Mobile

Snowboarding is a fun and safe sport as long as you know what you’re doing. Occasionally of course we push the limits. A few years ago whilst snowboarding with someone around La Dole we decided that rather than go back down via St Cerque we would snowboard home by passing over the ridge and down the other side. For decades both us had hiked those slopes so we knew them well. I took one step and felt myself falling. I was face down in the snow and I called to the person I was with to know whether he could see me. He could, so I knew there was no problem. We both strapped our snowboards on and from that point we snowboarded down the slope. In Verbier a 29 year old Entrepreneur lost his life after falling from a cliff into a rive below, from a few articles I’ve read. The conditions are unclear at the moment. What is clear though is that the people did not have a proper contingency plan or experience of the mountains. If the conditions are adverse the last thing you want to do is go off piste, especially when you’re not with a local guide who knows the mountains. The reason I’m speaking about this particular story is that these people had some of the latest technology at their disposal. GPS enabled iphones and twitter, as is written in this article. If you’re lost in the mountains with this type of device you can get a geo loc within twenty meters of where you are. You can see a satellite view of where you are and you can see which way would be the best to get home. You can also stay put and let rescuers find you rather than attempt to make it back down. If your GPS location is within 20 meters it’s not that complicated to find two people. The other reason I’m speaking about this is that some of those who were part of the group were tweeting the adventure. One tweet speaks about the great time they were having and how they “finished the ski day due to complete whiteout”. The next is about the 2 people missing. Screen grabs of the tweets are here. This demonstrates the weakness of the iphone and the GPS functionality. With my phone whenever I go outdoors the GPS tracks my exact location within 20-60 meters. What this means is that if I go missing within a minute you’ll see exactly where I am if you’ve added me on Google latitude. On that note I’ve invited a few more people to follow me on google latitude. If you have an S60 Symbian phone maybe you could do the same, just as a backup. It’s a shame it had to happen to anyone, especially since that type of accident is easy to avoid. It’s even more of a shame that Hermioneway, whom I met at LeWeb in Paris is one of those that had to go through the experience. Switzerland is a beautiful country for all those that enjoy outdoors sports and beautiful landscapes so it’s a shame that it’s overshadowed by that event.

One Hundred Million is the number of photographs geotagged on flickr. That’s an impressive number. There’s an article about the news here but I want to explore the fun side of things. Whenever I take photographs with my mobile phone they’re geo tagged so where ever I am in the world I can pinpoint within five to twenty meters where it’s been taken. As a result if I go for a walk every day for a year I can take pictures of the different seasons and how the landscape changes, from snow to spring to summer and more. It also means that when you’re going on holiday to some of the top tourist destinations you can find all the images taken around there and see the area before you arrive, scouting out where you would particularly like to go. It’s also a way of keeping your own record. We’ve all heard that sentence, “hey that’s a great picture, where did you take it” but the photographer never remembers. Now there’s no worry. You’ve automatically kept track. Listening to a recent “This Week in Tech I heard mention of GPS units that are smaller than a nail, meaning that they could be put into all devices by default. Whether you share that information is entirely up to you, as is clear in flickr. I’m looking forward to more geo-cached images of the area around which I live, then when you’re tracking me with latitude and I upload images to flickr they are automatically placed on the map in real time.

warzabidul - Feb 5, 2009

You can select to specify where you are by city and country if you like. You have quite a bit of control. I have found a bug though. Sometimes it displays that I’m in another city and country than where I actually am.

For a moment it thought I was in England and in Holland. Haven’t changed country though.

Google latitude is an interesting app available at least on Nokia phones that allows you to see where your friends are according to their mobile phone. At the moment it’s limited just to your gmail friends but expand to include more. What makes this application interesting in the near future is that as more of the early adopting friends of yours install this app you’ll see which city they’re in quite easily. If the friends are in a public space then you can get more accurate directions. It’s an interesting application.

Documentally - Dec 3, 2008

Wow, looks really heavy.. you going out in it? Looks like there is a strange red UFO hovering over the roof there.. ;)

For the first few seconds, then I opened the windows and everything was fine once more :-). There’s a chance I’m going out in it a little later today. Want to get some video of a flash mob in Lausanne.

Here, some qik snowfall, on the last day of the year

If it’s something geeky you’ll see me learn how to use it. The most recent thing I’ve played with is the n95 8gb and google maps. This time though it was from a car rather than on foot and as a result it was far quicker to correct a mistake. I took care to locate the satellites before leaving home so that when I arrived to Lausanne I could stop by the side of the road, load google maps, press 0 and the gps in the phone would automatically locate me within 30 kilometers. I then had to type the address of where I wanted to go and confirm it was correct. Within seconds I had a track. I looked at it. Saw where I was and where I needed to go and that was that, very easy. Once or twice I overshot but within just a few seconds I knew and finding the place was a piece of cake. Of course I didn’t use the device whilst the car was moving. I made sure to keep both eyes attentive to the road conditions and only when I was stopped did I check. It worked really well.

Having just noticed that the new gmail application for S60 is out I have noticed some interesting new features, the most interesting of which for some of you may be the accounts tab so that you may use more than one gmail account at once. Other features include Chats, outbox, mobile drafts, Chat, contacts and more. One of the more interesting options now is that you can search through your e-mails straight from the application on the phone rather than using the website. As a result it’s far easier to find that particular e-mail with flight information or the route you were planning on taking.

Whilst at a number of concerts I had to type fast, very fast on a mobile phone keyboard. Within a very short time I began touch typing. I can type whilst looking around. That’s a useful feature of certain phones. It’s useful because it means the keyboard is well designed. Are there many mobile devices that you use and can you touch type on them. Do you touch type on your blackberries, iphones or other devices or do you see that as the preserve of computer use?

A good video looking at the evolution towards the fourth screen