe had created some drum loops that he was trying out, and various MCs including PanicPhaze joined in. Tao have a press release about the collabaration with SYPC here.

We were lucky to have Nadia from Radio 1Extra come to check out the course start and interview DJ Spencer Lowe and MC PanicPhaze. She also interviewed someone signing up for the course, and the SYPC Center Manager. Nadia’s report is being broadcast on Radio 1 today at 2:40pm, after the entertainment section (was around 3pm).

Here is the link to the 1Extra Homepage, click on the ‘Listen Live – Real’ link to tune in to the station: http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/

Here is a picture of Nadia interviewing Spence, who is explaining how miniMIXA works.

I made a short video clip of the initial performance setup, and then where DJ Spencer Lowe and MC PanicPhaze were briefly showing Nadia the software (I did not make clips of the performance and audience though). l put something together and have uploaded it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-nqTef3j30

Well, it has been a busy time here for miniMIXA, and I have given a number of demos on Windows Mobile and Symbian devices to various Japanese handset manufacturers and service providers. The reaction in every case has been outstanding, and I have had comments from senior industry figures and meeting attendees like “My son would absolutely love to have this application on his phone”, “amazing” and “this would be really good in Japan” to “simply light years ahead of anything else I have seen” etc.

I have a good feeling now that we will be able to get services going in Japan around intent miXaPlayer (miniMIXA), and around Tao’s intent GamePlayer, too, the demos of which were also received very well indeed.

I must say, I found Japanese hospitality to be outstsanding, and I was made to feel very welcome. Japanese people everywhere seem very courteous and friendly, and it was a pleasure to be a visitor to this beautiful country. The transportation system in Tokyo is incredible, but, I must admit, I would not have had a clue (and still don’t) about how to find my way around it were it not for my knowledgeable companions. It may be I will be coming back to Japan soon, and I very much look forward to that!

I am on my first visit to Japan right now, doing a miniMIXA demo tour. An auspicious start was when my BA flight was full and I somehow got upgraded to business class. I have never in all my years traveled before in business class, and I must admit to being impressed (the food, cabin service and environs were all excellent). The trouble is, once you have experienced it, you can never look back! My one quibble, if I were to be allowed one, would be why do BA charge you to plug in your laptop on the plane? I was expecting (perhaps stupidly) to be able to plug in a standard mains power plug, and I had brought lots of adaptors just in case mine did not fit. Not a chance! I was told you have to buy a special adaptor for £80! Hmmm.

Just before leaving for this trip I had the privilege of giving a miniMIXA demo/performance to an audience of Microsoft employees. It was part of a demo extravaganza session by Jason Langridge and Dan Cohen. I must I was well impressed with the new Windows Mobile 6 interface, and how cool it looked. It also seemed to be so easy to enter text on a Smartphone device. That got me thinking that before setting off on this trip I needed to have an easy way to enter text on my own pocket pc. I decided to check out a piece of software called SPB Software House Full Screen Keyboard. It took no time at all to get used to, and it sure beats having to buy a bluetooth keyboard. It is well laid out and I don’t know why I did not think of looking for a software solution like this before. Word completion is excellent, too. It looks great and it is one piece of software that does the job without a fuss. One suggestion though, is were it too be possible, somehow miraculously, to be able to second guess when you got the key press area slightly wrong (some kind of weighting system), then it would be perfect. As I am just still trying out the demo version, this is one piece of software I will most certainly be buying. Mind you, that said, having seen how sexy the new window mobile 6 interface is, and how easy it is to enter text on a messenger like device, maybe I will be needing to trade in my ppc for one of those! I have my eye on one of the new, super powerful and nicely specced imate ‘ultimate‘ devices. Like any audio bod, I can always use the most powerful processors, so I am also keeping my eyes open for what Marvell are going to come up with next, too.

>> Hear the mix here: Red Lounge – Tao 3GSM Party Mix.

On Monday night (12th Feb) at the Tao 3GSM party in Barcelona’s Red Lounge, I did short performance on miniMIXA, mingling with the party goers – in between a great set from the house DJ, “DJ Monk”. I had miniMIXA++ running on an PocketPC and sending the live 22Khz stereo audio output stream via bluetooth to the venue’s PA system. It all worked fine, and I had some senior mobile industry figures mixing live, too.

For the set I had purchased from Time and Space some middle eastern audio loops (Roots of the Middle East and North Africa from Big Fish Audio and SoundScan Arabian Traditions from Universal Sound Bank) and was mixing these together with some excellent bass and drum loops from the Music Tech Magazine, plus an audio track and a modular synth riff, together with some spot loops. I had set these up with the miniMIXA++ Cell Mix (MusicDJ) mode, and used the new beta XY control surface and quality filter to cool effect.

It really was pretty spectacular (and fun) to be doing this all live on a mobile device, on the floor. I lost the bluetooth connection a couple of times when someone passed in front of the bluetooth module (it was a low power one), so that was useful to know.

Even though I am not a DJ, people seemed to enjoy it, and especially enjoyed participating in the mix and hearing themselves over the PA – seeing the excited reactions was really cool. The XY control surface went down particularly well, too. In the hands of a real DJ, this could all be so much cooler still.

For those interested, I have uploaded a quick mix of roughly what I did. It uses 11 of the 12 tracks in miniMIXA, and all 4 sections in MusicDJ mode. It uses high quality low pass and high pass filters (controlled with XY control surface), reverbs and even a modular softsynth. You should hear that everything is pretty tight. It was live mixed, and recorded (direct to SD card) on an HTC Universal. You can find the recording here :Red Lounge – Tao 3GSM Party Mix.

Was this a world first performance? Quite possibly(!), as it included the following elements: live 12 track mixing on a Windows Mobile device; 22KHz stereo output over bluetooth to the club’s PA; audience participation; modular synthesizer; spot loop triggering; full track audio file streaming from storage card; XY control panel (controlling filter cutoff/Q); loading content into the mix on the fly (auto pitch shift/time stretch from other MIXApaks); use of a range of live fx at track and global level.