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Touch typing on the N95 8GB

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Whilst at a number of concerts I had to type fast, very fast on a mobile phone keyboard. Within a very short time I began touch typing. I can type whilst looking around. That’s a useful feature of certain phones. It’s useful because it means the keyboard is well designed.

Are there many mobile devices that you use and can you touch type on them. Do you touch type on your blackberries, iphones or other devices or do you see that as the preserve of computer use?

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Sony and Crosscall Mobile phone advertising

Byrichard

The Sony Xperia Z5 compact is for women who blog about fashion and the Sony Xperia M5 is for baristas who dream of owning a sports car but can’t quite pay for it yet. These adverts will never hook me in to wanting their products. I’m the type of person who lives in the countryside and spends his weekends in the mountains on adventures.

I want the Sony Xperia Z5 because of it’s fast autofocus, it’s new technology and it’s 4k recording technology and new image sensor. The geek press gave me information about the device and that’s what woke up my interest. Marketing to geeks is all about the specs and the technology. Marketing to normal people is about “This is the lifestyle you have and this device will survive it”. In the land of Sony people live in cities. Now to contrast with crosscall.

 

Crosscall make rugged strong mobile phones and their advertising is more in line with my own lifestyle.In the space of one month I shattered three screens on two phones. Two of those screen shatters were as a result of playing Ingress. In one case I stood up and the phone slipped from my lap on to the floor, bounced and then fell down again. It fell about two metres and the screen became unresponsive. In the second case I tripped on a step and fell with my hand rotated so that the screen took the impact rather than my wrist. I was so disgusted with myself for the incident that I was tempted by the Crosscall Odyssey+. The phone is rugged and would probably survive such a fall. It has excellent battery life but it’s data connection leaves to be desired especially when playing location based games like Ingress.

Crosscall advertise their devices as rugged, for the adventurous among us. They use runners, surfers, climbers and snowboarders as brand ambassadors. It’s through one of Xavier De La Rue’s posts on Facebook that I learned of the brand and that my curiousity was peaked. The Crosscall Odyssey+ is a niche device. The Trekker X1 has a better chance of appealing to a broader audience.

 

I love that devices by Sony and Crosscall are being advertised as weatherproof now. As an iphone user I liked that Lifeproof provided me with weatherproofing. I appreciate that brands are making their devices weatherproof by default. Soon it will be possible to throw people in to pools without warning once again… once autumn and winter have left place for next summer, of course.

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Mobile video streaming and the future of video sharing

Byrichard

Two years ago we had the World cup and with that came hundreds of videos shot in cities around the world of people celebrating soccer (or football as a sport). At the time everyone would go out with their video camera, record the footage, wait till they got home, capture it and share via a number of sharing sites.
The problem with this is that it’s both slow and tedious. It takes too much time and organisation to do. That’s where a new generation of mobile video streaming devices come in. Some applications like Qik and Bambuser are limited to people with cheap data rates via their mobile operators. As a result their services are not so interesting.
What was missing from the market place were mobile video streaming services that would allow the content creator to backup the video to their mobile device before sharing it either over the air via 3g networks or wifi. Three services allow for this Kyte, which Scoble has talked about recenty, Flixwagon which I have talked about recently and then Livecast.
Each of these video services allows you to save the video as you’re streaming.
Kyte is interesting because it allows for you to share pictures, video, polls and audio from one application.
Flixwagon is interesting because it allows you to compile all the metadata you want to have included with the video before you stream. It allows you to categorise it within set niches, then add keywords to make finding the video easier.
Livecast is the most recent one I’ve tested (just a few minutes ago) and this one allows you to choose how much bandwidth you want to use, from just 24kb to 160kb. It gives you a stream limit of 2 gigabytes and storage of 100 megabytes… (if I remember right.) It differentiates itself with the stream from file option. You can record a number of videos on your phone and choose to send them at another time. It works well enough

Video streaming is an easy way of sharing video with your friends without the need for a computer. As a result we should expect quite a bit more coverage of live events from the audience’s point of view, not just big budget broadcasters.

This is a little rambling but it’s fun to see what’s available.

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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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Seesmicing from anywhere

Byrichard

I like to seesmic but there’s no way I want to be stuck in one place without moving around. It’s more fun when you see people aren’t in a desk situation. Here are four places from which to seesmic and make things more interesting.

Seesmic from here.

The Lake Side

Yet another nice view

The Mountains

Nice view

And where to have lunch 🙂

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The Crosscall Odyssey Plus

Byrichard

 

The Crosscall Odyssey Plus fills two niches. It is a rugged weather proof phone rated to the IP 68 standard and is equipped with dual sim capability. This makes it ideal for the sports I enjoy, mainly via ferrata as pictured below and hiking. It comes with a smaller carabiner than the one pictured below. I swapped it for one of my own.

1030283

IP 68 is a code to determine how resistant a device is to both particulate matter and liquids. 6 denotes that the device is dust tight so particulate matter will not make it’s way in. 8 as defined by the manufacturer denotes that this device can be submerged for half an hour at 1m before damage occurs. If you get caught in the rain or have to cross a river the phone should survive.

Another interesting feature is the dual sim capability. This phone allows for two microsims to be used at once. In my case I have a Swiss sim card and a french one. Both sims are constantly active so you can select whether to make phone calls from Sim 1 or Sim 2. You can also select which sim card is using the data plan.

It runs android 4.3 and works fine with the TomTom app, the ingress and others. I found that battery life is also comfortable. With me as a user the battery lasts for a day.

more info

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Some “livestreams”

Byrichard

It’s a shame I was running low on battery last night because I was at the Fanzone in Geneva for the Italy Vs. France match. I managed to stream a few moments of the game. Since the Italians have won this game we can look forward to a lot of noise on Sunday if and when they win. 

Perfect for me and live streaming.

 
The Penalty.

Post match euphoria for the Italians, by then the French were already heading home.

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