nokia sports tracker

Until I get an N8, I have stopped using ShoZu and Nokia Sports Tracker am using the N900 + PixelPipe + RunKeeper on the iPhone 3G. Why?

1. None of my friends use Nokia Sports Tracker (On Nokia Sports Tracker, I recorded over 700 activities (90% bicycling, the rest cross country skiing)  and many people use it but not one of my friends around the world uses it on a regular basis anymore)
2. A fair amount of my friends and people in Vancouver use RunKeeper
3. Up until today despite many attempts, Nokia has been unsuccessful in creating a popular social network which is what Nokia Sports Tracker and RunKeeper are. And although I love Nokia Sports Tracker and I'll try it on the N8 in the future, I doubt Sports Tracker now that it's spun off Nokia will be successful! Love to be proven wrong
4. All in all the N900 camera is better than the N82 (except for the flash which I don't use)
5. I don't have to carry my Bluetooth GPS, the N900 GPS is good enough
6. PixelPipe is not nearly as great as ShoZu but it's good enough

What's wrong with RunKeeper

1. On the iPhone 3G, it doesn't multi-task so if I get an alert or phone call, the tracking stops. Hopefully fixed on iPhone 4
2. There's no way to lock the touch screen so it's easy to inadvertently stop RunKeeper while you are bicycling. Of course this wasn't an issue with N82 which is an old school candybar phone without touch screen

PixelPipe observations

1. No connectivity re-transmission unlike Shozu. So as I blogged before, if you lose connectivity in the middle of PixelPipe uploading  your photos you have to manually figure out which photos were uploaded and upload only the missing ones. This is very painful for a crazy :-) person like me who uploads dozens of photos ; not so painful for the normal person who only uploads 1 or 2 photos per day
2. No automatic tagging on a per account basis. In ShoZu you can set it up to tag differently based on which flickr account you upload to
3. No multiple accounts unlike ShoZu
4. No way to upload friends only or family only i.e. no way to use flickr permissions like ShoZu does only public or private. A pain if you again are a crazy :-) person like me and use flickr permissions  like "friends only" or "family only" which I gather less than 1% of flickr users do
5. No way to select multiple photos unlike ShoZu. This is a Maemo limitation I guess since there is no system UI gesture to select multiple photos or files. You have to laboriously select one photo at a time until all are selected.

Aargh instead of making this a kick a*s product (I have 340 maps from bicycling on Nokia Sports Tracker which NST calls "workouts", ha my bicycling is not a workout!), Nokia is spinning out Sports Tracker into a separate company called Sports Tracking Technologies. I totally disagree with this decision. Instead I recommend (I know it's too late) that Nokia fix the web app (e.g. fix the horrific URLs, make it more social by tweeting your workouts, etc) and bundle the mobile app with all Nokia devices with GPSes. Perhaps Sports Tracking Technologies can give Nokia an exclusive license?

From Charlie at Nokia Conversations:

QUOTE

So, since you are all wondering, Nokia is not killing Sports Tracker, but giving it some wings and will discontinue the Nokia Sports Tracker beta towards the end of 2009 migrating it to Sports Tracking Technologies, a company founded by the creators of Sports Trackers (Ykä Huhtala and Jussi Kaasinen, if you care to know). Given more breathing room, the Sport Tracker guys will be able to start developing other related sports apps.

END QUOTE

N97 Review Thrilling Review Conclusion - only recommended for S60 geeks

If I had money which I don't due to transitions in employment and the need to pay $8000 for a new roof, I would buy an N97 NAM with my own money. But, unfortunately (it pains me to slag Nokia since I desperately want Apple to have viable competition longterm and slagging Nokia is like slagging my first love since I loved my first cameraphone, the 1 megapixel Nokia 7610 I bought in 2004!)  I can not  recommend the Nokia N97 for other people i.e. people who are not already S60 geeks.

Buy an iPhone 3GS instead. Sure the camera on the 3GS s*cks compared to the N82, N95, N97, N86, etc but the software is a joy to use and the touch focus is something that Nokia should have done first. and there is a viable useful app ecosystem for the iPhone unlike Nokia (sure it may develop but there is no sign of it).

The N97 works for me because of these apps (in no order):

• ShoZu - Sorry Pixelpipe your service is unusable until Nokia fixes Share Online, sharing only 30 items at a time is a non starter for me.  The unreliable Share Online which has no cues about whether a photo has been uploaded already is a major annoyance.)
• Gravity - Gravity rocks, it's one of the best Twitter clients on any platform and is continually being improved! Gravity makes the N97 QWERTY keyboard useful instead of a frill. Without gravity, I'd be content with the superior camera of the N86 8MP and pecking away in g*d aweful T9)
• Nokia Sports Tracker is a must have for tracking your bicycle rides, walks,etc. It is full of annoyances like not remembering any of your preferences (I always want to share my Maps with everybody, please don't ask OVER AND OVER again) but works well and is very useful and works in the background unlike the iPhone trackers all of which are useless because the iPhone doesn't allow 3rd party apps to multi-task
• QIK, video streaming need I say more. It just works and keeps getting improved!

If you love the above apps or any of the other few (there are about 50 good apps on S60, on iPhone there are several hundred good apps!) good apps on S60, then that probably means you are an S60 geek and then the only choice in 2009 is either the N86 8MP or N97. However once a 5 megaxel iPhone with decent video comes out in 2010, then I fear Nokia at its current rate of stagnation won't even be able to keep S60 geeks like myself happy.

Why normal people should NOT buy  the N97:

• the UI is impossible to use for non S60 geeks, hand the N97 and iPhone 3GS to a newbie and may G*d have mercy on your soul :-) ! Can't stand S60 constantly nattering at you asking whether you want to connect or not, of course I do ! touch inconsistently works from screen to screen, app to app and a host of other UX issues
• the whole thing feels like a work in progress e.g. widgets are a great proof of concept but in reality aren't really that useful, e.g. the twitter and facebook widgets don't display enough useful info and autoscroll, they just display the last 10 or so status updates, these widgets feel like "hello world" rather than actually useful
• instability - e.g. I reset the phone via *#7370#, set the camera to sequence multiple shot mode and take 16 pictures and the camera app freezes; if Nokia can't get their camera app to work in 2009 no wonder ShoZu also has stability issues
• there's not enough RAM - even if you install all the apps on the built in 32GB mass memory you still run out of RAM

The N97 has to go back to Womworld in England on Tuesday so here are my penultimate observations:

1. There's a bug in the camera app which causes it to forget the GPS setting occasionally. This is annoying because this means I have to re-enable GPS every time I start the camera app (or at least double check that it is still on). Easily fixed I bet in a post V11 firmware update
2. The speakers are tinny but loud, great to listen to while riding my bicycle! Far better than iPhone mono sound!
3. The keyguard lock issue came back today so it's not ShoZu or Sports Tracker causing it!
4. Needless to say multi-tasking with S60 (e.g. playing music with the music player, tracking your bicycle ride with Nokia Sports Tracker and taking photos) works great until you inevitably run out of RAM or the camera app crashes.It's ridiculous that you can run out of RAM with the N97 in 2009 as it is supposedly a "flagship" device. C'mon Nokia please put 256MB RAM or greater in the N97 successor
5. The GPS lock is faster than the N82 and N95 but I don't have time to measure how much faster. It seems a bit flakey compared to a dedicated GPS unit like the LD-4W which is disappointing but to be expected

Twice now in the last 24 hours, my N97-1 running the V11 firmware has auto-locked and subsequently pressing the keyguard aka lock switch on the right side and trying some N97 unlock voodoo from the last time this happened didn't work. I'm am going to do a hard reset and not re-install Nokia Sports Tracker and ShoZu (both of which are unofficial 5800 versions) and if it comes back, I can then definitely blame the hardware and firmware. Stay tuned!

1. The N97 touch UI is a wart on top of an S60 wart. The S60 touch UI  works  only if you are an S60 geek like me or sloanb. For the mass market aka "humans" as Marc Canter calls normal people :-), S60 and the S60 touch UI are unusable. Please Nokia (speaking as a friend who wants Nokia to thrive instead of merely surviving the iPhone juggernaut):
   1. fix the S60 UI as per Rui's suggestions
   2. start a separate stealth division or company to re-do the UI (as I  previously advocated after Nokia Open Lab 2008 and as Alec Saunders advocated today  or just buy Palm :-)  (yes I know buying Palm is unrealistic, but in the long run it's just as valid as Maemo (which I like but is just for geeks at this point) or even worse trying to revamp S60 to make it usable)
2. Having said that, I am strangely enjoying using the N97 (the Touch makes perfect sense if you have been living and breathing S60 since 2004 like I have!). I love the beautiful big screen (the N82 screen seems tiny and dark by comparison) and the camera seems faster shot to shot and the pictures are not bad in regular light (e.g. this photo of Dane from the N97 looks better than this photo of Dane with the N82 (need to view both at original size) wouldn't you agree?).
3. Nokia not having full Mac support for the N97 at launch time in 2009 is inexcusable. The days of the Microsoft hegemony are over. Get over it Nokia, the 1990s are over :-) !
4. Even if Ovi Maps supported the Mac, I doubt I'd like it. I bet I'd feel the same way as Stefan i.e. I'd still use Google Maps instead of Ovi.
5. Over the air update of my trial N97 (which is European) firmware worked flawlessly. Unfortunately as per Ms Jen, the same can't be said of the N97 NAM, again inexcusable for a flagship device.
6. Still not a fan of widgets:
   1. Rather have the weather widget use the official and best Canadian forecast which is Environment Canada's
   2. The facebook app doesn't show enough info and doesn't show Notes
7. Surprisingly email works better than expected with my gmail account. Major bug is that tags don't show up as IMAP folders which they do in a proper email client like Thunderbird.
8. Qik, ShoZu and Nokia Sports Tracker (Sports Tracker still has a bad website and inexplicably doesn't upload all the photos you have taken during a ride but that's not an N97 exclusive bug) all work just as well as they do on the N82 and E71 even though none of them except Qik support the N97 officially yet.
9. Gravity rocks! it's one of the best mobile twitter clients on any platform! Beautiful and fun with the kinetic touch scrolling.
10. The Web Browser still feels pokey and outmoded compared to the iPhone web browser. Please fix!
11. As many others have pointed out, the keyboard is fine except that "long" key presses should result in numbers or the other symbols instead of auto-repeating the key.This works fine in the E71! Please fix in a future firmware update.

Here's my very rough draft Nokia Sports Tracker Tutorial for the recently released version 2.06. It still is too complicated and harder to use than Nokia viNe but appears to be regularly updated unlike viNe. And it still doesn't remember my Live Sharing Pref which I think is a bug and is annoying because I want my maps to be always shared ]!

Here's my Nokia viNe Tutorial in pictures. Has Nokia viNe been discontinued? Seems to be quiet. Meanwhile Nokia Sports Tracker just had a new release and while more complicated seems to be better.

It appears nobody in Vancouver uses Nokia phones and ShoZu even though it's FANTASTIC because nobody has taken me up on my free ShoZu help in exchange for coffee offer. Bloodied :-) (ok, not really!)  I am but undaunted as well, here's another offer: Free photo GPS tagging tutorials using Nokia ViNe and Nokia Sports Tracker and Nokia phones in exchange for coffee. Interested? Email roland AT rolandtanglao.com or text me: 604 729 7924 or twitter rtanglao

From Geotags help locate photos by Jeffrey Simpson in the Georgia Straight

QUOTE

An avid cyclist, Tanglao takes photos during his rides and has more
than 44,000 photos on Flickr, a great many of them geotagged. Recently,
he’s been taking pictures with a Nokia N95, a smartphone with a
five-megapixel camera whose image quality rivals that of some basic
stand-alone digital cameras. With a built-in global-positioning-system
receiver, the N95 automatically tags photos with geographic data

END QUOTE

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

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!)

Seeing Ms Jen's and Glenn's posts about the Nokia Sports Tracker Widget a few weeks back made me create my own Sports Tracker N Series Widget page. Unfortunately Sports Tracker is maddeningly infuriating in that annoying kind of "Nokia can almost make software way" because:

1. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it would freeze or stop tracking my movements in the middle of a bicycle ride when I first tried it (using the built in GPS on the N95-1 and the built-in GPS on the N82 (North American version). And I tried to make it work about 70 times (yes I have 70 routes on Sports Tracker and far too many are incomplete because the GPS froze) which I think constitutes a fair trial!
2. So I bought an LD-4W GPS when I was in Finland for Nokia Open Lab 2008, thinking that would improve the reliability. Well it did for ShoZu but for Sports Tracker it was no more or less reliable
3. I want to believe :-) ! Maybe it's the fact that I have an N95-1 so maybe I run out of memory? Maybe the N82 NAM doesn't work because it doesn't have the latest normal N82 firmware updates. Maybe it's because I don't use 3G (I'd love to use 3G but none of the devices Nokia has sent me to date has North American 3G)
4. And yes I know it's beta, I hope the next version called Nokia viNe is less flakey. Maybe both Sports Tracker and viNe are more reliable on newer phones like the N95 8GB NAM, N96, N85 etc! ShoZu has dramatically improved in reliability in recent versions for fanatical 30 pictures or more per day users like myself (pretty reliable for normal folks all along methinks)! Fingers crossed that the same thing will happen for Sports Tracker and viNe.
5. Postscript: just tried logging into my sports tracker account with my Nokia Account and it failed, in fact I can't login into my Nokia account at all. Here's the error message: "Servlet error: An exception occurred. The current application deployment descriptors do not allow for including it in this response. Please consult the application log for details." - Weekend maintainence? Regardless, a very unfriendly error message.

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!

I rode in the June 2008 Vancouver Critical Mass bike ride (check out my Mobile Muse Channel with pictures, videos and text as well as my partial Nokia Sports Tracker map of the route as well as flickr pictures which I can't get into the Mobile Muse Channel since there's no RSS feed) and streamed video live using Qik from my Nokia N95, like I did for the Vancouver Car Free Festival. Only this time I didn't use WiMax just Edge

Some observations and comments:

1. The ride is quite the phenomenon. As a 3-5 days a week bicycle commuter; it was quite liberating to "take over" the streets and cycle with impunity (if you were in the middle, not so in the back) and be a 1st class citizen (for once!) on the road rather than feeling the need to maintain a constant vigil for cars not seeing you and running you over. Is this a form of civil disobedience or are we just Critical Massh*les? To be honest, I fluctuate between both.
2. Lots of people taking digital photographs and using their cellphones and taking video but nobody doing this live. Imagine 5 years from now when everything is live!
3. My Io Gear power unit Nokia N Series power connector is flakey! Aaaargh, too late to return it too.
4. The N95 really isn't designed for streaming video live over a cellphone network from a bicycle. The S60 interface is designed to be used with one hand while standing still and the phone itself is not designed to be mounted on a bicycle. I would love for Nokia to build a mobile cellphone streaming device but realistically making my own with something like the Bug from Bug Labs (hopefully I'll get mine soon) will (eventually) be the way to go

IF you are a multimedia creator and a north american THEN get an N95 8GB NAM or N95-3 NAM

IF you are a multimedia creator and a european or asian (except japan of course) THEN get an N95 8GB or the original N95, the N95-1

ELSE get an iPhone 3G when it comes out

That's my capsule review of the N78 :-) What can I say? I am spoiled by the iPhone's ease of use and wonderful application environment and the N95's wonderful 5 megapixel camera and video! And with the N95 coming down in price, I can't recommend the N78 (which except for the GPS being faster seems like a downgrade!).

DETAILS:

1. Pricey at $US 500 for the N78 NAM (NAM = North American 3G version), especially when the the N95 North American is $469.97
2. Only 3 megapixel camera on the N78 (but it takes great pictures but not greater than the N95!) unlike 5 megapixel camera on N95
3. Camera is slower to focus (even in fixed focus mode) than N95 which means more blurry photos
4. N78 Keypad is awful, number keys are fine but the Green and Red Keys are very difficult to hit consistently
5. S60 3rd Edition FP2, the OS on the N78, has hardly any real improvements. I'd rather have an simplified, easier to use UI than FP2's eye candy. I'd also rather have a phone that doesn't reboot like the N78 did on me (could be due to the Nokia Sports Tracker beta I was running but all the S60 phones I have used since 2004 randomly reboot). Please make S60 more stable!
6. N78 Lanyard/strap clip is cool.
7. N78 GPS seems faster and better at getting a satellite lock.
8. Video is only 15fps unlike the 30fps on the N95 (and the difference is noticeable!)

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

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)
• My Qik Car Free Vancouver archives which currently has our dry run videos and after the event will have the archive of my live stream
• My Nokia Sports Tracker site which shows our Car Free Vancouver dry runs (dry run June 8, dry run June 11 stream 2) on a nice zoomable Google Map

How you can help:

• Come on down and participate! It's free!
• Take photos and videos and blog about it and tag it: cfvd08

Finally for techies, here's a diagram of how the technology works!

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.

Our config was:

1. helmet mounted N95-1 for me and N82 for Jean
2. N95-1 ran the following software
3. 1. Qik - streamed video live over EDGE
   2. Nokia Sports Tracker

1. My video - also below
2. My GPS Track and map
3. Jean's GPS Track and map

1. 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
2. A bluetooth microphone with wind reduction like a the Jawbone would probably result in better sound

My video: