Andrew Sullivan asserts in the below video interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival that blogging is broadcasting. I think it is both and it depends on the writer/blogger in question. Sullivan's style is that he broadcasts his piece as soon as possible from the time the idea or event happened and he broadcasts in his blog multiple times a day. Other bloggers, such as Geoff Manaugh of BLDBLG, publish a few times a week or once a day, in a longer, edited essay form - I would consider this publishing the blog post or some folks might call the longer, curated/edited essay form an article.

What about the moblogging that I do here? Would it be broadcasting via Sullivan's definition or do I mobile publish because I tend to look for the best image or two of the day and only rarely do I moblog more than one or two images as they happen. The evening, a couple of weeks ago, that I went to dinner with Ernie, Jason, and George at Esperento in the Mission was more broadcasting or documenting as it happens, as I moblogged photos of two of the dishes we ate and two photos of the gentlemen, but most days, I do believe I am publishing.

I do agree with Sullivan that blogging is the most exciting thing to happen for writers, as well as artists and photographers, in many a decade.

Thurs 06.25.09 - Praise the minor and major deities that rule over YouTube and BTInternet! I have *finally* after 2 days of trying, got video uploaded. In case you were wondering, the internet connection at my hotel in London had slowed the BTInternet snail got off the salt bed intact and found a nice cool misty forest to traverse over, thus while it was still slow it was reasonably slow rather than chew my f*ing arm off slow.

Thus, here it is my video of Phil Campbell reviewing the Nokia N86's video capacities mere minutes after Anssi Mäkelä handed us the phones as we got in the car to go to the Carl Zeiss lens factory tour.

Phil was quite happy with the video capabilities of the N86, and I am more than quite happy with the photography capabilities (with the exception of the focus on the macro setting, but that can be fixed in a software update).

My full review of the N86 and my review of the Carl Zeiss factory tour upcoming.

Tues 06.23.09 - Since I am having video upload FAIL due to my London hotel's bad BTInternet connection, I am uploading this rather amusing video that Rita Khoury (aka Dotsisx) has posted of the two of us giving a Nokia N86 review as we were on the bus from Aalen to Stuttgart after our 1.5 days of Carl Zeiss lens factory tour happiness.

My video of Phil Campbell doing his off the cuff review of the N86's video recording will be coming as soon as I can get the dang thing uploaded.... (grrr...)

Panorama photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.

Tues 06.23.09 - This panorama is a bit clunky, as I was just learning how to use it, but I love it. I love the Panorama option on the Nokia N86's camera.

PyS60 Developers Blog: http://croozeus.com/blogs/

Mobile Lenin on PyS60 ( Mobile PyS60 author) : http://mobilenin.com/pys60/menu.htm

Nokia Open Source on Python for S60 : http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/pythonfors60/

Fri 06.12.09 - Will PostOffice for MT post this cron job email now that I have the correct cron job command?

Update: Yes, it did, but not with the cron job command that my server support team said would work, but with the one that Movable Type said would work.

Update at 4:48pm: Sorry, it ran a couple of times too many before I deleted the test email out of the inbox.

For two reasons, email photos to this blog is going to be an imperfect way to moblog:
1) If one does not delete or move the email out of the inbox, after the cron job runs, then the PostOffice plugin will post again the next time the cron job runs - at least when using Gmail.
2) One first has to resize the photo in the phone before emailing, otherwise there will be a large photo - both in pixels and kilobytes - that is posted to the blog.

With the G2 Ion / HTC Magic phone, I downloaded PicSay from the Android Market to do the resizing and emailing all in one go, as the PixelPipe Android app did not send the photo resized.

Given that a super-user/moblog addict like me spent many hours over days to set this up, no wonder why regular folks don't want to blog from their phones to a blog that lives on one's own server but prefer instead if they do moblog to a hosted service. gah.

Oh, Lifeblog, Oh Lifeblog, why did Nokia discontinue you? You were such a lovely and perfect moblogging app for Nokia phones...

Thurs 06.11.09 - Will PostOffice for MT post this cron job email now that I have the correct cron job command?

Update later in the evening: No it did not. The support fellow at my server gave me a new command for the cron job and it did not work, so I just triggered the script via the command line and it did post. Now back to the cron job drawing board.

The next two weeks are going to be very busy with me flitting here there and everywhere for (mostly) business purposes.

On Sunday, I will drive up to the Bay Area for some Python Rehab. Actually, I am going to some training but it sounds much more fun to say to people that Python and I aren't speaking right now, due to some tuples, and so I am checking myself into programming rehab. No seriously, I keep getting tuple errors (little ass*s)...

If you live in SF or Oakland or South Bay and want to get together for dinner, I am trying to get folks together either Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evening in San Francisco proper.

And then sometime, not quite sure when yet, late next week, I will be flying to Germany for a big adventure of which when I have a bit more info, I will blog about. Yes, this another one of the WOM World / Nokia adventures. This one will involve Industrial Design + Manufacturing + Photowalks, which means it will be AWESOME. I love factories, esp. if I can take photos and ask lots of questions.

Rather than flying back to LA after 4 days in Europe, I have requested that I get dropped off in London. I plan to be in London until the 28th of June at the very least and I will be attending Tuttle Club at the ICA on Friday, June 26th. Thus, if you are in London-town from the 25th to the 28th and want to go for a photowalk or to dim sum or to a museum with me, let's meet up.

Mobile Tidbit #1: I just tweeted:

LG Viewty Smart & Samsung Pixon will do it, will Nokia & Apple do it? Choosing camera focus with touch: http://tinyurl.com/touchfocus

Honestly the most interesting bit of the new camera phones that LG and Samsung have coming out is not the 8.1 megapixels on the LG Viewty Smart nor the 12 megapixels on the Samsung Pixon, but the fact that both of them will be using the touch screen to introduce a "manual" focus to camera phones. By touching the area of the view screen, you can choose what part of the photo that you want the camera to focus on. This is exciting.

I am *shocked* that the Apple UX geniuses did not first come up with this innovative use of the touch screen as applied to camera phones, but then again, I am not really shocked, as the camera is just an after thought on the iPhone.

When I had my 45 minute trial of the Nokia N97 at SXSW where I compared its photos to the photos that my Nokia N95 took, my biggest complaint about the Nokia N97's photos is that the focus was off. It would be great if the N97 had the touch focus feature on it, as then I could have chosen where or who I wanted the camera to focus on rather than have sharp backgrounds and slightly blurry subjects.

Hey Nokia! That first firmware update for the Nokia N97... The update you will most likely release in July? Make sure that touch screen camera "manual/auto" focus is a part of that update, as it is too brilliant and and too useful to be left out.

Mobile Tidbit #2: What is in a Name?

For the last 5.5 days, I have been calling my new lovely Google I/O gift mobile device the "Android HTC Magic", as that is what folks that the Google I/O conference were calling it. But I heard at the event some folks calling it the G2 or the HTC Ion.

When I was hanging out with Justin yesterday, he was calling it the G2. And today on Android and Me, Taylor calls it the Google Ion (HTC Sapphire).

People, can we decide on one name and stick to it? Thanks.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her HTC Magic camera phone.

Sat 05.30.09 - Even though the Google Android HTC Magic phone only has a 3.2 megapixel camera, HTC and the Android team have put them heavy lifting image algorithms to work, as this mobile device takes the best looking photos daytime and strong light I have seen from a device that is under 5 megapixels. The phone has no flash, so night time or action photos are usually blurred.

The new Google Android phone did a great job on local flowers today even though the daylight was gray from June Gloom cloud cover. I purposely put the camera lens within 4 inches of the big vine flower. The camera auto-focused on the buds behind and to the left of the big flower, as well as distorted the color of the big flower a bit to the orange, but nonetheless, the photo turned out surprisingly nice for a 3.2 mp camera with no close-up function.

The big failing so far with the HTC Magic is that there is not a sharing application, like Shozu, to send the images to places on the web. From the photo gallery one can send the photos to email, messaging, and Picassa, but not to Flickr or to one's blog.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Here is my transcription of two sessions from Day 2, 05.28.09, of the Google I/O 2009. Per my usual, the following is a combination of live quotes from the speaker, notes off the slides, some paraphrase and a few of my own asides.

So far, Brett Slatkin's Offline Processing on App Engine: A Look Ahead has been my favorite of the day. Lunch conversation with Prashant and Bastian was delightful.

Here is my transcription of two sessions from Day 1, 05.27.09, of the Google I/O 2009. Per my usual, the following is a combination of live quotes from the speaker, notes off the slides, some paraphrase and a few of my own asides.

Chris Nesiadek's presentation on Android's Interaction Design was my favorite of the day.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Wed 05.27.09 - Or how Ernie, Ms. Jen, and hundreds, if not a thousand plus of us were given free Android HTC Magic phones today at Google I/0.

Or how Google quite brilliantly insured that hundreds of developers would write Android apps by making sure that they would have testing devices!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Wed 05.27.08 - Due to my plane being an hour late, I may miss the first session on how to code for Android. Even if late, I am looking forward to the Google App Engine and Android sessions today and tomorrow.

If the folks at Starcut are going to proudly announce that they mobilize brands and media and charge a newspaper to mobilize the said newspaper's website, then they should educate themselves on the standards of the mobile user experience.

Major rule of the mobile web: Give the User a Choice. Don't assume that they want the full website or that they want a reduced site for mobile. Just because a script has detected that the browser coming to the site is a mobile browser, doesn't mean the reader/user wants to be forced into a locked sandbox with no exit. Don't assume that every user wants to reduce their data usage, some of us have unlimited plans. Give the user a choice.

Here are a few examples of Mobile Sites that do the User Experience right by giving the reader/user a choice to either view the mobile version or to switch over to the "classic", "full", "regular" version of the website:

Why does this matter? Well, not every Nokia or Sony Ericsson or Blackberry or insert name of mobile device is a smartphone with Opera Mini or a version of the Webkit or Gecko mobile browsers, but then again, not every Nokia or Sony or Blackberry or other mobile device is a simple device with a simple mobile web browser.

I think it is great that more and more websites offer mobile versions that are stripped down and load fast for mobile devices, but if you are going to strip out choice along with kilobytes, this is not good.

My Nokia N95 has a full featured web browser that renders most websites, except heavily AJAX sites, quite nicely. I have an unlimited data plan. Between my Nokia's browser and my data plan, I want to see the full version of most websites unless I need information quickly and then the mobile version is usually fine.

Not yesterday.

Yesterday, I left the house in a rush to meet up with Lauren Isaacson in Encino so that we could have lunch together before she departs for Vancouver. I was heading north on the 405 and passing the Long Beach Airport when I realized that I left my paper copy of the LA Times Food section. So, I did what I would normally do in this situation, I opened my Nokia's web browser and typed "latimes.com", instead of getting the usual, full web version of the LA Times website, I was forced into the mobile version of the site with no exit out.

No link to the full version. No links to the Food section. No ability to get out of the reduced web version. I then went to Google to search for the article and the Google search took me back to the front page of the mobile site with no link to the full version of the LATimes.com. Here is the mobile site that I saw with no link to the full version of the LATimes.com at either the top of the mobile page nor at the bottom:

I was very frustrated.

I was mad in the immediate situation of trying to locate information that was still live on the full version of the website but I was unable to get to the information because the mobile version of the site did not let me go there. I was mad as a web & mobile user experience designer to experience bad UX design first hand. I was frustrated that Starcut has probably charged the LA Times a lot of money to piss off loyal readers like me.

In the end, I had to use a desktop computer at Lauren's parent's house to search the LA Times' website for the article on the restaurant we were to go to. Itzik Hagadol is excellent, especially their 20 salads for $8.99.

But the lack of ability to exit the LA Times's mobile site from a mobile browser is not excellent. It would be excellent if Starcut would revisit the site and add a simple link at the top or the bottom of each mobile page, giving the reader/user the option to go to the full non-mobile version of the site from their mobile browser.

Ernest over at Darla Mack's S60 News & Reviews just posted a comparison review of the Nokia N97 vs. LG Viewty Smart: Side By Side Comparison. While Ernest didn't have both devices in his hands to do a review, he did use the Omio Comparison Widget to create a tech spec side by side comparison.

About halfway through reading the side by side tech spec showdown between the Nokia N97 and the LG Viewty Smart, I thought, "Wait a minute, this should be a comparison between the Nokia N86 and the LG Viewty Smart, not the N97!" I followed the link to Omio's site and made my own tech spec showdown between the two upcoming 8 megapixel camera phones to be released this summer from Nokia & LG, see below after the jump / below the fold.

Folks, the Omio Comparison Widget is hours of entertainment if you are a deep mobile tech geek who gets off on which specs are better. For me it was minutes of entertainment and I will be waiting to get the camera phones in my hands to take actual photos and see how the mobiles perform under a mobile blogging geo-tagging photowalk photography test.

Although, I will say from the descriptions in the tech specs in the below comparison of the LG Viewty Smart, Well, hello! The LG Viewty Smart will allow for manual focus as well as automatic? Hello! Now we are starting to talk photography!

The nice folks at Amazon.com have opened up the ability for bloggers to add their blog to the Kindle-world. If you are a regular blogger and would like to have the various Kindle reader folk out there to able to download and read your blog on their Kindle's, then go register at Kindle Publishing.

The nice folk at Six Apart alerted their Twitter followers about the new Kindle Publishing option for bloggers this afternoon:

Our friends at Amazon just launched Kindle Publishing for Blogs -- list your blog in the Kindle store: http://kindlepublishing.amazon.com

Why is this exciting to me? Given that I am a big fan of reading, mobile devices and blogs, this is a perfectly easy way to make sure that one's blog reaches what possibly may be a new audience or at the very least it makes current readers of one's blog be able to read the blog anywhere on a mobile device at their convenience.

I signed up for Kindle Publishing this afternoon and within 20 minutes I had this blog, Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, and The Happy Tastebud signed up as Kindle subscriptions. And in another 20 minutes after that, I had the links to the Kindle subscriptions added to both blog's sidebar Subscribe area right next to the links to Atom and RSS feeds.

It was easy. Amazon did not require anything of me that I had not already had accomplished (description, keywords, screen shot, masthead, etc). I did not have to recode my blog nor did I have to make a device specific app, like many have done for the iPhone, but all I had to do after filling in basic information was to give an RSS or Atom feed to Amazon.

Amazon allows you to see a preview of your content as the Kindle will display it to the reader and it is not optimized for a photoblog or for the design control addicts amongst us, as the photos are very low resolution and in black & white and the typography is serif and fairly large. Also, there is no control over layout. But all of this adds up to an impetuous for me to make sure that my content is compelling regardless of the device or machine that it is viewed on.

Whether anyone actually subscribes to my blog via the Kindle or not really doesn't matter, what does matter is that Amazon is making a wide variety of publications available to their Kindle readership and Amazon is making it easy for bloggers and other content publishers to distribute their work, which is very exciting for the mobile and handheld device ecosystem.

[Photos coming to this space tomorrow when I am not so tired.]

Thurs 05.07.09 - Tonight was the first ever Mobile Geeks of LA at the Cat & Fiddle on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. Basically, James has taken the Mobile Geeks of London on tour.

It was good fun. While it was only 73 degrees F when I left Seal Beach, it was 88 F when I arrived in LA at 8pm!!!! Luckily, the courtyard at the Cat & Fiddle is not only beautiful, but has a burbling fountain of which all the mobile folk were gathered around. Somehow the sounds of water falling made it seem cooler.

What was cool and sweet was not only hanging out with friends (Lauren, James, Vikki, Jeb, Geoff & his wife Christine, Amir, Al, Francine, and Matt), but also meeting and talking with new people like the Las Vegas folk who came out for the event and others.

Big Thanks to Whatleydude, Matt Singley, and Jeb Brilliant for putting together a lovely evening.

My Nokia viNe from tonight: http://vine.nokia.com/#/mid=&lc=&vid=965979&cc=&page=home

Photo taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N95.

Wed 05.06.09 - Today the Nokia N79, that the Nokia folks loaned me at SXSW, was whisked away by FedEx to go home to New York. Farewell to a lovely little mobile.

Take a stance. Even for a minute or two or a month or longer. Do it publicly.

One of the conversations, however briefly, I got into today on Twitter with Jonathan Greene was about John Gruber's iPhone post, "Complex".

While I agree with Gruber's initially stated premise that starting with a simple problem or solving a problem (just one) is a great way to begin any project. Once the simple has been defined, then build on it. Gruber goes from strength to strength to Apple fanboi kool-aid drinking by the end of the post.

In one of my Tweets, I pose the question:

"Gruber is very much in the Apple fold. That is why I ask if he is making a theoretical stance rather than an accurate assessment"

I think it makes great articles to take a stance and argue from it. I think it makes great art when one decides to take a stance, even if briefly, know where one resides in that theoretical space as one creates and practices one's art. But it is also important, whether one is writing articles or creating art to clearly acknowledge the stance and space that one is standing in, so that the reader or viewer can also know where to stand.

What do I mean by this? In Gruber's piece, his lack of a disclaimer or acknowledgment to the audience or even to himself of his US-centric and Apple-centric position makes the ending arguments of his piece fall flat if the reader falls outside of the concentric circles that Gruber is assuming that everyone is agreeing on. Many of the ideas in his article are intriguing, such as basing a series of devices on a software/firmware platform first rather than the function of the device, but this assumes that all the readers have drunken deeply of the iPhone kool-aid and are devotees at the shrine of Jobs. But what happens to the cult when Jobs retires and the powers that be don't carry on the same way? What happens if Gruber is looking at Apple's strategy from a theoretical stance or from a critical (in the academic sense) 20/20 hindsight review of the last eight years of strategy rather than what may or may not have happened?

This year at SXSW, Andy Budd and I had two very fun rounds of debate about Apple, the iPhone and anything that Nokia is doing. We were to have round three but never got to it. Andy is a User Experience professional, not only does he blog about it, run a whole web firm predicated on UX (clearleft), writes books on it, and speaks on UX, but he also firmly lives it. I thoroughly enjoy engaging Andy on topics of UX as it intersects mobile, as it is a great place for my great passion of mobile to cross his of UX. Andy and I disagree on the iPhone. While I agree with him that it is the "game changer" of 2007/2008, I don't think we can assume that it will be going forward.

I argue that Nokia and other firms cannot be discounted in the wake of the iPhone, as not every user/customer/person will be satisfied by the iPhone's features, functions, and OS. I have a number of non-web-design LA area creative friends who tried the iPhone and returned it before the 30 days were up for an Android G-1, a Sidekick 3, or for a Crackberry. I also have a number of friends and colleagues in LA and other places, who prefer Nokia Nseries phones to the iPhone, of which I am one of them. Most of us in this category want camera phones that take great photos.

On Twitter, I summed up my statements with on Gruber's article:

"It can be easy to forget culture & sub-cultural usage patterns as well as differing personal usage. The US is not all."

To this end, both in Gruber's article and in my own conversations with web colleagues who are passionate about A or B or C or X or Z device, I think we all have to remember that different mobile devices are not just fulfilling a cultural zeitgeist of the moment (like the iPhone in the US right now), or a sub-cultural niche (like the Sidekick 2 in the North American punk scene from 2005-2007), but also individual's differing usage patterns.

I do think it is important to state, even if briefly where one stands in that moment within the frame of the discussion so that the reader/viewer knows what one's theoretical stance is.

This is why I always encourage my friends who are excited about digital photography to write about and publicly dialogue about whether they are most interested in the act of shooting the photo or in the act of processing it later on their computer. Do you post your photos as is or do you process them? It is not an inconsequential factoid, but a record of your artistic / photographic journey that helps your viewers to know where you stand right now.

This is why I try to be clear that, for now, I like to shoot photos with camera phones, as I like the immediacy, I like the constraints, and I like to send my photos to this blog or to Flickr unprocessed, as is. And on the other side, for my friends who the great pleasure comes in the hour or two spent at their computer later processing their DSLR photos, good - many beauties upon you. Let us know about your process.

Why do I talk about theoretical stances or spaces in conjunction with John Gruber, the iPhone, Andy Budd, Twitter, Flickr, and camera phones this late in the evening after a long day? Well, in my recent post on the Nokia N95 vs. the Nokia N97, I was outright that my interest is in the camera capacity of the device and in response to some comments, I made a few comments that went deeper into the the territory of the quality of the camera being preeminent. I didn't make these comments to inflame but to iterate that my theoretical space and concern as an individual user of mobile devices is that of a photographer first and foremost.

From what position or space are you standing in right now?

Photo Credits: All photos taken by Ms. Jen either with her Nokia N95 (v.1) or Dustin's Nokia N97 prototype on Sun. March 15, 2009 at the Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, during SXSW Interactive. Nokia N95 photos on the left column, Nokia N97 on the right. Click on first photo to start the lightbox slideshow.

One of the best parts about SXSW Interactive this year was getting to not only hold the upcoming Nokia N97, but use it to take photos. Yes, I did actually put the Nokia N97 through its paces rather than just pet it.

Big thanks to the Nokia USA folks who were hanging out in the Austin Convention Center hallway and let folks stop by to check out (fondle, really) the new & upcoming Nokia Nseries and Eseries devices.

Thus, the above photo comparison is a straight showdown between my own Nokia N95 (N95-1 - two years old) and the soon to be released, much ballyhoo-ed, Nokia N97.

Yes, the touch screen and qwerty keyboard on the N97 were delicious. Yes, I drooled. Yes, I love the new Symbian Series 60 version 5 OS. Yes, I want one. But... and the big but for me, before I purchase, is how will the camera really perform?

All the features are great, but if the camera is not as good as my current, 2 year old, completely paid for Nokia N95, then what is the point of getting a new device? I am in the market for a new Nokia Nseries, but I want a camera that is better than the one on my current N95, not as good or less than.

All the photos above were taken in the Austin Convention Center hallway during the Nokia Sunday afternoon meetup to see how the Nokia N97 would perform against the N95 (with most recent firmware update v. 30.something.something). I asked all the people to hold the same pose so that the photo set up would be the same for each photo and I turned the flash off on both camera phones. The lighting was sun streaming in through big windows and some overhead fluorescent lighting. Between the lighting, the neutrals of the ACC, and the white walls, I was interested to see how clear the Nokia N97 images would be and would they veer towards the warm or cool in the color spectrum.

Disclaimer* aside, while the Nokia N97 prototype that I used for the above photos did an ok job, the photos were slightly less clear than my Nokia N95's photos and warmer in color tone. I was really hoping that Nokia would seriously up the ante with the N97's camera, but for a camera phone that will be the top of the line and the flagship product from Nokia in 2009, I would hope that between now and release that the Nokia engineers and programmers will upgrade the N97's software and tweak the camera performance so that my Nokia N95 will not beat it in another photo comparison in a couple of months time.

*DISCLAIMER: The Nokia N97 that Dustin Randall (aka DocMobile) had for me to play with is a prototype, of which the browser and other software bits were not fully ready for prime time. Which if some of the software on the prototype N97's was faulty, then it stands to reason that other bits may be to. Whether the camera software on the device was ready or not , Nokia does have some work to do, as the N95 is still taking better photos..

Hi!

I have two mostly finished but not ready to publish posts one from Saturday on the Nokia N97 and one from yesterday on the N79, but due to client deadlines and my Mom's birthday (today!) it has been too busy to finish the posts up properly. I will do it tonight.

Sorry for what appears to be a lack of activity around here, but without Lifeblog on the Nokia N79, I can't moblog my usual photos.

---

Update: Will PixelPipe push the photo to my server or will it live on their server just like Flickr does? If PP pushes to my server, I can use it for moblogging when I have a phone without Lifeblog (new Nokias), but if they just send the link to the photo that lives on their server, then why use it over Flickr for the same purpose?

Further update via my twitter: "Huh. PixelPipe is not any different for moblogging than Flickr or others. Photos on their server, not mine. Fail. #ownyourownphotos"

Even more: If Nokia is going to stop putting Lifeblog on their new phones after the Nokia N82, I wish they would open source Lifeblog so developers can iterate and continue to make direct phone to Movable Type moble blogging with no intermediary service or server.

Photo taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N95.

Sun 03.15.09 - Showing the Nokia N79 to Kenyatta and Ella of Rocketboom on a stair landing at the Austin Convention Center at SXSW Interactive.

On the night of the U.S. Presidential Inauguration, Tues. Jan. 20, 2009, musician and hostess extraordinaire Kerry Getz threw an Inauguration party and House Concert at her place on Balboa Island. It was a lovely party and the music was amazing. I tried to get a round of the Beatles "Here Comes the Sun" going, but we didn't get very far, though all the musicians who played were delightful.

As Steve and Lobelia Lawson were playing their set, I video'd one of the songs with the Nokia N82 and one with the Nokia N85. I then took the movie files, unaltered, and uploaded them to Vimeo, and have now embedded both mobile videos above for you to watch and determine if the Nokia N82 or the Nokia N85 wins for best picture, sound, and all around video quality. I hand held both mobiles, there was no external microphones or lighting to aid the videos.

What you see & hear is what you get from the Nokia N82 and the Nokia N85. What do you think? Which mobile wins the video wars?

Wed 02.12.09 - The Nokia viNe project N82 has been decommissioned. I will be sad to see it go back to WOM World, as the Nokia N82 is my absolutely favorite camera phone to date.

I am back on my Nokia N95 until after SXSW, when I will buy my very own black N82.

Photo of Scruffy McDoglet guarding, very diligently, a plate of apple slices taken with a Nokia N82 on Tue. 02.12.09

A year ago today, I was taking a plane from Chennai to Bangalore and then having a good walk around Bangalore with Mohan.

Over a year ago, I signed up for Nokia's Sports Tracker in preparation for the Urbanista Diaries trip. I created a public account that would feed into the Urbanista Diaries web interface at the nseries.com website and then I used the same account for the Nokia viNe project, as well as all kinds of photo walks & drives in between Urbanista and Nokia viNe. I also have a private Sports Tracker account, also started a year ago, for tracking my walks around my neighborhood that for privacy's sake I don't want public.

About a month ago or so, when I tried to log into Sports Tracker, I was prompted to either merge my Sports Tracker account with my Nokia account or to create a Nokia account. So, I did. I merged my public Sports Tracker account with my public Nokia account. I also created a new account on Nokia for my private Sports Tracker account.

Much to my chagrin, I can log in to both Nokia's Ovi and Sports Tracker with my private account and I can log into Ovi with my public account but I cannot log into Sports Tracker or Nokia viNe with my public account.

A week ago, I used the feedback form on Sports Tracker to explain the problem and ask for help. I have yet to hear back.

I am frustrated on several accounts:

1) Don't ask me to merge accounts and then not let me be able to log in.

2) No, I am not going to make a new public account, as then I lose a year's worth (a YEAR!) of data, photos, and video that I can't log into and access or edit or delete or add titles to or... Yes, it is still readable and viewable, but if I can't log in & edit the data, then it is being held hostage on the Nokia servers.

3) Tomorrow I have to send the Nokia viNe project Nokia N82 back to WOM World and I have ALL of January's journeys trapped on the N82 mobile because I can't upload them to Sports Tracker or Nokia viNe, which means that I have downloaded the photos to my computer via the cable, but I have not been able to upload the geo-tagged paths/journeys to the server. This frustrates me, as I can take my 4GB micro SD chip out of the Nokia N82 before I ship it back, but when I put it into my old school N95, I still won't be able to upload the journeys/paths to the server, as the server won't recognize my login. This means no Punk Rock Bowling or the rest of January 2009 photos & videos on Nokia viNe.

4) If I an early adopter and someone who has been using the service for over a year can't log in to my account and can't get anyone to reply to my help request, what happens to all the new customers who Nokia wants to have use the Nokia web services? Nokia, please put a consistent, across all your web services, community support in place to help customers troubleshoot their problems that neither a FAQ nor forum can help.

Has anyone else been frozen out of their Sports Tracker or Nokia viNe accounts after merging the account with their Nokia / Ovi account? If so, please comment and let me know how you solved the problem. Thanks a big bunch!

The year I lived in Ireland, for grad school, I had an account with Vodafone IE.  The only thing that I really like about Vodafone IE, other than they had the best data coverage all around Ireland in 2005-2006, was the web based sms/text messaging.

Everyone who had a Vodafone account, be it a pay as you go or a monthly tariff, could log into the Vodafone IE website and send up to 300 texts a month from their web based account area free of charge.  This was a win-win for both Vodafone and for the customer.  A win for Vodafone in that their customers were logging into their web site daily, if not staying logged in the whole time they were at a computer.  And a big win for the customer, esp. the pay as you go folks, as they got 300 free sms/texts a month if they were logged in to their account on the Vodafone website.

I wish AT&T in the US would have this.  I hate texting.  Really, I do.  I hate sending texts and I hate receiving them.  I mostly hate receiving them as it means I am obligated to reply.  I am phone call and email kind-of-gal, but I have plenty of friends and family members whose first preference of communication is sms/text. 

If AT&T would give me 300 free texts to any mobile phone, and not just another AT&T subscriber, a month if I was logged into my account on wireless.att.com, then as a person who is at her computer all day & most nights, I would send a lot more texts.  It would be convenient to send them from a full keyboard and I wouldn't feel frustrated.  AT&T could have the win of having my eyes on their site more than the once a month log in that I do now to pay my bill.

How about AT&T?  Other than setting up the interface on the customer's account front page and having a link to the sms gateway set up, it would give ou all a big payoff.  Plenty of us would run over our free 300 and then you would have another revenue stream. Right now you all have a half-assed send an SMS to only one another AT&T subscriber that is hidden in a menu, why not do it right, do it big, do it to any mobile phone?  Or even allow more than one recipient at a time?

Skype now has sms/text that I can send from my Mac's desktop to any other mobile phone in the world for only 9¢, so why don't you?

All photos taken by Ms. Jen from Jan. 9 - 11, 2009, with either a Nokia N82 or a Nokia N85.

Tues 01.13.08 - Last week I emailed the lovely folk at WOM World asking if they would send me a Nokia N85 so that I could do a rigorous photography comparison with the Nokia N82.

Now for the record, after taking the Nokia N82 out to India for the Urbanista Diaries and having one in my possession this fall for the Nokia viNe challenge, I am very partial to the mobile camera phone wonder that is the Nokia N82. Also, let's note that in Sept. when I had the opportunity to fondle the Nokia N85 at the Nokia House lounge in Espoo, Finland, I found it lacking. I did not like the front faceplate keys on the Nokia N85 keys at all, nor was I excited about the fact that it was a slider. For photography, I prefer a candy bar to a slider or other bits to fiddle with. All I want to fiddle with is the camera, not the handset.

The photos above were taken one right after another with me making sure that the state of the subject, lighting, and other conditions did not change. The idea was to make sure that the only differentiating factor was the mobile device used to take the photo and its software, camera, lens, and flash. The N82 is noted to have the better camera, lens, focal range, and zenon flash. The N85, while the new device, is not noted for making a great evolutionary step forward for photography but instead a sideways step from the N82.

The N82 has a better flash and a better focal range than the N85, but the N85 takes the photos as you click, it does not focus and then capture. At times this is much more satisfactory as one is not frustrated as the camera focuses, but as you can see from the photos above the N82 takes much clearer and sharper photos than the N85. I conclude that it is worth it to wait for the N82 to focus rather than have the immediate satisfaction that the N85 is fast.

As for night and difficult lighting situations, I purposely took the camera phones to the badly lit red interior of Alex's Bar in Long Beach, California, which is the bane of rock photographers LA wide for the lack of spotlights and the red walls which eat light right on up before your camera can sense it. The N85 won in this situation when I turned off its flash and just had it shoot. It was fast, captured warm colors and made the most of the dim lighting, but the N85 failed miserably when I turned the flash on as it was dark and dim. The N82 was blurry and a bit darkish with no flash inside of Alex's, but with the lovely Zenon flash really lit the band right on up.

The other difficult situation that I took both camera phones to was the bright sunlight and water reflections of Huntington Beach's Dog Beach that included two white dogs, Scruffy & Belle. Usually the white fur plus the sunlight makes for a photo failure, esp. when it comes to rendering the form of the dog as they usually become just a white blob. Both the Nokia N82 and N85 did valiant jobs with the bright sunlight, white fur, and water reflections but the N82 rendered warmer, clearer colors and the N85 shifted the color slightly to the cold, blue spectrum.

Overall, other than the no flash at Alex's Bar, the N82 wins this round against the N85.

Up next: Round 2 - Punk Rock Bowling. Who will win in the lights of Las Vegas and the yellow shift of the Sam's Town bowling lanes? Check back next Monday for the answer on whether the N82 or the N85 will win...

****
Please note the following specifications on each camera phone:

The Nokia N82: 5 megapixel (2592 x 1944 pixels) camera, CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar™ lens, Focal length 5.6 mm, Focus range 10 cm ~ infinity, Macro focus distance 10-50 cm, Integrated xenon flash
v20.0.062 firmware (RM-313)

The Nokia N85: 5 megapixel camera (2584 x 1938 pixels) camera, CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar™ lens, Focal length 5.45 mm, Focus range 10 cm ~ infinity, Macro focus distance 10-50 cm, Dual LED flash
v10.045.53 firmware (RM-333)

Why do I list the firmware of the camera? Well, a recent update for the N85 is rumored to improve camera function via software and I will update both today so that this weekend's Round 2 will be on the most updated firmware.

Update: 01.14.09 - I made an attempt to update the firmware on the N85 today, as there are rumored improvements for the camera performance, but the ancient borrowed PC I used would kept disconnecting the Nokia Updater and the N85. Since, I don't want to send a bricked N85 back to WOM World, I gave up for today. Everyone I know either has a virus ladlen 2003 or older PC or they have switched to Macs. Over the Air (OTA) firmware updating can't come fast enough to the Nseries line for me.

The Mobile Blog-o-sphere is all a-flutter about the *supposedly* evil 'Curse of Silence' vulnerability in some Nokia S60 phones.

If you haven't heard of it, a supposed malicious person or machine could send a bit of code that would stop all SMS/texts and MMSs from ever arriving to your cell phone. The only fix is doing a hard factory reset to the phone.

And this is a bad thing? Frankly, I think Nokia should offer The Curse (or Blessing) of Silence as a toggle on / toggle off feature!

I *hate*hate*hate* texts. Have I mentioned how much I hate texts/SMSs? If any saintly hacker out there would like to pass on the Blessing of Silence to me, I would bake you the cookies or a full dinner of your choice...

Then I could happily say to all the SMS-addicted folks I know, "No, really, I mean, REALLY, I did NOT receive your text message. I am so sorry. Why didn't you call or send me an email?"

Late last December, a year ago, I decided to participate in Blog365 and I am here to tell you 367 days (365 days + leap day + today) from the start of the daily blogging for a year that I did it. I blogged every single darned day for the last 367 days, including leap day of which we were allowed to take off but I didn't.

Due to the fact that I allowed myself the leeway of blogging from my computer and / or moblogging from my phone, I was able to complete the challenge and not feel that it was a struggle. Being able to moblog directly from my Nokia phones (N95 & 2 N82s) to this Movable Type powered blog via Nokia's Lifeblog made all the difference in being able to complete the daily blogging schedule on top of daily life, work, friends/family, travel, and the vicissitudes of life.

Then to make life interesting a more than a bit challenging, I decided to participate in NaBloPoMo in July over at the Happy Tastebud and in November here at Black Phoebe.

In the Blog365 challenge, I decided that which/what content I (mo)blogged didn't matter, it could be text or photo, as long as I had one blog post per day. In the November NaBloPoMo challenge, I decided that I had to blog text every day on top of any photo posts. That was hard, but really good.

After November was over, I had more text / opinion posts that I wanted to write but December got too busy and I didn't have a challenge to goad me on to actually write rather than just mo-pho-blog. I am going to continue daily posting here in 2009 be it text or photos, but I resolve to blog more text, at least 3 times a week.

;o)

I know it is much cooler to be wearing a bluetooth one ear-ed headset these days than a two ear-ed wired headset, but I am currently a HUGE fan of the Nokia hs-43 wired headset and don't even know where my fancy pants expensive bh-602 bluetooth headset is (somewhere in the bowels of my purse).

Since July 1st, those of us who live and drive in California are to have hands-free wireless devices whilst driving. You can talk on your mobile while driving, but you have to have both hands on the wheel and your headset on, not that most SUV drivers obeying the law. We won't talk about the lady with her phone glued to her ear in the GMC Yukon XL who nearly ran me off the road today, no, not at all, we won't talk about her nor bailouts for auto companies that build such behemoths.

No, what we will talk about is cute, small, efficient, good design by forward thinking companies.... Nokia, thanks for two good products that make my life easier.

I like the way that the Nokia BH-602 bluetooth headset will shape to the back of my ear, but I don't like how I can't hear in stereo and when I am walking or out in the big wide public my friend on the other end of the call asks if I am in a wind tunnel. I also have lots of music loaded on the microSD chip both in my N95 and in the Nokia viNe loaner N82 mobiles and it is very hard to listen to music in a one ear-ed bluetooth headset. Also due to having a small ear, the bluetooth headset even when properly shaped to my ear, flops around making it hard to hear.

My N95's wired stereo headset died a bad wire failure death over nearly a year ago, so I had been using the wired headsets from my N80 and N800 to listen to music while exercising and walking the dogs. When the black N82 arrived on my doorstep in early September, I pulled out the included in the box wired headset, the HS-43, with glee to see what it would do.

Over the last couple of months, I have fallen in love with the wired headset that came in the N82's box, to the point that I don't use my bluetooth headset unless I left the wired one at home.

Why do I love the HS-43 wired headset so much? Let me list you the reasons:

1) Wires. Good old fashioned copper covered in plastic & cloth makes for a better sonic / audio experience.

2) Stereo. Hey, novelty! I can hear sound, be it music or spoken voice, in both ears!

3) No need to remember charge the wired headset.

4) Friends and family can hear me speak during a phone call much clearer with the wired headset, even when I am walking along the beach in a stiff breeze. Hello, Seal Way, the killer of all phone calls, you don't kill my calls now.

5) Oooh, baby baby... the best feature of the HS-43 wired stereo headset is the one that seems most bizarre when you first pull it out. It does not look or act like your usual wired headset, as the back/top is not a headband but a 1/4 inch wide black fabric that is about 6 inches long that have two lanyard style clamp/unclamp at each end. Thus, when the danged thing gets all tangled up into a wad of wired hell, you just pull the two clamps apart and YAY the tangles are gone. If you by accident attempt to pull it out of your purse too fast or out from under the dog and you think, "Oh Crap! I have just broke the headset!", oh no you have not, the clamps release and you can pull it out nicely and reclamp it.

Oh, lovely HS-43 Wired Stereo Headset, I <3 you.

Bluetooth, who?

I had the opportunity to handle two Google Android first generation mobile phones today, the T-Mobile G1, and while the shape (form factor) is a bit odd, I did enjoy playing with the user interface much more than any of the iPhones I have tried.

Gasp! Shock! Blasphemy!

Every time I use a friend's iPhone, I am left nonplussed and usually find it to be a bit frustrating of an experience. Yes, yes, yes, I know, I am weird. As with any interface, even learning to use the iPhone takes time. And the truth of the matter is that I am not intrigued enough by the iPhone to want to learn.

The iPhone, as I have detailed out before, has a crappy camera, no video capture, no MMS, and Apple has made it to be a closed sandbox.

For all the claims of the radical innovation and intuitive user interface, I will agree that bringing the metaphor of the web and Apple UI to a mobile device is new and can be delightful to use, but it is not for everyone. I am not the only person I know who has fondled and played with the iPhone and then went and bought another device.

Today I had the opportunity to talk with some folks who perused all the major smart phone options and decided to get the Google / T-Mobile G1 Android phone over the iPhone. After listening to them describe what they wanted and then saw how both of them had hacked/altered the home screen to fit their needs, as well as get a tour of the G1 mobile, I was intrigued.

Yes, the G1 has a crappy camera; yes, there is no video capture; but the UI and the physical handset made more sense to me than any time I have used an iPhone. I did not have to have steps explained to me as I was using it, my hands and mind figured it out. Everytime I use an iPhone, I get stuck and have to ask the owner what to do next - usually this is a question of what to do with the physical handset as I find it too abstracted.

The web browsing experience is good. As good or even better than the iPhone. I ran through a couple of websites that most mobile browsers choke on due to javascript & AJAX and the G1 rendered all the scripts and CSS correctly. Bravo!

What is most exciting to me about the G1 Android phone is that it is open source and one can use python to program it. I like Python. I like mobile python for S60 and will be interested in exploring the Android development platform.

The other two things I liked about the G1 was that it is smaller than the iPhone and I can hold it in one hand without fear of dropping it and it has a physical qwerty keyboard which was easy to use, even easier than the Nokia E71 keyboard.

So, Google, here are my challenges to you:

1) I love open source, but I love unlocked mobiles even better. I am willing to pay the extra for an unlocked phone.

2) Come on, Google, give Nokia, Casio & Sony a run for their money and put a real camera on the G1: at least 5 megapixels or better, with a flash, a quality image sensor chip, and then back it up with the computing power to process the algorithms for great digital camera work.

3) Video capture.

Looking forward to the next iteration of the Google Android phone.

It is official, Nokia viNe has been released into the wild and is now available for download. This version of Nokia viNe is a mobile geo-path-tracking / photo / video location based mobile app that allows one to create "vines" or "journeys" on one's phone and then upload it to the nokia server to be displayed on the web or via a widget.

Nokia viNe version 1.02 released by Nokia today is for the following Nokia mobiles: the E71, N78 & N79, N82 & N85, and the N95 8GB & N96. I have tried it with my Nokia N95-1 and it won't login to the server and start working, sad this.

I promise to write a new Nokia viNe How To tomorrow that will reflect the changes in the new version that has been released to all. Not only are there some nice improvements and changes to the mobile app since I wrote my tutorial (faster uploads!), but the Nokia viNe web interface has greatly improved.

There are three features I would love to see in the next iteration of the Nokia vine mobile app and web interface:

1) Multiple logins on the mobile app. I currently have two logins and would like to toggle between accounts as to what I upload where.

2) Be able to have finer control of what is public and what is private, not only on Nokia viNe, but also on Sports Tracker and Share on Ovi. I like Flickr & Vox's approach of up to 4 plus levels of privacy to public with: private (only you), Friends & Family, Contacts, and Everyone. At this point, there is no way I can control this from the Nokia viNe mobile app, nor from the web interface. Given that Nokia viNe is a location based service this is extra important for trust and safety.

3) Be able to determine in my account settings if I want my photos or video to be able to be downloaded once they are up on the Nokia viNe site. Right now, I have no control, which as a beta tester over the last 2+ months didn't bother me, but over time it will. Flickr allows me to set who I want to be able to download my photos (none, family, friends, friends & family, contacts, and everyone). This is important for trust and copyright.

Overall, I would like to say Bravo! to the folks who have been working hard to make both the Nokia viNe mobile app and the web interface.

My other posts on Nokia viNe:
The Nokia viNe Promo Video is Cute & Funny!
Nokia viNe How To Tutorial (The Alpha Version)
Nokia Nseries Widget or Why Nokia Really Needs a Good Internal Communication System
Batteries for Ricky
Nokia's (life) viNe

I hate that word/phrase. It is vaguely insulting and has airs of superiority from the person who utters it or types it.

Normob is a shortened catch phrase for "Normal Mobile" or the average mobile user, to indicate that the person one is speaking of is not of the heightened level of knowledge and superior usage of a mobile phone or device as the speaker / typer.

I am calling bullshit on this.

Get off your high horse. There is not some special tier for mobile tech bloggers and folks who stand in line to get the first edition of any given high end mobile phone, other than the tier known as fanboi*. Fanboi does not equal superiority. Fanboi equals passion and extraordinary desire to dig deep into one's wallet for the newest, latest, and greatest, frequently.

Just because your mom, your boss, your neighbor has the free phone with the monthly plan/tariff does not make them worthy of a derisory term like normob. It just means they have other priorities.

I have a friend who runs a literacy project in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa, and she *loves*loves*loves* Nokia phones. She loves how reliable they are, how they will keep working no matter what, how they can be used as a flashlight. No, she is not talking about an Nseries or Eseries phone, she is talking about the cheapest, most reliable phones that can be bought by the folks in Freetown, of which model number I have no idea what it is. So, are she and all the folks in Freetown "normobs"?

No. They are using mobile devices to the fullest extent of the ability of their budget, their local networks, and it suits them well. This is good.

Is my mom a "normob"?

No. She loves her Nokia N82. She loves the photos she can take. She likes to moblog her photos to her Vox blog. Can she use most of the other features on her N82? Mmmm... mostly not, not due to stupidity or normality but due to the fact that she wanted a phone that was also a very good camera. Those are the features what she wants from a mobile besides the ability to make phone calls.

Dear Mobile Bloggers and Journalists, let's drop the word "normob", to use it is snotty and below you, unless you would like to use it about yourself. There is no distinction between you and the folks worldwide who love their mobiles for very different reasons and ways from the way you do.

Wed 11.12.08 - I have truly enjoyed using the Nokia viNe mobile app the last two months and the word on the streets is that it will be released into the wilds this week.

This should be fun to see how it has been refined from the testing stage. Looking forward to seeing the released mobile app later this week.

Do watch the video above as it is cute, funny, and a great use of flash, animation, dog walking and Nokia viNing... I don't know anyone who ever walks their do while they are running Nokia viNe... ;oD

Tues 10.28.08 - The below screenshot slideshow is a pictorial tutorial on how to use the Nokia viNe (formerly LifeviNe) mobile application. Click on the first photo at the top and navigate through the lightbox slideshow. Detailed notes are below. If you have questions, please comment below and I will do my best to answer your questions, but please see the Troubleshooting post.

Here is the companion posts I have written on Nokia viNe:
* Troubleshooting / Bug Report post, please comment there with your troubleshooting tips and bug reports on the Nokia viNe Mobile app.
* My previous post on Nokia's (life) viNe with some how to.

The Tutorial:

A) Before you start, please make sure that you have already set up a Sports Tracker account at sportstracker.nokia.com or do it from the mobile Nokia viNe application. The way that the Nokia viNe app works is that the mobile app will upload your photos and video from your mobile to your Sports Tracker Account.

B) Then you can get the Maps + Photography widget and display your Nokia viNe journeys / photos / video on your website or Facebook or other spots online. If you are a participant in the Nseries.com Nokia viNe campaign / project, then you can view your uploaded journeys at the Nseries Nokia viNe flash interface.

Part Two of my improve Nokia's Communication Idea Set.

One of the frustrations in participating in projects / campaigns with WOM World can be the difficulty in communication and getting timely information. This is not news to the folks at WOM World (we had a big conversation last week about this) nor to other folks who work on campaigns/projects with them. Now let me break this down into the problem, the extenuating circumstances, and the proposed solution:

The Problem:
I love participating in projects / campaigns / whatever you want to call it with WOM World & Nokia but I find myself frustrated that much of the information that is needed to complete my side of the project right either comes late or quite a bit into the campaign. Take the example of the lack of Nokia viNe widget for the last month and a half of that campaign and then finding out about a similar widget by some other team at Nokia via another blog.

The Circumstances:
(please note that the following are not unique to WOM World or Nokia, but happen all over the world in a variety of businesses)
1) Nokia is working with at least 3 external agencies / vendors on any one campaign: Interactive ad agency, WOM World/1000 heads for the outward facing blogger interface & social media marketing, a possible pr agency, etc. This is on top of the one or two or more internal Nokia teams that may be involved in the project (the developers who are making the service, the marketing team, etc). This is a lot of cats to herd. And it is a lot of folks to be informing each other of what each member of their teams is up to, as well as what other teams at Nokia may be up to that might help the campaign/project at hand, all while on a tight deadline.

2) Almost every company on the planet has teams that are understaffed and overworked. It is a reality of the business system. 'Nuff said.

3) WOM World's primary mission is to follow social media and bloggers and then let the world know about what those folks have said. WOM World does not create its own content. At the same time as WOM World is blogging about what we are blogging about, they are also sending and receiving mobile devices all over for trials, and participating in / conducting Nokia campaigns with bloggers and social media folk, as well as interacting with Nokia and other agencies to make sure that WOM World's portion is working. See #1 & #2 above and you get the point.

4) Ok, I could now talk about how different cultures view the dissemination of information or lack thereof, company cultures, and transparency v. Finnish mind reading tricks, but I won't muddle up the subject at hand with more details or conjecture.

The Proposed Solution:
Provide a back channel for each of the projects / campaigns as a way of getting information out there and keeping folks informed, and as a way to build community.

What do I mean by a back channel? Before Nokia Open Lab in Sept. most of the participants had very little information other than initial email invite, as the website for the event was not up yet, so Roland Tanglao set up a wiki to help us communicate and share more info that folks may have gleaned.

By having this wiki, the Open Lab participants were able to share our flight times to meet up at the airport, information about the event, information about Helsinki, and most importantly - after the event - links to our blog posts, photos, tweets, etc that we created about the event.

Instead of talking less in public spaces about the Open Lab because we had our own private place to talk to each other, we talked more in public because we had more information and we felt more empowered.

So, I propose that for each campaign / project that Nokia and WOM World work on (either together or separately) with bloggers and social media folk, that a wiki or Friend Feed or an old school link portal or some other way for us to aggregate all the information we need to share with each other, as well as a listing of all the posts / tweets / etc that we have written about the campaign / project.

Arguments Against:
Since I floated this idea by WOM World's Donna and Siobhan last week, I already have the objections to my idea. Of which the biggest objection is that if a wiki is set up, then the fear would be that the participants would just chat to each other on the wiki / forum / back channel and would not post about the project.

Counter Argument:
In the instance of the Nokia Open Lab 2008, having the wiki did not stop us from blogging and tweeting about it. In fact, we posted more and responded to each other in our blogs because we were sharing information and we had built a community.

WOM World may have posted a few links to our writings during and after the event, but by having a back channel we were able to self-aggregate all of our social media and blog links about the Open Lab and it can be viewed by the public which only increases the Long Tail effect for the event.

When we were talking last week Siobhan suggested that FriendFeed would work within the constraints of WOM World's primary mission, as it could aggregate all the posts for all of the participants of any given project. But, unless FriendFeed has good filters for all of the incoming feeds, we would also see all of the other posts by the same folks.

A wiki or like, either on the WOM World site or external wiki like PBwiki, would also allow us to share links and information that would be helpful during the project, like my finding the Maps + Photography widget last week, it would allow not just the participants but the whole world see a complete or almost complete list of the posts on the project both during and after in one place, as well as build community.

The Conclusion:
Please help those of us without degrees in Finnish Mind Reading out. I would love to know who the other participants in the Nokia viNe project are, I know a few, but it would be great to follow all and not just thier viNe posts but also their blogs and other social media, as well as to share information that will allow all of us to better participate in the project.

Information + Links + Community = a Big Win for Nokia in the long run.

On one of those amusing trips down Internet Blackhole Lane last week that started at Twitter and ended 5 clicks later at someone's website, led me to finding the Nokia Nseries Maps + Photography Widget.

This is a great widget, much more useful than the Urbanista Diaries widget. The above widget has all the Sports Tracker uploads that I have made public, from my India trip to various bits afterwards to the current Nokia viNe uploads. And more importantly, it is fast and works.

But this hidden widget is interesting.

Super interesting, as I had been bothering the folks over at WOM World since early September about when the Nokia viNe testing/campaign participants would be getting the widget to publicize our adventures in Nokia viNe land, but up to last week there was no widget for the viNe campaign.

When one trots over to the Sports Tracker site, there is not a single thing about a Nokia Nseries web site widget that scrapes one's Sports Tracker account for the data, geo-paths and imagery. One would imagine that more than a few Sports Tracker users would love to know about this widget so that they could display their paths and imagery on their website or Facebook page.

Hello, Nokia. Helllllllooooooo.....

The above Nokia Nseries Maps + Photography Widget that uses my Sports Tracker username & data would be an excellent addition to the downloads on the Sports Tracker site. It would also be lovely to have it available for download over at Nokia viNe site.

One would think that if a large and lovely mobile corporation was going to spend lots of money on developing a widget and/or web services and/or promotional campaigns, such Nokia viNe and Sports Tracker, that one would have the internal teams and external vendors talking to each other to let each other know when a product/widget/campaign has been created that would benefit the other team or each other. If one is going to create a great useful widget, it would be lovely to have it cross-linked to as many places on the Nokia website as possible to get as much traction as possible.

Dear Nokia, if you need a good internal blog / intranet to improve your global marketing campaigns, hire me, I will set it up for you and get your teams talking. Inter-team and intra-team communication equals better promotions and pr, which equals more sales.

Sun 10.12.08 - File under "Better late than never". Or file under "She's Been SWAMPED with work the last 4 weeks". Or whatever you want to file this blog post under.

When Scruffy decided to use my Nokia N95 as a chew toy in August, I thought I would have to replace it. Thinking that Whatleydude had already held the Nokia E71, I twittered him to ask what it was like. He didn't know yet. But before I had to know, my brother and I were able to use a gas powered solder iron to flame the N95 back into working order. After the DIY homemade repair, I thought no more of new Nokias, well, until the black Nokia N82 for the Nokia viNe showed up on the second of Sept, but that is another story.

The reason I asked Whatleydude, London's mobile man about town, about the Nokia E71 is that I had seen a several good reviews and was curious about the QWERTY keyboard (would it be good for moblogging?) and the camera (it is only 3.2 megapixel, but what were the photos like?). Basically, I was E-curious. Not really ready to leave my beloved Nseries, but curious if the Eseries would fit my needs.

Basically folks, I want one device that will fit in one of my small adult female hands. That one device should fit in a pocket while walking, as well as fit in a small purse. First and foremost, I want a good camera with an internet connection on that mobile device. Second, it would be nice if it had email. Third, it should have a good camera with an internet connection. And Fourth, it should have a mobile application that allows me to blog directly (yes, directly) from the camera phone to this Movable Type blog with no 3rd party servers involved.

And if it must, it can ring on occasion, but that doesn't mean I will answer it.

The Nokia N95 and Nokia N82 fit all of the above Ms. Jen requirements with their 5 megapixel cameras, internet, email, and the Nokia Lifeblog mobile app that allows me to moblog photos & text directly to this blog.

The E71, in all of its glory - frankly its sleek metallic sexy glory, only accomplishes half of Ms. Jen's required tasks. It goes on the internet and it has email. The camera is meh, though I really do like the photos Micki coaxed out of her E71 in Helsinki, as what the E71 could not deliver in clarity it made up for in shine and luminescence (much like the Nokia 7610). But the camera did not produce any photos that could compete with the N82. And there was no mobile app on the phone that would allow me to blog to this blog, in other words it just had Share Online 3.0 (no allowance for adding one's own Atom script as a new service) and no Lifeblog at all.

While the E71 worked as a lovely text based device, ie for texting or Twitter, it did not do 90% of the rest of the tasks that I use a mobile for on a daily basis, or if it did, not as good as the N95 or N82. The web browser on the E71 does not render web sites as nicely as the browser on the N82.

While I am not using my mobile for classically defined "business" tasks, I can see that the Nokia E71 would be a great if not superior replacement for a blah mainstream Crackberry or other biz phones. For the person who wants their mobile device to have a QWERTY keyboard (it worked nicely), with email, internet, and business applications, the E71 would be a fine machine, but I am a heavy creative content producer who needs a creative production mobile device. Also, the E71 was made for a larger hand than mine, I had to use two hands to hold it.

So the E71, whilst very sexy is not the device for me. It very well maybe the device for you.

Batteries for Ricky is not a new band playing opening slot the Glasshouse next Thursday, nor is it a new charity telethon, unless Ricky does want us to raise batteries for whatever his cause may be.

Early in September when I posted my Nokia (life)viNe review, Ricky asked about the battery usage of the Nokia viNe mobile app (not yet released, in closed beta as of Oct. 2008). He asked if I would use the Nokia Energy Profiler app to monitor the battery usage and power draw-down of the the Nokia viNe mobile app vs. the native NSeries geo-tracking and photography.

As a dutiful foot solider in the mildly-scientific mobile experiments, I loaded the Energy Profiler on the trial Nokia N82 and ran it as I tested the native GPS/geo-tracking while I took photos and then later started recording with Nokia viNe while taking photos.

The results are....

My own anecdotal experience is that the GPS plus photography = hot camera phone and low battery life, while the Nokia viNe mobile app does not make the N82 go hot and the battery lasts at least 4-6+ hours or more of normal to super usage.

As you can see from the photos above***, using the GPS/geo-tracking with the camera* causes spikes of battery drain over 2 watts while I took the photos or used other mobile apps (top two screenshots of the Energy Profiler), but later in the session using just the Nokia viNe mobile app to track my geo-path and take photos at the same time the battery usage consistently stayed under 2 watts with occasional spikes even under heavy draw (bottom two screenshots).

Nokia viNe plus taking photos* wins for less battery usage.

Update: Mon 10.13.08 - Ricky responds over at this post at the Symbian-Guru, "Ms. Jen Proves NokiaviNe Might Be OK". The comments are the interesting bit, as differing view points get fleshed out.

***
Notes:
* ...as well as using email, checking the web, and other usual bits to relieve boredom while driving to a client meeting in LA**.
** No judging about my mobile use while stuck in LA traffic, until a 35 mile drive takes you over 1.5 hours.
*** Per usual, if you are looking at these photos while on Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, you will see the nice Lightbox slide show with captions, if you are looking at it on Darla Mack's site, then you will just see the photos without the nice Ajaxy goodness.

"Polaroid photo "267 (meeting)" by Heather Champ, posted to her Flickrstream.

Wed 09.24.08 - Today was one of the worst days I have had in a very long time. To keep in short & sweet: I am on a very tight deadline for a delivering a web app and both my internet & phone went down today for a number of hours. I spent in excess of 7 hours today dealing with AT&T trying to get everything back up.

All of my neighborhood was effected by the internet outage, and my phone outage was compliments of a misunderstanding on AT&T's part about my recent trip to Helsinki. I will be having a conference call in the morning to straighten out today's 4 hours worth of phone calls to the "Customer Care" plus a trip to the local AT&T store for a new sim chip between bouts of hour plus long phone calls.

Please AT&T Wireless, don't make me regret 7 years of faithfulness to you.

The video(s) from the Nokia Open Lab 2008 are now up on the Ovi channel.

For all the attendees who were baffled as to why we were invited and what the purpose of the Lab was, in the part 2 of Jari Pasanen's introduction to the Nokia Open Lab event, he states what, as VP of Strategy, he was hoping to get out of the event:

"How we can actually improve the communication dialogue between guys like your self, because you also are not only leaders but also censors. You have a lot of understanding where this business is going. Nokia is now moving fast into the internet business. We are not saying we are an internet company. We still have our legacy, we are a mobile phone company, even though we call some of our products 'multimedia computers'...."

As I have watched some of the video from the event that is up on the Nokia Open Lab Ovi Channel, it has helped me to more clearly remember was was said, but... and this is a big but, I am even more forcefully struck then I was at the time by the lack of women present. The four of us who were invited did talk about the lack of women during the event and were told when we asked that more women were invited but couldn't make it.

In the video(s) of the Lab, it appears that Nokia's interest in brainstorming and/ or the experts about mobile and the interwebs' is only a guy thing. Yes, Anne, Micki, and I are featured in the videos (sorry, I haven't seen Rebecca yet in the vidstream), but the greater majority of the event invitees are men (4 women, over 35 men).

Where was Darla? Where was Cat? Where was Rita? There are a lot of women in mobile and internet who have expertise that should be shared with Nokia at an event like Open Lab.

If we are to take Jari's introduction seriously and statement that the Open Lab was a way for internet folk to share their expertise with Nokia, then there were many women with expertise in social media, blogging, media, creation, and the internet who could have been invited, such as: Danah Boyd. Lynne D. Johnson. Sharanya Manivannan. Jen Beckman. Anne Galloway. Megan McMillan. Molly Wright Steenson.

Just sayin'. For next time.

Also, next time, 2 or 3 days of workshopping / discussions / brainstorming would be better than 1.5 days. We were just getting comfortable to really get down to the issues when it was time to go home.

Go watch the videos on the Nokia Open Lab Ovi Channel, there is some good stuff there. And some funny stuff as well. ;o)

All Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

The synopsis of the very first ever Nokia Open Lab 2008 is below the "fold" (aka click on the continue reading bit)...

All Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Wed. 09.10.08 and Thurs. 09.11.08 - Thus the Nokia Open Lab 2008 starts off with travel from Seal Beach, California at an ungodly hour of the morning on Wednesday (ie before 5am) to get to LAX in time for a 7am (!!!!) flight to New York's JFK airport before transferring on to Helsinki via Finnair.

My neighbor Earl was so kind as to give me a ride to LAX before the crack of dawn even thought of getting up. The flight from LAX -> JFK was wonderful due to the lovely inflight GoGo wifi, as previously documented. At JFK, Micki and I stopped for lunch at an amusing "bistro" that was themed as a New York cop bar with the servers in fake police uniforms.

The plane ride from New York to Helsinki was uneventful, in that there was no wifi, and my poor rowmate, Rahul Nair, got a chatty Ms. Jen (sorry, Rahul...). But hey! Rahul was a part of the team that was responsible for Zonetag and Zurfer. Oh how I would have liked to have met him 2 years ago when I was working on the Around Ireland project. In my defense, it was an 8 hour flight to Helsinki and Rahul has been working in geo-location for a couple of years... ;o)

For the next two months I am participating in the Nokia viNe project, of which a number of different folks from around the world have been given trial Nokia N82's that have a new Nokia geo-tracking-photo-video-music application* called lifeviNe**. At its most simple, lifeviNe is a 2nd major iteration of SportsTracker mobile app that has been repurposed and redesigned for photo and video geo-tracking rather than adding photos to one's workout.

This past February, I had the opportunity to participate in the Nokia Urbanista Diaries, where four bloggers / photographers were sent around the world in four separate two-week trips. During the Urbanista Diaries trip, we used Nokia N82's to take photos, all the while we ran SportsTracker as we went out and about. At the end of every "Workout", I would upload the "Workout" to my account at the SportsTracker web site, and then the Urbanista Flash app on the Nokia Nseries website would display my/our photos on the geo-tracked-located-mapped route for each of the Urbanista Diarists.

In 4 hours and 3 minutes, two of my alarms will ring for me to get up, take a shower, pack the last final bits, zip up the small-ish bag I borrowed from Alex, and then go to LAX airport to depart for Helsinki, Finland.

24 hours from now, I will be in Finland for the Nokia Open Lab workshop/seminar event for four days. I am excited, but tired from the last few days of whirlwind. I will be moblogging photos as I go, also watch the Nokia viNe* flash interface on the nseries.com website, as I will be sending my photos up there as well.

* How to view my geo-located-pathed photos? Go to: Nokia viNe, click on the "Experience Nokia viNe" button, click on "Contributors", scroll right until you find Ms. Jen, click on my icon, and then wait for the photos, map and track gets served up.

I am now off to drive up to the San Francisco Bay Area to go to the DjangoCon 2008 that will be hosted at the Googleplex in Mountain View tomorrow & Sunday.

I am excited to be attending DjangoCon, Saturday night's Django 1.0 Release Party, and to visit the Googleplex for the first time. I had planned on staying up in San Francisco on Sunday night to have dinner with friends and generally wind down the weekend, but...

This morning I got a lovely email invitation asking if I wanted to attend the Nokia Open Lab* this upcoming week in Helsinki. Of course I said, "Yes, yes, yes!"

From the invite:

"The latest [Nokia Workshop] being a new annual workshop that hopes to involve an eclectic mix of the online community in a discussion of what the future holds for everything from mobile technology to media creation."

It will be a great whirlwind in the course of 8 days, all in the name of mobile and web creation! w00t!

* Big Thanks to Charlie for helping me out with the real name of the Nokia Open Lab event. As usual, Super Charlie to the Rescue.

mt_20080902_233542964.txt

Test... test.. test!

[Update from computer: Don't look so appalled at your screen, I am just testing that the Lifeblog on the new N82 works.]

Tue 09.02.08 - Yay! I am very excited.

1) No more voicemail.

2) SpinVox converts all my voicemail messages into text form or as an email.

3) Did I mention no more listening to voicemail?

I won't continue to tell you how excited I am that I have not had to listen to voicemail the last month... But I am excited and going to tell you about it. SpinVox, I love you.

Anyone who knows me spent a few years in the mid-2000s remembers being very frustrated with me, as I had my voicemail turned off completely. Yes, I flummoxed some poor defenseless AT&T Wireless employee by calling to request that my voicemail be completely turned off. It took about 15 minutes for me to convince him I was serious and that I wanted it completely deactivated. Turned off.

I happily lived from 2003 to 2006 with no voicemail on my mobile phone. I did have an answering machine at home that I would listen to when I was ready, which was usually at the end of the night & I would return calls the next day. And folks could text me on my mobile or send an email which I check multiple times a day from my computer & mobile. I have had an email enabled mobile since 2003.

Why did I do this? I really love asynchronous technologies and methods of communication. By asynchronous, I mean that the technology or communication that does not require instant response but allows the person receiving to read, process, and to return the communication when ready. Many have written about the stresses of always being on and plugged in, my way of dealing with the expectation that some folks have that one will always be available NOW is to set boundaries as to when I am available.

No, I will not pick up a phone call after 10pm or before 10am, unless it was prearranged. No, I don't pick up the phone when I am in a store or in a meeting or when having dinner. Etc.

Thus voicemails pile up. Some of them are important communiques that one needs the info fairly immediately, some are just "Hi! Was thinking about you!", some are long funny ramblings, and some are random who the heck are you. By the time one has dialed up the voicemail, listened to the messages, wrote down the important bits, deleted the rest, and hung up, I am frustrated by the inefficiency of the whole process.

Thus the genius of SpinVox. Our new best friends at SpinVox have a nice set of computers that record the voicemail from the caller when you can't answer your calls, the nice computers then use voice recognition software to translate the voicemail to a text and/or email, and within 1-4 minutes a nice text arrives at one's phone and a nice email comes down the pike as well.

One never has to listen to one's voicemail ever again. Thank the deities of voice recognition software!

Example a client called me the other day, when I was trying to talk to the Auto folks at the Toyota service area and I could not pick up. Before I finished my conversation with the Toyota service rep, I already had a set of texts waiting for me with my client's message. So, efficient. So nice.

Receiving texts and/or emails with the voicemails transcribed is particularly when folks are giving details that you would otherwise need to write down, like directions or phone numbers, as they arrive already written down.

I have chosen to receive both text to my mobile and emails to my gmail, I have been saving every voicemail to email for later reference. Why? Well, some of them are darned funny as the voice recognition does not get every detail right and does its best to compensate, its translations can be darned funny.

SpinVox does save all the actual voicemails for you if you want to listen to them or if it did not get all the important bits. The parts that the software can't recognize and transcribe is rendered as ________ and SpinVox gives you a reference number for that message. A reference number? Yep, so rather than listening to every danged voicemail to get to the one you want, when you call in the SpinVox system will ask which message you want to listen to. Fabulous!

SpinVox also allows you to verbally blog to your website, as well as send messages and other services, but I am still so excited about SpinVox converting voicemails into text form that I have yet to explore their other services.

My only complaint about SpinVox is that it took me months to get signed up as when one goes to their website it appears from the front page that the service is only for the UK and folks who have UK based mobile carriers. I was under this impression until May of this year when James Whatley, SpinVox's evangelist, corrected my error and let me know it was also for the US and many other countries. It is not until one clicks on the "SpinVox for You" menu item that one sees that one can choose a country other than the UK. The country options should be on the front page so that SpinVox does not lose business.

SpinVox, thanks for the great product and user experience. Y'all rock.

My tip of the day: How to sign up for a plan without a 24 month contract with AT&T Wireless in the US.

How? Easy. Buy your own Nokia Nseries phone and let the Sales Human at the AT&T store that you just want to get a sim chip and plan for it with no contract.

Ok, maybe not so easy. The sales human may try to sell you an AT&T branded phone from the store on top of your desired call & data plan. Resist. Bless AT&T, but at current time they are not carrying any Nokia Nseries phones due to the fact that Nokia will not back down on disabling the GPS & Mapping features (go Nokia!). AT&T would like to sell their own navigation/mapping solution for an extra $30 a month.

As an aside, let's do the math here (as of Aug. 2008):

Cheapest Apple iPhone is $199 with the mandatory 24 month AT&T contract (in the US). But you also have to pay AT&T $30 extra dollars per month for their GPS/Maps feature beyond one's phone & data plan, which is an additional $720 over the course of the 24 months.
$199 + $720 = $919 (real price of iPhone with GPS)

Cheapest Nokia N82 purchased on Amazon.com at the beginnging of August during a sale is/was $379*. A Nokia purchased outside of AT&T does not have disabled features, thus the GPS and mapping is free.
Thus the real price over the course of the device's lifetime is $379.

In my world as a photographer a Nokia with a 5 megapixel camera for $379 is a much better deal than a 2 megapixel iPhone for $919.

Now to get back to my point, if you show up at the AT&T store (or T-Mobile) with your own unlocked device, then you don't need to be in a contract. Multiple month contracts are a way for the carrier/operator to make their money back from subsidizing the cost of the mobile device. Last week, when my Mom and I went into the local AT&T store to purchase a sim chip and get a plan for her new Nokia N82 the sales support representative was very helpful and pointed out to us that he was taking off the 24 month contract requirement before I had to mention it.

If the AT&T sales human that you are purchasing a plan from does not rightly see the above logic, then find the manager to eliminate any contract requirement for a person with their own phone. The sales human will still get their commission regardless if you are in a contract or not, appeal to their finer nature.

*If you gasped at the cheap price for the Nokia N82, start watching Amazon's prices on Friday through Saturdays, that is when they seem to drop significantly. If I wanted to switch my Mom over from an evil little flip phone on Verizon, I had to find a similar price to what Verizon charged her two years ago. Now she is free.

I would like to encourage y'all to vote for my Mobile Creativity panel for SXSW 2009.

Moleskine to Mobile :: Consume or Create!

"Mobile devices are the frontier consumption vs. creation for over 2.5 billion people in the world. Do we, the people, use our mobile devices to consume other's creations or do we create with our mobiles? As designers, developers, and creators, will we let the manufacturers & operators define the mobile space or will we?"

Please go vote.

Tues 08.12.08 - Today my brother kindly repaired both the damaged case and the volume / zoom button of my Nokia N95 with his solder iron.

On Saturday, Scruffy decided he was going to chew on my phone and damaged the back plastic housing of the mobile to the point where it would have to be replaced or the phone would be ruined within a couple of months from exposure. That evening I ordered a Hello Kitty faceplate / housing / case that I found on Amazon.com to replace the damaged one.

By a strange miracle of the US Postal Service, the Hello Kitty faceplate arrived today. I was quite excited, pulled it out, and realized quickly that it was meant to be snapped on over the existing housing not a replacement for the original. I tried to snap it on, but the Scruffy chew damage was such that the Hello Kitty faceplate would not snap on. At all.

After lunch, I went in search of my brother who is very handy and can fix an amazing array of cars, boats, objects, etc. Luckily for me, he was working from home and had his gas powered solder iron in his truck. I decided that the case could not get any more fubarred, so I let him see if he could melt the plastic back into place.

And he did! Yeah! It doesn't look pretty, but the case now snaps on properly and protects the electronic innards of my mobile.

While he was at it, I asked him to solder down the broken volume / zoom contact point and it is now working again! Yeah!

Super Joe to the Rescue!

Sat 07.12.08 - Painter Ryan Callis and Poet Chris Davidson decided nearly a year ago to start an art / writing / music salon every two months in Seal Beach as a way to lure the Silverlake hipsters out of their lairs and out into the big wide world of SoCal.

The Salon has been quite successful with 30-50 attendees (mostly artists and writers) the second Saturday of the odd numbered month. I went last time (May) and had a good time listening to folks present their work and talking with other attendees of the artistic and writerly persuasions.

Ryan approached me about presenting some of my work at this month's Salon two weeks ago with the statement that the web has been under represented so far. I decided that I would promote all things web / mobile and photography by showing some of my India photos from the Urbanista Diaries adventure.

The other presenters were: Los Angeles painters Liz Carney and Feo Voronov, who displayed and spoke about their paintings (Photo of Liz Carney above with one of Feo's paintings on the wall next to her). Poet Patty Seyburn read from four of her poems. And Summer Darling played an acoustic set.

The constraint for the evening was that I had to show my work, describe my process and be done in 10-15 minutes.

Thus, I decided that I would actually present on a dual set of subjects: One being the adventure and process of geo-mobile-photo-blogging with the Nokia N82 on the Urbanista project and the other being the phenomenon of photowalking and making friends through Flickr groups. How would I cover so much ground and images in 15 mintues?

I distilled my presentation down to the bare minimum facts on mobile photo blogging and then specifically talked about the 4th Chennai Photowalk. I took all the photos that I took from the Chennai Photowalk and put them in a slideshow that played while I spoke on the Nokia Urbanista event and on the Chennai Photowalk folks. It was great fun and the audience liked not just the Chennai photos but also the whole idea of photowalking.

All in all, Salon #5 was delightful.

To start, I will let my Tweets from tonight speak:

"Ever since living in Ireland 2005-06, I have hated text messages. My hate grows worse here in SoCal. Don't send 5 texts when you could call!"

"I won't text back if folks are using it for extensive details rather than calling or email. Officially old & grumpy. Text is for short msgs"

"I wish one could opt out of receiving texts with one's carrier. I would. I don't see why I should be charged to be irritated. F*(ked up."

More of an explanation:

When I went to grad school in Ireland, 2005-2006, it was really expensive to make calls on one's mobile phone but comparatively cheap to text, thus everyone I knew in Dublin texted like mad and never called.

To help the average American understand, my monthly Vodafone.ie contract allowed for a multitude of texts but only 50 minutes of phone calls per month for approx. $74. The worst insult was that I could only get 6 mb of data a month for an extra $30. Every one, young and old, in Ireland texted.

In contrast, my contract with AT&T here in the States gives me 650 daytime minutes of calls a month, unlimited AT&T to AT&T customer anytime minutes, and free nights & weekends. All of this phone call bounty for $39.99 a month. I also have unlimited data and email on my mobile for $24.99 a month. But to send a text it costs me $0.15 a text and to receive it is $0.10 a text.

What this means is that I can send and receive unlimited emails from my phone for no extra charge, but each text - incoming or outgoing - costs.

Also, because it is more important for me to have the best camera available on my phone, I don't have a mobile with a QWERTY keyboard. Thus, texting more than one short message is a pain in the thumb and a pain in the wallet.

I could join the Century of the Anchovy and get a big fat 'ole text plan with 1000 messages or something, but then I would have to start actually texting back and forth to conduct a conversation.

What it boils down to is that for information beyond one idea or detail where one really does need to convey complexity and / or subtly, I will be be calling or emailing. Text (SMS) is my least favorite way to communicate.

Alternate title: Why my next phone will be a black Nokia N82 & not an iPhone...

The iPhone 3G that was announced today during Steve Jobs' keynote at the Apple WWDC in San Francisco and the Apple fanbois/grls were drooling, as well as drowning Twitter into a catatonic state with their drool.

I waited patiently next to my laptop for over 2 hours this morning to see if Apple would add two features to the iPhone that would convince me that it might be a good phone for creators. What two features would that be?

1) An upgraded camera that would make it at least competitive with other phones in its price range, at the very least a minimum of a 3.2 megapixel camera. If Apple really wanted to make creators drool, then 5 megapixels with a good lens that would be competitive to the Nokia N95 and N82.

2) Video recording capacity. My mom's crap little camera phone that she bought 2 years ago for half the price of an iPhone can record video. iPhone's can play video but they can't record it.

So, I wait by Twitter, MacRumors, and Engagdet Mobile. The announcements starting rolling in... $199! 3G! GPS! Approved applications store coming! Thinner! Plastic! White & Black!

Wake me up when the Jobs announces a real camera... snooze snooze snooze...

zzzzzzzzzzzzz....... Twitter dries itself off and comes back online and I notice that none of the fanbois/grls are tweeting about the camera. Hmmmm...

Off to the Apple site I go looking for the new iPhone 3G specs... After 10 minutes of reloading it, the new specs come up just before noon.

Guess what?

1) No new camera. Same old 2 megapixel, puny lensed, blurry non-wonder as last year, only addition is geo-tagging of photos with new GPS feature.

2) No video capture / recording.

The iPhone 1.0 and 2.0 are beautiful mobile devices with a lovely User Interface (UI) but why nearly all consumption and very little creation?

I am disappointed. I wanted to be able to have more than just the Nokia N95 and N82 to recommend to fellow artists, friends, and family when they are looking for a new kick ass camera phone with an easy to use UI, internet, and GPS.

To quote James Whatley, "Meh. Next."

To quote me, "One would think that Apple would have upgraded the phone to at least 3.2 megapixels... As Bill the Cat would say, 'Ack! Pphhhbbbtttt!' "

Unless something better comes down the pipe, my next camera phone will be the black Nokia N82. Nokia, release a North American 3G version of the N82 at $199... Kick Apple's bootay!

Wed 05.13.08 - Anytime that Chris and Alec want me to conduct a market research interview about my opinion on Nokia, I am available... ;o)

The only downside to my trip to the Nokia store is the did not have any wired headsets available for the N95, neither does nokiausa.com. Bluetooth is too crackly to listen to music on and the pair of earbuds that came with my N95are broken. Thus the trip to the Nokia store on Regents St.

Tues. 04.29.08 - Jason, Bryan, Arnold, and Donna at the Sky Room Bar in Long Beach.

This photo was taken with my Nokia N95 and then posted to this blog via the N95's Lifeblog as a demo on mobile blogging during the Nokia Open to Anything event.

Mon 04.28.08 - Robbie and Amir at dinner at FuRaiBo in West LA.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 on Feb. 25, 2008, in London.

Good news, folks! I wrote about it briefly back in March but it is now official and the Nokia Conversations will be launching within a few hours!

When I met up with Charlie Schick in late February at Paddington Station in London when we were both in transit, Charlie told me that he had left the Ovi group to start the official Nokia blog. I was and am darned excited about it.

Charlie and his team will be writing on Nokia, the Mobile / social space, and the like. Most importantly, they will be the continuing to make Nokia more open and transparent to the public. This can only be a good thing.

Charlie alludes to it in this post on his blog. Darla Mack blogs about Nokia invites us to the neighborhood. So does Mobile Jones...

Amy Gahran of Contentious.com's N95 bricked during an update recently and there is no recourse. Nokia needs Authorized Repair Centers that will take Nokia devices from all over the world & repair them, be it under warranty or for charge. Dell & Apple do it, Nokia needs to join the party.

From my first comment on Amy's post:

What do I think, well, Nokia needs to do the following:

A) If they are unable to have retail stores with repair centers in every major city in North America, then they should have authorized repair folks that one can take one's phone to be repaired on the spot or within a few days either under warranty or for charge. Before Apple opened the Apple Stores, they had Authorized Retailers and service centers all over the US and Canada. Nokia needs to do the same.

B) Nokia needs to increase the scope of their customer service to be like Apple or Dell, in that all of there devices can be repaired in any country that they sell their devices in. Don't tell me that the US customer service can't help a device bought in Europe or Asia. If that is the case, then sell the US devices at the same time you sell the European or Asian devices rather than 1.5 years later.

C) Nokia needs fully functioning "Suite" for updating & backup & multimedia for Mac & Linux folk. While the worldwide market for mac is only 4%, it is much higher in North America (17%?). Demographically & psychographically, the folks who buy Apple/Mac computers in North America are most likely going to be the market for Nokia Nseries (prefer design & high end function over cheapness). Folks buying $299 PCs at TigerDirect are unlikely to purchase a $649 Nokia N95.

Purple, people! Purple!

Many blessings upon the folks who approved a purple phone! Purple! Yay!

Do I need to say any more about a purple Nokia 6220? Like the Nokia N82 it has a 5 megapixel camera? Should I mention the Xenon Flash? Or the GPS? ... HSPDA? Huh...

But hey! The Nokia 6220 is Purple! Did I mention it comes in Purple?

Now when will AT&T roll out their HSPDA network that will be compatible with a purple 6220?

;D

Mon 03.24.08 - Now sending a 'small' image from the N95's Share Online to my blog, I wonder what size it will arrive at...

Update: The "small" setting on the Nokia Share Online 3.0 resizes the N95 photos to 640x480, which is my preferred size.

******

The March Madness 2008 Moblogging Saga (i.e. Lifeblog vs. Nokia Share Online):

1. The Big Switch Over, or Back to My Nokia N95
2. 03/22/2008
3. Dear Nokia, Time for some real UX testing...
4. How to Post to a Movable Type 4 Blog from Nokia Share Online 3.0
5. Scruffy's Clover Crown
6. Belle Running>

******

Sun 03.23.08 - Happy Easter!

Update: Here is the "medium" size in Nokia's Share Online 3.0 application. At 1024 x 768, it is still too big, not just for screens but also for the variety of folk who may visit one's site from broadband that really isn't that broad or from a mobile device or on dial up.

******

The March Madness 2008 Moblogging Saga (i.e. Lifeblog vs. Nokia Share Online):

1. The Big Switch Over, or Back to My Nokia N95
2. 03/22/2008
3. Dear Nokia, Time for some real UX testing...
4. How to Post to a Movable Type 4 Blog from Nokia Share Online 3.0
5. Scruffy's Clover Crown
6. Belle Running>

******

Since Charlie asked, I will reply...

Here is the how to steps that I took to be able to post / moblog (mobile blog) from my Nokia N-Series phone (in this case an N95) with Nokia Share Online 3.0 2.0 to this Movable Type 4.1 blog (MTOS 4.1):

1) First off, you will need to have your login user name and the associated Atom / Web Services password for that user name*. How to find this? When you are logged into your MT blog, look up in the top right corner for Hi "username", click on this link, it will take you to your "Edit Profile" screen. Scroll to the bottom under "Preferences", look for the last form box entitled "Web Services Password", click on Reveal. Copy this password.

2) Second off, you will need to know the URL to your MT install's atom script, it usually will be: http://www.yourdomainname.com/pathtomt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/

Example: http://www.happyexampleweblog.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/

3) Have your Nseries Nokia phone/mobile in hand, now is time to configure the Nokia Share Online on the phone. Click on the Main Menu button. Go to Applications folder and click on "Share Online". Click on Options. Click on "Add New Provider".

4) Provider Name: (whatever is best for you to remember) - I used "bpc" for blackphoebe.com
Protocol: Atom (if using MT or Word Press or Blogger, then Atom is your protocol)
Web Address: This is where you put in the URL for your Atom script.
http://www.yourdomainname.com/pathtomt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/
Once all of this is filled in, click on "back", and it will take you to the next screen. If it doesn't, then click on new account & choose the provider you just set up.

4) Here is the fun bit, start filling in the details:
Service Provider: Click on the name of the Provider you just set up. Then click on OK, it will take you to the next screen:
Account Name: I used the same name as as the Service Provider I just set up or you can say MT
User Name: your MT username from step #1
Password: your MT Web Services Password / Atom Password Reveal from step #1
Image Posting Size: The fun really begins here... If you pick Original size it will be the size that your NSeries phone takes the photos at, if 5 megapixel then YIKES~. Pick small or medium if your blog readers are coming at screen resolutions of less than 2600 x 1800 (which is about 99.99% of the internet). Think of your readers' experience, not everyone has a big screen nor do they have really fast broadband. Also, if you are not on an unlimited data plan then you will most likely want to choose medium (1024x768 in the N95's case, still too big) or small (640x480 in the N95's case, just the right size for this blog), unless you like really expensive mobile bills. I used the Edit function in the onboard Gallery app to resize my images to 640x480 for posting the most recent photo.

5) Save the above. Nokia Share Online will most likely try to activate. If you are me, it will not activate and get cranky. If it doesn't and activates right away, then you rock. If not, log out, turn off the phone/mobile. Reboot/turn it back on. Go back to the Main Menu, click on Applications, click on "Share Online", move the select over the MT account you just set up, and click on "Options", in Options click on "Update from Server". At this point or maybe if you are me, then within 18 hours, Nokia Share Online will decide to make friends with your Movable Type blog and post photos & text to it. If it can't activate or update server, check back tomorrow and it should have pulled its little head out of its crevices and will be working.

6) Now post away... If you try to moblog a photo from the "Share Online" world icon in the camera app of your Nokia Nseries phone/mobile, you will find that you can't edit the Title or add a description and only the photo with the date set will be posted to your blog. But if you take the photo and then go to the Main Menu -> Applications folder -> Share Online -> click on the service provider you want to post to (in my case "BPC", my MT blog) and then click on Options -> click on "New Post", then you will be able to add your own Title, Description, and then insert whatever Audio, Image, or Video you wish to post. After finishing all the bits, click on -> Options -> Post to Web.

Now time to experiment. Have fun.

****
Notes:

* I have two username accounts for my blogging, "Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen" is me posting from the web browser interface / admin of my Movable Type install and "Ms. Jen Moblogs" is only posts that I send from my Nokia camera phone to this blog directly. I do this to indicate to the reader what is a regular blog post and what is a moblogged post (posted from my mobile).

** If you are not a Movable Type peep, but prefer Word Press or Blogger or... and still want to moblog with Lifeblog*** or Nokia Share Online, this wikipedia article gives all of the atom URLs for various blogging services so you can configure your phone to moblog. If the Lifeblog on your Nokia Nseries phone is still working, then the above Atom username & web services password & atom script URL will work to set up to post from your phone's Lifeblog to your blog.

*** Michele Neylon has a great tutorial on how to post from your Nokia Nseries mobile's Lifeblog to your Movable Type 4 blog.

******

The March Madness 2008 Moblogging Saga (i.e. Lifeblog vs. Nokia Share Online):

1. The Big Switch Over, or Back to My Nokia N95
2. 03/22/2008
3. Dear Nokia, Time for some real UX testing...
4. How to Post to a Movable Type 4 Blog from Nokia Share Online 3.0
5. Scruffy's Clover Crown
6. Belle Running>

******

Two problems with Nokia's Share Online 3.0, one can't edit the title nor can one add a description before posting the photo to the web service / blog.

I was able to edit, resize, and rename the full sized photo of my great aunt Babe's bougainvillea bush from the Gallery on my Nokia N95, but once I opened Share Online it just sent the photo with the date that I sent it as the title, not the renamed photo name as the title. And then there is no description...

Ok, Nokia, no offense, but what the F*(k were you thinking to discontinue and disable Lifeblog when it was a fairly full featured mobile blogging app and replace it with a badly featured and thought out "share" app? Hello, maybe you should have put both out there and asked your customers which they preferred to use...

Hello... Helloo.... heeellllloooooo.... Are y'all awake up there in Espoo? Did you do any User Experience research with actual customers and power users rather than in house testers? Did you contact any real live mobile bloggers during the testing phase to see how we need an mobile blogging app to work with our photo / blogging flow? Heeeeeeeelllllllllooooooo.....

****

p.s. I added the text and renamed the title of this post from the web browser interface, not from the phone.

p.p.s. Listening to Motley Crue while I write cranky blog posts.

p.p.s.s. I plan on cracking open the box that I packed the N82 back up in to see if I can get the N82's working Lifeblog mobile app off of it and transfer the working Lifeblog sis to my N95 before shipping the N82 back to WOM World.

p.p.p.s.s. Next time I talk about updating one of my Nseries phones, stop me. Remind me that the Nokia Updater bricked my N80 and now has made my beloved Lifeblog inoperable. Huh... not trusting the transmissions from the mothership... huh...

******

The March Madness 2008 Moblogging Saga (i.e. Lifeblog vs. Nokia Share Online):

1. The Big Switch Over, or Back to My Nokia N95
2. 03/22/2008
3. Dear Nokia, Time for some real UX testing...
4. How to Post to a Movable Type 4 Blog from Nokia Share Online 3.0
5. Scruffy's Clover Crown
6. Belle Running>

******

Sat 03.22.08 - File under WTF!?!?!?!?!?!

After spending over 3 hours last night cursing the demise of Lifeblog the mobile app and attempting to get the new Nokia Share Online 3.0 to recognize the Atom script on this blog to no avail, today for no known reason whatsoever, Share Online decided to post this FULL SIZED photo of the Irvine Tollway Bridge over the 91 Freeway on is own volition. Thanks Share Online for not posting when I spent 3 hours trying to get you to participate and then posting out of nowhere on the freeway today. WTF?!?!?!?!?!

Despite its capricious ways, the good news is that Share Online 3.0 will post to Movable Type 4.1 blogs with no extra hacks. Yeah!

Now just to refine the process....

****

Update from Sun 03.23.08 : Since Charlie asked, I have created a how to / tutorial on getting Nokia Share Online 3.0 to work with one's Movable Type blog.

******

The March Madness 2008 Moblogging Saga (i.e. Lifeblog vs. Nokia Share Online):

1. The Big Switch Over, or Back to My Nokia N95
2. 03/22/2008
3. Dear Nokia, Time for some real UX testing...
4. How to Post to a Movable Type 4 Blog from Nokia Share Online 3.0
5. Scruffy's Clover Crown
6. Belle Running>

******

Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95, of which the Lifeblog is borked so this photo was uploaded via MT rather than moblogged.

The WOM World folk let me keep one of the Urbanista Diaries N82's through SXSW for better photo taking, but today I had to reset it back to factory settings & wipe the extra memory chip in anticipation of shipping it back to the UK and returning to the daily use of my Nokia N95.

To get my Nokia N95 back into daily use, I updated it to the most recent N95 update and optimized the files. Per usual, the update wiped all my settings and programs, so I had to reinstall ShoZu and Joiku, as well as redo my blog settings in Lifeblog. Only problem is that the 20.0.0.something update for the N95 has made Lifeblog incompatible with this install of Movable Type Open Source 4.1, or if not incompatible at least it won't recognize the correct settings. The N95 12.0.0.something Lifeblog worked just fine with this MTOS 4.1 install, and so did the most recent update / OS version for the N82. I have run through the phone's Lifeblog settings 7 times and reset them each time and it still can't find this blog. Bah!

When I met up with Charlie in London a couple of weeks ago, he was surprised that Lifeblog was installed on the N82 and said that the N82 would most likely be the last phone that would have Lifeblog. Charlie unofficially confirmed what I had supposed for sometime now, that Nokia has left Lifeblog to die.

This will be a problem for me and my daily moblogging from my phone to this blog. I have tried for a few years now to convince various Movable Type perl developers to make a mobile blogging plugin that would work across a variety of mobile platforms to moblog photos and text to one's MT 3.x or 4.x install, but to no avail. David Jacobs told me that his company, Apperceptive, has made such a plugin for paying customers and will be releasing a version to the public, but it has not happened yet.

Charlie is currently working with David on a blog for Nokia and hinted that one of the side projects would be a mobile blogging plugin for Nokia phones.

Please, please, please...

I still have three city photo essays to post for y'all: Goa, Mumbai, and Vienna; but unfortunately work has intruded. Darned work that I have to get done before I leave for SXSW on Thursday. In the meantime, while I was packing up The Box to send back to WOM World today, I wrote up my thoughts on the accessories that I took out on my leg of the Urbanista Diaries mobile adventure.

The Nokia Bluetooth Keyboard : Like it, but it takes a bit of practice to get the typing right. Even with practice, I will still making more typos than I would on a regular keyboard, of which part of that may be the bluetooth keyboard's size and part of it may be the small screen of which I could not always see what I was typing. I had been looking into getting a bluetooth keyboard before the trip and using it to type a whole blog post to a photo rather than just a headline was very convenient. I used the keyboard to compose several posts to this blog via Lifeblog on the N82 and was quite happy with the results. The only thing that was a bit of a pain is that the keyboard was not automatically found by the N82 but I had to download software for the phone to run the keyboard.

Nokia BH-602 bluetooth headset: I really didn't use this while in India, as I was not making a lot of calls. I did start to use it when I got home to try it out and other than the awkwardness of it being made for a bigger ear, I quite like it. It doesn't fully stay on my ear and wiggles around a bit, but I do like the lack of wires. The sound quality is a bit fuzzy with some crackles. If the price were under $60, I would buy it. But given that it is over $100, I won't be purchasing one.

The Proporta Charger: This would have been a very handy accessory to have for the trip to recharge the phone batteries while on the go, as the phone would lose battery power about half way through every day of photos plus GPS plus Sports Tracker running. Only one problem with the Proporta Charger, it never worked. I got a gimpy charger that even when it was fully charged, it would not charge another device. I tried a number of times, Jay tried when he was in Chennai, and the Proporta was declared defective on arrival. Good thing I had my own Power Monkey with me and the Power Monkey ended up being the best and most used accessory of the trip.

Generation X Cell Antenna: Ok, they are small, cheap, and sticky, but it works. I put the cell antenna extender in one phone and had another one that I did not have an extender on and then would test both in multiple situations. The cell antenna extender worked to boost at least one bar for phone calls and improved data connections. For all of my friends who are complaining about the dropped calls on their iPhones, too bad that they can't get into the battery compartment of the iPhone to add one of these little guys.

Nokia GPS Modules: I didn't use these. I had good GPS reception everywhere and had no problems with GPS to Sports Tracker, except for the lack of cell towers in the Mumbai Harbor (which was not a GPS problem but a Sports Tracker settings problem), so I never trotted this out. I carried one with me, but didn't need to use it. Part of the reason I may have not cared to use this GPS module was the lack of screen and/or LED read out made it boring to use. It is just a black plastic ovoid. Huh. Screen please with geo-coordinates. Nokia, make this thing fun to use.

Now all these accessories are back in the box awaiting their trip back to the UK tomorrow via the nice folks at DHL. I will be sad to see the bluetooth keyboard and headset go.

Sat 02.23.08 - Urbanista Ryan now takes the metaphorical baton and starts the fourth and final leg of the trip. Have fun, Ryan.

A wrap up post from me later and photo essays coming here over the next few days. Above photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 last night at the Schottentor U tram stop in Rooseveltplatz.

[note: This post was written on Feb. 18th in Goa, India, but could not be published until later due to lack of wifi or internet connection.]

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue."

India as the bride. From all of the billboards and other street advertising, India is big on weddings. Thus, I decided to pull the above proverb from the Euro-American tradition and use it as a major theme for the photos I would be taking / am taking with the Nokia N82 for the Urbanista Diaries trip to India.

It is fitting as South India, where I am visiting, is in a period of economic growth and cultural change. On every corner there is something old, something new, something colorful, and who knows... possibly something borrowed.

As I take photos of the India that I am photo walking and driving through, I am most intrigued and captured by the contrasts in architecture, color, typography / signage, and people in the cityscapes / landscapes, as well as the street dogs that are in all of the cities. The color and geometry of buildings in contrast to each other, the environment and the bustle of city life has been particularly intriguing.

In Chennai there was quite a bit of great art deco architecture, Bangalore is sprouting glass medium to highrises, Kerala is a mishmash of old dutch colonial and new sky scraping apartment buidlings, and Goa is a fascinating mix of old colonial Portugese with 1940s art deco to 1970s socialist brutalisme concrete block buildings.

India is the place to be if you are a graphic designer in love with type. The range of signage and advertising from hand painted to the highly sophisticated is amazing. And then the placement of said signs in their environmental milieu can be extraordinary.

I have not taken a lot of photos of people, unless I have their permission or if they are within the context of the cityscape / landscape. I hope that when I am in Mumbai there will be more opportunity to take appropriate people photos, esp. of street fashion. Today I saw a Goan couple walking down the street, she in cuffed jeans and he with a moderate quiff. Hmmm...

On top of what I am choosing to take photos of, I have after the Chennai Photo walk and viewing all 150 of those photos in the context of the Flash interface on the Urbanista Diaries site, I realized that they functioned almost as stop motion animation when the Urbanista slide show was fully loaded and playing smoothly with the big photos and the thumbnails. Since last Sunday's photo walk, I have been purposefully shooting a lot of photos, not deleting, and shooting multiples of a subject as I walk or drive past as to maximize the cinematic effect of the Urbanista flash slide show.

There you have it: Ms. Jen's photo theory thoughts on shooting mobile photos in India. For the moment at least.

Tues 02.19.08 - Photo of colorful lanterns taken by Ms. Jen on the walk up to the Elephanta Island caves with a Nokia N82.

Due to the lack of reliable internet connection, I am once again using the Lifeblog on the Nokia N82 to post this photo and text to my blog. Go Lifeblog Go. And get GPS embedding capacity while you are out there.

Now on to the subject at hand... If you were to go to the Nokia Urbanista Diaries website and look for my photos from today's expedition to the Elephanta Island caves, you would see my photos going out and coming back, but no photos for while I was there.

Why you ask? Well, if Sports Tracker does not have a data connection it will not map photos. No data connection means that Sports Tracker will think that there is no photos associated with the "workout activity" (yucky sports language again).

From one developer to another, this is silly. I had the GPS positionsing on at the same time, ShoZu was able to map all the photos even on Elephanta Island where there is no data connection to the main land cell towers. [Update from later: I realize that it is good to use the cell tower / data connection for when one does not have satellite, so I would like to propose here that Sports Tracker use both or one when the other is not available, but not to make it so that if there is no data connection that the photos are not uploaded.]

Why is Sports Tracker relying on triangulating one's position from the data connection to the cell tower rather than the far superior native GPS positioning that is already on the N82? I rechecked my settings, with live sharing off I should have the ability for Sports Tracker to rely on satellite data rather than triangulation from cell towers.

Thus, when I went to upload my "workout" to the server, no photos were found. In terms of our photo work flow for posting mapped photos to the Urbanista site, this means that I needed to find a computer with an internet connection that also has a usb port so that I could upload the cave photos manually to the Sports Tracker "workout".

This is when the trouble started: where to find an internet cafe: found; do the computers have a usb port to use: no, too old or already taken with mouse & keyboard; does the ancient computer at internet cafe have flash 8 or 9 installed and/or the latest browser that will support AJAX: no, no, no; does the computer at the internet cafe have connection faster than molasses during a blizzard: no, the frozen molasses is faster. Epic Sports Tracker upload in India Fail.

Being the determined little taurus turtle that I am, I went back to my hotel room and started to see if I could access my Sports Tracker account from the N82. You can, kind of. The site mostly loads, which is more than the nseries.com site does, due to the fixed width layout there is some amusing overlapping. (Did the dev team at Sports Tracker test the site on the mobile device, the N82, that they are co-promoting with their own product?)

Once I was logged into my account the list of workout activities did populate on my profiles page, a grey box with a whirling circle sat down to the right a bit loading loading loading, never to load. Whether that grey box was the flash obect for the photos, map or workout list, I did not know as none of the three ever loaded on the N82's browser.

Now, supposedly the N82 comes with FlashLite. Supposedly.

Ok. Let's talk folks. If Nokia or Apple or any other mobile device maker wants to market their high end devices beyond the US & European markets, then they need to acknowledge that not everyone has access to a internet enabled computer and if they do, it may only be of glacially slow speeds. And in some markets, the mobile is preferred over the computer.

A friend of mine in LA who hates computers recently bought a iPhone and after a month or two of using it realized that she wanted to purchase some music on iTunes and needed to update her iPhone. Only one problem, she couldn't do either, as she does not and chooses not to own a computer and the iPhone requires a computer (Mac or PC) to interface with the Mothership. I have previously blogged here about my repeated frustration with Nokia's PC only focus. Nokia and Apple, what about the millions and billions out there with no computer and whose only connection to the internet is your mobile device? Time to make all activities be functional purely from the mobile device with out having to access a computer.

Given that Nokia has a huge market presence in India and I have seen by far more Series 60 Nokia devices out and about in India than I ever do back in LA, should not all Nokia websites and software / web applications be fully functional on the phones produced by Nokia?

Flash may tell a lovely story to computers on a fast broadband, but what about the rest of the world?

The nseries.com website does have feeble mobile version, but as soon as you click on the links one will either get an error code or a very minimal functioned and designed site. Please look at m.twitter.com or m.flickr.com for great examples of fully funcitoning and well designed mobile versions of the Twitter and Flickr web apps.

It is possible to break out of our preconceived notions that our main work flow occurs on a computer and that the mobile is an additional device. The mobile is the main device for more people around the world than not. Let's move into the present with the devices and the applications.

Ok, as usual, I have all these plans to blog tons and tons and tons when traveling, but jet lag and the warring desire between blogging and sleeping are foiling my plans...

Here is what I have been up to so far in my Urbanista Diaries adventure in a brief sketch:

Urbanista Day -2 : Wed. Feb 6, 2008 : Fly from LAX to LHR (aka Los Angeles to London).

Urbanista Day -1 : Thurs. Feb 7, 2008 : Arrive in London, lunch with Siobhan, Donna, and Colin from WOM World. Four hour nap, and then meet the WOM World folk plus Richard for a glass of wine at Gordon's Wine Bar on the Embankment. Dinner. Attempt to sleep.

Urbanista Day 0 : Fri. Feb 8, 2008 : Fly from London to Chennai, India. Don't sleep on plane in an attempt to get on the Indian time right. Arrive at 1am.

Urbanista Day 1 : Sat. Feb 9, 2008 : Pop up at 5:30am after 2.5 hours of sleep. WIDE AWAKE. Fear that I will miss the Chennai Photowalk. Distressed that Hotel is too far out of town and in a neighborhood that is unwalkable. Talk to Urbanista Jay around 7:30am, find that he is in a nice hotel in the downtown area, ask him to inquire if there is room in the inn for me. There is. Relieved. Gather self & belongings to transfer to the Ramada Raj Park.

Text Chandrachoodan, the Chennai Photowalk organizer, telling him I will be late. Take a taxi to new & better hotel. Arrive, feel greatly relieved as the hotel and neighborhood are comfortable & walkable. Text C. again to apologize for being late & tell him will try and meet the photowalk later. C. texts me back to tell me that the photowalk is on Sunday. Jet lag brain is horrified at the confusion and texting C early on a Saturday morning. Oops!

Jay and I go to lunch, then back to the hotel to use the wifi to get things organized. Jay and I catch a auto rickshaw to the Sam Thome Cathedral/Basilica. Walk around. Service going on so walk down to the beach. Get besieged by beggars. Go back to Cathedral, go inside, walk around look at it. Go visit Saint Thomas' tomb under the Cathedral. Walk a bit. Take lots of photos. Jet lag catches up to me something fierce. Jay & I go back to the hotel and discuss life, the world, and the mobile universer before he departed for the airport to fly back to the UK. Goodbye, Jay. End of day 1. Well, except I couldn't fall asleep until 3:30am...

Urbanista Day 2 : Sun. Feb 10, 2008 : The Day of the big Chennai Photowalk dawned bright and clear with me up just before dawn... Yes, once again, less than 4 hours sleep. I will write a whole separate post about the Chennai Photowalk, but it will suffice to say: It was Excellent. Excellent in the Bill & Ted fashion. I had a blast. 3 hours, 4.25 miles of meandering up & around Mount Rd, 87F degrees or more, sunny, 75% humidity, great photographers, even better conversation. Basically a ton of fun. I was sad when we parted at 11am, summer camp departure sad - wait! these are my new best friends - we can't leave - so moo & biz cards were procured. Now I have a bunch of great blogs to read and new flickr friends.

I got back to the hotel just in time for it to pour rain all afternoon and for the jet lag to smack me upside the head. Can go out and be a photo tourist when it is pouring, so I napped instead... Only to wake up many hours later just in time for a late dinner at the hotel and a night of NoSleep.

The method of mobile blogging that we are using during the Nokia Urbanista Diaries adventure to send photos from the Nokia N82 phone to the Nseries Urbanista website is as follows:

1) Turn on Sports Tracker. Start a "workout". Make sure the GPS signal is strong.

2) Start going around on the adventures and take photos. Go lots of new places, takes photos, make sure the GPS signal remains strong.

3) Stop the Sports Tracker "workout". Click on "upload to service". Sports Tracker will find the photos associated with the "workout" route and send them to the ST server with the GPS data and athletic data.

4) The Urbanista Diaries flash app then pulls the photos, geo & route data feed to create a photo map and the slideshow that you can watch on the site.

At the beginning of the year, I blogged that I really didn't like Sports Tracker as a mobile blogging app for the reasons that it is created to be a sports tracker and not a photo tracker, I also wondered why Nokia has allowed Lifeblog to go dormant rather than adding the geo data capacity to that established app.

During the course of January, I tried Sports Tracker out a few times while walking Scruffy McDoglet and liked it as a mobile app to tell me how far we had walked and at what pace, but I still felt that it was not an app for mobile photo blogging.

Urbanistas Devin and Jay both blogged about their frustrations with Sports Tracker while out on their journeys and Ryan has tested it before starting his part of the Urbanista adventure.

I am now at the end of my second full day of mobile - geo - blogging with the Nokia N82 and Sports Tracker has been doing a good job of tracking where I have been going around Chennai, has added most of the geo data correctly, and has been able to find and send without error most of the 200+ photos I have taken. I am certainly not going to complain about how Sports Tracker sent up all 150 photos from today's 4th Chennai Photowalk, no, actually I am going to praise the hard work that the developers have put into improving the system in the last four weeks that the Urbanista Diaries has been going.

What I would like to point out here is what Sports Tracker could do to make the application a little more photo mobile blogging friendly or spin off a sister app that would be 'Photo Tracker':

1) If Nokia wants Sports Tracker to be adopted and used regularly by more than just the athletic or tech geeks then make the mobile and web based user interface be visual with photos and geo data at as the first level of interaction.

Find someone's mom who loves to take photos but is non-technical (I will donate my Mom to the cause) and have her be the UI tester without any explanation, if she can use the app while taking photos and then post them to the server, then everyone can. Take a big tip from Nokia's Lifeblog app for the phone on this. The photo thumbs are the first thing that comes up and then you can do things with them via 2 different menus (one menu with the thumbnail display and one menu for each photo).

How could this work for Photo Tracker, well make the "timing" start when one opens the camera app - this action should be a choice as not everyone will want every photo geo tracked nor the pull on the battery resources that the GPS and tracking app take. Each photo should have a manual (at the time or later) opt out feature, as some photos you don't want geo tracked and some you don't want sent to the Photo Tracker server.

2) Yes, allow the photographer to choose which photos get sent up to the server from each timed tracking activity either before sending the data and photos to the server. The fact that Sports Tracker currently sends all the photos it can find during the interval of the activity is either too much (150 photos from today's photowalk! Yikes!) or some photos should not be sent due to privacy or it is just a bad photo.

3) Now onto the Sports Tracker web based application... The colors and layout of each workout profile may be conducive to sports based athletic training and tracking, but not for photography or showcasing one's mobile photos. Photo Tracker should have the photos up above the "fold" not buried as tiny thumbnails at the bottom of the web page. Don't get me going on the green & black color scheme...

4) Take a tip from any number of social networking applications and allow the user to configure the layout to suit their needs: Sports folk will want the athletic data prominent and Photo folk can make the photos prominent. Also, allow the user to change the stylesheet: ie the colors, typography and minor layout changes (see blogger, typepad, vox, myspace, et al for how folks can customize the look).

5) Take a tip from any number of social networking apps and an allow the view/user to easily find one's friends recent 'posts' / 'activities'. Right now it is very difficult for me to find the most recent uploads from Ryan & Jay and I can click on Devin's username to navigate to his space on Sports Tracker at all. Take a tip from Flickr on this, Flickr makes it really easy for me to see the most recent photos from my contacts and friends.

6) Last but not least: Own your own stuff. Allow the advanced mobile photographer or web dev the option to host and send the data to their own website and make it apart of the settings in Photo Tracker to post to your own blog if you so choose (Atom Protocol anyone?). This person can then take the athletic and geo data via the xml/kml file and with the photos create their own mobile app.

Lifeblog lets me post directly to my website via the Atom Protocol and that is why I prefer it to all the other mobile photo blogging apps out there, but it doesn't embed the geo data. Sports Tracker and Shozu both embed the geo data but they don't let me send the photos and data to my own site but only to their websites.

Frankly, after how Nokia seems to have left Lifeblog high and dry, why should I put up two plus years of photos and geo-data to Sports Tracker if in 2-3 years it will be DOA as well? Data portability and/or stability for long term archival purposes and url links is important.

At the very least, make all the data and photos be exportable, not just on the phone but also on the Sports Tracker / Photo Tracker site.

Some folks may argue that Sports Tracker already does the job of athletic activity tracking well. This is true. Why fiddle with the system and add a full featured Photo Tracker? Well, that is how we are currently using the system for the Urbanista Diaries as a Photo Tracker, not a Sports Tracker.

One could also argue that ShoZu and Flickr do much of the same functions as we are using Sports Tracker to do and that I envision that Photo Tracker could do, so why recreate the wheel? In web world, the first to enter the market is not always the best web app in the long run. When was the last time you used Friendster? Applications developed later can learn from others before them, iterate, add new features or goals and come out with the stronger user base, ie. MySpace and Facebook.

Nokia, how about a full featured Photo Tracker that takes the best of Lifeblog and Sports Tracker mashes 'em up, iterates a bit, and makes this mobile photo blogger darned happy? How about it? Run with it.

Or the attack of the famed Movable Type 500 error code...

This last week in the middle of attempting to finish up my client work and get ready to leave for the Urbanista Diaries adventure, I started to experience 500 internal server error codes when I logged into this blog. Not a good thing to have. But if I refreshed I was able to access the admin interface.

On top of traveling from LA to London to India in the last 72 hours and only getting about 5 hours sleep, I was not able to log into the blog interface at all. Agh! I was able to send mobile photos via Lifeblog, but not login. Odd.

This evening, after trotting around Chennai with Urbanista Jay today, I started troubleshooting and a few emails to my web host folks to no avail. I realized that the trouble started when I upgraded to the MT 4.1 professional, so in a last ditch effort to blog this evening, I deleted the MT 4.1 Pro install and reinstalled MT 4.1 Open Source. All is well and I can blog again.

Now I am too exhausted to say much more. Time for bed, as tomorrow morning is the Chennai flickr group photowalk nice, bright and early. Go over to the Urbanista site for the photos I uploaded via Sports Tracker today and I will put the rest up here with some words on why I think Sports Tracker should refocus and become Nokia Photo Tracker...

***
Update on Sun. Feb. 10, 2008 - Ok, using MT 4.1 Open Source is working in that I can blog. Yeah! But... some functionality is broken: like the links to categories. Please bear with me here, as my first priority in the next two weeks is to photo blog with the Urbanista world, if I get the time I will troubleshoot and fix any functionality issues.

For now, use the archive link to find posts.

Yes, Ms. Jen leaves in less than 36 hours for her big adventure on the Nokia Urbanista Diaries adventure. Of course, I will be blogging photos and text here and at my Flickr account, but also check out the Urbanista site OR... even better embed the Urbanista widget on your website or MySpace or Facebook or the like.

Here is the code to embed the widge on your website or MySpace account:

<div id="flashcontent"><strong>In order to view the Nokia N82: 
The urbanista diaries you need JavaScript and Flash Player 8+ support</strong></div>
<script src="http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/js/swfobject.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">var so = new SWFObject('http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/media/campaigns/n82/widget.swf', 
'Nokia N82: The urbanista diaries', '300', '250', '8', '#ffffff');so.addParam('wmode', 'transparent');
so.addParam('flashVars', 'bloggerID=4&copy=http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/media/campaigns/n82/data/en-R0/widget.xml');
so.write('flashcontent');</script>

For iGoogle or Facebook go to the Urbanista site to download the widget for your world. Pick the Ms. Jen widget...

Mon 02.04.08 - After all of Friday's troubles, fire drill, and hurried documenting of box contents to make the US Customs folks at LAX release the package from WOM World for my leg of the Nokia Urbanista Diaries adventure, it is a big relief to see the DHL truck pull up in front of my apartment building as I was coming back from a walk with my Mom and Scruffy.

I was so excited to document the arrival of the Nokia N82s and attendant accessories that I pushed the video button and made a video instead of a photo and I said "DSL" instead of "DHL". Oh well. The DHL delivery guy was a good sport.

As with Jay, my box contains:

3 Nokia N82s
2 Nokia GPS Modules
1 Nokia Bluetooth Headset (darn! I did not get the Pirate one that Jay did)
1 Nokia Buletooth Keyboard (excited!)
and a bag of goodies: sim chips, extra batteries, The Proporta Mobile Survival kit, and something called the Generation X (((CELL ANTENNA))) *.

The last item looks like an enlongated golden RFID chip, but you paste it into the battery compartment of you phone and it boosts low cell reception. All my iPhone friends on AT&T need this**.

Yeah! The Urbanista Diaries countdown continues: two more days to go, then I am on a plane.

-------
* According to the over the top copy at the amazon.com link: "AS SEEN ON TV".... Judge for yourself. I will let you know if it works well or not.

** I am on AT&T & have no reception problems with the Nokia N95. The iPhone folks in the same area are having dropped calls and data. It is the hardware, people. The internal antennas in the mobile device. Yet another way that Nokia kicks Apple's bootay...

I will fly into India late Friday night / early Saturday morning from London to officially start the Urbanista Diaries adventure. And the very next morning at 8am, I will be meeting up with the lovely folk from the Flickr "Chennai Photowalk" group to go on a Photowalk of Mount Road in Chennai (Madras)!

This will not just be hitting the ground running, but photo-ing! Ok, bad pun.

I am excited. I like to plan for my photo and mobile blogging adventures a bit beforehand and it is always better if one can meet up with like minded people.

I am looking forward to next Saturday's Photowalk in Chennai. Big thanks to Chandrachoodan for organizing it!

Happy Friday to you! Happy Friday to me!

One week from today, I will be flying from London to Chennai, India. Yes, one week plus one day, aka next Saturday, the Nokia Urbanista Diaries starts for Ms. Jen!

Starting tomorrow, I will be blogging about the cities I will be visiting. But today I will give you the amusing tidbits that happened during the course of the day in the name of getting ready for the Urbanista adventure...

Amusement of the Day #1 - File under small typo turns into "Fun with Bureauracy™", I will let my Twitter-stream speak for me:

msjen Assistant at WOM world office labeled the phones as £18,000 instead of £1800. US Customs is now holding them. I am to leave next week...

msjen I have to either file an expensive bond or pay thousands in taxes. All over a clerical typing error.

msjen No, I had to call them get the correct invoice, & then verify it with MY Social Security card. Ugh. Hopefully, all is well.

msjen customs wanted proof of my biz tax id, but I do everything with the IRS online & don't have a card. So my Social it was.

I will find out tomorrow morning if the US Customs folks at LAX will accept the invoice with all the contents listed & with US Dollar prices of approx $2600 and not $37,000 or if I have to post a $250 bond to get the Nokia N82 and other related Urbanista stuff out of hock. The best part about the bond is that when I leave next Wednesday and take it all out of the country back to its originating port of LHR, I would not get the $250 bond returned.

I told the WOM World folk that we should let US Customs reject it and DHL just ship it back to the UK on Monday and then I pick up the package from WOM World on Thursday. Bureauracy should never ever be rewarded with money. Ever.

Amusement of the Day #2 - File under Prepping for the Tropics, also from my Twitter-stream:

msjen Just took my first anti-malaria pill. Hopefully, I won't have any of the evil nightmares, depression, etc that Mefloquine is known to cause

msjen According to the directions: If one vomits w/in 30 mins. take another pill. If w/in 60 mins. take a 1/2 a pill.

msjen Up to 1850, folks mixed quinine with wine. So, what's good for the goose, must be good for the gander. ;o) glass of wine in hand.

msjen Nearly 2 hours after taking my Mefloquine pill and no vomiting! FTW! Now crossing fingers for no nightmares or psychotic breaks!

Gratuitous Dog Nose photo taken by Jen Hanen with her Nokia N95 in Dec. 2007

Tues 01.29.08 - One week from tomorrow afternoon, I get on an airplane and start the start of my portion of the Nokia Urbanista Diaries!

Hee hee hee... Can we say excited? Yep. Can we say extra excited about traveling to Europe -> India -> Europe with a Nokia N82 in hand? Yep. Can we say that there is too much to do before next Wednesday? Yep!

Here is my Urbanista Diaries schedule:
Wed. Feb. 6th : Leave LA for London
Thurs. Feb. 7th : Arrive London - Trot around London for the Day.
* Celebrate Chinese New Year with Steve Marshall at the Jade Garden in Soho for a Dim Sum lunch!
Fri. Feb. 8th : Depart London for Chennai, India
Late Friday / Early Sat : Arrive Chennai
Sat. Feb. 10th : Meet up with Urbanista Jay in Chennai, receive mobile 'baton'
Mon. Feb. 11th : Depart Chennai for Bangalore
* Hangout in Bangalore for 2 days. Take photos.
Wed. Feb. 13th: Depart Bangalore for Kochi, Kerala
* Hangout in Kochi. Trot around taking photos.
Fri. Feb. 15th: Depart Kochi for Goa
* Goa. 2.5 days. Photos. Old Goa.
Mon. Feb. 18th: Depart Goa for Mumbai
* Mumbai (aka Bombay). 2.5 days. Photos. Have fun.
Early Thurs. Feb. 21st :Depart Mumbai for Vienna, Austria
*(Hello! One small suitcase. Tropical climate to European winter! Hello! Crazy!)
Sat. Feb. 23rd: Pass off mobile 'baton' to Urbanista Ryan
Sun. Feb. 24th : Depart Vienna for London.
*Attempt to stay in Oxford and London for a few days before departing for home (SoCal).
Wed. Feb. 26th : Fall into a puddle and sleep for multiple days.
* Then go to Austin, Texas for SXSW to speak at Interactive and enjoy Music from March 6 - 16th. ;o)

I will mind getting the two client websites I need to finish before departure on the 6th, as well as take my anti-malaria pills on schedule, and you all can mind your bits by doing the following:

1) Don't forget that there is a contest to win a Nokia N82 every week during the Urbanista adventures. Just go to the website, look at the photos, log in, and identify the photo of the week. And hopefully win a kick ass camera phone.

2) Download the Urbanista Ms. Jen Widget and add it to your blog, iGoogle, Facebook or MySpace. If you can't find the embed code to work for you, I have posted a plain text version here that can be copied and pasted onto your blog or MySpace space.

3) Hey, I am going to be in India from Feb. 9th to 20th. If you have any friends or connections in Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi, Goa or Mumbai who would like to go out on a mobile photo walk or show me the wonders of their city, please email me at 'blackphoebe at gmail dot com'. Any recommendations would be lovely! Let me know!

One of the things that I love about Nokia's Nseries line of phones is that they are mini-computers with a phone, camera, and internet connection. On top of all of that, one can update the firmware / software of the mobile device just like one can update their computer's firmware or software.

Does your mobile start to get a little slow after a while or have blips & burps or freeze or crash? Well, if it is a Nokia, you can download the Nokia Updater to your PC, plug your mobile into the data cable and then into the computer, back it up, and then Update. Couldn't be simpler, right?

Well, if you are me, an ardent Nokia fan, but also an owner of 2 Mac computers (15" MacBook Pro & a 12" PowerBook G4), you have a wee bit of a problem when it comes time to update one's phone or internet tablet... it is called... how to borrow a PC... Trust me, do not, DO NOT, whatever you do, think you can run Nokia's Updater from the Windows install of Parallels on your MacBook Pro. JUST SAY NO. I have a lovely little N80 brick that no amount of the Kings Men or repair people will put back together again...

Now every time an update is announced for the N95 or N800 tablet, I am VERY VERY VERY reluctant to even think about updating, even though both need it. I call my brother, ask if I can borrow his work PC laptop, drive over there, run the Nokia Updater application and find out if there is an update available. The N800 has had several updates since it arrived in October and the N95 (RM-159) has only had one last July, even though all the other N95's in the world have had at least 3-5 updates since then.

My N95 is starting to sssslllllloooowwww down. It really needs a good firmware shot in the arm or in the patooty. I would love for it to focus and shoot a photo faster than its current stop, focus, focus, focus, pick nose, focus, focus, hey-look-theres-a-squirrel, focus, focus, hey! maybe I should take a photo speed. It is driving me crazy. The lower the light, the slower the focus with our friend the N95 v.1.

Mind you, my N95 is faster than my N80 was, but now that I have tasted the delights of the N82, the N95 is looking and working old & slow. Dang! It is only 6 months old and cost me a lot of $$$. Where is my update? Where is my update that I can do natively from my Mac?

A few days ago, I went and checked to see if there was an update available on the local borrowed PC for my N95. No new update. So sad.

But there was an update available for the N800 tablet. Ok, let's update.
Updating. Updating.. Updating...
Nokia's software tells me to turn off Tablet, disengage the cable, and reboot. Ok.
No go. No turn back on. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Look at borrowed PC. Swear. Swear again. Crap.

Google problem. Find that there is a Mac hack to flash the firmware updates for the Nokia 770 and 800 available. So, I download it to my MacBookPro, download the last update and the newest update. Use my Mac to flash the N800 to its last update and... it turns back on... it works... it restores its data. All is well in N800 land, thanks to Mac!

Then I try to use my Mac and the flasher software to update the N800 tablet to the OS 2008 Tablet software. All is well. It works. Birds sing.

Then I use the Mac flasher to send it back to OS 2007 as a test. All is well. Take N800 tablet to borrowed PC, attempt to flash the OS 2008 tablet firmware using the PC. Bricked again. Crap. Use Mac to reflash. All is well again. Birds sing.

Moral of Story? Use a Mac. PC's suck, esp. ones running MicroSquash. (My Dell with Ubuntu Linux is very nice. Linux gets less love from Nokia than Macs do.)

Moral of Story? Hey Nokia, increase your market share and profits by supporting Macs! Give your Mac owning fans some love. Do not accede all the market to Steve Jobs and the iPhone.

Moral of Story? I would like to see all Nseries devices get updates at least every 3 months. If I am going to spend over $500 US, I would like consistent support for at least 2 years.

Moral of Story? I want a Nokia Updater that works with my Nseries mobile device natively on my Mac.

Who cares you say... Well, it does matter, folks, as I sent her off in a little FedEx envelope with a check, an application, and two photos to the Indian Embassy's outsourcer (yes, they use an outsourcer) a number of weeks ago to apply for a tourist visa to India in anticipation of the Urbanista Diaries trip.

The Outsourcer kindly had an online passport tracker to let me know how it was progressing along a line of desks on Mission St. in San Francisco (hey, if the Embassy is going to outsource, mighty kind of them to do it to my home state). Within an hour of my passport's arrive, it was "On Hold". Yep, "On Hold".

After a few weeks, a few emails, a few phone interviews to clarify my intentions, and two letters on my part, the upswing is that if one is a "Freelance Artist & Designer" from California, one's visa application will be on hold while the Outsourcer susses out if you are a journalist (no), a filmmaker (no - but you are from LA, no, I am not a filmmaker), a web designer seeking work in India (no, got enough right here at home in California, thanks), or ....

Anywho, after writing the second letter assuring that my intentions for travel in India were honorable and that I will be conducting a whimsical photo tour of India that is a continuation of an ongoing mobile photo project, my visa was approved and my passport returned.

Good thing that the Nokia Urbanista Diaries are merely a global mobile photo and geo-mapping project to showcase the Nokia N82's abilities and not a film project... ;o)

Today, Jay arrives in Singapore.
Tomorrow, Devin completes his leg of the Urbanista Diaries trip and passes the baton onto Jay, whereupon Jay trots off to Malayasia & Thailand.
Two weeks from today, I will be in Chennai, India.
Two weeks and one day from today, Jay will pass the baton onto me.
30 days from today, I pass the baton onto Ryan in Vienna...

Listening to "Up Around the Bend" by Hanoi Rocks. Finland produces more than multimedia mobile devices... ;o)

The same weekend of CES and the porn convention thingy (sorry, I don't pay attention to acronyms at the best of times, let alone the beachballtits acronyms) in Las Vegas is always the weekend of the American Football finals weekend. Thus, my brother, his good buddy Mike and Mike's dad make their yearly pilgrimage to the Sports Book at Caesar's Palace to spend the weekend drinking and betting and getting sick from the smoke & viruses brought to the sports book room by all the folks who are in there. Got to love Las Vegas.

Now listening to "El Matador" by The Spores. Molly rocks harder than you.

Whether you go to CES, the porn thingy, PRB, VLV, or any other reason to go to Lost Wages, you will come home with the Las Vegas Flu. The LV Flu is worse than anything you pick up in an airplane. First off there are a wider variety of folk from more ports of call in any given casino in Lost Wages than in any airplane. Then add onto that the canned, recycled air, and SMOKE. Did I mention the extra, pungent, oxygenated smoke that is recycled in Vegas? Add that to at least 243 viruses and you have SICK. Real quick.

Now listening to "Beat Surrender" by The Jam. If you haven't guessed, I have iTunes on shuffle.

Sin City nothing. More like Sick City. What goes on in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. It comes home with you. If you are a mild mannered (me) or a medium mannered (brother) Hanen, it means coming home sick with a nasty head cold which can develop into more. Now if your manners aren't mild or medium, then wrap it. I don't want to hear what you picked up.

So, my brother spent all last week at home with bronchitis, conjunctivitis, and sinusitis. The CL said he had an extendo hangover, but today (10 days later) was his first half day back at work. Hardly a hangover.

Up now? "Not a Crime" by Gogol Bordello.

I felt mild twinges of tummy flu last week but squelched it. I woke up this Saturday for our first day of the Punk Rock Bowling Tournament #10 with my nose dripping at an alarming rate and I was COLD. I am never feel cold. I like 45F. I like skiing. I like cold weather. I run hot. But I have been cold ever since Saturday. I currently have the heat on in my apartment. Shocker.

"Toast of the Town" by Motley Crue from the remastered "Too Fast for Love" cd. Thanks, Alex!

Don't know if I was getting a bit sick before leaving for Punk Rock Bowling, but within 12 hours I was very sick. Now this makes for a boring weekend. I was in bed by midnight and waking up at 10am. No real drunk, but lots of cold medicine. Bah. How can one flirt with hot 40-something punk men when one's nose is dripping and one has a sore throat. Really.

Speaking of the Crue and Ikki Nikki Three & a Half... if you have a copy of the original Leathur Records "Too Fast for Love" contact me. That is one of the best punk/metal albums of all times - Dead Boy-esque. The 1981 EMI version is just metal. Bah.

Ha.ha.ha.ha... In your mind you are thinking, "Ms. Jen must be sick and a bit loopy, she just wrote 'hot 40-something punk men'!" Yes, it was true. But flirting whilst sniffly never is very effective so I have no news to report. But the men were hot.

"Family Tree" by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. Love the TSPO. Love 'em.

I hope I don't get as sick as my brother, as I have WAY TOO MUCH TO DO before departing for the Nokia Urbanista mo-pho adventure on Feb. 6th. Like finish two client websites, update the barflies.net's CMS, and put together all of the Punk Rock Bowling photos (334 of 'em) into a mammoth photo essay.

"Leavin' Here" by Lars Fredricksen and the Bastards. Other than Gordy (the Unknown Bastard), none of the other Bastards or alumn Bastards were at Bowling this year. Hmph. Oh, Craig Fairbaugh, where are you? Did you fall off the planet?

Speaking of the Nokia Urbanista Diaries, how did Devin visit Punk Rock Bowling for most of Saturday but he did not post a single photo to the Nseries website? Enquiring minds want to know. I know he got some good photos, as I was with him when he was shooting and talking to the ladies with leopard print Sidekicks.

"Do the Devil" by the Amazing Royal Crowns. No websites for the Crowns, other than MySpace and all my old articles and other bits. Hey look! Someone put up a wikipedia article on the Crowns. Yeah!

Actually, I do know why Devin couldn't post his photos from the Sam's Town Bowling lanes... if one can't get a GPS signal than Nokia's Sports Tracker won't post the photos from the route taken. Why are we using software that is not working while the first of our four mobile bloggers is already out on the road? If Nokia would just add geotracking to Lifeblog and toss the Flash interface into the can, it could have worked out of the box.

iTunes is now playing "I Can't Get It" by Hanoi Rocks. Even though I have 1648 songs in my iTunes Library, it keeps coming back to Hanoi Rocks, The Jam, and Sigur Ros. Odd.

Well, to stop the cold induced brain dump now, I will say this, I can't get it why the world's premier mobile phone manufacturer insists on using Flash for their website. Ironic when one considers that most mobiles can't get Flash and Flash Lite is not so great. Gotta agree with Finland's other export, Hanoi Rocks, right now. I don't get it at all.

Sat 01.19.08 - Devin Balentina, who is on the 1st leg of the Nokia Urbanista Diaries! Devin came to visit us at Punk Rock Bowling. Good fun!

I worked on refining the design of this website and have started making a Mobile version of the site.

Yep, a .mobi - view on your mobile / cell phone, version of the website. It is almost there, when I have it ready all the way, I will ask for help in testing it on various cell / mobile phone browsers.

I also added the Nokia Urbanista Diaries widget to the sidebar on the blog and as a center piece on the entrance page to the website. If you would like to follow along by adding the widget on your blog or website, here is the widget code to copy and paste onto your site:

<div id="flashcontent"><strong>In order to view the Nokia N82: 
The urbanista diaries you need JavaScript and Flash Player 8+ support</strong></div>
<script src="http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/js/swfobject.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">var so = new SWFObject('http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/media/campaigns/n82/widget.swf', 
'Nokia N82: The urbanista diaries', '300', '250', '8', '#ffffff');so.addParam('wmode', 'transparent');
so.addParam('flashVars', 'bloggerID=4&copy=http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/media/campaigns/n82/data/en-R0/widget.xml');
so.write('flashcontent');</script>

Or you can download the widget from the Nokia Nseries site yourself.

It is official, the Urbanista Diaries Around the World Mobile Relay Adventure with the Nokia N82 started on Fri. Jan. 11th when Mr. Devin Ballentina departed from his home in Curacao for New York City. Jay Montano takes over in Singapore. Then me. Then Ryan Gallagher.

Can you guess where I am going?

Hint #1 : I went last Monday and got the full round of vaccinations plus some malaria pills. Yes, Ms. I love all things cold is going to the tropics.

Hint #2 : I had to get a visa and it was outsourced by the nation in question's embassy to an outsourcer in San Francisco (I kid you not, this gave me hours of amusement).

Hint #3 : While parts of this nation's society are in technological hyper-drive, much of the nation remains staunchly conservative and I will to be respectful buy at least 2 items of their traditional clothing before I leave within 15 miles of my house to wear while I am there.

;o)

At dinner last night, it came out that various members of my family think I am a vagabond.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a vagabond.

In my seven years and four months as a freelance web designer and developer, there have been many ups and downs to working as a "consultant" rather than cube farming as an employee at an established company. Over the years, I have attempted to solve many of the major pitfalls of freelancing by purchasing my own health in-sewer-ants (Kaiser), opening my own 401k, and working at even-ing out the cash flow, etc., but I never thought of public perception as a pitfall of freelancing.

In web design and development, I know more folks who are freelance than who work at a company. Of the friends who do work at a firm / corporations, I only know of one who is truly satisfied and the others keep talking of going back to freelancing or at least entertain the idea of it or are jealous of friends who are freelance. Of my freelance friends, many of us toy with the idea of steady cube farming, but instead have started to form informal partnerships with other freelancers or small design/dev firms to have greater reach than just one person could.

But to be called a vagabond. Really.

Now to be fair the person who said this is in their late 80s / early 90s and this may be a generational gap issue and a lack of understanding of contemporary work practices & realitites more than an insult, but I was still surprised.

In the web design & dev world, I am a moderate stay at home freelancer compared to some of my compatriots who are on the conference speaking circuit or have clients spread far & wide. I do get out and about a couple of times a year, be it for conference speaking, conference attendance, or just plain travel. Heck, I haven't even reached the gold status, let alone platinum super-flyer, with my frequent flyer program.

How can I be a vagabond if I am not even recognized by my fave airline as a frequent frequent flyer?

All jokes aside, I have reached the stage of life of which in some folks' expectation I should have bought a house, started a family, and otherwise "settled down". So when the news hit the family that I would be spending a great deal of the month of February trotting about on the Nokia Urbanista Diaries project... vagabond!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I will be out and about from Feb. 6th to 24th participating in the Urbanista Diaries project / challenge with Nokia N82. Now one of the glories of having a freelance web design career is that I can say "Yes!" to Nokia and not have to worry about not having enough vacation time. As a freelancer, I just need to get my work done, give warning to my clients and folks I contract with, and then off I go.

More on my destinations in a bit... I first need to find my tin cup, red kerchief, a hobo hat, and suspenders of which to deck myself out for my trip!

When I first heard of the new Nokia mobile app shipping with the new Nseries phones, Sports Tracker, I envisioned a mobile stop watch combined with GPS and a how many steps have you taken monitor. Dull. Sigh. Where is an updated, GPS enabled Lifeblog?

Ok, I grew up in a family that was sports obsessed, esp. my first stepdad - my mom's second husband. He was on the Olympic committee, competed in the Pan American games and has won in the Master's division of the some sort of spin off of the Olympics (Allison, help me here). My childhood, from ages 3 to 13, was spent with the stepdad, mom, and various other mom-related relatives who were pathologically compulsive about exercising at very darned opportunity.

Beach volleyball in the evenings? Check. Olympic style kayaking and canoeing? Check. Surfing? Check. Running? Check. Skiing? Check. Hiking with a pace meter and stop watch? Check!

By the time I was 8 years old, I was hiding when the folks were ready to go out for yet another bout of daily evening EXERCISE! Me hiding with my mom yelling at me that it was time to leave. My high school rebellion was to cultivate super-white, never see the sun skin. To do this in an ultra-athletic, sun-worshiping family was even more rebellious than teenage pregnancy or drug use. I kid you not. The cousins that got knocked-up and/or were smoking pot were excused as long as they were in competitive sports and winning.

The cousins have sports trophies and I have a great collection of black vintage dresses and goth jewelry. I also now have great skin.

So, the nice folks at Nokia's WOM World asked me to evaluate the Sports Tracker app, as it will be used on the Urbanista Diaries adventure as our way to track our path and upload our photos to the Nokia server.

As of Jan. 1, 2008, the State of California has a law on the books that one can only use an mobile phone while driving if it is hands free.

In all the articles released in the last week that I have read and the summaries of the new laws that went into effect on January 1st, no one defines what exactly hands free means, there is an assumption that one knows the legal definition of the phrase.

Does this law define hands free as you must have a "hands free" system that mounts your mobile phone on the dashboard and only works with voice commands? If so, I am screwed and will be illegal, as every time I check the NokiaUSA.com website, they do not have any hands free car accessories for the N95 by this definition. Should I ask a European friend to order a Nokia n95 hands free car set up for me on their local Nokia website, I pay them back, and then they can ship it to me?

Does the law define hands free as a bluetooth ear/headset that allows one to answer calls with a minimum of touching one's mobile? If so, then more problems, as I have yet to meet a bluetooth earset / headset that fits me and is comfortable. If I have a problem with small hands, also have a problem with small ears.

Does the law define hands free as using the Nokia wired headset / microphone set that comes in the box with the Nokia N95? I don't think so. Some of the early literature I read about the new law last year said that wearing wired earbuds did not count and violated a law from years ago that one can't where headphones while driving. Yet, other sources, such as the California Highway Patrol site's FAQ page, suggest that the idea of the law is to keep both hands on the wheel and not to be distracted while driving.

Hello, Nokia USA, please start selling useful accessories on your website for mobile devices that you are selling in the US!

Hello, Nokia! Hello, how about having one website for accessories that is not country dependent?

Let's be honest here... I am not really a talker on my mobile phone. I have a lovely lovely camera with GPS and an internet connection that on occasion rings much to my dismay. Given the amount of time I spend in my car, if the State of California wants me to be completely hands free with voice activation for tasks, then Nokia - make my Nseries phone's camera voice activated and let me moblog with voice activation while driving safely.

Anyone who reads this website or watches my flickrstream or has been in the car with me knows that I love to take photos whilst driving and moblog them on the spot... ;o)

Photos of the Irish Brothers taken on Thurs., Dec. 27, 2007 at Alex's Bar in Long Beach, Calif.

The true test of any camera is shooting movement indoors at night in low light situations with no flash. The ultra true test of any camera is shooting a band at Alex's Bar in Long Beach, Calif, as there are no windows, the interior lights are low, the walls are all painted dark red, and there is no stage lighting whatsoever unless the band brings their own. Shooting live band photos at Alex's is a huge challenge without a pro-sumer SLR camera with external clip-on flash, but extra flash is a no-no in rock photography as it distracts the band, and at many concert venues will get one kicked out of the photo pit for using a flash.

Any good music photographer worth their salt learns how to push one's camera to shoot in any nightclub or concert venue situation without a flash early in their career. I learned how at age 15 with 400 iso film and setting my f-stops and shutter speed for low light but fast movement. With the advent of digital photography in the late 1990s, this became a challenge as most early digital cameras were point & shoot for daylight at best.

One of the fun & challenging parts of mobile photography with my various Nokia camera phones has been concert photography. To see how I can capture a photo with a camera that was never designed for low light / fast movement situations. Two of my favorite concert photos I have taken in 24 years of shooting shows were two photos I took with my Nokia 7610 - one of Social Distortion's Mike Ness and one of Mike from the Riverboat Gamblers. The fact that the little kickin' 7610 could get those photos... rock on! Rock on!

The big disappointment of the Nokia N80 and Nokia N95 is the delay between pressing the shutter button and ... and... and... and.. and.. focusing... and... and.. and... photo taken. Many times this can take up to 15-30 seconds, esp. in low light situations. How many times did I wish it would just trust me and snap, like the 7610. Stop over thinking, just do it.

The glories of the Nokia N82 is that it just takes the photo. Rarely is there a delay while it thinks, focuses, and snaps. In most situations, even at night with the flash off, it trusts that I know what I am doing and takes the photo without fuss. Without the big delay to focus and refocus and pick its nose and refocus again, like the N80 or N95 does, the N82 about 90% of the time will take the photo that you saw through the viewfinder at the time of pressing the shutter button. Yay!

In the above two photos (double click for the larger versions) I took the one on the left with my Nokia N95 with no flash and the one on the right with the trial N82 with no flash. The Irish Brothers kindly made my job easier by bringing in their own bluish halogen lights that that cast a strong upward light. In the above photos, the N95 was able to capture the two front men clearly and the background decently. The N82 blurred the Keith & Karl a bit, but captured David the drummer and the background with great clarity and lighter than the N95 did.

I also used the flash on both camera phones, of which I am not displaying the results as it was not conclusive in this case. The N95's flash did not add much illumination or significant difference, as the dark red walls of the room and lack of light eat up any of the N95's flash real fast. The N82's powerful Xenon flash was actually too bright and gave both Keith and Karl glowing red eyes, as well as added some flash light bubbles to the photo. In this case it was better without the flash for both Nokia camera phones.

Using the Nokia N82 to take photos at night and at a show was a delight. This is a big step towards camera phone I have been dreaming of, except for the fact that the N82's pre-installed Lifeblog is not interfacing with this MT4 powered blog when there is not good reason why it shouldn't.

******

Up next in Ms. Jen's review of the Nokia N82 - all the night and indoor photos that I have taken with the Nokia N82.

The Lifeblog on the Nokia N82 seems to be faulty. It will let me post to Typepad, but not to Movable Type. I have checked my blog settings on the N82's Lifeblog, as well as access point settings, many times over in the last few days, and I have not been able to post to this blog from the Nokia N82's Lifeblog, but I am able to do so from my N95's Lifeblog.

Odd but true.

Why would Lifeblog have a different version pre-installed on the N82 from the version that comes pre-installed on the N95? I am able to send and receive emails on the N82, so it is not a data or email/ISP issue.

What makes it more frustrating is that the N82 takes kick ass photos that I would like to moblog here, but to no avail. To add to the frustration, Nokia does not have a mobile version of the Lifeblog site (yucky Flash) where I can go to download the newest version of Lifeblog. And as stated on this blog before, Lifeblog does not have an application updater on the phone as many mobile applications do, nor do they have an about button where I can see which version is currently installed on the phone, which makes troubleshooting more difficult.

Dear ShoZu, please allow for a generic Atom script Share-It destination (like Flickr does), where I can input the url of my blog's Atom script, the username and atom password, so that I can use Shozu to post directly to this blog from a Nokia Nseries phone and give up Lifeblog which seems to have been deserted by Nokia.

A solar PowerMonkey for recharging one's Nokia N95 or iPod on the go. Yeah!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with the Nokia N82.

Wed. 12.19.07 - The Finnish exchange student, the Nokia N82, has arrived today from the lovely folks from WOM World for her 2 week stay in Seal Beach with Ms. Jen with our friend the DHL delivery guy plopping the box down in a rain puddle (again) and not knocking on my door.

Rather than boring the reader with the now cliched "unboxing" photos, I started out by pulling the little baby out of her box, inserting a sim chip (back to the 7610* style sim holder - W00t! - none of the N95 struggle and nail breakage!) and battery, gave her a charge, and then engaged Scruffy McDoglet in a game of tug-a-war all the better to take comparison photos with...

Thus, here starts the N82 v. the N95 trial photos. In the comparison photos, both the N95 and N82 are set to no flash and close up mode. Scruffy was moving at high speed in both photos trying to steal the green stuffed rabbit from me.

Now I expect the N82 to be worthy competition to the N95 in the photography department. Let the photo games begin... ;o)

* Surprising amount of physical comparisons with 2004's Nokia 7610 (my precioussssss) in terms of size and and few other details, but the N82 is no where near as cute and well shaped as the 7610.

The Nokia N95 on the left and the Nokia N95 8GB on the right column. Click on the 1st image for slideshow and titles.

A camera is a tool. A tool to help actualize the photographer's vision, what is seen right there and then. depending on what the photographer wants to capture is which camera tool she/he will use, be it film SLR, digital, mobile, pin-hole, toy, point & shoot, etc.

As high megapixel digital prosumer cameras have become common, many people are switching back to film or to toy cameras (such as the Lomo or Diana or pin-hole or...) or to mobile camera phones to achieve different effects and to impose a system of constraints. Many times the best art happens within the boundaries of constraints as one is forced to push the medium.

I love mobile phone photography. I love the immediacy, the ability to send the photo to the web right on the spot, the ability to not worry about f-stops and focus but instead to shoot frequently and often. I have a lovely Nikon FM-3a manual film SLR camera, but I use my Nokia camera phone to shoot about 98% of all of my photos. There are shots I can take with my Nokia mobile that it would be quite difficult due to size and weight and mass to get my my Nikon.

To this end, each iteration of the Nokia camera phones does not necessarily mean* that the camera is better with each additional megapixel or new imaging algorithm or sensor chip.

Each one of the Nokia mobiles I have owned has had the ability to take photos in a different way than the next one. The 7610, while only 1 megapixel, could capture close ups in a way that the 6680's 1.3 megapixel never could. The 7610 also has a lovely dreamy without being pixelated effect that many photographers have to use vaseline to achieve. The 6680 had its charms and so did the N80. The N95 can capture closer to real life purples than any of the previous mobiles (purple is difficult for digital sensors to get right without a lot of software and algorithm bulk). The 7610 and N95 v. 1.0 are my favorite Nokia camera phones to date, for very different reasons.

When WOM World offered to send me the Nokia N95 8GB (v. 2.0) for a 2 week trial, I said yes, as I really wanted to see how the photos would differ from the first iteration of the N95. Initial reports and reviews of the N95 8GB indicated that there was a slight change in camera speed and possibly in the algorithm. As seen from the photos above, there is a slight difference - an increased saturation in the N95 8GB photos.

When I put the N95 and the N95 8GB to their paces, I made sure that I was able to stay in the same place and attempt to shoot the photo from the same angle (exceptions with the ship photo while driving and the dogs as they were moving) to be able to increase the accuracy of the comparison. I also shot all the above photos with the flash off.

From the photos above it is obvious to me that the N95 8GB mobile camera takes photos that are a wee bit sharper and a bit more color saturated, but that the N95 handles direct sunlight (ocean view), strong back light (Xmas tree), and night colors (sphere lights) much better. Some photographers may prefer the more pastel effect of the N95, whereas others would prefer the deeper color saturation of the N95 8GB.

It is up to you to determine what you prefer and which device you would rather shoot photos with. As I look at both sets of photos, I am divided as to which camera I prefer, as it would depend on the situation. But as I detailed out in yesterday's review of the N95 versus the N95 8GB, the 8GB device is a wee bit too big for my hands and caused a bit of cramping. Thus, color saturation or not, I will stay with my N95 and pull out the 7610 when I want a bit of good distortion.

*****
Footnotes:

* In Jay's N95 v. N82 camera comparison, while the N82 may have a faster shutter speed and be able to "stop" the fan in its place, the N95 actually took the more visually pleasing photo.

Photo of the Nokia N95 8GB and the N95 taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia 7610.

While the original Nokia N95 (aka "The Classic" or the N95-1) was released to European and Asian distribution in March of this year, I did not order mine until July of this year due to my Nokia N80's meltdown. I have truly enjoyed and loved my N95, it is a great machine - the 5 megapixel camera, GPS, internet, and all. I have a 2 GB microSD chip in the add-on memory slot and have not filled it up as I download my photos and videos every day or two to my laptop.

When WOM World's Donna offered to send me the Nokia N95 8GB (aka the N95-2) for a two week trial, I took her up on the offer. I had read many reviews comparing the two devices (pretty darned similar but a few tweaks - bigger screen and more memory on the #2) and wanted to try out both devices at the same time.

Two days after I returned from England, when SoCal was getting a much needed rain storm, the DHL fellow dropped of the package in front of my door step and did not knock to see if I was in. Luckily I heard him and rescued the box containing WOM World's £500 phone before it was soaked through! I quickly evacuated the N95 8GB box from the soggy shipping box and there it was! with a Mobile Video Hat (?!?!?)*.

Over the course of the last two weeks, until shipping the N95 8GB back to the UK yesterday, I have had the opportunity to use both devices at the same time and give them a good comparison. The short version of my review is this, I wouldn't trade in my Nokia N95 v. 1.0 for the 8GB model, as there are not enough new features to entice me and the 8GB N95 is a wee bit too big to fit comfortably in my hand.... -->

I think AT&T's database is having a bit of credit card reflux. During this morning's big adventure in watching folks scramble all over each to ride a wave, I noticed that my sim chip was reporting a fail and could not find the network. Hmmm... I haven't had that problem before down at the beach.

Upon returning home, I logged into my AT&T wireless account to discover that I was "suspended" due to a bad credit card... Odd, I have room on my credit card. When I went to look at what card they had on record, for some reason, they had a card number from four years ago from before their switch to Cingular, and not my most recent card that has been working up to now...

AT&T, did your database take a dump or is it having a reflux issue and burping up numbers from years past?

When Apple announces or releases a product, it is at a big Apple convention with great fanfare and under plexiglass. No touching, no trials, no sending out of the new device to the serious Apple fan bloggers. Apple is big on design, genius and promotion, but very short on getting down with their purchasing public. A definite wall between the design aristocrats and the hoi-polloi.

Nokia on the other hand makes great products and includes their fanboys and fangirls in the process before and during the mainstream release. Nokia takes their phones out to the public and creates fun projects for artists and bloggers to participate in around the device release time.

Apple creates buzz via exclusivity and untouchable-ness. Nokia creates buzz with inclusion and creative fun. When Apple released the iPhone, it was behind glass and closed doors - really how many bloggers got a pre-release to run the iPhone through its paces? When Nokia releases an Nseries mobile phone / multimedia computer, is in the reach of the public and pre-released to a number of tech and creative bloggers who let the rest of us know what the device is capable of. Two completely different approaches.

I like inclusion. I like touching. I like play. I like Nokia.

To that end, Nokia is putting together a mobile blogging global travel adventure / challenge to celebrate the release of the Nokia N82. During the months of January and February 2008, Nokia's WOM World has asked 4 bloggers to participate in the Nseries Urbanista Diaries, where the bloggers will have 2 weeks with the N82 is 2 different cities meeting challenges before passing the phone on to another one of the bloggers. A moblogging relay event, if you will.

Mobile is not about consumption. Mobile is about connection and creativity. Nokia gets this. Apple maybe kinda does, hopefully in the next iteration there will be more creation.

The Nokia Nseries mobile devices are about connection and creating. I have with my N80 and N95 been able to take kickin' photos, capture hour long video, record sound, as well as write. Sometimes I read blogs on the web browser, but mostly I create with my Nokia.

I am quite excited to announce that I will be participating in January 2008 in the WOM World / Nokia Nseries' Urbanista Diaries mobile blogging / relay challenge with the Nokia N82. I don't have all the details yet, but I will be receiving the mobile device in one city and then traveling to another to pass of the phone to another blogger all the while completing set challenges and moblogging, taking photos & video, geo-tracking it all with a modified version of Nokia's Sports Tracker and the N82's onboard GPS.

Basically reprising AroundIreland.net with better technology and in new locales! Yeah! I love doing photo-walkabouts and moblogging. Ms. Jen will be one happy creative come January.

The other Urbanista Diaries participates are Devlin of the Nokia Guide and Jay of My Nokia Blog. Who shall be the fourth?

The best part of it all is that we don't know where we are going yet.... I told Siobhan from WOM World that she should either start or end me with Punk Rock Bowling.... ;o)

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 on Wed. 11/14/07 at the Future of Mobile.

Wed. Nov. 14, 2007 - Future of Mobile - BFI IMAX Theatre

Carson Systems / Carsonified put on the Future of Mobile today at the BFI IMAX theatre next to Waterloo station. Per my usual, here are my typed notes from the conference. Due to the theatre-style seats, lights directly in face, and IMAX screen, the likelihood that I will be able to type an accurate translation is very low. After the first break, I moved seats. Photos to come.

*****

9:10 am - Tony Price - Keynote
AMF Ventures
Mr. Price talks very fast. Some of what he is saying is very good, but so fast, it is not sinking it. Some of what he is saying is cheesy. Cut out the cheese, slow down, and this would be a good talk.
"Who will I trust with my digital footprint?"
Tony states that the screen is not the thing, sound and uniqueness is the thing with mobile.

Nokia's Lifeblog for one's mobile phone and PC was released in 2004. I had the opportunity to participate in a project with Lifeblog in late 2004 through to early 2005.

I use Lifeblog all the time, on all of the Nokia phones I have owned since Dec. 2004, as the best way to view my photos on my phone, or to send the photos as MMS's to my Flickr account, or to post the photos to my website using Lifeblog's Atom posting to this Movable Type 4 powered blog (Thanks to the MT team for making this happen with 4.0, you guys rock). I don't use Lifeblog for the PC, as I have a Mac.

Though Lifeblog is the single most useful application on any of the Nokia N-Series phones that I have owned, I have a few beefs with Lifeblog:

1) Lifeblog has been stagnant and has not moved with the times, as there have been very few changes or upgrades to the mobile app since 2004.

2) Lifeblog is PC-centric and there is not any Mac interface. Wake up, Nokia, there is now a significant Mac population out there. Many of us own your phones. (Nokia's Multimedia Transfer (beta) for Mac does not count, as it is not an app for both my computer and my phone).

Here is my wish list for Lifeblog:

1) Lifeblog, interface with my Mac. Thank you. Be it a Lifeblog for Mac or a complete and consistent interface with iPhoto, I care not, just do it. I prefer Lifeblog over iPhoto, as Lifeblog for the computer also keeps track / a history of my mobile video, emails, and texts - i.e. my whole mobile life.

2) Lifeblog, I have this lovely Nokia N95, it has GPS. Please take the GPS data and embed it into the EXIF data of my photos, so that when I send them to Flickr or my blog via Lifeblog I can use the geo-coordinates to map the photos or videos. ShoZu does it, so can Lifeblog.

3) Lifeblog, please have an update the app menu function on the mobile. ShoZu does. I never know if you have a new version until I go to the website and download and .... And while you are at it, give me an "About Lifeblog" menu choice so that I know what version of Lifeblog I currently have on my phone.

4) And last but not least, actually the most important request to the list... Lifeblog, please make your mobile app work with internet data rather than email, or let me decide which to use. When I am at home in California, this is fine to have to use the email / ISP data on my phone, as I have a contract with AT&T that allows me to have an email connection. But when I am abroad (like now) I have a pay as you go sim chip that only allows for phone, text, and internet data but NO email / ISP data. So, I can't use Lifeblog when I am in Europe. Lifeblog, ShoZu uses regular ole' internet data, please give me that option. Thank you.

Here I am at the end of my wish list and I should honestly ask myself, why not use ShoZu, as they have GPS interaction with my photo EXIF data and they use internet data rather than MMS or email? Well, ShoZu does not post to my blog. Lifeblog does. ShoZu has lots of ShareIt partnerships with companies, but not with my mt-atom.cgi script. Lifeblog does have a connection to my mt-atom.cgi script.

Come on, Lifeblog, sharpen your sword. Get out there, be the best.

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri Nov. 9, 2007 - My plane arrived at Heathrow at 6:38am this morning. I did not really sleep at all on the plane nor eat after last evening's lovely gluten-free plane meal. The Heathrow line for passport control was very long, but the agent I dealt with was very nice and easy going. Thanks, sir!

Just a little before 8am found me at Paddington Station and off to my hotel. Damian the fabulous desk clerk / manager was able to get me into a room by 10am, where upon I showered and meant to take a 2 hour nap before going to lunch and then to the Regent's Street Apple Store to watch the big to do for the UK release of the iPhone. Six hours later I woke up for a deep sleep.

After much rushing, I arrived at the scene of the London iPhone geek queue by 5pm. I found Steve Marshall right off the bat standing about 20th in line, as he had tweeted his placement in the queue, and Dave Stone who was observing from the edge of the sidewalk. For the next hour, I hung out with Steve and Dave, as well as chatting with various mobile company folk who were friends of Dave's. It was a blast. The security and cops were a little over organizing, as the crowd wasn't overly large or obnoxious but instead was happy and excited. Free pizza and champagne was given out to folks in line by local merchants, lots and lots of UK press was out and about interviewing folk. All in all, darned good spectacle and fun.

After Steve and the rest of the line was let in the Apple Store to make their purchases, Dave and I went around the corner to the Liberty Bar to have a drink with Walid and Sokratis of TrustedPlaces as well as Paul Walsh. Dave and I had a lively conversation about mobile, our various punk youth experiences, running with the Trickster, and other bits, which melded into a lively conversation with Paul and Sokratis about the future of the web, the mobile web, and device adnostic web standards. Good fun. An excellent way to start out a trip to London.

From there I went off to find food, as the others had to go their ways. Now I am back at my hotel and am hoping to actually go to sleep before 1 am London time...

To quote the Bouncing Souls, "Here we go"...

Tomorrow is the big day: the departure for London Calling, the November Edition or the Future of Mobile Edition, as well as, Dublin Calling, Ulster Calling, and Andalucia Calling.

As I have started all the packing and the last stages of planning, I had to run lots of errands today. One of the errands took me to the Main Place Mall in Santa Ana, so that I could obtain a variety of Peek-a-Poohs for the small Hickseys. Whilst at the Mall, I stopped in at the AT&T/Cingular store to inquire as to why my sim chip has been going screwy of late. Some days my phone announces that it is Cingular. Some times AT&T. And some days, oddly, T-Mobile. What?!?!?! For fear of a large roaming bill, I decided to stop in to the AT&T/Cingular store and see what was up.

At the store, I found three men there, two obviously clerks and one in a suit, of which all three matched up my idea of the typical mobile / cell phone store employees: Mr. Indifferent, Mr. Helpful/Nice, and Mr. Pindick. When I walked in Mr. Indifferent and Mr. Pindick ignored me. Mr. Nice asked after what I needed, I explained to him that I was wondering if my old school AT&T sim chip from 2004 is on its last legs and described the issues I was having with it. Mr. Nice was very helpful, said yes I needed a new sim chip, and recommended where I could get a new AT&T sim chip without paying $25 for a new one and having to sign up for a new contract that his store would require.

I then asked when AT&T will be upgrading their 3G network. Mr. Nice did not know, he suggested I ask Mr. Indifferent the Regional Manager and Mr. Pindick. Over to the other two I went and inquired. Mr. Indifferent the Regional Manager asked which plan I had, I told him that I had an old school data plan from 2004, he was impressed. But his phone rang and he walked off to answer it.

Mr. Pindick, after arguing that I could have had an unlimited data plan since 2004, asked to see my current phone, I pulled my N95 out of my purse of which Mr. P. inspected.

Mr P: "Do you know that your phone is European manufactured?"

He didn't give me time to answer, "No shit, Sherlock, that is why I bought it."

Mr. P: "This phone does not work on the American 3G network, only the European and Asian ones. Which is why you don't have a good 3G connection with our network. You need an American 3G phone."

On he pressed. Me, repressing a snotty reply to the effect of "Cingular/AT&T has a 2.5 G network, the "EDGE", which is why I am asking when you will be upgrading to a REAL 3G network." He went on...

Mr. P: "Nokia has released an N95 for the American market."

Me: "No...." ((BLAH))

Mr. P as he turns my phone over and fondles it: "The American N95 has a black cover (his thumb rubs over the back cover of my phone repeatedly), instead of the purple one that this one has."

Me: ((Mr. Pindick is having thumb sex with my phone!!! AGH!!!))

Mr. P: "The new Nokia lacks a camera lens cover and has a bigger battery. Too bad you don't have that phone, you wouldn't have the problems with the network."

Me: "When will AT&T be selling them?" ((Knowing they aren't at this time and knowing even if I had the new Nokia N95-3 for the US market that the Cingular/AT&T network would still be slow...))

Mr. P: ((????)) [He did not answer.]

Me, smiling and taking my poor abused phone back: "Thank you."

Mr. P, voice dripping with condescension: "I guess you need a better plan and a better phone."

Me: leaving.

Going to a cell phone / mobile carrier retail store has become as unpleasant as going to a car dealership. Unfortunately, it is unavoidable as the call center folks can't help me replace my sim chip.

Dear Mobile Carriers, please screen out the Mr. Indifferents and Mr. Pindicks of the when you are hiring for your stores. Thank you.

No. I keep trying, but no, I can't.

Why? I can only get as far as the above title before Movable Type's AJAX conspires against my Nokia N95's browser. I have tried to use the file uploader, which I was able to use from my phone's browser with MT 3.4, but in MT 4 the file uploader uses Lightbox and I can't toggle around in it enough to press "upload" on my phone. And for whatever reason, in the mobile browser, I am unable to fill any text into the "body" of the post. Frustrating. I could do all of this from my Nokia N80 and the N95 with MT 3.4, but not with Movable Type 4.0.

Bah. Desktop/Laptop-centric blogging software. Bah.

What ever happened to Progressive Enhancement and Unobtrusive AJAX? Have Steve, Jeremy, and other standardistas been preaching to the wind? I should hope not. Web based software and applications should be device agnostic and the site should work whether the device has javascript or not.

Why try and why care? In less than 5 days, I get on a plane for Europe for the great "Ditch Thanksgiving 2007 Tour" or the "Let's cash in frequent flyer miles go to London, Ireland, and Spain for 3 weeks Tour". Whilst I am gone, I don't want to pay AT&T my arm and Scruffy's leg for international data fees to post photos and text to this blog, so I will be using my UK Vodafone sim chip with Pay As You Go that I have overly topped up. Only problem is that sometime in the last year, since I was last last ( previous to the last time) in the UK, Vodafone changed their PAYG plan and it is really really hard to mobile blog with the non-contract PAYG.

When I was in the UK for various events in 2006, I was able to to use about £20 per week on PAYG to send my photos as MMS's to my Flickr account, Flickr would then send them on to my blog. At the beginning of Ocober, when I was in London for FOWA 2007, I found that it appeared that I sent photos to Flickr via MMS, my N95 confirmed the photo was sent, and later when I would check there would be no photo on Flickr. Vodafone UK's MMS was not interacting with Flickr.

When I attempted to use Lifeblog, it was a no go as Lifeblog uses email/ISP data to send and with a PAYG account one does not get email/ISP data. I then tried to use Flickr's mobile uploader, but that did not work as it wanted to go through the MMS to send the photo. ShoZu was not working for me at all while in London and upon reading ShoZu's forum's it is not enough to change your Access Point, you have to reactivate for each APN.

The best part is that Vodafone PAYG's data plans, both 3G & WAP, have Flickr blocked as adult / unappropriate content. The whole week I was in the UK this Oct, I tried to get Vodafone to unblock it to no avail.

Vodafone, you may have the best 3G connections in the UK and Ireland, but you live in the dark ages. Flickr should not be blocked, nor should my MMS. If I pay you for a sim chip and top up, let me use the PAYG £s however I want. Don't trottle me. Give me 3G unblocked, give me MMS, give me email/ISP. I will pay for it, give it to me.

I want to be able to use my Nokia to blog as I go, not wait until I get back to my computer to bluetooth the photos to my MacBook Pro and then load them up to Movable Type 4, if I have a wifi connection (the UK yes, Ireland & Spain most likely no). Thus, my experiments this week with trying to post directly from my phone's browser to my MT4 installation. If it works here, it should work in the UK, Ireland, and Spain. Except it isn't working here due to the MT4 obtrusive, non-progressive javascript.

Wed 10.17.07 - Thanks to Jeff K and Bill P at Nokia for the lovely bundle of mobile tablet joy that arrived via UPS this morning.

You drooled at the announcement. You figured out where you would get the money from, maybe even had an argument with your credit card about your desire. You marked the days off on your calendar. You took the day off work or at least told your clients you were faintly indisposed for the day. You stood in line with your sleeping bag and a camp stove. Hours later you walked out with a lovely black shopping bag which enclosed a black box which enclosed your one true love, at least on June 29th of this year.

Now what are you going to do with your delicious, lovely, new iPhone?

No, don't show me how it maps directions to Google Maps, my Nokia N95 can do that with the onboard GPS. No, don't show me the two handed keyboard technique you have developed, as we both know that a teenager can kick your two handed technique with one thumb.

Show me what are you going to create with your iPhone on your iPhone. Don't look at me like a deer in headlights.

Don't tell me you don't use your mobile or cell phone for creative acts. I know you do. Ok, so you can't afford an iPhone right now, or you love your Blackberry or Treo inordinately, or like me you are a Nokia fan, or you have the free clam shell phone form your carrier, or, or, or...

You do use your mobile device for more than just phone calls, I know you do. Now how are you going push your device? Pull it? Create with it?

Laura Moncur sent me an email today on my post about using my N95 to tether my MacBook to the net. Laura's email got me wondering, even though I don't have an iPhone, can one use it as a modem to one's laptop? Consult the Oracle of the Internets...

According to cre.ations.net, one can use the iPhone to tether a PC to the net using the SOCKS proxy, which also has further instructions on how to hack a package for Mac.

intomobile .com recommends using Tinyproxy to use one's iPhone as a modem for one's Mac.

Thanks to Laura for getting me thinking about this.

Ok, wordy title, but after doing some reading on WOM World, I decided it was time to plunge in and set up my Nokia 95 to act as a modem for internet connection to my MacBook Pro to be used on the go when no wifi is present.

This frees me up to be able to compute online, albeit slowly, anywhere. No wifi or expensive wifi? No ethernet cable? Anywhere that I can access the internet on my N95, I can now tether my Mac to it for connection.

Thanks to AT&T for my unlimited data plan, even if Cingular's EDGE is slowish, and thanks to The Nokia Blog for the tutorial on How To: Tether Your Nokia to a Mac for Net Access Via Bluetooth.

A note for other AT&T customers who want to set this up, I still have my old AT&T sim chip from 2004, so I am using the mMode settings and my APN is "proxy", no username, no password. If you are a Cingular customer or you got your sim chip during the Cingular era, then your APN will be different.

Since I am at home, now that I have proven that I can use my N95 as a modem and written this post, I shall go back to using the wifi.

Thank you Mr. Greene for the best sum-it-up succinct quote of the last few months:

"The iPhone is for consuming content, while the N95 is for creating it."

Jonathan Green, in his blog post "Nokia N95 or Apple iPhone?" (via Darla Mack), compares the features and approaches of the Nokia N95 and the Apple iPhone as an owner and daily user of both mobile devices.

When my Nokia N80 took a plunge in oblivion this June, rather than rushing out and purchasing the Nokia N95 reflexively, I charged up and put my sim chip into my faithful old friend the Nokia 7610 so that I had time to really research the then upcoming iPhone and the Nokia N95, as well as think about what my dream phone features would be. The conclusion of several weeks of research and thinking lead me to buying my Nokia N95 mid-July and I couldn't be happier.

Since that time, I have been in a number of social situations where I have been teased or questioned by fellow geeks and design folk who own iPhones on why I did not get an iPhone. In every instance, I bring up the Nokia N95's 5 megapixel camera with flash, great video capture, and GPS and the iPhone's complete lack of these features (no video capture, no GPS, 2 megapixel digital still camera with no flash). My friends are entranced with the user interface of the iPhone, I am entranced with the photos and video that I can moblog from my N95.

To paraphrase Madeleine L'Engle, "Fire consumes, cancer consumes, I am a human being not a consumer." To that I add, "I am a creator, not a consumer." So, Nokia bring on the creative-centric mobile devices!

On the GPS note, online and mobile presence has been bubbling up from the geeky underground and this week it started seeping into the internet mainstream when Google purchased Jaiku. Factory Joe weighs in with his opinion on why Google bought Jaiku. Darla thinks that Nokia missed out by not acquiring Jaiku.

Bloggers, mobile afficionados, and media drool over the new Nokia Nseries line at the Nokia Nseries LA party.

Do you ever search for a blog post you made a year or two ago and can't find it, only to realize that your ranted and raved to all your friends in person about the subject and you didn't actually blog it?

Well, hey, when I lived in Ireland from Sept of 2005 to Oct. of 2006, I ranted and raved frequently about the lack of unlimited data plans for mobile phones from Irish and UK carriers. I thought I blogged about it, but I guess I just tortured anyone who would listen to me...

When I signed up for a monthly plan with Vodafone Ireland, the maximum amount of data I could get was 6 mb for 18 euro! Yikes...

Jen, what do you mean by data plan? All the better to MoBlog with. To be able to send photos from my phone to Flickr or this blog, I need either internet data or email data, both covered under a data plan. I can easily blow through 6 mbs a day, let alone a month! In August of 2007, with my Nokia N95, I used over 152 mbs of data, thus an unlimited data plan is necessary.

Let me compare my plans that I had in the US vs. Ireland...

Anecdotal evidence is suggesting that it is not owners of existing smart phones or high end phones who are switching to iPhone but it is first time high end buyers who are getting iPhones. Has anyone experienced this or seen research on it?

When I was at the Rails Edge conference last week and at dinner the first night with other speakers, Stu Halloway started to tease me that I was the only one without an iPhone. I pulled out my Nokia N95 and asked him where was the the 5 megapixel camera with video capture on his iPhone and where was the onboard GPS for geotagging and mapping? After we verbally sparred for a bit, Stu asked if the Nokia N95 was my first smart phone. No, I replied, I have had Nokia Series 60 phones since Dec. 2004.

Stu then observed that most of the iPhone owners he knows did not have smart phones or had not purchased a high end phone previously. I thought this was very interesting. Quite a few of the iPhone owners I know had Treo's or Crackberries before, so my anecdotal evidence was to the contrary.

Yesterday, I was viewing Elizabeth's daily painting / drawing and saw this on her "beside myself" sidebar:

Video: Purchasing the iPhone becomes an event in Shadyside
I'm interviewed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about standing in line to get an iPhone on the first day they were available. It's my first cellphone, and I'm glad I waited until now to get one - I'm delighted with it.

The iPhone purchased at the Pittsburgh Apple Store is Elizabeth's very first cell phone ever! Watch the video for her commentary at the end.

Ok, iPhone owners, what do you know? Is the iPhone your first high end phone or have you had a phone with email, interenet, a camera, et al, that you used the smart phone features? Did you have a data plan with a previous phone? Or is this your first high end phone with a data plan? Let me know in the comments below!

Using Lifeblog to test posting text from my phone to my website.

... Then the upgrade to Movable Type 4.0 is complete and I can moblog directly from my phone's Lifeblog to my weblog with no 3rd party!

Under Thundercloud, Over Nebraska - click on photo to see the whole set with mapping

Yes, the underneath of the thunderclouds were yellow, it was creepy...

I used my Nokia N95's GPS whilst sitting in a window seat to geotag these photos as we flew over Nebraska & South Dakota last evening, as well as altitude (approx. 30,400 ft.) and speed (585 to 614 mph)! They told us to turn off our devices's wifi, but didn't say anything about GPS... ;oD

All mild airplane naughtiness aside, it was a true treat to be able to track speed, altitude, and geo-location by just pointing my phone at a 45 degree angle next to the window of the plane. At first the Nokia's GPS announced that it had no connection and then it found over 6 satellites to use and had a strong signal for until I shut the phone off. Upon landing, I had ShoZu send the geotagged photos to Flickr, this morning I organized it into a set.

All photos taken while flying to Chicago for The Rails Edge conference.

Over a year ago, I tried ShoZu out as application on my Nokia 6680 and also on my N80 and found it lacking. I had Lifeblog and MMS of which to send photos from my phone to either Flickr or Typepad, so I did not see why I should be using a mobile app that took too many steps, added extra text to the post, and was frustrating. For what?

At the time, ShoZu's angle was that by using their application on your mobile you would save data fees as it managed the connection and photo size. In the US, I have and had an unlimited data plan, so to click on an app, go through the menu, to save data that I didn't need to save was too much. In Ireland, I worked out a plan with Vodafone between MMS and data to moblog without paying a fortune, thus interacting with the interface was not worth any savings.

End of Ms. Jen and ShoZu.

Last July, I even commented on Darla Mack's blog about my crankiness with ShoZu. After making this comment, Sho Zu's CTO, Andy Tiller sent me this email in July of 2006:

Hi Ms Jen

I saw your comments about ShoZu on Darla Mack's blog, and was sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with ShoZu. The thing that concerns me most is that you found ShoZu didn't always work - this is worrying, as ShoZu is normally much more reliable than alternatives. Would you be willing to provide further details?

If you'd like to give ShoZu another go on your N80, I'd be happy to send you the new S60v3 version to install. It includes an option to upload reduced quality images to save your data bill.

Best regards

Andy Tiller (CTO ShoZu)

Mr. Tiller wins points for internet marketing foo. But I still was not convinced about ShoZu. My goals for mobile photography and blogging have always been the least amount of steps from photo capture to the photo showing up here on my blog, not data fees.

Fast forward to the last two weeks as I have been putting my new Nokia N95 through its paces... The two major distinctives that the N95 has over other phones on the US and European markets is the 5 megapixel camera and the onboard satellite GPS receiver.

This last week, I longed for Nokia to have made it an option that if I want to embed the GPS geo-coordinates into the EXIF data of the photos I take, thus making mapping easy and/or automatic. This would have been a dream come true last summer during the Around Ireland project.

In consulting the Oracle of of the Internets, I was informed that ShoZu will take the GPS data in the phone and send it to Flickr when you use their mobile app to upload your Flickr photos from the phone. Well, well, well, well... time to go look at ShoZu again.

I signed up for a ShoZu account, downloaded it to my phone, with a little bit of wrangling got ShoZu and Flickr to agree to authenticate, and off I went. ShoZu 3.2 is still moderately annoying in terms of the number of steps needed to accomplish the task, but ShoZu is sending the GPS coordinates from my phone to Flickr where they are added to the right hand info bar as a place. Click on that place and it gives map. Nice.

This is good. I can ask the N95 to get the GPS coordinates either before or after I take the photo. Then I open "Applications", click ShoZu, click on "Share-It", click on "All Files", choose the photo to be sent to Flickr, open the photo, click on Options - where you can add a title, body, tags, etc. Finish adding text/tags, send it off to Flickr. Check Flickr and there it all is, including the GPS geo-data.

Here are the drawbacks: ShoZu asks you after you take every photo (after every photo taken) if you want to send it to Flickr. If you do this, the photo will be sent with no title, no tags except ShoZu, and no GPS geo-tags (use method in above paragraph for geo-tags). I wish I could turn feature off, as I now have to click "Cancel" to get rid of this to see the photo. The other big drawback is that ShoZu adds the text "- cameraphone upload by ShoZu " to all uploads. It would be nice to have a "Pro" version of ShoZu of which for a fee, I can have that text taken off every photo sent.

Update: According to Thilo, there is an S60 mobile app named Locr that will also attach GPS data from the N95 to your photos.

Forget the iPhone, let's talk the Nokia N95

Today at my book arts class, we learned how to do the Japanese style book binding. For my book arts project, I printed out mobile camera phone photos from last summer's Around Ireland project and will be making a book of the photos.

For some time now, I have been stumped on how to best display / frame the ephemeral photos from my Nokia camera phones outside of this blog and Flickr. I am very glad that Tammy Callis convinced me to join her in taking this book making class at the Angel's Gate Cultural Center, as I think I have found an authentic way to display / frame my mobile photos in a physical manifestation by making a unique book to contain each set of mobile phone photos.

I first searched through most of my original downloaded photos from my Nokia N80 from last summer in Ireland, used Fireworks to crop and set them in the page, and then printed a set of four to Kodak matte ink jet paper. Print and then cut to fit the size of the pages for the book. The Kodak matte ink jet photo paper had the look and feel of good drawing or book paper. Now I just need to get a better printer.

Little jewels of books to display little jewels of photos.

In less than 50 minutes, all the folks waiting in line on the West Coast will be buying the first edition of the Apple iPhone. I am not in line, I am not at the Apple store. I thought about it, not to wait for a phone, but to take photos with my Nokia and moblog the event.

As previously documented, I won't be buying an iPhone on this round. I want a competitive megapixel camera, a good lens, and the ability to moblog via email, 3rd party app (flickr, vox, Shozu, Lifeblog, etc.), or MMS. The iPhone only offers a 2 megapixel camera, email, no MMS and not 3rd Party apps.

Since the firmware meltdown of my N80 last week and the fact that I have been unable all week to get a hold of a Nokia Customer Care rep who can help me, I have been diligently watching the iPhone hype / broohaha build to a crescendo, as well as researching Nokia's superior phone / computer : the Nokia N95.

I am more than a little upset at Nokia's inability to provide authentic worldwide Customer Care rather than the byzantine Soviet-style bureaucracy they are currently providing in the name of Customer Care. On top of the inability to get my Nokia N80's repaired this week, I have a choice, either buy a new Nokia N95 to replace the N80 or go to d.Construct 2007 & continue to use my old school Nokia 7610. I love the Brit Pack, but ...

Temptation can be too much.

All of this. All of it. The iPhone hype, the dead N80, the tempting N95, returning to my first love the 7610, the summer sunlight hitting everything in the right light - calling to be moblogged .. all of it is adding up to me asking myself, "What really is your ideal phone?"

Ms. Jen's Dream Phone / Camera, pulling from currently existing mobile phone and camera technologies, or All the Better to Moblog With:

* Carl Zeiss lens or better.
* 8 megapixel camera
* Sensor chip and software that can capture purples and dark blues accurately.
* Auto Focus with a manual option (like the N80) to choice up close or distance focus.
* 10x digital zoom.
* Video capture at the megapixel rating of the lens and digital sensor.
* On board flash.
* Option to add on another flash for night time or concert photography.
* Minimum 256 MB of RAM / Computer memory
* Minimum 8 GB of data storage, either internal or as an external memory chip.
* GPS without any additional software or subscriptions.
* The GPS data will be embedded automatically into the EXIF data of each photo, if the photo is taken outdoors or near a window.
* The ability upon set up of the phone to type in my name, url, and email address into the EXIF data structure that can be added into every photo taken by the the camera automatically.
* Quad band phone so that I can use the phone and data connection anywhere in the world on any network.
* Wifi / WLAN
* Unlocked, so that I can put in a SIM chip anywhere in the world.
* Email.
* MMS.
* SMS / text.
* Full internet browser.
* Ability to turn off images or just receive text on the internet browser if in a country where the data is too dear (hello, Ireland).
* RSS feed reader on the browser so I can keep up with my blog reading wherever I am.
* The ability to make text larger or smaller at any point in the UI.
* The ability to customize the UI by me (wallpaper or even the whole look of the UI)
* Open architecture so that I can install 3rd party apps to add functionality to the phone.
* MP3 player with shuffle and the ability to fast forward and reverse within a song or podcast.
* voice recording and text notes.
* calculator
* Oh, yeah, the phone thing. Bah.

I don't need Office functions or a PDF reader. I don't need calendar functions or an alarm clock. Or many of the other things common to a smart phone that waste memory space.

My Nokia N80 fit most the above bill with the exception of the camera was only 3 megapixels and got purples wrong all the time, it also did not have a feedreader, nor did it have GPS. I could toggle the font in the internet browser, but couldn't in other parts of the UI. The big problem with the Nokia N80 is the on board memory was about 66 megs effectively and my miniSD chip was only 1 GB. The even bigger problem as the time lag that the N80 needed to interface with itself, the external chip, and the camera. Oh, yeah, one would have to reboot every day and some times 2-3x a day to keep it running well. Not so good.

I don't want an office phone, I want a digital artist's phone. I want the quick response of the Nokia 7610 in taking photos and accessing objects in the memory. Give me more on board memory and a bigger logic chip so that the smart phone can be both smart and quick.

Most of all, I really want a camera phone that I can use to access the Internets, post photos to my Movable Type blog without a 3rd party intermediary like Flickr, and the photos are print quality.

A bigger wish, not sure if any of the mobile device or digital camera manufacturers have considered this yet, but it would be lovely if I could choose either by switch or menu whether I want the photo to be 1 or 3 or 5 or 8 megapixels before I take it based on how much memory I have left, what I want to do with it (an MMS would choke on 5-8 megapixels) in the moment or in the long run (moblog immediately, for web later, or for print later).

It would also be lovely to have a high quality camera / smart phone that not only fit well in a woman's hand but was designed as to not cramp up my thumbs trying to type.

Dreaming about moblogging with the best little networked camera phone mini computer.

iPhone, move over. Meet the Nokia N95.

With less than a week from the official start of the iPhone selling season, I say pshaw. Last night at my Aunt Dana's birthday bbq, while talking to Greg Carpenter from Boopsie Mobile Find, I got to hold, view, and take photos with his new Nokia N95. A very sweet little machine. About the size of the N80 but with more screen (rather like an infinity pool), a 5 megapixel camera (!!!!), an interface similar to the N80 but more refined, and a second slider for Multimedia play functions. Did I mention the 5 megapixel camera?

Since I last wrote about the iPhone, Apple has bumped up the on board camera from 1 megapixel (phhhbbbffftt...) to 2 megapixel (be still my non-beating heart). The iPhone requires a 2 year contract with AT&T / Cingular and there is no MMS (multimedia messaging) at all. Touchscreen interface sounds intriguing, but I had that with my previous PDAs. The only big news of the iPhone is the on board memory storage of 4 to 8 gigabytes, compared to the 2 gigs of the Nokia N95 (added miniSD card).

Let's do a side by side comparison using the tech specs of both devices as of June 24, 2007:

I will let my Twitters from this afternoon speak for themselves:

"is finding Facebook annoying. Again. Updating my Nokia N80s firmware. Then off to coding fun."

"It is a very BAD idea to attempt to upgrade one's Nokia firmware with Parallels. Nokia N80 now dead. Nokia - release Mac OS X software!"

"Crap. Now charging old 7610 so that I have a phone. Crap."

Why update the Nokia software? Just like it is a good idea to update your computer's software, it is marvelous that Nokia provides an update for my lovely mini-computer the Nokia N80. But today things went wrong. Very wrong. Be it the Nokia data cable or Parallels, I know not.

I have updated the firmware on the N80 three times in the last year with no problems, but for some reason today the update stopped 90% of the way through and pitched a fit. The phone is not turning on, the Nokia updater is not recognizing the phone or data cable. Argh.

I bought my Nokia N80 in Ireland last June and nokiausa.com is not recognizing my serial number. Will make phone calls tomorrow to rectify the problem or at least find a Nokia Care provider who can resurrect the N80 from the dead.

The silver lining to this particular cloud is that I kept my Nokia 7610, charged it up this afternoon, and even though the camera is only 1 megapixel, I do love the photos from the 7610. Welcome, old friend.

The above photo, "Telephone Poles", was sent to Flickr on Sat. 4/14/07 in the evening, but never received.

I have been having a problem this week between Cingular's mobile network and Flickr. I send photos (via MMS or email) from my phone, I receive confirmation that they are sent, I am charged, but the photos never show up on Flickr.

As a test, I have also sent photos this last week to my Vox account via MMS or email from my phone and they are received about half the time and show up on my Vox account.

Is the problem Cingular's network? But why would it not like Flickr the last week and like Vox half the time?

And to top it off, Cingular's network is working like a charm in North Carolina where I am right now for business. I have sent several test emails to Flickr and Vox and both are showing up on my account directly after sending them from my phone.

Cingular - WHY, oh WHY, do you have such shitty service in one of the biggest markets in the country (LA/OC)????

Oh, Flickr - WHY, oh WHY, do you seem to have massages when I am sending photos? They don't show up in my photostream but Cingular still charges me.

Vox - What are you doing right in moblogging interface land that Cingular and Flickr aren't?

Is this an issue of Cingular and Flickr not playing well together? As I said, it just started in last week. Has it been solved now or will I be able to moblog happily in North Carolina but when I return to SoCal I will be up a creek again?

I love sending photos from my phone to websites. I love moblogging. I am at Flickr because up to this point they have made sending photos from my phone to Flickr a very easy set of steps.

Frustrated.

Apple announced the iPhone today. (via Engagdet)

My initial response is iDrool, iDrool, iDrool...

My second response is ... wait, only a 2 mega-pixel camera? Come on Apple, get a bigger mega-pixel camera... Nokia has 3 mega-pixles already released (i.e. Nokia N80) and the Koreans have 7-8 megapixels camera phones.

My third response is... but how will it moblog? Will it run Terminal or SSH? Can I add another browser, as I am not all to fond of Safari? What is its extensibility?

While the iPhone as displayed today is revolutionary for its gorgeous large screen on a small device and the finger touch pad screen UI, who wants to be locked into a two year Cingular contract with only 2 megapixels? Not me.

It would be lovely to have OS X natively running my mobile device for ease of use and transferring of files, but me, I am willing to purchase a pricey mobile device if the camera, UI, and data / internet features all add up to ease of blogging to this website directly from my phone.

Nokia, the gauntlet has been thrown down. I love your Karl Zeiss lenses, and multiple mega-pixel cameras, but the Nokia PC Suite and Lifeblog only interface with Windows OS. Nokia, it is time to come out and play with OS X* and keep up with the Jobs'.

Given that it is now official 3 days after "Little Christmas" it is time for Peek a Pooh, the mobile phone accessory, to take off his Xmas Yule Log decoration. Or maybe, I can go get a more seasonally appropriate Peek a Pooh, and then put Pooh back in his Yule Log and save him for next Christmas.

Oh let the geeky madness begin....

The idea that it could even happen was planted in my brain by a certain Mr. B in August 2004 at the Movable Type 3.1 Party. This last summer I used the browser of my Nokia N80 to login to my website hosting control panel when I was not near my laptop or a internet cafe. This last week I wondered when some enterprising person would develop a Symbian Series 60 SSH client.

Today while reading blogs, I hit the mother load of future geekiness while reading Mike Rowehl's post on "E61 and Putty." Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, the nice and lovely open source programmers over at SourceForge have developed PuTTY for Symbian OS.

I have installed it on the N80 and have accessed the shell of my server via PuTTY on the mobile, surfed a few directories... oh the things I can do to entertain myself while stuck in traffic... Wahoo...

In the beginning, was the command line. ;oD

As promised here is the link to the PDF of my Master's Thesis, Moleskine to Mobile : How Creative Professionals are Using Their Mobile, as submitted to Trinity College, Dublin, on March 31, 2006, towards a M.Sc. in Multimedia Systems at the Computer Science Dept.

I would like to say a big Thank You to all of the folk who took my survey and interviews, without your respones this thesis would be a much poorer document.

This work is copyrighted 2006 by Jenifer Hanen. Please note that the use and sharing of the content of this thesis is permitted for fair use academic and non-commercial purposes with full attribution. If you wish to reproduce more than 2 paragraphs of content or use the content for commercial purposes, please contact me.

Sat. May 27, 2006 about 10 something pm. The last week or so, Ireland has had a series of North Atlantic depressions (lows) generate winds and storms blowing through daily. For the last week, if the winds are high then I don't have cell / mobile reception. Not just the Vodafone 3G / GPRS internet and email is down, but also my phone call reception. The funny thing is that it is not regular but comes and goes.

This is very frustrating to say the least, not just for my moblogging, but also to call out and receive text messages. But I have not heard a single thing from Vodafone. No emails apologizing for the brown out. No notices on their website. Nothing.

Compare Vodafone to my mobile provider in the States: Cingular Wireless (formerly AT&T Wireless). I frequently don't get reception in Dublin when wandering around streets with buildings that are 4 - 5 storeys tall. I can drive around Downtown LA with buildings that are 25 - 60 storeys tall and have full reception the whole time, as evinced by this moblogged photo. During the worst of the Santa Ana wind storms, I never lost reception in Orange. The wind picks up a bit in Dublin and suddenly... nothing.

What up Vodafone?

Maybe you ought to institute the service that my website hosting provider has, a real time listing of server status. Come on, Vodafone, throw us a bone... if you can't deliver good reception, at least have a notice on your website of what is up.

No, I didn't even call Customer Service, as the nice call center folks are usually less aware of what is going on with their mobile network than I am and they have to call another office to find out what is going on...

Ok, T-Mobile, when are you going to enter the Irish mobile market, kick ass and take no prisoners? Vodafone, O2, and Meteor are fat, flabby and need a good run...

This evening I will be closing my "Moleskine to Mobile" survey for my thesis. Thank you to each and everyone of the folks who took the survey. I had far more responses than I expected.

I am now in the interview stage and will be for the next five days. I will also be writing at this time.

If you know of anyone who is doing innovative or creative work with their mobile or cameraphone, email me.

When this is all over and I have handed in my thesis, I will let you all know of the marvelous and wonderful things that folks are doing out there, in the meantime, it is write/write/read/write/research/write for Ms. Jen.

Hello all my lovely web/mobile friends and folks who came here via Photo Friday, Nokia, or other,

I am currently working on my thesis for my master's degree on Moleskine to Mobile: How Creative Professionals are using the Mobile Devices.

I would love if you could take 5 mins. to fill out the following survey about your mobile usage. If you have practices and opinions that you would like to share and be on record for, please fill out your name and email and I will interview you.

Also, if you could pass this link onto your blog readers or friends or colleagues who also are using thie mobiles for creative purposes, it would be much appreciated. The more, the better the survey.

If you have questions, please email me at blackphoebe at gmail.com. I will be at SXSWi this year and would love to say hey!

Take the Survey:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=557101809700

After weeks and weeks of looking at them, after being given one in a promotion last July but it has never arrived, last friday during a very good Vodafone holiday promotion, I went out and bought a Nokia 6680. The deal was that if I signed up for a one year contract, of which I have been meaning to do, I could get a Nokia 6680 for cheap. Relatively cheap.

Now with my lovely and beloved 7610, I could blog directly from the phone with Lifeblog in the US with AT&T Wireless as well as send and receive any email amongst a host of other features for a reasonable price per month. But Vodafone in Ireland does not provide such features, to blog my photos from my Nokia 7610 phone, I have had to use MMS rather than Lifeblog, there is no email with the Pay as you Go plan, as well as very little other features, and data transfer and/or internet features are expensive. It has been a frustrating eleven weeks in moblogging land.

Upon the purchase of the Nokia 6680 and the signing of the contract, most of these troubles dissolved, but at a price. From the 6680, I can moblog to any Typepad installation with Vodafone ISP (their email access point, not their GPRS/WAP access point), but I can't moblog to my Movable Type 3.2 installation (once again, Martin has kindly provided a hack, but it is not working for me). I can use the Lifeblog on the 6680 and on my PC to send photos to Flickr and then to this blog via email or MMS.

But how does the 6680 perform compared to the 7610?

... as if the whole of the lit building was not enough to announce it...

For those of you with iPods, you may create a Podcast. Those of us without an iPod in our life, who do have a Nokia 7610 mobile with good recording capacity, have just turned in our first MoCast to the CultureSluts.

On Fri. Oct. 28, 2005, I went to the Darklight Symposium at Digital Hub Dublin. I met Steve of the CultureSluts that day and Jessie that evening. They recruited me to a do a guest MoCast for them as Ms. Jen the Unordinary American.

I recorded small interviews with Kaptain Trouble and Stu, the bassist for the Damned, at the Damned's recent Dublin show. It was good fun. I also meant to record Jason Thompson and Tony Nealon who were both out from SoCal (specifically Huntington Beach) for the Damned show, but did not get around to it.

I will post the link to my first MoCast when Steve and Jessie put up their next Podcast.