Paid apps in Android Market from Ireland (and other countries)

screen-shot-2009-10-13-at-1247471One of the issue early adopters like me are facing when using an Android devices in Ireland is that you can’t access the paid apps in the Market. One could get a sim-card from UK and use it only to buy an app or wait in hope that one day Ireland will be in the list… It might happen when Meteor will have the HTC Hero in its choice of handsets…

Fortunately, there is an option C if you want to be able to reward good developers. Continue reading

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Happy bar code day everyone!

barcode Today’s Google logo celebrates the 57th anniversary of the bar code.

Happy birthday bar code!

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Holy grail of Windows technical support

Twice these past weeks, I’ve been asked to look at Windows computers (one Windows 2000 and one Vista) that “didn’t work”. After a deep underground investigation, I managed to find the holy grail of Windows technical support. The solution lies within Internet Explorer… Don’t bother trying to re-install Internet Explorer or update to the latest version, that will not help. The only perfect and hasle free solution is:

Don’t use Internet Explorer! Firefox and Google Chrome will be able to replace it perfectly.

The simplest solution is always the one that we miss… I hope this will help lost of people.

Raphael

PS: OK, fair enough that will not resolve ALL issues but that will help a lot!

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Follow-up on the MMS settings for HTC Hero

I’ve realised that, even if my settings were all correct (ISP and MMS) I could not receive MMS.

I received one asking me to go to Vodafone web site with my mobile number and a password like if I didn’t have a MMS capable phone. While doing all the tests when I was trying to figure out the correct settings it was working… Continue reading

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HTC Hero – Revisited…

I’ve used the Hero for over 2 weeks now and I am still very happy with the device. There are “only” 2 negative points but they are easy to fix or should be fixed soon.

First, the biggest one for me, when using the Android Market in Ireland you will only see the free apps, you can’t see and buy the “non-free” ones. I could not find the reason behind this but I would think that it is due to the fact that not one of the Irish mobile network operators are offering Android based phones…. Vodafone is offering the HTC Magic in UK, Spain, Germany and France (SFR), I found this press released that say “More countries to follow” so I am hopeful that Vodafone Ireland will have one soon. There are few apps I’ve spotted that I would like to buy! Continue reading

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HTC Hero first impression and settings APN for Vodafone Ireland

I had my HTC Hero for few days now and I am extremely happy with it. I am still in the “wow” denial stage so I can’t find any faults. My main worry was the onscreen keyboard, mostly with my huge fingers, but with the predictive text (English or French) it is working like a charm.

I had only two problems with the setup of the phone. One was my fault, the phone will take your contact from 3 sources: Sim card, your contacts from your Google account (more on that to follow) and the one from the phone (copied or created on the phone). The problem was that my contact in my Google account were a mess (duplicates, old addresses,…), so I had to do some cleaning. Luckily, it is easy from the Google pages, you can merge duplicates or delete a whole bunch… Continue reading

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