Roland Tanglao's Weblog

As I feared the $7 "unlimited" data plan for the recently introduced N95-8GB and other Rogers approved devices restricts you to using the built-in apps. The built-in apps are *ahem* (to be nice) not that great with the exception of the web browser (and I fear that Rogers has somehow neutered the "great for Nokia" webkit based browser but not so great when compared to the iPhone browser). 3rd party apps, like ShoZu and Qik, are much better in my humble opinion.

Not only that, you are forced to commit to a 3 year contract if you wish to use the $7 plan.

At this time, if you are mobile enthusiast, therefore, I can't recommend the Rogers Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan or buying a Rogers N95 8GB. Instead I recommend buying an unlocked N95 8GB from Tiger Direct or other source and then buying the Rogers 1GB/month $65 'PC Card plan' which Alec Saunders uses with his unlocked non Rogers N95. As far as I know, this plan doesn't have a 3 year contract requirement. And it doesn't have the 3rd party app tax (Alec uses 3rd party app Qik to stream video live and doesn't pay 5 cents per kilobyte).

Anyhow, to end in a positive note, if any Rogers N95-8GB owners want to experiment with 3rd party apps and want to set them up in such a way as to avoid the "5 cents / kilobyte 3rdparty app" r*poff tax, and you are in Vancouver, please email roland AT rolandtanglao.com and let's get together in Gastown at lunch on a weekday and I'll show you how (it's not as intuitive as the iPhone). I've been using Nokia S60 smart phones like the N95 for four years and can show you how to use the powerful but not so intuitive S60 interface to your advantage.

From Rogers.com - Wireless Essentials:

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NEW! Adding Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan* to your voice plan provides:

* Unlimited on-device mobile browsing access to your favourite social communities like Facebook & MySpace, news, sports and entertainment sites all on the go for one flat monthly fee!
* Access to search the mobile Internet with Yahoo! Search and Google
* Access to information sites like Yahoo! Canada, Canada.com, Windows Live, The Weather Network, Lavalife Mobile and more!
* Protection against high pay-per-use data charges while surfing the mobile Internet

Start saving on all your mobile Internet browsing with Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing* or pay per use at 5¢/ KB.

Plan or pay per use at 5¢/ KB

Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan
Monthly Fee Includes
$7 Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing*

For a limited time, customers who activate on a Voice Plan and add Vision Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing* on a 3 year term receive Vision Bonuses. Learn more

*Important: This plan includes unlimited on-device mobile browsing only and is only available on select phones (PDAs such as Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices, PC cards and non-Rogers certified devices are not eligible). Data usage incurred on ineligible devices or incurred while tethering (using device as wireless modem for computer) or incurred using non-Rogers (3rd party) applications downloaded to your device will be subject to pay-per-use charges of 5 cents/KB. A 3-year term service agreement is required for Rogers Vision devices.

What is tethering?

This plan does not include any usage incurred while tethering. Tethering is when you use your phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet. The phone can be connected via USB cable or Bluetooth. Once connected, you can access the Internet wirelessly on your laptop using the Rogers Wireless network. While accessing the Internet wirelessly on your computer, data charges are incurred at a rate of 5¢/KB.
What are 3rd party applications?

3rd party applications are applications like Yahoo! Go or Google Maps. These are non-Rogers applications which may be downloaded to the device and incur data charges at a rate of 5¢/KB.

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The N82 was released today with great fanfare (rightly so since it's the first Nokia with a real flash!) and some fun video but nobody has told me whether it can pass the "Roland Challenge" and the "Roland ShoZu Challenge". I'm hoping the latest Nokias like the N95-3 and the N82 pass because of their increased RAM.

p.s. in case you forgot, here's the Roland Challenge: take 50 pictures in 30 minutes of random stuff and see if the phone or camera app crashes (without any 3rd party software installed and a freshly formatted 2Gig or larger card)

p.p.s. and here's the Roland ShoZu Challenge: Repeat the Roland Challenge but install ShoZu first and set ShoZu to auto-upload and again let me know if ShoZu, camera app or the phone crashes

The face of MoMoVan (at least for 2007-8) by popular vote is Igor Faletski who not only is one of the partners behind Handi Mobile but also looks great in a hat.

Some other MoMoVan Oct 2007 thoughts:

• Enjoyed the beer and the venue at Granville Island Brewing Company. Looking forward to the next event there
• Igor Faletski's and John Boxall's MoMo World Wide Summit 2007 presentation was insightful and hilarious. Love how they loved the unconference part the best too. I suspect I would have too.
• Handi Mobile's poll service sounds great. Please add acknowledgement message to confirm a successful vote.
• The floobs aka "Mogulus Mobile" service that they mentioned sounds great. Sign me up for the beta, Igor and John!
• Great enthusiastic organization by new WINBC Executive Director Michael Bidu. Go Michael Go! Go WINBC go!
• Edie Hats is fantastic (and Igor and the MoMoVan attendees looked great in them). I have two of their hats and will head to their celebration this weekend at their Granville Island Store

I'm helping a wee bit with the re-launch on October 1st in a more informal style like Steph and Bryan did for the original Mobile Monday Vancouver way back in January 2006. Register today, it's free; see you at Granville Island Brewing Company at Granville Island on October 1st at 6p.m!
From MOBILE MONDAY VANCOUVER, October 1, 2007 | Bryght:

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Roland Tanglao is helping organize MoMoVan October 2007! (event on upcoming)

Every first Monday of the month 100 of the smartest local minds will share their ideas in places that we all love. The new WINBC Mobile Monday Vancouver (MoMoVan) starting Monday, October 1st is going back to its grass roots origins. FROM HELSINKI’S MOMO GLOBAL SUMMIT TO VANCOUVER’S LOCAL INNOVATORS Are you an interested, opinionated developer, entrepreneur, CEO, Ph.D or student ready to share with others your thoughts, ideas, and solutions around our local wireless industry and Web 2.0 community? Are you ready to have fun? How about free pizza, free beer (1st round), and free parking? We have listened to people like you and developed an event that YOU want:

* To enable an open conversation that is relevant to the wireless and Web 2.0 community in Vancouver and BC

* To facilitate opportunities for casual networking, identifying local talent, building strategic partnerships and business development

* To promote local innovation and collaboration in the wireless and Web 2.0 industry from small start-ups to large companies to research labs

* To have FUN

** You must register, even if you are not paying a fee, by Friday, September 28, 2007. **

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Wow 11 phones per second, wonder what's next for Nokia after mobile phones!

From Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect: 5th, 11, 39%, 70+:

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The significance of the numbers? According to this recent InterBrand/BusinessWeek survey the 5th most valuable brand in the world with industry peers such as Microsoft at #2, Samsung at #21, Apple at #33 and Motorola at #77. 11 phones sold per second, which equates to a 39% market share in a (roughly) 1 billion sold per year industry. And lastly 70+ languages supported on our entry level products.

Tires and toilet paper? Mentioned because the company has a history of re-inventing itself from its fairly recent focus that included these two products, and that the design research which the Tokyo team is engaged in has a scope very much broader than simply mobile phones.

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UPDATE: here's the FeedM8 badge

Another mobile RSS service to try: FeedM8 (requires verification code: [FM8327-55]).This one allows you to make money and is Canadian (Tris Hussey at blognation has the full FeedM8 scoop). We'll see! I'm skeptical (I believe in making money indirectly instead of directly off of "creating compelling constantly").

I've asked for this before from ShoZu but nobody is listening :-) ! In the wrap up meeting today of the mobile rich media research study at SFU at that I was part of the last two months, I expressed my frustration at not being able to fluidly upload videos (sorry but email, FTP or Bluetooth or USB just don't cut it from a mobile device) to my favourite video sites like I can easily do with photos. I know videos are much much bigger but we have phones that support WiFi. so LazyWeb let's do it. And I'll pay! The USB / Bluetooth chain of pain doesn't work if you take as many videos as I do and if you use a phone like the N93 which takes gorgeous videos that have huge files which easily exceed the limits of today's mobile uploaders (the biggest I know is Vox which supports video uploads up to 50MB; unfortunately this doesn't work since the N93 videos can easily be well over 100MB).

Unfortunately technical people often can't seem to get simple things right. Unbelievable but not so unbelievable if you look at the history of HTML and how many many websites to this day are generating "bad" HTML.

FROM Technical Challenges in Content Delivery to Mobile Devices | Mobile Muse:

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Our first surprise came when we discovered that even a "tried-and-true" standard like SMS - that world-wide delivers billions of messages monthly - is not so much a standard as a guideline. Something as simple as inserting line-breaks in content is not, in fact, specified in the protocol as a requirement and it is often not implemented at all by certain platforms. This makes it very difficult to deliver even the simplest "structured content" (i.e. a list) in an easily understandable fashion.

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I misplaced my mouse at Super Happy Dev House. I went shopping for a replacement on Friday and found that the combination of the:
N800 and 850 GSM phone + unlimited data plan = perfect price checker and shopping companion.

The 850 means that unlike GSM 1900 phones it basically works anywhere except a Faraday shielded bunker :-) ! A bit geeky but it was fun being able to take notes and check out the websites of the mouse I was considering as well as verifying that contrary to the label on the box, the mouse I bought, a Microsoft Wireless Bluetooth Mouse 8000, actually works with Macs (inaccurate MS 8000 mouse review - works fine for me out of the box with latest MS drivers - I luv MS mice; I think this is the 4th I've bought with my own money!) !

And I guess maybe not so geeky since I didn't get any second looks and I see "normal" people playing around with their Sony PSPs and Nintendo DS's all the time these days.

Mark my words, shopping and checking prices and taking photos and sharing media back and forth about what you are buying with friends while shopping will become just as normal as playing games on mobile devices!

Awesome vision (I am not a fan of Lifeblog (his previous vision) but I am fan of Christian! And of course I am a fan of Series 60 which was one of Christian's first visions!). Go Christian go! Wouldn't it be cool if Christian Lindholm built this OS at a startup around an open source core like Linux and wouldn't it be cool if Nokia bought that OS and used it on future phones? This would blow the iPhone out of the water. In the long run, this is what has to be done if the iPod-ization of mobile phones is to be avoided IMHO (but hey I could be wrong :-) !)

FROM ChristianLindholm.com: My speech at MEX, The SW Transformer A Vision for a mobile OS:

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I was asked by Marek Pawlowski from PMM to give a keynote at the MEX conference, a small mobile user experience conference. It is great small conference with key people in mobile user experience.

My brief for the talk was this manifesto:

"Manifesto point #4:

Handsets, applications and services should be more aware of the user's physical environment and adapt to provide the most appropriate interface for sound and visual conditions. We think multi-modal interfaces should be supported on many more mobile devices and can dramatically improve the user experience."

Summary:

We are at a stage where a new mobile operating system should be created. One that enables the creation of a cheap monoblock enabling best of breed convergence of mobility and computing. I envision an OS that morphs to accommodate both moving use and mobile use. Focused use and multi-tasking. I call it a Transformer OS.

One way to think of this is to think of RSS in terms of comand. Each command or feature in the user experience is wrapped into a meta language of context. This language of context will drive the use cases and the rendering. We do not only separate funtion and presentation we make function and context interdependant.

With such an operating system we would tear down classic application boundaries: like calling, camera, idle, and calendar into a fluid dynamic environment. The operating system is broader than the footprint of the silicon. It extends into the environment and the network.

I think this kind of device and system could be a massive hit in emerging markets where they choose a mobile before they buy a computer.

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