Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Karen and Paul organized Transport Hero Camp today; a BarCamp for public and the youth delegates from the Youth Summit on Sustainabile Urban Transportation / CUTA / ACTU .

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Random observations (some of which you can see in image format above):

• As a national event, it would have been great to have simultaneous English/French translation.
• Paul and Karen did a great thing (they made the difficult look impossible); this was an excellent gathering with savvy youth!
• I am still energized by Gil Penalosa's presentation last Wed (my 10 minute N95 video which is embedded below) to go beyond baby steps in bicycling. How's this for a non-baby step? Bike sharing and secure bike parking at every major transit node in every metropolitan city in Canada (Metro Vancouver, Calgary, Monrtreal, Toronto, Ottwaw, Hamliton, etc!
• Can I vote for Paul! Oops I can't because he is running in Surrey!
• Open Source Bike Sharing?!? why does it have to be monolithic? why does it have to be funded by ads?

10 minutes of Gil Peñalosa's presentation

http://blip.tv/file/1191401 (for those who can't see the flash video player embedded below)

Details have yet to be finalized, but it looks like I'll be going to a Nokia Mobile workshop (paid for by Nokia, including carbon offsets!) September 10-14,2008 being organzied by Nokia's WOMWorld folks. Sounds like fun. Maybe I can lead a session on Mobile Muse and SIFTTool.

Here's a portion of their invite:

QUOTE

It's taking place in September between the 11th and 14th, and will be the first of its kind hosted by Nokia. We're contacting everyone from creative's, designers, video producers to open source software bloggers and mobile tech pioneers. There will be a number of workshops that'll see discussion with participants, and with Nokia guys, about the future of different online arenas and mobile technology. Workshops that we hope you'd like to join in with and make yourself heard.

END QUOTE

In the meantime, time to start my travel research. If anybody has been to Helsinki, love to have the following questions answered by a Helsinki person:

1. Where can I get a pay as you go SIM Card with several gigs (2GB or higher) of data so I can blog, flickr, youtube, et with my Nokia N95-1 while at the workshop?
2. Can somebody recommend the best place to rent a bicycle in Helsinki? I am a "born again" bicyclist who's been commuting to work for 16 months 5 days a week and who has taken thousands of photos from an N95 and uploaded to Qik while bicycling. So I'd want to do the same in Helsinki.

After the 2.01 firmware upgrade, AirMe never locks on with the GPS and finds my location even if I am outside in locations where it used to work with the old firmware. Yay for bugs (Yes my GPS is enabled). Do I have to do some sort of funky GPS reset dance to make it work again?

My Bug Bundle has been delayed until September. Bug is switching to Poky Linux and they closed a 3rd round of funding. I am still very enthusiastic about The Bug but it's hard to be an enthusiast when you are itching to experiment and shipment is delayed by 3 months. And as I have said before I don't really like simulators. Oh well, perhaps I'll activate one of my dormant iPhone application ideas!

Well I went to FutureShop expecting more of the same old same old and I wasn't disappointed :-). Cleaner lines and better organized stuff but really not much different. Oh well.

Here's what I want: a store staffed by people who are all like the "Apple Geniuses" i.e. if I am looking for an iPhone lanyard strap, I could talk to an iPhone expert, if I am looking for a washing machine, I could talk to an washing machine expert. And there would be WiFi and computers so I could do my research in-house. I'd rather queue for somebody who knows what they are talking about than have to deal with three friendly people who don't.

I don't really enjoy dealing with staff who obviously don't have any product knowledge or who know less that what a Google Search would reveal. Unfortunately that's the norm for stores like these.

However, I am dreaming I know. I'll settle for a staff that isn't afraid to admit they know less than the customer and who are charming and friendly without being overly so.

And if anybody knows where I can get a lanyard case for an iPhone 3G, please leave a comment!

Not so great when you have over 300 tags! Oh well time to go back to Ecto which is not very pretty but does tag search and auto-complete

UPDATE: Vincent Janelle says that it could be that the Eye-Fi card is not approved by the CRTC.  Thanks Vince!

I am going on Darren's client Future Shop's blogger opening tonight and I know it's off topic but I have a question for Future Shop buyers: Why don't you sell the cool gadgets? Like the Eye-Fi card which IMHO is mass market (and to my knowledge has been available in the USA for over 6 months but is still unavailable from Canadian mass market retailers)  but still cool?

I have always loved gadgets. Ever since I have been a kid back in the 1970s I have been buying (via mail order) gadgets that were unavailable in Canada. Things are better now, since we have E-Bay (which I loathe, but that's another blog post) but we are still behind. Perhaps somebody should open up a retail version of TigerDirect.ca? I'd pay a premium to touch and feel cool gadgets that aren't officially available in Canada and to buy them immediately without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous duty, mail order, e-bay and other annoying things like that.

Got the 16GB iPhone yesterday. Stream of consciousness notes so far:

1. Just like the original iPhone, ithe iPhone 3G still camera s*cks and not having video also s*cks! A slow, 2 megapixel camera doesn't cut it in 2008!
   
2. Does seem a bit lighter and battery is faster
   
3. 3G doesn't seem that much faster than EDGE
4. Browser crashes more often
5. Google Reader is noticeably faster 
6. ShoZu doesn't geo-tag and only posts one photo at a time and only at 640x480 (yes i know shozu is working on it! go ShoZu go!)
7. AirMe is better but only does 1024x768 and rquires bogus userid registration (complete with bogus personal questions)
8. Apps are great; I have already thought of some that would satisfy Apple's p*ranoia :-) and might be fun to develop and might even make money! Apps are great both because of Apple's p*ranoia and also despite it! A "mass market, mobile GPS with decent connectivity and bandwidth" platform is what the iPhone is; the first ever. Sorry Nokia you don't have such a platform (S60 isn't it, Maemo isn't it, S60 Python isn't it, Widsets isn't it, Flash Lite isn't, etc,, time to focus Nokia!) yet. Vive la competition; I trust Nokia has something in the works; it's been a year and either the Nokia cupboard is bare or they are going to launch something truly great soon.
9. I am waiting for Qik (aka live video streaming) and Nokia Sports Tracker
10. I like Tap Tap whatever it's called even though it's dumbed down from the unofficial SDK version

Now all I need is a North American 3G phone to confirm 100% that my 3G plan is not locked to my iPhone.

Like Richard, I just added the $30/month 3G data plan to my existing Fido plan. So it should be cheaper (and faster) than  the $50/month I pay  for my current grandfathered unlimited EDGE data plan. If the SIM isn't locked, I am  thinking about buying an unlocked N95 8G NAM  because the camera on the iPhone s*cks (but the 3G lifestyle (it's great! thanks to iPhone 3G I can now tell people about ShoZu and other apps I have been enjoying with my "2.5G" lifestyle and how you can create multimedia content in real time, post it immediately to the internet and get feedback in real-time) of always-on geo-enabled consumption and creation, usability and ecosystem of iPhone apps is far superior to what Nokia and others have done! Nokia, you blew it, this could have and should have been been your market to run away with). Luckily it's early and not too late to win in mobile in the long term but unless S60 usability is improved it's not going to happen!.

And for the record, Rogers still s*cks and so does Fido:

1. Their website is inaccurate; existing Fido customers should just call 611  to get an iPhone 3G
2. The hiring of MS&L digital was a waste of money (despite their blog practice, BlogWorks, MS&L did the non social media aware thing of emailing people and didn't blog, twitter, flickr, facebook or in any way engage social media)
3. 3 year contracts s*ck; in 2010 I bet I could easily go over 6GB/month. There's no reason other than short term economic gain which in the long run hurts the entire Canadian economy by hampering innovation and experimentation and reducing productivity.
4. Giving priority to new Fido customers over old faithful Fido customers like myself who have been paying $100/month since July 2004  is unacceptable. Why should I have to wait for my iPhone unlike new customers? Why can't I go to the Fido store like new customers  and order it there rather than being forced to order over the phone?

I rode in the June 2008 Vancouver Critical Mass bike ride (check out my Mobile Muse Channel with pictures, videos and text as well as my partial Nokia Sports Tracker map of the route as well as flickr pictures which I can't get into the Mobile Muse Channel since there's no RSS feed) and streamed video live using Qik from my Nokia N95, like I did for the Vancouver Car Free Festival. Only this time I didn't use WiMax just Edge

Some observations and comments:

1. The ride is quite the phenomenon. As a 3-5 days a week bicycle commuter; it was quite liberating to "take over" the streets and cycle with impunity (if you were in the middle, not so in the back) and be a 1st class citizen (for once!) on the road rather than feeling the need to maintain a constant vigil for cars not seeing you and running you over. Is this a form of civil disobedience or are we just Critical Massh*les? To be honest, I fluctuate between both.
2. Lots of people taking digital photographs and using their cellphones and taking video but nobody doing this live. Imagine 5 years from now when everything is live!
3. My Io Gear power unit Nokia N Series power connector is flakey! Aaaargh, too late to return it too.
4. The N95 really isn't designed for streaming video live over a cellphone network from a bicycle. The S60 interface is designed to be used with one hand while standing still and the phone itself is not designed to be mounted on a bicycle. I would love for Nokia to build a mobile cellphone streaming device but realistically making my own with something like the Bug from Bug Labs (hopefully I'll get mine soon) will (eventually) be the way to go