Archives for March 2010

Searching for a decent set of cans…

The old and fairly reliable Sennheiser RS40′s I was using up until a few weeks ago finally gave up the ghost in the run-up to Mobile World Congress this year – or to be more accurate, the battery packs finally gave up. Despite overnight charging, I was getting only about three hours of operating time; and since the charger in the headphones themselves wasn’t working, I only had the charged battery in the base unit, so I was getting maybe four hours a day from them.

Sennheiser RS40 Wireless Headphones

The RS40s were (and are) really lovely headphones, with the great feature that if you stood up to walk to the printer and forgot you were wearing them, you didn’t treat the rest of the lab to the cartoon Yoink! Thud! sound effects as you nearly strangled yourself with the headset cord. Shame they were let down by the powerpacks…

 Sennheiser BA151 battery pack

You can’t even find the BA151′s easily anymore :( So the hunt was on for a better set of ‘phones for the lab…

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A little light reading…

What do you do when you’ve successfully gotten a demo to Mobile World Congress and you want to reward yourself?

Go order a little light reading of course! :)

Light reading

Amazon are really getting to like it when I log in at this stage I think :D

Although, the more recent book purchase was with The Book Depository and between lower prices and free shipping, they actually worked out cheaper than Amazon did (and thanks to Neal Asher for that tip). They weren’t cheaper for every book though – ironically the science fiction books I was looking at were more expensive – but for the programming books I was looking for, they came in about seven or eight euros under amazon.com and their shipping is about six weeks faster than amazon’s, for free. So we’ll see in a day or three when the books arrive if they’re as good as they look…

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Mobile World Congress 2010

Mobile World Congress entrance

Two years ago while I was working at dotMobi, I was one of the programmers working on the DeviceAtlas project, which launched at Mobile World Congress 2008. At the time, it was the largest launch I’d been involved in and it was quite a ride towards the end – when you’re launching to 60,000 people at the largest trade show in the world for your industry, the pressure is enormous.

So when Suura undertook to demo at this year’s Mobile World Congress, I knew we were in for a major project with a high workload. Or at least I thought I did, but if anything, I underestimated how much pressure there is for a small startup at this event. I’d like to say everything got done in normal business hours without stress, but I think everyone who’s ever even attended — let alone exhibited at — MWC would call me a liar! Not least of whom would be the me who found himself working away at some exceptionally unsocial hours during the lead-up to the event…

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