Technology: April 2005 Archives

In the last 12 months I haven't found a single false positive in the spam folder of my mailbox. I still receive some false negatives, but that doesn't bother me. No false positives means that I am able to change my processing workflow. Until now, all spam ended up in the spam folder, which I checked for false positives once a week. Today I changed my mail configuration to discard all messages flagged as spam. This saves me about 15 minutes of work every week!

One week ago I received my new mobile camera-phone. I was happy, since I wanted to use it for publishing photo's on Flickr. How disappointed I was when I found out that Amena had delivered me a half configured phone. No international roaming, GPRS, MMS or e-mail configured. :-( In short, my wonderful multimedia phone was delivered with all the multimedia functions disabled.

Now one week later, I have managed to get GPRS activated ---I have to pay activation costs!--- which also made MMS active. After talking 5 minutes with customer support they also told me that they have activated roaming, so the next time I go abroad I can call home. In theory, everything should be alright now, but... somehow I still can't send nor receive e-mail. And that is exactly the feature I want most!!!

To be continued...

Why is it so difficult to do? When I buy a phone, I want all functions to work. Since yesterday I am using my new phone that came with the new contract. Since this phone has a camera, I would like to take pictures and send them to my friends or publish them on Flickr.

Well, that is not possible, since I do not have GPRS. Last year I had exactly the same problem with Movistar, but that solved itself after a while. But now I want to send my photos, so I checked the Amena site for instructions. Without success. So tonight I will try out the support department. And when I speak to them I can also activate roaming, since they have decided to deactivate it by default since most people never leave the country anyway ;-).

It's not that difficult to do it right!

Some weeks ago, we decided to change mobile provider. We have a contract with Telefonica Movistar, but most people we phone with are at Amena. We did some calculation and came to the conclusion that we could save on our bill by changing to Amena as well.

This weekend we finally found the time to head to the Amena office, and we explained out plans. The nice lady in the shop asked us some questions on our phone behaviour ---who, when and how much--- and she explained us about all the possibilities of the different packages. We made some quick estimations and selected the 'right' package.

Then the more important question came. Carriers earn so much money with all their inflated rates, that they can give away expensive toys. We could choose a new phone! MJ had prepared herself, and knew what her demands were: she wanted the cheapest phone that could flip open. Until now she always had candy-bar phones, but now she wanted clamshell. All other functions did not matter, since she only use the device for phoning and sending SMS messages. Her choice was the NEC e242:

Of course, as a reader of mobile expert Russell Beattie, I know that there is more. Russ has the most incredible applications and uses for his mobiles, and it seems that he uses his mobile for everything I still use a PC for. But his phones are ---even after the carrier discount--- so incredibly expensive that it would take me years to earn that back with the cheaper rate of Amena. I guess Russ lives in another realm, but most people here choose between the five cheapest models. So I set my mind together, and thought logically. I don't phone a lot, I use SMS even less, and once in a while I use WAP to spend some dead time. Basically, any phone would be enough. But hey, I am a gadget freak, so I should have something additional to wish for, right? Maybe I need a camera on my phone, to update my photo page more often. That's it! I looked around, and saw a nice and cheap Samsung phone that according to the specs had a camera. I asked if I could see it, and fell in love with the device. Cool design, very light weight ---they show the phones without batteries---, but... without camera. I asked the friendly lady if she could show me the camera, but no, they'd made an error in the specs. So I took the cheapest camera phone they had: the NEC e242:

Now we have to find a way to keep our new phones separated!