I am not a high maintenance phone user, with no contract. The landline, email, texting or skype does me fine and looks after my money, though I have been a very reliable, predictable customer to my mobile phone network for ten or more years. I didn’t want to put myself into a contract, but I did want to break into the smartphone world with my replacement handset – especially with all my work on content for ReallyAppy and Nonvert.

Cost

Without a contract, I was faced with the prospect of purchasing a phone outright. I spent several hours and several evenings reading reviews and watching videos or all manner of HTC, Nokia, Samsung phones, and gaping at the cost of iPhones and trying out a friend’s iPhone 3 (prior to iOS 5). Yes, I was mislead about the newer options in the iPhone, but neither was I able to shell out the money for the handset or a suitable data plan to feed the hungry thing.

Eventually, after much deliberation, I settled for the Samsung Galaxy Ace, which turned out to be at the centre of the patent war between Samsung and Apple, and is apparently now banned in the Netherlands. I can see why, as can my iPhone owning friends who are surprised at the similarities.

No Flash

The Ace is not powerful enough to support Flash, which at first seemed a little odd, but doesn’t bother me all that much. The YouTube app triggers pretty much seamlessly should I want to play a video on a website through the browser.

Battery Life

Many reviewers had a dispute with the battery life. Not being a heavy caller, I do find that I can make the phone last 2 days with light usage, but 1.5 days and on all night is usually enough to make it display ‘connect charger’ on the standby screen. I may be getting longer battery life because although I leave wireless on, I have data transfer switched off due to a lack of suitable data plan, which prevents a lot of background syncing.

When the battery life does get low, the phone appears to switch itself off, though I’ve never caught it in the act. My C902 used to have a fault that was either common or occasional in the handset depending on how lucky you were. I saw it switch off in front of my eyes twice while idle and on good battery life – however I have yet to catch the Ace doing this. Instead, it likes to switch off in my pocket, which I suspect may be to do with the power button being situated on the edge of the phone. Still, this behaviour correlates far more with battery being low.

Keypad

The initial keypad configuration was quite tricky to use – narrow like vertical iPhone keyboard but for a touchscreen newbie, a little too much. I have opted for the traditional keypad with multiple letters on each key for vertical and the qwerty horizontal keyboard when I require it. The most irritating thing about the vertical keyboard is the lack of apostrophe – one must use horizontal qwerty to get that character, a nightmare for strange people like me who insist on using correct punctuation even in IM and text messages.

Writing text messages can be quite amusing on the Ace. It uses text prediction – for some strange reason I must type ‘no sheep’ quite often, as ‘sheep’ will always be predicted after ‘no’ in my messages. At times when I use IM such as whatsapp that can have comic results especially as I struggled to not clip keys by accident.

However the prediction can be quite useful as it seems to use names and details out of its phonebook and teaching it words is pain-free (having just taught it ‘blogging’). There is the swype keyboard entry – its meant to hold a world record for speed. I may go back to have another go at it, but I did not find it as intuitive as typing with straight prediction in the first few weeks.

Camera

Calls are great quality, and the camera is super too – see my photo set for some examples. I recently used the camera on bonfire night and made us of the ‘fireworks’ setting. The flash is bright and clear, and it takes speedy photos. In comparison to my c902 the only disappointment has been that it seems to be more sensitive to light levels when taking panoramic photos. If anything, the zoom is better on the ACE – though they both have 5MP cameras.

Peripherals

The ACE comes with its own headphones for handsfree and an alternative colour back (white or black). The headphone socket is universal, which I have used to advantage with an audio cable for the car and my own headphones at work. The charger plug is also for data and a standard type of USB which is handy. I tend to carry the charger with me if I am not home at night so I can charge it that night or the next day, but its tiny and weighs practically nothing. Alternatively I can charge from a computer’s USB port.

Connecting & Bluetooth

I have not been successful in using the Samsung Kies software with the ACE due to its incompatibility with the phone and my Macbook. However, I am used to using bluetooth and after quite a while of being rather puzzled at how I could upload files via my standard mac bluetooth but not see files on the phone using it, I discovered that one needs to set bluetooth visibility individually on each file to make it visible. Once discovered, everything was fine, but it could benefit from a ‘select all’ functionality. Also I cannot delete using bluetooth, but there is a ‘select all > delete’ on the phone to please my clear-the-decks requirements after downloading photos.

Conclusion

Altogether, I have probably had the most teething problems of all the phones I have owned, with the Ace, but I half expect it as not only do smartphones use a lot of power, they are more complicated by design. For the money I paid at the time, there wasn’t much in the market, but I do wonder if I had paid out a little more, I might have got something a little faster, and a little more reliable – but probably a lot heavier, and bigger…

Landing on the John Lewis website was a breath of fresh air amongst other retailers (particularly electrical ones…) with their cluttered websites and confusing product comparisons. So, these are my top 4 reasons:

Clean & Uncluttered

The John Lewis brand has a lovely, clean, elegant look of it. Even in stores there are dividers in just off white with some simple sans serif font. Whitespace appreciation gives breathing space. Everything about the clarity in the JL site makes you feel relaxed. Yes, one could argue it was a bit boring but in honesty, its a lot easier to read and find things when a hundred and two things aren’t blinking at your or crushed together.

I am fortunate to have worked with nearly all the clients in the company portfolio, providing support, updates, copywriting, organic search engine optimisation support, email marketing, template building, testing, researching, analysing, quotes, and simpler development tasks.

My role is very broad, as I am neither design nor development specialist, which means I have niche knowledge and fulfil and eclectic and unusual set of requirements between different projects!

Much more information about my employer can be found on our Clever Web People website.

Part of my role is to undertake copywriting requests from clients and internally for our company.

Examples of articles I have written as part of my job include:

For ReallyAppy

• 3 Types of BlackBerry App
• Design the Perfect Android Launcher Icon 2011
• Mobile App Mistakes 2011
• How to Plan Your Brand’s App 2011
• Good Practise App Customisation 2011
• How to Give your Branded App the Edge 2011
• The Perfect Mobile App 2011
• Making an App Your Customers Will Use 2011
• Good Experience Design for Mobile Apps 2011
• Customer-Led Mobile App Development 2011

For Mobility Pitstop

• Mobility Scooter Buying Guide 2010
• Mobility Scooter Law & Insurance 2010
• Benefits of Puncture Proof Solid Tyres 2010

For F C Dawes & Son

• Winter Precautions for Heating Oil 2011

For our company website

• Protecting Your Intellectual Property 2011
• Mobile Website or Mobile App? 2011
• Meerkats, Tweeting and You? Social Networking 2009
• 5 Alternative Marketing Methods 2009
• 32 Tips for a Super Blog 2009
• Effective Email Campaigns 2009
• Write a Killer Facebook Advert 2009

The article was originally in short form for Harmony Internet, though was published with Smashing Magazine in August 2010 attributed to me with Harmony Internet as my employer.

Recession Survival Tips for Web Marketing and Online Business

From March 2011, I am in the process of writing a new article for Smashing Magazine.

Here are the results:

Go here if you would like to link up with me on LinkedIn.

DigiPest – Chris Fairey

Chris describes his company:

We specialise in network and website testing for small businesses, we can also provide training if required.

DigiPest – security specialists is run by Chris who as well as reading the same degree from the University of Hull (2008) also went on to complete the EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker qualification. I would recommend Chris to you for any security concerns regarding websites and networks, even if you think you may be safe as houses, he would be able to tell you.

LinkedIn | @digipest | www.digipest.com

ArtDeal Designs – Artiatesia

Artiatesia describes herself as:

I’m the Founder and Creative Principal at ArtDeal Designs, a boutique design studio assisting Solopreneurs and Small Businesses with their web & graphic needs.

ArtDeal Designs – US small business design studio is run by Artiatesia who not only has a passion for blogging and all things tech, but creates designs for small businesses and entrepreneurs. With strengths in social media (Facebook, Twitter) design as well as traditional website, blog and print design, ArtDeal is an ideal contact for any freelancer or small business.

LinkedIn | @artdeal | www.artiatesiadeal.com

DooBurt – Chris Laythorpe

DooBurt is a web developer, project manager and designer and a former colleague at Harmony Internet. With interests and surprising catacombs of knowledge in a number of obscure subjects including aircraft, air disasters (and building them out of LEGO), and World of Warcraft (I didn’t necessarily mean healthy interests). Chris was also part of the Audiostylists, and a DJ, and is still in his twenties, honest.

LinkedIn | @dooburt | dooburt.squarespace.com

Pete Hindle

Pete describes himself as:

I’m just some guy with a site who posts things

Pete Hindle is a creative soul from Biggleswade who blogs and tweets thoughts, writing, photography and insights from the creative community with good humour about Bedfordshire and its quirks. Pete is also an illustrator, juggler, and reads mountains of books.

@petehindle | www.petehindle.com

Creatingle – Sarah Francis

Sarah describes her company:

Imaginative, professional design and creative digital art (with a twist of quirkiness)

Creatingle – simple, beautiful design is Sarah’s freelance website, where she has great talents in print design, while also designing for web and more diverse outlets, including bar designs for big UK music festivals. Sarah is a very thoughtful, intelligent designer who I would recommend without hesitation.

LinkedIn | @creatingle | www.creatingle.co.uk

Albofish – Alex Hollyman

Albofish – musings of a clever web developer is Alex’s personal website, where he posts articles and advice from a developer perspective. He is a Harmony Internet’s senior developer, and my colleague. As well as turning his hand to classic ASP and PHP, Alex has a keen interest in jQuery, CSS and HTML and is a fantastic and creative problem solver.

LinkedIn | @albofish | www.albofish.co.uk

Diggersworld – Thomas Digby

Tom describes himself as:

I’m a web developer for Blitz Games Studios and have recently moved onto IndieCity.com – the one stop shop for all things indie games.

Tom is a gifted artist, designer and developer. A Flash wizard, he’s also pretty nifty at the guitar too, and is far too humble to agree with me on that. Blitz Games Studios is on the top five independent European developers of video games with titles on the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP and PC platforms.

LinkedIn | @diggersworld | www.blitzgamesstudios.com | www.indieCity.com

Smartdog Digital – Illiya Vejestica

Illiya describes his own company as:

Smartdog digital is a specialist online marketing consultancy & training company helping business to measure their ROI online.

Illiya set up his own business, Smartdog and is a PPC and search engine guru, speaking at events, conferences and keeping up with a wide range of contacts. He blogs, tweets and is always right at the leading edge of what’s going on in the business. Illiya is the first person I look to for advice in online marketing as an expert, and he can provide insight and analysis to save hundreds of pounds from a marketing campaign.

LinkedIn | @illiyav | @smartdogdigital | www.smartdogdigital.com

BearOnFire – Sarah Carney

Sarah describes her freelance business as:

BearOnFire is a home for custom illustration and graphic design. Roarin’ good!

Sarah is a designer, illustrator and creative writer living in central Iowa. With a passion for dancing, Sarah juggles creativity in multiple forms along with managing a busy online forum and blogging about it all. Proud creator of a featured deviation on Deviantart, Sarah has been recognised for her contribution to the community and has many happy clients who have commissioned her individual talents.

LinkedIn | @sarahsellaphix | sarahcarneycreative.com | Thrive Art Blog

kNOELedge – Noel Gray

Noel describes his freelance business as:

Creative solutions to everyday challenges

Many of us have too much to read, reports, blog post, emails and probably many more. Keeping up can be a nightmare. I help you by showing you how to read faster and more efficiently. And yes, you read every word.

Perhaps you have problems at work that just don’t seem to go away, they pop up again not matter what you try. Costing you time and money and leading to frustration. I use creative thinking to identify the underlying issues and then give you a new perspective to overcome them.

Noel is a clever soul with a passion for problem solving! Not afraid to grace boardrooms and corporate environments, Noel brings his great experience and brings down barriers to progress. A great thinker, academic and listener, Noel’s services have been sought by GlaxoSmithKline and The Chartered Management Institute amongst other high profile names.

LinkedIn | @kNOELedge | kNOELedge.com | kNOELedge.net | Facebook

Here are some examples of artwork created for the charity:

Here are some examples of design work I put together, mostly posters.

During my course, I completed several pieces of technical writing, including my final year project (dissertation) on web storytelling. Overall, my favoured modules included managing a team of fellow students to deliver projects to multiple clients (personas played by our tutors), web authoring modules (HTML, CSS, web standards, accessibility, implementation) and research (proposing hypotheses, conducting tests, drawing conclusions, critical thinking, formal paper writing).

Here are some examples of my writing during my degree:

“Has the evolution of 2D Digital Design Technology allowed modern designers more or less creative freedom?”

Short response to the title posed in a second year Animation and Simulation module. .pdf format, December 2006

The Disclosure of Personal Information By UK University Students on Facebook and MySpace

Formally presented research paper on social networking in UK universities. .pdf format, May 2007

“The Pros and Cons of Living Online”

A response to the theme, in relation to mobile phone tracing in the always on society. .pdf format, November 2007

Web Storytelling, Literature Review and Project Summary Presentation

Research project presentation given at the end of the first semester, following completion of literature review and the outlook of the project in the next semester. .pdf format, November 2007

I strangely found myself renewing my BCS membership for £48.00 tonight. Its been on my Rememberthemilk list for about a week, as it expired at more or less the same time as my young person’s rail card. However, that cost £26, and I always see it as a valid investment. The BCS, each time they survey me, I wonder if I’m really getting the full value out of them.

Its always somewhere down my list to do, that I rarely pay high attention to, to the point I somehow maintained my student membership after graduating, and eventually after several letters from them asking if I wanted to upgrade, rolled it up to full MBCS membership.I’m the only one in the office who is, as far as I know. My course was partially accredited by them, which is why we all joined as freshers.

Puzzling Business Card Results

At work, our sets of business cards were printed without any titles or qualifications after them (not that this bothers me). Unfortunately they are too thin, and the spot uv wasn’t great either. For the sake of the few that most of us may give out, we ended up sticking them together to double the thickness. We were each issued a whole box full, which was a surprise.

Taking one over to the folks (look at the shiny thing and my new job title!) the first thing my family remarked on was not the lovely logo, not the thin card, but the fact my degree status and MBCS status wasn’t on there. This made me chuckle over priorities. We’d been typically more preoccupied with presentation, given our industry.

Changing Rooms

Our rebranding is finally reaching the office (we worked from outside to inside).  What with the news that we have some land in Biggleswade (nearest town) which we plan to build an office on from scratch, if all goes well. [Update March 2011, it is going well see: Office space in Biggleswade ] I’m not holding my breath, there’s been enough 80% jokes already (80% being the point a lot of projects in web/software development gets stuck at).

Its brilliant if it does happen. In the existing office, we’ve had more furniture than IKEA stocks arrive in the last three weeks. Lovely cupboards for upstairs so we no longer see a pyramid of archive boxes. Just a bit more light up in our loft, and our designer might be able to stop sitting by the window on a regular basis to stop his creative talent wilting (he’ll get used to it soon enough – the light I mean)

Retrospectively, it would have been more useful to have photographed other areas of the office, but a lot of the more impressive additions are still being settled or rearranged downstairs where clients are received. However, we have all been issued with bright orange chairs.

It will be good to see the meeting area settled. At present, you can see the elements of it like jigsaw pieces, but the puzzle is not completed. Of course, being web people, not DIY or interior designers, we’re not flying along with the changes as quickly as we might otherwise. Here was the upstairs office about two weeks ago:

Though, its an awfully long way from where it used to be, when half of this room was used for storage.