I hope I will live long enough to see who can walk the talk

What is going to happen in Egypt is unclear whereas the future of Nokia is much more clear unfortunately. What to say that has not been said already everywhere on the web? If you really care about Nokia’s profits and cashflow (in the next few years), then this is perhaps the best choice. If you cared about Nokia like Steve J. cares about Apple, then this is the really a suicide mission (which by the way started years ago, not this year).

In the end, it’s not about the hardware or software, it’s really about a curated experience. Buying a Nokia phone means different things to different people but to me there was always something good about this brand. In the past, Nokia only needed good hardware, a good distribution channel and an after sales organisation to sell its products/experience. Now it’s a different ball game and software is indeed important but a sub-brand of windows does not allow you to control your product as well as your image. Look at the story of SEGA and how they shifted their focus to software only and now the company I grew up with is just a distant memory. As Rovio pointed out, Nokia’s probably beyond saving at this point and it’s very sad.

I hope the web (web apps) will free Nokia like it freed Egypt in 3-4 years time.

After almost a year, I finally decided to buy the N810 and have to say i have a lot of mixed feelings about the device/platform/experience. I know there are already a million posts on this device, but I thought a list of pros and cons will definitely come handy since I am thinking about selling this device already ! Anyway, I’ll keep it short but I’ll try to update this list as much as possible.

My feelings at the moment go from excitement about this ultra-portable and very stylish device to utter fear of having wasted 200£ of my credit-crunched money on a simple digital photo frame. Actually, without any intention to offend anyone working on this platform, the device is such in pity state that nobody even made an application to turn a screensaver on and make the device a very expensive photo frame (you have to use the slideshow of some image viewer to make it so). Why I cannot take a picture and as soon as I’m back home or withing bluetooth range transfer automatically the pictures and have them on a N810 screensaver?

Cons

• Writing with it is quite strange. The keyboard is not as useful as I thought (possibly because of the layout), the word suggestions on the screen become a distraction and there are a lot of missing features that could have been implemented to improve general navigation (look at the example below, the Benq S6, for one example)
• My biggest complain is web navigation because when I try to move the page in any direction I often end up clicking on its links. Also, the resolution makes impossible to click on some links without the stylus and the directional pad is used to move from link to link and not move the page. Why Nokia didn’t use the “opera-mini” approach with some sort of pan-view navigation and read-view for reading and clicking on links is beyond my understanding. Just look at how nice is the the Android browser!!! Here’s the browser in action:
• The directional pad would have been perfect to navigate pages with a simple touch but nothing… What’s strange is that Nokia already implements the NaviWheel on some of its mobile phones so why they didn’t implemented it here (not just the rotation gesture but also scroll up and down). Also, it is positioned in the wrong place . Nokia could have positioned the d-pad outside the keyboard to have larger keys and be able to use it even when the keyboard was closed. On top of this, I always find difficult to move up (I’ve got big thumbs ) because there is not enough space between the d-pad and the front part of the N810.
• During the installation of any application the devices becomes unresponsive for seconds if not minutes! Not sure if CPU is up for most of the jobs, but the impression is that it’s not just a hardware issue
• Ecosystem is not as lively as others (a certain phone and s60) and here the lack of business drive is really showing the limitations of the open source ecosystem compared to other ones. The biggest problem however is that most of the N810 applications compared to S60 ones for example don’t get the job done quickly either because of lack of features or because the GUI is too complicated to use (and that applies to apps with nice GUIs as well where you need 50 clicks to just add a song to a playlist! Jez, sometimes performing a task seems I playing a game! )

• I’m not quite sure what niche it is supposed to fill. Can I use it as a mobile? No thanks, my N95 is already doing that job nicely. Is it a portable computer? mmm, don’t think so. Navigator? TomTom is cheaper and gets the job done better (besides, I use my N95 as my satnav)… So, I’m not sure where and when is supposed to be used?
• Official website is sloooow (www.maemo.org). Is it hosted using one of these web servers?
• Minimising into the background so that it does not take precious screen space in the application switcher area is not possible for skype and other applications.
• it’s labeled as n-series but i think it’s should be called gseries as in geek series or google series since it seems that Google products work better than other ported applications (actually you can install Android too). The device is barely ready for a geek, imagine for mass market.
• Browser is sometimes slow and loading a page make any other browser windows completely unresponsive (e.g. why can they fill the gap when loading the page with something else such as changing view for one specific page or something else…). BBC iPlayer does not play smoothly . It seems it can barely play youtube videos.
• It’s still not 100% finger friendly… Actually, you get the feeling that it’s trying to force you to use different styles all the time (now keyboard, now stylus, now middle finger ). Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
• Even when it’s finger friendly, I get the feeling of a desktop environment with menus a la windows and problems a la Linux! Totally disappointing! Examples?

The menu is like windows when it could have been like the curtains-menu you probably saw in the Benq S6.

The Application Manager shows the libraries! Is the average user supposed to see this advanced configuration with names like libillumination0 which have nothing to do with the applications I have installed (well, they are dependencies but the user should not really care)…

• Email notifications are quite useful but kill the battery in few hours (using wifi), so it’s now off

Pros

• Not trying to contradict myself with the above points, but it’s quite finger friendly once you change some setting (echowb theme), understand the “workflow” and where you are supposed to put your fingers . I know, it shouldn’t be like this but it definitively grows in you once you get it
• Wonderful screen, good resolution. Device is absolutely gorgeous and the screen is fantastic (oops, I think I already said that)! You have to see it to understand and just compare the style of the N810 with the Benq S6 to see the difference between plastic and metal!
• That’s it I wish I can expand this list in the future

What i would like (or I wished they copied from other successful gadgets)

• USB Host (possible already, but not out of the box)
• 2 memory slots not 1!!!!
• Able to read multiple card formats
• make the keyboard ‘reactive’ to the stylus so the real keyboard can be used instead of the on-screen one
• Use the direction pad for scrolling pages with a simple touch
• Option to show the category instead of the name… I.e. Why I cannot turn something to show Media Player instead of Canola2? Would really help newbies.
• Nokia to show some interest in keeping this platform alive…

-Reda

Interesting Links

Nokia will bring bling and finger-friendliness to Maemo 5

PS: Application Installed/Used

• Default Media Player (often useless when playing radio since a broken connection is not re-established and need to do it manually)
• Browser. Resolution kind of ok, hopefully I will not become blind by the age of 50 using this tiny tiny screen, but it crashes the device very frequently. Cannot check Google Reader without worrying to crash my N810
• Skype
• Canola2 (took a long time to get it working!)
• Kagu Media Plaer
• mYTube
• PDF Reader
• AbiWord
• FBReader
• Maemo WordPy (nice menu – big buttons)
• E-Mail
• CrazyParking
• Blocks
• VGBA
• Scopa (Italian game)

mmm, there is either something wrong with my Google Reader or the world is suddenly gone really quiet…
Surreal!

You see the problem I have is that I have one gadget (my dear Nokia N95) which does all of sorts of things in a mediocre way and other 200,000 million gadgets which do one thing very well…Why do we have to stick with this jack of all trades gadget (acclaimed by many people and me) but master of none? Why do we have a “moving target” and it looks like we’ll never get true convergence? You could argue that I have already an exceptional device because my mobile can take good pictures, play music and show videos but my point is that I will claim to finally have a “converged device” when I won’t need to buy something else with exactly the same functionality.

You can read about “one side of the coin” in this post:

“…convergence is the future, many portable devices can do many things at the same time, but at the end of the day when it comes to take a very good photo, you use your $1000 DSLR camera, when it comes to play a videogame seriously, you use your PlayStation and when it comes to record a video, you use your “serious” videocamera. …”

and this could be true for many years to come considering there is a new generation  which is growing up and is more than happy with “beta-quality” standards. Ok, I’m no saint and my generation was more than happy with VHS-quality videos but good quality products are now becoming a premium especially when in the blogosphere people are shouting to give everything away for free!!! Anyway, I don’t think this is the way it should be at all and Metadata Working Group is a fine example at how big companies can get together if they recognise the disadvantages of  walled gardens… Would defining a standard to move and process my data between devices reduce the barrier to convergence? Perhaps, here’s few examples:

• Renting Market. At the moment, there isn’t a gadget renting market because there isn’t a clear way to shift the data from place to place… Imagine if during a concert you can use the best camera on the market to take pictures and transfer all the data to your phone at the end of the event. Imagine that you don’t have to carry with you a 5kg bag all day just to take high quality pictures and don’t have to settle for mobile-quality pictures…well, data mobility could help that.
• My N95 does not have a FM Transmitter radio, but I could add one using a 3.5mm audio jack. Imagine the same modularity and extensibility with the camera, the memory and everything else…
• Imagine you have a saturated mobile market where mobile phones are becoming a commodity. Really really busy people have a blackberry and another phone; not so busy people have only one … What if you could move the data between two or more mobile phones (not from the same vendor) easily and transparently? Would you use the blackberry mobile during the day and keep the other in the bag and do the opposite in the evening? Would it help selling more phones? Perhaps…

We got to the point that not only different technologies are being converged into single multipurpose gadgets, but also content is being converged and I’m glad with have at least a starting point which is Internet but without a clear business reason I don’t think many companies will make any efforts towards convergence. I just hope that the next “open xxxx” or data portability project will bear some fruits data standards

Update:

I was writing post this and I just read about a microsoft patent to share resources

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SW or HW required

• Microsoft Outlook
• Nokia mobile, PC Suite and (optional) Handy Calendar
• Gmail Account + Google Calendar Sync

Calendar

The calendar is to me what the memory is to any normal individual… well, that’s possibly an overstatement nonetheless it’s unbelievable how much I am dependant on my outlook calendar. I use it to save flight tickets, hotel reservations, planned holidays, bank-holiday, train timetables, milestones in my study plans, end of any interest free balance transfer periods and of course appointments as well as anniversary… basically anything that has a time, a booking reference and/or a location is on my calendar… Everything is then synchronised with my mobile and my Gmail account using PC suite and Google Calendar Sync respectively.

My tips (i.e. what works for me ):

• Colour labels. Very effective when I look at monthly view in my outlook calendar
• I tend to paste all relevant emails in the description field of the appointment “form” and use Handy Calendar on my mobile to best view any appointments’ details.
• I always put my reference numbers in plain view (the location field is often the best location for reference numbers)
• Use my local time (UK) in all appointments because they will change when I change the time-zone. E.g., on a flight entry, if the arrival time is on a different time-zone, I set the end time in the calendar appointment as UK local arrival time not the destination local time.
• Hotels bookings, locations I need to be and days spent on holiday are always all-day events, everything else has a start and an end time
• I use Google Calendar Sync as well as my Gmail accounts to share my schedule with my girlfriend.
• I tend to avoid the use of Tasks as much as possible to reduce the admin I have to do unless there is something I want to be constantly reminded once the deadline is passed.

Emails

When I started working few years ago, I never imagined I would end up being constantly overwhelmed by tens (sometimes hundreds) of emails, so I came up with the following personal toolbar to manage all my emails (btw, the following strategy is also similar to the GTD method)

For each email I receive, I apply the following flags if necessary:

• Red Flag: Important emails which I need “to action” by the end of the day. Usually no more than 4-5 emails should be marked with this flag
• Blue Flag: Emails which need a response usually within 1 or 2 weeks. No limit to the number of emails that can be flagged, but the more emails I flag the more difficult it becomes to review all of them at the end of the week.
• Green Flag: Important emails, no action needed but I flag them anyway to find them amongst hundreds of emails.

Furthermore, if an email requires a specific action or is due by a specific time I add a reminder as shown in the picture below.

Together with the toolbar, I also use a “Search Folder”, to manage and find my emails.

Steps required to create the Toolbar and Search Folders

Toolbar:

• Click on “Customize…” from the “Tools” menu.
• Click on “Toolbars” tab
• Click on “New…” button and give a name to the toolbar (default should be Custom 1)

• Go to “Commands” tab
• From the “Categories” list select “Actions”

• From the “Commands” list, drag and drop to the empty toolbar:
  1. Red Flag
  2. Blue Flag
  3. Green Flag
  4. Add Reminder…
  5. Clear Flag 
• Right click on any button to change the name, show both the image and text of the button and start a new group (which simply adds a vertical separator). Note how “&” is used to add the “Alt” letter (i.e. the letter used with the “Alt” button to select the button using the keyboard).

• The naming scheme I use is “&1 To Action – HP”, “&2 To Action – LP” to select the buttons with a simple Alt+1, Alt+2 and so on…

Search Folders:

• Right click on “Search Folders” and select “New Search Folder…”

• Select “Create a custom Search Folder ” at the bottom

• Assign the criteria for the search folder
  1. Type the folder’s name (e.g. if you are going to search for red flagged emails, you could name it “Important emails”)
  2. Click on Criteria
  3. Click on “More Choices” tab
  4. Click on “Only items which:” and select the wanted criteria from the drop-down list (remember the name given in step 1)

• Click Ok to all open windows, then right click on the new search folder and select properties. Click on “Show total number of items”

That’s it! I think that is in short what I use on a daily basis to help my work and private life… There are of course so many other strategies that could be used but I think this is a good compromise and it’s “green”, cost effective and time efficient… I hope it can be the same for you as well

PS: The search folder will show the emails only in the current data file. That is, if you archive your emails to another data file you will lose visibility of those emails.

PPS:

• Calendar and contacts are synchronised with Nokia PC Suite
• Work emails are synch’d with Mail for Exchange
• Everything else is done using the browser (i.e. private email accounts)

[photo source]

Picture in Flickr

It’s really easy to do. You can find a very nice tutorial here (www.logicscape.com/oob_tutorials/)

I think the whole experience is very addictive because is basically a positive feedback loop (very engineering view, I know ) and you can potentially end up in an "unstable" mental and physical state so watch out . You know how "greed and fear" drive the economies around the world? Well, I’ve been trying to understand what are the factors that influence the social interaction and basically I think it’s all down to "narcissism and control (of your data)". Each one of them affects each other and both can drive you nuts!

Personally, I’m not into social networks (although I used to be a big reader of feeds and I subscribed to way too many of them) but Flickr gave me a glimpse of how it could be and it’s something I want to stay clear as much as I can .

I have been a Flickr user for years but only recently I started enjoying photography and as good Web2.0 etiquette suggests I sent some of my pictures to groups and strangely I received some positive feedback about them. Arghh, two minutes later I was hooked! The Web2.0 Social Angel appeared and told me: "Congratulations, you finally entered the magical world of social photography". It went on for days! Then suddenly one day, I decided to put my narcissism aside and started living the real life
Actually, on the Flickr addiction problem, there is a nice picture in Flickr that nails it and you can find long discussions in Flickr’s forums too!!

So, my goal is now more than ever to prioritise and save time (and cost) as much as possible. So I tried to come up with some ground rules…

• First, attention/time: As usual I like the 80-20 ratio based on the old pareto principle, so now I try to give 80% of my attention/time to no more than 20% of the people I care. I would like to have a 48-hours day, but the reality is that my day is only 24 hours! I would like to enjoy the company of the entire world but the reality is that I have limited resources as well as limited time; I cannot clone myself and I don’t like everyone I met in my life as well.
• Second, how to interact: not all my friends lives in the same city I live in and that is why I used these web services in the first place. But, sometimes I wasted a lot of time on one service just to serve my curiosity and not to really communicate. So, no more "ghost" accounts, if I won’t seriously use it I won’t register for it.

I really hope it helps

-Reda

 Following images are from http://www.ishoppe.co.uk/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=n95

So, considering I had a huge selection of pictures and I could not go anywhere I started to look at my past pictures and started playing with them using Photoshop… Few things I learned so far:

1. You can take beatiful pictures even with a N95
2. You’ve got lower chances of taking nice pictures with the N95 so you should take as many as you can unless you want to take a proper camera with you. Thanks to Nokia (in a sarcastic way though) and the extremely high compression of its photographs (notice the high variation in size), you can take a lot of pictures before you fill your memory card…
3. Black and white conversion seems not give the best result with N95 pictures. There is always a lot of noise in the pictures and the image does not look crisp and clear as it should (compared for example to a 5 years digital camera)

Some examples:

N95 – day example. OK

N95 – another day example, kind of OK. I love the original version of the next photo. It was taken on a cool morning in Kista (Stockholm) when I was going to work and it just snowed. Unfortunately, you can see some noise especially in dark areas…pity. But I love this picture as well as the original…

N95 – night example (some light in the background). Kind of OK.

And this is an example of how a nice, crystal clear picture should be. Look at how nice is the contrast, how sharp is the picture. I love it. Why, Nokia had to set the compression algorithm so high (without judging the rest of the camera) is beyond me.

Anyway, I’m doing a set in Flickr with all these pictures and others I’ll either modify or already modified….

-Reda