I saw the news that there was an iPhone tethering app available tonight in iTunes and decided to check it out now once I got home. As you can see it’s in the iTunes Store, but my access is blocked in the US. Interesting …
I’m not sure why this is blocked, as there are certainly plenty of phones that can be used in this way — not too mention all the data cards that are out there. Unless the iPhone has some hyper efficient Dial Up Networking capability that no one knows about it seems like an odd to block. People are already using tons of data.
As a related point, it’s ridiculous to even consider paying for this functionality when it’s built into the bluetooth stack to begin with.I just discovered that this is not DUN at all, but an adhoc wifi access point … the same trick you get with JoikuSpot on an S60 device or WMWifiRouter on WinMo.
Apparently a woman in the Uk signed up for Lovefilm, but was connected to one of my email addresses. This is an obvious mistake, but concerning as I’ve never signed up for Lovefilm directly to the best of my recollection and am wondering how my address was harvested in the first place.
Next, I received a car rental confirmation from Thrifty for a trip I’m not taking. Perhaps I might have been motivated to visit Jackson Hole next week, if they’ve thrown in some airfare as well.
Finally, Sirius sent an email saying there was an issue with my billing information yet after calling there was not only no issue, but I am pre-paid on our radios for the foreseeable future and set to rebill as needed. More disturbing here though is that the operator read my password to me over the phone unprompted to make sure I knew I could use it for online streaming. This is a big WTF! Why for starters can they actually see my password in their system and who thought it would be a good idea (and not totally creepy) to have them read it proactively to me?
Google Maps for Mobile has been updated to support Transit routing which is excellent. I’ve had that functionality for a while on the Blackberry, but since I no longer actively use one, it’s great to add this option to the E71 and others. The UI could use some work, but the functionality is certainly appreciated.
To be officially confirmed later today, but apparently the Mayor’s office will be passing on lighting up the city. The plan is to instead focus on providing affordable access to everyone which is certainly an admirable goal.
According to a piece in Computerworld, the consultants have decided not to focus on a particular access technology, but are very interested in the $8 Million available from Verizon, Cablevision and Verizon to help fund the underserved initiative.
Now I don’t want to sound too ungrateful or suggest anything too out of line here, but the main providers of access in the city would stand to lose the most from a low cost / free wifi citywide network right? I’d have no need to connect to my cellular connection or pay more to my cable / phone provider to get additional out of home access. And someone does have to pay to maintain it …
I can’t imagine we are really even going to see that much progress with $8 Million in “free” money. No one burns money like our benevolent overlords talking about doing things rather than just getting it done.
I just discovered a handy tip for Nokia Chat fans … It’s possible to set your default contacts view to jump right to Chat rather than the main contacts application view. This works great for me since I really don’t need to scan my contact list … I tend to access who I need from the comms app of the moment.
On the E71, you can set this right within the contacts application settings as seen here:
Nice and simple. If you are already engaged in an open chat, Chat seems to take priority, but this is a nice way to always default to Chat.
Verizon is making some noise today with the apparent release of FiOS TV, though when I checked their site for two different addresses (Grammery / Union Square and Hell’s Kitchen) I only see coming soon. So, who can actually get this?
The packages and services they will be carrying actually look great with 100HD channels and a networked DVR … I just don’t believe it’s actually available yet.
Peter Rukavina wrote a very cool hack for Nokia Chat and Plazes over the weekend. Using a jabber bot, you can request Plazes places based on your location. Of course the results vary based on user submitted data, but the idea is quite compelling and something I would imagine we’ll see more of when Nokia integrates Plazes into the budding Ovi suite.
To get started you simply add reinvented@ovi.com to your buddy list and you should then see something like this:
You can then make your requests and see where the places are on the map. You can even add these locations as landmarks which is quite handy as well. In fact the landmark makes it possible to roundtrip the data back to Nokia Chat if you share your location within your presence.
It’s the Larry David rule of life – you just want things to work for you, regardless of how much something contradicts your stated opinions. AT&T is not opposed to the Sprint / Clearwire merger, they just want everyone to have fun dealing with their lawyers and the FCC.
In this case, AT&T claims that it isn’t really opposed to the merger, but it’s filing opposition papers because it feels that Sprint and Clearwire aren’t receiving the same level of scrutiny that AT&T received in its mergers, specifically with regards to it spectrum holdings. This seems like grasping at straws by AT&T just to throw some sort of extra paperwork roadblock in the path of the new Clearwire, which is an obvious competitor.[Techdirt]
Nokia has just pre-announced that in September they’ll be recruiting for a new program called Nokia Pilots. Pilots will give those recruited the chance to impact future next generation products and services through advanced access and feedback. While there’s only a limited amount of information posted, I believe this will be a very big idea.
Nokia Pilots gives you a unique opportunity to get involved in Nokia’s creative process. Get an insider’s perspective by taking an active role in the development and testing that will help shape Nokia’s next generation of products and services. Your input and suggestions will help us develop new ideas that will be put into action as we strive to create the best products and services possible. Nokia believes that the best way to get better is by working together. [Nokia Pilots]
As you might expect, I’m very interested in getting on board with this program and believe I’ve got a lot to share. Getting involved in the vision for how the services work is huge! Nokia has stated many times that they are becoming an internet company through a suite of services which have really only just begun to go live. The conversation will only continue to evolve!
The Nokia E71 North American Edition (NAM) is finally available!
There was actually a special launch event tonight at the Nokia Flagship in NYC which I stumbled onto just making calls for availability. If you are interested it’s running for $483 plus tax. You might be able to find a better deal online through some other venues, but I’m really glad the price is below 500 bucks unsubsidized. My NAM edition arrives tomorrow and I’m looking forward to getting back into HSDPA with it ASAP.
Last week, Nokia Beta Labs released a very cool new application called Nokia Chat. As you might guess, Nokia Chat is an IM application, but that just starts to scratch the surface as there are also additional layers of presence and location. Unlike some apps you might have tried like Jaiku or twitter, Nokia Chat is about one to one communication and does not have a public room in which everyone’s discussions pass by.
Nokia Chat is Jabber based and to use it touch need to sign up or in using your Ovi sign-in. Your handle is then nickname@ovi.com and you can also add this account to your desktop IM client using chat.ovi.com as the server.
In addition to chatting with your friends and colleagues you can share locations as well using the GPS on your device. This is something you are fully in control of though, so rest assured that your actual location is not revealed unless you to choose to share. Nokia Chat integrates with the system landmarks and uses the familiar (or actual if you prefer) name in you presence line. You get to send you own location which provides a link to you on the map and is fully navigable from within your mapping app so you can meet up if you like – or simply just see where someone is hanging out. What’s nice about landmarks is that you can use saved locations from both Google Maps or Nokia Maps. When you open a location link, it goes to Nokia Maps …
Nokia has integrated Chat into the address book though it works as a tab within the application. On the N95 you move the rocker to the right and then switch into chat mode. On the E71, the tab is accessed by moving to the left, which gets you into the tab ui at the top of the screen. When chat is running it is also actually using contacts and I’ve found you need to keep both open in order to stay actively connected.
The GPS functions by searching on a user defined interval. 20 minutes is the default and that seems to offer a nice balance between actively sharing and managing battery life. It’s hard to tell exactly how long the connection is maintained, but from an offline state to connected your location can be shared within a matter of moments (less than 30 seconds including application start up) thanks to the use of landmarks as reference points and the speed of AGPS.
Nokia Chat has become my preferred mobile IM app. I would love to see support for additional IM services which would let this work beyond just Nokia handset owners. You can add Gtalk and other jabber service buddies, but connecting with AIM, MSN and Yahoo contacts would make it complete – even if those people could never take advantage of the Nokia specific features. I have found the application to be very lightweight and notifications for chats are easy to manage and not intrusive.
I’ve been playing with Nokia devices for a few years now thanks to the blogger relations program but the program has been focused on the Nseries line. This past week however, I received an E71 which has made me an instant Eseries convert. The E as you might expect stands for Enterprise which would lead you to believe there’s a corporate focus here and while that’s certainly a strong suit (ahem) there is nothing conservative here at all.
The styling is awesome – metal, sleek and shiny. The build quality is the best I’ve seen with the exception of Nokia’s 8800 which was designed as a luxury device. The E71 makes my Blackberry Curve feel like a toy by comparison.
The E61 and E61i which I’ve also used are the prior generation of this device and yet aside from the QWERTY keyboard there’s very little in common in experience so far – and that’s a very good thing! I actually loved the E61 when I first purchased it a few years back and was excited to try the E61i which enhanced the original with a slightly refined body and a camera. Both however, simply did not have enough memory to multitask and I found the batteries was easily drained by mid-day running push email. I had the opportunity to switch over to the E61i from the BB Curve but had to return to the Blackberry after a short time due to a weak battery as well as issues staying synced with Exchange. Exchange sync has been fixed thanks to the free Mail for Exchange updates and the E71’s battery is a whopping 1500Mah – the same as the Nokia N810.
As you can see in the above shot the E71 is between the Curve and iPhone in shape and size, though it’s thinner in both thickness and width than either device. It feels amazingly solid feeling in your hand and easily slides in and out of your pocket as you need it.
I think the more logical comparison of the two is the Blackberry since that’s really the target for a device like this but there’s not much to compare. I’ve always found Blackberries to be very strong in wireless sync and speed between messages and while the prior E61 series were not stellar here, the E71 is super quick. Aside from the speed, I’m running a ton of apps concurrently and using gobs of data on both cellular and wifi simultaneously. Handy Taskman reports 61MB of free memory on boot which easily lets me do anything I can imagine with the E71. I typically run two push email accounts, Nokia Chat, Jaiku, the browser with multiple windows and have the Music Player open. On my commute I’m listening to music or podcasts over A2DP. I’ve found in the past week that my usage of the Nokia Internet Tablet has gone from several hours a day to only a few minutes … The E71 can handle just about anything.
While the E71 has a very solid qwerty keybord, the software also includes predictive text which works better than other systems I’ve tried (NIT and BB). Anything you type can be added to the system dictionary and is then available anywhere you need – whether in a note or even in a form field within the browser. I’ve added at between 50 and 100 new words if not more since starting out. The text prediction works with contractions, but for some reason does not add a period after a double space. Hopefully that can be addressed with a software update. The keyboard layout seems far more optimized that the E61 as well. It’s easy to reach key punctuation and symbols without having to hunt around or use the character shortcut key.
The Browser has received a nice boost on two fronts. I discovered fullscreen mode immediately and have not looked back. This elimiates the soft key shortcuts and page titles to maximize the page view. With a double press on the left soft key you are at the menu for bookmarks setttings etc. A single tap is handy to see how much of a page has loaded since you can’t see the loading bar in fullscreen. I would love to see the fullscreen mode drop back to window view when a page is loading and then back to fullscreen on completion so you never had to guess what was happening. I’ve actually suggested this to “some people” and hope it makes it in on a software update schedule. The other key detail here is that new windows spawn when opened from other apps or via an active standby screen shortcut. I love this one. It’s seriously annoying to lose your place when coming over from an email link and having a new window open instead is the same way I use my desktop browser.
In software, there’s a nice dictionary which can serve either as a traditional dictionary or if you download (for free) additional languages you can also use it as a translator which could be quite handy when traveling in another country. Otherwise the on-board software is as you might expect from S60 though for some reason Access Groups are no longer on board. This was a handy way to package both cell and wifi AP’s together in a single stack. I really hope this returns. The new Nokia Chat beta application actually has a nice facility for selecting multiple AP’s by type for access … perhaps this is a new direction for things and will make it’s way in to the rest of the system as well.
The E71 is as close to a QWERTY Nseries as I think we might see. It does everything a high end Nseries does with though lacks Carl Zeiss optics and automatic auto-focus (press T when the camera is open). The 3.2mp camera does a fine job – not great, but substantially better than most phones. From a multimedia angle, music, podcasts and video are all fine. Sound is fine for my daily needs and while video looks great on this screen, the consistency in framerates are not at the same level as what I’ve experienced on the N95. Though I can’t say I necessarily expect the same level of entertainment access with an Eseries.
One last function to note which I’ve honestly barely used is the ability to switch modes. The idea here is that you get one device with multiple personalities. If you want work messaging on until the weekend and a focus on your personal stuff after hours and on weekends, you can press one button and switch over to a more personal (active standby) view. I’ve been running both email accounts all the time – I guess I’m too Type A not to just leave it all going all the time.
In general, the E71 is one helluva solid device. The only thing missing here is 3G support for the US, but that’s coming …and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!
As noted previously I have not purchased the iPhone 3G and as of this moment see no compelling reason to do so … I did update my iPhone to the 2.0 software though after the update re-harvested the SIM for my other devices.
I like what I see in the app store, meaning I like how it works, but I am not finding any applications that are must have, OMG this is something that will drive me to the 3G device cool. The App Store is regardless, the best on-device implementation I’ve seen for application discovery and distribution. Works quite well in iTunes as also I should note, though 99% of my browsing has been on the iPhone itself.
I’ve loaded up mainly streaming music apps – Pandora, AOL Radio and Last.fm. All work well and as you’d expect delivering tunes based on your requests. I’ve only used them on Wifi, but as Angel can confirm, music streaming on EDGE seems to work fine too.
I’ve also checked out Facebook, NYTimes, Truphone, Remote, eReader and Bank of America. Facebook worked as expected though the iPhone web app was strong to begin with. The NYT was actually disappointingly slow. The m.site is much quicker on the iPhone or any other device for that matter. Truphone refused to connect I think because I was doing it without a SIM and that’s how it identifies you … eReader is cool and actually connected to pretty old Palm database. I actually updated my payment info with eReader and installed the app on my E71 … think I’ll be checking out some new eBooks soon. I don’t have an account with Bank of America, but I was curious how they were handling mobile banking … not much to see beyond locations until I login. Remote is the best app I’ve tried and that’s thanks to the Apple-centric home in which I live. I love how I can use my wife’s or my iPhone to connect to our shared iTunes library and stream tunes on the AppleTV. If I did not have an iPhone, it would be worth having an iPod Touch just for this functionality.
In general, I’m pleased with the update given I get essentially all the functions minus the 3G radio and onboard GPS with the 2.0 software. I stopped in the Apple Store in White Plains on Sunday for a Genius Bar appointment with my MacBookPro and spent some time with the new iPhone 3G just to see if I’d missed anything and should just buy it, but I left without a new device and am not regretting anything. The new hardware certainly feels nicer in your hand and I found the keyboard more responsive than the one on my device, which is odd given they run the same OS … If I was going to spring for one, I’d get the White which definitely looks elegant and seems to stay cleaner compared to the finger print magnet Black. Plus, I’d need to have 16GB just because …
I was completely unsuccessful at getting my work Exchange account to sync and am not sure what the issue is as the Mail for Exchange application syncs without issue on the Nokia handsets on which I’ve tried it. MobileMe has been a complete fail … Contacts and Calendar refuse to load and mail is just my .Mac which is already forwarding to Gmail. I’d probably stick with Gmail IMAP which supports IDLE and does “push.”
I’ve been reading reports on battery life and am not surprised. GPS and 3G eat batteries. It’s been my experience for a long time and that nice big screen on the iPhone can’t be helping in the power department either. People will just need to learn how to manage their activities a bit. Speaking of which I’m very curious to see what happens with all the apps people load and how that impacts the usability and navigation on the device. There are no sub-menus which is potentially easier to deal with, but you can only deal with so many pages of things.
We’ll have to see what happens when apps get access to background processes in the fall. For now, there’s still no multitasking, cut and paste, and bluetooth does not support DUN, A2DP or keyboards. My iPhone is likely to remain largely unused …
Due to some cosmic craziness, the Address Book on my Mac Book Pro had swelled to over 140,000 contacts! 141,674 to be exact. There were actually even more but I was successful in killing a few off.
I have no idea what caused the duplication bug to occur, but it was way too much for the system to handle and I needed to take a fresh crack at things. There were simply too many to select all and delete or even run the built-in duplicate finder.
~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook in case you are wondering where to find the source data. I trashed the whole folder.
At some point over the long weekend last week I started to re-think my position on upgrading to the iPhone 3G … I’ve been trying to keep the hype in check, but it’s seriously hard given the rather considerable volume of discussion.
As I checked back in with the world following a flight to San Fran, I see that Walt Mossberg has brought us a very realistic review which reinforces what I already have discussed, but also brings up a few wrinkles. I was justifying considering using the iPhone as a bridge between both my personal and work email and data, but it seems the iPhone forces you to choose one over the other if you decide to use the Exchange sync option. While on your desktop, you can have multiple calendars for various things in Outlook or iCal, the iPhone seems to only support a single calendar and will actually wipe your personal data from the device if you set up Exchange after syncing your personal info. I guess this means you can can’t loop your data from work into MobileMe either… at least via iPhone.
The iPhone is also officially “mortal” with battery life reduced considerably when using 3G which I expect most buyers will be doing vigorously. Running push email, browsing and running GPS will all tax a battery considerably and these are the things people are most excited about.
Looking forward to seeing what applications arrive and how that pushes things across the industry. The simplicity of the interface and strength of the browser have certainly woken a few sleeping giants … Though I’ll be happily enjoying the benefits from my existing iPhone for the time being.
I’ve been using Boingo on and off for a few months now and it’s been indispensible from my mobile devices though until now there’s been no Mac client … It’s finally here though, GoBoingo for Mac works just like the PC and Mobile editions and lets you connect to the vast international network of hotspots via the Boingo simplified connection manager.
One thing I really love about the Boingo client is that you don’t even have to know in advance whether the airport or hotel is in the system, Boingo proactively connects and lets you begin to surf.
I’ve got Boingo installed and ready on my N95, N810, MacBook Pro and work-issued Lenovo X61. I’m ready to connect and with a business trip this week, I’ll be putting Boingo to work!
BBC is running a very cool piece on the Supermarket of the future. You scan your items as you go via your phone’s bar code reader and then the phone’s software generates a single bar code to total everything making it quick on the checkout side as well. You can even choose to pay via NFC or a biometric finger print reader!
The whole thing is shown running on a Nokia N82 and uses custom software specific for the store which looks like it’s a European Costco.
