Roland Tanglao's Weblog

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

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:

As part of my contribution to the S60 Ambassadors program, I'm doing some videos of people's reactions to S60 and awareness of Ovi. Herewith my first 1:30 S60 Ambassadors video with Cecily Walker, library and social media maven (recorded with her N82 at Vidfest). - Watch Cecily's S60 video or check out my transcript below!

Positives:

1. absolutely loves it
2. changes the way Cecily views media, "all in one package" she can post audio and video immediately via Bluetooth or WiFi
3. really pretty
4. paid with N82 with her own money! (off Craigslist since not officially available in Canada, aaargh!)

S60 Not so Positive

1. S60 "really really buggy" things quitting without error message
2. Never heard of OVI (unfortunately most people in Canada haven't but that's not surprising given Canada's lack of awareness on these issues and Nokia's lack of marketing)

The N82 was released today with great fanfare (rightly so since it's the first Nokia with a real flash!) and some fun video but nobody has told me whether it can pass the "Roland Challenge" and the "Roland ShoZu Challenge". I'm hoping the latest Nokias like the N95-3 and the N82 pass because of their increased RAM.

p.s. in case you forgot, here's the Roland Challenge: take 50 pictures in 30 minutes of random stuff and see if the phone or camera app crashes (without any 3rd party software installed and a freshly formatted 2Gig or larger card)

p.p.s. and here's the Roland ShoZu Challenge: Repeat the Roland Challenge but install ShoZu first and set ShoZu to auto-upload and again let me know if ShoZu, camera app or the phone crashes