Randomrants

I have entered a Sony-Ericsson competition to win a trip :-)…

So please click the link below…

vote for my photo

to vote for the photo below… (this is one of my favs taken with my N95)…

The global Expert’s Choice winner will receive a trip of a lifetime to one of five destinations worth approximately £10,000/12,500 EUR.

The global People’s Choice winner will receive a trip of a lifetime to one of five destinations worth approximately £5,000/6,250 EUR.

The rules just want a camera phone photo only, taken in 2008….  All the rules are available here– and you can enter the World View photo competition here.

The competition runs from now until the end of October.

Tags: General, n95, Photos by Me
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<rant>
Ah the joys of being a tenant. We just had our six monthly inspection to make sure the house hadn’t been converted in an Asian brothel and meth house. (That should bring up some interesting Google Ad-Words :-))

But it got me thinking. Now we are tenants and have to put up with what feels like a parental inspection to make sure our room is tidy. Now last time I checked I was a grown up (yes my wife and a number of my friends my strongly disagree) and yet we have to put up with this.

Now the financial income to the landlord/lady on our property is around a low mortgage repayment. So of course the landlord/lady has a vested interest in the property being maintained.

Now consider this… image if we had a 105% loan on this house and the bank was owed a shit load of $$$ with the risk that we are trashing the place and dramatically reducing its value.  At this point the bank could be seriously out of pocket and with the credit crunch that is happening you’d think they might give a flying toss as to what is happening. But no.

Banks go “here is your mortgage please pay on time we need never speak to you again”.  For me there in lies the rub.  We are going to put less money into the house, for all we know it is being negatively geared what ever that means, than the landlord is.  Yet we have to put up with having our bathroom checked for mould.

Now our Agent was all very nice and was in and out in 5 min and took notes on something that we would like fixed, but what is the bank that lends 105% doing about their investment… nothing.  This is one of the reasons that tenants feel like second class citizens.

</rant>

Tags: Annoyances, Funny, General, n95 by Me
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O.k, well the firmware hit version 30 for the n95-8gb over night as well, and I have just finished installing it.   But for those that are uncomfortable about doing such a radical thing as updating your firmware, I thought I would put together a series of screenshots to show what you have to do and how easy it can be.

But one small catch, if you have your phone heavily customised it may not look the same when it reboots and not all of your apps may be where you think they are.  The process is still far from perfect in my opinion but the benefits of a more stable OS on your phone more than outweigh having to spend some time moving a few things around.

Stage 1 – Make a backup….   Just in case things go wrong 🙂 (and to put your phone back to how it was…!)

To create the backup choose the backup option in Nokia PC Suite.

Stage 2 Click on the Update Phone software button in Nokia Pc Suite.  (yes Mac people you will need to find a PC to use… don’t nark on me!)

Follow the instructions:-) Also make sure you phone is on power or at least has a full battery if the power goes out whilst you are doing the upgrade all sorts of bad things could happen!

Now, if you phone can find the update this is what you will see.  Not all phones will see this update, phones that are closely tied to a phone company for their firmware may not see this update at all.

Now it will download over 100 meg of stuff 🙂

Then it will Flash the phone and start installing the software.  At this point your phone will turn off and on a few times.  Your computer will also go through a couple of found new hardware devices as well.

Now all going well your Firmware is up to date.

Now comes the fun part.  Putting your phone back together.  Not all of your apps will be installed correctly.  You will need to go to Applications, App.mgr. and look through the list to see what is not installed.  At this point you can reinstall some of your applications by choosing install.

Now the final stage is to put things back…. the easiest way to do this is to go back to Stage 1, the backup you made… rememember that…  it was Stage 1.  Go to the Back Up in Nokia PC Suite and choose restore backup.

Now go outside and enjoy the day.

Tags: n95, nokia by Me
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Ironic Mobile Advert Fail

Originally uploaded by wolfcat_aus

One of Eye Corps’s wizbang signs (the portrait plamsa tv’s) at Southlands had a modem failure 😉

It was even more ironic given that the add was for a mobile phone. of course it was for my mobile phone, so that adds to the whole circular nature of the experience, an Nokia taken a photo of a Nokia kind of thing.. all very deep and profound I am sure.

I always suspected that these adds were basically simple flash animations just running on a windows box. And the windows error message just proves it. Seriously what a waste of computer just to show some simple animations, but I guess some one is a paying a lot for these adverts that cost nothing to build and nothing to run.

Yep, I am definitely in the wrong business.

Tags: Funny, n95, Photos by Me
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The Nokia N95 1 (or as I like to call it the Nokia n95 Silver) has had a big firmware update..

• Nokia Maps 2.0 built-in
• Full N-Gage client
• Nokia Search 4.0 with Google plug-in
• Share online 3.0
• Enablers for Comes With Music
• Download! application updated (v 3.1.50)
• Upgrade to Music Player
• Update for Flash Lite 3 (improved viewing of sites like YouTube)
• Current consumption improvements (for e.g. WLAN scanning)
• New baseline for VoIP (with significant error corrections)

(thanks to All About Symbian) for the pointer….

and they also say that the 8gb version of this update should be out in the next few days as well.  I will let you know when it pops up.

Certainly I am looking forward to the NGage only being installed once 🙂  Expect a report on the firmware as soon as it comes out for the N95-8gb version.

And I think Nokia owes me money as well…. since I got my I know of 5 of these phones being sold to my friends and co-workers.  I really should get a cut 🙂

Tags: n95, nokia by Me
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Been up in Sydney for a few days for a planning workshop with the Sydney crew which was all very nice, amazing how much work you can get done in a 5 minute face to face conversation over a nice glass of red (Thanks for the invite to your place Chris).  And got to spend sometime with my sister and by time I mean complete a set of tasks revolving around setting up and fixing various bits of tech in the house.

But that aside… and back to the non work stuff, I managed to squeeze out some photos on the flights up and back and get some new GPS traces for you to look at in Google Earth.

When I finish the project at work that is a month late due to my lack of calcium intake and low immune system I will be playing some more with the plug in version of Google Earth and will try and get my KMLS to work off this site directly.  Also hopefully soon my ISP will get off their arse and put PHP 5 on my damned server and I can run some more scripts at this end to show off some of the data I have.

Anyway click on the images for the bigger versions of these Nokia N958-gb geotagged photos and then click here to download the following KML Files…

Sydney-to-Melbourne-Flight2.kmz and Melbourne-to-Newcastle-Flight.kmz Both of which have the taxi and take off sequence although the gps lost fix due to the rapid climb in height.  They are not the cleanest traces either but getting a fix inside a 737 is never easy, especially when you put your phone into flightmode and then put it away as well.

This Photo doesn’t look like much at this size, and infact only looks good once you get up to the larger sizes, but it is Canberra at Night. There is a touch of a reflection, but given that I use only a camera phone on Night Mode with the general vibrations of an Aircraft and a few glass of wine before the trip this worked out better value than I anticipated.

Tags: General, gps, n95, Photos by Me
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I finally found the bit of software I was after for my n95-8b.  It was a raw NMEA183 sentences log generator.  See the Sports tracker logs are o.k.  And yes it does create a very nice KML file for google earth.

But really three is a lot of data missing….  For example..  I can see only the average speed the max and min speeds.  With a Nema Log file I can see the speed and elevation e.t.c at any point of the trip.  Of course you need other software to deal with these files, but I have that from running things like OziExplorer on the R2H.

the software is called eGPSTrack .  A Java App that hooks into the internal GPS and writes all the raw GPS data at an interval that is configurable by the user.

This is from there about page….

“eGPSTrack is a gps tracking Java application for mobile devices with J2ME and a Bluethooth , internal or serial gps receiver. It isn’t a navigator, it is a positioning tool that tells you were you are at each moment, and which route you have been travelling. It is primarily aimed at outdoor activities such as trekking, hiking and cycling

eGPSTrack can load calibrated maps (cartographic or satellite images), and show your current track, position and direction on the map, providing you a global view of your trip. Old tracks can be loaded and showed at same time as your current track. Tracks can be exported to GPX and KML files so that you can view and edit them on a computer.”

There are some issues with the software, for example it doesn’t handle the rotation of the screen very well, and occasionally wigs out a little.  But it is a very low version number and it does what I want.  So if you really want to track yourself with your phone, rush out and download this FREE application.

Oh yeah… and one last dig….  Try and do that on your non jailbreaked Iphone… leave a gps task writing in the background whilsts listening to music, making a log file via Sports Tracker and taking a call 🙂  Sorry had to get that in. 🙂

Tags: gps, n95, nokia by Me
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As most of you should be aware I am a bit of a geotagging/gps nut (acutally I am just a nut).

with 99% of my photos geotagged on Flickr and a tendency to send out geotweets (is that even a word, guess it is now)  I am always trying to show people how to set up their phones to do it….

Well Kevin Anderson has written a great blog post based around an n82, flickr and geotagging.  And with him being a much more bettera writer than I am…. I figure I will just give you the link to his post and you can read it all over there.  It works for the N95 and N78 roughly the same as well.
Howto: Geo-tagging photos for an easy map mashup

P.S

I may have finally found the raw nema writing for the n95-8gb that I have wanted for a long time, but I didn’t read the manual for the software so I have yet to get it working properly (will get back to you on this shortly)

Tags: gps, n78, n95, nokia by Me
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As Promised here are a few photos to compare the cameras on the Nokia N78 (3.2 Autofocus Camera) and the Nokia N95-8gb (with its 5mg Autofocus Camera).

Both of these were done on default settings and because I am ambidextrous I took the photos simultaneously as well.

Note to self: Must stop doing that in public makes me look even more of a tosser than I actually am.

Oh and click on images for bigger versions as well

This photo is looking at the N78 having just taken a photo of the n95…. Notice the Finger prints on the black plastic already.

Long View – N95

Long View – N78

Plant – N78

Plant – N95-8gb

The only other thing to note is that the only two photos that was nativelly geotagged was the N95 Plant and the N78 window, the rest of the Tags I have added in Flickr.

With the N78 it geotagged the window shot, even with out the Assisted GPS turned off using the new Auto Geotagging built into the firmware.  I do think it is a bit faster at getting a fix that the N95 but it was using Location Tagger which is still the only way to do it on the N95.  Evidently it will be coming in the next firmware update.

The N95 Plant shot was tagged as I had the GPS already running using Sports Tracker for logging my driving in the car.

I will try some geotagging tests soon.

Tags: n78, n95, Photos by Me
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30 Minute play review…

Candybar Bar verses Slider. I actually prefer the candy bar design. Sure it may be in most cases slightly bigger in your pocket, but one it is open the N95 is longer and thicker and heavier than the n78. And after 7 months my slider is not as tight at is used to be and the whole phone has a bit of a wobble, something that is not going to happen with the n78.

TV Out or FM transmitter… tough call, I have used and would use both. TV out is great in that you can make a presentation and take just your phone to a location and show clients something, or just review your holiday snaps on a big screen at the hotel. The FM transmitter means that you can listen to your music in the car straight from your phone. I’m still deciding which would be the more useful… work or pleasure.

The Camera is a big thing and so the N95-8gb camera wins hands down just on megapixel count and both phones have the same LED type flashes anyway so there is nothing in that.

The GPS is better located sitting at the top of the device as is the headphone socket (some thing that I really wish the N95 did) And it is good if not better at getting a fix as well. Also the Australian version came with a 3 month trial of the navigation.

I don’t see the problem that a lot of people seem to have that navigation costs more. I have paid for it and did so over buying TraveRoute for the R2H for the simple reason that I have my phone on me more than the R2H 9oh yeah and it is cheaper. Plus you are only paying for Navigation not the maps. You can see where you are and how to get somewhere for free anyway.

I have updated the Firmware straight away (came with 11.043 out of the box, going to 12.046),.  There was an issue with the updater saying it didn’t work, but it had 🙂 The Maps version has not been updated to Maps 2, as from a quick series of google looks there are issues with FP2 and the latest maps. (Pity)

The other great pity is there no Games or N-Gage on the phone. Games are great for one thing killing time on your phone. There is not even a version of snake for example. Power users will have no problems finding and installing free games, but Joe Average might end up paying for things that he didn’t need to.

The heart beat thing is also not upsetting me… I thought it would but given that the phone looks off when it is resting it is reassuring to know that it hasn’t died 🙂

Conclusion… If you want to get into the smart phone game the N78 is a winner. Sure the case will be used by CSI at some point in time to lift your finger prints.. but the geotagged photos will prove you were not at the location anyway. It may not have the screen and grunt of the N95 8gb, but it is a worthy device never the less.

I will put together some photos over the weekend to compare the devices and also the cameras as well.

Tags: n78, n95, nokia by Me
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