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.

Mobile Tags

Have you used 2D mobile tags? I have, and I tried to use them around me - at work.
The things that happened made me think of how to increase their usefulness.
It seems that not only me was worried about the future of Mobile Tags.

Tommi Vilkammo of Nokia writes in his blog:

"I tried to push the concept inside Nokia, publicly manisested by the the pompous blog posts 2D barcodes will rule the earth and 2D Barcode Manifesto. Taking a honest look at the current state, hovever, I realize that things have not proceeded as quickly as I assumed...[]...I still very much want to give 2D barcodes a fighting chance."

Now, if you pardon my pedant style :) I would raise some points about how this noble goal would be brought closer to achievement:
1. For such application to fly, the usability must be highest.
"Opening a lens cover on my N95, navigating thru a deep-buried S60 menus, launching another app, finding a proper Command inside its menu" is a no-go!
By all usability gods, the mobile tag scanning option should be within 1-click from the Camera application.
In Japan, they say, it's within 0-click in the Camera, maybe we should go that far, too.

2. Why there's no Mobile Tag generator in the smartphone?
The smartphones have the printing ability, so why it still takes an extra PC, an internet access, and a URL, unknown to a humble N95 user, to generate the tag?
Wouldn't it be great to generate a tag on-the-go, say, from your own vCard, and print it via nearest Bluetooth-enabled printer?
This would facilitate business card transfer, and essentially eliminate the need for error-prone text recognition software (aka Businees Card Scanner) built into SonyEricsson's UIQ3 platform?
I can even foresee a new item in the Send As menu of a Contact - "Print Mobile Tag"!

3. Maybe Nokia should add those tags (alone with the printed URL to mobilecodes.nokia.com ) to all business cards of all Nokia employees?
That would create a cause for a digital usage of this tech, and encourage people to visit the site and download the Reader and the Mobile Tag Printer.
And of course, this would visually establish Nokia's technological leadership!
(This last step should be done after all creating and scanning usability issues been sorted out, IMHO.)

I hope my ideas could be of help, let me know what you guys think.

Google's Paranoid Android

1. The essence
As you've probably heard, Google has announced a partnership (Open Handset Alliance) with mobile and chipset manufacturer companies, to design and implement a new mobile plaform, Android.
While most general public hoped for a Google-branded handset announcement, the Android platform instead had been announced.

2. Why another platform?
Some might say - why try one more time?
Is there a place in the [rather small] smart mobile market preoccupied by Symbian, Windows Mobile, and multiple custom-built OS?
First of all, most current smartphone platforms have their own 'wrongs'.


Symbian is hard to develop for.



WinMobile is not reliable and hard on CPU.

Many others are too small to comment on.

3. Possible impact
The plaftorm will gain a significant (40-60%) share of the smartphone market, which is estimated to grow to 1 Billion devices by year 2010.
More manufacturers may join the alliance, and there might be some in-fight.

Remember the PowerPC alliance?





MS-OS/2, anyone?





4. Things to do
Watch Google closely, develop outstanding products independently.

Join the OHA when the timing is right.

5. Things to not do

Ignore Android.

Delude yourself it's not going to be a viable competitor to your current smartphone software.

6. Current reaction
There seems to be a common disappointment due to devices (mobile handsets) not currently available.
People got used to observe hardware and oversee the overall usability of a product.
They are left to oversee the beauty and convenience of Android Development tools instead.
Not every smartphone user wants that.
Google seems to be clearly focused on getting the best developers in its camp first.


Ten Million dollars says they may succeed.
Google tries to cater well to developers, giving them easy, simple and free development environment.
This will help create multitude of good applications, fast, when the time comes and the shipments start.

7. An Epilogue. Or is it just a Prologue?
What I want to offer you is my private view on the future of Android.

If all goes well for Google, it will swipe all other smartphone platforms into oblivion within 5-10 years.
Only Apple will stand out (probably in a niche market, like their Mac computers).
By that time Nokia will probably have the same smartphone market share as Apple.

I believe Google hopes to become to mobile industry what Microsoft had become to PC industry.
Google does all the same steps - refuse to tie their own resources in hardware development, while focusing purely on the software architecture and applications.
The handset companies would create a unified and compatible smartphone software market, allowing a single binary be run on all smartphones, thus creating a well-leveled field for software developers, as well as consistent experience for the end users.
The effects of such conditions are well known from the history of the PC.

The smart mobile usage will boom. No, I mean

This will be good for both the cell service providers and the Open Handset Alliance.

Three kings will rule the mobile software world - usability, compatibility and rich features.

What Google may currently lack is the whole ecosystem for smart mobile usage - something like Media Store, Social Networking, or the Nokia Ovi portal.

But with Google's web competence it shall not be hard to do, given they sign up the content producing companies.

On a side note, I especially like the way they focus on the builders of all that goodness.
10M bucks offered to a developer, not a manager! :)
How many companies we know that try to stimulate their engineers (not top managers!) in a similar way?

P1i user interface - is it any better?

I've finally had some time to spend it with SonyEricsson P1i, the avant-garde of "serious" SE smartphones. As I have previously confessed, their previous generation flagship product had been my device of choice for almost 3 years.
Must I say I had been quite excited and I had some expectations of increased usability, robustness and stability of the new runner-up P1i.
But it turned out, that the P1i device (again! after the lackluster P990i) is not up to pretty high usability/ergonomics standards that I had enjoyed on my trustworthy P910i.
And here's why.

1. First off, they left off the 5-way JogDial wheel.

This wheel alone is an "interface" on its own.
The whole menu structure in UIQ2.1 has been fully accessible with just your left thumb on jog dial!
You could open menus, close them, navigate within, select items, run them with only a thumb, single-handedly, even with the flip closed!



Now all that goodness is gone, since the P990...






2. They also left off the phone buttons.

P1i contains only qwerty keyboard, no "Answer"/"End Call" or other phone-related buttons.
What this means is that you have to use a mixed interface - you dial numbers on keyboard, then press on-screen "Call Button" (or press the jog dial inside). Switching from virtual keys for control, to physical buttons for numbers.

Sometimes the on-screen buttons are small and you need stylus... Needless to say - one hand/on-the-go operation becomes cumbersome. In P910i it was solved by a flip-closed mode, which beautifully shifted the complexity away, switching display sensors off while on-the-go. But here in P1i - another step back and dispersion of your attention.




3. The ubiquitous "More" button.

This is the most annoying and cumbersome feature of all UIQ3 user interface.
Whenever some application designers feel some "need of space" for all the menu features that don't fit into the 3 soft-buttons in the lower bar, they hide all the goodness into a single and impenetrable "More" button, behind which hell only knows how many useful (or completely not) features are hidden.
User often is compelled to press that button just to see what else that application can provide.

This is so inferior to the UIQ2 and MacOS paradigm of top-bar pull-down menus that I have nothing else to say. Just check the screenshots. This would have been OK for your dumb phones with buttons only, but on a touch-based smartphone! Duh.
How could hiding part of UI help user productivity and UI transparency I just can't imagine! I think we've been there already with Microsoft's "Personalized Menus".






4. The 3 ways of input.

User may interact with P1i using either:

-- keyboard,
-- side buttons and jog dial,
-- touchscreen+stylus,
-- touchscreen+fingers.

Having many options for control could sound as advantage, but those inputs methods are complementary throughout the UI, not replaceable!
For some features you HAVE to use on-screen soft-buttons, which are easiest and most conveniently pressed with just a finger; for others, such as very basic CLOSE button in the upper right, you better be holding a stylus since the button itself is quite small; for still others (CAMERA) there's no way but to press a side button.
This makes user experience tattered into pieces of using different input methods.
Especially funny when you see several "Close" buttons on the screen - one for the stylus (top right corner) and one for non-existing in P1i "three buttons row" (lower right)!

5. "Do you want 5, 15 or all of your apps?"

The paradigm of "More", "Even more" and "All" continues in the application strip at the bottom of the Home screen.








With touch screen, there could have been a better solution - a scrollable "infinite" ribbon of icons, with "inertia", like a wheel that would roll for some time after you clicked and dragged it. Such ribbon would effectively allow to do away with the application menu and the 12-icon mode. Customization would be accomodated by re-arranging icons order on the launch ribbon.
Instead, user sees 5 icons, by clicking on a divider a user can see 15 icons (with peculiar diamonds replacing empty spaces!) or, finally, the whole application menu.
Now what if I want space just for 7 or 19 icons? :)

6. The Ulimate Goal.

So what it is, the ultimate goal of such conformist UIQ3 UI design?

Compatibility with buttons-only phones.

And while I can agree that it serves them well (take MOTO RIZR Z8 for example), at the same time it denies the usability achievements of the past platform, UIQ2.1.
Such situation derails old-time users from UIQ and drives them in hordes to Windows Mobile in search of 'new cool' stuff and 'powerfull specs' stuff.
I have seen this situation en-masse in a well-known Russian online forum which used to be alive with the joyful sounds of P910i users, but not anymore. Most people left, only occasional newbies ask for a solution and some old-timers file their report on migration to Windows Mobile world. Some also express intent to migrate there since they did not like what they saw in UIQ3 devices from SonyEricsson either.

Would it not have been possible to create a separate, simpler version of UIQ, like Nokia S60's cousin, Series40?

'One size fits all' strategy failed, at least in the usability plane. And that means a lot nowadays.

What's most annoying is that SonyEricsson had 3 years since the P910i launch to improve and polish the highly valued hardware ergonomics and interface before iPhone hit the shelves! This very strategic blunder seems oh so familiar...

They were the closest shot to the "simplest stuff", the bread and butter of Apple Inc.
This may be also testified by the fact that Apple went as far to help SonyEricsson to write UIQ-based "iSync agent" for P910i, which installs on the phone the first time you try to sync it with a Mac. The sync support is full, up to the contacts pictures.

And yet SonyEricsson pursued some other goals [comments are welcome] and basically slipped down on the software, while mucking the hardware with a non-optional keyboard, and a shorter screen.
Yes, 3G, yes, WiFi, but why go away from marvels of past technology? Would you buy a PC with a faster WiFi but smaller screen and less convenient (and non-removable) keyboard and mouse?
I loved P910i and seeing SonyEricsson fall was a pain.

Such is my completely personal and biased old-timer SonyEricsson hardcore smartphone user opinion.

All comments with no offensive meaning will be published.

PC Suites revisited

Hello my patient reader,

In a previous blog entry "An Ideal PC Suite" I expressed my vision and hopes for a better PC Suite - and Nokia delivers! What I mostly wished for, is "smart auto-sync" feature, is at the core of the Nokia LifeBlog application!
If you never heard or tried the application, now's the best time to do so. Honestly, I believe this app has all the potential to become a key component of the upcoming Nokia Ovi stuff.
It lets you have and manage offline copy of your phone's content - all the MMS, SMS, photos and videos. On a horizontal "Time roll", easily scrollable!
LifeBlog-compatible phones stamp all new items with smart "location tags" that let you differentiate between cell network areas. You can later rename those tags - say, after city names - and with a simple click in LifeBlog you can see all items that were created in that same area! At the very rough, you automatically get a new location for every country you've been in while using the phone.
The LifeBlog UI "scrolls like butter"! It's a true "Nokia iLife", highly usable and very easy to learn. Amazingly enough, you may use it straight off the phone, no PC required! Capture and blog online, on-the-go.

There's more exciting news - there's now a new "Nokia Photos" application, delivered as part of N-series PC Suite 2.0
This one has also a very good UI and it allows you to import all your pre-existing photos from either a hard drive or a cell phone, should you want to use it as your photo organizer.
Nokia Photos has a Timeline View, which looks very much like the LifeBlog.
Here's one important thing to notice about those apps.

They do not require you to have a phone!!!

You can use them just as your digital life organizers.This strategy mirrors what Apple, Inc. has done to iTunes - you may use it without an iPod, just for ripping/storing/playing/burning your data.
Once you get used to a blissful user experience, you might as well start looking out for a compatible device, to streamline your "digital life management" experience even more ;)

Of course, these new applications allow you to upload the content to your blogs!

Those apps are essentially the Nokia i-Apps. If this is what Ovi will be like, I am all in!

The only strange thing is that those "web accounts" need to be set up independently in both programs.
Another small issue that I noticed is that LifeBlog does not correctly "play" animated GIFs in MMS. Such graphic files take single MMS slide, but this slide should not be still. On a phone they play fine.

Did you notice there are many Nokia PC Suites out there?
There are "normal" PC Suite, which work even with S40 devices (the moest recent version is 6.85). There are also E-series PC Suite (which I have not yet seen), the Vertu PC Suite, the PC Suite Express, and, most importantly, N-Series PC Suite (most recent version 2.0).

The battle of PC Suites continues!

I took part of a Nokia PC Suite Beta test for version 6.85.
Of the 3 errors I reported, none were fixed.

I still hope for the next version
I uninstalled 6.85 and downloaded another flavor of Nokia PC Suite , aka N-Series PC Suite. As the name suggests, this would work only with Nokia N-series smartphones.
It features a very slick black 'batman' design and cool in-focus transitions. It worked really well for me and never crashed once. It has less clutter on main page since the main page is broken into 4 categories: Music, Photo/Video, Internet, and Tools.



The good part about it is that it did away with kludgy Nokia Media Player which became almost dysfunctional in the latest 6.85 release. The media player of choice is now ... ta da!...the Microsoft Media Player 11 (which was not a hard choice on PC, I suspect).
Now there's hope for playability of stuff...
BUT (there must always be "but") - the N-series does not have the corresponding messaging part - you can not send SMS/MMS, there's no browser entry for your phone in Explorer anymore. Once they add the missing functionality, there's no turning back for me.
Meanwhile - I came up with another idea regarding PC Suite UI - why They have not changed the INTERFACE much, they changed the LOOK. IMHO the less of "interface" we have, the better. For instance, is there really a need for the main window since we have the same apps in the systray launcher?
Could not they have moved

"5 new messages"
"3 missed calls"

- notifications into the Windows system tray notification area?
You'd click there and see the messages and the Call Log.
Windows has the API just for that. I hardly foresee users keeping the main window open just to see the new SMS.

(6.85 rants)
The new and controversial (from usability standpoint) feature of 6.85 is the small messages pane in the lower left corner of the main window. In few seconds after start, it shows you the three most recent SMS (and only short parts of them).
You may click and close the pane, though.
This feature look like "blind innovation" and it brings only questions:

"Why only three?"
"Why only SMS (not e-mails)?"

If you'd get serious to read more behind those short excepts from SMS, you'd click into the area, and PC Suite would still bring you to the Messages entry in the windows Explorer. You'd have to click once more on the Inbox hive to see the message list. One more double-click and you finally see the whole message.
The fact that there's still no decent UI to the communicative core of the product is quite amazing.
Completely usable and convenient solutions is what we all need. They should take preference in development resources, not those ad-hoc, not-well-thought out, features, that look like they're there just to show off... Otherwise the product may fall down sick of 'featuritis'...I never wish this to happen to a Nokia product.