Missing Mary Road

matthew miller writes a really good article in ZDNET.

As I plan my trip to Nokia World next month I have continued thinking about Nokia and finally posted an article on ZDNet that I have been thinking about for a few months. I write this Nokia Experts site so of course I am a fan of Nokia and their devices or I wouldn’t spend hours writing here for free. I try to give you my honest take on things and am both positive and negative here and in my other writing. However, it seems to me that the media and smartphone enthusiasts in the US are unfairly slamming Nokia when other smartphone operating sytems get by with more. Am I being overly sensitive or do you too feel that Nokia doesn’t get the respect it deserves in the US?

so you know back when google did their unconventional speed tests for the chrome browser (which i’m not personally a fan of, but still prefer it over firefox). opera did one better, and this is why opera will always remain to be the better browser across any platform. if you don’t get it, you really should click on the google speed test to see what the fuss is all about.

Geocities, once the charm of the internets, was shut down last october by yahoo. now in it’s memory, the spirit of geocities lives on. the Geocities-izer does you the enormous favor of transforming your favorite (or least) website into not just a Geocities page, but a really bad Geocities page. oh and good luck enjoying the lame midi files. it’s like a blast from the past.

when the internet was coming of age in the mid to late 90’s, the browser wars were kicking in.

technology has changed a whole lot since and so have the browsers, you can do more with the browser alone today than you were able to do with a fully loaded computer with all the shareware you could find hacked up from astalavista.

tom’s hardware has an awesome write up and comparison of the most popular browsers in the market available today.  aptly titled, the web browser grand prix, they set about an awesome methodology in comparing the big five, namely, IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.

my favourite being Opera did rather well which I was expecting completely. what it doesn’t measure is the usability and feature set of the browser, which in my opinion is far superior for Opera than any other browser.  the amount of customization one can do in Opera, along with mail and feeds integration, tab management, opera unite and link along with widgets makes it the most usable piece of software i have on my computer.

anyway, go and figure it out here, but do go through it carefully, it rocks.

Symbian OS developed by Nokia continues to rule the mobile smartphone world. The latest Gartner data for the 4th quarter of 2009 shows that Symbian leads with 46.9% market share with RIM in second at 19.9%. Unfortunately, Symbian saw a drop of 5.5% from the same quarter a year ago. RIM, iPhone, and Android platforms all saw large increases in market share and are definitely the ones to keep an eye on moving forward.

Looking at the manufacturer numbers we see that Nokia dominates the world with 36.4% (down from 38.6%) with Samsung in second at 19.5%. Nokia did outperform expecations in a down economy though and is still in a very strong leadership position.

The first announcement by Nokia at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona is the introduction of MeeGo. In a significant development in the convergence of communications and computing, Intel Corporation and Nokia are merging their popular Moblin and Maemo software platforms. This will create a unified Linux-based platform that will run on multiple hardware platforms across a wide range of computing devices, including pocketable mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, media phones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems. Called MeeGo, the open software platform will accelerate industry innovation and time-to-market for a wealth of new Internet-based applications and services and exciting user experiences. MeeGo-based devices from Nokia and other manufacturers are expected to be launched later this year. This announcement strengthens the Nokia and Intel relationship, and builds on the companies’ broad strategic collaboration announced in June 2009. Intel and Nokia now invite participation in MeeGo from existing Maemo and Moblin global communities and across the communications and computing industries. “Our vision for seamlessly communicating between computing devices from the home, auto, office or your pocket is taking a big step forward today with the introduction of MeeGo,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. “This is a foundational step in our evolving relationship with Nokia. The merging of these two important assets into an open source platform is critical toward providing a terrific experience across a variety of devices and gaining cross industry support.”

“Microsoft unveiled the schedule for Windows 7 Release Candidate’s retirement in May 2009, when it issued the early look to the public. At the time, it said Windows 7 RC would expire June 1, 2010. Before that date, however, users are to receive warnings of the impending end. Starting on Feb. 15, Windows 7 RC will display notices every few hours that the machine will periodically shut down beginning on March 1. As of March 1, PCs running Windows 7 RC will automatically shut down every two hours. Those shutdowns will come without warning.“

apple (computers? devices?) these days reminds me more and more of fairy tales and other stories or rather the morals learnt (or lack thereof) from them. it’s funny how the company makes an announcement and the world of media just explodes all over the interwebs. anyway…so i suppose from my previous post you know what my stance on the new device is.

apple is a smart company. their UI’s are usually beautiful and they make sleek and elegant devices. usually in my experience, that’s all they are though, sleek and elegant, and not much else. also they’re flimsy, very, very flimsy. (if you’ve ever bought a first gen apple product, you know what i’m talking about). take the new tablet for example.

they’re aiming for a netbook alternative, but they’re not gonna be  getting much out of it to because to keep their price point low, they’ve had to skimp out on hardware. pretty much no usb ports or SD support. super cool idea for a device that’s being advertised as a media box, don’t you think? and in true apple fashion, they’ll just charge you an arm and two legs for getting those plastic pieces of apple USB and SD adapters. same thing with 3G support. you want 3g on that thing, you may hand over 60% more money for the same thing without, thank you very much. good stuff. oh another thing seriously lacking, a camera. my n900 has two! one for making video calls forward facing, and another for shooting video and taking photos.

now let’s see…what else, oh yeah, wanna see what the web looks like using the ipad. click here and find out. err…get used to the blue logos. you’ll be seeing it a lot if you’re on the ipad. and if you’re interested in reading why Mac OS doesn’t support flash altogether…not well anway…well you can read here more about it and why they won’t be supporting it anytime soon either.

the other reason apple can afford to keep down their hardware costs is by making up most of the money in software, especially since they make huge cuts in the app store, itunes and  ibook sales. so what it boils down to, with apple, no such thing as a free lunch. it will be interesting to see how apple reacts to it’s software content distribution systems and the percentage it takes off it, as it sees the apps move from the stores to the web itself (case in point, google voice).

now giving credit where it’s due. both the ipod and iphone reinvented the future and brought it to us and handed it to us on a silver platter. it changed the way we consumed the technology and  we loved every minute of it. the ipad just took a step back unfortunately. it was designed to consume media. a sort of re-invented television, yet it’s being marketed as a computer which it hardly isn’t. a computer is something that is customizable both in terms of hardware and software, the ipad is neither. a user of a computer has a very intimate relationship with the computer itself. the very design of apple devices these days deny you that privilege. the whole reason why computers are in the shape and form that they are in today is because thirty years ago there were hackers and geeks tinkering away and messing with parts to improve upon and adding on devices and other electronics and fun toys to make their computers better, faster and using them in ways that the original manufacturing neither intended nor imagined. with the whole lock down of software (and now hardware, especially with proprietary hardware), the future is fast looking like a bleak place where there can be no innovation as far as the end users are concerned.

unfortunately without the lack of multiple apps running simultaneously, all the ipad is is something similar to changing channels on tv, good luck trying to watch two things at the same time, or for that matter, even choosing what playing, because the app store really doesn’t give you that choice, Apple does, and they control what gets to play. so you’ve got hundreds of channels, and nothings on. they got away with this business on a phone, i’m not sure how successful it would be on something thats meant to overlap with a computer. yes you can writeup quick emails and browse the app store and text in real fancy manners to other ipad users, but thats not the same thing as reconfiguring an entire computer to do something entirely different.

have a good day ladies and gents.

E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here’s how it works, and why it isn’t already widely used.

so i suppose i’ve been neglecting posting here. fair enough. let’s try and catch up. from the previous post, you can tell i’ve been playing with my new toy quite a bit and absolutely loving it and the more i use it, the more it rocks. and just a day or two after that, the google nexus one phone was announced so i’ll post more on that in a bit and try and explain why the n900 still rocks more than any other phone out there right now.

in the mean time, here’s a day in the internet.

so after a whole lot of waiting, i got me a new toy. behold. i’d promised hugh i’d write up a review so here goes my attempt at my first review.

first off, let’s begin by saying that this phone is so high in demand right now, that it’s been very hard to get a hold of. most places have been out of stock for about two months which is when it was released. nokia hasn’t made it easy for canadians to buy it either. had to have it shipped from the US and it wasn’t cheap either. the device runs at about $500 USD but it’s well worth the price and i’ll try to explain why below and why it also beats the pants off any iphone or blackberry out there.

first off, the technicals.

Display – 3.5 inch touch-sensitive widescreen display, 800 × 480 pixel resolution (highest i’ve ever seen of any phone)

Connectivity – 3.5mm AV connector, TV out (PAL/NTSC) (how cool is that, another reason not to buy a flat screen tv)
Micro-USB connector - (iPhones now are the ONLY phones that have disagreed to a universal phone charger, sucks to be a mac geek)
Bluetooth v2.1 including support for stereo headsets
Integrated FM transmitter - (superb for road trips, testing it out last weekend on a drive to michigan)
Integrated GPS with A-GPS – (didn’t try this yet, i got a gps in my head)
Battery Life – (sucked at first, after a quick firmware upgrade, battery is rock solid now)

Processor and 3D accelerator – (the accelerator is pretty neat, flip the phone from landscape to portrait and it automatically switches to the phone, i believe nokia has had that going in their N series for a while now)

TI OMAP 3430: ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0 support – (basically it’s faster than your computer from six years ago)
Memory

Up to 1GB of application memory (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory) – (remember this is a phone!)

Mass memory – 32 GB internal storage : (!!!!) expandable to 48 with microSD !!!!!

Input – Full QWERTY soft and hard keyboard with a stylus (take that you one handed iphone crackberries!)

Operating frequency Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 900/1700/2100 MHz – (This sucks for Rogers customers, meaning you can only use EDGE. wind mobile will you give you full 3G support, i use wifi for the most part so don’t matter much to me)

Email & Messaging – Supported protocols: Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3, SMTP (IMAP rocks!)
Support for email attachments
Support for rich HTML
SMS and Instant Messages as conversations (This is one of my most favourite features)
Instant messaging and presence enhanced contacts
Multiple number, email and Instant Messaging details per contact, contacts with images (This is my most favourite feature, integration of contacts with skype, googletalk, SIP, jabber, yahoo, aim etc is seamless and can make google talk and skype calls like pure vanilla)
Support for assigning images to contacts

Web browsing – Maemo browser powered by Mozilla technology (i actually was able to setup fennec as well which is basically a variation of the browser that comes with the phone)
Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support – (take that iPhone)
Full screen browsing – (oh yeah did i mention, none of that pinching shit is involved. oh and since the screen is a resistive touch, not capacitative, i actually don’t need to smudge all over the screen with my fingers, thats why the stylus rocks)

5 megapixel camera (2584 × 1938 pixels), Image formats: JPEG CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens 3 × digital zoom Autofocus with assist light and two- stage capture key Dual LED flash Full-screen viewfinder Photo editor on device TV out (PAL/NTSC) with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U, included in box) or WLAN/UPnP Landscape (horizontal) orientation Capture modes: Automatic, portrait, video, macro, landscape, action  - (i’ll be honest, i’ve never cared much about camera phones and don’t think they’ll ever take decent photos, but this damn thing keeps testing my stance on it)

Video – Wide aspect ratio 16:9 (WVGA) Video recording file format: .mp4; codec: MPEG-4 Video recording at up to 848 × 480 pixels (WVGA) and up to 25fps Video playback file formats: .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 Music and audio playback Maemo media player  Music playback file formats: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a .ogg (basically any format you can throw at it, it will playback. err….iphone, i’m looking at you)

Built-in FM transmitter (i love this thing)

oh err…did i mention it runs linux so has a full ssh server and client setup as well as the fact that you have full root access on the phone and no carrier can actually lock the phone down (one reason why you haven’t heard too much hoopla about the phone, since noone is willing to provide it with a discounted service plan) full root = no lock down.

okay so i have to admit, i love nokia’s. always have and always will. i’ve always ever owned a nokia phone and i’ve been very happy in their reliability, sturdiness and durability. i’ve actually gone and done a lap in a swimming pool with one in my pocket, and come out the other end and have it working fine. i don’t know any other phone manufacturer that can provide such durability. on top of that, the usability of nokia phones is their biggest selling point in my opinion. the fact that they make using a phone as simple and intuitive as possible is something no other manufacturer has been able to do.

having said that, the n900 initially is extremely confusing to use. but as you use it more and more, after a few hours the usability becomes second nature and you realize why things are the way they are and how customizable the phone is and how superbly designed it is. now i’ve never used a smartphone before either so maybe this was just me. as mentioned before, the phone runs a version of linux developed by nokia called Maemo.  and it’s a geek’s paradise. the apps developed for it are strong and usable. i haven’t had a chance to mess around with the ovi store yet, but i’m sure it’s just as fun.

as far as apps go, the iphone seems to be a winner so far, but if most apps are rendered useless everytime a jailbroken iphone gets a firmware upgrade, doesn’t seem like much awesomeness. with apple, it seems like everything can be awesome and cool, but has to be bought at a price. also i’ve learnt that qik.com is one of the coolest things i’ve seen in a while as well. though in all fairness, ovi is revamping it’s ovi store for the n900 allegedly and giving it a redo making it similar to the app store. but also because maemo is debian based, apt-get has limitless possibilities with repositories popping up everywhere by anyone.

now most people compare this thing to the iphone, the iphone being the most popular phone in north america at the moment. i personally have found the multitasking abilities, the integration of skype, sip, google talk with nokia contacts is seamless and something i am so used to now, i cannot do without. most reviews and comparisons of the phones will tell you similarly.

at the end of the day, the price of the phone is well spent upon this thing, as it’s not a phone that you can do “smartphone” things with like the iphone. it’s essentially a mini computer, that also makes calls. the freedom and choice that nokia has offered is limitless. the build quality and the durability of the phone feels full and solid. the annoying virtual keyboard on the iphone is given an alternative on the nokia, and better yet, because the n900 has a resistive screen rather than capacitative, the n900 works superbly with the stylus that comes with it so if you’re feeling lazy about using the qwerty keyboard, the virtual one works just as efficiently, no fingers too fat for this puppy. (oh yeah, works with winter gloves/mitts on too, take that iphone users!)

also the multidesktop feature is a nice grab from gnome/kde users. and makes usability a lot more feature rich as customizing each desktop individually really enhances the enjoyment of the UI.

the browser that ships with the phone is one of the best mobile browsers out thereas well, but the tips and tricks of the phone are the selling point.