Dan’s Blog (2.0)

Why, in this day and age, when they can send a man to the Moon, is it so frickin’ difficult to tell what time it is? Specifically, what makes it so seemingly difficult for mobile devices, which are connected to a public network, to tell what time it is? Surely mobile connected devices should be our most trusted time sources. The network they’re connected to is constantly pumping out a time-sync. So what is the problem? Three examples:

I normally carry around a couple of devices. Most recently, these have been consistently unreliable sources of the time. The Blackberry has two time-sync options: network and “blackberry.” Neither of them ever yield a correct time (as measured by my Mac, whose time-sync works flawlessly when measured against the BBC).

The N73 also has a “network sync” option which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. I have often found that the time is wildly off – by as much as a few hours. It also doesn’t help matters that a change of this setting requires a reboot.

I have to manually set the time zone on the Blackberry but the Nokia N73 somehow can figure that out for itself.

I just came out of the other end of the Channel Tunnel and my iPhone hasn’t picked up the fact that I’m now in Central European Time – so it’s still showing an hour behind.

In this fast-paced world, it’s more important than ever for your device to know the correct time. This becomes especially important when you’re sharing media (as, for example, a number of people are contributing camera-phone images into a photo pool which you then want to be able to view sequentially). I constantly find myself on conference calls with multiple people in different time zones and knowing the correct time can be extremely important in such situations (and don’t even get me started about how most software just does not know how to deal with meeting planning that happens across multiple time zones or meetings that are being scheduled in a time zone other than your own – the software on Blackberry is a rare exception – I often find myself using the Blackberry to schedule a meeting even when the PC is right in front of me). So what’s going on here and how do we fix it? I’m open to suggestions.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 19:02 under Mobility, Travel
Tags: blackberry, iPhone, Mobility, Nokia, rants, time

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The Register reportedon the launch of Conversations from Nokia “Beta labs” division. So don’t get me wrong. I applaud Nokia’s efforts on releasing this and in particular in releasing it for existing handsets. However, this release brings some questions to mind.

First of all, why wasn’t this feature part of the original functionality of the device. Integrating the SMS inbox with the address book surely should be one of those features that you should expect to be on every device. The fact that this is being released in 2007 as a high-tech, cutting edge, “beta” function is a little sad I think and belies a dysfunction in the mobile industry with regard to integrated user experience.

But leaving that to the side for a second, who now gets to benefit from this innovation? Certainly not the majority of Nokia S-60 owners since they will likely never install the app themselves. It’s only the early adopter users and industry insiders who know how to install apps on their phones that are able to benefit. That’s not a critique of the app as much as it’s a critique of the whole mechanism by which software updates roll out onto handsets. There should be a mechanism for automatic over-the-air updates analogous to the software update functions prevalent in the desktop world.

Having said all that, the app itself is definitely a step forward for SMS discussions and I can see myself using it a lot. However, applications like Jaiku already go so much further in allowing one to many messaging, integrated with a Web user experience. SMS discussions is a great tweak on top of a “Mobile 1.0″ service but it doesn’t really seem like the kind of envelope-pushing application that I’d expect out of a “lab.”

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 19:39 under Mobility
Tags: Nokia, nokiabetalabs

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On my recent trip to Greece with my wife to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, I made myself one promise: I would not use the Web for the whole week. By and large, I kept this promise, however I was not completely off the grid. While we were island hopping, I was snapping pictures with my N73 and using Zonetag to send them up to FlickR. The results are available here.

ZoneTag is a nifty downloadable application and service, developed by Yahoo! Research, which allows you to (among other things) upload images directly to FlickR from your camera phone. Of course, there are plenty of applications that allow you to do this, but the ZoneTag difference is that by using the CellID, and cross-referencing this against a database of CellIDs that they maintain, ZoneTag can accurately geotag your photos even if your device doesn’t have a a GPS built in. ZoneTag also learns CellID locations through users using the system and telling it their location. It’s “leveraging collective intelligence.”

Anyway, apart from being a bit of geeky fun, there was a method to this madness. Publishing these photos allowed our kids (being looked after by my saintly mother and sister) to keep track of our travels. It was like being able to send postcards instantaneously. And unlike MMS, sending an image with Zonetag does not compress / reduce the images to the Nth degree - the original images with their original detail are sent up. Now, granted this is the Greek islands and you can pretty much just wave a camera around snapping randomly and get great pictures, but I actually think these turned out pretty well. My only complaint (a Nokia complaint, not a Zonetag one) is the high level of compression (which I’ve complained about before) and some softness in the corners (which to a certain extent can’t be avoided with small lenses, but I would have expected more from a “Carl Zeiss” lens. (Carl must be spinning in his grave.)

I was also trying out a new product from Yahoo’s Berkeley labs - Zurfer. Zurfer is a Java application that allows you to browse FlickR images. The Yahoo! labs guys call it Zonetag’s “little brother.” It’s got a slick and responsive user interface that’s simple but also powerful in its task: enabling you to browse photos. You can browse your own photos, your contacts’ photos or (more interestingly) photos around you.

What would I like to see more of from these guys? For starters, I’d like to be able to upload pictures after the fact, and in batch, instead of having to go through the process for each and every photo I take when that photo is taken. I’d also like the ZoneTag UI to be built more into the camera/viewer functions (send to ZoneTag should be another option under “send” when I’m viewing images). As for Zurfer, I really like the concept, and it was fun to use, but I wonder if this couldn’t be built inside Nokia’s Series-60 browser as a Web App and thereby spare people the hassle of downloading yet another app to their phone. Then again, if it were inside the browser I wouldn’t have been able to keep my promise.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 20:50 under Travel, mobile 2.0
Tags: Greece, N73, Nokia, Yahoo!Labs, ZoneTag, Zurfer

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There are two particularly annoying bugs in the Nokia Series-60 (Webkit-based) Web Browser:

Check-boxes don’t work. In order to “check” a check-box in a form and make it “stick,” you have to click it (so it appears checked), click it again (so it appears not checked) and then move the focus off of the check-box (at which point it will change its state back to checked).

There is a big with the time or time-zone. I have not figured this one out, but on some pages times are misrepresented. In particular, on the “my itineraries” section of the British Airways web site, when I bring up an itinerary it shows me the times of the flights with a one hour off-set (as if I were in CET). The time zone of the phone is set correctly and the time on the phone reads correctly and the same web page brought up on a PC web browser shows the correct time. This bug could have been particularly disastrous for me as I was trying to book a car to the airport yesterday. I brought up my itinerary on the phone and was booking a taxi based on those times. Thanks to a thoughtful American Express employee who bothered to look up my flight numbers, I was saved from probably missing my flight.

And while we’re on the subject of things that piss me off, why does Google (on Firefox on the Mac) insist on showing me pages (such as maps and docs) in German? I’m logged in. It knows who I am. It knows my preferred language is (US) English. But it insists in bringing up pages in German (presumably on the strength that I am in Germany right now). Not helpful.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 13:04 under Mobile Web
Tags: Bugs, Google, Nokia

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Just a quick note: I’m now listening to Timo Veikkola of Nokia who’s title is “Sr. Future Specialist”. Timo’s talking about the values that will drive service and hardware design in the future. Great stuff, especially after the somewhat fluffy presentations from Target and MTV which basically amounted to “here’s how we’re selling you more stuff.” Timo is completely blowing them away - wow.

“Devices will become intimate companions.” I believe this is true (though it raises a number of privacy and security issues). This vision of the future could easily turn into a dystopian nightmare if these issues are not correctly understood.

“Leapfrogging” - users in developing markets will use the mobile device first as a connected [Internet] medium and will effectively leapfrog the existing [PC] paradigms.

“Semantic Search & Find” - the importance of giving people the information they are looking for with far greater accuracy then is currently happening on the PC Web.

Cool stuff. Nokia continues to push the envelope.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 17:13 under Technology
Tags: futureology, Nokia, SXSW, sxswi

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On paper, this looks like a fabulous device. It’s got a high-res screen. It’s faster than its predecessor, the 770. It has a great browser, Opera. It’s got audio, video, the promise of Skype calling… It’s got a web cam for Internet-based video calling. Linux based, it’s open to third party developers. It’s also pretty cheap for what it does.

On the minus side, do I really need another device to lug around with me? I actually already have an iPod, a Blackberry and an N73 and I don’t realistically see the N800 replacing any of those. And you can’t drive presentations off of it so it can’t replace the laptop either, except in very specific situations. I suppose it could theoretically replace the iPod, but what about all that Fairplay-DRM’d music (doh!).

No. I’m fairly sure that if I did buy this, it would sit around in my living room gathering dust, only occasionally picked up to look up some obscure trivia on IMDB or Wikipedia. I dunno — am I wrong? Am I missing something here? I’m happy to be convinced.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 22:42 under Technology
Tags: n800, Nokia

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The Mobile Discussion
Originally uploaded by R.J. Friedlander.

While I’m posting images from San Francisco week, here’s me at the Web 2.0 panel (”The Mobile Discussion”) with Om Malik and Ansi Vanjoki from Nokia. I’m saying “this is the future calling” right after Anssi talked about running Bittorrent on his N93. Om’s thinking “Why do I always get stuck with the weird ones?”

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 23:45 under Web 2.0
Tags: gigaom, mobile2.0, Nokia, web2.0, web2summit

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Well, it’s been about two weeks since I wrote gushingly about the Nokia N73 on this page. Has the bloom come off the rose? Well - in some small ways, yes, and I will detail those here, but in the main I am still very impressed with this device.

My biggest pet peeve is picture quality. For a device that prominently displays the fact that it sports a “Carl Zeiss” lens and a 3.2 megapixel sensor, I would expect higher quality images. The problem seems to be in the software. Even at its highest image quality setting, the JPEG compression is jacked way up. A typical highest-quality image out of the phone comes in at around 500k. My old 2-megapixel Powershot S100 used to produce images around the same size, for comparison. Considering you can now buy 1GB cards for this thing, I think it ought to be possible to squeeze some higher quality photos out of it. The auto white balance is also pretty wonky. My sense is that the sharpening algorithm is also jacked way up but it’s kind of difficult to tell with all the compression artifacts in every picture. It also takes a while for the camera to get ready to take pictures and there is too long a delay between the time you depress the button and when the picture is actually taken - resulting in many missed shots, especially when your subjects are fast-moving children. Don’t get me wrong: for a camera phone, it is pushing the envelope. But Nokia really markets this phone as a digital camera as well as a phone and in my view it needs some tweaking in order to make good on this promise.

My second area of frustration is with the Bluetooth support. I had expected some improvement over the N70, but unfortunately I find it still craps out quite often. The only remedy is to go in to the control panel and turn Bluetooth off and on again. This usually fixes the problem, but when you’re trying to make or receive a call on the go, or connect to the Internet to quickly send/receive email, this can be very frustrating.

Both of these are software issues so they could potentially be addressed by firmware updates.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 19:38 under Mobility
Tags: cameraphone, N73, Nokia

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It’s been a day since I’ve taken delivery of my brand-spanking new Nokia N73 (pictured at right). And I have to say, I am pretty impressed. It’s not that it’s some huge revolution in usability and design. It isn’t. It’s a step up from the N70 (pictured at left) which I’ve been using for a few months. But what a step up! It is just a little bit better in almost every aspect of operation and use. Build quality is better. Industrial design is better. It’s lighter. It’s smaller — not by much but just enough that it now fits comfortably in my pocket where the N70 was uncomfortably bulgy. It’s balanced and has a flat bottom — it doesn’t sit precariously on the desk like the N70 did. The materials it’s made out of seem higher quality — maybe it’s just the lack of (or at least minimization of) finger-print-showing chrome accents. Its battery lasts longer. It doesn’t get as hot as the N70 did during long calls. The camera features a real (glass, auto-focus) lens and takes measurably better pictures (though still not up to the quality level of dedicated digital cameras, they are more than usable for most on-line applications and could even be suitable for decent, if small, prints). The lens cover is easier to slide back. The screen is higher resolution and brighter. On the N70, you had to wait a few seconds for things like the call register or address book to come up. This delay is gone on the N73, making the experience of using it as a phone much much much less painful. The PC sync software was a snap to install and get working and synced my 800+ Outlook contacts very quickly over Bluetooth. In short, it’s just that little much better in about every single way and that adds up to a real difference in terms of usability, operation and, yes, sexiness. To borrow a catch-phrase from Oldsmobile, this is not your father’s Series-60.

Special mention has to go to the Web browser (which is built WebCore and JavaScriptCore that Apple’s Safari is built on top of). It is really really good (with a couple of caveats, see below). The browser operates like a PC browser, complete with a little pointing hand cursor that you move around the screen with the 4-way rocker switch. The hand moves semi-intelligently from link to link and, because the screen is smaller than most Web pages, you get a zoomed-in view which shifts around as you move the cursor. You can get a page overview and then zoom into the part of the page you’re interested in. And when you go “back” or “forward” a page, you get neat little page thumb-nails which animate back and forth until you find the page you’re looking for. The result is an amazingly usable Web experience, even for pages that do not adapt for mobile browsers (a bit more on that later). Nokia also recently open-sourced a significant portion of their own work on this browser, which should spur yet more innovation around this platform.

My minor qualms list:

• The built-in web upload application for photos (which is supposed to provide out-of-the-box Flickr integration) did not work. It kept rejecting my username and password and provided no easy way to diagnose the problem. I downloaded ShoZu which worked right away (although ShoZu didn’t have the N73 in its list of supported phones).
• The Nokia S-60 Web Browser works on most sites, but things falls down on things like drag-and drop Ajax applications. Nothing you can do here unless you could add a bluetooth mouse (which you can’t, and in any case that’s hardly “one-handed operation.”)
• The Web browser does not appear to support CSS media queries (or at least doesn’t load stylesheets marked for media type “handheld”). So if I go through the trouble to create special CSS for small-screen devices, this is work is lost on the S-60 Web browser. I think this is a big problem and I hope they fix it in future releases.
• There are two browsers — one for “Wap” and one for “Web.” They even share the same (or a very similar) icon. This doesn’t make sense.
• Final browser nit: when I tried to demonstrate how cool the browser was to my wife by bringing up IMDB while we were out at the pub to answer a question on so-and-so’s filmography … the phone crashed. Oops! It hasn’t done the same since but still — some points knocked off for bad timing.
• Settings are difficult to change. It took me the better part of 20 minutes to figure out how to turn off keypad beeps. That’s a lot of beeps. (It’s in “Profiles”).
• The Lifeblog application holds a lot of promise, but seems to be limited to working with the Typepad software. I would love to use it, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work with Blogger.
• It takes yet another kind of micro-flash-card format (MiniSD), which means the card I bought for the N70 is now useless.

That’s about it for now. The long and short of it is — great device. As for the Web Browser — it’s a real innovative leap for mobile browsing. Like any 1.0, there are some problems, but Nokia re clearly on the right track here. My wife has yet to be convinced, though.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 22:12 under Mobile Web, Mobility
Tags: N73, Nokia, webkit

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