Aquila Online

Springboks – World Cup Champions

// October 20th, 2007 // 4 Comments » // News

Congratulations to the Springboks with the 15-6 win in the Rugby World Cup Final.  You boys are beauties.

World Cup Rugby Viral Game

// October 16th, 2007 // 15 Comments » // General

Most of you would have seen this by now on Justin and Gregor‘s sites, and probably on ten’s of South African blogs too.

This was just too good not to share. Thanks for the time-waster guys. You rock!

Brought to you by The Times

My high score is 117.133m thus far.

Vote Samsung Blog Phone Charity Giveaway

// October 14th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // General, Samsung SGH-i600

As you may know, I was recently involved in the Samsung blog project, where a couple of bloggers, Aquila / Nico Olwagen (that’s me), Rafiq, Tertia and Deshanta were asked to test drive a number of Samsung mobile phones for a few months and blog about our real life experiences.

The project was a blast and you can read more about my experience with the Samsung SGH-i600 Blackjack phone over at the Samsung blog.

Now that the project is over, the good guys at Samsung decided to donate the phones we reviewed to charity and currently the Samsung i600 Blackjack and Samsung E250 is up for grabs.

Since the Living Maths project is close to my heart, I chose it as my nominated charity/organisation. Living Maths, an NGO which addresses the shortage of people with mathematical skills and so provides classes for pupils struggling to grasp the fundamentals of this discipline and promotes mathematics as a career.

So what I need you to do is to go vote for Living Maths on the Samsung blog site to get the phones (you may need to sign up to vote, but it’s quick and easy). I think this will truly help them get the message out and assist in that all-important organisation needed to bring essential maths tuition to our youngsters.

Let me also take a brief moment to thank Daniel Lamberti from Samsung Mobile and Mike Stopforth from Cerebra for this awesome experience. It was great being part of this project and even better to be able to assist in enriching someone else’s life with this charity giveaway.

All help with the voting will be appreciated.
You guys rock!

Justin and Charl Twitting Away

// October 12th, 2007 // 4 Comments » // Funnies, Tech

Spotted this over at populs.com yesterday – Justin Hartman and Charl van Niekerk twittering away.

Classic.

Getting Touchy Feely With The HTC Touch

// October 9th, 2007 // 6 Comments » // HTC, Tech

As some of you may recall, I posted about the HTC Touch when it was launched in South Africa earlier this year and since then I’ve been itching to get my hands on one, even just for a brief moment.

I was pleasantly surprised when I received a call from the team at the communications agency Tribeca PR who graciously offered to hook me up with a review unit at the end of August. You guys rock!

So when I finally got my hands on the review unit I was absolutely stunned at the size and the beauty.  Compared to my current phone, the HTC TyTN and after reviewing the Samsung SGH-i600 (Blackjack), this is probably one of the most aesthetically pleasing phones I’ve had my hands on recently.

Measuring at a compact 99.9mm in height, 58mm in width and only 13.9mm deep, the unit even weighed in at a measly 112g.  This means no bulging pockets.  Then again, this phone is so beautiful, you wouldn’t want to keep it confined to its supplied cover (almost like a bodyglove cover) or your pocket in any event.  You really want to show it off and let people ‘touch’ it.

Speaking of which, the aptly named HTC Touch features the new TouchFLO system with which you can control the phone.  There are a number of ways for you to swipe your finger across the screen, which will bring up different GUI’s (Graphic User Interface).  For instance, swiping your thumb upward from bottom to top will bring up the TouchFLO menu, which you can then browse through by rotating it like a cube with your thumb.  You can access your media and playback music and video you’ve recorded with just a flick of a finger. 

You can obviously still use the included stylus to navigate your way around, which turns out to be a non-negotiable for typing.  The lack of a slide-out keyboard or even an alpha-numeric keypad, made typing out a simple SMS a bit of a bother. But all this can be overlooked after a few days of practicing using the on-screen keyboard.

A note on the screen – brilliant.  Indoors, the colours are vibrant and clear,  while outdoor is almost impossible (as with most touch screen phones).  I quite liked the home screen, which features a couple of quick shortcuts to things like a weather widget, your contacts, and text messages.  The handy weather widget calls up weather forecasts based on your location via AccuWeather. 

I would suggest changing the update settings though, otherwise you could land yourself a nasty surprise when the invoice for your data account arrives. As I was traveling during the time of the review, this feature was quite useful and made my wardrobe choice a lot easier.

Looking inside the brains of the phone you’ll find a 200MHz Texas Instruments CPU, 64MB of RAM with 128MB ROM running on Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional with 802.11b/g WiFi and stereo Bluetooth. Unfortunately 3G got the boot on this phone, which is really a pity.

On the outside, the Touch features a 2-megapixel camera, however you’d be best advised to carry a dedicated camera around with you as it’s not entirely up to to the task.  The lack of a flashlight makes is pretty much impossible to take quality pictures indoors. On the other hand you can get some decent pictures outside and if the lighting is perfect inside.

Included in the package is a 1GB microSD card to store all those important audio, video and documents on the go.  Speaking of documents, the full ambit of Microsoft Office Mobile applications are catered for, including PDF viewers and scope for others through 3rd party software. 

Synching my contacts, calendar  and tasks with Microsoft Outlook proved to be a piece of cake.  Although I didn’t specifically use the feature, it appears as though a push email service is available via Hotmail and Windows Live Mail.  Being a Microsoft-based phone all the usual suspects, Internet Explorer, Messenger and Windows Media Player are included as well.

I could say so much more but one really needs to touch and handle the phone to get a feeling for it. Some personal niggles aside, my overall impression is that this is a decent and useful phone. It is stylish and modern, with a couple of nice gimmicks features that will get people talking the minute they see it. Obviously you’d need a bit of a backup plan to keep them interested, but then you’re one of those hip, trendy people who can hold a conversation in any case right?

I definitely wouldn’t mind one as a present – nudge, nudge, wink, wink