The last two weeks have been very intense with the finishing up & delivery of a (mobile) web site, several sets of big family events (2 sets of birthdays), and then an old friend from college getting married.
I have lots of photos to post, I have a Nokia N9/N950 Tips & Tricks post for you all, as well as a few other posts on the back burner & on the to do list.
Thur 09.29.11 - The long awaited Nokia N9 with much talked about Swipe UI and the Meego/Harmattan OS has now started to ship or will be in a store near you within the next two weeks. Well, in a shop near you if you live in Sweden, Finland, Pakistan, Kazakistan, or China, but if you live in the US, UK, Germany or many other places you are f*ck3d unto the very Ballmer. Yep, only MacroSquish for you if you live in Western Europe or the Western Hemisphere.
Order the Nokia N9 online, even if your local shop doesn't carry it, it is worth it. The Swipe UI is beautiful and very usable, the hardware delish, and Maemo's Harmattan with a touch of Meego goodness hiding behind all the UI swipe is a geek's delight. I have had the Nokia N950 developer phone for two weeks now and it causes mobile envy even in the most dedicated iAddict. If the Nokia N950 turns heads...
Hello lovely little Nokia N9, welcome. Go forth and prosper.
Fri 09.23.11 - Photo of a magnolia blossom by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8 at the Huntington Library and Gardens.
Fri 09.16.11 - Doing a little dogsitting while reading Meego 1.2/Harmattan Docs and Getting Started guides on how to get the Qt SDK on my Mac to talk to and deploy a .deb package to the Nokia N950. Building and deployment to the N950 work just fine on the danged WinXP install on Virtual Box but not on the native Mac side.... Grrrrr...
Thurs 09.15.11 - Happy 9th wedding anniversary to Ryan and Tammy!
Three thoughts floating around my head this morning while eating breakfast and reading the weekly Seal Beach Sun:
1) For all of my gushing two days ago, after spending some time with the Nokia N950 the camera is very good but not great like the N8. The resolution, color, and clarity on the N8 is definitely superior but the N950 has a nice look to the photos that I do like.
2) At Mobile 2.0's end of conf cocktails, I had a conversation with Mike Rowehl of Mobile Monday SV and Churn labs about wanting to develop for the mobile web or native apps. Mike said that the stop up on developing for the mobile web for many devs was monetization. I made a joke that I was satisfied as long as I wasn't living in my car or had moved back home at 40-something. We both laughed, but I could see that monetization meant something else to him entirely.
The conversation keeps coming back to me when thinking about the mobile web: why right now devs prefer to create native apps and what in the heck does monetization really mean any way?
Does monetization mean that I can be self-supporting as an app developer and not have to be taking on clients (my definition)? Does it mean the dev can use the money to buy a house and hire a few employees? Does it mean turning the app(s) into a full blown business? A business that then gets sold to a larger business for a large sum and then you get to join the big cats in Los Gatos?
What thinkest thou?
3) Once again the Seal Beach Sun's Crime Log has produced a pick of the litter winner this morning:
"Monday, Sept 5, 2011 - Rossmoor - Suspicious Person or Circumstances - 10:55am - Kensington Road - The caller requested a patrol check for a man wearing a hoodie who was walking on the Gertrude side of the elementary school. The caller said there has been a recent increase in crimes, including a robbery involving men in dark hoodies. The caller that it was suspicious for someone to be wearing a hoodie at all in September."
Now before you get all upset about hooding profiling, please remember that this is September in Southern California, our hottest month of the year with temps in the 90s to 100s and higher. And the caller was right, anyone wearing a hoodie with the hood up in 90+ temps is cruising for a minor Darwin Award in the heat stroke category.
Wed 09.14.11 - I love the colors, art, and creative vintage stations at Salon Pop in Long Beach.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N950.
Mon 09.12.11 - This morning DHL delivered a Nokia N950 developer mobile wonder-kin to my doorstep. The Nokia N950 is the nDrool device that I have been hoping for out of Nokia for the last few years: Great camera + physical keyboard with a tilt screen + maemo/meego linux based OS.
The Nokia N950 is the next few logical steps from the N900 and while still very geeky it is also consumer ready. It is a true shame that Nokia is choosing to only release this device to a few selected developers and not to general, worldwide release.
After playing with the the Swipe UI, the camera, browser, downloading apps, and getting myself acquainted with the various on-board dev tools today, I would feel very comfortable in giving the Nokia N950 to anyone I know who likes smartphones.
The thing that surprised me the most is how high quality the camera is on the N950 is even without the branded Carl Zeiss lens. I love the camera software UI and have been getting really nice photos all day long. I very much look forward to the N9 with Zeiss optics.
Meego/Maemo + the Swipe UI = A lovely lovely Mobile. I look forward to creating for the Nokia N950 and N9.
Dear Nokia, the Nokia N950 and N9 are ready for the worldwide mass market, don't miss out on selling lots of devices in your current love for all things MS. I have played with the Windows phone and was bored in less than 5 mins, I still have the N950 in my hands after nine hours of discovery play.
Big thanks to all the folks who have been working diligently on the Nokia N950 and N9. And mille grazie to the good folk(s) at Nokia Developer for sending me a Nokia N950.
This blog post is brought to you by the N950's web browser, sftp in the terminal, and me tiptapping away on the actual real live keyboard.
Photo of Belle taken with the N950 at less than 5 inches away from earlier today, sent to Flickr.
Go Create.
Sun 09.11.11 - The best of the photos from Allison and I's road trip to Buttonwillow today. We left Huntington Beach at 11am, drove north on the 405 to the Interstate 5 take photos and Qik videos along the way, until we arrived in Buttonwillow, Calif., at 1:24pm to go have lunch at Tita's Pupuseria. This was a zany, dada-esque road trip to make Buttonwillow the road trip destination rather than the road stop.
After lunch we drove to the Tule Elk Reserve, then southbound along Elk Hills, eastbound along the 119 to Old River, southbound on Old River Rd to Copas Road to Murray Family Farms farmstand for some fresh fruit, back on the southbound I-5, to Fort Tejon, and last but not least, we stopped at the Vista de Lago Vistor's center at Pyramid Lake before finishing the afternoon with a drive-by of downtown Los Angeles.
After a bit of disappointment in the past, I gave Qik video a try again today taking about 15 or so videos that were streamed to Qik's servers. As per my past Qik experiences, I returned from my adventures frustrated that Qik would not play the videos and that there are no saved video files on my phone. Next time I will video with the phone, come home, stitch the videos together and upload to Vimeo. Qik is too unreliable and I now have no access to my videos of the day.
All photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
The post I wrote last night on 9.11 and then published this morning, I have set back to draft as I need to work on it a bit more. Given that I leave soon for the zany Buttonwillow road trip, I will do a bit of editing/re-writing and re-publish this evening.
Have a lovely day.
Updated Sat 09.17.11 - One week ago late on Saturday the 10th of September, I wrote the following personal essay piece about the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. Within hours of publishing it, I turned it back to draft as I wasn't ready for it to go live, especially not on the day that was meant to remember the dead and thank the living rescuers and heroes.
What I was trying to communicate with this piece is my anger and frustration at the media, Bush administration, loss of freedoms (for what? more fear?) and culture clash politics that have erupted in the ten years since. My own reaction on Sun 09.11.11 was to participate in a wee bit of dada-esque absurdism with my sister and not to listen to / watch / consume any of the media's disaster porn.
As I stated in the essay, I am not angry or frustrated at those who died nor their loved ones, but at our cultural and governmental responses.
Am now republishing.
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Sat 09.10.11 - This afternoon I had the opportunity to go visit the lovely Ms. Herlinda Chico and see the house that she and Jeff have bought, as well as meet the pets and new kittens.
Fri 09.09.11 - Photo of Sir Grayson Hernandez taken by Ms. Jen this afternoon with her Nokia N8.
Thurs 09.08.11 - The contrasts in saturated color caused me to stop, pull out the camera phone, and shoot the dusk framed by Target red. Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nokia n8.
Wed 09.07.11 - Photo of local tree flower taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
Two notable things from today:
1) Soft launch of Alex's new website. A few more iterations are needed tomorrow before I will be really happy.
2) An elderly lady, 70+, in a bronze sequined outfit tried to steal Scruffy McDoglet this evening!!!! Really. It was astounding.
I was in Walt's having a glass of wine & chatting with a friend, Scruffy was parked outside in my line of site, laying on the sidewalk, when the lady in question and her friends tried to abscond with Scruffy. When confronted by a waiter who is also a friend, she claimed I was neglecting Scruffy by having him outside.
Sorry, lady, it is against California law for a dog to be in a restaurant and he was just fine until you decided to wind him up, unhook his leash and try to take off with him.
The dog-stealer-to-be then had the chutzpah to argue with me, the waiter, and my friend. Crazy!
I had to put Scruffy in my friend's car, as the lady's two friends would not leave him be.
Is the Leisure World set so hard up for small, cute dogs that they are stealing them from Seal Beach's Central Ave when tied up to a pole in full view of the owner???
Scruff is now safely asleep on the couch.
In the last 12 days, I have driven to Sunnyvale for the Nokia Dev Party, spoken at the Mobile Javascript Summit online conference, fallen down a stair and wrenched my back, flown to San Francisco to attend Mobile 2.0, launched one web site and working on another launch, and spent a bit too much time icing & heating my back.
Note to self: do not fall down stair. Yes, that one stair did more damage than a whole flight.
I really enjoyed the two mobile conferences and the Nokia Dev Party. It is exciting and encouraging to talk to other folks who are designing & developing for, and passionate about mobile. While it was amazing to workshop at Mobile 2.0 with other mobile designers and developers in person, the Mobile Javascript Summit was also very encouraging not only learn but also to see & participate the interaction in the chat area.
Regardless if you are designing or developing for native apps or the mobile web or the one web, this moment in time is very exciting as we can and could and will be pioneering whole new worlds, even if it might be small, handheld ones.
Big thanks to all the fine folk that I have talked with, met for the first time, or been able to catch up with the last 12 days.
Sun 09.04.11 - Photo of Gracie climbing on the gate taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
Fri 09.02.11 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.