The launch of Nokia’s Ovi app store doesn’t seem to be going very well. Both TechCrunch and Allaboutsymbian are reporting issues, and my initial impressions also weren’t so great either. I tried to find the only Symbian app I’ve ever paid for on store.ovi.com, and I couldn’t. It was available, but just not for my phone.

Gravity has been humming along nicely on my Nokia E71. I love it so much I sometimes tweet from my phone while I’m sitting behind my PC. But if I select the E71 on the Ovi Store, Gravity disappears from all listings. Meanwhile, Mobileways, who created Gravity, even use the E71 as an example of a phone you could use with their product.

It looks like you need to select a touch screen phone in order for Gravity to show up, even though that app absolutely does not require such a phone. Luckily, it seems the mobile version of the website doesn’t seem to filter based on your handset.

It’s been a while since I released the last version of WP-Cumulus. I’ve been very busy with client work, but there were a few important little fixes and features I wanted to release. The most requested of those probably is that the Flash movie now supports the ‘target’ attribute. I’ve also made the XML path (from which the XML file is loaded) configurable. Both these features are of use only to people not using WordPress, but they were requested so frequently that I decided to add them in.
More Finally, a new WP-Cumulus update

Moblin 1.0 made the headlines because it promised to boot really quickly. But startup times alone will probably not be enough to lure Windows users into trying Intel’s purpose-built netbook operating system. That’s may well be why the brand new Moblin 2.0 beta looks really slick. It’s definitely still a little rough around the edges, but the user interface is impressive.

More Moblin 2.0 is pretty impressive

Last year, Intel’s Atom series of microprocessors did something that no other computer product had done before it. It was the first new, innovative product that was significantly slower than other recent offerings. To the surprise of pretty much the whole industry, Atom-powered netbooks caught on. For the first time, consumers were buying slower computers. Because they were fast enough for most common tasks. And because they were light, cheap and used very little energy.
More Testosterone may be the biggest polluter of all

Symbian may be the smartphone OS with the most experience, it does suffer from a certain dullness. It’s like the MS-DOS of mobile phone operating systems. Where the iPhone basically runs a trimmed down version of Apple’s OSX, Symbian was built to be light. Also on eye-candy. And it shows.

Fortunately, there are developers out there that create software that goes beyond that typical boring Symbian look and feel. Like mobileways.de, who recently released Gravity, a native Symbian Twitter client that brings both features and eye-candy.
More Gravity adds some sexiness to Symbian

Apparently, there’s a course out there that makes you a Certified Ethical Hacker (or CEH). I always thought that being a hacker was about having an certain attitude about technology. I consider myself a hacker because I own a region-free DVD player. It’s about manipulating technology to suit your needs. But unfortunately, these ‘needs’ are personal, and there are plenty of people out there for whom illegal activities like fraud constitute personal goals.
More Become a Certified Ethical Hacker

I love Google’s general tone of voice in things like this. They’re not saying Chrome is better than other browsers (which it is in many ways), nor do they list any benefits. You should just try it. And they’re telling you with a wonderfully quirky commercial that is nothing like what their competitors are doing. In fact it wasn’t originally intended for TV. Completely down to earth. Well done.

I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about a kitchen appliance before, but in my opinion Tefal’s new ActifFry multicooker qualifies as a gadget. It makes cooking easier, and gadgets are all about making our life’s easier, right?

The ActiFry is a hot air over that stirs your food while frying it. All you need to do is put stuff into the circular pan and press to ‘on’ button. If some of your ingredients needs to cook longer than others you might need to add things later on, but other than that you can just sit back and watch things unfold. The rotating vanes will make sure your food gets cooked evenly, and there’s a timer so you can go do something else while it does the work for you.
More ActiFry is like a Roomba for cooking

One of the first things I noticed when I started using my new router, was that I could not log in to the device’s web interface using Chrome as a browser. Like many other routers (I’ve had at least two, including a Linksys one), my new Draytek doesn’t really use the username field, and the manual advices to leave it empty. But it seems that’s exactly why Chrome is having trouble. When I tried ‘admin’ instead, I was able to log in.

So, if you’re having trouble logging in to configure your router, try using a generic name like ‘admin’, ‘user’ or ‘root’, or see if the manual lists a default username. Not because your router needs you to enter it, but because leaving the username field empty seems to upset Chrome. This issue probably isn’t exclusive to routers, but most other services will require a username anyway.

When our DLS connection failed a couple of weeks ago, it became clear to me that we needed a backup of some sort. I looked into business DSL subscriptions, but if you need a fast guaranteed repair time, the monthly rates start to look like mortgage payments. That’s why I decided to get a second consumer broadband line and hook try to somehow tie them together into one, easy to use local network. Thanks to a great router by Draytek and some clever tips from various forums, this turned out not to be very difficult at all. Here’s what I did.
More How to easily set up a redundant internet connection