by John.Karakatsanis @ Flickr

About a month ago I was contacted by WOMWorldNokia who wondered if I would like to try out the Nokia N900 for a few weeks. Apparently, someone over there took a liking to my posts on the N97 mini and my problems getting WordPress installed on the little devil and thought I might give the alternative a go. Now, I’m not a professional product tester but I’m not gonna pass up an opportunity like that and so – just a few days later a stressed guy in an unmarked Mercedes van pulled up, flashed his DHL badge and presented me with a small, yellow bag containing the little toy.

As a unwrapped the little devil I soon came to realize that this thing was everything but little. About the size of half a brick (no kidding!) my thoughts were brought back to the time I unwrapped my 9110i communicator. Since I was on the go I didn’t have much time to play around with the thing so all I had time for was a quick look, touch and feel and it felt big. And heavy. Now, big means two things. Bulky to carry, nice to handle and watch. The screen is gigantic and you can easily fit both hands on the unit without getting your fingers entangled and wrists crooked.

My first reaction to the keyboard, when trying it out without power, was that I had no feel for when the keys were pressed. It felt very much like a cheap plastic board, but later when I set power to the thing everything changed. Writing was no problem, all the keys depressed nicely and unless you are writing blind (i.e. without looking at the screen), its not a problem at all to feel when the keys are pressed and not. The layout of the keyboard was a bit different from what I’d gotten used to with my N97 mini, but that was probably because the N900 was a UK model and my N97 is a Nordic model.

The thing that convinced me that this is a serious phone was the screen. It was crystal clear, even in bright sunlight. And using the pen it was fantastic to point and click. The little “jerk” and click-sound the unit gives off when a click is registered was just right, and I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the screen at all.

Now, there are some less positive sides to the N900 as well. As I have already mentioned it is huge, heavy and bulky. That can be compensated for with a belt pouch, but the thing that makes this a pro model and not a consumer model is the user interface. It is very different from any other phone I have tried. It operates several different virtual screens or “windows” that you change between by dragging the screen right or left. You can have different shortcuts and applications running at each virtual screen, and switching between them is no hassle. No wait worth mentioning, and the user actions to change between apps and screens are easy once you get the hang of it.

by codecz @ Flickr

The real downer though is that though this phone comes with an awesome camera – 5MP Carl Ziess – it does not come with an MMS application. You have to download one. Now, I was told there are several out there, but I didn’t bother to try any out. For me, a 2010-model phone with a camera should come with MMS capability built in. Period! The pictures came out perfect though.

After some searching, trial and error I also got the Twitter app “witter” running smoothly. Witter is still in beta and I don’t think it will ever come out in a final version, but it is loaded with functionality and with some playing around a pro user isn’t going to have any trouble setting it up. Remember: Google is your friend!

All in all the N900 is a great phone – in more ways than one. I would easily recommend it to a fellow geek or any other advanced user with some degree of technical knowledge, but for a “regular” user or a non-technical business user this is not the way to go. Yet! With some updating to the software this could easily compete with the rest of Nokias N and E-series phones, as well as any Blackberry, Android or iPhone.

I’ve heard talk about memory issues on these phones and it wouldn’t surprise me if that is the problem for me as well. But if it is going to be this bad I’ll seriously consider moving back to the N95. It might be an old model, but at least the phone works properly.

As I am writing this I’m running a second attempt at reinstalling the phone OS. The first attempt failed miserably. Didn’t even complete the backup process! This time I skipped the backup and went straight for reinstalling and it seems to be working OK. I really hope this will rekindle the spark in this fancy mini-computer I’m carrying around. If not, I’m gonna have to brand this a beta product as well and start looking for a serious product!

I have some ideas for some new online projects I want to start up, but because of the storage capacity issue and the fact that I only have 2 databases I have been forced to but these ideas on hold pending an upgrade of my webhostingservice. Unfortunately, my current provider can only set me up with 10 GB of storage and 10 databases. Maybe not too bad you might think, but the price is 90 NOK or almost $14 (about €10)  per month! That amounts to 1080 NOK or $180 (€120) per year and I am very reluctant to pay that when I can get unlimited storage, unlimited traffic and unlimited databases for less that 30 NOK or $5 per month at other hosts. So why don’t I just move my site to different provider?

See, it’s not that simple. All these unlimited storage hosts are set up in the US of A. And their terms and contracts are very much tailored to the US marked. Not to mention the fact that their servers are located “over there”. So I’ve been searching high and low for a European and preferably a Scandinavian host that will give me some decent storage space, unlimited traffic and a few databases along with the PHP/CGI, FTP, email and shell access that I need so badly at an affordable price. And what have I found you ask?

Nothing. I have found none. Not a single provider has stepped up to Google’s or Twitter’s plate and presented itself to me as the shiny, golden solution to all my online desires. And so I ask you this: Is there a webhotel out there for me or am I forced to chose between expensive and far away?

Replies, tips, hints and experiences are welcome!

by Zanastardust @ Flickr

I am a fairly frequent user of Flickr. I use it to share my photos, and as sort of a backup service for photos I don’t want to loose. Currently I have almost 3500 pictures stored, and more are coming. I’ve been a paying customer – a so called “pro” for a little over a year, and I have no plans of canceling my subscription. However, there are a few key features I think is missing from this top of the line photo sharing service:

1: Support for RAW format

I shoot almost all of my photos in Nikon’s RAW format NEF. Only the pictures I take using my cellphone is directly converted to JPEG. The rest is stored in large files that I can do just about anything with using my favorite photo editing software. Problem is that Flickr doesn’t support these RAW formats. And since I use Flickr as sort of a backup service as well as a sharing service, I would really like to have my original files stored there as well. I have searched the web for an alternative or additional service where I can security store my originals, but to date all I have found are expensive services for professional photographers and that is not what I’m looking for. I don’t mind paying for the service, but I would like to be able to afford bread and butter as well…

2: Improved access control

Some photos are for everyone, some are just for me, and some are for a select few. With Flickr all you can do is share with everyone, with your friends, your family, or with no one.  I would like to be able to share my photos with the people I select. And I don’t want them to have to register with Yahoo! to gain access. Either by a unique link (like Google’s Picasa) or by email somehow. That way I control who has access my photos, and the people I want to share with can keep their personal info personal.

I’m trying to think of a third wish but I got nothing. Seems there are only two features I find missing on Flickr. Is it really that semi-perfect? Hm! Well, why not? Still, I’d say the two points I have are pretty important so I really hope to see them implemented soon. Or maybe someone has a tip for a different service I can use to fulfill my photo storage and sharing needs?

The thing was promptly returned the next day and I got a new pair which works perfeclt. I’m using it all the time and the sound is great. A bit low when I listen to classical music, but for electronica, RnB, jazz and pop it works great. Even when I’m on my bike in down town traffic.

The only thing a bit annoying about this Spotify + BH-504 setup is that the play/pause button doesn’t work. Swapping tunes back and forth is no problem, but I can’t start or stop the music without taking up the phone. I expect this is a Spotify issue though, so I plan to try Nokia’s built in media player and see if the issue persists.

I’ve also had some bad sound when I’m talking on the phone using the bluetooth headset, but since this only happens when I’m by the computer at home and not while I’m at the lab, it’s probably some interference from somewhere.

The only real problem I have is that I don’t have a dataplan for this phone. I use wifi as much as I can, but you really need a decent dataplan to use this phone to it’s full potential. I have to check out those data rates again…

As for the WordPress for Nokia application it has almost all the things I want in a blogging tool. The text field is large enough for me to see what I am writing while still allowing for a few buttons to be visible on the screen, and it offers the most basic functionalities like saving drafts, managing comments, creating and editing pages, and it allows for pictures to be added to posts. I have to be honest and admit that I haven’t tried that last option yet, but I’ll get around to it soon enough.

In all this greatness though, I have found a few things that are really annoying. First of all, when adding a symbol from the ‘sym’-menu, the symbol is added to the end of the post. I detected this when I wanted to make a word in my previous post into a link. With the cursor at the beginnig of the word a few lines above the end it the post, whatever I did, the symbol ended up at the end and not where my cursor was. Not good!

Another thing I noticed while batteling with the symbol issue was that the only the left and right arrow keys are working properly in the post content field. The up and down buttons move focus away from the content field and up to the title field or down to the buttons below. This is fantasticly annoying when trying to move between different parts of the text.

I truly hope that the developers working on WordPress for Nokia will work out these kinks, because I do believe they are some of the final hurdles for this app to be king.

I am prompted for URL and login information, as well as an API code to my blog, and three text fields and one click later I’m in! Now, that’s how it is suppose to work. Well, apart from all the installation issues of course…

So thanks to @WOMWorldNokia and @tallboyz I am now powerblogging like a pro on my Nokia N97 mini!

Upon completion I answered yes to start the program and since everything had gone so perfectly well so far I actually expected it to work. But instead I was left with a hanging browser and another application that wouldn’t run. I tried to restart the phone and run WordPress again, still no result.

But since the symptom was very much the same as last time – the app being installed but returning nothing when clicked to run – I tried to install the QtMobility package still laying around on my memory card. Again it installed fine, and the result was different: Nothing happened. Even after a restart the app did absolutely nothing when clicked.

I must admit – it is tempting to give up, but then again: I need to get this working! (BTW: This post is written on a regular PC…)

I downloaded the package and tried to install it, but was promptly informed that Qt was not installed. So I canceled and went hunting for this other little bugger. It wasn’t exactly easy to find, but thanks to some comments on the very site where I found WordPress for Nokia I found a link to some packages I think was released by Nokia.

The packages were different parts and versions of Qt, and thanks to some trial and error I found out that the package I was looking for was called Qt installer. It installed a whole lot of different things on my phone and I was starting to think that this actually wasn’t too bad. How wrong was I…

After installing Qt, the WordPress for Nokia package also went in without a hitch. But when it came to launching the app nothing happend. I tried to exit all other running programs, I tried running it twice, I even cold booted the phone; still nothing.

So I went back to the comments on the website and started reading. After a while I found someone who had experienced the same as me. They were adviced to install another package called QtMobile, and from what I understood that made everything much better. Someone was even kind enough to link to a zip-file containing this fix-all package. I installed it, and sure enough: WordPress for Nokia is now running on my Nokia N97.

One might think that the story ends here. That after installation I got my blog set up in a flash and that this post is written with a big smile using WordPress for Nokia. Alas – so lucky were not I. While the configuration page was simple enough to fill in, the program has proven completely unable to make propper contact with the website. All I saw was “connection timeout”-messages. After trying four different connections – wifi and GPRS/3G – it seems the app has finally recognized the presence of a WordPress system on the website I am directing it to, because now all I’m getting is a program that fails to respond. The last message I saw was “fetching user blog” or something similar, but as I’m writing this post WordPress for Nokia is running like a zombie process in the background. And since the only way to kill it is to power off the phone, and because I can’t save drafts with MoPress I feel kinda stuck. Thank the ghost in the machine for multitasking!

I believe I mentioned in my previous post that the scrolling doesn’t work as expected, and I stick to that. But the lack of tagging was wrong. Just below the content field is a text field for tags. I haven’t tried it yet (I will on this post), but I assume it works like most other tag fields.

The thing I have found missing today is the functionality to start a post, save the draft, and return to edit and finish it later. The same type of function would allow the user to edit already published posts. I would classify these as critical functions for a blogging tool. Wouldn’t you?