Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Herewith my Grassroots Open Mobile Web presentation (original PDF) that I presented Monday April 14, 2008 at the Open Web Vancouver conference.

Presentation Links:

• Chumby
• Bug Labs
• How a Bug could save the US Government 100s of millions of dollars
• Bunnie's Blog about awesome Chumby hacks
• OSGI Java components whitepaper (used on the Bug)

The presentation was a lot of fun to put together and present. Next year, I hope to present a followup with my musings on the actual real Bug and any OSGI Java components that I manage to get working.

I love my iPhone (which I paid for with my own money and am still glad I did) because:

• it's beautiful and so is the interface
• the web browser is great, gmail and google reader work well
• the switching between WiFi and EDGE is seamless
• SMS interface is great, so it was great when I was out of Canada and didn't have access to affordable data and wanted to communicate with fellow SXSW attendees
• the voice call interface is great
  

I hate my iPhone because:

• the 2 mega pixel camera s*cks
• no video, i need video!!!!!!
• it's closed at the moment so there's no ShoZu, I need ShoZu! I am addicted to ShoZu's ability to post photos of the kid to my private flickr account and other pictures to my public flickr account

If the iPhone had a 5 megapixel camera and video and ShoZu was available for it, I'd switch in a heartbeat and use it all the time for everything. As it is the phone in my pocket is my N95-1 provided by the Nokia Blogger Relations program (thanks!) and the phone that i would buy with my money if I lost my iPhone and N95-1 would be one of the N95 North American versions.

Having said that I also have a love/hate relationship with my N95-1

I love my N95-1 because:

• It runs ShoZu which has literally changed my life. The ability to "photo-document" my life in real-time has been and continues to be amazing. And if ShoZu ever integrates with Twitter and gets Facebook status updating working, I'll never have to use SMS again when I am in Canada which would be no big loss since I am not a fan of SMS (or paying for messages, I just want to pay for the bandwidth I consume, SMS rates are a ripoff.)
• It runs Qik and similar 'live from the phone videocasting' apps. Qik, flixwagon et al are killer apps over WiFi and 3G!
• It's "open" (since you can only develop 1st class applications using Carbide which only runs on Windows and uses the archaic and silly C/C++ combo, it's not fully open in my book; the whole certificate model and the fact that the amazing hardware on great devices like the N93 is crippled by missing certificates for Python so you can't really access the full power from more modern and dynamic programming environments like Python means Python et al are second class citizens on S60)

I hate my N95-1 because:

1. S60 is not truly open (see the Python problems mentioned above). Hoping for a re-focus around a Linux core e.g. using Maemo from the N770, N800 and N810 Internet tablets.
2. S60 is clunky, hard to use and a maze of twisty little menus and apps are constantly moved around each firmware release. I have taught many people who just got their S60 phones how to use their devices. you don't have to do that with an iPhone which while not perfect is much, much easier to use.
3. It doesn't have enough RAM so ShoZu occasionally hangs and a reboot is required (granted this has become a lot better in the latest N95 firmware updates thank goodness!)
4. The display is too small. As big as the iPhone or VGA please!

My SXSW experience shows that if you aren't a VOIP or gadget guru like Alec Saunders or Andy Abramson and you are a Canadian travelling in the States then as of March 2008, the best thing to do to avoid extremely high Canadian mobile roaming rates is to:

1. Get an unlocked, jailbroken, activated iPhone
2. Buy a GoPhone from AT&T
3. Activate it and slip the SIM into your iPhone. The $10 included with the phone is great if you are just calling folks on AT&T otherwise $50 will do you for a week. Unfortunately GoPhone data rates are a ripoff so using EDGE on your iPhone is prohibitively expensive
4. SMS and phone others on AT&T for free and keep in touch! It worked great (texting and phoning with the iPhone is so much easier than T9 on my N95 or any other handset!) at SXSW. Now if only I could set up Twitter so that I only get SMS from my Twitter friends who are whereever I am travelling too, I could have kept in 24 hours a day sync with my Twitter SXSW crowd! (yes I know you can do this manually but there ought to be a way to do this semi-automatically!)

For the record I used my iPhone for SMS and phone calls with the GoPhone SIM and I used my N95 for video recording and photo uploading over WiFi. It worked great but most people couldn't master the mental S60 gymnastics that I had to do (e.g. frequent rebooting) to get the N95 to work with the flakey SXSW WiFi. And I used Skype to phone home for nearly free over WiFi from the hotel.

So far so good. The only bug I can see is that I can't seem to update my Facebook status from ShoZu 4.0. Everything else works (e.g. I can see the last few status updates from my 341 ShoZu "friends"). I am sure the ShoZu folks will make it work pretty quickly; it'll be cool to use my unlimited EDGE for updating my Facebook status for free (rather than SMS which would cost me $).

For those who don't follow the Nokia soap opera, the N96 flagship (with 5 megapixel camera and an incredible 16 GB flash card built in with a micro SD slot so you can expand to 24GB and soon 32GB but with a low res 320x240 screen) introduced today at the Mobile World Congress looks almost exactly like the N81 (major difference: N96 is a dual slider)

Not a big fan of the N81 (it's a great Walkman for those who don't want an iPod and have lots of money but the 2 megapixel camera is b*gus) but it does look a lot better than the N95. I do wish that Nokia had come up with something more radically beautiful when designing its next flagship. Shame the N96 has the same lock switch as the N81. Fingers crossed that the N96 lock switch is less finicky than my N81 (my N81 lockswitch sticks). But oh the possibilities with 24GB of storage! Yum! Go Nokia go! Now just fix S60 and make the screen bigger and you'll finally have one device that does everything!

From World Mobile Congress 2008: N96. Press Photos:

QUOTE

In a previous post I expressed by appreciation for the Nokia N81. The simplicity and balance of the design certainly make for a classic look. Hence, I was really pleased to see that the industrial design of The Dark Knight (N96) borrows so heavily from the N81.

There is a real attention to detail here. Is it perfect? No. Is it close to perfect? Yes.

END QUOTE

Here's what I did:

1. Set Nokia's camera app on my N95 to take a photo every 10 seconds
2. Took over 200 photos on my bike ride in today
3. Deleted about 50
4. Selected the remaining 150 and tried to upload them with ShoZu to flickr

Here's what happened:

1. Phone started repeatedly complaining about low memory
2. ShoZu "crashes" every time (by crash I mean doesn't display the ShoZu main screen and just sits there, rest of phone is functional)

Here's the software that was installed on my N95 (all installed on my main memory):

1. A funky theme I got from SiMo
2. YBrowser
3. ShoZu
4. Bambuser
5. Flixwagon
6. Qik
7. Google Maps

I guess uploading 150 photos at a time is not a normal :-) use case for ShoZu. Or maybe it's a bug. Or maybe I have too many apps installed. Looks like I'll have to hard reset my N95 and start over again, aaargh (how many times have I done this? about a dozen! oh the joys of early adoption)!!!

Today I tried out flixwagon, "a stream live from cellphone" competitor to Qik. I did a "Carcast" direct from my N95 (mounted on the empty passenger seat with my Gorillapod) as I drove from Gastown to the Viaduct (12 minutes). Impressive!
What Flixwagon seems better at then Qik:

1. Better buffering
2. More "Ajax-y" website

What Qik seems better at then Flixwagon:

1. Non Cheesy look and feel. I could live without the little flixwagon icon moving about before the video is shown and the "too cute" flixwagon smiley icons.
2. Higher Resolution. Qik seems to be higher resolution the flixwagon. Qik is 320x240, Flixwagon seems to be lower resolution
3. Better URLs. There seems to be no flixwagon equivalent of qik.com/roland. If it's there I couldn't find it. UPDATE: it's there! found it by URL hacking, no obvious link when logged in, my page is indeed flixwagon.com/roland
   

Anyways the proof is in the video and both Qik and Flixwagon are evolving at a rapid rate, so let the competition continue! Check out my flixwagon "CarCast":

The above photo shows my "bicyclecast" setup (Gorillapod + N95 + DT-22 Tripod Adapter + my bicycle). It worked for only 6 minutes of my 30 minute commute to work (bug? limited buffering capacity? EDGE too slow?). And was fun. The GorillaPod doesn't keep the camera too snug on the bike but it's low budget, cheap and cheerful. Someday I'll have the money to buy a proper bike tripod camera mount like the pros use for Tour de France videos!

Check it out: qik.com/video/13888 recorded live from my bicycle (the hardest part was fastening the tripod and the phone onto the bike, music courtesy of my N81 Musicphone)

I am inspired by the Nokia Blog's N82 + Gorilla Pod post to get a Gorilla Pod, attach it to my Bike with an N95 and DT-22 and do a Qik live video cast as I cycle in (maybe play some nice background music with the N81 and do some fun commentary via a bluetooth headset as well!) Anybody know where I can get a Gorilla Pod in Vancouver or do I have to resort to mail-order yet again?

I need 2 Phone numbers and 2 SIM cards, one for the N95 (which is currently SIM-less but I sure do miss 3rd party programs like ShoZu and Qik (e.g. it was alot of fun to Qik the Farmers Market on Dec 22 in real time and have people sending me comments asking about kolrabi and blueberry honey :-) !) happening in real time over the cell network instead of delayed until I get to a WiFi hotspot) and one for the iPhone (which I love for its ease especially for texting and fantastic web browser). My hope is that Rogers introduces a decent all you can eat (well 1-2 GB or less for less than $75 a month) when they give in to the inevitable and introduce the iPhone in Canada.