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This time I took the bus and train to work. Electric Trains are notorious for getting a GPS signal even with a window seat it can be tricky to get a solid lock. I was very pleased with the strength of the signal and the trace. Once again I just used the GPS and not the WIFI positioning. There are a few drop outs in the signal when the train passed through some cut outs and some big road bridges. However the trace is still good enough to see where I went. Another advantage is that the trace actually has the broken lines. The traces via Sports Tracker fill in the blanks. Having the Gaps lets me see where the signal did drop out and most software for geotagging photos will let you infer location from gaps in the traces so this is not a major problem.

So here is the trace.

View Larger Map

Tags: google, gps, HTC-Desire by Me
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One of the reasons I put down as my interest in the #telstradesire was my interest in Geotagging and Geoawareness…   So here is the blog post covering that…

First things first.. the bad.  There is a known issue with the GPS on the Desire and the Telstra HTC setup.  One hopes that all the people buying the phone from the shop from now on don’t have to do an Over the Air Update to get the GPS working… it needs to ship with the correct firmware. Mine didn’t, but then mine was not factory standard, so I can’t comment on that.

Now on to the good stuff.

WOW… the GPS on the HTC-Desire rocks.  Not just a little, but a lot.  Time to get a fix (even without Cell Tower prefixing) is simply fantastic.  This is the fastest GPS that I have now.  I have 3 others… two Nokia Phones (n95-8gb, N78) and my Asus R2H.. the HTC leaves them for dead.  Time to fix is often under 1 min even when it is a long distance from last fix, strength of fix is always great and it holds it fix very well once you move out of optimal GPS signal range, ie slightly indoors and in built up areas.

Although it took me a while to find the app to suit my needs.  What I was after was something that created either a KML or preferably a GPX file and stored that on the memory card.  No surprise really that the app to do this the cleanest was a Google App called My Tracks http://mytracks.appspot.com/ (See the website for a slightly tacky but helpful introduction.

Once I had the app that suited my need…  It was then easy to show a comparison to my most commonly used GPS (the Nokia N95-8gb) and the HTC-Desire.  So what I did was trace the drive into town I do I both devices.  Now they both were set to GPS only (no wifi) and I hit go within a few seconds on the trace.  Also both phones had a fix approx 2km away the night before.

The embedded file can below can be downloaded here.. n95-htc-samples.kmz (right click save as) to show you the detailed path.  The HTC-Desire got a fix before I had even turned the car on.. the Nokia took a couple of minutes to catch up.  To many this time frame may not seem important, but it means I can fire up the GPS on the Desire much faster to get a trace to log my road trips or just to tag photos on a photo walk.

Of course this will suck battery… but once I managed to turn off all the power and bandwidth sucking default settings battery life is once again acceptable.  Whilst the new iPhone may have the ability to do background apps.. the current ones don’t.  And a background task is what is required to do decent GPS logging.  The HTC did that perfectly.  As a test for a some other apps.. on the way home I ran two different background tasks doing logging to see what I would get, what I got was two different trace files

So here are the traces… Blue is the Nokia, Red is the HTC.  Overall I’d give the more accurate trace to the HTC as well, but I still have to play with the software to get the most out of it.

View Larger Map

This blog post that I did covers how to take a GPX file and marry it to the shots from your DSLR to geocode your photos.

Given that this is a Google App, I really think Telstra should look at including Apps like this on the default setup on the phone, not just fill the phone with apps that are just WAP links.

Tags: google, gps, HTC-Desire by Me
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Kind of sad when you think… I’ll just go up the road on my holiday to make a video to test out my HTC Desire for its video making abilities to realise that you had on you 4 different devices capable of making HD (or near HD) video…   I was annoyed I forgot to take my wife’s phone so then I could have made 5 videos …. ah well… 4 will just have to do.

All of these sample Videos are on default settings for recording only, where I walked part way up the Elizabeth St Mall in Hobart repeating the same walk 4 times (yes I did get some looks )

Devices used were a Nikon D90, a HTC-Desire, a Nokia n95-8gb and a  JVC GC-FM1 PICSIO

Output formats and files Sizes

Device	Native Format	File Size	Frame Size	FPS	Audio
Nikon D90	avi	112mb	1280×720	24FPS	176kbps-mono-11kHz
HTC-Desire	3pg	7.46mb	640×480	26FPS	12kbps
Nokia n95-8gb	mp4	15mb	640×480	27FPS	96kbps-mono-48kHz
JVC GC-FM1 PICSIO	mov	57.8mb	1440×1080	29FPS	130kbps-Stereo-48kHz

D90 Video

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HTC Desire Video

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JVC GC-FM1 PICSIO Video

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Nokia N95-8gb Video

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Now one thing I did try was to upload these videos via the YouTube app on my phone as a way of testing upload speeds… guess what… you are not allowed.  The YouTube App says no you have to upload large files via wifi only.  I really can’t begin to describe how wrong that is.  What if you don’t have wifi, what if you are on the road in the middle of no-where taking photos and have 3g coverage (like this shot).  I’ve had Telstra 3g coverage in some amazing areas.. but certainly no wifi… so how do I upload video?

What happens when someone sees something amazing or even breaking news and wants to upload it… well they can’t.  If this is going to be a true social device that has to change and change fast.

Tags: HTC-Desire, n95, Nikon D90, video by Me
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Ok…. this is one of those quick and dirty blog posts that show quick impressions only…. and not a great deal more.. but is a way of me putting these thoughts down before they get lost after using the device for a while.

Impressions:

• It feels nice in your hand.
• It feels fast, but then given less than 10 years ago this was the fastest processor for home PC’s it should .
• It works…  one of those you can pull it straight out of the box and hit go kind of devices, which it should be.
• It doesn’t work… the app store whilst easy to use still just doesn’t have that slick ordering system.. if you know what you are looking for it is fine.. but hunting can be tedious and there doesn’t seem to be a sense to the order of things in the store.
• I have fat thumbs… the onscreen keyboard is just tedious still… I’m sure it is just me coming from a non touch screen device but I am having trouble typing on it.
• Flash 7 video means that I can watch all the ABC News stories… which for me is a huge win. (and with Flash 10 coming soon an even bigger win)
• Charging from USB is kind of a last resort really… unless you are going to tether the device for the day.. plus it into power.
• Having to do a firmware update to get the GPS working well that kind of sucked… one hopes that the general public shouldn’t have to go through this.
• 2Gig SD Card… well that is a joke… it is a step down for me from my 8gig storage on my N95-8gb.  Sure it is upgradable.. but why should I have to.  Your average Joe public is going to see a phone with 2gig of storage and a phone with 8gig of storage and say that the other phone has more “RAM”.
• The SD Card is tedious because you have to remove the battery to access it.
• The Battery is Removable.. another battery is on my list to buy next week… if you are going to power use this device all day you’ll kill it… so more $$$
• I already worry that I am going to break the back just accessing the SD Card, HTC NEED to make this a slot.
• I miss my dedicated buttons on my Nokia for the Camera on the side.
• I miss my TV out option that my N95-8gb had… sure it was only analogue quality but it was better than nothing.
• I’d like a front facing camera please…
• The headphones with mic work very nice.
• Once I get my head around tweaking all the Scenes better I’m going to love them…
• The GPS is really good.  Very fast to get a lock on the first time, very impressed with that.

Now comes the real test… 4 days holiday and lets see what the phone does and more importantly whether I can get used to it…

First impression is that is a very nice device…

You can see which Apps I have installed here

http://www.appbrain.com/user/wolfcat

and I’ve created a new Flickr Set here for photos from the Device

Tags: HTC-Desire by Me
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There have already been comments that all(most) of the people doing the Telstra HTC Desire review are  basically just taking a bait.  Given the people that are on the list I’d have to say  that is very disingenuous to those folks.

That aside, I thought I would take the time to write down where I am coming from.

I’m not primarily a Telstra customer… I have a backup Telstra Phone that I only use on my extra long road trips, say twice a year (if I am lucky).  This phone just sits in a draw the rest of the time without credit as there is no way to keep long term credit on prepaid without it expiring.  Funny thing is that stamps don’t expire, but phone credit does.

But then I spend most of my time in a large city with access to basically blanket coverage anyway, so coverage as never been a major issue for me. I am a free wifi hunter, data rates in this country are to put it kindly criminal.  Sure sending a few tweets here and there is nothing, but when the SMH home page weights about 1 meg and refreshes… that starts to add up very quickly.  More when you consider that if I was to use data it would be for storm chasing and uploading high-res photos from my D90 the cost is way out of my budget.

And I am not an iPhone user, and to be honest the iPhone has never attracted me.  Sure it is a very nice looking device, but my trusty 3 year old Nokia N95-8gb still out performs the iPhone for the task I use it for.  Those tasks are making calls, using the camera and GPS tracking primarily.  Nor have I been a big application installer. I kind of tend to find a series of apps that do what I am after and stick to them.  The background recording of GPS traces has meant that I could never use an iPhone as that is what I consider a base requirement for a device is the ability to mulitask.  Neither is the camera and use I use the front camera for video calling occasionally as well.

I did play with a Nexus One for about 5 min over a beer and must say that is was the first phone that made me stop and think about jumping ship as it were.  The N97 whilst an improvement over my N95, just wasn’t the huge leap I was looking for.  The N900 still isn’t on plans in Australia and with the changes to Symbian has a real risk of being technology that is going to be OS Redundant by the time it hits our shores.

So I have been plugging away with my phone which I can use very easily with one hand with it’s 8gig of on-board storage, tv out, replaceable battery, multitasking, damn fine camera e.t.c quite happily. The other main thing I do with my phone is interact on twitter in the evening, with the phone connected to my home wifi using dabr.co.uk as my primary web app.

It is going to be interesting to see if I can not only move to a wholly new platform but a new way of interacting with a device and yet still keep the things that I count as my minimum requirements.

To really it put the phone through its paces I’ll use just the HTC Desire whilst I am in Hobart for four days and see what I can do about video, photography, GPS, calls and social networking, then I will see how it goes through day to day real world use as well.

It should be interesting, I’m willing to look at something new it just has to fit my “old” requirements as well.

P.S

I’ve set up a Twitter list for all the other people on the Social Review here as well which you can follow.

http://twitter.com/wolfcat/htc-desire-telstradesire

Tags: HTC-Desire, n95, nokia by Me
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For someone who’s best ever win in anything was $200 on a horse race, I’ve actually won something a bit more valuable to me..  2 days ago I got the call say I was one of the 25 Telstra HTC Desire Reviewers.

Kind of feels like I have been chosen to go to the Island.. but with less organ transplants and less Scarlett Johansson.

What this means is that I get to play with the new Android 2.1 HTC Desire and see if it is any good or not.

Should be an interesting few weeks… with the added bonus that I am going to Hobart for a 4 day holiday next week, which gives me lots of time to put the phone through its paces…

So I’ve files this post under a new Category in HTC-Desire and will file related posts under this for the next few weeks.

To see who else  is on the list it is now live on the exchange blog on telstra

* insert yada yada yada bit here… *

I have been given a HTC Desire handset by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my user experience and personal opinion.

Tags: google, HTC-Desire, Mobile by Me
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Remember Beta Folks, ok for you younger ones it was like HD DVD, one of those great formats that a still few use in high end roles but went the way of the dodo.

Today’s announcement of Section 3.1.1 by Apple.

“Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. ”

Of course this is aimed squarely at Adobe and the upcoming CS5 which will let Flash Developers port to the “I” platform. And as it turns out happens to be the biggest step down the road of turning Apple into the next Beta Format. Like Beta it will be around for many years to come and I am sure that many people (most much smarter than I) will be able to put forward lots of technical reasons why the Native only path is the best way to go.

But why did the public, yes not developers and not marketers choose VHS over Beta… because it was cheaper easier and OPEN. Sure when VHS was first coming out, Beta was better, but people didn’t care.

Apple got the jump going for the “people” aspect with the iphone… but the market is bigger than just the iphone and whilst Nokia still hold the high ground on numbers and devices (Sorry Apple users but my N95-8gb is still more useful than an iphone!), Android is on the rise.

Reviewers who have lauded the iphone and now looking at devices like the Nexus One and the HTC Desire which pack all the “wow” of the iphone with one extra little toy… OPEN Platform.

Now if you are a development company and can build a new game/widget/etc and output it via Flash to Android, Nokia, WinMo and all the devices that are on this.. but miss the “I” platform what are you going to do. In the medium term, sure you will develop for both, but not long term.

The restrictions of the “I” world are starting to bite and the noose is getting tighter, due in no part to Apple pulling on it themselves.

The times are a changing.. the rise of Android will see to that… the rise of the OPEN environment where people change things on their device without voiding warranty are coming….

This graph helps to show the rise of Android in the Mobile Operating System Market in the US….

(Source from JavaLobby)

Tags: apple, flash, General, nokia by Me
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Thought I would add the some of the stuff from photos to my blog, the sort of stuff that you do not find in EXIF data… the stuff that really makes a photo.

First cab of the rank so to speak will be my sunset photo from the other day…. of course if there are flickr photos you want the story behind, just drop me a line.

The basic shot was planned 3 hours before hand, when I noticed the smoke around the city from the series of burn off’s that the DSE was conducting that day.

Now smoke in the atmosphere will ALWAYS give you a red sunset. And if the smoke is thick enough, you will be able to see the whole disk of the sun with the naked eye, let alone needing ND Filters.

So I know it is going to be a great sunset, so I get home from work grab all my gear and head to my favourite place where I know that I can get the sun setting over water every time. Before I go however I have I quick scan over my flickr sunset set just to make sure I have the approx F Stops and Shutter speeds for similar photos in my head.

When I got to my location, I like always fired up the GPS on my phone to create a log file so that I can tag the photos… and because I am shooting the sunset swap to my 70-300mm lens. I’m after the sun as big as I can get in the shot (well at least very large, so am looking at the 200mm+ range)

Also I have my Hoya 62mm Circular Polariser on my lens. Now I have the cheap 70-300mm which has the problem that the front element rotates on focusing, meaning that you have to tweak the Polariser every time focus changes.

So that kind of covers the technical side of things… then that bit of luck comes into play. There was a boat with a wake boarding moving up and down the bay right opposite the outcrop I was standing on. This shot was the 4th shot I took of them.

As this shot is all manual, this is what I did. I took a practice shot of the sunset to make sure that the colour and lighting were correct. Then as the boat passed left to right I got a focus lock (single point – centre left) on the wake board rider. This gave me the opportunity to check that the first time they went passed that I could get the shot I was after. By now I already knew how far they would travel and when the return trip would be.

Next is that moment of fear… will they pass through my shot again… will they fall off, will they do something unexpected.

Lucky for me…. They didn’t… it all went to plan. I’d also put the camera into highspeed burst mode so that I could shoot more frames that I needed to capture the action. Given that it took the rider less than a second to pass through the sweet spot of the image I wanted to give myself every chance. As the rider got close to the the sun I made sure that I had focus lock on him and just panned the camera as he moved from right to left.

The biggest piece of luck however was when the rider decided to jump. Just before the reflection of the sun from my point of view.

So that is how I fill a blog post writing about a lucky image that took a lot of understanding to get.

So look at the EXIF data of peoples shots to see how the shot was done.. but really… look at the photo and that will tell you how it is really done.

(also you will find this image on Redbubble, with the Lat Long on the final image, where you can buy it from a post card to a framed print)

(oh nearly forgot)

Here is the EXIF Data:

Camera:	Nikon D90
Exposure:	0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	200 mm
ISO Speed:	250
Exposure Bias:	0 EV

Exposure Program:	Manual
Date and Time (Original):	2010:03:25 19:12:24.00+11:00
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
Exposure Mode:	Manual
White Balance:	Auto
Digital Zoom Ratio:	1
Focal Length In35mm Format:	300 mm
Scene Capture Type:	Standard
GPSVersion ID:	2.2.0.0
GPS Latitude:	37 deg 53′ 57.12″ S
GPS Longitude:	144 deg 59′ 2.35″ E
GPSAltitude:	9.5 m
Creator Tool:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Lens:	70.0-300.0 mm f/4.0-5.6

Tags: gps, Missing from the Exif, Nikon D90, nokia, Photos, Redbubble by Me
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Now of course this works for any camera digital camera not just high end DSLR’s.

I guess people are going to say but who cares about Geotagging photos.  That is easy… say you are on a once in a lifetime trip heading to some out of the way places or even just around town.  You take that great photo of a beach, a wall or even a person… now in 6 months time are you going to be able to find that location again are you even going to remember where it was roughly…    This is why I geotag my photos.  I can now find any location for my photos from the last 3 years, because all the photos have it stored in the Exif data.

I am going to show how using the GPS built into my phone running in the background I can do this.  So you people with phones that have a GPS that can not multi-task will have to spend some money and get a logger to be very accurate. My Nokia N95-8gb runs Sports Tracker in the background just fine so this is what I am going to use as my example. Then by using software called Geotag will add lat long and altitude to all the images, before they are uploaded to flickr.

The biggest advantage of Geotag however is that it will add the data to the RAW files as well as the JPEG/JPG files.  Formats include ARW (Sony), CR2 (Canon), DCR (Kodak), DNG (Adobe), ERF (Epson), MEF (Mamiya), MRW (Minolata), NEF (Nikon), ORF (Olympus), PEF (Pentax), RAF (Fuji), RAW (Panasonic), SR2 (Sony) and SRF (Sony).

Geotag should run on any operating system for which a Java SE 6 runtime is available.

Of course you can just manually add lat and long to say Flickr or Picasa but if you have a big set of photos or have travelled a long distance in a few days it is always easier to get software to do it all for you without having to guess locations.

First Step.. and most important... Make sure that the time on your Phone and on your camera are as close as possible. The software works by comparing the time stamp of the photo to the time on the track file.  You can set offsets for it.. but it is just easier to get it right in the first place.

Always switch on the logging software on your phone and wait for it to get a fix.  If you just fire up the software and hit the road and start driving it can take a much longer time for the GPS to get a fix than if you are stationary. Once you are happy that the software is working you are good to go.  Another tip is to break up a journey into a series of smaller track files, that way if the software crashes you still have a large part of the trip as a log file.  For example when I have been on my road trips I’ll often stop the GPS and start a new track when ever I got out of the car to take photos.

So lets dive in…

Getting the Log File to Geotag.

Open Sports Tracker, go to Training workouts…

Select the date you are after.	Now find the first track file you want.
Then Choose, Export, then Export as GPX. Most GPS Log file software programs handle GPX and this format contains all the info you are after.	Then Choose create file only.
	It doesn’t matter what drive you put this on.. so often Root Drive is just faster especially if you have a few track files to create. .. Repeat as needed …..

Then once you have all these files simply drag and drop from your phone on to your computer so then we can move to the next part of the process.

Once you have opened Geotag choose File > Load Tracks From File.

This will let you select all the small tracks files that you have created in one group so you don’t have to open each track file on its own.

Then you can either open up just the image files or a whole directory.  I tend to just import into Lightroom, do a quick pass to delete the dud shots, then tell GeoTag to look in the directory from the last import and work from that.

Now with the Track Files and the Directory Open, you right click, choose Find Locations > For All Images.

At this point a cup of coffee may be required if you have a few thousand images…

Once it has finished processing you will have all your images that the gps was working for tagged…

Then just choose Save All and you are done.  Now your RAW files and your Jpegs have the correct geodata embedded into them, so any time you upload to a service that supports Geocodes your photo will be mapped automatically.

You can of course get GeoTag to look up information such as lat, long, altitude, place names or get it to guess locations based on missing parts of the track file.

Another trick is to take one photo with your phone that is geotagged and then copy that information to the rest of the photos.  This is great trick if you are in just one place.  As another trick before going indoors take a photo of the front of the building, then use that as your tag if you cant get a GPS signal indoors.

Of course the easiest thing to do is to buy a GPS for your Camera, but if you don’t mind spending a bit of time the above steps should save you a bit of time money and still give you what you need.

(PS, I still have  dedicated GPS for the camera on my to buy list.. but I am a bit fussy like that )

Taken at: 26°38’11″S, 149°54’29″E

Tags: General, gps, n95, Nikon D90, nokia, Photos by Me
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After living in Melbourne for 5 years I finally got to do Puffing Billy last weekend…. We did the full return trip from Belgrave to Gembrook. And I left my Nokia N95-8gb running with Sports tracker and created this KML file of the trip. You will notice that in places it jumps a bit which would be due to the thick tree coverage on the route.

Enjoy.

Get the KMZ file here as well

View Larger Map

And my fav photo from the trip…

See the previous post for video from the trip as well taken on the D90.

Tags: google, gps, n95, Nikon D90, nokia, Photos by Me
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