David Pitkin

Who knew there was a Google Earth Store where they sold cool stuff like the Trackstick II. With it you can upload your track like I have been doing with the Nokia Sport Tracker to Google Earth via a kml file. It can also provide you with the GPX file you need to link with your camera photos to your location and automatically save the location in the photo itself. The Google Earth/Keyhole team continues to impress me.

Update: The Trackstick II requires Windows to export your files. That is kind of lame given the outputs are all open formats.

I attended my first MoMo Boston event this week, the topic was location based services and maybe because it was in a classroom I had the natural urge to take notes so here they are.

My takeaway was that location based services on your mobile phone have been stuck in the same place for 3 years. When I had my Nokia 6820 from AT&T there was an awkward wap site where you could put in a friends mobile number and through an opt-in process subscribe to their cell tower based location. You could then pick a friend from your list and search for a restaurant in-between both of your current locations. This application would have been a great demo even today at such an event. We have not progressed very far.

The presenters were all good. uLocate presented their where.com GPS widgets. They were pitching their platform for Location Based Services so shared their pain in dealing with the individual carriers, phone operating system diversity and testing of location based services.

Skyhook shared some numbers about their coverage, they have mapped 18 million wifi access points and have about 70% of the US population mapped. Ryan said they had some N800 code working, I hope that they enable Maemo Mapper for Skyhook with a Loki app.

The event itself was great, the classroom was filled. There were more Mac’s than PC’s so I fit right in with mine. 7 minutes for a presentation was a good amount of time and Jeff Glass did great as the moderator.

Nokia Europe released a N-series Mac app to transfer music AND pictures from your phone to iTunes and iPhoto! Previously it was only for the N91 that could play music from iTunes. Your phone connected with bluetooth can show up as a camera in iPhoto to transfer pictures from and you can fill your phone any % you want of random songs from your iTunes library when connected.

This is a Macintosh week, as I am swapping my HP tablet and MacBook Pro on and off every work week so I can play with both operating systems. A new version of Twitterific and the Nokia app today were great Mac additions.

I arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico and needed to get to the other side of the 100 mile island to the HP Plant in Aguadilla. I was already familiar with the roads near the plant but getting out of San Juan and across the island in a rental car was another matter. The map that Avis provided was in English (a plus) and that was all I had provided to me.

I did however pack my new N800 Navigation kit, as I sat in my cool blue Chevy Malibu I attached the horn looking mount to the windshield and fired up the n800. Oh crap there are not maps of Puerto Rico included! I could have checked before I left but other things were on my mind. Ah well I used the Avis map to navigate out of the city and onto Route 22 a road with many tolls that went directly across the north coast of the island to my destination.

As I drove across the island I thought to try the Nokia Maps application on my N80. One of the cool things about the N800 nav kit is that the GPS is a bluetooth model that works with other devices. It connected right away and started to download maps via GPRS! I had roads in Puerto Rico abit on a small screen. I was in business and was confident in my location and where I was going. I was a little bored so I thought why not try out the turn by turn navigation option but I knew already that you had to pay to enable it. I asked for a route and it connected over the network, when you click start navigation a prompt to purchase shows up. It actually offers you a few subscription options such as 1 day, 7 days and 1 year and 3 years. I chose the 7 day option for 11$ USD! Voice guides were downloaded and I was in turn by turn navigation mode, nice.

Now the screen on the N80 is small. This led me to attempt to get some sort of maps on the N800 and load up Maemo Mapper. Now this grey market program can connect to the same Bluetooth GPS and downloads maps from a URI to Google, Microsoft or any other map provider. This is not entirely okay with the copyright restrictions on the maps but was downloading maps through another bluetooth connection to my N80 and on the windscreen. Score update.

Now I already know the few roads around Aguadilla and the North East corner of the island so cruising around with the N800 works great for a few days.

On Friday evening I made the trek back to San Juan. And started right off with Nokia Maps, at first it told me that it was back in an unlicensed state! I attempted to buy another license and it correctly told me that it was already licensed and started to work again. It was an easy ride back across the island. No points awarded since Maps crashed the phone when I attempted to redial a call from my bluetooth headset. I am still impressed that it tried, this little device was connected to a bluetooth GPS, downloading maps and route information from a GPRS connection as well as making phone calls back to the US, all of this in the Caribbean ocean and 1,600 miles from home.

Back in San Juan and near the aeropuerto. I needed to find the Courtyard Marriot where I was staying. Hmm Nokia Maps has no POI database in San Juan, I did a search for Marriott and it returned a few hotels in Florida (only 900 miles away) and even a few in Boston! How useless is that. Okay we have even more technology here. I called the hotel first and got some directions that I could follow. I also fired up Google Maps mobile on the N80 to find the hotel address. It worked as perfect as a Java app on an S60 device can first by prompting me to allow it to access the network and then by letting me triple tap the hotel name in. This is where it got really wacky. The addresses in Puerto Rico are in a mix of Spanish and English, so the Hotel shows its address like 7031 Boca… but Nokia maps could not find it. Never mind that in this area of San Juan near the big casinos there are a bunch of one way and confusing streets. I eventually wound up at the Hotel from the directions on the phone as none of the devices were any strong help except Google Maps!

I can’t believe how much stuff actually worked (like Nokia Maps and Google Maps) and how much at the same time I had traditional methods like paper maps and phone calls to actually get myself around. It was nice to have lots of options.

I took my N800 to Puerto Rico this week. It worked out great, I was able to jump on open wifi and use GPRS all over the island. Once online I could check gmail, facebook, twitter, and forums all without lugging and opening up a laptop. It also was great for maps and navigation but that is a story in itself.

The highlights was making my first Gizmo call home when I had no mobile coverage. I did have wifi that worked best in the bathroom of all places in the room.

On the plane home I checked out the pictures I took with the N80 on the screen by popping the miniSD card into the n800. When I did not grab the N800 I used google mail, widsets and shozu on the N80, I continue to be impressed with the N80. If only the networks I use had 3G coverage and used the same frequency as Europe. . . The only camera I carried was my N80 which made it a truly mobile communication device providing calls, pictures, navigation, information and even sent a video up to youtube while standing there outside Castillo de San Felipe del Morro.

The only gripe is that the battery life could be better! This has always been the case but it really hurts when you are relying on it for so many things. It continues to be nice to only need one power adapter for most of my mobile devices the list of: N80, N800, BH-800 headset and LD-3W GPS all use the new 2.5mm Nokia jack so one car adapter for them all. I can’t wait for the CA-100 to ship so I can even suck power from any USB port ;)

First the requisite picture of all the stuff out of the box. Not pictured is a car charger with a new nokia style 2.5mm connector, just the one charger for the GPS and Tablet but I guess you can always run one on it’s battery while the other is charging.

It is really nice that now almost all my Nokia gear uses the exact same charger.

The Navicore software installer crashed under Vista, first time that happened to me. I then used a Windows XP machine to run the installer. You pick the locations (USA East, USA West, and Canada) and voices depending on how much of the included 2GB MiniSD card you want to fill up.

While that installer was copying a GB over USB I paired the LD-W3 GPS with my N80ie and started up the Nokia Maps app, it worked perfect! The GPS locked on fast and worked great even indoors.

The funniest thing I noticed is that the intersection on the Nokia box happens to be Route 2 and 495 which is about 10 miles from my house!

I am really excited to take this out on the road!

Antonio asked me if I had ever spent a lot of money on a mobile phone. I had to say yes, the most outrageous phone I ever owned was a R380 Ericsson phone around the year 2000. I don’t even want to remember what it cost. Running EPOC which was the precursor to today’s Symbian S60 when the company was called Psion. It was so damn cool.

Sometime after that I also had the first bluetooth headset from Ericsson the HBH-10 that went along with an imported T28.

I installed Vista this weekend, it did not live up to the hype as all reports have said.

I had a return love affair with my Macintosh. I either found or used all these new applications and features the next day with very pleasing results:

BluePhoneElite Version 2 Beta ! Now with Symbian and great SMS and support. This app integrates my mobile phone with the laptop, for example I can type SMS messages on the keybaord and send via the phone (so replies are easy for the recipient), it pauses iTunes when the phone goes out of bluetooth range, and flashes the address book entry on the screen when someone calls resulting in a very pretty caller-id, more features I am sure are in there.

Timezone support in iCal: I am scheduling a meeting today with people in Melbourne, Australia and California without access to enterprise calendaring and scheduling. I found the check box in iCal preferences to turn on Timezone’s! This puts a drop down menu in the upper left corner to pick what time zone you are viewing the calendar. It is a great feeling when I want an application to do something smart and I go search and it is there and better than I could have imagined, the opposite is more often true.

Coda I help a friend put up pictures on his business website Kenney Land Care Coda a new Panic app is great for just that. Added bonus it imported my Transmit bookmark, nice because they are the same company. Small gripe the ssh client does not use my terminal ssh keys.

Twitterific There is a little check box to “update IM status” with your latest tweet, I use Adium and not iChat. I would have expected the dialog box to ask what IM client so that different ones would work with the feature, I checked it anyway. Nope it just works with both.

• FlickrMate Last I installed this TextMate bundle which lets me easily insert my flickr pictures a document without a switch to a web browser, very slick.

Now for some perspective, when I installed Vista ULTIMATE using the retail dvd the next thing I did was put in the Office 2007 ULTIMATE dvd. It was not recognized, I thought the dvd could be bad so I put it in my Mac and it read it just fine. I figured out that the dvd burner I used to install Vista is not supported/recognized. Wait you say, I installed from it? Somehow the installer has more or better drive support than the system itself, I don’t understand that at all, guess it is good I can reboot back into XP.

After a few weeks of the website and svn repository offline it appears that the typo team is back on the job. I can’t wait to see what they have done.