Author: J

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Time to switch?

I was reading that Ed Bott had switched from Windows Phone to iPhone, because Verizon didn’t push out the Cyan update. I have never had a problem with getting Windows Phone updates from 3, but my problem is not so much the carrier but rather the core functionality in the OS. Or, put another way, it seems to me that updates to Windows Phone are few and far between.

These things take time, I am fully aware of that. But over the last couple of months it looks like Microsoft is focusing more on iOS and Android, while forgetting about the few the proud, who actually buy the phones.

My trusted Lumia 920 is about to kick bucket after one too many drops, and I will soon be on the look out for a few phone. Addingn insult to injury, my Lenovo Ideapad is getting slower by the day, so now might the right time to make that switch to another platform to see if the grass really is greener on the other side.

That being said, Windows 10 is looking pretty good so far, and hopefully the UI will still receive a some serious updates. It might be a good idea to hold the horses for a second and see what will happen with the Windows ecosystem. Heck, I might even be able to buy a real Windows tablet.

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WordPress for Windows Phone

3361413196_53c355e34cAfter resetting my phone I was unable to install WordPress as the app didn’t show up in the store. Apparently Automattic decided to discontinue windows phone support and therefore pulled the app.

I did a search and stumbled across a link to the store allowing me to install. Perhaps it’s only in Denmark the app is inaccessible.

Anyway, here’s the link

Enjoy

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UML resources for Visio 2013

imageI am doing some analytical work on a side project these days. Currently, we are in the process of defining the scope of the system, so as the good analyst that I am, I have fired up Visio 2013. Now, I didn’t get the big flashy version of Visio, which means that I don’t have all the stencils I need. In another blog post I wrote about the BPMN 2.0 stencil, but this time around I have to use the UML stencil as I am working on use case diagrams and data models. Luckily the Internet is my best friend, and I managed to track down not only UML stencils but also crow’s feet.

You can grab the UML stencil here and the crow’s feet stencil here. If you are looking for BPMN 2.0 I recommend Orbus. Enjoy.

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Facebook payments coming?

FPpayment

Gizmodo has a really interesting article about an alleged Facebook payment functionality, which might see the light of day soon. Working in the financial sector, og coure makes this a very interesting thing to me, since payments are a an area where the competition is heating up quite dramatically these days. Danske Bank is doing a bang up job with their MobilePay solution, and the other banks (well, most of them) are trying to get the Swipp application to take off for real.

Considering eBay has spun off PayPal in order to maximize the market potential, does indeed set the stage for some interesting fights over the years. I am curious as to how the banks will react to IT companies stepping on their turf. And who knows, maybe consumers will have no problem at all trusting IT companies with their payment information. And why wouldn’t they? At the end of the day even clearing is an IT system.

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Health & Fitness

Health & FItness seem to be new black these days. It is very common here in Copenhagen to see runners training along the water and when you get further into the country side you can’t throw a smartphone without hitting a peloton of bike riders, myself included.

‘I have been a runner and a bike rider for many years, but I never really got into the whole gadget side of things. Granted, there were not a lot of gadgets around ten years ago compared to now. True to my geeky self I have been using a Garmin Foerunner pulse watch for a while now, but since that is a bit cumbersome to wear on a daily basis I have gotten my hands on a Fitbit.

Despite being advised to wait for the next edition to hit the market, I decided to get the latest Fitbit flex. So far the thing works out really well for me. It motivates me to take the long way around, or walk instead of drive, in order to reach my daily goal. However, if you are not slightly obsessed about these things my guess is that it will make sense to use.

Fitbit released an app for Windows Phone not too long ago, and it works extremely well. Bluetooth 4.0 keeps the battery drain to a minimum and the app is very metroesque.  All in all very cool stuff. The only thing is that since I use two device I have to use three service. One to extract data from the two devices and a third to consolidate data. Luckily, I can use MyFitnessPal because both Garmin and Fitbit will let me integrate my accounts. So, all food intake is registered in MyFitnessPal and all excersice comes from Garmin and FItbit. Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

All I have to do is keep to the schedule, and come July 2015, I will be able to ride up Kroonplatz or Zoncolan without problems – I hope.

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Getting rid of social notifications

For a while now I have been pretty bothered by all the notifications i receive from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in particular. Despite all kinds of filters I am getting more and more tired of beng bombarded with emails urging me to stop what I’m doing and go look at…whatever.

The first social network to get the make over over Twitter. So without further ado I present to you a settings page without any enabled notifications.

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And here’s LinkedIn, or at least a small part of it.

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New HTC One render

Neowin just posted a render of the upcoming HTC One running Windows Phone 8.1. I think this looks really really nice, and I would definitely consider this over a new Lumia.

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Getting my Lenovo on

imageA couple of weeks ago my old trusty desktop PC died. I ended up up buying a Lenovo U430, which I had been looking at for a while.

The machine has some pretty good specs, but notably lacks an SSD drive, which I guess I have to add eventually. Of course, it has no CD drive, so I will have to get Windows on there in some other way.

As it turns out, I never ever use the touch screen, mainly because I don’t want to amke the screen dirty, but since the trackpad supports muliti gestures pretty well, I don’t really need the touch screen. The screen itself has pretty bas viewing angles, but nothing that I cannot live with.

The one thing that has surprised me, is how much I use the metro environment. I think metro is better for touch, but it offers me a lot of opportunity to connect to my work accounts such as Exchange and Lync easily, so I find myself using quite a bit these days.

That being said, I am not sure I really get the whole dual environment thing as I have multiple apps that do the same thing. Mail and Skype are good examples.