Video of a Crane.

Kind of fascinating watching it fish.

No I don’t have anything better to do with my time.
At least I’m not lurking in the bushes stalking movie stars!

Pondering GPS

OK, I know very little about GPS (other then the excellent entries I’ve read in this group.)

I read somewhere that a survey found that GPS is more anticipated by potential users of mobile phones then mobile TV.
This doesn’t surprise me as finding ones way around the countryside strikes me as a damn useful thing to have in a phone.

I’m noting down a few thoughts, after using the GPS in the N95 a few times in the last couple of weeks…

• GPS seems to work better if I’m driving. The positioning seems to be more accurate if I’m standing in the middle of the road. Maybe trees confuse the satellite signals? That said, I had some real problems getting a fix on the satellites recently, until I slid the phone up onto the dash. Once I had a fix, my passenger wouldn’t let go of the phone as she found it fascinating to watch our progress on the screen as we drove through the countryside.
• It would be nice if the camera app in the N95 auto logged onto the GPS and geotagged photos and videos. In fact, it would be interesting if everything were geotagged such as SMS and email.
• Maps should allow an option to override the screensaver without running the backlight continuously.
• It would be nice to see the two GPS apps (the info app and Maps) combined.
• This device should be the ideal hiking phone, but the lack of protection for the screen, the strength of the plastic case, and the battery life reduce its effectiveness. What if the phone could plot a path following my movements through the bush? This data could be picked up by the Lifeblog app and mashed up with geotagged photos (including recorded sounds and video,) and finally the whole lot uploaded to Google Maps.
• There is a GPS device on sale over here that allows the user to take a photo of a place, and this becomes part of the info for tagging a location. The user can browse for the photo of where they want to go, select, and the path finder does the rest. The N95 is the idea platform for this sort of functionality.

I thought it was interesting to read in the manual that the N95 has three different ariels.
Is this why the phone is clothed in plastic fantastic?
Is it not possible to ‘time slice’ access by the phone/Wifi/GPS to a single areal?

I was bush walking on the weekend and a couple of people whipped out their GPS units.
We got to talking about something called ‘assisted GPS’ where the Cell towers are used to glean extra position data.
Since there are three ariels in the N95, Any ideas on whether the N95 can use this technique?

Nokia isn’t interested in waiting for the carriers to catch up

This is a continuation of a blog entry I wrote a while back…

Mobile devices become the ultimate social network?

link to a Yahoo news story

A partnership between Nokia and Cisco Systems promises the kind of
simple-yet-comprehensive enterprise telephone products that IT managers
love. Unfortunately, the new setup, while technically available now,
isn't supported by the major U.S. carriers, and there's no telling when
that will happen.

Why am I awake at sunrise?

why am I up at sunrise

Facebook Apps.

I’ve been burning my afternoon away fooling around with all the new Facebook applications that users can embed into their profiles.
Great stuff! At launch, alot of the Web 2.0 type sites that I’ve been using for a while now were supported such as Veoh, Scrapblog, and Splashcast. There are also games and heaps of slideshow apps.
Looks like Facebook are similar to Vox in that they have spent a bit of time making sure all the content looks professional and won’t turn the site into a MySpace hotchpotch.

It’s interesting to note that Facebook is giving the application providers access to run their application hooks quite deeply into the system.

Entry for May 24, 2007: Dark

In an earlier blog entry I mentioned the season of ‘Daylight Savings’ which has long past and no I am barely tolerating the season of ‘I hate that it’s dark when I get home in the evenings.’

There were a few other Swim Dizzy defined seasons, and I’ve got a two more to add...

• Red wine season which tends to be the cooler months of the year.
• And there is GNT season, which is when the weather warms up a bit.
• Then there is the Micro season of Scotch on the rocks, which occurs at the end of a night of drinking Cider.

Bush walking.

This is a video of the Numantia falls, taken last week when I had my first expedition with a bush walking group.
We were trekking up in the Blue mountains, outside Sydney.




We drove up to Falconbridge, parked the cars, and then hit the bush.

Had lunch in the bush, and emerged in Springwood around three in the afternoon.

The USB connection.

I have to admit that one of the things that ‘made up my mind’ to buy this phone was the USB Flash Drive functionality.

One of the coolest things about the USB Drive is that I can carry the Nokia PC software suite around with me, and install it on the spot.
I’m thinking it would be great if people could run Quick Office on the phone, or straight off the USB on a PC keeping all data on the phone, much like the Sandisk U3 software suite.

Data transfers are allot quicker over the USB drive option, when moving data on and off the phone.
Don't use the PC Suite file manager, it's as 'slow as a wet week.'

I was also pretty impressed when the mp3 files that I had transferred via the USB drive option were automatically polled by the music player.
All the video I took last week was quickly sucked of the phone, and edited footage sent back for transport home.

With this sort of functionality, one might never need to remove the SD card.

I’ve noticed a lot of comparisons with other devices floating around,

...and the N95 does quite well.

I’m less interested in how well the N95 compares with its peers.

I’m more interested in how well it performs the tasks that I need it to do!

I need a phone to run for at least a couple of days no matter what the functions are.

If I’m on a long plane trip, I want all the entertainment facilities to last the distance.

I need the phone to last as long as the Bluetooth keyboard does so that I can get some work done.

If I’m trying to find a location, I need the GPS to function properly
and not drop out from lack of juice before I reach that destination.

I need to be able to record video at a two day business ‘off site’
without the N95 gasping pathetically for current, halfway through the
team bonding session on the second day. Yep, this happened to me last
week

I don’t care how well the N95 compares to Windows Mobile devices.

I need a device that is useful.

If the battery stops the N95 from being useful, all the features crammed into its plastic shell are pointless.

Are any of these bloggers actually using the N95 as their
only phone, no landline, day to day?

Lifted from Facebook group.

 
I grew up in Australia in the 90’s
   
Just for Fun - Totally Random

• You watched the ABC more than any other station. Those days are long gone.
• You made worms by squeezing your Vegemite or peanut butter crackers together.
• The best parties always had fairy bread.
• The Waugh twins. Go! Aussie! Go!
• The Spice Girls and the rise of Girl Power!
• Super League almost ruining rugby league in Australia.
• Getting the Easter Show guide from the paper and circling all the show bags you wanted.
• You thought everyone in America carried a gun and you never wanted to go there because you were were scared you'd get shot.
• Blinky Bill, Spot and Gumby.
• You always used to see that dried out, white dog poo on the footpath. You never see that anymore.
• SuperTed, Widget The World Watcher and Samurai Pizza Cats.
• Going to the Easter Show with a big group of friends from school once you were old enough to go without Mum and Dad.
• Doing research for school projects by going to the library or looking up an encyclopaedia rather than using the internet.
• Brian Henderson and Richard Morecroft reading the news.
• Paul Keating was some guy that ran the country and John Howard became the only PM you really ever knew because you were too young to care before that.
• Banana Man, Bangers and Mash and The Raggy Dolls.
• Game Boy.
• Waking up early everyday to watch Agro’s Cartoon Connection or Cheez TV.
• Hey Hey It’s Saturday.
• Everyone got the Coke bag at the Easter Show and it was only $10.
• Buying those 6 packs of Coco Pops, Fruit Loops, Frosties, Rice Bubbles, Nutri-Grain and Corn Flakes so you could have a different one each day and then opening the packets really carefully and removing the cereal so you'd have a mini wardrobe afterwards. You also most probably just let your parents eat the Corn Flakes.
• Trying to make the Rainbow Road shortcut on Mario Kart 64.
• Postman Pat, Fireman Sam and Lift Off (that show with the dirty, blind doll named EC).
• Playing GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 and arguing over whether Oddjob was allowed to be used in multiplayer.
• The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• Super International Cricket on the SNES.
• Arguing over which was better – Nintendo 64 or PlayStation.
• Don’t push me, push a push pop!
• Nobody made not jokes... NOT!!
• Bathurst stopped being Holden vs. Ford and all those European cars came in until they came to their senses.
• Who shot Mr Burns?
• Watching Captain Planet and then driving your parents mad by always singing the song.
• That's so funny, I forgot to laugh.
• WWE was WWF and they actually had cool wrestlers like The Rock, Mankind and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
• Playing Gran Turismo and MGS on PlayStation.
• Roller coasters at Wonderland, Sydney.
• You decorated your room with glow-in-the-dark stickers.
• SBS didn’t have any ads. Not that you ever watched it anyway, except maybe for softcore porn.
• You played marbles and could name all the different types like blue moon, oily, candy, red wine, galaxy and red devil. You never played anyone for your god marble.
• Feeling sad when your Tamagotchi died.
• Singing a ram sam sam, a ram sam sam, guli guli guli guli guli, ram sam sam, a rafi, a rafi, guli guli guli guli guli ram sam sam.
• Seeing a small rack of DVDs in the video store and wondering if anyone ever rented them.
• Dolly the sheep.
• Getting up early to watch the Rage Top 50.
• Friends when they were all actually just friends. Why didn't Phoebe and Joey get together?
• Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Watching The Simpsons back when it was funny, every night on Channel 10.
• Power Rangers becoming cooler than the Ninja Turtles, even though the Turtles will always be cooler.
• Watching South Park for the first time and being really excited by all the swearing.
• Watching Hercules and then being disappointed when Xena Warrior Princess replaced it. Nobody was cooler than Herc.
• Blowing on the Nintendo cartridge before putting it in the console to make sure it worked properly.
• Smell the cheese.
• Vulcan, Tower, Flame... Australian Gladiators.
• Playing Mortal Kombat and trying to do a fatality but just ending up punching accidentally.
• Pokemon! Gotta catch ‘em all!
• Watching Hey Dad! and then seeing little Arthur McArthur go on to star in that famous Sorbent ad.
• Full Frontal, not Comedy Inc.
• Wolfenstein, Doom and Duke Nukem.
• Downloading music from Napster.
• Chatting with your buddies on ICQ.
• Going to see Titanic.
• And the winner is… Sydney.
• Mighty Max and Polly Pocket. Max and Polly always got lost because they were so bloody small.
• Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
• Waiting for Tony “Plugger” Lockett to break that record.
• Australia didn’t always win the cricket.
• The Socceroos couldn’t qualify for the World Cup.
• John Eales captained the Wallabies and we won the World Cup.
• Ray Martin hosted A Current Affair.
• Zoopa Doopa ice blocks were only 20c and if you couldn’t afford it, you asked the canteen lady to cut it in half so you could split it with a friend.
• Listening to boy bands like Human Nature and girl bands like Girlfriend.
• Barbie, not Bratz.
• Happy Meals were only $2.95 and the toys were simple but actually good.
• Person 1: Who farted!?
• Person 2: Whoever smelt it, dealt it!
• Person 1: Whoever made the rhyme, commited the crime!
• Brad Fittler was the best in the world.
• Thorpe won lots of gold medals and wasn’t so gay.
• Opposite day.
• We all loved Pat Rafter and almost cried when he lost to Goran Ivanisevic because our Pat deserved that title more than anyone. Definitely more than Hewitt ever did.
• Playing tackle Bull Rush at lunchtime and having tackling banned. You had to resort to grab 1-2-3 or tip. Same goes for footy.
• Giving a friend a backage in the canteen line. If it was your best friend, you gave them a frontage.
• Pogs and Looney Tunes Tazos.
• Nobody won Wimbledon unless their name was Pete Sampras.
• You ate Smarties instead of M&M’s.
• You tried Dr. Pepper and hated it.
• Service stations didn’t need space for 4 digits on their petrol prices signs.
• Girl germs! Boy germs!
• Goosebumps.
• You had to actually call your friends rather than send them an SMS.
• Hubba Bubba.
• Wearing a Chicago Bulls T-shirt or cap. Wearing the cap backwards.
• Arguing over who got to be Warnie in backyard cricket. Six and out!
• Paul Jennings’ Gizmo books.
• Matchbox cars.
• The feeling of wonder you got, the first time you were able to see the image in one of those Magic Eye 3D pictures.
• The Secret World of Alex Mack.
• Talk to the hand!
• Johnson and Friends, Noddy and Humphrey B. Bear.
• You wished you had enough Lego to build those amazing cities they displayed in the brochures.
• Collecting Yowie toys. Aussie wildlife was way cooler than any stupid Kinder Surprise toy.
• Playing truth or dare with your secret crush.
• Mark Taylor equalling Don Bradman's record.
• Slap bracelets.
• Jurassic Park and those toy dinosaurs where you could pull a piece of the skin out to see its insides.
• Roger Ramjet, he’s our man, hero of our nation.
• We had paper money.
• Good on ya Mum! Tip Top’s the one!
• You could buy more than enough food from the school canteen for only $2.
• Begging your parents to go to McDonald’s for dinner.
• Rocko’s Modern Life, Rugrats and Hey Arnold!
• Noni, Monica and that bald guy named George on Play School.
• Going to World 4 Kids to look at all the toys.
• Watching The Lion King and feeling Simba’s pain when Mufasa died. Disney just doesn’t make them like that anymore.
• Soft serve cones were only 30c and they never tried to up-sell a Flake because they didn’t have it.
• Wanting a Brain or Silver Bullet during the yo-yo craze.
• Nesquik without the Nes.
• Troll Dolls.
• The Kids' Works at Pizza Hut with unlimited drink refills. You made an ice cream mountain covered in choc chips and marshmallows and could never finish it.
• Thomas the Tank Engine and TUGS.
• Ba-na-na-na-na! Ba-na-na-na-na! Make those bodies sing!
• You had to get your photos developed.
• Your family didn’t own a 4WD unless it was a real one like a Land Cruiser or Patrol. Range Rovers were tough and nobody thought BMW would make a 4WD, let alone Porsche.
• Street Sharks and Biker Mice From Mars
• Competing with your friends to see who could eat the most sour Warheads in one go.
• The Channel 9 logo had dots next to it and the Channel 7 logo wasn’t a folded piece of paper.
• No Hat, no play.
• Dr. Dreadful Food Labs. Kids these days wouldn't be allowed that because its not healthy enough. We didn't give a shit about our health in the 90's.
• High five! Up high, down low, too slow!
• Watching Round the Twist and getting pissed off that the actors kept on changing. You still loved it though.
• Cheating in Heads Down, Thumbs Up.
• Watching that game show called Vidiot. Game shows didn't have to be educational back then, like That's Academic... that show sucks.
• Collecting basketball cards, whether you followed basketball or not.
• You always wished your parents had bought you a bigger Super Soaker for Christmas. Christmas is hot in Australia... the more water, the better.
• Collecting hundreds of tickets from Timezone just so you could trade them for some crappy prize that you could have bought from Woolies for ten bucks.
• Healthy Harold day was the best because you got to miss class to sit in a tiny caravan and listen to a talking giraffe.
• Playing handball with Ace, King, Queen and Dunce and making up stupid rules as you went along.
• Skipping ropes and Jump Rope for Heart Day.
• A*mazing.
• The Ferals. Rattus, Modigliana, Derryn and Mixy were cool until they started that five minute piece of crap, Feral TV.
• Hypercolour T-shirts.
• Who Dares! Who Dares! Who Dares Wins!
• Having your very own Dollarmites account and getting really excited when you earned a tiny bit of interest.

Growing up in Australia in the 90’s was rad.

This really is a real computer!

The first thing I did after I had charged up the battery was to UPDATE THE SOFTWARE.
Either Nokia software development is barrelling along at top speed, or they hadn’t finished the system when they shipped the phone.

Updated the firmware, which was a completely painless process as it was a brand new phone, so I didn’t have any problems with losing software or data. Others I hear have not been so lucky.

I downloaded The Map loader utility and found during installation that it needs Microsoft’s .Net so that had to be downloaded too.

Video encoding app from the Nokia site looks like a great little utility.
Then I found that to run the utility, I needed to download an updated PC Suite to use the video encoder.
Interestingly, it looks like the encoder does a better job of crushing video if the N95 is plugged into the PC.
Is Nokia using the phone as a dongle?

There are some issues with the video stuttering and the Real player doesn’t resize to ‘full screen’ very well.
I’ve been using ‘Super C’ encoding software which gives me much more control over quality.
I’ve also found the TV ‘out’ quality to be a bit average. I encoded a video at 640x480 and downloaded that to the N95. It plays, but Real player has problems keeping the audio synced to the video, and soon the frame rate of the video had slowed to the point where it was pointless watching.

Specking of PC Suite, this application is maturing nicely. I like that it’s become a dock for other applications.
Only prob I had has been in connecting with my old faithful 6600.
I was having heaps of problems transferring all my contact details from the 6600 until I discovered a ‘transfer’ application on the N95.
This app linked up with the 6600, and downloaded a program (I’m assuming it’s a Java app?) to the 6600 which ran, and automagically transferred everything to the N95.
Not only contact info, but photos too were all copied across.
I’m really impressed!

The Video Centre on the phone is a quick way of accessing content, but it doesn’t scan the memory like the Mp3 player does.
The icons that spin to select videos are really cheap looking. Would have been nice to see thumbnails extracted from the videos spinning about the selection menu.
I’m wondering when Nokia is going to integrate all audio/Visual playback into a single app?

Iradio needs a SIM inserted. Weird! as the phone can operate in ‘off line’ mode with the SIM removed.
The fact that the N95 can operate with out a SIM is interesting. The 6600 wouldn’t even finish booting with out a SIM in place.

It’s all good, but is it worth a thousand Oz bucks???

I’ve had this 'box of tricks' for a week now.

This phone demands a real 'love hate' relationship.

Unpacking the thing was like Christmas.
Top marks to Nokia for including a gig of SD memory card (I recently bought a Canon TX1 and all they saw fit to include was 32meg of MMC memory.)
There was also a video cable, a USB cable, and a cheap pair of earphones.
All these bits and pieces made me feel like ‘batteries HAD been include’ and that I could access most of the features of the phone immediately.
I received the plum version which is a great colour.
The protective case for the phone (also in plum) that I found in the box is cheap looking but at least they made the effort and I have no complaints.
I would like to meet the ‘dumb ass’ in marketing that decided that it would be a good idea to have an opaque 'peel off' sticker applied to the screen labelled with N95. I already know what it is that I bought, what I need is the clear protective sticker applied to the screen in the factory.

I’m a bit surprised how ‘plasticy’ the phone looks, especially after paying more then a grand for the unit.
It was quite disappointing holding it for the first time after all the hype.
I was surprised that the sliding screen assembly was plastic and not enclosed in a brush metal shell.

Speaking of cheap looking, I’m going to say something a little controversial here.

The N95 looks like a plastic toy!

Nokia used to be famous for building handsets that looked ‘hand built’ by a team of Scandinavian craftsmen. The N95 looks like Fisher Price was sub contracted to snap the pieces of plastic together.
I've held remote controls constructed of better quality plastics
As for the controls, the silver will wear off the buttons within a year, the 'app' and 'menu' buttons move around in their rest positions, and bizarrely the screen assembly is rock solid when slid into its up or down positions, but moves around when slipped into its home position.

That said, all the reviews I’ve read, and dudes in my office, really like the build quality of the phone!
One guy compared it to the O2 handsets.
I’m seriously out numbered with this opinion.

The ‘direction pad’ is also pretty bad, it’s too easy to accidentally hit the ‘multimedia’ key when aiming for the ‘clear’ key, or when trying to move the cursor 'to the right' in Notepad. What was wrong with the little joystick that was on the 6600? One of those joysticks surrounded by a cup of guard plastic would have been a lot less prone to slippage.

The hatch on the SD memory is a strip of plastic that is bent back to allow access to the card, so despite the card being ‘hot swappable’ I’m wondering how long the protective cap is going to last?

• A the panel fit. Toyota should be commissioned to get these panels fitting more closely.
  
• 
  B silver coated buttons. I had toy cars when I was a kid that used much the same process.
  
• 
  C spongy key action, and why is the Dpad so big, and soft, and butted right up to the keys on ether side?
  

I recently joined a bush walking group and this phone should be the
ideal device to take out into the wilderness. Unfortunately I don't
trust the construction to survive little bumps and jolts (I took the
6600,) and (as has been pointed out by lots of people,) the battery
life restricts the N95 owner to the daily ritual with the recharger
cable.

Entry for May 13, 2007: anal sex

It’s a bit incoherent cause I’ve been busy lately, and tonight I’m buggered (not in the anal sex way.)
The weather has been unseasonably warm which, thanks to the blanket media coverage global warming is getting, isn’t’ surprising anyone.
I’ve had to pull on clothes as soon as I rise in the morning these days.
Had my auntie staying with me for a couple of days which was nice.
We got to talk at length about a huge family gathering that she is organising. She’s getting cold feet cause she’s realised that it could ‘melt down’ due to the number and size of the egos that will be attending.
I told her that that’s exactly what I’m looking forward to.
She has rekindled my interest in running a Backpackers.
Everyone that has had a good experience in a Backpackers wants to run one, and I’ve had lots of good experiences.
Joined a bushwalking group and today I was up at six in the morning so that I could head out into the mountains.
That’s why I’m buggered (not in the anal sex way) tonight.
There may be a video forth coming.
Work is sucking all my creative energy from me and in a lot of ways I long for the sort of job Sean has.
I can’t help getting caught up in company business and its buggering (pretty much in the anal sex way) up my brain.
The devils vine in the bathroom is under assault by something that’s causing the leaves to die, so it’s pretty buggered too (not in the anal sex way.)

Have N95?

Subjects open for discussion…

Build quality.

What was in the box.

Software.

Battery.

GPS.

Wifi.

 

Feel free to add your own.

Another Scrapblog embed.

You may need to go ‘full screen’ to read the clips.

OK, the beast has arrived...

...and the lights in the city dimmed when I plugged it in to recharge the battery.

I noticed a protective sheet of plastic was included in the packaging but I can't get the plastic to peel away revealing the sticky side.
Any tips???

Why didn't Nokia stick it on in the factory like they did with my 6600?

I’ve read that the Kings Cross food festival is on this Sunday,

 if your after a bit of cheese and sleaze ;-)

Attack of the green bug.

Despite the risk of becoming known as ‘bug boy,’ here is another macro video of a bug which flew into my kitchen last week.

Two toys arrive in the next week or so...

One is a Nokia N95 so enough of the questions, there will be critiquing.
The other is a Canon Tx1.

My 'hard earned' is being spent on both these products, and I want to be a happy camper.