Nokia Search 4 as the ultimate mobile shell

Sometimes it's rewarding to step out of defaults.
What's good for majority may not be so good for you, smartphone power users.

And it's just dawned on me that there might be another thing on your phone, a powerful piece of software which is under-rated and under-used.
It's called Nokia Mobile Search 4.0 and I think it can be used not just for search, but also as a shell for navigating your phone.
It has advantages of it's own and I will demonstrate it now.

Here's my active standby screen shot:

Shortcuts are a prime power in "marketing" phone software to users and I don't think defaults do justice to the power of S60 here. Luckily, S60 is highly customizable.

Of course, Search is already accessible from your Active Standby screen, but I prefer single-button launch for such often-used actions as navigation. Doing more clicks than one would be waste of time.
So I quickly followed the path: "Settings - General - Personalization - Standby Mode - Shortcuts" and have set the right standby softkey to Search.

As you can see from my Standby screenshot, I still have access to Contacts and Messaging from the Active Standby Apps bar.
You may also notice that I replaced "Create New Message" with "Messaging" - this combines both New Message and Inboxes into a single entry, and frees up one softkey (the other softkey is also freed by removing redundant Contacts shortcut).
Widsets has it's own clicks to do (Access Point selection) and is more of a platform, so it takes one of softkeys.
Where once was Lifeblog (sic! I prefer the PC version now), I placed Search.

What does it give me?
Well, simply "access to everything", if I don't enter search terms!

Unless you press some numeric/abc keys, you have categorized, sorted access to all you phone's content:

- Music (same structure as Music Player, sans podcasts)
- Contacts (consider simplicity of options there)
- Calendar (only items shown, no day/week/month view)
- Messages (Inbox and Sent items are combined)
- E-mail
- Images (albums supported)
- Videos (albums supported)
- Applications
- Notes
- Bookmarks
- Files (turned off by default)
- Landmarks
- Mail for Exchange
(more plugins are possible with Search SDK, it's up to developers now)

And if you start pressing dialpad keys, you enter a search term and you search across all those "domains"!
Once you get into that shell and start navigating, you notice nice sliding transitional effects, neat un-cluttered Options menus, scrolling text that makes long phrases usable, all that at a speed that will not disappoint!

Surely, this one "shell" cannot replace each and every function, but still I find it pretty usable for getting back at my phone's content. Some of you may already use applications that give you access to stuff by typing first letters.
I don't know if those use Search engine, but why not try the original?

It's free and you can switch off unneeded sections in Search Options, to speed it up even further.

Try it, you may like it. Even if you're bad at T9 as me, you still can "just browse" in Search...

Links: Nokia Search demo, FAQ and tutorial

The end of XPERIAments

New month, new hopes.
As you probably know, Nokia has just introduced a new flagman device, N97.
Looking at the demo and UI of that device, I could not stop myself from thinking -

"This is the end of SonyEricsson XPERIA, there's so much more behind Nokia's offering...
Now XPERIA looks like another custom WinMo device, with that Panels user interface which is niche by design".

"Seriously - who wants to have multiple Panels? Why would a normal Joe User want a different view and UI every now and then?
To make himself accustomed to new ways all the time? Really, for UE junkies only."

Besides, it tries to push a new concept on you, one that all apps are just panels on the Panels Home screen (and there are multiple Home Screens!), and this would require developers to learn new things about panel setup, usability, coding. Not every one of those plain vanilla WinMo developers would just jump into that.

Another concept not only for user, but for a developer, too. Another API to learn.
Why would they invest extra time to support a tiny fraction of a WinMo market?
This is geek-only UI, utterly niche, more so than Apple was in the 90s."

I have my doubts that X1 will have success. I have had them even before N97 announcement, now they're even stronger.
XPERIA user interaction concept is bad example of when a feature hunger led to less ergonomic (although more flexible) design.
X1 was announced pretty long ago and I remember my buddy's excitement. He was an SE fan (like myself 5 years ago) and he wanted to get X1 badly. But he could not wait and got iPhone instead. Come on, Apple ships them for 18 years already, and only now Nokia and SE can put out an answer, besides both of them have had touch-screen devices for quite some time.

It will still take them some time to reach the same slick level of user experience and simplicity in access to advanced functions. Was Mr. Jobs right in his bravado about iPhone being 5 years ahead of any competitor?

N97 will also finally compel all existing N95 users (including myself) to upgrade.
A new era, indeed.

With UIQ let down, in 2009 we will have only those platforms competing for our (and the developers') mindshare and markeshare:

Google Android
Nokia Symbian
Apple iPhone
and Microsoft Windows Mobile

Ewan from AllAboutSymbian put out very similar thought about the market - it's tightening up - less players and more competition.

Will Nokia, like Microsoft, come in and take away Apple's crown, and put them back into smartphone niche?
Time will tell.
My POV is "Developers, Developers, Developers..." plus do something to consolidate app exploration, purchase and installation

Maybe it's a good idea for Nokia to provide free classes for Symbian developers?

Nokia Comes with Sex

Yes, really.

In the sense that the newly-announced Nokia E63 comes in two colors, one for each sex: blue for males, red for females :)

Nice, huh.

It's good that Nokia recognizes a good form-factor (E71) and continues to build new devices around that.



We have seen worse cases where achievements were dropped as evolution continued (I mean P-series of SonyEricsson, especially P910i -> P990i).

Glad to see that this is not so with Nokia.
Good move.

Apple almost halves iPhone 3G production plans

Just a quick passing comment - let me speculate about the reasons behind
a slower sales of the Apple iPhone 3G.

1. Financial Crisis, of course.

On a more user-centric perspective:

2. Can it do video calls?
Steve did not include that functionality in his use cases demo. This does not create enough upgrade incentive for 2G users.

3. Still no MMS, no video recording.
This does not create enough upgrade incentive for 2G users.

4. No modem capability out-of-box.
This does not create enough upgrade incentive for 2G users.

All the value added in the new iPhone 3G was a higher speed, at the price of a faster battery discharge.

No wonder it does not go as far as expected.

I personally thought that iPhone 3G will be a revolution, at least a huge stimulus for 3G UTRAN usage, but, having omitted utterly important use cases (videocall, modem) Apple did not become the "3G Saviour"; neither they have stimulated existing iPhone users to upgrade, nor attracted enough of those people in the smartphone market, who were "sitting on a fence".

Nokia 5800 Tube effect

Hello dear pundits,
As you probably know, Nokia has recently propelled it's beloved and enamoured Symbian-based S60 into a new era - era of analogue control. Analogous control may not be new per se (think of volume knobs, sliders, or even computer mouse manipulators), it is definitely new when applied to, arguably, the most ubiquitous thing on this planet - a mobile phone.

I will delay detailed usability analysis until the time that S60 Touch device lands in my hands, and this is probably for the better sales...
Let's think of it in more visionary way - what this means to the whole mobile market.
Now, here I do not share Mobile-Review's point of view, that this will surely crush the competition (Sony Ericsson UIQ, iPhone, Windows Mobile); neither do I think that devices like Nokia 5800 won't change much of the game.

I strongly believe, and see a reason behind such beliefs, that S60 Touch will change much of Nokia's own game.
It will certainly be elevated from XpressMusic line on to the N-series line of models, and thus will overtake significant portion of the current N-series users.
While it's too early to say much of whether the careful and confident approach of Nokia to creation of analogous control devices will capture many _new users_, one thing can be said right now - the S60 Touch platform will retain many of the current Nokia users.
In this sense, I see it much as a defensive move, not innovation.

And, amongst all of the possible defensive moves, Nokia chose the most conservative approach - not to change the user interface, but rather augment it with a touch screen enablement.
They could have decided to develop a new UI, or to shoehorn Maemo into cell phone devices, but what we see in 5800 is more a strategic move - new Symbian version, new S60 edition, a touch-based control of the old-style S60 UI, and two new features - contact bar and the media menu, which look as "strap-ons" to the existing UI goodness.

I am not trying to say that was wrong decision! That was a very careful and considerate, and wholly in line with Nokia's style - when you've got mammoth legs, move slowly but very assuredly.
Check your every step, so as not to fall and lose existing user base.
This is very considerate of us S60 users.
This is also very considerate of the S60 developers out there.
Apparently, Nokia sees S60 as it's greatest asset ever...
They are not carrying out revolutions a-la Guy Kawasaki, who once said (and still says so): "Kill your cash cow."

There have been previous attempts of Nokia to market touch-based devices, such as Nokia 7700 and 7710.
I don't know what went wrong with S90 - this looked very promising and innovative (for those times) devices.
My pure guess is that S60 had more Nokia people going to vote for them, in a political sense.
Bad luck, I must say. By now they might have been deeply entrenched into touch devices.

Should Nokia have decided to continue with S90 evolution,
There could have been no possibility and no market for iPhone!

Now I myself, personally used SonyEricsson P910i.
It was a remarkable phone, and in many ways that was the top usable device of those times.
I even consider it top usable device of SonyEricsson's all-times line.

It was a great pity and a great looming mistake, that SonyEricsson decided to drop UIQ2.1 and break all compatibility, and develop and debug on top of new UIQ3, which happened to be a flop, mostly due to the extremely buggy P990i.

Come on SE, I wanted hard to get a new phone to upgrade my aging P910i, but I simply could not make myself to buy your new crap.
It is incredibly wise and great that Nokia decided to go their different path, and not break compatibility (at least for some apps), and not to "revolutionize" S60 with completely new interface, which would almost inevitably have it's own sizeable share of bugs.
Here in 5800 we see beautiful evolution - precious time & effort spent on debugging the code is not lost, just the new features added.

Obviously, there have been people (even me) who tried to reason [for many years] for the renewal of the shut-down line of Nokia touch-screen devices.

But only Steve Jobs' voice was heard.

Now, 16 months after the iPhone, we can finally welcome Nokia to the analogue control game.

Would you use your PC/Mac without a mouse?
If in few years I would ask you "Would you use a smartphone without touch-based control?" my bets are that your answer will not be any dfferent.

(Yes, I remeber the old arguments from the DOS guy who would never use a mouse - but where are those now?)
We, humans, are analogue creatures. By nature.

Christmas wishes from N95 S60 firmware

It's Christmas time soon, so I decided to put out a brief series with humble "wishes for improvement", the features that I would like to have as Christmas present from Nokia Santa (if there was one)... well, there's hope... Lapland is there in Finland... :)

The first round is, actually, about things I hate most in my current N95 v30.0.016.

Frankly speaking, S60 firmware team have made great progress in term of both the code stability, speed and power consumption. Kudos to the hardware guys!
You are a reason for Nokia to rock.
But there's not much done in terms of improved user experience.

Sad to say, but almost 2 years have passed since it's flagman phone was out, and some pretty obvious "features", those that derail the user experience from the "happy thoughtless bliss", have still not been fixed.

I know, I know, we geeks are all so adaptable to anything, but as a pro with an "eye for UI" I still refuse to adapt and still I go reminding all you S60 PM and the coders alike - this is what will make S60 (and so my N95) User Experience very much better:

1. Access Point preferencing, please Santa!
We still have to answer to each bloody application, which bloody AP to use.
Please please please Nokia, make the system-wide panel of preferenced Access Points, and the future strategy of each app is to either (a) respect the system AP pref, or (b) well, there's better be no (b)...remove all AP settings from zillion places in zillion applications (N-Gage, VideoCenter, E-mail etc).
So far, only some WAP bookmarks in browser need a separate AP, and of course MMS sender/receiver.

2. Don't lock my phone, please Santa!
Like I already ranted here, there are smarter ways to know if your keypad needs to be locked.
For a start, unlock the phone if any cable is being inserted (the phone is not in a pocket or a bag, it's in the hands),
then, keep the phone unlocked if it's being charged (it's surely not on the go, either).
In other words, think of ways to keep the phone accessible...
To skip keypad autolock in such situations would be nice, for example.
This would let the user implicitly lock the keypad, if so desired.
The current behaviour makes usage of phone in home/office fixed locations miserable - just to read new SMS fast we need to click 4 times (two for unlock, one to close confirmation, one to show message).
Keypad lock/unlock confirmations are a nuisance! They hug my workflow for 2 seconds! I feel punished.
Why we need them at all, when the key sign in the upper panel is the indicator already?

This is pretty burdensome and counter-intuitive. Imagine sliding your finger to unlock iPhone, and then boom! 2-second modal dialog to confirm...yuk

I would very much appreciate it if you'd unlock the keypad for me, when I insert a USB cable or an Enhancement, so that I could choose the mode RIGHT ON. Me and you know I can't insert something when my phone is in my pocket (and thus, under danger of erratic key presses).

And while you're there, please make an option to switch off connection warnings in all apps which use network (MOSH, Download! etc).
I don't like to be pestered by warnings, that's the Microsoft Way...









3. Permit my signed Java, please Santa!
With all those certificates, there's a reason to think that it did filter out the unwanted (malicious) unsigned programs during installation phase, and now we have only perfectly legit java MIDlets installed.
Now, what with pestering me out with incessant requests for permission of network access etc?
I know, you know, that Opera mini has to get the network, otherwise no fun. I know, you know, that it was signed with a certificate for all those access things.

Then why there is no persistent permissions for my installed java applets? A simple checkbox would let the phone memorize my trust settings and do not ask me every launch. In fact I do believe in defense-in-depth, but are we not paranoid here? Maybe we can let signed apps do the things they want?

4. Lifeblog will Sound, please Santa!
Lifeblog is the best thing that happened to S60 in all it's time.
It is the focal point of data aggregation, and the underlying interface for Ovi services, it's the technology which can (and should) be adapted for every phone, maybe even merged with Search 4.0 functionality.
There is support for Sound Recordings in Lifeblog. You have to start them from the Lifeblog, and they appear on the Timeline, and they get synced with Ovi or PC Suite, and they go to your PC!
But - when you make recordings straight from Voice Recorder app, LifeBlog does not see those sound files.
Come on, this is an omission. Should be fixed, IMHO.

It would make great sense to include the 'normal" recordings in Lifeblog, and not force the user to create them in Lifeblog, thus separating and isolating Lifeblog from the data which is already generated.

How many of you created at least one sound rec from within Lifeblog?

For ex. when you take photos straight from the Camera, or send SMS straight from Messaging, Lifeblog sees them all.
But not when you make the Sound Recordings. This eventually leaves a lot of sound bites out-of-sync, you never see them on PC, unless you do the hoola-hoops jumping to get them specifically via some other process (hunting down, copying, deleting ...yuk)...
Would be wiser to join them into the Lifeblog circle of things.





5. Lifeblog will Note Me, Santa!
Now, I had written previously about Notes sync here, and the dead is still not done. I have also filed bug requests during PC Suite beta 6.85 and 6.86 about incorrect timestamping of Notes during sync. Nothing changed so far.
This time I will speak from the firmware team perspective - how to treat them on the phone.
And I mean the Lifeblog strategy and features here.
Right now - we have two sets of Notes - the ones on the phone and the one in LifeBlog.
Lifeblog notes can be created, seen and managed only in Lifeblog. I think this is the second most important Lifeblog problem - since the rest of your "normal" notes in elsewhere, and so - kept out of normal Lifeblog sync cycle.
Timeline is the best presentation you can get, to see things in a time-sorted order.
Here it would be very nice to see the Notes that we already have on the phone, and not to force us to create new ones from arcane Options menu.

How many of you created at least one note in Lifeblog? I doubt there are many such geeks...

Why there was such need for note data fragmentation is quite unclear.
Would be wiser to join "normal" notes into Lifeblog circle of things.
This would make the Lifeblog the powerful all-absorbing one-stop technology for all user content, except for web/e-mail and 3-rd party.
Integrate Search 4.0 into that - and we have a killer app, nothing similar exists on competitor symbian-based products (Apple has Spotlight and iMovie/iPhoto/iSync)
Also please Santa, make a LifeBlog app for my Mac! I still have no automatic way to backup my messages and notes and sounds there. (OK I know that one's too much to ask by Christmas, just count me in for the Ovi Mac Suite beta)

6. Better Podcasts, Santa!
There are few deficiencies in current Nokia Podcasting application.
One of them is the the podcasts titles stop scrolling as soon as I start downloading at least one podcast. This makes selection of some other podcasts to download impossible, if the podcasts have long titles. A good example is our Mobile-Review site.

Second drawback is that there seems to be some sync lacking between Podcasting app as such, and the Music Player's "Podcasts" section.
Since you can play podcasts in both places, but each of them keeps it's own DB of podcasts status - "played" or "not played" statuses are separate in both apps for the same track.
This makes up for user confusion when you see tracks as "new" although you've actually heard them all...

This is explained by the following scenario:
(a) You open Podcasting download two podcasts (podcast1, podcast2) from, say, "Voice of S60"
(b) Now you can see the Yellow (unplayed) status of both podcasts in the Nokia Podcasting apps
(c) Going into Music Player now, you can find both podcasts in the "Never Played" section
(d) Play the podcast1 in Music Player, and you see it disappear from "Never Played" in Music Player
(e) Going to Podcasting, you still see yellow color of both podcasts, as if they never played.
(f) Play the podcast2 now in Podcasting, and see the color change, and the icon change to black checkmark
(g) Going back into Music Player, you still see the podcast2 in the "Never Played" category

I should notice here also that Podcasting app handles Russian (and maybe other international) titles well (ex. Mobile-Review),
but the very same podcast titles looks as boxes in the Music Player, which, apparently, uses a different code to render MP3 titles.








Can't you Santa do some code re-use? :) I simply can't read it like that!


[update] There's also difference between Podcasts and Music Player in marking listening position.

Music Player (not Podcasts!) marks the place where you left off/stopped playback in each podcasts, and gracefully resumes playback, should you try to play a podcasts which was not "rewound" or listened to the end.

Podcasts, on the contrary, makes you start from 0:00 every time, which annoys me because I expect I could play podcasts while I manage them, download new episodes, navigate directories.
Seems like to do this, I have to leave podcasting and start Music Player instead.

All said, would it not make sense to disable playback option in Podcasting, once and for all?
Or... make that option switch to Music Player instead?



Such are my humble wishes to Nokia Santa, if there was one. I do not ask just for myself, neither I need more Nokia hardware.

Just please "play nice" with those "dumb" and "tired" users like me, will you, please...? :)

SDHC 4G Flash corruption on N95 Lifeblog [updated]

I found out a very unwelcome behaviour of on-the-phone LifeBlog in my Nokia N95.

It corrupts the flash file system (FAT32) on my 4G microSD.

At first I thought that this could be either Camera app, or the Gallery app, or the LifeBlog app.
My normal workflow would be to take N95 out of my pocket (keypad locked), open the camera shutter, look to see if the Camera started [if not, curse and close and reopen, up to 3 times], then take some pictures, press Back, optionally go to lifeblog to see the photos from there, then close the camera shutter and put the phone back into pocket. If I needed to see photos in more detail, I would usually go to Gallery, but on most occasions I pressed the right soft button which was assigned to Lifeblog.

And I noticed that with such workflow I lost many photos. On the worse occasion, I lost 98 photos out of 212 taken.

The symptoms depicted below.





These photos were seen OK by the Gallery, but only before I opened LifeBlog and it started to build thumbnails needed.
Of course, I did not stand still there and I browsed to the left or right in the lifeblog while it did the preview building, but should it corrupt the filesystem because of that???

As a result, the whole folder of the previous day was lost, and some corruption occured inside some today's photos. From a technical standpoint, seems like it corrupted the huge 4G FAT table while doing FS operations. Neither Camera nor Gallery exhibit such nasty behaviour.

Needless to say, I am stopping using the LifeBlog on the phone until Nokia clear up the problem in future firmware updates. My current f/w is 21.0.016.

Oh and yes, I checked my microSD card on PC, and reformatted it already 2 times, but problems still appear (are being introduced into perfectly working media gallery) only after LifeBlog!

[UPDATE] All this behavior was only due to Kingston SDHC card, which are, according to N95 User Guide, not listed as compatible. Also of note, that there are classes of SDHC cards, like class6 or class9...
The higher the class, the faster is the card. The effect of flash memory classes on operation inside N95 is not yet studied.
There's no SDHC-specific warning in manual, so take my post for it.

Bye Bye iCards

With the launch of fancy new MobileMe service, Apple has essentially and quietly killed the free e-cards service that has been my favorite since 2001. It used to be available at www.apple.com/icards

I used to use the service heavily, thanks to good taste in choice of images, nice and fast UI, and the ability to use it without any kind of log-in.

Now it seems like "this public beach has been bought and now members-only"... a pity and a move that makes me hostile to me.com. I am not becoming a member, also because I remember the free iTools that Steve told us "will stay with you forever".

"The best things in life are free"

Apple seems as aggressive with it's market moves as Microsoft's .NET - but in a very closed nature.
I honestly believe we should not fully land in the hands of yet another monopoly.
But with all the news about Linux approach to the desktop - where else a humble end-user should go to get the best experience?

And I know it's not only Con Kolivas, I have a hacker friend who quit this also because of egotism in Linux community.

So, for a while, I will stay with the Mac as my home machine - but keep on looking...

Blue Phone for the Elite

This time, I want to share my joy.
While it's only a part of my user experience, Macs had and will always be (hopefully) taking some 'warm place' in my heart.
But there used to be some 'gotchas' for an advanced Symbian smartphone users like me.
There are simply no PC Suites at all, neither from Nokia, nor from Ericsson, not from other UIQ/S60 licensees as far as I know.
Well, "good riddance", I can hear you mac users say. "What's not there you don't need (only want?)" Not quite so.
It's only that the most "painful points" are closed on Mac, with the help of iSync and the Modem Scripting for GPRS.

(I should note here that iSync is able to reconcile all your devices in one go, be it Palm and 2-3 phones plus add .Mac account - all those sources will have the same data after you sync them in a single pass, just press one button.)

But the third most "painful" point for us 12-button peddlers is, of course, the text input.
Now, I don't know about you, but I hate T9. It works (kinda) but then again in my N95 half of the times I use it - it has wrong Input Language, and it's not easy to switch between the keyboard layouts.
Think of trying to enter some Russian in Nokia Maps - and your default input is English.
It takes a serious trouble to travel all the way to the Phone Personalization and back. Sometimes I just give up and curse.
On another note, entering contact names should not have T9 on by default.
There are many use cases like those... but we diverged.

Anyway you look at, typing on your Mac is much faster than on your phone.
So there you have - the need for some "serious" messaging application, right on your Mac where you have "the digital hub" (sorry Nokia, the "multimedia computers" are mostly "for the geek of us").


And BluePhoneElite delivers!




I should confess I've had a "long-term relationship" with this program before I could make my fairly weighted judgement and present it to your attention. This envolved seeng it develop, helping it develop, filing all kinds of suggestions, trouble shooting etc.
The good part about that the now you don't have to bear through all this.
The products is ready. And I highly recommend it. This is what many PC Users dream of - but for Mac Users only.
No bloat, pure meat. Yet very extendable and it has plug-ins and scripting.

The functionality of this product differs a lot from the Nokia offering.


First of all, it's an online product. You don't have to press buttons to "Refresh" the list of SMS, calls etc.
You have the freshest view as long as your bluetooth connection to phone is not broken.....

Secondly, it's a multivendor offering. You can have many phone from many manufacturers connected and working at the same time. When you want to send a message, simply select the right phone from the drop-down list.

It's like iSync - no matter what your hardware, you'll have the best features available.
And no need to put tons of bloat from every phone maker. (Heh, good part about this rant is that Nokia does not yet produce "bloat" for Macs)
Thirdly, you have the calling functionality thru your Mac!
You can use Mac's headset (or speakers/iSight mic) to do voice calls.
Just like Skype, only really via GSM/CDMA.


Once you get an incoming call, a nice window pops up, with the number, name and the contact's picture from your Mac's Address Book. Incoming Text messages are also popping up, giving you options to Reply of Forward them.
There is a nice capability to enter text notes for each voice call, made or received. You can type during the call as well as after the call.
The only pieces missing are MMS support and there are some minor UI "misconceptions", like the Device Folder grouping in Message Center, or showing all the same Recent Calls in every phone's context menu.
Those can be easily adapted to, and if there are enough user requests, I believe it also can be changed.
I personally believe that the future of this program's UI is adding back the unified calls+messages centre, but per each phone, so it would not have the current Mac-centric view, where every known call or message is shown on all and every phone. Add the invocation of those by double-clicking the phone's icon and I'm done!

My experience also shows that the developer support is exceptional! I usually got friendly responses for every of my e-mail within just a few days. As a small company, Mirasoftware does it's best at providing meaningful answers, support and bug-fixes. A bugfix within a week - I would like Nokia to try and match that!

A very nice touch is that they always provide an exact bug-fix list with every release. For those who like to see what changed, it's indispensable.

Another nice feature is reading the phone book directly from the phone when you address a message or a call, and no, you don't have to hit "Refresh" to get the newest version. As long as you have connection, BluePhoneElite2 has the synced version in cache.

The product costs 25 USD and is well worth the money. A time-limited trials are available for you to make sure you have the features supported. Sending a support request even during a trial is no problem, and there are all the chances that (in rare case of issues) you'll get the bug-fix and will have the "green light" to buy.

And so did I !

N.B. N95 is fully and perfectly supported.

ICQ denies older protocols

News of the day - today ICQ started denying older versions of it's protocols to be used.
This will inevitably break compatibility of many "3rd party" clients, but only for the good.

It's double fun for me, because only last month I sent "goodbye & see you on Skype" notes to all my ICQ contacts, citing many technical problems and low level of innovation which plagued the system for 7 straight years now.
I remember using video chat with Yahoo! IM back in 2001, and with this competing service there never was a missed character due to full international encodings support via UTF, much unlike among a multitude of clients on ICQ using different versions of protocols to connect and causing havoc trying to properly decode "code-page based" messages.
With ICQ, there never was a working video/audio connection, thanks to weak firewall/proxy support and to the need of direct connection.
File Transfers worked day in, day out.
Very annoying were "holes" in protocols, which allowed other clients unsolicited access to your real status.
E.g. one could see if I am really "Offline" or if I am, indeed, in an "Invisible" mode.
Many exploits existed to get the password of some notorious accounts (mostly 5-digit, and "beautiful" numbers).
It was also possible (protocols up to v8) to see the remote party's external IP, and learn geo position from that.
There was also a nice hack which allowed to delete yourself from the remote party's Buddy List, with no confirmation/acknowledgment needed at all.
Add the king of headache, Spam, to that, and you'll get the picture WHY.
Despite some efforts put into bringing all client to a common, compatible level, ICQ have not gone far enough, probably for the fear of alienating it's customers.

Could the actions today mean that the customers are fleeing away, and there's a need and the order "to do something about it"?
And just think of where they all are fleeing to?

With this new move - denying older protocols to be used, and enforcing only the new one, AOL is bravely stepping into the world of security and compatibility. Hopefully.
Every "serious" client app will probably be upgraded very soon.

Anyhow, thank you AOL, but I will stay out once I stepped out.
Nice move, though. If only a little bit sooner.

NB. A related post here.

Why I killed iTunes

I have been using iTunes since 2001 (version 1.0) on a Mac, and since it came out - on a PC, too.
I killed iTunes on my PC and here's why.

First of all, I do not posess Apple's "closed source" systems like iPod or iPhone.
This effectively frees me from the need of iTunes - because I do not have to sync those. Nevertheless, iTunes seemed to be the best music jukebox system out there, on any platform. But 7 years have passed, and things have changed...read on.

Secondly, there's no iTunes Music Store operating in Russia (of course, this being a major reason to my first point. A big pity, I must say, I was longing for a way to get those free Album Art covers for all my CD-ripped goodness...
GimmeSomeTune stopped finding the right stuff, for some reason.

Next on, the built-in Visualizer has changed for the worse. It tends to circle a little bit too much on a very limited subset of visual configs, showing just few tired schemes.
My reliable sources said Steve Jobs mada some orders and it influenced the "randomness" of the config preset selection. Too bad, I still remember how beatiful it was in version 2!..
Version 7 showed some improvement in that part, though, but never again was it soo good...

The User Interface has changed in v6 from very simple and elegant, rounded corners, to somewhat edgy and more aggressively-looking one; the Visuals button disappeared into the menu; button layout changed and I must say it was unpleasant and irritating to accomodate to those unexpected changes.

Startup speed on PC was slow.

But worst of all, was the closed nature of it's sync mechanism (iPod or nothing), which could not help my Nokia N95 to get new tunes! Well guys, I remember v1 was not so! It could sync to Rio and Creative MP3 players, although to a limited set.

Once I installed the new Nokia N-series PC Suite, I could not miss the MTP option - the one that installs the drivers needed for Sync with the Windows Media Player.
The second blow came when I upgraded from bundled WMP9 to the latest WMP11.

IT REALLY ROCKS!

I did not expect this from Microsoft, but they did their homework well!
This player exceeded my expectations in functionality, and gave me a very satisfying user interface.

Very important that now I can sync to Nokia, thanks to the open nature of it's device interface.

This thing watches folders! The functionality has always been in my wishlist for iTunes - and I found it only in WMP11. Now you can simply copy some files into a watched folder and they automatically appear in your WMP Library! The same goes with changes/deletions. Wow!

The usability has increased dramatically since the previous versions.
I have never had high expectations of newer MS releases, but hey! WMP11 delivers!
This one goes against my common rule - never upgrade a Microsoft product until you have to.

WMP11 has a built-in Find Album Info feature - this works most of the time, getting all the info, including the album art.

And since all my music was already neatly packed into iTunes Music folder, I just set the WMP to Watch this folder - and all my music magically appeared inside the WMP Library! Managing music with this feature is a no-brainer. The only loser would be iTunes, if I changed something outside of it.
And then - after a week or so - I found it does not make sense to keep PC iTunes anymore. The competitor is strong enough to stand on it's own feet.
Why would I bother manually re-scanning music folders from within iTunes, to add some newly copied files?

Kudos to the MS Windows Media Player Team!

(My Mac still runs iTunes, though! :)

Nokia Download! nearing EOL?

It has been for quite few weeks now, and I wonder if Nokia is going to fix it or scrap the offering alltogether to free some space for Ovi.

The Nokia Download! for PC application cannot update itself.
I have version 2.0.19.0, the new version is 2.1.11.0 and it's installation files seem to be corrupt on the Nokia's server:









The Nokia Download! on my N95 "Cannot find file" when updating the "N95 Sercices" section.

Anybody else experiencing the same?

It would be no wonder, of course, if Nokia decides to give red light to Download! and give green light to Ovi Store or something (N-Gage for non-gamers of us?)...

Oh and yes, I filed the bug request with Nokia, long time ago.
They seem to have fixed on-the-phone experience, but not the PC app updater.

N.B. "EOL" stands for End Of Life.

What will change tomorrow?

Today at 10am PST Steve Jobs will give a keynote at WWDC 2008 in San Francisco, USA.
Many people wrote about what products will probably be introduced.
I don't want to repeat that, let's try to imagine how (and if) the world will change, which triggers Mr. Jobs will pull again, like most every keynote.

Back in 1985 it was the Macintosh, starting the Era of "very human technology", with intuitive user interfaces and analogue control (via mouse). The all-in-one, take-anywhere design of computers.

If you remember 1997 - the introduction of the original iMac - you will understand that then it was the dawning of USB Era, the floppyless Era.

In 1999 the PowerMac Cube was introduced, thus "igniting" (Apple's own words) the Era Of The Compact Desktop Computers.
It seemed not very important back then, but we still see the continuity of that Era, even in other vendor's products.

What will be different this time? How today will change the world (OK, maybe just some markets, not the World? :)

One major change - 3G Mobile.
Yes, you could say Apple is "late to the party", full of other vendors and solutions.
But ask yourself and ask people - how much do we use 3G? How many people are really aware of the advantages?

Not really many, I witnessed. Besides the usual "internet is faster" there's not many people (in percent of the total mobile market) who get excited when they hear "3G". You hear? "The Internet is faster"...sounds like epitome to the TelCo World.

It's no surprise that many have tried, but still 3G is getting pretty low traction.
With iPhones, there'll be change.

Update: just noticed a post at here
There in comments I tried to analyze what's missing (I made a type in my name heh),
and there goes my explanation why Mr.Jobs spent so much on his flights last quarter...

New S60 Calculator

Always wanted to write about it, but never took time, until now...

With all the stories and hopes about a better S60 Calculator,
here are my ideas for the new Calculator UI:

0. Please take a look at the Music Player and it's efficient use of D-pad buttons.
With a single button press you can fully control the current playback experience.



Now think of how many up/down/left/right clicks you need to do any serious math with S60 Calc!



It would make great sense to repeat the Music Player usage pattern in Calculator.

1. The Centre Button goes to "="
2. Left Button goes to "-" (Mental connotation is "Less")
3. Right Button goes to "+"
4. Up is "*" (Multiply)
5. Down for "/" (Divide)
6. "*/+" keypad button on the keypad for decimal dot.
7. "#/^" keypad button would work as SHIFT for the four D-pad buttons, cycling through the other math operations, in fours.
The Shift keypad usage is familiar from the Text Input, so users will quickly adapt it for shifting to more advanced math functions.



Does this make sense to you? Please chime in.

Update: Calcium screenshot added
(only 4 basic ops, but usability-wise leaves S60 Nokia Calc in the dust)

6 steps to better PC software from Nokia

Hello Nokians,
this is just some free advice, a private opinion from an engineer, software architect, AND a prosumer.
Take it or leave it.
What would I do if I had a chance to change Nokia Way?

1. N-series PC Suite and Communicator Marriage.
(get back Lifeblog moniker)
I would certainly evolve the N-series PC Suite, which currently holds the palm of Usability. The most obvious step would be to add messaging features that the suite currently lacks.

2. Ditch the Video Manager, Music Manager in favor of WMP integration.
Well, the time has come to confess - VM and MM are pure crap.
If I'd wanted so much to keep them I would put in into a niche of S40 Suite or something.

3. Nokia Music Client ("Euphoria") as a WMP Skin/Plugin.
While the current buggy beta is "beta than nuthin", and has the potential to keep the high UI standards of N-Series, I do not want a separate Music Database just to use my music with my phone. Either use the WMP DB, or "become the WMP", i.e. re-engineer it as a WMP Skin or Plug-in.
Knowing the strategy is cross-platform, I would then say - integrate with iTunes Music Folder/DB on Mac, integrate with WMP "My Music" and DB on a PC, and with some popular Linux player, too.
Administrative effort needed to use large music libraries with two players concurrently is not worth using Nokia Music Client, IMHO.

4. LifeBlog becomes the N-Series PC Suite.
With all the search for a "golden formula" of the PC Suite, why not consider ditching the PC Suite for good? I mean, you have LifeBlog, the pieces missing are Sync with Outlook, One-Touch Access, and Messaging.
Everything else is for geeks, geeks can get tools wherever.

I mean, why not nicely tuck all those under LifeBlog's wing and you'd have the iSuite for Nokia Phones!

Just make it ONE Window, ONE UI. Call it OVI/PC, if you please.

Let's think of consumers/prosumers, not mainly geeks. Severe some features in favour of majority. Knowing where to cut is important, remember Occam's.
Otherwise this is starting to look clumsy like Oxygen's Products.

5. Nokia Communicator rehash.
Well, it's just a beta. You have to pedal around it for the view to stay up-to-date.
Please make it sync everything without users having to click around.

6. Well. And. Of course, Fix all the bugs filed for PC Suite :)

Lifeblog vs. Nokia Photos

It had been circulating in the back of my mind for quite some time - the thought of "who's the winner?" kind - between the Nokia Photos and the Nokia Lifeblog, to both which I gave my kudos in a previous post.
But time passed, and newer versions of both products appeared, each striving (quite independently, it seemed so) to "grow wings" and become PC-man's definitive iPhoto replacement...
So... in the blue corner (and on your Nokia phone!)... the Nokia LifeBlog!



Blue ribbon, silver scroller... toolbox buttons in the upper part.
It can sync to your device, get all the juice out on to a PC, and then you have the full digital life cycle - Backup, Restore, Upload to Web (blog), display, use geo-tags etc. On a side note - the uploader stopped working with this blog.

In the red corner - the Nokia Photos!



Grey ribbon, blue scroller... toolbox buttons in the lower part.
It can ... sync to your device (using the same on-device lifeblog support), get all your content (SMS, MMS, Text Notes - but strangely enough - not from the "Notes" phone application, photos, videos, audio clips - again, not yet from the Recorder phone app, web posts) and then again - you have all the same "Rip/Burn/Mix/Upload" features found in the Lifeblog.

So what's different?
Well, apparently those two programs keep their data separate. I mean it.
Unless you're not careful enough, you may end up with two separate incomplete sets of your phone-produced media-content. Did I say "phone-produced"? Not quite so. You do not have to have a Nokia phone to use those programs. Each one of them allows you to import media from PC and use all the niceties for free! Try it, if you haven't.

Also of some interest are the filtering capabilities in both programs:

I looked pretty hard last time to find it, but I finally managed - inconveniently hidden inside the Tag Manager button are the filters:



With nPhoto (as somebody quite properly dubbed it) - life is easier and the filters are found in a pull-down menu in the right upper end of window:




As you can see from my filters, my usage pattern tend to be more text-biased for LifeBlog and nPhoto for photos. Simply because nPhoto has the button for slideshow, in LifeBlog I have to dig inside menus.

Unfortunately, you cannot control which type of media goes to which program.
From my findings, LifeBlog seems more tolerant and resilient to sync failures. Once I had a notebook battery go down when syncing with lifeblog. And after that the nPhoto began to report failures on some "stuck items" during each sync.
One sync with lifeblog - and the "missing" items came through, and voila - no more errors in nPhoto.

Finally, as much as I would love the LifeBlog moniker, Nokia decided otherwise.
And the winner is.... Nokia Photos.

They seem to have silently given LifeBlog a boot.

Now, if you go to www.nokia.com/lifeblog you will be redirected to the nPhoto site.
(probably, some links from my old post won't work right, but what can I do)

What issues do I see with such decision?
Just one. The brand awareness.

Yes, I can readily believe that nPhoto will have all the LifeBlog features and a nice UI to boast, but what about LifeBlog brand, dear Nokia Product Management???




The LifeBlog name is imprinted in devices and printed manuals, Nokia device owners will surely be looking to get it working.



It is so convenient to use Lifeblog in the phone because you simply see EVERYTHING - all you text/graphic/video/mms media is there on the timeline!

This is a unique offering in the mobile world, even iPhone cannot do that - mix everything in a simple cleanly-navigated time-based line.

Why this offering is so badly under-presented to potential customers is beyond me!
It's usability is also overwhelmingly undervalued.

A simple excersize for Nokia to do:

1) assign LifeBlog to the right soft key by default on the N-series
2) see LifeBlog usage grow and grow, along with a mindshare for good UI from Nokia

The word "Lifeblog" more accurately describes the multi-media capabilities of this media jukebox.

"Photos" just don't go well with what the program does.
It's not a Photoshop.
And what about "Videos", "Messages" and "Weblogs"?

"Photos" just sounds bland.

A wiser solution would be to announce "Lifeblog 3.0", and say it's based on "the best of the two programs" and have it based, in fact, on nPhoto, if you chose so...

Please remember, some [printed, firmware] names just can't be changed.

Please set the customer free of the confusion.

It also would have been a great achievement if Notes and Sound Recordings could have finally been flawlessly synced to a PC.

Classic PC Suite has issues with Notes sync; fumbling with Device Browser for Sound Recordings is so indignifying...

iTunes Music store payment

While listening to an old-time song, that I really liked (Paul McCartney's), I caught myself smiling and I thought:
"Whoa? ONE dollar for this song? I would gladly pay TEN for this treasure!"
And here's the business idea - and what would I do if I was Steve Jobs and the record companies came knocking on my door to ask for uneven payment per song for the greatest hits:

"We're gonna introduce donation-style payments for selected songs, which would enable buyers to PAY MORE than $1 per song, SHOULD THEY CHOOSE SO."
"Pretty cool, huh?!?" :)



Some form of this "offset" already exist, though - people may buy the iTunes Plus version for $1.29, but IMO it just offsets the non-DRM risk...

Nokia PC Suite Beta

I almost forgot to mention that I have got into Top10 of Nokia PC Suite beta testers during the 6.85 run.
Here are some screenshots of the stuff I have got as a thank-you note from Nokia Finland, by mail.


Thank you Joni L. ! I am sure to enjoy the cup and the flash drive!
Now there's a new run for the 6.86 version which has continued to improve in the UI style and bugfixes.


Full list as well as registration is at http://europe.nokia.com/A4325521
Pitifully I found my most serious issues unfixed in this beta.
(PIM Notes are being transferred and stamped with the current time during Sync, not the original time)


Let's hope for the fix in the next version.
It's a little discouraging; though my main reason for slacking during this run is trivial lack of time.