Low on Space

sheilaellen — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:28:25 +0000

I recently had to revert back to using a 1GB memory card in my G1, since the 16GB card spontaneously corrupted. Ever since, my phone’s been helpfully pointing out, at least once per day, that it’s short of storage space and suggesting that I manage my applications; by “manage” it means “delete”.

There are some apps that I could delete but I’m reluctant to do so because I like them and might forget what they’re called should I acquire a more powerful android device and wish to reinstall them. There are others that I rarely use but do exactly what I need them to do on those rare occasions that I do need them. Until now, I’ve been managing to hang on to the aforementioned apps by deleting apps that I’ve installed either because they looked as though they’d do what I needed but didn’t or simply because they looked shiny in the store but quickly dulled with use. However, with Christmas looming, last night I thought I’d try installing the RTM android app – and it’s a whopper (~3.75MB). I’m determined to give it a proper trial but this means that finally I’m going to have to get ruthless with the other apps.

As I shall probably wish/need to reinstall some of them at a later date, if not on this phone then another, here’s a rollcall of the victims of this cull:

Name	Description	Use	Pros	Cons	Size	Version	Credits
BeyondPod	Full featured podcast manager and RSS feed reader.	Managing the few podcasts I subscribe to.	Easy to use. Can schedule automated checks and downloads.	I get stuck in the interface, looping between the various screens as to exit, instead of pressing “Back”, you have to press “Home”. Also, I’ve yet to get it to successfully subscribe to ABC’s MediaWatch vodcast; not sure if that’s a problem with the vodcast or the app.	1.55MB + 1.01MB data	204	BeyondPod Team
Phonebook	Contacts management: “unified communications inbox” (calls and SMS), stats, birthday notifications, search, groups.	Alternative to the default address book.	Much better than the default address book.	I only keep in contact with a few people via voice calls and/or SMS so don’t really need/use the advanced features.	1.87MB + 88KB data	106	Voxmobili – Onmobile
Meridian	Media player: search, lyrics, subtitles, gestures, ID3 edit, rating, meta data.	For playing media (mostly audio) stored on my phone, which isn’t much with this smaller SD card.	Much better than the default app.	I rarely listen to the music stored on my phone, preferring to stream from online radio services instead.	1.53MB + 100KB data	75	III – Romulus Urakagi Ts’ai
IcWord	Document viewer: Microsoft Word only.	Allows me to open and read MS Word documents.	Provides functionality that isn’t available to me by default.	Only useful for MS Word documents.	1.16MB	2	Derek Li
FBReader	eBook reader: epub, oeb and fb2.	Reading novels.	Gives me the option to read a book without having to carry anything extra around with me.	I prefer to read the paper version.	1.09MB + 44KB data	527	Geometer Plus
Pixelpipe Pro	Media uploader: images, video, audio, text.	Posting to Flickr.	I can upload instantly, no need to wait until I have access to a more capable PC with internet access.	I very rarely use it.	1.05MB + 76KB data	23	Pixelpipe
WordUp!	Word game, very like Boggle.	Killing time on the bus.	I love word games.	I don’t use my phone to play games very often.	0.98MB + 52KB data	28	Anthrological
Odd One Out	Game: spot the odd one out, against the clock.	Get’s pretty challenging to beat the clock towards the end.	Not enough variety, just the same shapes but with less time.	I don’t use my phone to play games very often	264KB	9	CRSoft
OffiViewer	Office document viewer. Opens PDF, Word, Exel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument and RTF files.	For reading random documents downloaded off the web or received as email attachments.	I don’t have to wait until I get to a more capable PC.	I don’t use my phone to read office documents very often	240KB + 4KB data	12	Art of Solving

The RTM app had better be good…

Jeni Tennison

sheilaellen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:20:10 +0000

Jeni Tennison is an XSLT guru who shares her expertise unstintingly on paper, at conferences and online. If you’re an XSLT programmer, Jeni needs no introduction; she’s probably helped you out sometime or awed you with an elegantly simple solution to what you thought was a horrendously complex problem. She has a knack for it. And this skill for simplicity and elegance in code is something I aspire to. And that’s easier said than done in XSLT – no sooner have you matched a “/” and before you can say value-of, you find you’ve applied templates to the descendant of an ancestor, sorted three ways, with a mode and priorities applied. So I salute you Jeni and will spend at least some of Ada Lovelace Day refactoring in your honour.

Ada Lovelace Day

sheilaellen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:03:19 +0000

Research has revealed a peculiarity about role models: if you’re a woman, gender matters. Although any (good) role model is better than none, the effect is greater for women when the role model is also a woman. Unfortunately, during the last decade the ratio of women:men in technology has decreased or – at best – remained the same in most regions of the world, thereby reducing the pool of potential role female models. Ada Lovelace Day is an attempt to redress the balance by drawing attention to women excelling in technology.

It’s the brainchild of Suw Charman-Anderson, social software consultant and digital rights activist – if you’ve never heard of her before, here’s your first new inspirational woman! Not only did she react to this depressing downward trend by having a proactive idea, she acted on it by publishing a website explaining what it’s all about, created a pledge so that people might register their support and then publicised the two widely.

Today, all around the world, people will blog about women in technology – and maybe you’ll discover a new role model.

Vista » Technology

Low on Space

Jeni Tennison

Ada Lovelace Day