Most of us have probably done it before. Seen or heard of a new interesting phone. And to learn more we have entered our preferred search engine and typed in the name or model number of the phone, followed by key words like “review”, “test”, “rate”, “feedback” etc. and then browsed through our findings.

With online shopping on the rise, I’m sure that quite a few of you have also considered – or maybe already tried – to purchase your next mobile phone online.

But sometimes a review, however good and detailed it might be, is not always enough to take the leap of faith and purchase a mobile phone from an online shop. You want to explore the phone and its features by yourself. Get a feel for the UI, menu system and usability.

Now, how do you do that without having to actually go to your local phone retailer?

You go to tryphone.com, of course!

It is an exciting new website, which offers everyone the possibility to test drive mobile phones before buying. The phone you choose to test will appear in your browser and then you are able to interactively navigate through the menus, thus getting a feel for the setup and User Interface.

There are also demos available, displaying how to ‘add contacts’, ‘change wallpaper’ etc. You can find specifications for the available handsets and finally, there is a section dedicated to user reviews.

One thing I particularly liked was the “compare” feature which allows you see two phones side by side, and then lets you navigate them both at the same time – If, for example you have doubts whether the Nokia N95 or the Palm Centro is the right phone for you, this is an excellent way to find out.

Of course, this still doesn’t beat going to your mobile phone retailer where you can hold the phones in your own hands, but I would say it is as close as you can possibly get right now without getting out of your chair.

Tryphone is still in its beta stage, and there are only a handful of phones available at the moment, but I’m sure that they will be adding new devices to the list on a regular basis.

Certainly this will help a lot of people, who are considering to upgrade their phones, to make the right decision.

Well done Tryphone!

Written by
michael thomsen

I did a little research on Google and found out that there already are a bunch of ‘web archaeologists’ out there who enjoy to locate dead websites and preserve them. One of the most interesting sites belongs to Steve Baldwin who has gathered information on several derelict and abandoned websites for a while now; “The Museum of Interactive Failure” as he calls it.

For example, did you know that the massively popular myspace.com originally used to be an unsuccessful file-sharing service until 2000? A fact that, most likely, only a handful of MySpace users are aware of, and a piece of information that could easily be completely forgotten over time if it wasn’t for Baldwin’s and other web diggers’ websites.

Another exciting web page is the Internet Archive (or the ‘Wayback Engine’ as it is also called). The Internet Archive has been around since 1996 and it’s purpose is to build an Internet library, and offer historians, scholars, and researchers a permanent access to both forgotten and current websites.

The Wayback Engine lets you enter any web address, and then allows you to select different links from different years, displaying what the particular page looked like that year – This way you can see how certain websites have developed over time.

If you have been with us for a long time and would like to take a walk down memory lane, then I suggest you try to enter www.barablu.com and see how our page has evolved over the past 3 years.

Written by
michael thomsen

Being a very satisfied Firefox user I would normally not pay too much attention to other players on the browser market, but an article from Computerworld about a Japanese browser maker, caught my interest.

I might as well be honest; Words like Fenrir(name of the company) and Sleipnir(name of the browser) taken from the Norse Mythology did probably have something to do with it. I am the barablu viking, after all… But reading on I found that, apart from the excellent name choosing, this browser also had a few interesting features.

• First of all, it offers a very high level of customization. Pretty much everything is customizable. Tabs, menu bars, explorer bars etc. You can even control what should happen when you right/middle/left click with your mouse buttons.  
• The ability to choose between the two layout engines: Gecko(used in Firefox) and Trident(used in Internet Explorer) is very useful to make sure certain pages are displayed to your satisfaction. 
• One of my favorite features is that you can lock a tab simply by double clicking on it – This way you avoid to accidentally close the tab. In fairness to Firefox I have later found out that the “Tab Mix Plus” add-on also offers this, but Sleipnir’s double clicking method is still more effortless.
• Also, I found it to be pretty fast, and I have yet to experience any crashes – believe me, I did try –  so it seems to be quite stable, too.

According to Fenrir inc.Global, the browser has a market share of 9% in Japan, and is especially popular with the “advanced” users, towards whom the product is also directed.

Having experienced a higher demand from international users, Fenrir have now decided to boost the promotion, and are hoping to conquer 5% of the English-speaking browser market, within the next couple of years.

It is a tough market to break into – Browser version market share statistics for June 2008 from Net Applications reports that Firefox is far behind Internet Explorer – Even though Firefox has been given a lot of attention, Microsoft’s seven year old IE6 still holds more market share than both Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 put together.

Sleipnir will remain installed on my PC, and I will continue to use it for a while. Whether it will triumph over my Firefox browser remains to be seen, but to me it certainly looks a worthy contender and definitely deserves a chance.

But it is going to take a whole lot of Viking Power to achieve 5% of the browser market share.

Written by
michael thomsen