atmaspheric | endeavors

A while back I posted about considering a new mobile to use specifically as a modem. I was originally thinking of a second phone to use purely as a 3G device since none of my current phones work on US 3G networks. As I’ve used the N95, I realize that unless I actually have a pocket modem, the N800 tethering I do regularly will render the N95 as a half-day device at best.

I really don’t mind the idea of a second device specifically as a modem, but knowing that my N73 can easily handle this task as well as anything else I’ve asked it to do in the course of a day, really rubs me the wrong way. I’m not sure how much extra real juice you get from 150mAH, but apparently it’s enough to make a difference here.

I don’t want to be in the position to have to make compromises — especially given the promise of convergence with devices like the N95. Today though I am not comfortable using the full capabilities of the N95 without being within range of a charger. I love what it can do, but expect it to handle the job for a day. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Technorati Tags: 3G, Battery, N-Series, N73, N800, N95, Nokia, convergence

I’m frustrated to report that the N95 battery just can’t cut it for a full day of use. Yesterday was my first real test of tethering, calls with a touch of GPS. My battery died a bit after 4 PM. While this is considerably better than the N80, it pales in comparison with the N73.

The real rub is that you have to think in compromises in order to make a full day of use. I like to use my phone as modem paired with the N800 tablet throughout a day when away from my desk. This battery issues is making me consider disabling t auto-connect function with my phone – in my window limiting a second device!

I still really like the N95 and hope that someone either develop a higher capacity battery or that Nokia can tweak a bit more with a firmware update.

Giving things another go today after a night powered off and charging…

Technorati Tags: Nokia N-series N95 N73 N80 N800 battery

The Nokia N75 Phoneis $50 with the standard two-year contract and rebate. This is an amazing price on an 3G N-Series device.

I noticed that family plan accounts are not eligible so that rules this out for me / my wife which is disappointing, but perhaps I can score something over the phone or in-store.

Technorati Tags: 3G, Amazon, AT&T, Cingular, N-Series, N75, Nokia

I’ve been having a great time with the N95 and especially the video feature. I find the quality to be outstanding and it’s very responsive once activated (takes a few seconds to initiate). The video is crisp and clear and sounds great too.

Last night I recorded a small adventure for our cat who escaped through an open door on our deck. Here are a few samples I thought I’d share so you could get a feel for things as well. The first is the straight video, the second is edited with music on the N95 and the third is a Muvee I auto-generated. I’ll have to spend more time with the editing ability as this is actually pretty amazing — there’s a timeline and you can add and merge multiple clips. I ended up killing off the music only portion in Quicktime at my desk… Muvee outputs a file that can be sent via MMS so the quality and length are quite different.

(Please don’t mind the lawn … we’ve had some excavating done here in past months and are working on growing things back)

Original:

Click To Play

Movie Editor

Click To Play

Muvee

Click To Play

Technorati Tags: Nokia, S60v3 FP1, N95, N-Series, Muvee, Video, Multimedia, Mobile

I’ve had trouble with the Western Digital MyBook staying mounted on the local computer I’ve used — and tried a few computers and all three connectivity options. The trick (so far) seems to be mounting the drive from another network machine. I’ve been connected with the drive accessible for about 24 hours now…

I guess the minimal activity that occurs prevents the drive from sleeping to the point where it unmounts. Since I use this as my main music system, it’s important that it actually be there when I want to hear or see something from iTunes.

I’ve contacted Western Digital support through their site about this issue, but have yet to hear back and given that it’s been weeks I’m not counting on hearing anything either. Until we add true network storage here, this seems to be the answer.

Technorati Tags: MyBook, Western Digital

I received a Sand Nokia N95 courtesy of the Blogger Relations Program today and immediately began my geekfest. I’m not sure on the full quality here, but I live streamed my experience using Ustream.tv:

I’ve been using the device non-stop since and will be posting quite a few follow-ups.

Technorati Tags: N-Series, N95, Nokia

After what seems like forever, the Nokia N75 – an actual 3G UMTS unit for the US is here on ATT / Cingular.  Looks like it runs $199 for the 2year subsidized price + $50 mail-in rebate… hat tip Boy Genius

I was fortunate to be able to meet with Craig Walker, the CEO of Grand Central last week, thanks to Andy Abramson. The purpose of our meeting was a meet and greet as well as be briefed on some new things brewing in the Grand Central labs. Now that things seems in the clear, I can share…

First, in case you have not heard of GrandCentral, they are (in my humble opinion) the leader in a new class of companies which all play in what’s being called Voice 2.0. GrandCentral is unique in that they provide a total solution, where many other players in the game offer one or two of the features that are all found within the GC platform. You start by selecting a new free phone number – I went for a local number. You then tell GrandCentral about all your other numbers (work, cell, home, SIP, Gizmo, Skype, Truphone etc etc…) as well as upload your address book. Now the system is read to rock and roll!

The basic premise is that when you are called on your GrandCentral number, all your phones begin to ring so you can easily be found. You can assign rules as to how you’d like callers to be handled based on how or if you know them, how they might be calling you or even just by time of day. Your home number defaults to “not ring” during business hours, assuming you are at work or on the road though you can easily override this if you like. As calls start coming in, you’ll immediately realize the power of the system. You can choose to use ListenIn, by pressing 3 when a call comes through to hear part of the person’s message before answering (press *) if you like. If you start having an important call and need to keep track of things, you can record the call with a press of 4. As if that’s not enough, GrandCentral also let’s you transfer the call over to any of your other lines with a simple press of *, which then starts your ring chain, so you can easily move from home to cell or visa versa if you like. David Pogue summed things up nicely in his video homage a short while ago.

The new stuff, which I saw last week and have been using a bit to explore more deeply is more closely connected with the mobile experience. Craig enabled my cellphone voicemail to route to my GrandCentral account with a forwarding code so my messages would start to aggregate in one place. Previously I was still getting cellular voicemail separately from my GrandCentral line and this centralization has huge benefits. It instantly simplifies my life and because it’s integrated with my GrandCentral account, I am connected to a much more robust contact list than I normally sync to my mobile. The other cool thing I was shown, which launched last night is the GrandCentral Mobile web site! This site which you can log into from any mobile device – I’ve been using my Nokia E61 and N800 to test things the past 24 hours and it’s very cool. Grand Central mobile logs you straight into your voicemail log, giving you instant “Visual Voicemail” access. You can listen, manage or respond to calls from your phone’s browser. I’ve found it to be quite responsive — even on my EDGE connection. The site is very efficient and something I think most power users will get a great deal of utility.

While everything is currently free, I asked Craig about the ways in which GrandCentral might begin to charge for services. I don’t think anything we discussed is ready for primetime, but it’s clear the basic service will remain free. As Craig and I talked, we were joined by Phoneboyand our discussion continued into how we are likely to merge even our land line voicemail into the Grand Central system! This is very compelling to me personally and it seems to Craig as well – since both our wives generally do not actually answer the home phone!

I’m confident from my discussion that GrandCentral’s development plan is far from complete and that they will continue to revolutionize how we use the existing as well as new and emerging voice technologies and services. Even the average consumer has two phones which can easily be consolidated into a single free number. Once it’s all connected the power and control is truly in your hands.

Technorati Tags: GrandCentral

Yesterday I switched my Cingular SIM from the N73 to the N80 as I am testing a piece of software and needed to use the WiFi in order to make use of certain features…

This morning I took the N80 from the charger at about 7:30 and at 11:40 it was dead. I had burned through all the battery had to offer and was without a charger in the car. Fortunately I was only a few miles from my home base and able to reconnect soon enough, but this is simply dreadful performance.

I actually really like the N80. I love the form factor (great slider and keyboard), love the WiFi with VOIP support (though use it sparingly) and today for the first time, seriously noticed how much faster it felt than my N73. I’ve installed fewer things on the N80 as it’s been more of a secondary device, but it’s seriously fast when moving through the UI and in particular when dealing with SMS messages.

This am, soon after disconnecting from my charger, I activated Twitter SMS and began to receive a steady stream of updates. I checked a few links out via EDGE while still in the house (keeping WiFi off with scanning off) and checked GMail once before taking my daughter to school. At that time, my N800 Tablet switched from my home WiFi connection to bluetooth DUN with the N80 and continued to be connected that way until I eventually ran out of juice before Noon. Through the course of the morning I made 4 calls, checked GMail on both the N80 and N800 and did a slew of SMS (probably close to 50 messages) with Twitter. While waiting to pick my daughter back up at school at 11:30 I noticed I had two bars left on the battery and received my first low battery warning shortly thereafter. The phone died before I got back home…

This is a great device that is severely hamstrung by an abominable battery. The N73 I’ve been using daily for months easily handles the same tasks (though perhaps with considerably less SMS) and can easily go well into the evening without issue. When the battery on your phone can’t even make it to lunch you start doubting how you can even use it without being near a constant power source — which completely kills the mobility!

Technorati Tags: GMail, Mobile, N-Series, N80i, Nokia, Battery, Twitter

I received an email from Elgato yesterday and was very excited to see that there’s native support built in finally for set top box control! You still need an external device to handle the IR, but if you happen to have either the ZephIR or iRed system running you can now effortlessly change the channels on your cable or sat box to record any channel you want.

Previously this took a considerable amount of effort with a third party software tool like iEye Captain, which I have to confess I really had a heck of a time mastering and neevr really did get it working right. Without an proper control, you were limited to recording analog cable and non-premium channels. Now though, I can record anything from the Sopranos on HBO to 24 on Fox and know that my EyeTV 200 can even have things waiting in iTunes for my iPod or (pending) AppleTV. I can even remotely set up a schedule (which you could always do previously as well) with TitanTV.

This rocks!

Technorati Tags: TitanTV, Elgato, MediaCenter, DVR, iRed, ZephIR, EyeTV, iEye Captain

“Nokia plans to bring its first WiMax-enabled mobile device to market in early 2008,” Nokia said in a statement. via CNET

Note they did not say phone. I believe it will be the successor to the N800 (though there may be one in between) and will support the Sprint WiMax partnership they’ve committed to already.

It will be one month to the day tomorrow from the evening with S60 and exactly when I was informed the browser would be available to download… at least that’s my educated guess as to what the real content is about. Check out the clues below…

S60 was the first to bring full HTML browser in mobile devices providing a desktop-like browsing experience.

Now, S60 cordially invites you to attend a live audiocast as Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanperä, Nokia, presents how Nokia and S60 enhance the Internet experience further.

The audiocast takes place on Monday April 16, 2007 at 1.15 p.m. CET.

To listen to the audiocast log on at www.s60.com/business/newsevents/audiocast on Monday April 16. A related press release will be available on the same day after 12.00 CET at www.s60.com and www.nokia.com prior to the audiocast.

The audiocast together with the presentation will be available for view on demand approximately one hour after the audiocast. [Ring Nokia]

Technorati Tags: Nokia, S60, S60v3 FP1, WebKit