Cablevision’s Optimum Voice Control Panel needs an update

My Optimum Voice

I am taking a quick break from cleaning out my home voicemail box which became full somewhere north of 200 saved messages. We never dial-in since we get the messages as MP3 attachments on email which is quite handy – even while mobile.

As you can see from the above screenshot, you can only select a maximum of 5 messages which makes deleting everything a rather annoying and time consuming process. Too bad there’s neither an option to auto-delete aged messages or an advanced control to select everything and delete them. Consider this a feature request!

BTW – It would also be nice to know when the box is getting full and certainly when over the limit.

Nokia and Skype – With an Open Phone it Won’t Matter

It was only a matter of time for carriers to make stink about the inclusion of Skype on the N97.  I had first read about the issue via Simon Judge and was surprised it had even take this long to be a public complaint.

Carriers will always hate things that compete with their bread and butter and when you look at the possibility of Skype operating as a voice over data service the carrier is reduced to a mere pipe.  From my perspective as an end user, I’m always looking at more opportunities for just this situation.  I don’t use any operator services currently other than the connection on on either my home broadband or mobile connections.  I have not purchased a phone from a carrier outside of the original iphone since that was released and before that it was years earlier.  When I moved to Cingular (now ATT) I only requested the SIM since I knew I knew I’d be bringing my own devices.

One might argue that Skype delivered pre-loaded on a device would greatly impact the conversion to use numbers and I can’t argue that, though I would suggest that the Skype base is strong and enthusiastic enough that installing it yourself – with or without the Ovi Store – is going to happen anyway.  As it happens there are already no shortage of VOIP options for mobile devices … Skype just happens to be BIG!

I hope Nokia does not back down on the potential for the partnership here.  If it’s really a mobile computer they are looking to sell, I should be able to use any compatible application I want to make the most of my purchase.  That is after all how computers work.

Video: Nokia E75 (Proto) Quick Overview


Nokia E75 (Proto) Quick Overview from Jonathan Greene on Vimeo.

The Nokia E75 was announced officially at Mobile World Congress recently and I’ve been fortunate to have been playing with a near release prototype of the Nokia E75 for a few weeks.

The Nokia E75 is the first Eseries device to support tri-band HSDPA and Quad Band EDGE which enables it to really cover the needs of the global traveler. I’ve used it with both TMO and ATT sim cards and found that I was able to find 3.5G signals without issues on both sides of the Atlantic. The E75 is also the first Eseries to run Feature Pack 2 which offers key some UI enhancements as well as the all important non-destructive system updates.

As you can see in the video, the E75 offers two modes of operation and let’s you choose between the standard number pad / T9 and a very full QWERTY keypad which slides out from the side. The screen auto-rotates when you open the keypad and maintains the state (as expected) of whatever operation you might have been in the midst of trying to complete. I found the keyboard to be very easy to use and would consider it one of the easier keyboards to use on the various mobile devices I’ve tried.

Nokia Messaging is integrated into the E75 and as you can see it can handle both Mail For Exchange along with your personal email accounts. I’ve been using both my work exchange account and Gmail with full push running all day. The 1000Mah battery can easily deal with this as well as my general usage which consists of email, web, maps and Joikuspot though I tend to recharge after a Joikuspot (on all devices) to make sure I can get through the day.

The E75 should will be a great device when it’s officially released later this quarter and I expect it to be very popular for people looking for a highly capable smartphone.

Safari blocks Chrome from being your default browser

You’ll note, Chrome is not an option and Safari is actually seizing the default browser option away from Chrome where I’ve also set it. I have no idea why there is more than one way to set a default application or why Apple is allowed to do this on Windows, but it’s damn sneaky.

2009-02-26_1214 - Safari defeats Chrome as default

Proactive Savings from Amazon Pre-Order

Received the following from Amazon today which was a nice surprise as I’ve never seen this before – from them or anyone else actually.

Greetings from Amazon.com.

You saved $3.99 with Amazon.com’s Pre-order Price Guarantee!

The price of the item(s) decreased after you ordered them, and we gave you the lowest price.

The following title(s) decreased in price:

War Child: Heroes
Price on order date: $16.98
Price charged at shipping: $12.99
Lowest price before release date: $12.99
Quantity: 1
Total Savings: $3.99

$3.99 is your total savings under our Pre-order Price Guarantee.

War Child is a solid album for a great cause btw …

Yes We Know it’s tooootally lame

During Gmail’s outage today your inbox was probably still receiving mail even if you were enable to send new messages. I was trying to mail a picture to twitpic while on the train and saw this:

2009-02-24_0807 - Gmail Yes We Know it's tooootally lame

Apparently when using the offline feature you can’t queue any new attachments … yet.

Safari 4 Quick Take

2009-02-24_0954 Safari Top Sites

I just downloaded and installed Safari 4 on two machines – my work laptop (XP) and my netbook (Win7) which are both PC’s. It’s immediately noticeable how quickly pages render and that’s courtesy of Safari’s new javascript engine. Safari also brings HTML 5 and CSS 3 support which is great news for web app developers and Web 2 enthusiasts.

  • There are definitely some bugs though as you should expect in a beta. In Gmail, if you click a link within a message you get a new window instead of a tab which is how my preference is set. This is the same BS that exists in the current release of Safari.
  • Clicking the title on a Digg post opens the page in the current view rather than opening a tab as you see in Firefox and Chrome.  Interesting that this is the exact opposite of the way links are handled in the first point.
  • On both my systems (XP and 7) even with the preference set from within Safari, I am unable to get it to be the default browser.
  • I tried to install Gears which appeared to install, but on restart of Safari, I found the browser had reset – no saved bookmarks, passwords etc.  I’d only been using it for about 30 minutes so the loss was not severe, though annoying to have to re-enter things.
  • I can’t add a new bookmark (only a folder) in the bookmark manager.
  • It’s impossible to add a link to a post  using WordPress’ graphical editor as seen here:

link Fail in Safari 4 I’ve also noticed some striking similarities between Chrome and Safari … The Top Sites view (first image of the post) is very similar to the Most Visted view in Chrome though it seems to load a live view of sites when possible which is a nice touch. Safari has also moved the tabs to the top of the window panel and added two icons over on the right side of the upper chrome which are very similar to Chrome’s … On the left is Safari 4 and on the right is Chrome:

safari is like chrome 2009-02-24_0956 Chrome Corner

Sure the changed the wrench to the gear, but the options in both menus are very similar.

There’s a cover view option in bookmarks which will also look to show you a live view.  I don’t tend to use local bookmarks much aside from bookmarklets so this is not of much interest to me though I suppose would appeal to a more mainstream consumer.

I’ll probably play around some more but until I can get around the tab issues and the default browser setting, using Safari is annoying – even though it is seriously fast!

Web Video War is Facebook’s to Lose

There’s no shortage of options when it comes to uploading video, but lately a few sites have upped their game and have changed how I’ve been considering even where to upload.

It has been a while since I captured HD video, but I recently received the Flip MinoHD as a gift and have been shooting a lot of clips again.  In my latest tests, I’ve tried Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube, blip, Viddler and Ovi.  Facebook and Vimeo are the clear leaders for streaming quality and the edge there goes to Vimeo.  What’s more interesting though is how differently the services are used and why I think Facebook will win in the end.

If you have never worked with video, it’s important to understand that sharing is a bit more complex than photos as anything you upload needs to be converted for flash which is how just about all web video is presented.  Shooting with the Flip is great as the files come off the camera already digitized as .mp4 files which means they can be uploaded straight away if you like.  You can also use a video editor like iMovie or Final Cut to add some polish though that really depends on your need.  In previous video work I’ve done, I’ve had to first import my footage from the camera (shot on tape) which is a real-time process.  If you shoot 30 minutes, you need 30 minutes to copy it over.  Once on your computer even if you choose to dump it right back out, you need at least the same amount of time (if you have a fast computer) to create a digital file which can then be uploaded for sharing.  The flip (and other digital storage based cameras) let you just copy the files over and get going right away.

So as I had started to say initially, I’ve been shooting a some new stuff since getting the camera last week and I was looking to share easily with family and friends.  Since Facebook offers some excellent control over who sees what, I went there first and uploaded a few clips.  Facebook recently updated their video offering and my HD (720p) video uploaded and encoded quickly.  I was actually pretty impressed with how quickly the encoding process took as that’s generally another real waiting point for most video sites.  The posted video showed up on my profile and in my feed and I was instantly sharing my vacation experiences.

I’ve been seeing a lot of video on Vimeo lately and wanted to test out their HD offer to compare and so I uploaded the same HD video again.  I also posted the video on Viddler, Blip (different video) YouTube and Ovi.  The differences became apparent immediately.  Every other site needed some serious time to encode the posted content and this time took anywhere from over 2 hours (vimeo) to overnight (youtube).  When my content appeared on Vimeo it looked awesome, but I was frustrated with the time it took to actually see it.  I’m not in a race to share content, but having to wait in line to even get the encoding going is quite frustrating.  Only Blip offers the original MP4 (believe at my preference) while the flash is being encoded which is very cool.  The negative is that MP4 files do not buffer or stream with the same ease across clients as flash – regardless of what Apple says.  Ovi, by the way refused to playback my video …

Vimeo is the only site that offers a premium option and I debated it for a day before going for the upgrade.  For about $60/year you get the skip the encoding queue and are offered better quality video playback, HD embeds (with 1000 plays), and a few other bits.  Right after I paid, I uploaded another video and I have to say it looks damn good.  Compared to the Facebook version there is noticeably less digital artifacting and the playback seems a bit smoother.  All is good right?  Well …

While Vimeo offers the best playback and a community, the community aspect is minor compared to what Facebook delivers given the real connections and notifications within the FB system.  The quality is very good, totally free and if you make your video public able to be embedded on your blog or website which is a very interesting move by Facebook in itself.  Facebook’s only real flaw is that there are no statistics available for content you share.  There’s no way to see how many people have seen your video or photos which tends to be a currency on most media sharing sites.  Facebook is probably going to be the place you also first think to share video content much like people have been doing with Photos.  As I see it there’s no reason why not to use it.  TOS BS aside of course though that does seem to be behind us for the moment. I will likely continue to use a variety of sites and have signed up for Tubemogul which will let me upload a single (<100MB) file and have it shared across the sites I choose as a bonus I can see an aggregated dashboard for my views as well.  Except for Facebook …

iPhoto ’09 Face Fail

In general the new iPhoto is really an excellent upgrade. There are a slew of interface changes and I am actually giving a lot of consideration to moving back to iPhoto from Aperture. That said, the new Faces feature definitely needs some work. It seems to require a lot of training to start recognizing things and does not like different angled shots of the same person. And then of course there are things like this:

iPhoto - Face Fail

iPhoto - Face Fail

Update on My Netbook Usage

Samsung NC10-14GW netbook

I’ve been using the Samsung NC10 as my main travel system (also carrying my work laptop) since the end of December and I thought it would be worth reporting on my findings to date.  In general, the NC10 performs admirably for every request I’ve made though it’s not hard to find the edge of the netbook limit either.

Since buying the NC10, I’ve traveled abroad twice and found that aside from needing to connect to my office’s VPN, I can do everything I need with ease during the course of a business day.  I can email, IM, video chat, browse sites, open office docs, play media etc.  The battery in Windows XP goes basically the whole day though I actually rarely run XP as was pre-installed.  Instead, I’ve been using a combination of Windows 7 and OSX as my primary systems – mainly Windows 7.

Both OSX and Windows 7 use more power, but are infinitely more pleasurable to use over XP.  I accept the lesser battery capability in return for user experience and will definitely remove XP when Windows 7 is properly released.  OSX is something I run when I want to use a Mac specific app like iPhoto though after this vacation I will probably not do that too much more moving forward with this current rig.  As much as I like running the Mac side of things, editing high resolution media is not very efficient on the current Atom spec.  You really need more horsepower and ideally a GPU to complement the CPU.  This would most likely reducer battery life further, but again it would be worth the sacrifice to let something this size serve as a primary computer.  I’d pay more for this privledge as well.

This past week, aside from shooting a few hundred RAW images of my kids, I’ve also captured a lot of HD video clips with a Flip MinoHD I received from my wife.  It’s basically impossible to playback these clips at full strength … they play fine in smaller preview scale, but fullscreen HD is just too much to ask for a low powered system in these initial netbooks.  While I would not be looking to edit or playback HD video or edit RAW images on a daily basis I actually lost track a bit that my computer was indeed a netbook.  Of course I know it’s a netbook, but since it really is an incredibly versatile system, I don’t really consider it secondary.  This last thought is something I think is pretty impressive … While the intent of the netbook as it was sold was as a low cost, reasonably powered computer you can actually do a ton of stuff with it – and not really consider the limits unless you start to venture into richer media.

For me, the netbook is still a very strong category of computers and I look forward to upgrading to a more capable system at some point this year when things evolve.  For a typical user these current and even the soon to be released computers will serve a very wide segment and after a few months of use, it’s not hard to see why they are selling well.  In these financially unknown times getting a lot of return on a small investment is a great deal.

Standing on the Beach

Today is our last full day on vacation and it’s been fantastic! The weather has been clear and warm and the kids have really enjoyed the beach, pool, boating and of course the playgrounds around Hobe Sound, FL.

Samsung’s OmniaHD is seriously impressive!

In a word … WOW!

I’ve never seen this touch UI in action and love the widgets and transitions.  Samsung really shows the potential for S60 here given that it’s running on S60 5th edition like the Nokia 5800 and N97 yet with a considerably higher degreee of gloss.  I don’t have any sense of how the battery lasts through all this HD action either, but it’s certainly a gorgeous looking device!

via S60 Blogs

The entertainment business just doesn’t get it

Let’s face it. It’s easy to acquire video content these days regardless of whether you subscribe to a particular tier from your cable company or even whether you live in the country. Regardless of this the content companies still do not offer a legit path to offer content direct to consumer on a broad enough scale and so piracy continues. The same basic practices occur across media whether it’s movies, music or even books. For some reason the media business still feels the need to limit who gets to see, hear or read something rather than simply enable access to content given that it’s all bits and has been for a very long time.

It’s this type of mentality that has clearly driven Hulu’s content partners to demand that Hulu prevent Boxee from distributing shows across the Boxee platform.  This is an ignornat decision based on old media thinking end of story.  When you consider that Boxee offers Hulu as is – with commercials as they were originally sold, it’s clear this is simply based on believing that the content can be controlled through the old methods.

Boxee is a free software product available to download and install on your (Mac, Windows or Linux) PC or AppleTV and has yet to charge anything more than your time to install it.  Content passes directly to you on the platform and screen of your choice and though instead of using your web browser to surf across a bunch of web sites, you get a clean 10′ UI which keeps things really simple.  Boxee also adds a social layer which lets you share what you’ve viewed or heard and even make recommendations directly to your friends.

Given that network television content remains “free” and culturally we still tend to gather among friends online or at work and socialize about the shows we watch, it’s ludicrous for the media companies to want to stop something that actually enables shared enjoyment of the very content they are trying to promote.  Hulu and Boxee together are just another outlet / channel / option for people to consume the content they want.  An important detail which I’m sure will be lost on the TV creation and distribution world is that while Hulu is working to make it from niche to mass, Boxee is still early in the technology adopter territory which makes it ripe for influential discussion and most importantly spreading the word – whether good or bad.  Ironically, when tech savvy consumers get burned or blocked on one route there always seems to be another which was there all along … still free, without commerical interruption and easily viewable on any platform.

Nokia Messaging Gets an Update

I’ve been using Nokia Messaging since the summer across my devices and it’s definitely worth an install if you are looking for a push-like email experience.  The latest update to the service offers a tweak to your settings giving you more control on the handset as well as supporting the just announced Eseries devices.

The Nokia Messaging team has released a patch for Nokia Messaging that is available now at email.nokia.com. This patch does a few nice things, including returning APN selection in the client, the addition of the E75 and E55 to the Nokia Messaging family, and upgrading our notification system for Yahoo! Mail users. [via S60 Blogs]

If you use an Eseries device like the E71 I carry, you can get an additional mailbox on your homescreen for a dashboard into your messaging which is excellent.  All handsets benefit from the web based configuration though which lets you define your mailboxes and then have Nokia Messaging send you a configuration message which activates mail on your device.

Sony Ericsson Says I Do

Sony Ericsson announced the Idou ( pronounced I do) phone at MWC today and it’s got some strong specs, and a deep link with Sony’s PlayNow Entertainment service which in addition to music, games will add movies.

To demonstrate Entertainment Unlimited, they unveiled the Idou phone (it is pronounced I-Do, not I-Do-You, and is only the prototype name). More information will come out before summer, but for now they are saying it is has a 12.1 megapixel camera, a full touchscreen, uses the Symbian OS and that it will be launching in the second-half of the year. Two carriers are expected to announce the support for Sony Ericsson’s Entertainment Unlimited this week. The company also announced the W955, a Walkman phone that is supposed to have a superior video-watching experience.  [mocoNews.net]

Into Mobile reveals this device will also be running on the Symbian Foundation version of Symbian which probably makes this the first phone of this new generation. This is impressive given that SE was really focused on UIQ up until quite recently and Symbian Foundation is based on S60. As this is a touch device, it will have a similar UI to to other 5th edition devices like the Samsung and Nokia devices though from what I’ve read SE is looking to differentiate on spec and with their service integration. Competition is good!

Microsoft to Launch Retail Stores

As you may have read already today, Microsoft intends to launch retail stores which strikes me as a serious challenge.  Unlike Apple which has had great success with their retail strategy, Microsoft relies far too much on their external ecosystem to tell their whole story.

Microsoft has a solid story around connected entertainment with Xbox, Zune and MCE and Apple still regards this area as a hobby with AppleTV.  This is a small piece of what they will most likely (my guess) be looking to sell though and I wonder how highlighted OEM partners will be selected to display on the PC side.  Given the existing channels in which Microsoft products are sold, I’m wondering whether a store in a store concept might not actually be a better play here.

Microsoft will definitely have a lot to contend with on the consumer experience side as their system is still quite a bit more complex to setup and manage.  It should be an interesting year for retail …. Apple is apparently also retooling their stores to offer more a differentiated experience via the Mac solution. 

Psion is really working hard to keep netbook for themselves

02/07/2009 - Netbook For Mobile Internet

jkOnTheRun reports on how Google is now honoring Psion’s trademark of Netbook effectively killing the search term for anyone else.  If this pushes further we are likely to see devices currently called netbooks go through a rebranding.

What’s strange about this is that Psion has effectively been a dead company for years and has no active product in the market – even if they did in fact invent one called a netbook though it was discontinued in 2003 – long before the notion of low cost computers we now know as netbooks came around.

Why now?  What are they cooking here?  There’s no known effort underway that would require Psion to protect the term so their device alone could be marketed that way … and it’s not looking lie a legal battle is mounting to do anything other than stop people from saying netbook.

Sites like netbooknews apparently get 50% of their earned ad revenue from the term netbook and this change is going to sting initially for sure.  I’ve been debating removing the sticker on my NC10 which reads Netbook for Mobile Internet but now I might just have to keep it there out of spite.