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Nokia and the Sportstracker

Byrichard

A few weeks ago I was in Paris and when someone pulled out the iphone I commented that it’s a bureaucratic tool but wasn’t sure why. The n95 is a flexible fun phone to play with especially when looking at Sportstracker. It’s an application I use every time I walk around. I’m not alone. Over a million people downloaded the application.

Eventually more than 1 million people downloaded the program and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding.

As a result, Nokia developers are realizing that aiming the application at amateur athletes was too narrow. They are thinking of rebranding the application as a kind of life-tracker. Based on the response to the software on Beta Labs, that may well help drive users to Nokia’s Ovi Web portal [also in beta testing], which is the basis of Nokia’s attempt to carve out a big piece of the evolving, mobile Internet. “It shows people they can do much more [with their handsets] than just make phone calls,” says researcher Kaasinen.

source

If i start a trip from work or home there’s a good chance I won’t let sportstracker report where I am live because I don’t want people to know certain details of my life. When I’m on holiday however this is a different matter. If I’m walking in St Moritz and I want my twitter or social media friends to see where I am then the sports tracker tells them where I am. With Flixwagon, Qik or Bambuser they can watch video of what I’m seeing as I’m seeing it.

That’s because you bring your friends with you with these new technologies. The digital lifestyle is more inmportant in how we relate to people and whilst in a place like Switzerland it may help to isolate people in high adoption areas of such technologies it has the reverse effect. Look at the Social media scene in London as just one example. It’s just a matter of time before other manufacturers catch up and these toys become mainstream.

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Interbine – Free your Mobile video – delivery via Wifi…

Byrichard

is an automated service that grabs videos from RSS feeds and converts them to 3gpp for easy download to the N95 and other mobile phones running the s60 OS. There are a number of default shows including MobuzzTV, Zefrank, National Geographic, DiggNation, Rocketboom and a number of other well known shows.

In the right hand column you have another four methods of accessing content, searching, browsing according to keywords, highest rated or what’s new. The second option is to browse through the directories they have selected to find the categories that are closest to your particular interests.

The final element is add a channel. If I wanted to I could take the RSS feed for the videos I have produced and create a channel to share with others with tags and more. The Personal feed is like a channel but for private use. The search feed works according to tags placed by other people in their videos. If you want video content about a music festival or event in a town by where you live then add those search terms and when video content appears it will be fed straight to your phone. Add youtube feed and video clip are self explanatory.

The website does not limit itself to the feeds that they have selected. With their firefox extension you may go to the youtube content of your choice and create channels of your choice. They appear in your account on the Interbine website.

Over the AIR (OTA) deliver

Once all the shows you want have been selected and the interbine application is selected you have a number of methods for downloading content over the air (OTA). These are WIFI, via the phone carrier and bluetooth. The option I have tested most extensively is Wifi. Once you’re in the application you have the option to sync all the video data you have selected and it will come to your phone for later viewing.

Since this is a mobile device there are a number of settings that are relevant, especially if you choose to get data via the carrier. These are how much space to allocate on the phone, how much data transfer you want to allow per month and how long the data will stay on your phone.

The Player

The application has a built in player that allows you to view the content per channel and then per video, allows for resuming, and syncing of the media for viewing. So far though I have had one minor inconvenience. I can’t get sound to work. I had the same problem with the youtube player so i don’t mind. (Turns out that problem was due to the warnings being off on the sound profile. That has since been fixed and it works fine) The work around has been to use the media gallery, play the content once and delete it once viewed.

What I like

What I like about this service is that it makes video content retrieval and viewing a far smoother experience than before. It may take some time to set up but once everything set according to your preferences everything else is automatic. Once you get back from work you open the application, sync your content and the next morning as you commute you’ve got a choice of video content to watch.

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Twitter as a way of life

Byrichard

Twitter is not a social network, rather it’s a way of life. The more you use Twitter the further it gets into your way of life. It allows you to follow current affairs, geek out about social media and keep in touch with friends that uses the social network. What’s more it’s a network that does not require any specific device.

At first it’s a confusing place. Look at the public timeline and it’s a torrent of junk and sifting through it will take hours a day. As you spend more time on twitter though you find people of interest to follow. In some cases it’s friends from the physical world, in other cases friends from other websites on the web and then more.

In reality what makes twitter interesting, and part of what makes people use it is how efficient it is at getting a message across. You’ve got 140 characters to express yourself. In Paris I was told I speak in 140 characters or less. That’s not a bad thing. In fact it’s good. It’s about the continual flow of information.

Imagine you’re swimming down a river but everytime you move to stay afloat you have to close your eyes. That’s what article and blog reading is. As you focus on one task so your ability to focus on anything else dissapears. That’s fine in the old media where pages are static and where airwaves are limited.

In the modern world though it is necessary to absorb many sources of information at once. How many of you have your ipod, laptop and mobile phone with you at the time you’re reading this post? I’m sure most. How many of you have more podcasts than you can view or listen to? How many of you have more programs recorded on PVR than you can watch?

That’s why twitter is a lifestyle. It’s about constantly looking for information and building an understanding of current affairs through constantly taking in little bits of information. Stop talking about the social media on twitter, rather start talking about the good old fashioned time efficient soundbyte. Want to be heard. Don’t take people’s time. Encourage interest instead.

Many people are complaining about the decentralised conversation, the notion that blogs are no longer the center of attention, that twitter, friendfeed, facebook and others are killing the conversation. In fact quite the opposite is true. If you’re in New York you’ve got one set of people, if you’re in London you’ve got another. if you’re in Geneva you don’t have much… To have a decentralised conversation means that many ideas can be explored at once and as pillars of the online community meet at various events so the conversations can once more converge.

Don’t worry about comments on a blog, think about the conversations and the people you’re having them with. That’s where the fun is to be had.

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Videocamp, Paris

Byrichard

A few days ago I was in Paris to meet the Francofous and in the process I passed by La Cantine where they were holding a Videocamp. It’s like a barcamp but rather than talking about radio and podcastng people talked about peer to peer video sharing, citizen journalism and other topics.

I filmed a few people presenting what their seminars had been about and finally they’re available via my website.

Please note that the videos are in French.

Video 1

Video 2

And yes it is very lazy of me to distribute the videos like this but I don’t have time to edit the content at the moment. If anyone wants to offer a transcript of what’s said I’ll credit you for the work.

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A lakeside stream

Byrichard

With 3g and fast mobile broadband access on the horizon more and more people will be streaming their content live for those across the world to see. Of interest around Geneva in the next few days is the European cup. We may find a few more people than usual in the streets and this may be of interest to people.

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Sports tracker and Google Earth

Byrichard

Six thousand steps later and I’ve created yet another track via the Sports tracker application for the N95. What’s fun is that within a few seconds of arriving home I can bluetooth the KML file to my laptop, open it in google earth and I’ve got an arerial view of the wintery walk I took

The walk I did earlier

If I could get a wintery map then it’d be perfect as the ground is covered in snow.

Update: I tested the “upload to service” and that’s interesting too. All the tracks are stored there and you can upload images and more. If you know a few people using the service you can compare your tracks with them. Failing that you can share with the world and see what they’ve added.

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Mapping wifi availability easily

Byrichard

Wifi is something that should be ubiquitous so that our digital lifestyle may not be limited to being online at home or at work. It should include, bars, restaurants and city squares. In some cities wifi is easy to find but in others that’s not the case.
The lazy way to do wifi mapping could be with the geo loc software on the n95, a flickr account and free wifi. Everytime you find free wifi, get the GPS co-ordinates, include them in the exif and upload them to twitter. Once that’s done get the rss feed of the geo tagged images and feed them to google earth.