Sidingsound

The title here is a bit of an in-joke—as you probably saw if you came in via my Twitter feed, new posts here are prefixed automatically with the words “New blog post: [title]” (work it out ).However, it is actually accurate in this case, as this post really does concern a new blog, that I’ve just set up on wordpress.com.

Eee 701 Planetoid is aptly named, being (a) a “satellite” of the Sidingsound blog, and (b) devoted entirely to my latest acquisition: an Asus Eee PC 701 “netbook” computer, and my various activities with it. I’ll be using “E7P” almost like a running diary of my “Eeexploits” (sorry), with ‘hacks”, fixes, useful apps, tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way, which I think might help other owners of this small but perfectly-formed machine, to get the most out of it.

I’ve posted at the Planetoid for the first time, with a couple of initial impressions I had of the Eee, and there will be a good few more over the coming days as I get to grips with the computer and start tweaking it to my requirements. Whilst I don’t intend to cross-post between the blogs that often, I’ll add Planetoid to the “lifestream” page shortly, so you can see when updates are posted there. (My Twitter page will also be updated with new Planetoid posts, though I still have to find out how to get wordpress.com to let me use bit.ly for short URLs, so I can find out how many visitors use them.)

So, jet on over to Eee 701 Planetoid and take a look, and I hope you enjoy your stay

Steve Litchfield, the mobile technology journalist and creator/presenter of The Phones Show, made a somewhat poignant comment on his Twitter feed a few days back:

Kind of sad that in 2009, I choose my smartphone based on the premise of “Which one sucks the least” 8-(

I replied via Twitter that the net effect of finding out about the smartphones currently on the market, has been to strengthen my inclination to hang onto my venerable Nokia N95 “classic” until it falls utterly to pieces, expires in a puff of smoke or otherwise “goes to join the choir invisible”. (Obviously, I expressed that within the 140 characters allowed, but you catch my drift )

Whilst it’s no secret that I like my gadgets, I don’t feel the need to ensure that they are the “latest, greatest and up-to-datest”—put simply, if they do what I want them to do, they could look like a potato or run on clockwork as far as I care. The N95 is a case in point: it does many things, it does most of them very well, it is still working fine, the firmware (operating software) is now mature and reliable, and I am genuinely happy with it (and yes, I have watched the competition closely, as you’ll see).

I upgraded to my N95 in the summer of 2007, and whilst it has been superseded by seemingly countless models in the ensuing two years, there hasn’t been a single handset from any manufacturer in my view, which has matched the range of features (and competency at them) which the N95 offers, for a price which doesn’t leave me glancing nervously at the monthly household budget.

Oh, there have been a couple of phones which “came close”, and to name but three:

• the Nokia N82 offered most of the same features as the N95, and added a xenon flash to make it possibly the most capable cameraphone on the market;
• the Samsung i8910 packs HD (720p) video recording and a great screen, but is expensive and only available in the UK on Orange, who apparently “could’ve done better” with the software; and
• the new Nokia N900 “internet tablet” looks great, but again the price is likely to be eye-watering, and we’ll have to see if my network offers it (as I don’t want to switch).

When it comes down to basics, though: quite simply, I’m generally content with my N95, and even more so with the monthly tariff I’m on with my network, which is now really quite modest whilst suiting my needs nicely.

Of course, there’s the question of what I’d do if my N95 failed, broke beyond repair, suffered some nasty accident (dropped in the toilet, fell in a cement mixer, etc.), and I had to replace it. Assuming I couldn’t get a replacement N95 without going on eBay or the like, and I wanted a new phone, there’s only really one handset which I think would offer me similar features (though not all of them) at a fairly low cost, and that’s the Nokia E75. I would be sacrificing two megapixels of camera resolution (and the Carl Zeiss lens) and video editor of the N95, but I would be gaining a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and USB charging (and possibly more), and retaining many of the N95 features I use.

I don’t know if my network would offer the E75 at the time I would “need” it, or if there will be a better alternative by that stage. However, I’m hoping that my N95 has at least a year or two more in it, so I can make the most of possibly the best all-round smartphone Nokia has ever produced. And nearly three years on from its introduction, I think that’s no small achievement.

A minor earthquake has rumbled Sidingsound Towers. Yesterday, some friends of ours loaned us their Nintendo Wii.

It all came out of a passing comment one of us made in conversation, to the effect that we’d been to a couple of other friends’ houses, and they’d fired up the Wii console and shown us Wii Fit, Super Mario Kart, Wii Sports, and so on, and that for the first time we thought we wouldn’t mind trying one ourselves.

“Well, we don’t get much time to play on ours, so why don’t you borrow it for a bit and see how you get on?”

Well, we did just that… and now I’m wondering if it was a wise decision, as suffice it to say: we’re hooked

I was surprised just how quickly I was able to set up the console (although admittedly I’m quite technically-minded). I think that if we end up buying our own Wii, I would invest in the A/V cable with the SCART socket; the bundled component-video cable does the job, but the three phono plugs look a bit unsightly hanging off the front of our TV.

Linking the Wii up to our home wireless router took less than five minutes, and worked first time, after which the console was able to fetch the news and weather details for the “home screen” (one of my favourite features, which I think I would use regularly).

One of the most fun activities for the three of us, was making our “Mii”s (the cartoon-like figures which represent you in many Wii games).Within about twenty minutes, we ended up with three Miis which looked at least something like us, and Naomi especially had a great time choosing her features (though I took the liberty of giving mine a bit of a diet—wish it was that real in our world…).

So far, I think the Wii game we’ve most “got into”, would have to be the bowling in Wii Sports (which is bundled with the console—that must present a headache for the game developers, when the freebie title is “good enough”!). The bowling alley “experience” is faithfully recreated; I especially liked the other games taking place in the lanes around your own, and the fact that your Miis are seen doing the actual playing.

A real surprise is just how quickly Naomi (4) took to the bowling: the way you use the Wiimote (controller) isn’t perhaps the most obvious for a child, but she picked up the principle very quickly, and within an hour or so managed to score 179 in one game without any help. This could make for an interesting scenario if we end up looking for a Wii of our own—strict rationing and withdrawal of Wii privileges in event of stroppiness, maybe…?

Actually, that’s a big question: can (or should) we afford a Wii in the foreseeable future? Well, we’re not immune from the general belt-tightening going on around us, and even if we can muster the cash, it remains to be seen how we get on with the machine before we need to give it back!

However, we’re very grateful to our friends for giving us the chance to find out, and stay tuned here (or on my Twitter feed) for any updates on our Wii experience.

Posted by Wordmobi

Today (27th August 2009) witnessed the “soft launch” of the Nokia N900, the latest in the company’s line of “Internet tablet” devices powered by the Maemo (Linux) operating system. (The other devices before it were the N770, N800 and N810, in case anyone wondered.)

I’ve been keeping an eye on Nokia’s Maemo devices since they first began appearing a couple of years back, and although before now they’ve never quite packed enough features to warrant my serious attention (and have also been priced a bit out of my “pocket-money” range), the N900 looks as if it may be the first of the line to do so.

Judging by the pictures and videos which have emerged this week, the N900 may be a significant step forward in a number of areas:

• it is noticeably smaller than its forbears—closer in size and general style to Nokia’s N97 smartphone (though still a little larger);
• like the N97 (and for that matter, my N95), it packs a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, with the option to upload directly to Flickr; and
• most importantly: it is the first of Nokia’s Maemo devices to include built-in mobile phone and 3G data capabilities.

It is this last feature which has really grabbed my attention, as the N900 now has the potential to provide a true “one-stop” device—combining the features of a mobile phone and mobile computing device, as few if any Nokia devices have done before it. You may have noticed me returning to the “mobile computing” theme several times in the past, with my attempts to see if my Nokia N95 (paired with a Bluetooth keyboard) can perform the tasks which would normally require a laptop. The short answer to this is: yes, it can be done, but not always as elegantly as I might like (although the N95 comes closer to this than most devices).

So, providing that my mobile phone network ends up carrying the N900 (and I can upgrade for a price that won’t make my wallet weep), it could well be the handset which finally puts my trusty N95 out to pasture. At this stage, there’s little on the hardware front which I would quibble with (on the contrary: the specifications look very attractive), but I have compiled a list of ten queries regarding the Maemo software’s capabilities, which I would ideally like positive answers to before I would consider it seriously as an N95 replacement. (I could come up with a few more, but ten is a nice round number )

1. Is Skype available for Maemo, and is video-calling possible with it? (For that matter, will mobile networks in the UK allow Skype on the N900, or try and block/cripple it?)
2. Is there VoIP (Internet telephony) capability on the N900 (especially SIP)?
3. Does the device provide geotagging of photos? (There’s a GPS receiver in the N900, so I would be amazed if geotagging isn’t present.)
4. The N900 includes uploading facilities for Flickr, so is it possible to add Pixelpipe as a destination (as with Nokia Share Online on the N95)?
5. Are there any video-editing solutions for Maemo? (A video editor at the same level as the N95’s would be fine by me, but even a means for basic trimming of clips would be better than nothing.)
6. While we’re on the subject of video: any way to stream live video to Qik (as the N95 can)? (I rarely use Qik anyway, but it’s a “nice-to-have”.)
7. Is there a Maemo port (or equivalent) of Audacity, for audio recording and editing? (If so, the N900 could make an ideal “portable podcasting studio”.)
8. Aside from Nokia Maps, is there any mapping software (equivalent of Google Maps) for Maemo? (I would really miss Google Maps from my N95, so I hope there is a usable alternative on the N900.)
9. Will the BBC iPlayer work in some shape or form? (I presume the streaming Web version would, and that would be enough for me.)
10. Will the N900 work with Bluetooth keyboards? (Yes, I know the N900 has a keyboard built-in, and that would do for short texts, but I’d really rather use my Apple wireless keyboard for serious text entry. It works perfectly with my N95, and the N800 supports Bluetooth keyboards, so I’d hope this is retained in the N900.)

I suspect an hour or two on the Web may answer many of the above, and I’ll post some updates on this site in due course when I’ve found them. As I mentioned, some of these are “nice-to-haves”, whilst other features would be important enough to make me think again about the N900 if they were missing and/or unlikely to be added. (For instance, I would definitely want to use Skype on the device, and video-calling over and above this would be a definite plus.)

An alternative I have thought of, would be to try and find an end-of-line Linux ‘netbook’ (such as an Asus Eee 701 or a first-generation Acer Aspire One) at a “knockdown” price (say, around £99), and pair this with the N95 for 3G data, whilst using the N95 for the tasks above which the netbook isn’t capable of). Obviously, if one device can do all the above (or at least the “important” items) in one unit, that would be preferable to two, but the netbook-plus-N95 combo could have its merits too.

So, now to wait for Nokia World 2009, and then try and find out if/when the N900 is coming to my network…

When we last left the question of how I could record and upload short audio clips from my N95, you may recall that I’d hit a snag: being, that the N95’s built-in voice recorder doesn’t save to MP3 format (only “full-fat” yet poor-quality WAV, or patent-encumbered and poorly-supported AMR), and that the few MP3-capable, third-party audio-recording apps for S60 3rd Edition (and I stress the word “few”), are either expensive, phone-quality audio, or both.

I could have a moan about this (i.e. “how come there is such a gaping hole in the range of software available for S60 devices?”), but instead, I prefer to reveal that I think I have hit upon a solution to audioblogging with the N95. It’s not ideal, because it involves an extra piece of equipment, but for now it will do the job.

The extra item in question, is my iRiver H320—a circa-2005 hard disk-based digital music player, which was referred to in one review as the “Soviet iPod” (due to its bulky nature and somewhat clunky interface), though it actually does quite a few things that even the latest iPods don’t. The relevant features here from that list are:

• it has a built-in microphone, or can take an external one;
• it records to MP3 format (at various bitrates); and
• it has a USB host function (also known as USB OTG).

That last feature, in case you wondered, means that one can connect a USB mass storage device (e.g. a USB flash or hard drive) to the H320, as if the latter were a PC. As the N95 can act as a mass storage device, it means I can transfer recordings made on the H320 over to the N95, and then upload the file(s) from the N95 as normal—all without needing another computer.

At least, that’s the theory, and I’ll need to try it out sometime, but this sounds like a solution to the problem of audioblogging from the N95, at least until someone wonderful comes up with an equivalent of Audacity for S60…

Who would’ve thought it—I go away on holiday with my family for a week, ready to photo/video/audio-blog the whole proceedings with my N95, and… well, knock me down with a pot of Mumbles’ legendary ice cream parlour’s finest, if I wasn’t so busy having fun with everyone that I didn’t have time to upload more than a couple of photos to Twitpic. (Incidentally, if you’re ever in the Swansea area and have a bit of a ’sweet tooth’, Joe’s ice cream parlour in Mumbles is an absolute must-visit. Just take our friends’ advice and go for the ‘plain’ vanilla one first, then work your way through the menu…)

So, how did it go? Well, we had a pretty good time, I think, topped off by my (impossible-odds-defying) unexpectedly meeting one of my favourite musician/composers in a folk music instrument store… oh, you mean how the N95 content uploads went? Well, pretty good overall, although I did encounter two “flies in the ointment” with the system:

• Perhaps a bit obvious, but even where you’re fortunate enough (as I am) to be on a 3G network with an “all you can eat” usage policy, that still doesn’t help if the area you’re going to has a low or variable signal strength. I’d almost forgotten the frustration (from my 56k modem-using days) of having a long upload fail almost at the end, because the sputtering mobile data connection gave out at the last minute; clearly, a good WiFi connection is useful here, if you can find one and (if appropriate) don’t mind paying for it.
• Pixelpipe seems to have its fair share of quirks when uploading the same content to multiple different content sites (which is basically the point of the service), using the Nokia Share Online utility on the N95. There’s probably a whole post I could write about these in detail, but in a nutshell, the items you fill out for a new NSO upload (tags, summary, etc.) don’t always appear where you would expect them, when you check your content sites later. For instance, when you upload a video to YouTube, your ’summary’ text doesn’t appear for the uploaded video—YouTube just shows the title of your video where the summary should be.
  To be fair, the problems are almost certainly as much (if not more) due to the content services’ application interfaces (i.e. how Pixelpipe interacts with them), but I have to keep a mental note of what works well and what doesn’t, so I can correct the glitches later.

Oh, and I’m pleased to report that I finally invested in a new 8Gb Sandisk Mobile Ultra MicroSD memory card for the N95 (four times more capacity than the previous card), so no more mad scrambles to find more storage space on long trips where I’m taking lots of video (and perhaps more room for the odd movie or three!).

Must go—I’m installing Xubuntu on an old PC for Naomi. Lots of fun…

This seems to be a time for following up on previous blog posts, so here’s another one “revisited”:

Back in May (when this blog was still run off Blogger), I wrote about how I’d really like to find a “hard” carrying case for my Apple wireless keyboard, which I use a lot with my Nokia N95 as an alternative to a laptop.

Basically, I haven’t been able to find one to date—I suspect my particular application for the keyboard isn’t a very common one—so at present I use the cardboard box which the keyboard came in, to protect the keyboard when it’s being carried in my gadget bag (and believe me, without protection, it would really get beaten up in there).

The box works, but I’d rather like a more elegant solution. The nearest I’ve found online is a padded “sleeve” case made especially to fit the Apple wireless keyboard, but nice though this is, it wouldn’t necessarily prevent the keys being pressed whilst the keyboard’s in the gadget bag, and I’d rather avoid this happening to save the keyboard’s batteries (and the N95 responding to unwanted key signals).

I’ve been thinking more about what I’d want in a hard case for the Apple keyboard, and here are a few of my ideas:

• The case’s dimensions should be quite close to that of the cardboard box which the keyboard came in, including the recess to accommodate the cylindrical part of the keyboard which holds the batteries and the power switch, and tilts the keys off the desktop.
• There should be some measure of foam rubber padding inside, if that can be done without increasing the case’s size much.
• I’d like to be able to use the keyboard inside the case (i.e. lift the lid, and it’s ready to go)—think of how a laptop works, and you’re on the right track.
• Related to the above point: if possible, the lid should be “angle-able” like a laptop’s screen, and I’d like to be able to place the N95 on the lid so that I can see it while controlling it with the keyboard. (In concept, this would be a bit like the phone holder on the Nokia SU-8W Bluetooth keyboard.)
• Definitely not essential, but a carry-handle might be useful, a bit like those you see on briefcases (and preferably smaller than those).

I wouldn’t really mind what material the case was made from, as long as it worked as set out above (and wasn’t liable to give me splinters or damage anything near it).

It’s at times like these that I wish I were more “handy” with DIY, software-coding and that sort of thing…

Posted by Wordmobi

Here’s a ‘poser’ for you for the middle of the week: what do all the following items have in common?

1. Bluetooth keyboard support
2. Support for Flash in the Web browser
3. 5Mp still photos
4. Carl Zeiss lens/optics
5. Video editor, with the capability to add captions and render movies at full VGA resolution

Guessed it yet? Yup, they’re the features which (to the best of my knowledge) the iPhone 3GS doesn’t have, which my two-year-old Nokia N95 does have (and which I actually use), and which Apple are going to have to add to the next iPhone before I will even consider switching.

Now, believe it or not, I’m not trying to be deliberately provocative here. I love my gadgets as much as anyone (if not more), and as a Mac owner, I really would love to like everything about the iPhone. I’m happy to admit, the above list is gradually getting smaller than it used to be—the 3GS now supports cut/copy/paste (as the N95 always did); it now supports Bluetooth headsets (ditto); and you can now use the live video-streaming service Qik with the 3GS (thus joining my N95, which I’ve been using with Qik for the last eighteen months).

It’s hard to believe one still can’t use a Bluetooth keyboard with the iPhone without ‘jailbreaking’ the latter—ironically, it doesn’t even support Apple’s own wireless keyboard (which, to further ladle on the irony, I use perfectly well with my N95). It seems to me that an iPhone or iPod Touch paired with a BT keyboard, would make a brilliant laptop replacement, so I wonder if Apple has deliberately withheld this support so as to avoid cannibalising sales of MacBooks (which wouldn’t make much sense, given the disparity in price between the products).

To top all this off, comes the continuing speculation that Apple is readying an “iTablet”—that is, basically a larger iPod Touch with a bigger screen (and presumably a few more bells and whistles). Sounds interesting, except I’d place a bet that it’ll have an eye-watering price tag, and probably still won’t have Bluetooth keyboard support (again, not to cannibalise sales from the MacBooks).

Anyway, it looks like I’ll be sticking with my trusty N95 at least a bit longer, even if it doesn’t look as cool as a laser-engraved Apple product…

Apologies for the seemingly endless stream of posts about the Nokia N95, but this one should be the last for the moment…

Ever since I got my N95 just about two years ago, I’ve wanted to be able to access the photos, videos, music, etc. on our home server (a ‘hacked’ Linksys NSLU2 running Unslung Linux), but for various reasons none of the possible solutions I’d looked at were ideal. The good news is, finally I’ve now found what appears to be the best way.

At the weekend, I finally upgraded my N95’s firmware from a positively ancient version (12.x, I think) to the latest (v31.0.017), which amongst many improvements, added UPnP “renderer” (client) support. In other words, the N95 can now play media from a server, instead of only being a server, as was the case previously.

I’m now in the process of trying out a couple of UPnP servers on our home server, to stream our multimedia collection to the N95. The one I’m testing right now is MediaTomb, and aside from it seemingly putting a quite high load on the system (“top” was reporting a load of over 3—the NSLU2 is not that powerful a machine), the functionality seems to work. I’ll be testing this further, but it does look as if my quest for portable multimedia anywhere in the house, may have finally found its goal…

If you’ve been reading here for a while—or take a good trawl through the archive—you may discover that I am somewhat attached to my Nokia N95 “smartphone”. It carries out a pretty wide range of functions—some more obvious (phone, e-mail, stills and video camera, GPS navigator) and some less so (games, Twitter/Facebook, SSH terminal for administering our home server, etc.), and overall I don’t see much reason to own another laptop, as the N95 can do most of the tasks for which a laptop would be used.

One accessory which the N95 really needs to make itself a “laptop replacement”, is a Bluetooth (wireless) keyboard, which can be used to enter text and control the phone without needing to use the phone’s keys. It might sound weird to use a keyboard with a mobile phone, but to me it makes sense with the new generation of “smartphones”, which can perform many of the tasks which would’ve required a laptop only a few years ago. Furthermore, the N95’s TV output means that any nearby set with composite inputs (or SCART, if you have a composite-SCART adapter) can be pressed into service as a monitor, and the 10-metre-plus range of Bluetooth means you can sit back on the sofa/bed/whatever and remote-control the lot without ever getting up. How cool is that…?

In fact, for a while I owned a Bluetooth keyboard: a Dell-branded Stowaway Ultra-Slim fold-up unit, which I used for about eighteen months, until what I would call a “daughter/fruit smoothie interface” sent the device to that great gadget shop in the sky. Ever since then, I’ve missed having a keyboard for my N95, and have been keeping my eye open for a replacement.

Unfortunately, not only did I originally buy the Stowaway for a stupidly low price (it had about 50% off due to the Dell branding), but the Ultra-Slim has since been discontinued, and there are relatively few alternatives available at this time which will work with the N95:

• Nokia markets its own fold-up Bluetooth keyboard, the SU-8W. Its main drawback has been its price, which can vary between about £60 to over £100, depending on where you happen to look.
• There are a couple of what one could call “Bluetooth thumb-boards”; Targus makes a “thumbpad”, and Freedom has a “slim keypad”. These don’t even make the running, as they are just too small, fiddly and limited for what I’m looking for.
• The most similar option to the Stowaway, would appear to be the Freedom Universal Bluetooth keyboard. Available at time of writing for around £60 if you shop around, it has an extra row of keys over the Ultra-Slim, but looks less sturdy (almost all plastic, whereas the Ultra-Slim was part-metal). It folds up very small like the Stowaway, but my Ultra-Slim wasn’t the easiest to type on; between the construction and the feel, I’m not sure about the Freedom, and wish it was possible to try one before deciding whether to go for it.

The option which currently has my attention, comes from an unlikely source: Apple, who produces a wireless (Bluetooth) version of the famous aluminium keyboard which comes with their iMac computers. I have one of these, and must say I find the Apple keyboard the best to type on that I’ve ever tried; therefore, I was very interested to read that the Apple Bluetooth keyboard works perfectly with the Nokia N95.

This is an appealing option, not least because I’m so used to the wired keyboard on the iMac, and because the Apple keyboard would give me the special characters I’d need (e.g. for using SSH on the N95). The price is also competitive with the above alternatives—the Apple keyboard can be found for under £50—and unlike the foldable keyboards, the Apple can be used comfortably on a lap (that aluminium won’t bend easily!).

Downsides? Well, I wouldn’t mind the occasional odd look I might get using an Apple Mac keyboard with a mobile phone (!), but thinking about it, I’d need to carry my larger ‘gadget bag’ because the Apple keyboard wouldn’t fit in the smaller one. Other than that, this looks like a cheaper way to get the “netbook experience” without coughing up many times as much as the keyboard’s cost for a dinky laptop.

So, to sum up: time to save those pennies