The best thing about living in the post digital age is that it’s now acceptable to have your phone out wherever you go. I regularly attend meetings with my phone out, staring at the screen as if I was oblivious to what’s going on around me.

But I’m not, and everyone knows I’m not. Because I’m actually taking notes of the meeting, so that I can be more efficient and get the most out of the session.

I use a Windows Phone so I manage to do a lot of work on the go, since Word, Excel and PowerPoint are fully integrated into the Office Hub. And when it’s quiet – I play Xbox LIVE

OneNote is easily the app I use the most. It is easy to use and perfect for typing out notes from meetings, or bright ideas that’d usually be forgotten in an instant. I even write blog posts for Ubelly on the app when I’m without a laptop.

So I imagine there will be a few iPhone users that are pretty happy now, as OneNote has just joined the AppStore. It’s pretty cheap too… at the great price of £0 for a limited time.

The app is the perfect way to sync all your devices with important notes and memos. If you are not a OneNote user already, you can get started with the web app which is completely free. So that’s a free mobile app and a free web app – handy!

OneNote for iPhone is available to download for free, for a limited time. Take a demo of the Office Hub on Windows Phone to see what other features are available.

With Glastonbury coming up this weekend, we’re preparing for a weekend made of awesome. However, one very much not awesome thing that’s always a pain at festivals is how to make your phone last, when charging isn’t always an option. Let’s face it, today’s smartphones aren’t the most conservative on battery, and it’s a problem across the board. So, shy of purchasing one of those £4 jobs from your local phone shop, here are some tips to get the most out of your phone battery, with some Windows Phone 7 specific tips to boot…

General Tips

Airplane mode is your best friend – One way to conserve bucketloads of battery is to switch your phone to Airplane mode whenever you don’t need to use it as a phone. Generally, I try and turn my phone on Airplane mode when I’m either with everyone I need to be with, or at night when I go to bed. That way you can still use other parts of your phone (like camera or alarms) without draining your phone.

Switching off networks – If you need to actually use your phone as a phone, then make sure you switch off all services that you don’t need. These include Bluetooth, Wifi, 3G, GPS, Data roaming etc. When your phone is looking for networks (3G or Wifi especially), it uses a lot of battery power, especially if you’re in a remote location.

Black backgrounds and brightness – Head into the settings in your phone and turn the brightness of your phone as far down as possible. Also, if your phone has an AMOLED screen (like Windows Phone 7), then make sure you have a black background set as default. The darker the background, the less power the phone uses when rendering the display.

Turn off email – Head into your mail settings on your phone and change the default sync option to manual. This will mean that you will only have mails pushed to your phone when you choose, as opposed to a regular schedule, which will conserve battery life.

Windows Phone 7 Tips

Turn off OneNote synchronisation and Xbox LIVE auto connect  - We assume that you won’t need to be gaming during the middle of Beyonce or making detailed notes, so make sure you head into the Applications menu and turn off both auto-connect to Xbox LIVE feature and OneNote synchronisation.

Make sure hubs are set to manual update – While the hubs are fantastic for keeping connected, they are generally set to auto-update, which can drain the life of your battery faster than a thirsty vampire. Make sure you set these to manual update to avoid this.

Turn off Feedback – Even thought it’s a great feature to make sure Windows Phone 7 continues to get better, turn off the Feedback feature while you need to conserve battery. Just make sure you turn it back on afterwards.

Use Pocket-to-Picture - If you do plan on using your phone as your camera for the weekend, use the pocket-to-picture function (ie. press the camera hard key to launch the camera), which will save battery life by not messing about with unlocking the phone. Simple concept, but has the possibility of saving you a great amount of battery.

Any tips we’ve missed? You can check out the ‘official’ Microsoft tips for conserving life on your Windows Phone 7 here.

image by Sharon Loxton from GeoGraph.

A little over a month ago the Photosynth application was released for iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4 and in that time it has been downloaded over 3 million times. This incredible free application from Microsoft gives users a quick and simple way of creating 360 degree panoramas of any environment.

You can upload synths directly from your phone and then share them via a link or embed them in your own site. There’s a neat feature where you can Geotag your synth allowing others to browse Photosynths on Bing maps.

I had a browse through the Mobile Panoramas gallery and here’s some of my favourites (look out for the full screen icon for a better viewing experience). You’ll need the Silverlight plugin to view these synths.

[EDIT] Following on from Nate’s comment, I’ve added mobile links beneath each panorama so you can view these using the Photosynth app on your mobile device.[/EDIT]

Sharing your unique experiences

If you’re in a special place that other people don’t normally get to see, this is a great way of allowing others to explore those locations or better appreciate the experience of actually being there.

Chernoybl’s Unfinished Cooling Towers

Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=6f5de8b7-dce1-4212-9e1b-fb7f70b6f3f5
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=6f5de8b7-dce1-4212-9e1b-fb7f70b6f3f5

DeLorian Fans

And for fans of Back to The Future, here’s an open-garage event at DeLorean Motor Corporation, Crystal Lake, IL (#2) – there’s 8 DeLorians in this synth!
Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3732b94a-b6c7-41a3-8359-aa782173db3c
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=3732b94a-b6c7-41a3-8359-aa782173db3c

Pilot’s view from a jet plane cockpit

This is one of those places that most people just don’t get to see – unfortunately the title and description are blank, can anyone identify the plane?
Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=d401d570-4ac0-40de-899c-c38a31e5a045
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=d401d570-4ac0-40de-899c-c38a31e5a045

A view from the inside

It won’t be long before Estate Agents (shudder) pick up on this incredibly simple technology. A great way to get a feel for a room in a house, and also a fantastic way to explore grand buildings.

Capitol Rotunda, Minnesota

Check out the bookmarks on the right hand side signposting interesting content.
Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=ac76fc3d-a9bd-4b73-a004-3be40a1373a9
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=ac76fc3d-a9bd-4b73-a004-3be40a1373a9

Christus Kirche Oberursel Anstrich mit Caparol Histolith, Germany

Keep an eye out for the headless man and his pair of legs friend.
Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=bd3d5e14-b2f7-4ce7-81e0-a53e3442400a
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=bd3d5e14-b2f7-4ce7-81e0-a53e3442400a

Creating a better holiday photo experience

For making your friends and relatives jealous of your sunny or wintery breaks, forget TwitPic or Flickr, Photosynth will really make them wish they were there.

Maledives

If you say you don’t want to be in this place right now, I won’t belive you.
Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=626386db-52ed-4e59-9d9b-8c6a31164c46
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=626386db-52ed-4e59-9d9b-8c6a31164c46

Amasya, Turkey

Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=e947c354-9892-49d0-94e2-aab21d5d214e
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=e947c354-9892-49d0-94e2-aab21d5d214e

The Royal Crescent, Bath

Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=f00d6059-bbb7-429a-8c38-ea17646946b3
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=f00d6059-bbb7-429a-8c38-ea17646946b3

Retail Experiences

Is there a better way to explore a shop before you make the effort to go and visit? These examples let you browse the shelves so you know what to expect when you arrive.

Dan Murphy’s. Australia’s favourite (and BIGGEST) Liquor Store

Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=6bf55f95-4628-4756-bd43-781f32b26a43
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=6bf55f95-4628-4756-bd43-781f32b26a43

Sakthi Sangeetha store

Web link: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=0d4fd4f3-d691-4029-8b44-92edf0e5543d
Mobile link: http://iphotosynth.cloudapp.net/viewhandler.aspx?cid=0d4fd4f3-d691-4029-8b44-92edf0e5543d

Where next?

Mobile Photosynths are great, currently limited by your creativity and the device in your pocket. With the release of the Mango update for Windows Phone 7, I’m hoping that we’ll have the same app experience on our Windows Phone 7’s very soon and with a 12 MP camera rumoured from HTC the quality of these is going to get better and better.

Some tips for creating mobile Photosynths

1. Try and avoid many moving people – seeing a pair of legs with no body is a bit weird
2. Geotag your synth – allow people to discover it through Bing maps
3. Tag interesting items/objects/people in your synths and create bookmarks to them
4. Add relevant titles and description – help people find your synths through search

Download the Photosynth App on iTunes.

1. It is a great synth of a fantastic room
2. He had taken it and shared it so quickly

Previously, in order to photograph and share a Synth we’ve had to use a digital camera, transfer the photos to a computer with the Photosynth application installed, then upload to Photosynth.net and wait a few moments whilst the synth is prepared for us. It seems that I’d completely missed the release a few weeks ago of the Photosynth for iPhone application which solves a lot of the faffing that was previously required.

The Photosynth iPhone app takes control of your camera and guides you to taking pictures that it can stitch together into a panorama – and it makes the process surprisingly easy and amazingly rewarding. Check out Dan’s synth below of the incredible main atrium at Wieden + Kennedy, Portland.

I’m looking forward to seeing more Synths being shared on the net, it is a great way to explore buildings, people, objects and places and this app makes it surprisingly quick and easy too. Be sure to Geotag your synths so they appear on Bing map searches.

Download the Photosynth App on iTunes.

NetBeans 6.9 Release Emphasizes JavaFX – NetBeans positioned as the primary environment for JavaFX with release supporting JavaFX 1.3, Java Card Connected 3, the Spring 3.0 framework, the PHP Zend Framework and Ruby on Rails 3.0.

Messenger for iPhone Hits a Million in Five Days, paving the way for beta testing of Windows Live Messenger Connect to allow developers to build apps that work with Messenger.

Apache Unleashes New Tomcat Open Source Web Server – the Tomcat 7 release includes release include improved memory leak detection and prevention and support for aliasing directories into an application’s URL space

New BIRT 2.6 Features in Helios – the new release for the reporting framework includes the addition of a Polar/Radar style charts, palette hashing, sorting improvements, multiple resource files and class path enhancements.

Find it hard to learn a foreign language? Online Language Learning Company Babbel Adds Voice Recognition Tool

Following Bing search for the iPhone, Microsoft debuts latest iPhone app: Windows Live Messenger

Madpixel launches its advertiser-friendly interactive video solution – users see hotspots to click on when they run their cursor over the screen.

What’s New in WordPress 3.0 for Developers? Craig Buckler from SitePoint tells it like it is.

Foursquare: One million users and an imminent deal… in the meantime the plan is to target users with relevant ads

YouTube leads 37% surge in UK online video viewing – online video advertising is gonna soar!

The iPhone Leak Gets Ugly: Police Raid Gizmodo Editor’s House, Confiscate Computers - no-one was arrested

Twitter snaps up Cloudhopper to become king of SMS staying true to its SMS roots, opens up the service to world domination

Adobe tosses in Flash towel after Apple limits iPhone dev – Apple say it’s too slow to be useful.

A positive side to the volcanic eruption – French carpooling platform Comuto profits from volcanic cloud as traffic to the site has doubled over the past few days.

Ultrathin Silk-Based Electronics Make Better Brain Implants – kicking off a new era of implantable devices. Can’t wait to be able to download info directly into my brain, but will probably be waiting a long time…

MI5 staff who lack computer skills made redundant.  I’m kind of speechless…aren’t they two decades late?

What Can We Expect From Microsoft’s Windows 7 SP1?  Really cool streaming features with RemoteFX.  Full AERO experience on thin clients and virtualized installations.

Apple iPhone 4.0 OS Already Jailbroken?  Of course the dev edition is still in BETA so Apple will likely fix it before release.

Facebook meeting on safety with CEOP to protect children online.  CEOP has been a big success in the UK by providing strong guidance to service providers, parents, and teachers about protecting kids.

Codeplex Foundation, which was started by Microsoft, names Apache Software Foundation co-founder to Board.

Cambridge start-up quadruples productivity by hiring 20 interns in a go!

The latest update in smartphone marketshare gains, Google rising, Apple on-level, Palm declines.

OnLive, a live streaming gaming service, to go live in June.

Finally for a bit of comic relief, here’s a comic strip for all you LOTR fans!