iphone

Speakout Wireless no catches, unlimited but slow 3G data for $10/month, no voice plan required is my conclusion after a month. Slow means under a 1Megabit sometimes  64 kilobits! But more than good enough to run GPS and do maps and geotag photos. Recommended if you are cheap :-) and want pay as you go data! Or just want a second phone with data and don't require voice! Only tested with a Nokia N8 with Nokia Maps and Pixelpipe but other folks have got it working on Android and iPhone. (see my previous speakout post for setup details).

 

(should work with Android too if you are technical enough to map Symbian to Android; this post describes how to do it for the iPhone)

tl;dr: N8 auto config sets up a WAP access point. All you have to is copy the WAP Access Point to your Internet Network Destinations group and setup the Positioning Server to be that WAP access point and you are done.

Detailed Steps:

1. Settings
   
2. Connectivity
   
3. Settings (yes Settings | Connectivity | Settings i.e. a 2 level settings menu is something only Symbian has :-) !)
   
4. Internet
   
5. Create a WAP Access point under Internet configured as (or if you are lazy just copy the WAP access point from WAP Services to Internet)
   
6. I was lazy and copied the N8 autoconfigured one called "GoRoger"s so Symbian called the copy "GoRogers(01)"
   
7. Databearer: Packet Data, Access point name:goam.com, Username:wapuser1, Prompt pasword No, Password:wap, Authentication:normal, Homepage none
   
8. Advanced Settings: IPV4, Phone IP address:Automatic, Proxy Server address:010.128.001.069, Proxy port number:80
   
9. Next configure the GPS Position Server under Settings|Application Settings|Positioning

   

10. Positioning Methods
    
11. Check: Assisted GPS, Integrated GPS, Wi-Fi/Network, Network based
    
12. Settings|Application Settings|Positioning server|Server settings
13. Tap on supl.nokia.com
    
14. Change Access point to: GoRogers(01) or whatever you created the access point in step 5

    

With the iPhone4S, Apple is now the leader in cameraphones. The only advantage left to Nokia is the Zeiss lens. They have fallen behind in everything else! Sad but true! I hope Damian Dinning and his fab team at Nokia have an even better Nokia cameraphone waiting to be introduced before the end of the year. Fingers crossed!

The iPhone4S has a camera processing chip, the so-called image signal processor aka "ISP" and it has over 6000 cameraphone apps and a f2.4 lens and HD video. The N8 and the N9 lose in all areas except when it comes to raw megapixel count (the N8 has 12 megapixels) and perhaps in the lens quality: the N9 has 8MP and f2.2; the N8 has 82MP and f2.8; both are Zeiss optics which are better lens (methinks) than the iPhone4S 5 element "no-name" design.

Time will tell if Nokia can regain its cameraphone crown but back in 2007 (the time of the "laughable" iPhone 2G; I didn't laugh; I had an iPhone 2G as well as my Nokia N95 and N82 which combined I used to take tens of thousands of photos and I loved the original iPhone web browser and knew back then the iPhone wouidn't be a toy cameraphone in 2011) nobody in the land of Nokia watchers and enthusiasts would have thought that that Apple would produce the iPhone4S that overall beats Nokia cameraphones and not only that will ship in volumes that dwarf the N95 and N82 sales: Every single deficiency that the original iPhone had compared to Nokia cameraphones in 2007 has been corrected and surpassed by the iPhone4S in 2011

Is there a N8 equivalent of the iPhone Slow Shutter app that will allow me to take 0.5 to 15 second photos?

Hard to believe but true: iPhone Google Reader web app is faster and smoother than the Google Reader App on my Nexus S. Anybody know why? Is the Android Google Reader App Java or an HTML 5 web app? I am guess it's a Java app; if so shouldn't Java apps be faster and smoother than web apps in Android?

I agree with Ewan. Symbian Anna is the kind of revision that we needed to see about 1.5 years ago. We'll see when we get the N8 firmware update (late this quarter or next quarter, too late!) to Symbian Anna if the browser is really modern and supports HTML5 and all the other browser goodies that Android, Maemo and iPhone browsers do; I think it does. Symbian Anna is a great update for those who live in a bubble and don't know about the move to Windows Phone 7 or Android or iPhone or if the phones that have Symbian Anna were priced really low e.g. under $200. Unfortunately the X7 is almost 400 Euro and doesn't have a decent camera instead it's the 8 megapixel EDoF camera (but perhaps normal people will be happy with a non auto-focus camera, call me crazy but in 2011 I don't think people will be happy with that camera)

And doesn't understand why the UI is not as responsive in general e.g when playing Angry Birds on the N8
or why the N8 Angry Birds sometimes displays black blotches instead of the correct graphics.

Ah the current sad state of computer software, hardware and experience where only a few companies like Apple can make a compelling, complete experience. (i.e. beyond the Fisher Price iPhone experience; I love Fisher Price Ewan, I also love computer power tools like Ubuntu and Emacs) . I am looking forward to trying out Android in depth but it feels like Linux before Ubuntu rather than a compelling experience that can compete with Apple's.

It's time for real total mobile experience innovation. One that isn't tethered to a PC. One that helps me manage my life without drowning in a sea of overlapping and confusing apps or "ad driven where my data is sold to the highest bidder" web apps.

Perhaps I'll just give in to my geeky nature and run my own powerful but hard to use server for services for my mobile like I run this blog on my own server.

The N8 camera software is awkward and it pains me that the iPhone has become the social camera instead of the N8 or other much better cameraphones but I still am in love with the photos it takes like this macro photo of a flower in Cedar Cottage.

After 6 days with Color here are some musings:

• To me, the idea of a co-locative co-temporal automatically created without passwords and users social network aka "co-created photo and video commons" is great; not sure if that's mainstream, perhaps it will be
• The App is flawed: no obvious way to browse by users, no help information, no tutorial (there is one on the website, but since this app-centric, there should be a tutorial accessible from the app!)
• The App is flawed: no way to unfollow a user or at least delete a user's photos.
• The App is flawed: no way to "unPost". Would be great to be able to delete your photo or video within 10 minutes of posting it.
• There is no web presence. Why have a website if it doesn't have proper permanent links for each user? (is this unfriendly link my permanent link:http://color.com/s/6a0esD?)
• 10 second videos are cool, but 1 minute or ideally 1:30 like flickr would be great
• Color is yet another social media ghetto where you can't get your stuff out with full metadata. Please follow flickr's example and provide an API that allows full metadata to be extracted along with the photos and video.

No obvious utility even to digital hipsters as evidenced by its lack of takeup; not everybody is an environment of iPhone and Android users who will try and both use this app. Color needs to promote themselves at conferences or events where lots of folks use the app (e.g. a geek conference with lots of iPhone & Android users; perhaps Northern Voice but probably not because it isn't iPhone and Android-centric) and thereby bootstrap their network. I think with the improvements above and heavy promotion at events with heavy Android and iPhone usage, it could be big, but there's no evidence that this will happen so far.

Conclusion: Great idea, D for execution. Color will not succeed but somebody else who's hungrier will take this idea and do it right eventually. A "co-locative co-temporal automatic social network" aka "co-created photo and video commons" will happen with or without Color.

As I said in my interesting Vancouver 2010 talk, this is the golden age of computing NOT the 70s and 80s like lots of folks seem to think. Write an awesome Javascript app (or just a fun proof of concept like my flickr Average Geo Tagged real time photos from 18 cities hack) and it works on millions of desktops and mobiles e.g.:Android, iPhone, Meego, Maemo, Mac, Windows and soon Symbian once Symbian gets a modern web browser. Share the code on github and make a video on YouTube and you can get recognition you could never get in the Internet less days of Creative Computing and Byte in the 1970s. Sure there are compatibility problems but nothing like the differences between Applesoft Basic, Commodore Pet Basic, Basic on the IBM PC (what was it called)?

If you examine the iPhone 4 photos and videos floating around the Internet you will see that the photos and videos are fantastic. Not as fantastic as the upcoming Nokia N8 but for 99% of the folks it's more than good enough. And that includes the "I have taken 40000 cameraphone pictures since 2004" cameraphone geeks like myself.

Even the mighty, not released until the fall, Nokia N8 doesn't have the fun and funky cameraphone applications that the iPhone has. One could argue as I have in the past that these are gimmicks to make up for the lousy camera which was true.  But with the iPhone 4, the camera is excellent: fast, plenty of pixels and excellent quality and the HD video on the iPhone 4 is unequalled by the N8.

So has Nokia lost the plot? I would certainly say so. Definitely lost the geeks and other "small c" and hobbyist creators to Android; the high profit, high margin trendy middle class and rich folks to the iPhone; the only thing remaining is low margin high volume phones and lingering vestiges of brand coolness in Asia and Europe.

Is Nokia doomed to "IBM-like 1980s irrelevance" where Apple and Android are like Microsoft in the 1980s - popularizing  and growing the market and pushing Nokia like Microsoft pushed IBM to the margins?

Certainly seems that way. I still think all is not lost. If the N8 ships on time and Symbian^3 is actually much more usable than I think it is and more importantly, the N8, post N900 device and Symbian are marketed properly worldwide and if the Meego post N900 device is cool and compelling, there's definitely the possibility of a rebound.

My fingers are crossed for the big N. I'll continue to enjoy my N900's unabashed and unequalled openess and hackability (disclosure:I received my N900 free from Nokia at the recent Nokia adventure but was going to buy anyway) and I am pretty sure I will buy an N8.

And to participate in the fun and use its great camera and software, I'll also get an iPhone 4.

More shaky backlight video from the fantastic combo of the E75, Qik and 3.5G. this time mobile and web related pontifications from Boris Mann of Bootup Labs (and fellow co-founder of Bryght). Check out the video after the jump or read my stream of consciousness pseudo-transcript :-) !

1. Please port Maemo to Qik, and Nokia please buy Qik; just like Nokia should have bought ShoZu :-)
2. Miss604's Denial of Service of Attack
3. Bryght - the first hosted Drupal, first Drupal as a service, 5 years ago
4. Bryght partnership with Workhabit - 50 servers, Cisco routers, pre cloud, we had DOS attacks and Workhabit's awesome Gary, Aaron and Jonathan fixed the routers
5. DOS cannot be fixed completely but it can be minimized through various means including taking out the DOS IP addresses at the router level, taking your site down is not a solution, shows that real hosting companies need to own their infrastructure or have DNS separated
6. Drupal Gardens aka "Bryght done right" aka "Bryght in the cloud is not using Aegir
7. But Drupal Gardens does use Drush
8. Bryght didn't use Drush, we used python for lots of historical reasons To upgrade 1000 Drupal sites e.g. from Drupal 5.1 to Drupal 5.2 sites I ran hmupdate.py (or was it hmupgrade.py? it's fuzzy now!) in a for loop over the 1000 Bryght Drupal web sites
9. Aegir has commoditized Bryght (former Bryght guy, Adrian Rossouw, developed Aegir; Adrian rocks)
10. The entire Bryght Drupal as a service is available in a box i.e. commoditized
11. The awesome Emma Jane Hogbin has advocated a web infrastructure e.g. a Drupal cloud for every town
12. A Drupal cloud for every town is a way to attract businesses because you can spin up a free (government pays for it, far better than bogus tax breaks) scalable, modern, SEO optimised website for a business or non profit in 5 minutes
13. Dreamweaver doesn't cut it - Technologists have failed because there is still no Dreamweaver for 21st century but wordpress.com is close and Acquia Gardens when it's 1.0 will be even closer
14. Does Qik have a business model? Yes bundling with handset
15. Schmap is annoying and irrelevant
16. Iphone 4.0 is highly relevant :-)
17. Apple Gaming network is huge - Could Tiny Speck use it for Glitch? Yes! How porous will Apple make it? i.e. will it play nice with other social networking sites? probably not in the near term but maybe in the long term
18. iAds - based on HTML5! Big ! Will make HTML5 "the voice of the new web dev generation"
19. Multi-tasking - it doesn't matter, it comes down to UX; area where Nokia is lost (except possibly Maemo! go Maemo go! p.s. I hate the name Meego much prefer Maemo!)
20. User Experience of multi-tasking is what's important and having to install a 3rd party task manager to make Symbian multi-tasking work is a really, really bad user experience
21. Yet another shout-out to Jan Ole Suhr for the awesome Gravity Twitter App - best mobile Twitter app on ony platform, only available on Symbian for the moment
22. Took Boris "83 clicks" to pay for Gravity, sad but true :-) ! Nokia, please fix!
23. Maemo potential is so much greater than Apple iPhone and Symbian because it's Linux and because it's truly open from the get go rather than openness being bolted on like Symbian :-) !

Shaky pontifications without borders video

Hard to believe that I didn't make any predictions in 2009 (my 2008 predictions)!

Herewith again some randomly ordered Mobile predictions which are worth what you paid for them!

Mobile

1. Google will introduce a "comes with data" mobile phone featuring an easy environment to write HTML5 & JS apps
2. A Canadian mobile phone carrier will actually sell mobiles other than the iPhone that have current software & aren't 6-12 months old :-) The current "sell old phones with old firmware with bogus customizations" model of Rogers, Bell and Telus will be over in 2011.
   
3. Apple's tablet will be introduced, it wil be big seller and a great creator and consumer of multi-media and it will be closed and have the iPhone App Store model rather than the Mac app model.
4. Nokia will deliver Maemo 6 and an N900 successor but it won't be good enough for the mainstream but will be awesome for me & other mobile devs because mobile Firefox will offer superior HTML5 and JS experience (yes working for Mozilla I am biased :-) !)
5. The next iPhone will boast a 5 mega pixel camera and other still and video imaging improvements which will be more than good enough for old cameraphone snobs like me and accelerate Nokia's decline among mobile multimedia creators.
6. Mozilla Messaging (my employer!) will introduce a version of Raindrop that doesn't require you to do geeky things like install things like CouchDB yourself and it will rock on Android, Maemo and any other modern open mobile web  environment (sorry Blackberry, iPhone and Symbian but you lose since you are all neither open or modern or both :-) !) Just kidding, it will rock on any modern mobile web browser open or closed methinks :-) !
   

 

After some digging and research around the web, my ideal mobile mad scientist programming language would:

• have the 2D and 3D graphic manipulation power of Processing, Nodebox and Shoes
• be cross platform mac, windows, linux, maemo on mobile, iPhone, android
• be 'web native' i.e. REST, JSON, XML and all the other web API stuff built in and not bolted on like it is Processing, trying to use the flickr api from Processing is shall we say kludge-o-rama (awesome code from bryan chung but indicative of the unnecessary struggle one is forced to engage with in Processing and other non web native languages)
• not use a Java-like syntax, death to curly braces and wasted semi-colons
• be dynamic, death to the Java/C++ cargo cult of typing for no reason 
• be easily adaptable to new APIs and new sensors through the ability to create a domain specific language and/or easy to use and beautiful foreign function interface
• be open source, sorry but for my mobile art,  i can't use programming environments and languages that are not open source
• support the REAL loop, I don't want to spawn threads for the sake of questionable 'concurrency' like I am forced to with OSGI and the Bug Labs Bug

IF I were an idealist that pretty much rules out everything :-)

Fortunately I am a pragamatist. So I will continue my experiments in:

• Nodebox & Python on the Mac
• Cocoa Touch and Objective C on the iPhone

What about Processing? Sorry can't handle the Java syntax and the pain of doing XML and JSON and REST programming and the kludge-o-matic way to access Java libraries. processing.js? too early and too much impedance mismatch to use all the lovely JS libraries out there. And Shoes is promising especially if it were improved so you could easily use normal Ruby gems but given its current "hibernation" "post-Why" not sure it will continue to be improved.

What should I use on Maemo if/when I get an N900? Ruby plus SWIG or some such foreign function kludge er interface :-) to access the sensor APIs which I assume are only available in C and C++ ?

What should I use on Android if/when I get an Android device?

What should I use on Windows? Not that I really care :-) But it would be lovely to have Windows people join in my fun without having to do anyting. Eines Tages!

Somehow I think the "mainstream" world is moving towards my ideal solution and the mainstream solution for what I want will look more like processing.js and ruby-processing or smalltalk i.e. scratch then it will look like Processing, Nodebox or CocoaTouch

On the night before I receive my N97 from Nokia WOM World for a brief trial, just for fun I looked back at my N999 concept/vision from December 1, 2008. And what the heck here's the N999 concept updated for July 2009 (notable updates are in bold):

1. screen with as many pixels as the 5800 Tube or iPhone (sorry but QVGA doesn't cut it in 2009!)
2. S60 simplified and fixed as Rui describes
3. 5 megapixel camera with cover and Xenon flash with 3x optical zoom and 640x480 30fps video (basically re-use the awesome N82 camera hardware and software and combine with the N93 optical zoom)
4. Quad band GSM and 3G (i.e. works on Rogers and AT&T in North America AND European 3G out of the box just like the N85, no funky North American model)
5. Built in ShoZu (with 10MB limit removed for 3G and WiFi, make the limit 50-200MB for 3G and WiFi) - killer app for photographers and videobloggers - Qik is built  into the N97 why not ShoZu? (I can't stand Share Online's limit of 6 photos at a time since I take over 50 a day; hope it's removed on the N97)
6. Bult-in Qik (killer app for videobloggers!) - Qik is built  into the N97 can't wait to try it!
   
7. Awesome web browser (Nokia's Web Kit browser was great in 2006, it is now far behind Apple's)
8. Lots of available RAM (as much as the N95 8GB please!), 8GB storage on built-in card - Reviews are mixed on the N97, sounds like it has a lot of RAM (more than the N95 8GB)  but with widgets it takes up a lot more. - I doubt I will use widgets!
9. Built in Nokia viNes to take advantage of Nokia's great GPS hardware (killer GPS app!) - viNes apears to be dead. Nokia Sports Tracker appears to be alive, so I'd rather have that built-in
   
10. Built in Twitter App i.e. built in Gravity

Now I know the above list is not possible given today's processors and batteries but in that case I can live without optical zoom! Everything else is doable as far as I can tell.

I still don't need:

1. QWERTY keyboard - I'd rather have an awesome camera and flash than a touch or QWERTY keyboard. And for me touch keyboards are just as good as QWERTY.
2. Email (Email is dead to me (ok email isn't dead but my resolution is to take any email thread  that I need to keep that has more than 2 replies to a wiki or blog); I continue to use it  for work and to communicate with "normal" folks!) - If the browser is as good as the iPhone's, then webmail clients work just fine.
3. Touch (would be nice, but not convinced Nokia has the software chops for this; I am not interested in S60 transmogrified with touch, I would prefer touch to be part of a totally revamped user interface that's NOT S60.) - Unfortunately it appears that Nokia's current touch interface s*cks. I hope I am proven wrong by my N97 trial.
4. Micro SD card slot
5. Calendar (would be nice but that's what my laptop is for :-) !) - Again with a good enough browser a web client would be good enough)
6. IM (Twitter is IM enough for me and I am fine with using it in the browser)
7. VOIP is dead to me except for Skype
8. MMS - I am not convinced I need it, I can always use ShoZu email photos :-) but I was wrong about SMS (so maybe I am wrong about MMS) - I am pretty sure I am wrong about MMS and I am pretty sure (unfortunately) I will be MMSing my relatives with pictures since they all finally seem to have MMS plans and devices and none of my luddite :-) relatives still use flickr or any of the other public or private photosharing sites!
   

 

Gravity, the fantastic S60 Twitter client proves that German S60 developers continue to rule the moribund S60 apps ecosystem (unfortunately the S60 app industry is a cottage industry compared to the iPhone app industry). First, profimail ruled the world (back in 2004 when I bought my first S60 phone and thought the mobile email was relevant, just say no to mobile email, just say yes to short form customized mobile two way communication like Twitter) and now gravity rules. And if you don't believe me that the iPhone app industry is clearly dominant over the S60 app industry than that's your prerogative and I'd have to wish you the best of luck making money with your S60 apps!

Behold the awesomeness of Gravity in my Gravity Screenshot set on flickr!

See the accompanying UBC mobile brief wiki for notes to this presentation which I gave to the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Sciences on January 13, 2009 (note that this presentation was prepared using the 280 Slides web app which i highly recommend!)

This is very interesting, now if it would tie into the New York Times iPhone app in a 2 way style, that would be great. Globe and Mail: please do something like this (or at least show that you are thinking about things like this!

QUOTE [From AVC:The Power of Profiles]

Talk about the feedization of the web user interface, we've got one now running at the New York Times. I think it's great to see the Times embracing social software concepts like profiles and feeds. I hope they take it a step further and connect all of this to the social web, beyond Facebook, to blogs, comments, tweets, and so on and so forth.

END QUOTE

Change 2008 to say 2009 or 10 and change Linux to Android (which is on top of Linux) and Russell was basically correct. Go Russ go! Looking forward to more mobile predictions now that you have joined Nokia (and I love how you continue to be honest!)

QUOTE [From The Future of Mobility is Linux - RussellBeattie.com]

There could be some spoilers out there. You never know what's going to happen tomorrow - Apple could pull out some amazing iPhone and change the market over night. But right now being in the industry this is how I see things progressing. As it is now, I use a Symbian phone and plan on recommending that platform to others looking for a good smart phone. But as the next 12 months goes by, I full expect that a Linux based phone will enter my world, and within the next few years become a standard.

See you in 2008.

END QUOTE

S60 5th edition and touch *sounds* good but if it's not in an easier to use form than the current S60, it's useless. And I am sorry but DRM'ed Windows only music doesn't work for me (I don't buy DRMed music from anybody including Apple)! Anyways Apple badly needs competition in the usability department so my fingers are crossed that this represents some sort of competitive threat to them. Go Nokia go! Viva la compétition!

QUOTE from Nokia unveils iPhone competitor — Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Comes with Music (press release, backgrounder) is Nokia’s new digital entertainment service. When you buy a supported Nokia device, including the NSeries, any of the XPressMusic phones and some other mass market phones, Nokia gives you access to the Nokia Music store at no additional charge for an entire year. Download (and keep) as many tracks as you like. This is not a subscription. You get to download and keep as many tracks as your heart desires. Tracks are delivered in Windows Media format, with DRM.

S60 5th Edition (press release) was also introduced. This latest operating system release includes support for new displays, the touch UI, a widescreen mode, a variety of new sensor support, and updated applications and browser support. Wonderfully cool things are possible with the new sensor support, like being able to stop the ringer by picking the phone up and putting it back down face down.

A touch screen phone and operating system were not unexpected. After all, Nokia had to respond to Apple’s phenomenal success with iPhone. However, the gutsy decision to give away the music goes straight after Apple’s cash cow, iTunes.

Scorched earth is a powerful offensive posture. One wonders what kind of deal with the devil RIAA Nokia had to agree to in order to gain the rights to distribute all those tracks for no money… and what the impact will be on their bottom line.

Look for 5800 XpressMusic devices with North American standard radios to land here Q1 2009. Exciting times are ahead.

[From Nokia unveils iPhone competitor — Alec Saunders SquawkBox]

END QUOTE