Testing the MaStory blogging client

Eventhough Nokia's own Ovi service doesn't support their N900, the device luckily comes with easy access to the Maemo Repository. This is a test blogupload with the MaStory blogging client from this repository.

The application lets you configure your blogging account very easily and it only took me a quick run through my username and password and blog URL. The application supports adding images to your posts from your phone, but also from online sharing networks Picasa and Flickr. Pretty neat!



MaStory also supports the easy adding of links, HTML tags, tag adding and categorizing your post. To top it off MaStory offers you to preview your text before publish. :)

Only things I might like to se in future versions would be the implementation of keyboard shortcuts for editing the text, such as ctrl + b for bold. However, standard HTML is supported so you can always type away or just use the cool HTML adding graphical menu.

This app is very functional and has a great, seamless look to it. It blends right in with the rest of Maemo and with the help of a few good apps you can get blogging needing nothing besides your device. This is true mobility.





(C) Christopher Peake 2009

Struck by Maemo - A first look into the N900

The N900 is Nokia's awaited new mobile phone, although the super corporation markets the phone as a mobile computer. Rightly so as it is a continuation in Nokia's internet tablet line, but the ability to make normal phone calls on the device has raised the interest of the device and brought it closer to a mass market. Another attention raising fact about the N900 is the Maemo 5 operating system that's never been seen before on a Nokia mobile phone. The selection of Mameo 5 as the OS is driving people to declare the previous Nokia phone OS, Symbian dead. Here are some of my initial thoughts on the device.
This preview was written on the N900.

The first thing I noted about the N900 was its hefty weight. As a mobile salesperson I've had the chance to try out a number of prototypes (and even dummy-phone mock ups of the device) and it certainly is larger and heavier than my previous device, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Every time I got to use the device I felt the size justified, however.

Maemo 5 is a wonderful OS that impresses and delivers above all functionality and pleasing design. In my experience this the first Nokia design in a while that looks as nice as it feels, while providing all those functions and features you (don't) need.

Setting up my e-mail, IM clients and contacts was a breeze. In addition to that, it was fun. The e-mail application in Maemo 5 is very simple, neat and sits in perfectly with other parts of the OS. In comparisant to the Nokia Email client that looked OK, but really stood out from the general UI this was a pleasant surprise. Nokia's Symbian phones had the ability to set up your e-mail inboxes in the same menu as your SMS inbox was, but I never got along with this feature.

I spiced up my contacts by downloading Hermes, a client that will pull your friends' Profile pictures from Facebook and attach them to your contacts. This way every time they call, you'll see their image. This simplified things for me in the sense that before I used to pull my friends pictures down from Facebook manually (and into my phone's limited memory, ugh!) and assign them to contacts. What would result was my friends (especially the female kind) noting that my image of them was "so last month, I look terrible" that from now on, I'll let "them" update their images on my phone for me. :)


Another excellent thing about the N900 is the integration of SMS, e-mail, Skype and other IM accounts directly into the system. Now when I open my contacts, I can see their MSN and Skype status and decide to call them, Skype them or IM them with one click. I am determined to move more and more of my mobile traffic to be covered by my data plan.














The camera in the N900 is superb as well. I've never had a mobile camera this good and as I don't own a seperate pocket camera, I don't think I'll ever l get one now. Sure, it is a bit sensitive about the surroundings being too dark, but pictures turn out alot better than on the 5800, let me assure you.

The web browser is also very good, as expected. Being an internet tablet the browser is the center piece of the whole device. Based on Mozilla Firefox it's light, fast and gets out of your way when you surf. You can make all borders dissappear and have only the webpage on the screen. What I like to do is scroll the webpage by using the keyboard. This way no borders or tool icons will get in the way if I'm simply reading the webpage. The web browsing experience on the N900 is superb.














What's become apparent while writing this review is the quality of the keyboard. It has a wonderful click to it and pretty much all computer short cuts (such as ctrl-c, ctrl-x...) all work just like you're used to. With the easy e-mail integration apps for taking notes and sending them, this truly is a mobile computer with great communication capabilitites.

The media player in the N900 is my biggest gripe, as it doesn't quite function with the stability and usability I had hoped for. Missing is an equaliser, although sound quality is very good in the device. Using my old SD card from my 5800XM, the device scrambles up my songs into a somewhat random order, where as everything wes perfectly alligned on my previous device. I think that I just need to understand how it puts my songs into order, however. At the moment if you connect your N900 to your PC, there's no way to browse the contents of the memory card. This is probably due to lack of full-out support for the device in Nokia PC and Ovi suites. Really waiting for this to be fixed!

There are some rough bits to Maemo 5 still, however and as I'm typing this the device has received no updates, and therefor I feel this is only the beginning. Scheduled for release is a software update addressing the small bugs I've encountered I'm sure, and we're still waiting for the arrival of Qt.

If you want a phone that will enable you to communicate on the go, you don't mind the size and want to be part of something completely new for Nokia, the N900 is your choice.









© Christopher Peake 2009

Social Networking – who cares?

Various social networking sites have spread over the internet like wildfire over the last couple of years. People are more than eager to share their photos, thoughts on books and movies and various devices in forms of reviews, their feelings and perhaps on a scarier note – their personal details to an endless amount of complete strangers. With Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as the leading social networking tools, the trend is to agree that ‘sharing is caring’, but the question I want to ask is, do you really care?

Advertisers were quick to realize the potential in the social networking sites as Facebook and Twitter. With the freedom to customize your page and do quizzes on just these areas of your personal interests, advertisers constantly get information on the users’ interests thus being able to market just the products the user is interested in. (Well, in theory at least.)

Not only do companies advertise on Facebook, companies advertise Facebook. Device manufacturers have adopted these social tools of sharing as selling points for their devices. For example you can now buy TVs with built-in YouTube support, but mobile phones take the cake on this one. Not many mobile phones get released today without mention of easy access to Facebook or Twitter on the device. Also, as the amount of megapixels in cell phone cameras seems to be on the eternal climb, sharing your photos is becoming another option in the device menu, right next to “Save image to…”

Getting to really know 'ya

So my question is: what is it all for? Why do we do it? Do we really enjoy reading other peoples’ status updates and flicking through their photos and reading posts underneath those photos because we want to know what other people think? Do we subscribe to a live feed on Twitter and choose to monitor the feed on our mobile device where it is updated constantly because we can't live without the information it provides us? I think the answer to the latter question is without controversy no. Social networking is more or less about having fun. Although there appears to be room for seriousness in social networking, (such as educational YouTube videos or Wikipedia!) usually it’s just for fun.

So then I have to ask the question: is it really fun to read about other people’s updates? I think the answer to this question is yes and no. Depending on how close you are to that person whose updates you read, you might be more interested in what they have to say. However, I think that most of us can admit that our Friends-list in Facebook is full of people we don't really even know and sadly, whenever they do status updates, we don't really care. As more people grow more and more addicted to social networking, status updates on Facebook may contain trivialities as the updates become more and more frequent. Looking at my Facebook profile updates page, I can see reports of people having successfully fed themselves and their pets, reports of what went on the night before right after midnight, what music is currently playing in their home stereo etc. Is this information I really want to know?

If only a minimal amount of content on Facebook is truly interesting to us, I feel the need to turn the question the other way around: why do we share?

Oh mirror on the wall...

In my opinion we share somewhat openly, but only what we want other people to see about us. Therefore our Facebook profile may serve as a tool of narcissism: we boost our self-image by highlighting things we like about ourselves. Also, some photos come out better than others and those are the ones we upload to the Internet. This is where I think we begin creating a false image of ourselves as we release photos only in key with our idea of what we look like at our best. The extreme of this phenomenon are all those people, who ‘photoshop’ their images to look prettier or to seem like they have physical characteristics they don’t really have. So in a sense, facebooking can be like playing a role playing game, but in the real world. I personally feel that Facebook is the biggest and most famous RPG around, not World of Warcraft, for example. The goal of this game is however drastically different: how to make my real-life me seem better (more attractive or interesting for example) through these digital tools.

Reality time

Now you might be thinking to yourself “But hey, this guy’s criticizing Facebook and social networks and all the while he’s doing it on Blogspot, another social networking site!” and rightly so. I must admit: I’m just as hooked on social networking sites as any of us. Therefore I might as well ask myself, why do I share? The answer to that isn’t all that world shaking and it can be found in this text: it’s fun. I’m doing just what I said we do in the introduction: concentrate on things that interests us and choose to share about it with others. In addition to that, however his blog entry is also a type of release for me, thus creating for me an illusion that it is serving a less narcissistic cause.

All in all, the whole social networks routine appears to be a cycle of seeing what’s been shared, so that you can share in hopes of others seeing what you’ve shared. If this is the process behind using social networking sites, it seems to be a self-feeding system. With the encouragement to share from device manufacturers, mainstream media and of course the sites themselves, there seem to be external factors constituting to the phenomenon in addition to the internal ones described. Aftera all “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”, that doesn't sound too bad, so why resist it?

© Christopher Peake 2009