Just tried viNes on the E71 (check out my my Y! Purple Bike 1st ride route). The mobile app part of viNes is much nicer than Nokia Sports Tracker (this could be a "honeymoon effect" due to the E71's expanded RAM and fast processor but viNes on an E71 is much better than Sports Tracker on an N95-1! Sadly viNes doesn't work on an N95-1). In a bit of an oddity, the maps show on both the Nokia Sports Tracker site as well as the viNes site. The website (like far too many Nokia websites, what is the problem Nokia? Adopt Joomla, WordPress, Drupal or Rails, stop using proprietary web systems with ridiculous amount of flash please!) is still very bad: not enough social media features (that you get for free on the aforementioned platforms), too much gratuitous flash and bad URLs (check out my past whingeing :-) about the Sports Tracker site!). Someday when the iPhone has background processing, an app like this will come to that mobile too! Until then, viNes is much better than any of the iPhone GPS tracker apps I have tried.

QUOTE [From Nokia viNe Has Been Released - Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen]

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.

END QUOTE

Kris briefly lent me his N82 but asked for it back so he could give it to a friend today.This led me to  look up how many photos I have taken with the N82 since August 26, 2008 when Kris lent it to me: 2300 public photos! Lots of blurry ones but some decent ones. Last N82 observations after 2 months of use primarily from my bicycle but also private ones of of the kid :

1. It's the North American Version so none of the recent software upgrades are applicable. No, I didn't consider changing the product code to get around this. Life is too short for ridiculous :-) hacks like changing phone product codes.
2. The N82 is actually slower shot to shot than the N95 when the sensor powers down. My theory is that the Xeon flash powers up for pre-flash/pre-focus and that takes time and this time is not needed in the N95
3. The built-in GPS seemed faster than the N95 but not much faster perhaps if I had the European variant which has had more firmware updates I would notice more of a speedup.
4. The keys are too small. Like Whatley Dude I prefer the N95's keys.
5. Sports Tracker *seemed* less reliable. Again this may be a firmware issue

Back to the N95-1 tomorrow! But my power cameraphone recommendation of choice for Canadians and Americans remains the N95-4 aka N95 8GB NAM (and if you have lots of money, the gorgeous sounding N85 (come on Nokia Blogger Relations send us North American 3G phones please!  which also does North American 3G). For a power user of cameraphones, life is too short for EDGE!

Had a blast bicycling and checking out Car Free Vancouver 2008 from Commercial Drive to the West End to Kitsilano and back to Commercial Drive (we skipped Main Street since it didn't start until 4p.m.)

Here's some of the media we created:

1. My Vancouver Car Free Vancouver 2008 Videos (Part 1, 2, 3, 4)
2. Jean's Videos - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 , 11, 12
3. JMV's Videos - 1, 2
4. JMV's Pictures
5. My Pictures

1. The weather! Perfect!
2. Jean's McGyvered bicycle mount - although I am investigating using the N95 ProClip Motorcycle Mount, anybody know whether it will work on a bicycle?
3. The event itself. Rockin' great time at all venus. Great food, great happenings (e.g. mojave, Paul Jarvis' band, Japanese food, African Drum circle, etc)
4. Qik was rock solid. It just worked and buffered when we lost connection.

1. Rogers Portable Internet combined with FreeTheNet combined with splash screen = FAIL (or at least it seemed to fail a lot more than during our 2 dry runs during today's bike ride, actually we did stream a lot more video than I thought). Next time I suggest EV-DO card from Bell or a HSDPA card (i.e. something designed for mobile connectivity, Rogers Mobile Internet is designed to be portable NOT mobile) plus a travel router like the $170 Cradlepoint CTR500 EVDO/HSDPA 3G Router . I am a supporter of FreeTheNet but again it's designed for non mobile use.
2. My IOGear Mobile Portable Power loose connection with my N95 caused me to run out out of power at one point - Jean's N82 had no problem so probably an issue with my phone, not the IOGear power.But probably points to the fact that the Nokia power connector wasn't designed to be connected horizontally for charging. I'd prefer a micro USB / mini USB for charging personally
3. Nokia Sports Tracker's 1998isms (I realize it's beta but if they had used Drupal or any modern system they'd get these things for free) - i) Bad URLs that end in .do instead of being clean ii) no search feature iii) no tags iv) no RSS for tags
4. Qik's tags have no RSS feeds

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!

Looking for a gift for a Canadian Social Geek? Then you are in luck. I'll show what's cool and give you a tour of the difficulties of being a Canadian Social Geek (there's no such thing as free trade in reality between Canada and the USA since it's even harder now than in the past to get gadgets over the border)

1. N95-1 Nokia Cameraphone ($650 from dell.ca)? Why because you can upload awesome cameraphone pictures automatically with suspend/resume to flickr for free over Wifi using ShoZu (every social geek knows where to find free wifi) and if you are rich you can do it over EDGE. Be sure to get your geek to upgrade the latest N95-1 firmware update which makes the phone much more stable when using ShoZu. And if you are really rich get an N95-3 ($619 US from Amazon USA) and upload over 3G over the r*poff Rogers and Fido 3G Network. Oh and you can do great videos but there's no automatic video upload solution (ShoZu will automatically upload 10MB videos which is far too little since that's less than a minute of full res video on the N95). Why not Sony Ericsson? Because ShoZu doesn't work so well on their phones (granted Sony phones take great pictures, better than the N95, it's just their software is even cr*ppier than Nokia's and even harder for 3rd party developers). Trust me your SGeek will love the quality of the N95 pics!
2. Apple iPhone - $US399 from Apple USA + about 150 bucks including shipping for a Hardware SIM unlock so it can work in Canada - lousy pictures but the most usable phone the world has ever seen for SMS, web browser for twitter, utterz, jaiku, etc. Notice how there are no CDMA devices on this list. That's because CDMA s*cks :-) (at least the Canadian and US implementations of CDMA s*ck, the fact that there are no SIMs means CDMA users are forever enslaved by the CDMA carriers) and even if it didn't there are no cool devices for it. Sorry Windows Mobile and RIM aren't cool and email is great but it ain't overly social :-) !
3. Chumby - display your friends flickr pictures and RSS feeds on this cute truly open hardware and software device - $179 shipped only to the US (but you know somebody in the USA you can ship this to right?)
4. Eye-Fi WiFi SD card ($US 99)- if you can't afford an N95-1 or 3 then this is the next best thing. Your point and Shoot or Digital SLR with SD to CF adapter = poor man's ShoZu. It ain't ShoZu because it doesn't have suspend and resume if connectivity is lost but it's the next best thing and the 2nd fastest way to get your pictures social. Ahem, not available in Canada. Buy in the USA at Walmart, Amazon, Costco.
5. One Laptop per Child (give one and get one for $US 400 and they ship to Canada, hallelujah!) - cool Linux laptop with built in mesh networking
6. Canon Digital Rebel XTi ($650 with decent kit lens but get the 50MM too):
   Rebel Xti + EyeFi Card and CF to SD adapter + Canon 50 MM f1.8 lens (about $100) + ISO 3200 + f1.8 = shoot in almost dark conditions and upload to flickr over wifi the moment you get to one of your locations with WiFi e.g. your house or work, the Nikon D40 is also an awesome camera but it doesn't take the Nikon 50MM lens so it ends up being more expensive (coz you have to buy a 3rd party 50MM fast lens or similar lens like the Sigma 30MM F1.4 to get a fast low light prime lens)
7. Nokia N800 ($274.99 from dell.ca) or N810 Linux (only available in the USA!) Internet Tablet - great for mobile blogging, twittering, jaikuing etc, also does mobile Skype very well! The N800 has two SD slots for a maxium total of 16GB of storage; the N810 has one slot but has a keyboard.