MobileDan’s Weblog

It’s been a bit since my last post…

I’ve been slacking…

Sorry!

Ok, in a nutshell…  in about May I received a Nokia 5800 Xpress Music… I’ve already posted about that here, but in the following months (it’s all actually been a blur) I received a N79… it was pretty nice, but like i said in my last post, I cannot go back to buttons… Maybe I am broken?

It’s actually a shame, because I really wanted to like that phone, but have found that I am completely touch screen from here on out…

Unless the N86 can win me over…

Enter the N97!

I was asked to go with the Wom World / Nokia 24/7 tour with such bloggers as

Matthew Bennett

Jonny Bruha

George Kelly

Andrew Currie

What an experience!  the task was to pretty much go 24/7 using nothing BUT the N97, its GPS, the amazing 5mp Carl Zeiss optics camera, the comfortable slide out (or pop out whichever you prefer calling it) keyboard. 32GIG! of installed memory with the option to upgrade another 16 gig Micro SD card, the home screen with the widgets which made using the phone’s features that much easier because they were all accessable from the home screen… ie. the facebook app, the weather app, up to 8 contacts on shortcut, up to 8 apps on shortcut…  all around, I fell in love with the device…

But, what was more exciting than that…

I was tasked to be the ‘wrangler’ of the above mentioned bloggers, or “voices” as they put their devices through rough and tough trials!

For those readers who didn’t happen to follow the Nokia N97 24/7 campaign, we all met in LA, traveled to SF then off to Chicago and finally ending in NYC! They were tasked to push the device to it’s fullest, we used public transportation, hiked around town, and to most of the touristy places, seeing and doing as much as we could do… all said and done, the 5 of us generated about 20 Gigabites of content!

All in the course of 2 weeks…

We drove up the Pacific Highway and had amazing conversations, we attended BarCamps in all of the cities we visited. and discussed amongst other things, where we see the future of mobile technology (usually at the expense of me being called a mobile addict, always having my eyes on my phone… (i’ve gotten better about texting and surffing while I drive guys! Which is a serious safety concern throught the world, and really isn’t worth the risks taken!)  )

It was a great experience, and I look forward to many more!  Please take the time to visit the above bloggers’ websites as well as My new employer’s website, 1000heads / WomWorld/Nokia

That’s right!  Welcomed to the UK by 1000Heads, who run WomWorld/Nokia, I am the new Voices Executive for the US!

I am writing this post, from a bus (with Wi-Fi!) from Oxford UK to Heathrow Airport, returning from my 1 week of training here at both the Milton & London offices!

I am excited to see that there are going to be exciting changes and improvements in the US market for WOM World/ Nokia and that I can be a part of it!

Expect a lot of more postings regarding this, although I am wondering if I should post this to my personal site instead… and keep the format and information found on mobiledan as it was… (with more updates of course )

With that, I end this posting, but look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas!

Daniel Silvers

MobileDan

dandandan

As a part of my trial of the N96, I was trialing  NokiaviNe, I was also asked to do a mobi-documentary… a sort of “Day in the life of”

I have seen some other documentaries and chose to do mine a bit different.  I’m not up for video editing just yet… so bear with me

Using the N96 for music and as a camera, NokiaviNe for tracking and choosing one not so crazy day to track, I set out to document a part of my day.  Due to the nature of my current work, I cannot film inside clients houses’ so I more or less did updates to and from the job.

One of the things I like about “viNe” is that you can see the icon for music, photos and/or video and then click on that icon to see it via your browser.

As of now, I cannot search for my “viNes” or myself by username, so I have to zoom in on my area and find the specific “viNe’s” that I want to show for this post…NokiaviNe is still working on ways to be able to link to “viNes” so I am going to include screenshots of the NokiaviNe website.

Back to the task at hand, “A day in the life… Gosh I get sidetracked easily!

Zooming in on the Westchester County New York area I can see that I’ve posted a bunch! And that there are others around me also posting a lot as well!.

Zooming in further I can pick out some of the videos that I posted, and can even view them on the page!

This video shows how I take the above picture…

Here are the rest of the videos I posted…eNjoy!

Driving though Westchester in morning traffic…

Finally with my boss, letting him do the driving…

Entering the city, Harlem River Drive, driving under I95 and the extention for the George Washington Bridge…

CrAzY  cAbBiEs!

Going to get eqiptment from the truck, and a blended video,

The last video kind of bleneded together, weird, I didn’t edit them, it just kind of worked out that way…

Hope you enjoyed this, I will next try to learn video editing whenever I get a chance!

Take care, and thanks for visiting!

As you’ve read, I received a Nokia N96 from WOM World / Nokia, I’ve had it for 1 week so far, and am loving it.  I am part of a test group using Nokia’s new LBS (location based services) App, NokiaviNe which is in beta testing.  I was asked to contribute content and feedback on this new and exciting mobile app which uses the phones GPS to track your mobile entertainment content (photos, videos and music listened to), and where and when you make use of such material.  As my ongoing review of the N96 continues, I will bring you more details regarding the actual device… But for now, let me focus on the NokiaviNe application and it’s accompanying web site…

As of now, the NokiaviNe Website is not functioning properly, I hope that this due to them adding new features, but we’ll see.  For now, peoples’ “vines” are being uploaded to the Nokia Sports Tracker website, and labeled “My viNe” with the corresponding date and time following that…

When I first heard of NokiaviNe, it reminded me a lot of Sports Tracker which is another LBS application and web site designed by Nokia Beta Labs to be used for tracking exercise and comparing your “stats” to your friends… They are both very similar, but make use of different tracking information.

When I first tried Sports Tracker, I immediately loved it!  I drive frequently and wanted to use it to track my day.  It reminded me of the early works of Stavros’ “Position Art”

Eventually, the Sports Tracker application was upgraded and let the user upload photos to their “workout” as long as it was taken while “tracking” and was taken of course, taken on that mobile device .  I first noticed the addition of photos on my October 28th Workout I am still waiting for music that I listened to to appear on Sports Tracker.  As of now, music that I listen to, while “tracking”, shows up on the device, giving hope of seeing it implemented soon, but right now, is not synced to the Sports Tracker Server… This was something that when I first noticed brought to the device app, I didn’t think would take long to also bring into the web based form.  It seems that the Sports Tracker platform is nearing it’s end, as nothing new has been going on with it, but I can, and hope that I am wrong!

This brings me to actual screenshots of “My viNe” and My “Workout” both from the Sports Tracker website, both tracked at the same time… They both don’t show my music listened to, but the Mobile app below them both does… Funny isn’t it?  I think not…

Noticing the last 2 screenshots…  I’ll enlarge them… The left one is showing my music listened to on the device, also giving the location, and the right is an actual cropping of the above NokiaviNe / Sports Tracker map cropped to compare.  as you can see. music is not included… We’ll see once the NokiaviNe site comes back up…

I think and hope that maybe NokiaviNe is going to pick up where my use of Sports Tracker is leaving off… adding my user generated content (photos and videos) as well as tracking listening habits.  As of now though, the “vines” I have added do not share music listened to either. I wish that maybe Sports Tracker would keep the tracking function, and share all of the new and interesting things that NokiaviNe is adding, I’d much rather track my speed, and have the function of tracking my music listening secondary, but that might just me me.  There’s always last.fm and the S60 Mobbler… But some people couldn’t be bothered with all the information that Sports Tracker offers.

Going through my stats on my Sports Tracker profile, I see that as of this writing, I

- Joined the service before October 2008 (my first successful track was 15.05.08 14:42 )

- Has tracked 1629.2 mi with average speed of 32.6 mph (unlike some others, I have not tracked flights, so all of my mileage was driving and walking)

- Has 81 workout(s) (I deleted all the workouts with 0 mileage, there were 15, I blame that on the GPS not picking up, and me starting over)

I thoroughly enjoy Sports Tracker, but can see where NokiaviNe is headed, and how I can use it in my daily life.  We’ll see how it turns out.  The nice thing is that I can install them both…

What do you think?

Hello again, I’ve been keeping up with adding content to my site, and just in time!

The friendly gang at WOM World/Nokia have sent me yet another device to put through the paces…  It’s the New Nokia N96-3! for US3G!

 

 

 

 

Opening the box, I found, of course, a beautiful device, neatly framed in it’s all black package.

 

 

 

Upon lifting the cover I read Nokia’s “we recycle” statement.

 

 

I never thought of it before, (I hope this doesn’t make me a bad person) but, acording to Nokia, Up to 80% of your old phone can have a second life… They go on to state that there are over 1 Billion Nokia users, and how we can all make a difference… Please check this Nokia website to locate a take back program in your country! Also, they urge the consumer to recycle the entire package as well! All of the plastic bags that I saw in the package wrapping the wires and whatnot all have the easily recognisable recycle triangles on them!

 

 

 

 

Peeling open the upper cover, I noticed the device flanked by a set of HS-45 ear buds on one side and the media controller on the other side… This is the layer of what you need on the go to listen to your tunes which can be stored in the 16 Gb of internal memory or or on your own Micro SD card, up to 8Gb!

 

 

 

 

On the lower level you find the CA 75U A/Vconnector, for connecting the N96 to a TV to take full ability of the 40 hours of movies and video you can store on the device!(or on your Micro SD card ) Also below is the CA-101 Micro USB connector used to connect the device to your computer to take advantage of the different suites Nokia has to offer, for backup and data transfering. 

 

 

Also in the bottom of the box is the paperwork.  While looking through the paperwork I noticed the all usual documentation, warantee information, the getting started introduction manual, a disk with information on the new device, and the user guide.

 

 

I couldn’t help but be surprised at how much smaller the user guide was compared to any other previous device that I remember. It seemed to be shorter in it’s wording, more direct and to the point, saving words, saving paper saving trees… And, also saving the reader from boredom!  I even saw instructions on using widgets, tiny web based applications

 

 

 

Last but not least, included in the paperwork, there were 2 last items that really caught my attention… Well…  Actually there were three…

The first is a guide to Ovi.com, describing Maps, N-Gage, and Multimedia and how to access these features on the device.  I’ve recently started using Ovi.com as well as the Ovi suite instead of just using PC Suite by itself.  I have grown to like the way that it handles, and look forward to more features being rolled out

The second pampllet was a more straight forward instruction guide telling the reader to “Get Out And Play”. Explaining how to access N-Gage and start playing!

The third item hidden under the paperwork was a DC-4 mobile charger for the device.  

 

I’d like to think that this was something that they folks at WOM World put in there especially for me… You know, Cause I’m MobileDan and all… 

 

 

Expect more on my review of the N96-3 in the near future…

The ups AND the downs that I’ve experienced in the last 2 days…

It could be pretty, or it could get nasty…  So keep your eyes peeled here to find out!