In a recent Washington Post article Peter Finn told the story of how the American military establishment, in co-operation with Georgia Tech Research Institute, have developed software that allows a network of drones to search and “positively” identify a target on the ground. The next step, as the article says, could be to launch a missile to kill the target.

Isolated, there is nothing new in this. Facial recognition has been available for quite some time, and unmanned autonomous aerial vehicles have been flying the skies for centuries. Granted, these flying robots have gained a lot more “intelligence” since the invention of rocketry. What is new here is how these technologies are combined to give us – the humble human – new ways to unfold our imagination. And though I have no problem seeing how the US military – or any armed force for that matter – would prefer to send a couple of microchips in an aluminum box into action in stead of someones father, mother, brother or sister. Not to mention the ground they could cover with a couple hundred of these winged smart-boxes. Or how about a few thousand…

But – what if the action the machines went into wasn’t war? What if it was a search and rescue operation for a missing person in the mountains? Or how about traffic duty? Or sex offenders? How about a robot that could respond to hazardous industrial accident scene and administer life saving first aid?

But then again, how could anyone make money on something like that…

As a result of this I have taken the step away from web based email and installed Thunderbird, Enigmail and GnuPG for Windows. I have generated a set of encryption keys, and added my public key to my email signature. I have also made a page here at stigFromOslo.com explaining how the whole thing is done. My recommendation: Get started with encryption – both for email and files – and keep your data safe and private!

Below is one of my Smugmug galleries imported to WordPress via RSS using the addon WP-SmugMug.

Photo by NokiaConnectZA @ Flickr

I really like my phone. I’ve been writing a fair bit about it, but this little piece of technology is just cool. Well, so far it has been just cool. But lately I feel that my Nokia N8 has let me down. First it was the Ovi Store. The application that is Ovi Store on the phone is slow to respond to touch input and more than once it has come up with error messages and bad excuses for not letting me download the new app I want to try out.

Now, this is more of a software issue than an issue with the actual phone and since I’ve heard rumors about an update I’ve decided to be patient and wait. The same thing goes for all the trouble I’ve had with the browser. It is slow, it has a crummy interface, and it won’t always display the web page I want to see. Again, rumors of an update is holding back my verbal wrath.

Nokia BH905 by lookatbowen

But now I’ve experienced an issue that really makes me wonder if Nokia has choked on it’s own cookie. With my Nokia N8 I have a Nokia BH-504 stereo headset. I’ve mentioned this headset before and I am still very happy with it. The battery life is fairly decent and I can use it with my Mac computer and my iPod Touch, which I actually found strange at first. You know, with Apple being Apple and Bluetooth being an open standard… The only thing the headset can’t seem to get right is pausing, playing and switching songs in Spotify. On my iPod I can switch songs but not pause and play, while on the N97 mini its the other way around. I’m not sure about the N8 – I’ve just stopped using the buttons on the headset to control the music and I’m fine with it.

For a while now I’ve been watching videos on my iPod and feeding the sound to the BH-504 – no problem. Pair up the two devices, press play, and enjoy. This has worked out so great that it is now just about the only thing I use my iPod for. Today I decided to try the same thing on the N8 and I was expecting trouble playing my video files. With the BH-504 headset connected, I used USB on-the-go (you know, the USB connector dongle that allows USB devices to be connected to the phone) to copy one Xvid-encoded AVI and one MP4 to my phone and fired up the video player.

Photo by RafeB @ Flickr

AVI-file: Nothing.

The first frame was showing on the screen, but pressing play had absolutely no effect what so ever.

MP4-file: Nothing.

Same thing.

Maybe my PC-encoded files wasn’t compatible with the phone? I tried a video that I recorded using the N8: Nothing. First frame, press play, behold the awesomeness that is no change.

Well, in all fairness: Pressing play made the button icons flicker. But no video enjoyment for me. So, was there something wrong with the video player? Out of date maybe? I tried running the software updater but nothing changed.

Could the Bluetooth connection to the headset cause problems? Yes. Yes! Oh, freaking crazyness yes!!

After disconnecting the BH-504 – the NOKIA BH-504 from the NOKIA N8 – all my videos played perfectly.

Phone recorded video: Check!

AVI-file: Check!

MP4-file encoded on computer: Check!

How and why a Nokia phone won’t play videos when connected to a Nokia bluetooth headset while an iPod can I do not know. I find it very, very strange. It works with the Nokia music player, it works with Spotify – both on the Nokia and on the iPod – and it works on the Macbook, it does not work with a video on the Nokia N8 handset.

Wow!

MobileKnox

After moving just about everything else from my iPod Touch to my N8 I’ve been looking for a secure password/credit card/login credential storage app like mSecure for iOS. I ignored Best Safe due to bad reviews, tried Mr. Safe and missed a synch/backup feature, and now I’ve tried MobileKnox.

It might have the power to synchronize, but it does not support nested categories and each record/entry only has a category, a title and a single content field while Mr. Safe and mSecure supports a multitude of fields for each entry. To me it’s vital to be able to add several pieces of information to each entry, thus making this app a no-go for me. Seems I’m stuck with Mr. Safe as my best option. *sigh* I want mSecure for Symbian^3! Where is cross platform compatibility when you need it?

Mr Safe by Sinew

I have been looking for an app to securely hold some of my passwords, some credit card info, WLAN keys etc. ever since I moved to N8. I used to use mSecure on my iPod Touch, but after I got the N8 I rarely carry the iPod with me any more. After reading some bad reviews about the application Best Safe I ended up downloading Mr. Safe. The app installed fine, but crashed when I tried to add my first item (credit card). Restarted the app and everything worked fine.

However, since I can’t find any details on how the app stores and protects the data, I am going to be very careful about what kind of data I enter into the app. And since Mr. Safe can’t sync or backup my data I’m going to continue my search and hope for something more like mSecure for iOS. MobileKnox is next on my list, since it has a desktop brother and I expect to find more info about it and be able to sync/backup my data securely.

The N95 never really cut it for me. Using the Share online feature I tried to get started with Vox, but I never really got it working. Except for sharing pictures the phone just wasn’t ready to meet expectations. Don’t get me wrong – I still love the N95 and would probably still have used it if I didn’t simply wear out the one I got.

Then I got a N97 mini. The full qwerty keyboard makes it great for blogging, and the 5mp camera is good for blogg style pictures, but without real software it was hard to get started. As I have posted a lot about before, finding the right app and getting it to run was hard at best and took a buket load more patience and expert knowledge than what I’d expect from an average mobile user. Of course that is all history now that the WordPress app is releazed on Ovi store.

Thanks to @womworldnokia I got a chance to try the N900 for a few weeks too. This is as close to a geeks phone as I believe Nokia will ever get. It was great – in more sence than one – but running a totally differen operating system it was hard to find all the apps I wanted and it was simply way too big. I can’t even remember if I was able to blog on it and it reallt doesn’t matter.

Now I’m on the N8 and I simply love it. The 12mp camera rocks, it is lightning fast, it is of perfect size, and it can now run WordPress for Nokia. Even though the on screen keyboard and I still have some issues to work out I hope make them history while blogging. Because this is simply fun!

So, with the phone up and running with picture sharing to Flickr thanks to Pixelpipe blogging is the next thing on the agenda. With the ‘share online’-functionality I’m used to from the N95 and N97 mini gone I had a quick search for WordPress on Ovi store and my old friend/nemesis MoPress popped up on top of the list. Having bought the program last time I got a new phone (which frankly isn’t that long ago…) I installed it from the list of my apps and here I am blogging on the N8 with no picture capability and unknown stability. But it works… Sort of.

Wonder when the makers of this app will add functionality to add pictures to blog posts.

Oh, by the way, the MoPress screen scrolls a lot better on the N8 than on the N67 mini.