Thanks to fellow Nokia Open Lab 2008 participant, Glenn Letham, for the Nokia Bicycle Cradle. Got it on Wed, mounted it on the bike yesterday and have done lots of photos and a few videos (one is embedded below). It seems the Nokia Bicycle Cradle was designed for GPS tracking, specifically for Nokia Sports Tracker and viNes but with a bit of jury rigging it's a fun tool for taking videos and photos from the handlebars of your bicycle (albeit with a not too useful view of your wheel and the road; it would be superb if we could tilt it really high or if the cradle was re-designed for on the bicycle video and photo taking). Apparently this handy cradle is NOT generally available. C'mon Nokia make this cool accessory available to all please! (And if anybody knows a similar thing for the iPhone please let me know!)
Steve Rocks (literally since he's a bass player! And figuratively since he's an articulate and very cool person!) ! Met him in Finland at Nokia Open Lab 2008. I applied to the program so, "Global Omnipresent Delivery Services" (GODS hat tip to Neal Stephenson) and Nokia willing, the N96 will make its way to Vancouver (apparently the N96 was designed/integrated in Vancouver) for me to take it on a bicycle and have my devious (ha ha !) ways
A few weeks back I was contacted about a project involving the Nokia N96 - the idea was to send one round the world, getting various people to use it, upload video and photos, add apps to the phone itself, leave stuff on it, basically put it through its paces and tell a story… It’s a great fun idea, and I’m the first one to get it! So I’ve got a brand new lovely N96 to play with for a week or so.
Wearing my Mobile Muse 3 technical evangelist and Fearless volunteer hats, I'll be riding my bicycle with Amy Walker, publisher of the fabulous Momentum magazine about all things bicycling, as part of Car Free Vancouver 2008 starting from the Fearless Mobile Booth on Commercial Drive at 12 noon Sunday June 15, 2008. We'll ride to all the other Car Free Vancouver venues (Main Street, the West End and Kitsilano) and stream video live from my bike to the internet.
Check us out at:
Fearless's Mobile site (where we hope, tech willing, to display a stream from my bike and from a car in a sort of "car versus bike" video mashup)
In preparation for a "car versus bicycle" streaming video showdown on Car Free Vancouver next Sunday June 15, 2008, Jean (Jean's blog post has the background and lots of useful info, read it!) and I did a dry run early this morning.
A question: Anybody know of software to stream in real-time GPS coordinates in RSS, KML or Atom over WiFi or 3G or Edge from a Nokia phone?
Some observations and comments:
Helmet mounted video is more stable BUT on the whole not great because everytime we check our blind spots, the camera moves which is more disconcerting than the jitter from a handlebar mounted phone. I think as Jean noted, we'll move to a handle bar mounted solution like a Gorillopod for the real Car Free Vancouver on Sunday June 15, 2008
A bluetooth microphone with wind reduction like a the Jawbone would probably result in better sound
Broke my GorillaPod last week bicycling up Clark Park, aaargh. What should I do ? Buy the SLR sized GorillaPod (and use it with my N95 and N93, I wouldn't tempt fate and use with my Canon 20D) or buy a proper bicycle mount? Or hack my own mounting system (e.g. from MAKE and Mark Boyd)
Don't have much spare $ and not much mechanical aptitude so leaning towards the former!
Could somebody tell me how durable the SLR GorillaPod is?
The above photo shows my "bicyclecast" setup (Gorillapod + N95 + DT-22 Tripod Adapter + my bicycle). It worked for only 6 minutes of my 30 minute commute to work (bug? limited buffering capacity? EDGE too slow?). And was fun. The GorillaPod doesn't keep the camera too snug on the bike but it's low budget, cheap and cheerful. Someday I'll have the money to buy a proper bike tripod camera mount like the pros use for Tour de France videos!
Check it out: qik.com/video/13888 recorded live from my bicycle (the hardest part was fastening the tripod and the phone onto the bike, music courtesy of my N81 Musicphone)
