Mobile

Blackberry is the latest phone operating system I have played with. So far my impressions of the OS are not that favourable. In particular what confuses me is the inability to setup the mail client, twitter and facebook out of the box as I can do with symbian, android, iOS and one or two other mobile platforms. What I do like is that the battery is meant to last a long time. I have a virtual and physical keyboard and I quite like optical scrolling. ¨ We will see how long it takes before I feel at home with this new operating system.

A short helicopter flight to a mountain refuge in Aosta, on the Italian side of the Mt Blanc. Good fun, walk to the glacier and back. I also tested my Iphone 4 phone.

[flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157624937122156”]

Here are some images of the Paléo festival. These pictures were taken with the Nexus One [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157624569201440”] And these pictures were taken with the Stylus tough 8010 minimu tough 8010. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157624567505952”]

To see which apps I have just take a look below.

With Appz.im you can easily share which apps you have with people. It’s quick and easy to set up.

There are four phones on my desk that are well adapted to tracking hikes. There is the nexus one, the e51, n95 and n97. The reason I mention this is battery life. In my experience if you go on a long hike at least one of the phones will die. You could buy an extra battery or two to make sure that this never happens but a more practical solution is to take all of your phones, install the tracking application on them and swap phone once the battery dies. Of course this would involve taking three chargers with you but at least this way you could track the hike in terms of chapters and somehow aggregate the data for a true hike map.

Google latitude is the perfect tool for anyone that works and has a life where logging into locations would be an unsightly thing to do. By that I mean that you can’t arrive at work and log into the location. It gives colleagues the impression you are not serious about your work. Now take this same situation in a social context. You go hiking and the people around you are not necessarily as passionate about technology. They’re walking around with paper maps after all. That’s where Google latitude comes into it’s own. Location is tracked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week every single day that your device is on. Why am I doing this? Am I not mad? Do I not have this location information to hide, and no shame? Well of course I have things to hide and shame but with this network only your closest friends can see where you are. And they only know your current location, not your previous locations. That’s where the service differs from foursquare, gowalla, yelp and all the others. Your location history is private. Only you have access to it. Then why use it in the first place? Well that’s simple. It’s a lifelog that’s not broadcast. You can keep track of how much time you’ve spent at home, at work and out socialising. Once a week I get to find out whether I was at work for more than fifty hours, whether I was at home for too many hours. More importantly i get to see whether I should not be a little more active in going out, from a personal life point of view. That’s where I’m lacking at the moment. Google latitude’s dashboard will help change that. Now, how could it improve? First of all automatic location check in. If I’m by starbucks in Geneva airport log me in if I’m seeing that network more than ten minutes. If I’m at the apple store for that amount of time log me in there. If I’m at a bar and I lose signal in that region due to poor network coverage then assume I’m in that bar. By being automatic and private location information could be quite a bit more interesting. More to the point that data is being collected anyway by mobile operators so why not take advantage of this? I believe this to be the future of mobile geo-location. With more android phones out there and more devices capable of multitasking this could easily become the norm.

PAF is not just the way you discribe something hitting something else. It is also used to define a portable application file. These are self contained executables that you can use for mobile versions of your favourite browser. One of my personal favourites at the moment is Chrome, it’s fast, light, and behaves the way I want it to. Better still it incorporates flash into the code. This means that I can view flash content without it being installed on the computer I’m using. Get it here

Waiting for the iPhone4 to come out in the hope to do mobile video editing is not necessary. Vericorder have come out with an app for that. The app is a simple to use video, recording and voice over recording app that allows for video editing and distribution to be possible on the move. There are three modes, record video, take photographs and record voice. Each of these modes allows you to gather material, name the clip and then record the next shot. The project tab allows you to add video clips to the sequence, shortening and sorting the videos in the order you want. After that is done go to the voice ovee app, record the audio, transcribe what you have said before adding the audio track to the timeline. Once that is done save the project. Export the video, chose send as video and you will have a finished edited news item. It is intuitive to use. Within ten minutes of use I understood how it works and simplz need to find events furring which to test the applicAtion.

Designers must understand that user interface as well as ease of use are the two most important features of any electronics device. The more intuitive the device the more likely people are to keep using it. As a first generation Ipod touch user and an iphone 3gs owner I see the value of simple, intuitive confident design. Looking at the itablet (ipad) what I see in this design are three key qualities, ergonimcs, ease of use and versatility. All of these combined make this device one of the most interesting on the market at the moment. The smooth, slick design reminds us of the macbook air but without the keyboard.  As it is a laptop we will expect less from it but get more out. The macbook air is running the same OS as the Macbook Pro therefore we expect it to do the same things but when it cannot then we say it underperfoms. The tablet doesn’t have that problem. It’s sold as a slate that has a touch screen that can serve as a multimedia device. Ease of use is another key feature. When you’re using a netbook, an N97 or many other devices you need some understanding of how things work. You need to understand how to configure an exchange server, you need to type the right character to complete the word and if you want to transfer files you need specific software. Of course the tablet has the same thing, you need itunes to do this. That’s an advantage and a dissadvantage. The advantage is that whenever you connect to any laptop (With the right library key) you can update podcasts and other content intuitively. The second advantage is that the app store is so much easier to use on the mac than other platforms. We are used to buying apps and music on that device. Who hasn’t downloaded 10-15 apps for their iphone or ipod touch already? Imagine the facebook app on the tablet, or the flickr app. In fact think about the day after a party. Hundreds of pictures were taken and you want to show them to friends, and have a good laugh. With the computer you can do this but you’re stuck at the desk, or you’re sitting down to be more comfortable. With the Ipad you hold it comfortably and a few people can stand around to see these images. Of course it’s less intimate than showing them on an iphone ;-). It’s also a way of demonstrating your picture portfolio or your multimedia showreel.   Versatility is the last point of interest for this device.  If you want to use it for picture viewing then it could double as a photo frame, if you want to use it as a calendar and e-mail client then you can. If you want to play games then the larger screen means that all the games you already have for the iphone and ipod touch can be used. Finally you can dock a keyboard to the screen and it becomes a 750 gram laptop. The advantage of this device’s keyboard, bought seperately is that you now have a laptop. You’re free to tweet, blog, sort through pictures and edit documents if iworks works well on the device. Now the question you’re wondering, would I buy one? Not until July 2010 after the summer keynote. I want to see how they implement these new features into their line of futre laptops. Will they give us a dual screened laptop where the keyboard and mouse are replaced by a second touch screen or will we get the conventional keyboard and monitor where the screen is now touch based? That’s the point at which we can decide whether the tablet or a new laptop make more sense.

Gravity is a twitter client for the s60 and I recently installed it on my N95 and so far I’m very happy with it. With an intuitive interface it makes being logged in to two twitter accounts and one identica account very easy. What is especially nice is that you select which account you want to look at and by scrolling left and right you see the friend’s timeline, the replies, your tweets, your DM and finally searches if you want. That’s automatic and for every account. It’s far better than the other twitter clients for s60 that I’ve tried so for the moment that is one twitter client I would recommend you use. I know what I’m talking about. I tweet from anywhere without it slowing down my social life. Also if you pay for this app after the ten day trial period you’re helping demonstrate that it’s not just the iphone which has people willing to pay for the applications