I think I just found my netbook

MSI Wind U120

via jkkmobile of course!

This new MSI Wind U120 system sounds killer!

  • 10 inch 1024 x 600 screen
  • 1.6 GHz Intel® Atomâ„¢ with1GB RAM
  • 160GB HDD
  • Wifi b/g/n
  • Bluetooth 2.0edr
  • 3G HSDPA/HSUPA
  • 3 x usb2
  • 4-in-1-card reader
  • 1.3Mpix cam with mic
  • 4400mAH 6 cell battery
  • XP Home

Of course I’m still more than capable of being swayed by a surprise from Apple if they feel up to it at MacWorld.

Delicious mobile beta

As simple as the layout is on del.icio.us it’s remarkable that it’s really not a very mobile friendly site … at least until now. There’s finally a true mobile version of the site and it looks great! The only thing we actually need now is an easy way to add bookmarks rather than just review them which is what the current beta site offers.

Meet the Nokia N97 – The New Nseries Flagship!

12012008258 - Share on Ovi

(more pictures to come – need more connection speed!)

Today Nokia announced the Nokia N97, the new flagship of the Nseries line.  The N97 brings a QWERTY keyboard to Nseries for the first time as well as continuing the touch UI (S60 5th Edition) introduced in the 5800 Express Music.  The home screen is all new and what I can only describe as a widget-top, giving you instant access to content that matters to you in your connected life.

There’s a clear emphasis on context which enables you to get both geographically and time sensitive information delivered at a glance.  The N97’s homescreen will be customizable to allow both Nokia and 3rd party developers to activate WRT (Web Runtime) widgets without having to launch an application.   Essentially live feeds at a glance.  For the connected the social networking enthusiast, this will be a must have device.

The keyboard slides and tilts from the longer side revealing a very comfortable raised typing surface.  While I only had a limited time to type around it seemed very easy to get used to and absolutely like something on which I could do ton of messaging.  It’s great to see QWERTY FINALLY on an Nseries!  Nokia has typically made you choose between E and N series for a device that does what you want most of the time and with the N97 there’s finally a single unit that can handle everything.

The new homescreen is an awesome way to provide direct access to information within an instant.  During our briefing with Nokia we learned that they consider the N97 a new category of device and one that is more a mobile computer than the prior generation of multimedia computers.  The N97 offers a massive amount of functionality in a very reasonably sized package.  The screen is 640×360 and is just gorgeous.  Contrast was excellent and colors (all 16 Million of them) seemed quite vibrant!  You can customize every part of the homescreen which is remarkably something that we’ve not had previously in S60 devices.  You can add, remove or just slide any of the widgets around to make things just how you like them.  When you rotate the device between portrait and landscape modes, things nicely re-align.

On first glance the N97 compares to the 5800 in size and seems like it’s older brother … until you slide the keyboard out and realize you’ve got an altogether new breed in hand.  While it’s not a small device, the N97 feels great in your hand and can easily be used while walking without needing two hands in most cases.  The virtual keyboards (numbers and T9) were clear and the softkeys seemed eas to access for quick data entry.  Of course for larger text needs a quick flip and you’ve got a real keyboard at your disposal.  Weight (Approx. 150 g) felt semi-comparable to the E71 and in the front pocket of my jeans it was not in any way uncomfortable.

There’s much more to this device than I can possibly do justice in an initial post.  When this goes live I’ll be listening to the keynotes and will report back after further Q&A.

Where’s my Federated Presence?

It’s easy to maintain a single status line across services which lets you report the same update across your social services.  I tend to use Ping.Fm mainly which lets me deliver cross-service updates via email, IM and web including mobile.  What’s missing in this age of unified communications though is the ability to share a richer level of presence.  

By presence of course I mean my actual presence – am I in a meeting, on the phone, on the go or even in a different timezone from you.  All of this information can be relative input for deciding how to best get in touch with someone and there is still no way to do this effectively outside of the expensive enterprise route from companies like Cisco, Avaya, and Microsoft which also require that you use their solution exclusively without taking inputs from other sources.  Of course these inputs should be definable so I don’t share random personal bits with business contacts or important business information across to my Facebookfriends but I realize that’s a degree of complexity that might be more challenging.  Still even the “basic” federation for presence seems to be missing …  

The key thing here is that I don’t want anyone else to have to install or use a particular service for this to work.  I just want this solution to deliver the right level of detail to the right service so my various contacts are informed appropriately.  Not too hard right?

Data settings should be locked to a SIM

Do you use more than one sim and more than one device? If you do then I would imagine you’ve also experienced the pain that’s associated with re-configuring EVERY data-centric application to a new access point each time you switch!

Why can’t phones be smarter to see that once the SIM has been switched the prior preferred AP is ready to be used. Voicemail is the only function that auto-programs itself when you switch .. While I certainly appreciate this effort, it’s quite minor as my usage is at least 90% data.

Given my travel as of late, I see this all too regularly. I switch my phones based on where I can take advantage of the 3G services and to avoid incurring personal roaming charges. Why can’t mobile devices support this with smarter switching capabilities?

T-Zones needs to be taken out back and shot

I have two active phones – A Nokia E71 running on an ATT SIM and an N96 running on a T-Mobile SIM. Because the T-Mobile SIM was initially provisioned for Blackberry service it seems to only have access to the T-zones access point which absolutely sucks. For starters, you can only have two simultaneous connections which means a multi-tasking device like the N96 (or any other N or E Series) bumps into this limit REGULARLY. In ordr to proceed past the warning about reaching the maximum number of connections, you must first request that an “offending application” stop doing what it was doing in order to try again in your current app. I would not be exaggerating to say I see this within 2 minutes of active use and continuously thereafter. WTF?!?!?! I never noticed this when the SIM was in the Blackberry and I’m guessing that because you pay such a premium for Blackberry data service it does not count against the two connections. Additionally the Blackberry really does not actively multi-task so it’s quite difficult to get two things competing to connect on the access point.

I’m aware this should be resolved with a change to my service agreement, but am unable to make those changes myself as the SIM and device are part of corporate plan. Regardless T-Zones is really a poor excuse for a data plan access point. People are using more not less. The limit should be the volume of data, not the way in which you connect.

A DUN Good Travel Companion

29/10/2008 - Nokia CA-100

I’ve been traveling rather extensively for the past month and it’s not always easy to find a WiFi hotspot which is not that much of an issue when you have a DUN capable 3G mobile. The Nokia CA-100 accessory (above in action) is a killer addition to my gadget bag as it uses my laptop’s power and charges the phone while it’s providing connectivity right back.

The Nokia CA-100 is designed to charge from USB to the Nokia mini-plug. It works with all of my gear which is quite excellent as I usually have an assortment on hand and it’s great to be able to top up without looking for a plug. As you can see, I have not even unbound the cord. The shorter length has been suiting me just fine and the whole thing closes back around itself making it very easy to carry around.

29/10/2008 - Nokia CA-100

I’ve wanted one of these for a long time and it took a trip to Finland to finally see it in an electronics store. For some reason it’s not easy to purchase at a Nokia Store in the US.

Hands On with the G1

I spent some time with the G1 over the weekend and am still a bit underwhelmed. Overall the OS seems very polished compared and compared to my experimental install on the Nokia N810 it’s night and day. Still my view is that Android is far more designed for the power user rather than the mainstream mobile consumer. The user experience will definitely take some getting used to and finding the right way to navigate through screens is something you have to learn rather than simply intuit. T-Mobile has only added myFavs to the OS leaving it to appear otherwise native which is definitely refreshing

The hardware is quite nice. I found the G1 much smaller than I expected actually from the initial photos. It was very comfortable in-hand and the keyboard did not seem too hard to get used to using. I spent less than 15 minutes with the device so this is really a very casual perspective. The screen was very bright and in general the system looks beautiful. There’s a slickness that’s hard to get a feel for without some hands on experience. The manner in which the screen slides out is very slick as well. The arm inside articulates around so the screen pseudo-rotates rather than simply sliding up. When it’s open there’s a very nice click as it settles into position.

I’ve heard one rather interesting detail as well which is that TMO will only have a small window of exclusivity with Android which is pretty disappointing considering how long they waited on 3G. My money’s definitely on other carrier or open Android devices over the G1. I’d expect to see quite a few new Android mobile devices around CES and in market around the same time if not right after.

Feeling underwhelmed by the G1

I’m days behind on feeds and discussion, but I definitely saw some news on the Google G1 phone and find it pretty disappointing. I know it’s absolutely a first generation product and there are certainly nice features in the UI that I’ve seen, but what’s been left out is pretty poor.

Sure the Google phone is naturally connected to the G-Suite. I get it. I like the google apps… But, why can’t I sync the phone from my PC or from Exchange? No really why? Google contacts suck, period. It’s a sorely lacking piece of the Gmail puzzle and Google has yet to show any additional updates (SYNC TO MY DESKTOP??) or integration with Jaiku (social stream) or Grand Central which I find seriously disappointing. What’s the vision here?

No video playback by default? Are you kidding? I have to download a 3rd party application from the store to get this going … nice. I’ve had video playback and recording I might also mention on every NSeries device I’ve owned and that goes back years now. Was video recording left out because it was viewed as an acceptable decision if Apple had already done the same thing?

No 3.5mm audio jack? This is a consumer device right? It’s not designed for enterprise integration (no sync outside G) so why do we have such a limited media playback experience as well?

These things are all table stakes at this point.

The UI details are definitely cool. I love the window shade system for notifications, but it’s unclear what happens when you get a slew of messages at once. In the example video I saw today, you receive and email and then have a very simple reply option via any contact channel you share. You only see it working with a single message but it’s pretty uncommon to see one email at a time. The browser features look strong, but geeky. No way my wife or dad would figure out the longer press options without assistance.

I’ve yet to get any hands-on time and would like to as the platform remains very interesting regardless of these gen one issues. I know there are other devices in development and we’ll probably see most of this wiped away relatively quickly.

Continental’s Mobile Boarding Pass

When I was confirming my seat earlier in the week with Continental I saw there was an option to get a mobile boarding pass and I decided it would be pretty cool to go paperless and signed up to receive my boarding pass on the phone. The way it works is that you get an email with a special link to your boarding pass which then must be displayed on your phone or PDA. I’d seen mobile check-in opportunities with American and Luftansa recently but nothing quite like this:

mobile boarding pass

What you are looking at is a poorly merged set of screenshots from the E71. I wiped out my frequent flier number and the trip confirmation code, but otherwise this is what you get. The QR code was scanned by the TSA at security with a handheld device and I made sure to mention to the next TSA team that my boarding pass was my phone since that had to pass through the larger scanners … No problem and I walked right through. At the gate, I think I was the first passenger to present a mobile boarding pass to the particular gate staffer as he had no idea where to put the phone to scan it in the table-top scanner. His colleague showed him you just place it on the base and a moment later I was checked-in and on the jetway.

I hope more airlines start offering this service because one less thing to deal with is a benefit when you are traveling. I always have my phone and it was very easy to simply show the screen instead of fumbling with a piece of paper.

One tip for Nokia users … I’ve had bad coverage in airports previously and was not going to take any chances with boarding and security process so I used the ever helpful but easy to miss “Save this Page” feature of the S60 browser. Once saved, I simply navigated to my bookmarks, went into the saved pages folder and chose my boarding pass.