Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Nokia NOT Apple set the mobile phone industry back by not shipping a mass market phone until the N8 w/enough RAM to multi-task ShoZu and other apps

Roland — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:02:48 +0000

Nokia not Apple set the mobile phone industry back 10 years by not shipping a mass market phone until the N8 with enough RAM to multi-task ShoZu and other apps and to take full advantage of the great technical features of Symbian.

Prior to the N8 no mass market Nokias had enough RAM to run ShoZu in the background continously and upload dozens of photos per day. I know because I had an N95-1 (the N95 8GB had enough RAM but it didn't ship at iPhone scale), N82 and many other N series phones and only the N8 has enough RAM to multi-task. ShoZu on the N95-1 and N82 regularly crashed (I worked around the problem by rebooting the phone every day something I don't have to do with my N8 or iPhone 4) and it crashed even more if I tried to run other apps simultaneously. Perhaps that was a ShoZu error but wouldn't have been awesome if Nokia had bought and bundled and made ShoZu bulletproof ? Much better than iCloud's rigid photo syncing solution!

Boy oh boy I loved ShoZu (I uploaded over 44000 photos using ShoZu) and used it until I got the N8. ShoZu doesn't work on the N8 :-( so I now use PixelPipe (which barely works because the developers have pivoted and the program is starting to bit rot and just barely works i.e. functionality that used to work no longer works: e.g. you can't enter tags from a list, you have to manually enter tags, you can't change which flickr account you are uploading to, etc)

Here's Ewan's argument in a nutshell

QUOTE (read the whole thing especially the comments)

Take yourself back to the days of the Nokia N95 8GB. It was a terrific handset: An excellent camera, super form factor, nice keypad — a true ‘Multimedia computer’.

Perhaps the best thing about those Symbian devices was that they could multitask properly. Hardcore Symbian developers could access almost every inch of the operating system’s plumbing to bring phenomenally useful services to users.

My most frequently used function on my Nokia Symbian devices was ShoZu. I wouldn’t shut up about it. This was (and still is!) a service that ran in the background on-demand. ShoZu would get your images off your Nokia really quickly. Many of my mobile friends had ShoZu doing an automatic upload. Snap a photo and boom, you’d see the little data indicator briefly switch on and off as the service sent your photo up to the ShoZu servers and then on to whatever services you’d configured (Flickr being a popular one). I opted for a little bit more control — so whenever I took a photo, ShoZu would immediately ask if I wanted the photo sent up to the internet. Again, if you pressed ‘yes’, that was it. Job done. Everything happened in the background.

You could get on with your day. I loved it.

Back at this point — 2005/2006, the mobile industry was looking incredibly exciting.

END QUOTE

If it's about flipping the switch rather than quality of the product, you will lose; it's just a matter of time

Roland — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:07:52 +0000

Glad this dude is no longer at Nokia; I hope the rest of the flip the switch folks have been fired or left.

QUOTE from a not too clueful Lee Williams

"When I was at Nokia and we shipped a Symbian product and it was bad, in its worst incarnation we knew that if we just flipped the switch, we could move 2.5 to three million units -- overnight, no matter how bad the product," he tells me. "That was Nokia. That was Nokia's brand, we knew we could count on that.

"And now look at it -- they flipped the switch and oh, 200,000 [Windows Phone] units out of the gate. Huh? Only selling in the US, under AT&T's moniker. If you can't flip the switch like that, Nokia's dead and devalued."

END QUOTE

Bicycle Commuting Picture Workflow - N8 in lanyard around my neck, take a shot, drop the phone

Roland — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:11:33 +0000

As a followup to WANTED: Two N8 Cameraphone apps with settings locked: default + hyperfocal street photography, here's my N8 cameraphone picture taking workflow (I have been doing this since 2008 and as a result have far over 50000 cameraphone pictures :-) !) while bicycling to work:

N8 is on a lanyard around my neck
I see something interesting
I take the picture using the N8 built-in cameraphone app custom setting (my custom mode is the default settings with flash turned off)
I drop the phone gently and it bounces harmlessly on my chest
I continue bicycling
Goto step 2

I would like an app with the touchscreen off because sometimes I accidentally trigger the photo editor.

I would like an app that locks out other apps because sometimes I accidentally quit out of the camera app. During my ride I don't use any other apps.

WANTED: Two N8 Cameraphone apps with settings locked: default + hyperfocal street photography

Roland — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:33:20 +0000

I'd like the following N8 Cameraphone Apps to avoid all the problems with accidental key presses and screen touches that I encounter every day:

The default cameraphone app but with the default settings locked to still photo (not video), auto-focus, auto-white balance, no zoom, touch screen off. And with no way to exit other than by killing it. This would be the app I'd use most of the time!
A cameraphone app like #1 but with the settings locked to hyperfocal instead of auto-focus, no preview and again no way to exit other than by killing it. This would be the app I'd use for "cameraphone street photography"

Ms. Jen, can you write this for me? Or can we write this together?

Backup your public Flickr photo metadata to MongoDB using backupPublicPhotoMetadataByDateAndUser

Roland — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:19:11 +0000

If you know how to run MongoDB and ruby on your computer or your server, then backupPublicPhotoMetadataByDateAndUser.rb is a simple Ruby script to backup your Flickr metadata for yours (or anybody else's) Flickr public photos for a given time period. Simple (it doesn't replicate flickr's richness nearly as comprehensively as Aaron's parallel flickr) but effective because then you can with very very simple programming use the MongoDB query language to do useful Flickr queries such as:

1. give me all the photos in gastown

2. give me the square 75x75url of all photos in Vancouver tagged "yellow"

3. give me all the photos geo-tagged in the city of Vancouver taken in 2011 during the morning rush hour (e.g. if you wanted to do Eric Fisher-like maps)

HOW TO RUN IT:

Start up MongoDB and create some indexes: /Applications/mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.0.2/bin/mongo

> db.photos.ensureIndex({id:1});
> db.photos.ensureIndex({datetaken:1});
> db.photos.ensureIndex({dateupload:1});
> db.photos.ensureIndex({lastupdate:1});

Set Environment variables to point to your MongoDB and your flickr api key and the userid e.g.

export MONGO_PORT=27017
export MONGO_HOST=127.0.0.1
export FLICKR_DB=rtflickr # your flickr database name in Mongo DB
export FLICKR_USER=yourfunnyFlickruserIdendinging@01
create a flickr.conf file like this:

Roland-Tanglaos-MacBook-Pro-2:mongoflickrbackup rolandtanglao$ cat flickr.conf
api_key = a3b9eeatbeefdecafbad

specify time and date to backup e.g. to backup your 2009 public photos:

./backupPublicPhotoMetadataByDateAndUser.rb 2009 1 1 2009 12 31 >backup.2009.stdout.txt 2>backup.2009.stderr.txt

Nokia Pureview 808 - 41 Megapixel sensor downsamples to superior 5 Megapixel images

Roland — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:26:24 +0000

If the Nokia Pureview 808 hype (Nokia, Engadget, Verge, AAS) :-) (Xenon flash, continuous focus 1080p video, 34 megapixels for still images, pentaband HSDPA, Symbian Belle) is to be believed, the Nokia Pureview 808 has a 41 Megapixel sensor which downsamples 7 pixels into 1 which means awesome images. 5 years in the making! Anyhow as somebody who as taken over 50000 photos with Nokia cameraphones since 2004, I need to review this immediately :-) ! Glad to see that Damian and the rest of the Nokia cameraphone team are still having fun and producing kick a*s cameraphone modules!

This week's hot camera is the Olympus OM-D

Roland — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:16:21 +0000

I have of course changed my mind. Out with the Fuji X Pro 1, in with the Olympus OM-D because it's cheaper, it has built-in Eye Fi support so my photos can get auto-uploaded and auto-geotagged, takes the awesome Micro Four Thirds lenses (45mm prime! 20mm prime!Need I say more :-) ? ) and is weather sealed! Anyways really enjoying my Fuji X10 for now! I will think about the OM-D in July around my birthday!

If you trust just one site like TechMeme or Reddit or YCombinator News or Slashdot for your tech news you are doing it wrong

Roland — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:33:53 +0000

Dave Winer is right as usual. Actively pick your news sources (plural, not 1000 like me but at least 2 dozen!), pick real voices, no crazy algorithmic ones like TechMeme or preaching to the choir rags like YCombinator News (I love YC News but really it's so over the top Silicon Valley startup it's not even a joke :-) !)

Fuji X-Pro 1 is seriously tempting

Roland — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 01:30:07 +0000

The Fuji X-Pro 1 sounds fantastic. Big sensor. Some great looking prime lenses and a great EVF. The rumoured $1700 for the body plus $600 for lenses sounds a bit too rich for me so if an Olympus or Panasonic with a great built-in EVF and updated sensor becomes available I still might end up with Micro Four Thirds. Now if only there was a built-in GPS and WiFi option in a MFT 4/3 or Fuji camera then I would have the perfect social camera. Much as I love the current crop of cameras and the cameras I have, it's very annoying that none of them has built-in Internet sharing and integration and an app platform (except the iPhone but except for Slow Shutter I quickly tire of its limited camera; when compared to the N8 and my Fuji X-10 the iPhone 4 camera still seems like a toy)

I can't believe I have been using Lightroom for 6 years! - Lightroom 4 Beta introduced

Roland — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:21:36 +0000

(Via Chuq, Lightroom 4 is out on the eve of the 6th anniversary of Lightroom beta 1 back in 2006!!) I have been using Lightroom since Beta 1 six years ago (and I love Lightroom but really don't like any other Adobe software!)! Time to up my game. Re-learn Lightroom 4 (it seems to be have lots of great radical changes in the develop module so my Develop Module workflow which is almost automatic so much so that I don't consciously think about it is now obsolete!) AND shoot more JPEGs (or at least tweak my Fuji X10 settngs to get the most out of RAW + JPEG and just post the JPEGs if they are good enough)

Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Nokia NOT Apple set the mobile phone industry back by not shipping a mass market phone until the N8 w/enough RAM to multi-task ShoZu and other apps

tags:

If it's about flipping the switch rather than quality of the product, you will lose; it's just a matter of time

tags:

Bicycle Commuting Picture Workflow - N8 in lanyard around my neck, take a shot, drop the phone

tags:

WANTED: Two N8 Cameraphone apps with settings locked: default + hyperfocal street photography

tags:

Backup your public Flickr photo metadata to MongoDB using backupPublicPhotoMetadataByDateAndUser

tags:

Nokia Pureview 808 - 41 Megapixel sensor downsamples to superior 5 Megapixel images

tags:

This week's hot camera is the Olympus OM-D

tags:

If you trust just one site like TechMeme or Reddit or YCombinator News or Slashdot for your tech news you are doing it wrong

tags:

Fuji X-Pro 1 is seriously tempting

tags:

I can't believe I have been using Lightroom for 6 years! - Lightroom 4 Beta introduced

tags: