David Carrington

In brief: pointing your Android phone in every direction calibrates the compass. So start whatever app you’re using, then wave your phone around in figures of eight in the air for best results.

Every time I go to demonstrate the fantastic Street View mode in Google Maps on my new G1 handset, I find that it never knows which way it should be facing. This was also true when using the Wikitude application (which is also very cool). So – how to fix this? I’ve found a method on the internet which works every time for me.

All you have to spin the phone pretty quickly in your hands, obviously keeping a firm grip on your expensive handset, but flipping it fairly agrressively in all sorts of directions. For example, rolling it over and over in your hands is how I usually do it. And that’s all you need to do to calibrate the T-Mobile G1/Android handset’s compass feature, and the fix only takes a few seconds!

Now I can show people the Eiffel Tower and scenes around New York whenever I like. I hope this works for everyone else too.

UPDATE: Of course this also works on all the other Android handsets too. I now have an HTC Desire and this calibrates the compass perfectly.

I’ve had a quick chance to check out Google’s new location tracking API in Google Gears for Windows Mobile phones. At first glance I say this is an absolutely awesome new feature.

My first point of call is to find out if any social networking sites (e.g. Brightkite) are interested in using this to create a great mobile web interface for Windows Mobile devices.

I’ve just ordered an HTC Diamond, with delivery expected on Thursday.

This will be my third HTC handset. It has the speed advantage of the first (HTC BlueAngel) and the size / style advantage of the second (HTC Touch). Combined together it makes one awesome phone!

What to do with the old phones? The HTC BlueAngel functions as my bedside MP3 player. The Touch is still a great phone and a tech-savy relative might like to get hold of it. We’ll see.

Over the last few days, I’ve been interested in various methods that I might get my hands on a new HTC Diamond phone. Each option has it’s ups and downs, but ultimately leaves me spending £150-400 for a phone that only does a fraction more than my existing HTC Touch (counting features that I’d actually use).

Sure, it’s got 3G and basically everything about it is a generation up from what my phone does, but I’m happy with what I’ve got. In fact, I’m really loving the new world that has been opened to me from having internet access wherever I go.

So far I’ve appreciated being able to do the following:

• Managing my Google Calendar remotely
• Watching for phones on Ebay Mobile
• Checking cinema listings
• Keeping an eye on motorway traffic
• Direct uploads to Flickr (no 25p MMS charge)

I’m barely eating up 1Mb / day with what I consider to be quite a fair amount of usage on GPRS. This gives me quite a lot of room to play with other ideas like IM and similar. I’m sure I’ll find a way to eat up the rest of my monthly allowance.

I fairly despise the Orange website for a number of reasons: loading screens, endless “sorry, an error occurred but we’re aware of it” links, and now a fairly useless new feature: usage since your last bill.

With all the talk of “Unlimited” features (texts and now data too), what I really want is the website to tell me some real numbers that represent my months usage. Why give me 47 pages of junk when all I need is a count which says I’ve used 2000 of my 3000 texts.

I imagine this page will be equally useless at telling me how much of my 500Mb fair usage of data I’ve used for the month. Luckily, I’m already looking into some software that will let me keep track of that directly from my phone. I’ll post a review once the data plan is enabled.