What's App With You?

One of my darling former students who had graduated to nephew status is now living in Berlin. He is working on his PhD is American History at an American university. I cannot remember which university, but if he reads this I am sure to be admonished; I will return to correct the details. 


The point of drawing attention to him is that he made me aware of a new smartphone application. Yes, he is a poor destitute university student, yet found hidden coins in the depths of his change purse to buy an iPhone. Now that I think about it strangely it was at the time he just happened to mention he did not have money for food for a week. What's an uncle to do? You think you raise them right and then...


Whatsapp messenger is compatible with the iPhone, and smartphones of the Nokia, Blackberry, and Android persuasion. They allow the user to SMS anyone anywhere in the world for free. Caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware), in this case, let the user beware, the app is free, but the receiver needs to have the same app on their phone. It takes two to tango or swap files in this case. The bonus is that you can also send unlimited images, video, and audio media. Using the same data plan as your Internet connection, the phone does not use the traditional SMS route of transfer.


At first I hesitated. How many people am I in contact with who have smartphones? Let me think! Oh, yea, one in Berlin. I told him I would install it, but he had better use it with caution. Any messages concerning his destitute finances will now require he SMS me a copy of his latest credit card and bank statement before I think about playing any soulful tune on my heartstrings. 


I easily found the app in the Android Market on my Samsung Galaxy i9000, the best phone decision I have ever made. Now we will have to see if this is the best app decision I ever made. For now, I am able to send SMS messages to and fro Berlin for free.


If you have a smartphone and download the app, send me a message to let me know. You need to use the + sign, country code, and then the mobile number. My number is
+36-70-315-8828. Happy texting. 


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Interesting Tidbits 3 Mobile Phones

Some swear by the iPhone, but plenty of others are saying something differently with their purchasing power. Symbian phones are way ahead worldwide. Your little corner of the world may make you think otherwise, but here are the numbers. This is great information for those of you who travel also. You can see what will work where as you move about.

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What Has Been Keeping Me Busy

Sometimes it is not the complicated things that keep a person extra busy. The little things can be annoying time consumers.

My new phone, the Nokia N96 is all I could have hoped for, but... It seems all of my contacts from the old phone were never saved onto my Sim card. What that means is that all 300+ contacts have to be reentered into the new phone. I have looked everywhere and have not found a way to import my contacts from a file, for example, my Gmail address book.

One other problem. I can make calls, but when someone calls me, they receive a message that the number is not working. This is not a phone issue, so I will have to make a trip to my provider to figure this out.

For our university, there is a teaching load calculator we have to fill out at the beginning of one semester for the previous semester. I usually am really good about getting this done right away, but did not get to it until today. None of my BA classes were listed. I have no control to make changes, just add in the numbers of students I gave grades to. Even ignoring the BA students, I get an error message each attempt. Only the department secretary has control over this, but it seems it is beyond her time limit to make changes. We will see how this plays out.

Speaking of the department secretary, I bought her a plant today and made a "You Are Highly Appreciated" sign. The university let my health insurance expire in November. I did not know it until I went for my flu shot. It took until yesterday for it to be resolved. The secretary had to return to the health office five times. Each time, they wanted different information, which they had not told her on the previous trip. Finally, she had me bring in everything I had, photocopied it all, had me sign each sheet, took everything she needed from the Dean's office and I now have my card again.

The Writing Center, I created at the university with the ten computers I was able to get donated has been a blessing for the new courses I am teaching this semester. Only six of them were able to be hooked up to the Internet. This made teaching a blogging course difficult. After discussing it with our computer person, he stated that for 15,000 Huf, he could get a router to connect the remaining four computers, but that the department had no money. I gave it to him, thinking in a week, I would have the router and full functioning computers. Two weeks later, he told me he ordered it. The week after that he said they sent the wrong kind. If I had known, I would have gone down to the store and bought it myself. Today, he e-mailed me. He has the correct one and will set it up. Different people and cultures have such different senses of time.

On a brighter side, I finished my first assignment for the NileGuide at www.nileguide.com. It was a smallish one, but I had some good fun working on it. It was quite challenging finding the names of all of the districts in Budapest, but as it turns out, not all of them are named, just numbered. The best part is I get to continually review all that I love about this city repeatedly.

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Ring-a ding-a ling

After doing copious amounts of research for the phone of my dreams and finding that the pomegranate phone in the video below is not available yet, or perhaps in my lifetime, I settled. It was a toss up between a Nokia N96 and a Samsung i850. The Nokia won out after reading dozens of comments on the Samsung forums, where people complained that SMS would not work after about two months. It is a shame though, the phone has a camera with more pixels than my Minolta Dimage 7i, which was the top of the class when I bought it; well perhaps for that one day only. Not being able to browse the Hungarian web pages, I asked my private language student to aid me in finding a store to purchase the phone. He chose that option instead of a lesson and insisted on driving me there too. The two guys working in the store spoke bits of English. If I had had the pomegranate, it could have translated for me, but then again, I would not be there for a phone either. The salesmanship was above and beyond most of my experiences in Hungary. They really went out of their way to be helpful, allowing me to play with the phone. It has a one year guarantee and a second year for another 100 Euros. I almost opted for the second year, but realized that in a years time, I would be wanting to move on to something newer and spiffier if this should die on me. My relationships with technology do not last long. I am a fickle lover in that regard. Here today and gone tomorrow when a new pretty gadget passes by and captures my attention. This phone has too many bells and whistles to list. If you are curious, here is the web site. http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n96/specifications So far, I know how to turn it on, but I have yet to make a call. Gosh, do I really need to read the instructions?

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