Earlier this month Google announced App Inventor, an easy way for anyone to get started on building Android applications. Earlier this week I got myself an invite, and headed over to see what’s what.

App Inventor is in its very early stages. It’s a closed beta, with invites going out to people when Google have the capacity and find suitable people. This shows, as there are still some clunky parts and limitations that will have to be overcome before release, but other than that it seems like an excellent preview of what’s to come.

Well that didn’t last long.

Engadget is reporting Windows Phone 7 Series has now been officially renamed to Windows Phone 7 – which is considerably easier to pronounce, remember, and it also actually makes some kind of sense.

Here’s to simpler product names!

Unfortunately earlier this weekend my trusty E61i died a horrible death. What’s annoying is that it shows some signs of life (the notification light comes on when you press power) but it doesn’t start booting. Think it’ll be long hours for me to figure out what’s going on, and even longer to get it sorted.

My outgoing E61i

So in the mean time, I needed (literally) a new phone – I didn’t fancy doing 300 miles in a weekend in a car that has failed its MOT (the other one hasn’t expired yet – don’t worry it’s still legal!) without a working phone to call the AA if it all went wrong.

So here’s what I got, and what I think of it.

Thanks to a plugin and a bit of tinkering, you can now check out this blog from your mobile phone or iPhone/iPod and you’ll get something that should make it substantially easier to get content on the go. Check out the screenshots below, or simply visit http://www.chris-alexander.co.uk on your mobile device to check it out.

The mobile site on the iPhone

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On an S60 Nokia

The other day it came to my attention that the latest version of my mobile contract (T-mobile solo 30-day, £20pm, 500mins, unltd texts) now featured an extra 100 minutes and free unlimited internet for people who were starting a new contract. So I phoned up T-mobile, nicely asked them to move me on to this new deal, and they promptly charged me 25p for the honour of telling me, for some reason or another, that they couldn’t.