I’ve been hesitant to write this post, mainly because it’s such a slow movement, but I’m seeing a change in Nokia over the past year or two that I haven’t seen before, and I think it’s a really good change. Of course, they’re going to need to move much faster if they want to really make an impact, but it’s nice to see some movement, nonetheless.
I’m talking about Nokia’s attempts to shake the quiet arrogance confidence that they’re known for and really speak up and out about their products and company. The first Nokia event I ever attended was the Go: Play event in London where they announced N-Gage 2.0, the N81 and N95 8GB. It was also the first event where Nokia used the word ‘Ovi’. I’ve since attended 3 Nokia World events (I’m missing this year, unfortunately) and watched countless product announcements online via video.
All of these keynotes/announcements have been roughly the same, up until the Nokia N97 announcement at Nokia World 2008. Several others noticed something different -- Anssi Vanjoki made the presentation, and there were several differences from previous product launches.
For starters, Anssi went in-depth about the origins of the Nokia N97 and the various thought processes that went into the device. He also loosely referenced competitors Apple and Google for the first time ever, and took a friendly stab at Engadget, as well. It was a very powerful keynote, one that led me to say that Nokia was finally on the offensive. It was the first time anyone knew without a doubt that the Nokia leadership *doesn’t* perform their job in a bubble, and it was really refreshing, sitting in the room and seeing a dramatically different kind of announcement from Nokia.
Not long after that, the Nokia N900 along with Maemo 5 was announced, and this was immediately noticeable as something completely different. If you compare the marketing message for the N900 to that of the N97, you’d know this was a different Nokia. The intro videos used a very loud and ‘in-your-face’ music, a stark contrast to the gently, friendly tones used in most Nseries and Eseries intro videos.
In addition, the print advertising used hard lines and who can forget the ‘maemo project’ online video campaign?
But it’s not just changes in the presentation and marketing, either. Recently, Rita and I decided to shut down Symbian-Guru.com. It was a long, fully-thought-out decision that took us months to actually commit to, and we didn’t really expect nearly the reaction we got. One thing that neither of us seriously considered was a direct response from Anssi Vanjoki, one of Nokia’s more well-known executives.
For reference, Anssi and I go way back -- in fact, he’s partially responsible for Symbian-Guru itself and my experiences in going from forum junky to blogger and beyond. You see, Anssi did an interview with Wired magazine back in 2006, where he showed off his Nokia N91 running Symella -- a P2P app that I had been in the midst of campaigning the developer to port to S60v3. Since the N91 ran S60v3, I emailed Anssi to see if he would at least share the .sis file so we could use it on our new S60v3 phones, too. After a few emails back and forth, Anssi revealed he had a special unit of the N91, but encouraged me nonetheless. I eventually (with the help of many users on HowardForums) persuaded the developer to port the app, and started emailing all the blogs that I read of the big news. None seemed to care, so I decided I’d start my own damn site, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Back to the present -- when I published our post on Symbian-Guru, Anssi came out with a direct response on Nokia Conversations, the official Nokia blog, letting us know ‘the fightback starts now’. As I exited my role at Symbian-Guru, Anssi picked up his new one as the head of Mobile Solutions at Nokia. His blog post (his first ever blog post, I believe) described how he was going to bring the fight back to Nokia, and he gave some specifics. If you’ve ever met Anssi Vanjoki, or even been in the same room, you’ll know he has a very powerful presence, and I believe he’s one Nokian who knows what needs to be done, they just need to let him do it.
A few days ago, Niklas Savander, Nokia’s head of Sales and Marketing, hopped on Twitter for an hour to answer questions from anyone who tweeted at him. He managed to avoid all of my questions, but answered a ton, nonetheless, and I believe it was really him, and not just a PR hack playing Ghost Writer.
The point is, where Nokia has always been known by their quiet, forceful demeanor, its executives are beginning to speak out and act….openly competitive. It’s refreshing, in my opinion, and they need to do more of it. In a world of Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Steve Ballmer, and Ralph De La Vega, companies need to have a public face that’s capable of creating change.
Another way that Nokia is really stepping out, moreso than any other mobile manufacturer that I’ve found, is their online presence. I wasn’t able to find an exact roster, but here’s a list of official Nokia Twitter accounts, as well as a list of Nokians who tweet (these may not all be ‘official’ Nokia Twitter accounts). They also have the incredible Nokia Conversations blog, which is run by some of the smartest dudes and dudettes Nokia has on board. The best part is knowing that Nokia actually monitors its brand on Twitter -- they’re quick to respond to questions, comments, and complaints there. Nokians on Twitter are also personable, as demonstrated by the personal accounts of various Nokians, such as @chansearrington, @jgallo02, and @docmobile.
Nokia still has a long way to go to fix all that I believe is wrong with the company and its products, but I think they’re starting on the right path. They need to move faster, and I think they can, if they shed some extra weight and focus their attention on the right priorities. I’m still happy as a clam with my Nexus One, but I’m still a Nokia fanboy at heart, and I hope to see more instances where the company is breaking out of its shell and revealing the competitive monster it can be. Exposing your executives to the public is a microscopic step, but it’s a step, nonetheless. Keep walking, Nokia, you’ll either learn how to run or you’ll trip and fall on your face. Either one would probably be a good learning experience.
So you want to know how to improve your Facebook experience? It’s easy – disable email notifications. Facebook’s notification emails give you the absolute minimal amount of information, followed by a handy link to get you to load up your profile and check things out in depth. When someone comments on something, Facebook’s notification emails tell you what they said, but don’t give you any other context – so you have no idea what exactly the comment is relating to (typically, at least). So, about a week and a half ago, I simply turned Facebook notification emails off.
To turn Facebook notification emails off, open Facebook.com (sign in, obviously), and click on ‘Account’ in the top right corner, then choose ‘Account Settings’ from the drop-down list. From there, click the ‘Notifications’ tab.
Annoyingly, this isn’t a quick task – you have to individually uncheck every one of the little boxes shown in the photo to the left – there’s no ‘check all’ or ‘uncheck all’ button. Once I did this, though, I’ve noticed that I have a much more enjoyable Facebook experience, for a few reasons:
1. I’m much more likely to comment/like other people’s stuff – when you have email notifications enabled, you get an email any time anyone comments or likes something after you – this can prove especially frustrating on things like baby announcements or other postings that are guaranteed to get hundreds of likes and comments. When you know your email inbox won’t be flooded with followups, you’re free to interact with your friends more.
2. I spend more quality time on Facebook – this one surprised me. I initially thought that if I wasn’t getting notified externally (email), I would be on Facebook 24-7, to make sure I didn’t miss anything. However, quite the opposite happened – I started spending less ‘empty’ time there and more quality time – engaging with and interacting with friends and acquaintances. I now only check Facebook maybe two or three times during the day, instead of leaving the page open all day or checking it every hour.
3. Facebook Messages aren’t as annoying – Facebook’s Messaging system is built just like email. While this works good for alot of things, it really sucks when someone adds you to a list to which everyone always replies-to-all. There’s no way to opt out of these types of ‘conversations’ – when someone responds, you get the notice, every time, whether it pertains to you or not. As with commenting on popular posts, this gets really old, really fast.
If you’re getting tired of Facebook, I’d challenge you to try disabling email notifications before you give up on the site altogether. I’ve made tons of awesome connections on Facebook, and I’ve genuinely re-connected with people from earlier times in my life through the site, as well. While there are some valid reasons people quit Facebook, simply managing it properly can help you enjoy the connections without getting fatigued.
In college, I bought a 4th generation 20GB black and white iPod at Sam’s Club (the HP Edition, actually). Back then, my music collection was only 10GB, and I figured that gave me plenty of room to grow. While using that iPod, I developed a pretty simple, yet strict method for keeping my music library clean and fresh. This system requires two pieces of metadata – star ratings and playcount/last played – to be synchronized between my portable device and my desktop computer.
For star ratings, I use this differently than most people. When I’m listening to music, if I come across a track that, for whatever reason, I don’t want to have in my library, I give it 5 stars. Why 5? Because on an iPod, that’s the easiest rating to give something, no matter what else you’re doing (driving, walking, etc). I can use my iPod all day long, rating tracks, and then synchronize with my computer, sort by star rating, and delete the 5′s. Super easy, and I’ve still got 1-4 stars for an actual rating system.
Playcounts/last played come into effect when I want to keep things fresh. My music library is now coming up to 20,000 tracks, and let’s face it – there’s no easy way to manage that. What I’ve done is setup playlists for each genre – these smart playlists are automatically populated with tracks that I haven’t listened to in the past XX days. The timeframe isn’t really important (sometimes it’s 30, sometimes it’s 60), but what’s important is that it’s music I haven’t heard in a while, conveniently packaged in a playlist.
These playlists are also useful on phones that have limited storage – rather than painstakingly trying to figure out what to transfer (or worse, risk the ‘random’ sync and take up space with junk), I can limit these playlists to ~1GB in size and have several of them on an 8GB microSD with plenty of extra room.
Since that original iPod died several years ago, I’ve tried in vain to replicate that system using various phones as MP3 players. I’ve tried every version of Windows Mobile since 2005, Symbian (various versions), Android, and even BlackBerry, and no phone that I’ve found is able to synchronize star ratings and playcounts/last played back to the desktop, which is the core requirement for my system to work.
Windows Mobile does synchronize this, but Windows Media Player on the desktop is such a pain to use, I just couldn’t handle it. My last-ditch effort was to try the new DoubleTwist player on my Nexus One. They advertise full synchronization of both ratings and playcounts back to iTunes, so I figured it was worth a shot. I’ll be honest, I never synced my phone twice. The DoubleTwist app on my computer is slow as molasses – it has to re-load *ALL* of my music every time I launch it – that takes quite a while when you have 120GB. Further, once it’s done loading all your stuff, it has to talk to iTunes to find out any changes to your media there. It’s easily 30-45 minutes of ‘loading’ before I’m even able to use the app, much less synchronize anything with it.
Thus, after fighting it for several years, I finally broke down tonite and bought the 160GB iPod Classic. I’m not really happy about it, and I’ve had to switch from MediaMonkey back to iTunes for my desktop solution, but I finally have just that – a solution, instead of a clunky workaround. I bought the 160GB iPod Classic mainly because it’s pretty mellow – there’s no frills, and this is purely a functional toy, I don’t need a touchscreen or any apps and such. Second, I bought it because, at least currently, I can fit my entire 120GB music collection on it – which means I always have my entire collection with me, which is something I’ve missed since I’ve been using my phones, even the N97 which had 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot.
It’s really unfortunate, honestly. There are so many benefits to using your phone as your MP3 player that it’s not even funny. I really find it quite depressing that no one in the mobile industry is working to address these two small (but incredibly important) issues. I’ve spoken at length with the http://blog.ovi.com/2009/11/12/welcome-to-nokia-ovi-player/ team about this, and they’ve simply (repeatedly) said it’s just not on their roadmap right now.
I’m keeping my eye on DoubleTwist, though – with a few speed improvements, they could finally be the key that I’ve been looking for. In the meantime, I’ve got my 160GB iPod Classic, and I’ll be using it to weed out the crappy music tracks I’ve accumulated over the years, until someone else is able to compete.
Have you found a way to synchronize ratings and playcounts/last played with anything other than an iPod? What do you use to keep your music library fresh? Have you given up on locally-stored media and gone cloud-only with Last.FM or Pandora?
I bought my wife a Kindle 2 a few months ago, when the refurbs were on sale for ~$100. She reads a TON, so I had been eyeing them for a while, and jumped on it when they hit a more comfortable price-point. After trying to finagle some free e-books onto the device (not a great experience), I finally caved and purchased an e-book from Amazon. I bought Making Ideas Happen, which was recommended recently by my friend Chris Freeland.
Purchasing Content
As expected from Amazon, the masters of online purchasing, the buying experience was seamless. I purchased the book from my computer (because I had Chris’ post in my Google Reader starred items) and chose to have it delivered wirelessly to the Kindle. Within probably 1 minute of clicking the ‘purchase’ button, the book arrived on our Kindle and we had an email confirmation in Christina’s inbox.
You can purchase books and other content directly on the Kindle, thanks to its built-in wireless. I personally find this a bit slow and clunky with the e-ink display, but I suppose if you knew what book you wanted, it wouldn’t be a horrid experience.
Reading Content
The Kindle 2 has a smaller 6-inch display which is a few inches smaller than a standard size book (or at least the ones I used to read). As such, I felt like I was buzzing through the content, since I was constantly pressing the ‘Next Page’ button. You can easily tweak the font to be smaller, thus fitting more in the space, so I suppose it’s just a matter of personal preference (and how good your eyesight is).
The e-ink display is perfect for reading books and other printed content. Because it has no backlight, you can read it in just about any lighting or situation with no issues. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a backlight, so like a book, you won’t be reading in the dark without a USB clip-on light or something. The display is more-or-less grayscale, and even the background is darkened, much like a normal page in a book. It’s really an entirely different experience than the brightly-lit LCD and OLED displays that I’m used to looking at, and I noticed that my eyes didn’t hurt after extended use, as well.
To get an idea of how much better (or worse) this e-ink display was, I installed the Kindle for Android application on my Nexus One. Granted, this is a MUCH smaller screen (3.7-inches), but I wanted to compare the readability of OLED vs e-ink. After about half an hour on my Nexus One, it became abundantly clear why people prefer e-ink. Of course, the Kindle for Android app lets you adjust the display a bit, but there’s still no real comparison.
One drawback to e-ink, though, that did, admittedly, get rather frustrating, is its refresh rate – that is, the quickness (or lack thereof) with which it is able to change things on the screen. Once you click the ‘Next Page’ button, expect to wait about 1/2 second before you can continue reading. Similarly, using other features, which I’ll talk about shortly, becomes a painfully slow process. In a world where digital toys continue to move faster and faster, it’s quite odd to see something move so slow. However, after a few page-turns, I rather appreciated this sluggishness – books shouldn’t be blown through, but rather read slowly. It’s almost like a built-in brake for us Internet-speedy-types, and I like it.
Sharing Content
Yes, there is a social aspect to reading books on the Kindle, but it’s so subtle, you’re not likely to get distracted by it (which is *just* barely the acceptable level of interaction needed when reading). For starters, there’s a social highlighter feature. As you’re reading a book on the Kindle, you’ll see various places that have a *very* light dotted line, along with text such as ’37 highlights’ beneath it. This tells you how many other people who’ve read this book have underlined that specific text. Odds are, it’s something you want to either re-read a few times, or highlight yourself. These ‘suggested’ highlights are so light, I almost missed the first one – you can also turn them off completely if you want, but I found it really helpful as I was reading.
There is also a more active social aspect if you want to share a portion of text with your social network of choice. I haven’t set this up, mainly because I want to be reading and not worrying about Twitter or Facebook, but it’s there, nonetheless (and it might be handy here or there).
Experiencing Content
I used to read a ton of books when I was younger – mostly spiritual authors such as John Eldredge, Donald Miller, Brennan Manning, C.S. Lewis, and the like. I would go through five or six books a year, taking notes in the sidebar and underlining all over the place. I have a bookshelf in my office full of books, most of which I’ve read a few times over. Since technology gripped my soul, I haven’t really taken the time to really read a book like I used to.
I honestly don’t know if the Kindle would change that or not. I’m going to finish reading ‘Making Ideas Happen’ on it, and see what I think. Already, I’m enjoying the device itself – it’s super thin and light, feels solid in your hand, I could, theoretically, carry my entire bookshelf on it. The battery life is insane, too, though that’s not surprising with a monochrome display.
Overall, I’d say the experience matched my expectations dead on. There are some sacrifices (battery-powered, slow screen refresh, etc), but there are also some big wins (small and light, easy on the eyes, social highlighting, easy purchase). It’s a bit of an investment up front (I got this Kindle 2 for $100, but they normally go for $139-189, depending on the model). I can say without a doubt that I wish I’d had one of these in high school and college, when I was lugging around monstrous textbooks that I often couldn’t sell used because there was a ‘new edition’. The upfront cost would quickly have been covered by the convenience.
Have you tried an e-book reader? What’s your take?
A few nights ago, Christina and I were driving down to Corsicana to pick up our niece for the weekend. While driving, I decided that I needed to find a QuikTrip to get a good drink. Having just installed Google’s new Voice Search update, I tapped the shortcut I’d setup and said ‘Find the nearest QuikTrip‘. (Normally I’d call it a QT, but I figured I’d help the software out a bit). As expected, the phone responded a few seconds later with a list of QuikTrip gas station locations that were ‘near’ us. Good so far. Unfortunately, the two that it found were both in the OPPOSITE direction that I was currently heading down the freeway at 70MPH.
I’ve struggled with this before, and I suspect I’ll struggle with it again – while the latest and greatest location-based services are helpful, they all miss on a key component, and Nokia is the only company that I have heard use this word in the same sentence as location: context. In the situation above, my contextual location would have told the software that since I was heading down the freeway at 70MPH (and had been, with maps running, for a few minutes), that I probably didn’t want to turn around and go 10 miles in the opposite direction. My direction and velocity are the context, which should have told the software to look for QuikTrip locations along the highway that I was traveling on, in the direction in which I was traveling.
Another time this problem appears is in the automatic re-routing feature on most modern GPS systems. If I miss my turn (usually on purpose, for testing, but still), all it says for the next 10 minutes is a series of U-turn opportunities. What if I don’t want to make a U-turn, for whatever reason? Why not look ahead in the journey and see if you can re-route me in a forward motion?
It’s this intelligence that I’m anxiously looking forward to from today’s leading GPS applications (those being, in my opinion, Google Maps Navigation, Telenav, and Ovi Maps). Such an intelligence addition might bring the likes of TomTom and Garmin back to relevance in the marketplace, too. Basically, even when not actively navigating, I want to abolish this whole ‘search within an X mile radius‘ thinking from today’s location-based services, and get into more contextual results that take into account other aspects, such as speed and direction of travel.
Have you experienced this, too? What other contextual location data can you think of that would be helpful?
