Roland Tanglao's Weblog

I'll be assisting Fearless, Dave and Kris with the "mobiles for DTES residents and artists donation drive" tomorrow. Let's get together and donate and have some fun!

[Cross posted with permission from the Fearless Blog]

Donate your old mobile phones to help DTES artists share stories, and tap into life, jobs & family

How can you help?

1. Your used mobile phones - preferably with video, camera, wi-fi
2. Cash donations (* tax deductible) or new phone donations
3. Conversation - tell your friends on your blog, twitter, etc. - post a badge

Action Plan:
First, Gather phones!

Collect all the unused mobile phones at your office and home - dig into your boxes of stuff, ask you friends! Digital cameras gratefully accepted too.

Next, Arrange Pick-up:

• Let us know via Twitter: Fearless City, email: info (at) fearlessmedia (dot) ca, Phone/SMS: 604.644.4349, Voice mail: 604.682.3269 xt 8320
• We'll come by on purple Yahoo bikes on Tues. Dec. 23rd & 30th to collect your devices
• We'll take your photo, bring treats, and thank you publicly with a link

Or, Drop-off (after Tuesday, 23rd) at:

• Roundhouse Community Centre - 181 Roundhouse Mews
• Pathways - 390 Main Street (kitty corner from the Canegie)
• Raincity Studios - 1 Alexander St. @ Water st.

Want to be a drop-off point? Let us know.

Even send by Postal Mail to:

Fearless City
c/o DTES CAN
PO Box 88023
418 Main St
Vancouver, BC V6A 4A4

Notes:

• Remove your chip, and clear your contacts before donating (all phones will be completely cleared before released).
• Please include chargers and accessories - used digital cameras also welcome
• Unusable phones will be donated to FreeGeek for reuse and recycling

Who is Fearless?

Fearless is a Vancouver Non-Profit group providing tools, resources, and cultural outreach to artists and residents in the improverished Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Fearless is a project of the DTES Community Arts Network (CAN)

More:

• About Fearless City
• Fearless City wiki
• Fearless City community site
• Fearless City Youtube channel
• Fearless City Flickr photos
• Fearless City Flickr group
• DTES on Wikipedia

Thank you for your support!

Post a graphic on your site with this handy code snippet:

<a href="http://fearlesscity.ca" title="Donate phones to Fearless to help Vancouver downtown eastside artists and residents" >
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/3121575464_8a062db061_m.jpg" height="240" width="195" alt="Donate phones to Fearless to help Vancouver downtown eastside artists and residents">
<p>Donate used mobile phones to help DTES residents and artists at fearlesscity.ca</a></p>

Had a blast bicycling and checking out Car Free Vancouver 2008 from Commercial Drive to the West End to Kitsilano and back to Commercial Drive (we skipped Main Street since it didn't start until 4p.m.)

Here's some of the media we created:

1. My Vancouver Car Free Vancouver 2008 Videos (Part 1, 2, 3, 4)
2. Jean's Videos - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 , 11, 12
3. JMV's Videos - 1, 2
4. JMV's Pictures
5. My Pictures

Nokia Sports Tracker data is missing! (mine didn't turn out i.e. most of my track is missing since I had to reboot the phone thereby losing my GPS Track, aaaaargh! Jean hasn't posted his!)
Things that were Great

1. The weather! Perfect!
2. Jean's McGyvered bicycle mount - although I am investigating using the N95 ProClip Motorcycle Mount, anybody know whether it will work on a bicycle?
3. The event itself. Rockin' great time at all venus. Great food, great happenings (e.g. mojave, Paul Jarvis' band, Japanese food, African Drum circle, etc)
4. Qik was rock solid. It just worked and buffered when we lost connection.

Things that weren't so great

1. Rogers Portable Internet combined with FreeTheNet combined with splash screen = FAIL (or at least it seemed to fail a lot more than during our 2 dry runs during today's bike ride, actually we did stream a lot more video than I thought). Next time I suggest EV-DO card from Bell or a HSDPA card (i.e. something designed for mobile connectivity, Rogers Mobile Internet is designed to be portable NOT mobile) plus a travel router like the $170 Cradlepoint CTR500 EVDO/HSDPA 3G Router . I am a supporter of FreeTheNet but again it's designed for non mobile use.
2. My IOGear Mobile Portable Power loose connection with my N95 caused me to run out out of power at one point - Jean's N82 had no problem so probably an issue with my phone, not the IOGear power.But probably points to the fact that the Nokia power connector wasn't designed to be connected horizontally for charging. I'd prefer a micro USB / mini USB for charging personally
3. Nokia Sports Tracker's 1998isms (I realize it's beta but if they had used Drupal or any modern system they'd get these things for free) - i) Bad URLs that end in .do instead of being clean ii) no search feature iii) no tags iv) no RSS for tags
4. Qik's tags have no RSS feeds

Wearing my Mobile Muse 3 technical evangelist and Fearless volunteer hats, I'll be riding my bicycle with Amy Walker, publisher of the fabulous Momentum magazine about all things bicycling, as part of Car Free Vancouver 2008 starting from the Fearless Mobile Booth on Commercial Drive at 12 noon Sunday June 15, 2008. We'll ride to all the other Car Free Vancouver venues (Main Street, the West End and Kitsilano) and stream video live from my bike to the internet.

Check us out at:

• Fearless's Mobile site (where we hope, tech willing, to display a stream from my bike and from a car in a sort of "car versus bike" video mashup)
• My Qik Car Free Vancouver archives which currently has our dry run videos and after the event will have the archive of my live stream
• My Nokia Sports Tracker site which shows our Car Free Vancouver dry runs (dry run June 8, dry run June 11 stream 2) on a nice zoomable Google Map

How you can help:

• Come on down and participate! It's free!
• Take photos and videos and blog about it and tag it: cfvd08

Finally for techies, here's a diagram of how the technology works!

In preparation for a "car versus bicycle" streaming video showdown on Car Free Vancouver next Sunday June 15, 2008, Jean (Jean's blog post has the background and lots of useful info, read it!) and I did a dry run early this morning.

Our config was:

1. helmet mounted N95-1 for me and N82 for Jean
2. N95-1 ran the following software
3. 1. Qik - streamed video live over EDGE
   2. Nokia Sports Tracker

Our videos and GPS Tracks:

1. My video - also below
2. My GPS Track and map
3. Jean's GPS Track and map

A question: Anybody know of software to stream in real-time GPS coordinates in RSS, KML or Atom over WiFi or 3G or Edge from a Nokia phone?
Some observations and comments:

1. Helmet mounted video is more stable BUT on the whole not great because everytime we check our blind spots, the camera moves which is more disconcerting than the jitter from a handlebar mounted phone. I think as Jean noted, we'll move to a handle bar mounted solution like a Gorillopod for the real Car Free Vancouver on Sunday June 15, 2008
2. A bluetooth microphone with wind reduction like a the Jawbone would probably result in better sound

My video: