Roland Tanglao's Weblog

I love my iPhone (which I paid for with my own money and am still glad I did) because:

• it's beautiful and so is the interface
• the web browser is great, gmail and google reader work well
• the switching between WiFi and EDGE is seamless
• SMS interface is great, so it was great when I was out of Canada and didn't have access to affordable data and wanted to communicate with fellow SXSW attendees
• the voice call interface is great
  

I hate my iPhone because:

• the 2 mega pixel camera s*cks
• no video, i need video!!!!!!
• it's closed at the moment so there's no ShoZu, I need ShoZu! I am addicted to ShoZu's ability to post photos of the kid to my private flickr account and other pictures to my public flickr account

If the iPhone had a 5 megapixel camera and video and ShoZu was available for it, I'd switch in a heartbeat and use it all the time for everything. As it is the phone in my pocket is my N95-1 provided by the Nokia Blogger Relations program (thanks!) and the phone that i would buy with my money if I lost my iPhone and N95-1 would be one of the N95 North American versions.

Having said that I also have a love/hate relationship with my N95-1

I love my N95-1 because:

• It runs ShoZu which has literally changed my life. The ability to "photo-document" my life in real-time has been and continues to be amazing. And if ShoZu ever integrates with Twitter and gets Facebook status updating working, I'll never have to use SMS again when I am in Canada which would be no big loss since I am not a fan of SMS (or paying for messages, I just want to pay for the bandwidth I consume, SMS rates are a ripoff.)
• It runs Qik and similar 'live from the phone videocasting' apps. Qik, flixwagon et al are killer apps over WiFi and 3G!
• It's "open" (since you can only develop 1st class applications using Carbide which only runs on Windows and uses the archaic and silly C/C++ combo, it's not fully open in my book; the whole certificate model and the fact that the amazing hardware on great devices like the N93 is crippled by missing certificates for Python so you can't really access the full power from more modern and dynamic programming environments like Python means Python et al are second class citizens on S60)

I hate my N95-1 because:

1. S60 is not truly open (see the Python problems mentioned above). Hoping for a re-focus around a Linux core e.g. using Maemo from the N770, N800 and N810 Internet tablets.
2. S60 is clunky, hard to use and a maze of twisty little menus and apps are constantly moved around each firmware release. I have taught many people who just got their S60 phones how to use their devices. you don't have to do that with an iPhone which while not perfect is much, much easier to use.
3. It doesn't have enough RAM so ShoZu occasionally hangs and a reboot is required (granted this has become a lot better in the latest N95 firmware updates thank goodness!)
4. The display is too small. As big as the iPhone or VGA please!

Bambuser (my archived videocasts) is another competitor to qix and flixwagon. It's out of Sweden.

Observations after a couple of 'casts:

1. Back end site is Drupal
2. You can download the flash video unlike the current versions of qix and flixwagon
3. You can select the quality and the size up to 640x480 unlike qix and flixwagon although qix supposedly will have this feature soon.
4. Does not seem to have a "stop streaming but keep uploading feature", only connect and disconnect
5. Current version seems to be slower and more jerky than the qix and flixwagon
6. It's out of Sweden

Check out my "Bambuser"-cast after the jump.

Today I tried out flixwagon, "a stream live from cellphone" competitor to Qik. I did a "Carcast" direct from my N95 (mounted on the empty passenger seat with my Gorillapod) as I drove from Gastown to the Viaduct (12 minutes). Impressive!
What Flixwagon seems better at then Qik:

1. Better buffering
2. More "Ajax-y" website

What Qik seems better at then Flixwagon:

1. Non Cheesy look and feel. I could live without the little flixwagon icon moving about before the video is shown and the "too cute" flixwagon smiley icons.
2. Higher Resolution. Qik seems to be higher resolution the flixwagon. Qik is 320x240, Flixwagon seems to be lower resolution
3. Better URLs. There seems to be no flixwagon equivalent of qik.com/roland. If it's there I couldn't find it. UPDATE: it's there! found it by URL hacking, no obvious link when logged in, my page is indeed flixwagon.com/roland
   

Anyways the proof is in the video and both Qik and Flixwagon are evolving at a rapid rate, so let the competition continue! Check out my flixwagon "CarCast":