A Lifeblog integration tip

A while ago, I ranted about lack of integration between Lifeblog, Notes and Sound Recorder on my Nokia N95.

Turns out - half of those woes can be resolved by the user, although at the price of sound recording quality.

LifeBlog is able to pick up, show and transfer to PC Sound Recordings, but only those recorded in AMR format.

I don't mind a little bit more compression, as long as speaker's voice is loud enough to be legible.

Turning to Settings - Applications - Voice Recorder and tweaking File Type a little bit enables LifeBlog to recognize any new recordings. (depicted)
And so - they are backed up to PC via "bigger brother", LifeBlog on PC.

No more separate file-digging! (and there was NO syncing of recordings from PC Suite, either!)

Wonderful.

If only there was some hack to enable similar integration with Notes...
Anybody got a tip?

Wii are the champions

Checking up Nintendo Wii for a week (bought it as a gift, in advance).
First impression - it's very tightly built, very good quality of materials, all connectors connect very easily and they have easily understandable, not confusing outlines and forms, and all use different colors. Gives you a nice feel to setup such nicely-built system.

Starting up gives you tons of warnings - you must be over 18 to legally set it up. Otherwise, you kiddies are breaking the Nintendo agreement and when you get injured boxing, or break that antique vase that cost your daddy 150K - Nintendo just wash they hands and smile happily. (Ask your parent to read EULAs and press A button!)

User interface is so immersive! Wii Remote gives slight rumbles when you point at buttons on screen. It also emits sounds in-game. Really cool and important for multiplayer (indicates who's turn in Bowling, for ex.)

The "Channels" concept nicely replaces "PC programs" concept; instead of "PC desktop" you have "Wii Menu".
That's it - no wondering around. Just 4 screens of 12 channels each (max 48 channels).
I had 6 channels installed, but, after visiting Wii Shopping Store, increased to 9, for free.

It's really nice and easy, and good for your body. The best video-gaming for your body. Fitness is better - but, you know, there's Wii Fit set on sale...

What bothered me most in user experience is annoying Yes/No confirmation menu when you try for Wii Menu from within a game or an activity. If you press "Home" button on Wii Remote, you first get Home menu where you can select an action.
Usually those include "Wii Menu" , "Reset" , "Wii Remote Settings" , and "Operation Manual".
You move the pointer, you get the rumble as you focus. You do confirm by pressing "A" button.

But, in case of "Wii Menu", you get that extra Yes/No confirmation dialog.

Why do they consider everyone so stupid - to make so many actions already and STILL get ANOTHER nag dialog - does not seem reasonable to me. Is this some cultural difference?
Even if there's danger of mistakenly going to Wii Menu - why not every mistake is covered by confirming dialog?
This is Windows 95 style and ought to be avoided.
Those who do mistake, do learn and stop mistaking.

Why pester everybody on such common action?

Another note - and quite understandable - is that there are too many warnings in Sports Pack.
Those are usually to make sure you're strapped, have a jacket on Wii Remote, have enough space, have thumbs to hold the remote tightly etc.
Let's count them - I will recount for you all user interactions on my way to start Bowling, single user game.

1. Open "Disc Channel" from Wii Menu. You will see channel preview.
2. From the channel preview, pick "Start". This brings up a remote jacket warning.
3. From the jacket warning page, you either timeout or press A after some reading delay and you get new window.
4. Now you're asked to press A+B buttons simultaneously. Is this to check that you have a working thumb and index fingers?
5. Finally you get Wii Sports menu - here you select which game of 5 you want. Press Bowling.
6. Number of players, or training mode. Press 1.
7. Here you're asked to select Mii (artizans) per each player.
8. Another jacket warning! Press A to continue.
9. Al last, you see the game intro. First player is asked to press A+B to confirm.
10. Real bowl begins. Make a throw. If you do incorrect throw, Wii will warn you and make you press B to confirm.
11. Now you've (hopefully) scored a throw. Alt angle replay, plus cheering voice comment. Nice. Press A and repeat steps 10 until game end.
12. Game Finished. You see your final score, as well as all scores. Press A.
13. Final screen. You see your current Skill Level in chosen game, and it's dynamics. Nice. Press "Again" to go to 9 or "Quit" to go to 5.

Is not it a bit too much of confirming? You have to be pretty determined to get into play.
Makes sense to warn once, or maybe 3 times - but every time? I know we're talking about children here.
I can understand. I just wonder if there's another way, like fast voice warnings while the games load?
(By the way, not every child CAN read those warnings! I am not even talking about who WILL read)

Last up, my thought on improving the channel content - we need more free channels.
Why not turn it into something like Nokia WidSets, where anyone can write a useful bit of functionality (stock quotes, web clips, car alarm integration, world-wide web cams) and put it in for Nintendo's approval, and be sold in Wii Shopping Channel with some revenue split like Apple does in iTunes App Store?
Right now it seems rather limited - and I can understand that Nintendo wants us to spend more on GAMES.

What if I am not a gamer type but I like the console and I hate PC and I don't have a Mac?
Those types are mostly senior/disabled citizens, or there are some people who have adverse opinion on PC at home (I had one programmer friend who never had a PC at home, intentionally) - but anyway - they can be made a paying audience while their kids are at school.

A touch to Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (aka Tube)

This year, I am starting with a new resolution - to make my posts here shorter and easier to read.
I am not targeting to please everybody with a 'balanced' position, this blog would give technically correct comment - but not from an engineer's point of view - I have preserved ability to view things with a fresh user's eye.

One day I had walked into Nokia flagship store in Moscow, specifically to try and judge for myself "the buzz" about Nokia 5800.

It was a sturdy device, moderate weight.
I checked sound quality first, using a pair my new Etymotics ER-4P earbuds.
I was pleasantly surprised with increased power (compared to my N95), and the sound quality seemed better than N95.
But both sound quality and sound power were less than those of an iPod Touch that I also tried.
So far, Tube seems to be on par with other XpressMusic phones (5310 comes to mind).
I checked the Bluetooth file transfer between SonyEricsson P910i that I had in my pocket and Nokia 5800 - it worked fine, although a bit slow because of old Bluetooth standard supported by P910i.
I wanted to check for improvements in the Nokia Music Player and Podcasts integration, but the flagship store does not have a WiFi access point, and no SIMs inserted in the phones, and so Mobile Computer buyers simply do not have a chance to check online capabilities!
I think this could be improved by setting up a secured WiFi access point and setting up the AP password in smart phones (S60), at least the most popular (N-series). Otherwise it's not possible to check browser, Downloads!, WidSets, MOSH, and others.

Next on, the navigation. At first I was a bit confused with unusual 3-button setup (no d-pad), but then something more annoying came up -

Some things you do by single tap, some - you have to double tap!

Before trying out, I did not realize how annoying it is!
Sometimes it gives you impression that the touch screen is not working!
The only obvious reason for double tap is so that you could use the Options menu. Single tap selects item, then you can tap on Options or quickly tap again to launch/open item.
This bad user interaction design drags it's ugly head from non-touch S60; Nokia really ought to have a look whether it's worth it to serve non-touch dishes in a touch restaurant to cater existing S60 users...
If you go to a Chinese restaurant, don't you expect things to be really different from, say, McDonalds?
What if they set up single-tap policy for every launch, while reserving tap-n-hold for Options menu?
It was this way in UIQ - plus there was JogDial for easy re-selection, and there were checkboxes beside every item that can be selected.

Does the S60-UIQ antagonism continue, even after whole Symbian belong to Nokia?

Now, that they started to put out touchy-feely things, and UIQ went haywire - isn't it the time to borrow the best and create a perfectly converged device?

My final feelings are that Tube does not really reach the UI efficiency of P910i, the phone which was produced 5 years ago.

Checked the Camera - it's slow-ish, the screen gets smudged as you move and view around as you aim. Not so bad as XM5310 (which is almost unbearable), but quite noticeable. Of course, here comes the usual line - "this phone is not marketed as a photo solution".

Quite convenient are the two slots on the left - one for microSD card, another for the SIM module.
I wonder if changing SIM could damage the module...

Tube screen is very decent; I started to edit a message and I noticed some screen mis-calibration: tapping with the plectrum in the middle of a word, and the cursor inserts four character left in the word.
Asked a nearby consultant - he did not know how to re-calibrate and he thought it impossible. I later found it myself in the Settings panel, did a very precise re-calibration, but the cursor was still inserting one character left from the place touch. Could have been an old firmware bug (there was version 10.x) or some hardware defect.

I checked the Handwriting text input method - and I was perfectly surprised!
IT WORKS! AT LAST!
Remembering my pitiful attempts to write on N800/810, I was kind of sceptic.
But it was working really fine, and the best of all - in Cyrillics (Russian) letters, too!
I could never get Primetech Jot to work on my P910 (it's for Russian handwriting on UIQ).
Checked the usual "t" "!" "?" "@" and all of them were recognized at my expected speed of natural quick jot.
Did they finally accept the Jot engine used in P910? P910 is still better in this area because you can write anywhere on it's screen (in fact, lower half of screen for letters, upper - for numbers; crossing the middle dotted line capitalizes character)
In the Tube you have special amply sized palette to write on - but it's not "half of screen", still.

Noticing that I did not get "tactile touch feedback", once again, I turned to a store consultant. In vain. They seem to be best at saying "hello" to all incoming visitors (they have policied this).
I myself could not find the setting, too.
Should not it be in the same Display control applet?

All impressions wrapped up, I would not buy this phone. I was spoilt by UIQ2.1/P910i, and I have tried iPhone for a week.
But if all you really liked, all you've had was Nokia phones, go ahead, you won't be disappointed.
(You might switch from non-touch solutions by SonyEricsson, Sagem, Samsung, MOTO and the like, too!)

After all - there is Nokia Maps, a decent Music Player, you can finally write letters, not to tap them like a woodpecker...and it does not break a wallet like iPhone does (oh, this should be Russia-specific comment - iPhone here costs 25000 RUR, Tube 15000 RUR) nice anti-crisis purchase for those who do not get Apple and it's closely-controlled nature.

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".