gadgets and technology – Page 22 – atmaspheric

2/9/20072/9/2007

CNN – Bluetooth’s ads to tourists in Times Square

Yesterday I was passing through Times Square when my phone buzzed. I looked down and saw that Dr. Sanjay Gupta was trying to send me a message. I was traveling pretty quickly so I was not able to accept it or even capture a screenshot (hey it was below 20 degrees with wind!). This is the first bluetooth ad I’ve seen first hand and has to be one of the earlier experiments in the US.

On my Nokia’s I’ve actually activated the preference for receiving ads (professional curiosity), and I am pretty sure the N73 was set to broadcast mode as well. I’m not sure whether broadcast mode status has any impact on receiving bluetooth ads or not. Anyone?

When the ad came through I was quite surprised. I still don’t really know how I really feel about this. Given the number of attention getting devices in Times Square, I can see where using bluetooth might break through a bit, but it’s still a tad disturbing. The mobile is a highly personal device and this seems to cross a line. If this had been user-initiated it would be entirely different, but on top of everything else I really don’t want messages from Dr. Sanjay Gupta and CNN. I’m sure it was to promote his show or an appearance rather than warn me about some looming health hazard.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, Marketing, Mobile, CNN

2/9/20072/10/2007

Smart2Go? Not yet.

This is a bit of a rant…

Nokia got a ton of press from their announcement yesterday regarding the Smart2Go service – a free mapping application (to be called Nokia Maps) on Series60, Windows Mobile and possibly even other devices … N800 perhaps?

I immediately went to check it out and found that the site required a code to even get past the home page to see what might be available to install. This was fixed some time later in the day and the site now appropriately redirects you … however, there is NO WAY to install this. There are plenty of links to download and share with friends… even a link to get the manual. Here’s what I found :

Download via PC –

Download via SMS –

Perhaps you’d like to read the manual while you wait?

I even tried doing the send to a friend thinking that perhaps that might work… but of course found that this looped me right back to where I started.

Now I am legitimately interested in this product and would love to have quality maps on my mobile. I already own a pocket bluetooth GPS and found myself thinking how much better my experience would be if I upgraded to a more advanced gps with better reception in order to take fuller advantage of this. Yet there does not seem to be any way yet to even try it.

I’m sure people were excited to be announcing things, but the importance of matching that up to the product’s reality is rather critical. You don’t get too many chances to make a first impression. Speaking of impressions, I sent some feedback through the site stating it was impossible to download and found this lovely message as my instant on-site reply:

It’s not like they asked for my name and email so I guess I should not be that surprised to see such a note, but to state so directly that there will be no direct follow-up is just poor. Why not offer me an email or RSS updates feed…

There is one last bit here before I’ve fully beaten this one down and that’s the PC-only (don’t even get me started here) MapLoader app, which from the screenshot I saw looks nice enough, though without actually being able to install the application on your mobile to begin with it’s of no use.

Someone needs to get things in order here ASAP. If you are not ready, don’t launch the site – just go with a press release and a screen shot. Capture interested parties with an email / rss update and let the site go live when the product can be used. This is bad marketing and execution all around. The other thing I really can’t figure out is why I seem to be the only person wondering what’s up with this? The rest of the Nokia blogger base happily reported the news with their joyous posts.

UPDATE It’s Feb 10 — release day from the release (thanks to people who’ve pointed that out). The site now lists a Coming Soon… so stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: gate5, GPS, Marketing, Navigation, Nokia, S60, smart2go, Windows Mobile

2/7/20072/7/2007

N800 – FM Radio!

I typically stream my music through internet radio stations, but there are certainly times when you either don’t have broadband to make that possible or actually just want to listen to a local station. With a quick trip to grab the fmradio.deb, you can then access the FM Radio within your N800.

First grab and install the file.
Next, open up your terminal and enter ‘fmradio’ and return
You should be looking at your N800’s new FM Rad
A special bonus is that once, run, you can add the FM Radio as a home screen applet for easy access.

Here’s a quick video as well…(should be live shortly if not now)

Hat tip – Maemo-Users.

Technorati Tags: FM Radio, Internet Tablet, Maemo, N-Series, N800, Nokia

2/7/20072/7/2007

S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 announced

Symbian Watch notes the announcement and pending release of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2.

Feature Pack 2 comes with improvements in usability and software architecture focusing primarily on the mid-range device category. Usability enhancements support the ease of use in for example messaging, multitasking and downloading. Feature Pack 2 also enables instant media playback during downloading and animated notification of inbound calls. Architectural improvements focus on ensuring excellent performance and flexibility of S60 in various hardware configurations, and include for example support for demand paging virtual memory technique.

S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 will be available for all S60 device manufacturers in Q2. It is fully compatible with S60 3rd Edition, and applications developed for 3rd Edition will run on all Feature Pack 2 devices. The new Feature Pack 2 will be demonstrated at the 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona in S60 stand in Hall 8. [Symbian Watch]

FP1 devices are just starting to roll out — like the N95 — and one of the big features of the release is the ability to handle firmware updates OTA. This will hopefully actually be implemented and allowed regardless of region for unlocked devices since updating the firmware can currently be a frustrating exercise. OTA is potentially a riskier adventure, but perhaps using a units WiFi connection will at least assure that your signal will not suddenly vaporize mid-stream.

Technorati Tags: N95, Nokia, S60v3 FP1, S60v3 FP2, Symbian

2/6/2007

Steve Jobs loathes DRM just like rest of us

This is simply awesome. From Steve Jobs…

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs havenâ€™t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. Thatâ€™s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player. [Steve Jobs @ Apple.com]

Now there is unfortunately nothing here stating that they will in fact abolish DRM, but it is a massively public statement from the current leader in*digital distribution on how the system can be open and fair to both consumers, stores and device makers. I know I am not alone in wishing we get there sooner rather than later. DRM sucks for everyone.

2/6/20072/6/2007

Prada Phone Demo

This video overview of the LG Prada, iPhone-like device is very cool. The whole thing runs through a Flash interface and looks like a lot of fun.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Flash, iPhone, LG, Prada

2/2/20072/2/2007

Nokia N800 – ReaderMini

In my initial post about ReaderMini, I only described the experience. Now you can see it in action and (hopefully) appreciate how good the experience really is on the Nokia Internet Tablet. Personally, I find it to be very close to the way I read feeds on desktop, which is amazing considering it’s happening on a pretty small handheld device.

Since the initial launch, ReaderMini has continued to actively evolve through user feedback for both bugs and improvements. The roadmap is looks strong and I believe this will continue to be a killer app for the Internet Tablet. If you use Google Reader on the desktop, you need to be using ReaderMini on the Nokia.

Technorati Tags: Google Reader, Internet Tablet, Maemo, Mobile, N-Series, N770, N800, Nokia, RSS, ReaderMini

2/2/20072/2/2007

Nokia N800 – Maemo Mapper

I had posted a screenshot of Maemo Mapper earlier this week, but thought it might be quite a bit more interesting to see it in action. I was successful in configuring three different map sources – Google Maps (Streets and Satellite), Virtual Earth (Streets and Satellite) and Terraserver. There are differences between all of them:

Terraserver only provides topographical information
Google Maps seems more up to date than
Virtual Earth which seems to have the simplest and easiest to read map

I’ve used both cellular data (EDGE) from my Nokia N73 and home wifi connection to download maps and use the Nokia LD-1W GPS, which is very small and easily fits in a pocket. You can capture full tracks and export as well as import .GPX files which is cool so you can share trip data with other applications like Google Earth or import POIs from Geo Caching sites.

Technorati Tags: Maemo, N-Series, WiFi, Nokia, GPS, Google Maps, N770, Bluetooth, N800, Internet Tablet, Maemo Mapper

2/2/20072/2/2007

Maemo 2.2

If you are developing for the Nokia 770 or want to start, the latest environment was just released:

The maemo team proudly announce the newest development environment for Nokia 770 Internet Tablets: maemo 2.2 ‘gregale’. This release supports development for the latest OS 2006 Software Edition. Maemo 2.2 is based on the latest Scratchbox Apophis R4 cross-compilation environment.

For installation instructions please see the tutorial:
http://www.maemo.org/platform/docs/tutorials/Maemo_tutorial.html

More info on the release:
http://maemo.org/downloads/releases.html#maemo22
http://repository.maemo.org/stable/2.2/Maemo_Dev_Platform_v2.2_relnotes.txt

Technorati Tags: Internet Tablet, Maemo, N-Series, N770, Nokia

2/2/20072/2/2007

The Windows Vista And Mac OS X Leopard Upgrade Chart

CrunchGear »The Windows Vista And Mac OS X Leopard Upgrade Chart

Technorati Tags: Apple, Leopard, Marketing, OSX, Microsoft, Vista, Windows

2/2/2007

Wired News: Steal This Download

This sounds like a great read… and is formated beautifully for small ebook readers like the Nokia N800. I’m sure it looks great at full screen and printed out as well.

Investigative reporter Kim Zetter spent a year probing the life of David Thomas, a high-tech grifter who became an FBI asset.

In interviews with Thomas, his girlfriend, his associates in the underground and federal agents on the cybercrime beat, Zetter pieced together the strange world of the “boards,” online bazaars where crooks and swindlers work together to scam everyone else.

Now Wired News is pleased to present Zetter’s probative three-part series as a readable, printable 25-page PDF file. Download it (.pdf). Print it. Read it. The text is justified, but the crimes aren’t. [Wired News]

2/1/20072/1/2007

N800 pairs with Bluetooth headsets

Dan, aka ThoughtFix successfully paired a bluetooth headset to his N800 I did the same and found that while it shows up and seems ready to connect, there’s nothing yet in the system that seems to recognize the new audio device.

If the device is smart enough to know that the bluetooth device is capable of doing audio, you might get the feeling that something good is coming. We do have Skype and Rhapsody on deck for February… I’d be stunned if the N800 handled A2DP, but very content to do VOIP over Bluetooth.

Technorati Tags: A2DP, Bluetooth, Gizmo Project, Internet Tablet, Maemo, N-Series, N800, Nokia, Skype, Rhapsody, VOIP

2/1/20072/1/2007

doc Reader lets you handle Word docs on your N800 / N770

doc Reader is a graphic utility that lets you read MS Word documents in your Nokia 770 or export them to text or PDF format. [Maemo garage]

I just gave this a try and while it does not open your file directly as a .doc, you can instantly view or convert to text as well as convert to PDF. I chose PDF for my test and it worked beautifully — as though I had printed to PDF from within MS Word on my desktop!

Technorati Tags: doc Reader, Internet Tablet, Maemo, MS Office, N-Series, N770, N800, Nokia, PDF

1/31/20071/31/2007

Maemo Mapper in Action!

I snapped a screen shot of maemo mapper downloading… and then uploaded to Flickr from the N800!

If you have a bluetooth GPS (I use the Nokia LD-1W) you can get a mobile GPS with Google Maps running pretty easily. The main limitations are the speed of your connection (you download as you go, but can save for future reference) and the strength of your GPS.

I believe a SIRF III device would connect much more quickly than my current GPS, but it works VERY well once it’s active and in sight. It took stopping the car for Maemo Mapper to agree the GPS found us, but from looking at the screenshot Maemo Mapper was tracking my course anyway… very slick.

Technorati Tags: Google Maps, GPS, Maemo Mapper, N-Series, N770, N800, Nokia, Navigation

1/31/20071/31/2007

What’s on my Desk?

Yesterday I looked down and saw I was actively using three systems each with a keyboard and screen.

(just out of view to the right is a Nokia N93 and I took this with the N73)

I had taken a shot previous and I think I’ve reeled in my tech addition somewhat… though I am clearly using a different array of stuff:

I live in a house now and have a lot more space to stash things … so there’s quite a bit more you just can’t see here at HQ, though what you see in that first picture is in active rotation. What’s on your desk?

Technorati Tags: Apple, gadgets, iTunes, Maemo, N-Series, N73, N800, N93, gear

1/31/20071/31/2007

N770 / N800 – Future Tech?

Luxist points to a pretty slick RFID based, wine catalog system that is really a tech demo more than a full product, but still show how handy something like the Nokia Tablet might be based on it’s small size, and bright touch screen. There’s no RFID reader or sensor inside it today, so this is not going to be as simple as just installing a piece of software. I’m sure Andy would be all over this in a heartbeat if it was real… 😉

Here’s a snippet from ThingM:

WineM is a Technology Sketch of a smart wine rack. It’s designed to locate wines in a wine rack using RFIDs attached to bottles and to display which wines have been located using LED backlights behind the bottles. Collectors (or anyone with a large wine cellar) can use it to search through collections, track the location of specific bottles and manage inventory with a minimum of data entry. Linking bottles to networked databases can provide information that would otherwise be too time consuming or difficult to obtain (for example, the total value of a collection, or all the wine that is ready to drink).

I could actually see using a library manager like this for other things as well like a large media collection. Imagine looking for a CD or DVD (the actual disc) and tapping a few buttons to have it highlighted nicely on your shelf. If you have a large collection and it’s not exactly organized, finding what you want can be rather slow…

Technorati Tags: N-Series, N770, N800, Nokia, Wine, ThingM

1/29/20071/29/2007

So simple a child can do it

While the Nokia N800 is a mobile powerhouse it is also extremely simple and fun to use.

My three year old daughter Hannah honed her skills with the computer and mouse in the last week and has quickly begun to advance to mastering stylus control and some new applications.

Here’s a quick video of her enjoying the painting program tonight before bed.

BTW — I shot this video on my N93 and then swapped the card over to the N800 where I uploaded the video to YouTube, and wrote this post!

(I did have to actually repost this as there was some crazy line break in the post that messed up the YouTube embed link and wreaked some temporary havoc with my page layout. Think it was the Opera browser form for WordPress… too much text with wrapping in fingerpad input mode.)

Technorati Tags: Internet Tablet, N-Series, N800, N93, Nokia, Youtube

1/29/20071/29/2007

Challenges ahead for IPTV and P2P Video

Andy Abramson fires a few shots at P2P video which I unfortunately agree with given where we are with our current infrastructure…

So imagine what happens with video which requires even more bandwidth than Voice. Let’s face it, it’s one thing to be the only person on a T-1, but a shared pipe that’s got everyone doing everything (voice, video, data, gaming, IMing, etc.) is the next place we’re going to see Information highway gridlock.

Our networks in the USA are not built for what is coming, nor will they be as rapidly expanded as they need to be. My experiences in Europe are far different now than they were a few years ago. When I’m in a hotel which has a quality broadband network my experience is T-1 like. In most Internet cafe’s in major cities I have a similar experience, but here in the USA we don’t have the luxury of the networks being built to handle all that’s coming. [VoIP Watch:]

I have the premium tier from Cablevision — supposedly 30MB down 5MB up. I certainly don’t get that regularly and in fact rarely do. A quick test on my connection reveals a symmetrical 3.5MB. I’ve seen the greater speed, but am not getting what you would want in order to really maintain the type of experience people would be willing to alter their current video provider. Verizon FIOS is rolling out in my area (not quite to my house) but will run at least 100bucks / month just for the data connection… you then of course need to add service like telephone and TV. Integrating billing for the triple play is very expensive, even if it might be convenient.

Seems there’s still a long road ahead for sustainable IPTV solutions.

Technorati Tags: IPTV, VOD, FIOS, Cablevision, Verizon

1/25/20071/25/2007

Getting Google Calendar on your Nokia Tablet

So I finally figured out the simplest way to get Google Calendar info locally on the Tablet… It’s relatively simple given the amount of effort I thought was required. You do not need to use a third party system like ScheduleWorld or GooSync (which does not work), you simply subscribe to your Calendar’s private (or public) iCal feed. You can easily view your Google Calendar online, but I’ve had trouble getting events to add. My guess is that the Ajax is a tad tricky for the Opera browser to really manage — not too unlike my experience with Google Reader actually.

You’ll need to actually install a calendar on your Nokia since there isn’t one thee by default and for the time being I would recommend GPE-Calendar, which is a nice work in progress. I’m not going to get into how you need to add repositories in order to install software here as that will make this more complex than need be. If you don’t know what that means, your probably reading the wrong post. If you have GPE-Calendar installed already, you are all set.

It’s probably best to start in Google Calendar in order to get the details we need to make things work back on the tablet… In Google Calendar, click on Settings, then Calendars and the name of the calendar you want to use. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find the ical and rss options for your calendar. I am using the private ical link in GPE-Calendar and as you would expect you’ll need to also use your Google Calendar login credentials in order to view things on your device. I emailed the .ics URL to myself so I could have it locally on my tablet as the address is pretty long. From within email on your Nokia, you can simply copy it to your clipboard as you’ll need it in a minute or two…

Back in GPE_Calendar — From the menu, choose Tools, then Calendars. When the window opens, you want to tap the paper icon, which will create a new calendar or you can edit the default calendar if you prefer. Regardless, you need modify the settings… Under Type, you’ll need to switch things from Local to Subscribe and paste or enter the ical URL we noted from Google. After you enter your Google Credentials in the boxes below, and adjust the sync frequency, you are done. Click save, and you’ll be back at the Calendar list. You can tap the down arrow icon which should now be in the line next to your calendar’s name. This will manually begin the process… be patient, as it may take a few min and GPE may appear to hang.

There are three bummers here aside from actually having to install a calendar on what seems like it would be a natural PDA already. If you can live with these for now while things evolve, you’ll be all set:

First, you can only subscribe. Changes made on the tablet are not sent back as a limitation of GPE Calendar. This means that you will receive whatever is on Google regardless of what you may have done locally… Hopefully this will be enabled as a two way option at some point in the near future as there is quite a bit of enthusiasm around the Nokia Tablet right now.

I’ve also discovered that alarms you’ve set for events do not travel… I’m less concerned about this for now since I get alerts on my phone via SMS as well as on my desktop from Google’s Notifier, but it seems like something that should really just work.

The last thing is a bit odd. When you sync, the CPU spikes and basically stalls things. I don’t know why downloading info like a calendar would do this but it does. Again, something that will hopefully be worked in the near future.

Technorati Tags: GooSync, GPE-Calendar, N-Series, N770, N800, Nokia, Opera, Schedule World, SyncML

1/25/20071/25/2007

SyncTunes – Smart Content for your Nokia N800

I had read about but was struggling to recall an app that could easily sync content from iTunes to a mass storage device (mounted memory card for example) and finally re-discovered SyncTunes today!

Through the magic of this application I can now VERY easily sync content to either memory card in the Nokia N800 which is very cool. You can certainly drag and drop things as you like, but through SmartPlaylists in iTunes, things are so much more interesting.

As you can see, the main interface of SyncTunes is pretty straightforward. You can choose a playlist (or smartplaylist), Podcasts and which volume and folder within you’d like to have things reside. I currently subscribe to far too many podcasts to be able to sync everything so instead I created a smartplaylist so the latest unread content could be waiting for me on the Tablet.

With this configuration, I am selecting only podcasts from the last month that iTunes (and also my iPod) have not played. SyncTunes will automatically replace the material on my N800 with each sync and the smartplaylist in iTunes is set to update on the fly. The whole process took about 5 minutes to set-up. While I am using this with a Nokia N800 tablet it will certainly work with any device that can be mounted on your desktop either through USB or even a card reader.

Technorati Tags: iTunes, Internet Tablet, N800, Podcast, SyncTunes, iPod, Mass Storage