Big scare..

Pressed the ON button on my Nexus 10, and NOTHING happened! What..?

I have been very careful to swipe off unused apps when I've finished using them, particularly as I'm monitoring battery conditions in the last day or two, see http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries.

So I plugged it in and hoped that nothing mysterious had killed the beast. Thankfully, after a few minutes, the screen blinked in a dim mauve colour, showed a battery icon, and went out again :) So, all is not last, but I must admit, this was scary.

Handy Safe again

Spent a while these last few days, sorting out Handy Safe on the Mountain Lion partition (Apple Store sees both partitions as one where apps are concerned, making it impossible to install a bought app on the Lion partition, most of them, when I run up the ML one.)

The Handy people came back with a solution for me today, a package to run and a registration key to use... thank you Paragon, Pen or whoever you are.

That gave me the chance to update Handy on all devices. Quite a collection of them, now that the Nexus 10 has arrived (yesterday).

One thing I learnt, having taken ages trying to copy Safe.dat back onto the desktops) was that ES File Explorer's NET option allows one to set up Dropbox, Drive, etc., so that one can carry out a range of functions on Nexus/Android devices and transfer copies f.eks. directly to the cloud!

So much for Handy for now.

A suggestion for fanboys of either persuasion..

I was looking at the list of devices above, and it reminded me how often I'm disappointed by the quality of participants on tech podcasts.

I won't name and shame here, but Apple guys seem to be worse than the more 'open tech' inspired Android enthusiasts. The worst of them are out and out apologists for every Apple fault, and even talk of "Apple Quality", (sorry, but be honest, how many of you have not had or heard of someone with an iPhone who has trouble with the hardware buttons?

Another thing I hear, which makes me groan, is when they infer that if you already have an 'investment' in iPhone apps it makes sense not to try a device from the competition.. a weak argument in my opinion, except for the unfortunate poor.

If you don't make an average investment on both sides of the equation how on earth can you hope to give intelligent advice?! Anyway, apps on both platforms are absurdly cheap.. it isn't going to cost more than a cup of coffee for an 'expensive' app, which you get to use on multiple devices.. get real!

And then there is the supposed question of the quality of Android apps..  I have approximately the same number of apps on both platforms, about 130 I think, and the only application I use on my iPad (iPhone) which I haven't yet found a match for on Android, is Momento, a daily journal. There are no doubt alternatives, but I'm looking for one that can be accessed via Dropbox from both platforms..

Thats enough rant from me. If you want more, try a few tech podcasts ;)

Moved over to Mountain Lion

I installed ML  when it came out first, but having a Lion partition on the same drive as ML caused some problems between iTunes and syncing the iPad and iPhone. i.e. I became frustrated when I had set icons on the above devices just as I wanted them using Lion, only to find them moving all over the place when I ran iTunes on ML.

While having problems with MyFiles, a new Cloud app, I had to dodge back and forth between the two OS versions, which gave me the necessary urge to sort things out. This has taken a couple of days, and no doubt there will be other apps which need to be updated, paired, or sorted out in some way or other.

What do I think of ML vs Lion? No big change..

One app I have been using a lot more than other mindmap apps is Simplemind, which works across the iMacs, iPhone 4, iPad 3, as well as my three active Android devices. Not the sexiest UI but most impressive interconnection via Dropbox.

Ordered Nexus 10 from Multicom

I've had Hardware.no's web site open on the Nexus 10 page, waiting for some supplier to quote a price for the device, and was searching for info about Nexus Media Importer when I suddenly noticed Multicom had an entry!

As I had ordered my US Nexus 7 from them, I felt safe in placing an order for a Nexus 10 even though the delivery date would probably be out in mid December.. Their price at NOK 3.5K was what I expected so I was quick off the mark, and after three attempts to enter my bank details and having Java troubles both with Chrome and Firefox, I got Safari to complete OK.

Today I have been trying to locate the User Guide, without success.

Howto: Copy Handy Safe Pro database to Nexus

Why do this?

Well, although the makers of Handy Safe Pro have managed to produce a reasonably good method of syncing the iMac desktop app with iPhones and iPads, their Android solution is atrocious, and should be avoided...

Here is a method which works. NB! You will need Dropbox installed on the iMac and Android device in question.

First, search for safe.dat on the iMac (/Library/Application Support/Handy Safe Desktop) Copy this file, together with the .tmp and .ind files you'll find in the same location, to a new Handysafe folder you make for the purpose in Dropbox.

Then, on the Android device where Handysafe has been installed, simply Export the above Dropbox files one by one using "Save to SD card" (the top option in my Nexus 7's Export window) into the com.epocware.handysafe folder, and agree to Replace the three files which are already there.

Then run Handysafe and you should be in business..

This worked fine on all three of my Android devices :)

Nexus 7 receives Jelly Bean 4.2

The OTA Update arrived shortly after  booting up this morning :) So buying the US version paid off alright.

Still waiting for my Samsung Galaxy Nexus to receive the update however...