***Editor’s note*** I just realized that the picture from the N95, while it seemed to transfer over as full-res, got shrunken down when it was added to the iPhone’s camera roll. I thought CameraKit was working awfully quickly, compared to when I used native iPhone pictures… So while I get the benefit of the N95′s autofocus and macro focus, I don’t get the benefit of higher-res pictures once transferred to the iPhone (because the N95 has no cool photo editing apps, nor do I have a working data SIM for it for direct uploads)… SIGH. So much for kludging together better mobile phone pictures through the iPhone, N95, and jailbroken 3rd-party app iBluetooth. 
Pic taken with a Nokia N95, then transferred to my iPhone via BT (shhh, it’s a secret!) for post-processing and uploading. Oh, what convoluted things I’ll do because I can’t get an iPhone 3GS right now… 
August 24, 2009 | Categories: Apple, digital photography, gadgets, iPhone, iPhone 3G, kludge, Mobile Tech, Nokia, Nokia N95, photoblog, photography, Tech | Leave A Comment »
I am quite the iPhone enthusiast, but before I finally got the iPhone 3G, I was using a Sony Ericsson P1i. I loved that phone. It had a great camera, even though it was lower-res than my Nokia N95. The camera UI was quite user-friendly and a bit snappier than the N95′s. Once I figured out the hotkeys, it was easy to change settings on the fly without having to navigate an on-screen menu. The overall UIQ OS was a bit fussy, but there were many things I liked about it over S60 3rd-edition. I loved the unique keyboard on the device. I got really good at typing fast on it. 
I even really liked Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on the P1i. I almost upgraded to the K850i before I decided to go with the iPhone. IMO, Sony Ericsson does cameraphones just right. They basically shoehorned a Sony Cybershot camera into nice phones. And their Walkman line of phones use a great UI that’s very similar to the PSP/PS3 menus.
While I am eagerly anticipating the update to the iPhone 3G, and it’s highly likely that I will upgrade to it (if I can afford it), I am very, very intrigued by the Sony Ericsson Satio (though I’m not so enthused by the name):
I think I saw news about this phone when it was still called the Idou, but I hadn’t paid too close attention to it at the time. I’ve been bad about keeping up with tech news lately, and this, among other things, slipped by me. However, after I saw today’s news about the final name of Satio, I went looking up more info about it on Engadget Mobile and saw this video they did. Very cool idea behind the phone, merging the Cybershot and Walkman lines of phones together. I also love that it’s Sony’s great UI over Symbian S60. I haven’t been too impressed by Nokia’s half-assed implementation of touch S60, so I’m hoping that Sony did better.
Even though I think that the iPhone has a great combo of OS, UI, and App Store, I do miss using other phones sometimes. The Satio looks like a great gadgety phone with features that I would love. The Palm Pre looks great, but I really don’t want to switch to Sprint. I already switched from T-Mobile to AT&T when I got the 3G, and my contract hasn’t run out yet. Besides, I was on Sprint a long time ago (using a Nextel phone before it got popular and then annoying) and don’t want to go back. I know the Pre is going to be released on other carriers later, but it could be quite a long time before it’s available from AT&T, if ever. Anyway, the Satio just seems really interesting to me right now. I was disappointed when the P1i never got updated, and SE subsequently dumped UIQ. But the Satio seems like the natural successor to the line of smartphones that the P1i was a part of. I’m very eager to see how the Satio looks like in person. And I’m glad that even though there’s been some bad financial news with Sony Ericsson lately, they still seem like they’re working hard to release interesting phones, which is more than I can say for other phone manufacturers in the dumps.
May 28, 2009 | Categories: Apple, awesome, cool design, gadgets, Idou, iPhone, iPhone 3G, mobile, Mobile Tech, N95, Nokia, P1i, phone, Satio, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Tech | 2 Comments »
Congratulations, Wells Fargo. You’re no better than those annoying “Re: your account” spam e-mails that I unceremoniously delete from my spam folder every so often. A lot of you may already know this about Wells Fargo, but this was the hubby’s and my first personal experience with their sleazeball tactics. A short bit of background: when we first moved into our current home, we bought some new appliances and financed them through the store. This particular store happens to use Wells Fargo to handle the payments. That’s all well and good. We paid off the account and closed it a long while ago.
Well, last week sometime while the hubby was in Germany for business, a representative from Wells Fargo called Olga left 3 or 4 urgent-sounding messages about our account on his voicemail. She gave no specifics about what she was calling for, just a terse message to call back immediately. We thought this was strange since the account has been paid off and inactive for quite a while. Being worried about any fraudulent activity on our account, the hubby called back last Friday. Someone answered and said that Olga was already out for the day and no one else could access our account info, so he’d have to call her back on Monday. This already sounded pretty fishy to us, and we had come to the conclusion that this is likely some kind of scam call that has nothing to do with our account.
Today the hubby got another “urgent” message to call Olga back, so he finally did. When he got through, she started in on some schpiel, asking if he keeps track of his credit report, and how his score was such-and-such, and “what if I told you I could help you improve your credit score?” He interrupted her and asked if there had been any unauthorized activity on our account, or if there were any additional charges, or anything of that nature. She confirmed that everything was paid off and in order with our account. He then politely informed her that he had nothing else to discuss with her, that our credit score is none of their business, and he doesn’t appreciate companies that use this type of deception in order to drum up business (my paraphrasing). Instead of conceding that she would not get any business from him, she pressed on, blathering on about how they’re just trying to help, and asking if there’s a better time for her to call back, blah, blah, blah. The nerve! Yes, she’s just doing her job, whatever. “Stick to the script, make the sale,” to cop a line from an episode of The Office (US). The problem is Wells Fargo, not “Olga”.
I honestly don’t understand how a company expects to get any business from former customers when they prey on people’s fears of identity theft, which is exactly what we were concerned about. It’s more insidious than the spam e-mails with the subject line “Re: your account”, or all of the paper mail that are plastered with “Open immediately. Important information regarding your account ending in 1234″, because these are easy to spot and deal with on your own time. Opening and recognizing a fake letter takes a few seconds. It’s a huge waste of paper, and I would rather not have to sort through them and set them aside to be shredded later, but it’s something easily dealt with.
Phone calls aren’t easily dismissable, especially when the caller is not descriptive in the voicemails. There could very well be a problem with someone trying to use an old account, or billing discrepancies that need to be addressed right away. And because you have to call back the particular person who was assigned to your case (commission, anyone?), you could potentially waste a lot of time playing phone tag. Since we do not use a landline for a home number any more, these calls also count against our minutes, so we’re actually paying to deal with this inconsiderate disruption. Lovely. Luckily the hubby didn’t have much of his time wasted by this BS.
Does Wells Fargo really think that after someone goes through the trouble of calling back, only to find that there was no problem after all, that he’d be happy to sign up for whatever BS service they’re offering? Does this really work enough times to make the damage to their company reputation worth it?
Well, it didn’t work this time, Wells Fargo. And I’m blogging about this to warn anyone who’s searching on Wells Fargo, customer satisfaction, or customer reviews for this company. I’m never going to knowingly sign up for any service that Wells Fargo offers. I’ll refer anyone who asks me about this company to this post. It probably won’t make a dent in their bottom line, but I’m hoping this post helps someone trying to make a decision on whether or not to do business with Wells Fargo. Don’t do it! If they’re this sleazy about deceiving former customers, who knows what other crap you’ll have to deal with as a current customer?
/rant
March 24, 2008 | Categories: bad customer service, gripe, idiots, Maemo WordPy, N810, Nokia, Pet Peeve of the Day, PITA, sucks, Wells Fargo | 2 Comments »
Forgot something about the N810 case
I didn’t notice until this morning that this case actually has two pockets. I tried to take a picture of this, but I’m not sure if it’s illustrated clearly here (see notes on the pic). This is nice, because then any accessories I put in here can be separated from the N810, so it doesn’t get scratched up. Nice bonus, Case Logic.
March 18, 2008 | Categories: accessories, Case Logic, gadgets, gear bags, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, N810, Nokia, Tech | Leave A Comment »
I have been searching for an N810 case for quite a long time now. I saw tips on the Internet Tablet Talk forums that people were using Nintendo DS Lite cases since the devices are similar in size. So I hunted online and locally for a good DS Lite slip case. It’s surprisingly hard to find non-ugly, non-crappy cases in stores around here. I would have thought that since the DS Lite is like the iPod of the portable gaming world, that there would be a huge selection of accessories, including cool cases. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be so!
I did find a nice DS Lite case by Waterfield Designs, but I still wanted to try to find something locally, preferably less expensive as well (though Waterfield Designs’ price was really not bad at all). Well, finally I found a decent case at Fry’s today by Case Logic that’s actually intended for a small portable hard drive, but I think it will work out well as an inexpensive slip case.
As you can see, it’s a bit bigger than the N810, but when the N810 is actually in the case, it fits more snugly than one would expect. The small amount of room that’s left could be used for a little memory card case, extra styli, or the N810′s micro-USB cable.
I might end up getting the Waterfield Designs case for the DS Lite later, but for now, I’m quite satisfied with the last-minute find from Fry’s.
P.S. This blog post was composed on Maemo WordPy. I’m trying to learn about all of its features. So far I’m rather pleased about how well it works. I hope I didn’t jinx myself.
March 14, 2008 | Categories: Case Logic, gadgets, gear bags, Internet tablet, Maemo WordPy, Mobile Tech, N810, Nokia | 1 Comment »
Editor’s note about my last “quinkie” post: I composed and uploaded it from MaemoWordPy on my N810. The other times I posted quinkies, I actually inked them out and uploaded the pictures to Flickr from my 770, but then I went on my desktop PC to type up the description and post it to my blog from Flickr (for a few reasons that I won’t bore you with).
This time I tried out MaemoWordPy to see if it would properly upload the picture directly to WordPress.com, which other blog editors have screwed up in the past. It was a bit tedious to switch between MaemoPad+ and MaemoWordPy to type out the text “translation” of my ink post, but other than that, it was incredibly easy to compose and upload directly from MaemoWordPy. Very cool.
P.S. This post is also coming at you from MaemoWordPy.
March 2, 2008 | Categories: awesome, blogging, gadgets, ink blogging, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, Nokia, Tech | Leave A Comment »
Usually I go to Amazon to find missing album art. Well, I just found out I don’t even have to save the pic file before pasting it into iTunes. I can just right-click on the pic to copy into the clipboard then paste in the album art window. Fast and easy!
March 2, 2008 | Categories: Apple, handwriting, ink, ink blogging, Internet tablet, iTunes, Misc Stuff, Nokia | 3 Comments »
"Quinkie" post – 2-18-08
Editor’s note: I hereby call these short ink blog posts from my Nokia internet tablet, “quinkies”. Also, regarding the Buy.com annoyance, they were asking for additional authorization when a charge was already pending on my card! So what other info do they need? And why did they charge my card before they shipped out the item (which I believe they said would not happen, but I can’t remember exactly)? What a disappointing experience. Never again.
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Buy.com delaying shipping out my order to request an authorization form be filled out w/ a copy of my CC and driver’s license! No online retailer should need a copy of my license. I decided to request cancellation (spelling corrected) of my order and will instead order from Amazon. Lesson learned! >:P
February 18, 2008 | Categories: bad customer service, Buy.com, gadgets, gripe, handwriting, idiots, ink, ink blogging, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, Nokia, sucks, Tech | Leave A Comment »
The Weekend is Almost Here…
Hey, Kids! Just whiling away a bit of time here before the 3-day weekend. I’m looking forward to a lot of relaxing. How about y’all?
Have fun and be safe!
ShoZu
Enjoy the view
August 31, 2007 | Categories: fun, handwriting, ink, ink blogging, N95, Nokia, photoblog | Leave A Comment »
I’m totally enamored of my Nokia N95. It’s a great phone (and it’s purple!). I’m really liking the whole Symbian, S60 thing. However, the one thing I wish I had on the N95 is a QWERTY keyboard. The size and the slider mechanism is just about right, so I know it’d really be difficult to add on a QWERTY (or replace the number pad) keyboard without adding bulk to the device, which is unfortunate. Although, may I point out that the Helio Ocean has a dual-slider form factor with both number and QWERTY keyboards, and it’s not that chunky?
Anyway, I have heard many good things about the E61i, and I’m really keen to try one out. However, at $450 for an unlocked version at TigerDirect, it’s not exactly a purchase I can slide under the radar, especially since I spent so much on the N95 to begin with! So, dear Readers, do any of you have an E61i you don’t want anymore and are willing to sell at a low-ish price? Or, perhaps one I could just borrow for a few weeks for a potential review? I’d love to see if an E61i is a kind of phone I’d like. It would really have a tough time competing against the awesomeness that is the N95, but I’d be willing to give it a shot.
What say you? Any leads would be appreciated.
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August 24, 2007 | Categories: gadgets, mobile, Mobile Tech, Nokia, smartphone, Tech | Leave A Comment »
Analog ink blog test
Originally uploaded by Jezlyn26
Okay, I’ve tried several times to write an “analog” ink blog w/ the intention of posting it, but it just hasn’t happened yet. So here’s one more try, posting via N95 to Flickr using ShoZu…
(If I like how this works, you might see more posts like this later.)
August 1, 2007 | Categories: blogging, handwriting, ink, ink blogging, Mobile Tech, N95, Nokia, Tech | 4 Comments »
While perusing a discussion thread on Internet Tablet Talk about must-have apps for the N800 (trying to find apps that still work for the 770…), I initiated a Google search that led me to this interesting page comparing the interfaces and quirks of the Nokia N800 to the Apple Newton. It’s quite an extensive article, so I just skimmed it, and bookmarked it for later reading. However, I was reminded of something that I feel is a big deficiency in Tablet PCs — you can’t directly ink in text fields. There may be applications to help get around that in some cases, but the OS itself is not architected such that you just directly ink your text into text fields. The Newton supported this way back in the mid-to-late 90s! A quote from the N800 v. Newton page:
The Newton has real, systematic handwriting recognition. Not just a better HWR engine (and it’s far superior to the very slow, inaccurate one in the N800), but one which is part and parcel of the GUI itself. On the Newton, you write directly in text fields and entry areas. Various on-screen and hardware keyboards and other input systems are still available if you wish them. The Newton’s HWR even cleans up shapes and doodles, has sophisticated built-in handwriting gestures (“scrubbing” a word to delete it, writing a caret to make space to insert a word, etc.), and allows you to turn off the recognition or delay it indefinitely (it’d then store and display the handwriting exactly as you had written, or if you preferred, in miniaturized form).
It is amazing that even now, in Vista, you still have to use a floating Tablet Input Panel (TIP) to initiate inking text, or tapping it out on the virtual keyboard, if you prefer. At least on Tablet PCs you can ink out words freeform — in print, cursive, or a mix of both — rather than being limited to individually inking letters to spell out words (there is this option in the TIP, though) on the N800.
I remember back when UMPCs were first announced, and there was a fledgling discussion forum for Origami devices (can’t recall the site at the moment). Someone had asked a general question about whether or not you could write directly in a text field, like the address bar in a browser, and one of the moderators, being a total newcomer to the Tablet PC platform himself, answered that he wasn’t sure, but would find out. I cringed to myself thinking that if I answered that question, I would have to tell them that they’d have to tap on the TIP before being able to write out their text. And it’s still that way today! It’s inefficient, and when you think about it, rather unintuitive, given the paradigm of text fields on paper forms.
I love the Tablet PC platform, even though I find myself not using it as much in my daily routine as I used to (due to several different circumstances which I won’t discuss now). I am glad for the updates to Tablet functionality in Vista, though I don’t use Vista on my current TPC. But I really hope that the inking interface will be updated to be even more intuitive so that you can ink anywhere, especially directly in text fields, instead of depending on the TIP all the time. It would be awesome if that were implemented in Vista SP1 or SP2, or beyond… Or even in other non-Tablet-PC devices that are now starting to use handwriting input, like the N800. I’m still waiting for Apple’s update to the Newton, or competitor to Tablet PCs…
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July 25, 2007 | Categories: Apple, gadgets, handheld, handwriting, ink, Internet tablet, MessagePad, Microsoft, Mobile Tech, N800, Newton, Nokia, Tablet PC, Tech, UMPC, Windows Vista | 4 Comments »
Once again, I write a blog post here to save people on Jaiku from having to read through a long comment…
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Actually, there were some people there already at 10, but luckily the theatre we were in didn’t have a movie going, so we were able to just walk in and pick our seats, instead of waiting in line to get in. I was a bit worried when I saw a bunch of people sitting around in front of a couple of the theatres, but was surprised to see ours was line-less. If we had shown up an hour later at 11, which was a more reasonable time to show up, we would’ve had a hard time finding seats in the stadium seating part of the theatre.
I was worried that they’d be harrassing us all to leave our cell phones in our cars because of cameras and all that nonsense, so we left our phones out in the car’s glovebox. I felt so “cut off” from the net while we were waiting in our seats…couldn’t even post a Jaiku that it was lucky we showed up at the theatre when we did. And it was all for naught, because everyone else had brought in their phones, of course. There wasn’t even anyone at the door asking to see ticket stubs or anything! It was like we had full run of the whole place, which was strange.
So there we were, with no phones, no books, nothing much to entertain us (besides a bit of convo and some snark about the teeny boppers all around us) for 2 hours except for my 770, which I did bring in with me. No WiFi, but we did trade off playing games like MaemoDrac (solitaire), Battlegweled, and Marbles. Honestly, I should’ve brought Half-Blood Prince with me, so I could’ve continued reading it (I had just re-read Order of the Phoenix to remind myself of the story before the movie came out, and was moving on to HBP in preparation for the 7th book’s arrival). There were some people who showed up in costume, including a couple people in rather elaborate costumes of Dumbledore and Snape. But the majority were just teens, tweens and parents. I felt kind of old. *smirk*
The 770 held out (its battery level was at half when we got to the theatre, so I put the screen brightness down low) and helped entertain the hubby. We took turns playing games, but I stopped after a while so my eyes wouldn’t hurt and give me a headache. After a bit of a glitch and slight delay in starting the previews and movie (slight audience tension and restlessness), the feature presentation played, and it was pretty good. Of course there were bits of the book that were left out, and some story bits twisted around, but I thought it was a decent adaptation of the book. There were things that kind of bugged me, but I won’t discuss them now. I look forward to hearing what the various Harry Potter podcasters thought of it. If you’re considering seeing the movie, I would recommend going. It’s well done, and supposedly the director of this film will be back for the next, so this is a chance to get used to his style.
Anyway, it’s quite late, and I should get to bed soon. Just wanted to type up my Order of the Phoenix experience (as best as I can remember and describe it at this late hour) since I was cut off from the world while I was waiting at the theatre. Now counting down to the 7th book release on the 21st…yay!
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July 11, 2007 | Categories: 770, Harry Potter, Internet tablet, movies, Nokia | 2 Comments »
Just installed MaemoWordPy on my 770, and I’m trying out posting from it. This is pretty cool! I’ll have to get a BT keyboard now…
In random news, I’m going to see Harry Potter at a midnight showing later. Hopefully we don’t have to wait in line too long to get in. Already there are 7 showings at the AMC theatre that are sold out as of about an hour ago. The last time I was worried about waiting in line for a movie was around the time the second Matrix movie came out, IIRC. Am I dating myself by saying that? Perhaps there were a couple other movies that were highly anticipated, but the second Matrix movie is the one I remember.
July 10, 2007 | Categories: 770, blogging, gadgets, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, Mobile Wordpress, Nokia, Tech, Wordpress | Leave A Comment »
Some of you may know that my current phone is a Nokia N95, and that I recently bought a Nokia 770 on Woot!. I reached out to the Twitter/Jaikuverse to see if there was a podcatcher app for the 770, since there are some podcast sites that the 770′s browser doesn’t render properly, making it impossible to download directly from them. Luckily I got a link to GPodder from my Twitter/Jaiku friend, Atmasphere. My reply of gratitude for the link turned into a mini blog post about why I’m trying to listen to podcasts on the 770, so I thought I’d post it here instead, to save verbiage on Jaiku, even though they don’t limit comment lengths.
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Thanks! I’ll have to try it out. I thought I’d try to offload some WiFi usage from my N95 and try using the 770 as my podcast listening device at work, but so far downloading directly to the device hasn’t been the easiest thing. The built-in RSS reader is useless, and a lot of podcast sites have all of this fancy-schmancy stuff that the 770 browser can’t render properly.
I tried putting feeds into Canola, and was listening to the latest TWiT. It sounded great, and it was fine, until something killed the stream and my only choice was to start over. Couldn’t forward to the place I stopped listening, because it’s streaming. This is why I am not a fan of streaming audio solutions. Works fine until you have a broken connection, which disrupts the listening experience, and ruins it for me. Also, Canola had problems resolving some feeds and bringing up episodes. Feh. The UI is very nice, but so far it hasn’t been as useful as I’d like.
So far, the N95 is the closest to my ideal podcast listening device — direct downloads, decent built-in media player with on-the-go playlist creation, okay hardware controls. No bookmarking yet, but I’m looking forward to the rumored update to the music player to add that functionality. That will be very welcome!
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July 9, 2007 | Categories: 770, gadgets, Mobile Tech, N95, Nokia, podcatchers, portable media player, Tech | 2 Comments »
For those of you who are all angry about the iPhone overshadowing the awesome Nokia N95, I submit that you should be mad at Nokia instead of Apple. Sure, Steve Jobs amped up the hyperbole and the reality distortion field, but why are you surprised? A) He is always like that, and B) Apple needs the iPhone to be a resounding success, lest they get smacked with bad reviews, bad news, and stocks falling like stones. The Apple marketing juggernaut has been full steam ahead, that’s for sure, and I have to admire how successful the campaign has been. Even though there are many who really don’t care to purchase an iPhone, just about everyone and their mothers know of the iPhone and that it’ll be on sale this Friday.
Anyway, regardless of what you think about the iPhone, I think the problem of the N95 getting overlooked is wholly due to Nokia’s dearth of marketing. Personally, if I hadn’t read about a bunch of tech bloggers and podcasters getting them and raving about the N95, I probably wouldn’t have started thinking about getting one. There is nothing out there to trumpet all of the N95′s great features (and great design). People keep griping about how the S60 browser has been doing “the Real Internet” long before the iPhone. This may be absolutely true, but how is the general public supposed to know this if Nokia doesn’t play it up? Yes, they probably described this to some degree with every release of an S60 device with this new browser, but not enough for it to creep into the public’s radar. Again, I didn’t know about this until I kept hearing Matt Miller on Mobile Tech Roundup extoll the virtues of the S60 browser.
I’m not saying that for a product to be successful it has to have the same amount of publicity as the iPhone, far from it. I’m just saying that companies such as Nokia are going to have to amp up their own marketing if they want the media to report on it, and the public to know about it. If Nokia is fine with just the uber-techies knowing about this stuff, then that’s Nokia’s prerogative. But if they’d just spend a little more time and money getting the word out (more flagship stores, magazine ads, and TV commercials), I think there’d be lots more S60 (and S40 and S80, etc.) users out there to balance out the WinMo users and the soon-to-be-iPhone users.
Being a newb to the S60 platform, I’m sure old-timers are saying, “Awww, shut up, n00b, we’ve been saying this forever!” That may be so, but Nokia still hasn’t gotten the word out (at least about the N95), so again, I say, be mad at Nokia for that, not Apple. Apple is a company that really needs the iPhone to be a success. As such, they really have to saturate the public with iPhone trivia to try and live up to the hype that started even before the first-generation ROKR phone from Motorola came out (Apple’s first real foray into the phone business, for those of you who are all, “Wha…?”) years ago. As many have said already, the iPhone’s existence is helping change the smartphone business, even before it’s been released. To me, that’s a good thing. Can’t wait to see what Nokia (and other manufacturers) do post-iPhone.
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June 27, 2007 | Categories: Apple, gadgets, iPhone, Mobile Tech, N95, Nokia, Tech | 2 Comments »
I don’t think so… But I did just buy a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet from Woot.com a few minutes ago. *sheepish grin* I couldn’t resist it at $129.99 + $5 shipping! Granted, it’s not exactly chump change, but considering what the device is, $130 is a rock-bottom price that I’m sure wouldn’t see anywhere else for a new (supposedly) 770. It has a successor, the N800, of which many of you have seen my reviews, so it’s not like I’m getting the bleeding edge for super cheap. However, I did like the web browsing and PDF viewing on the N800 the best, and I think that even with the 770′s “last year” technology, it should do quite well as an occasional browser and e-book reader.
One thing I hated on the N800 was the fussiness of trying to get some of the Linux apps onto it (if it didn’t have a simple installer program already), so I fully expect to have that same annoyance in the 770, but hopefully it won’t be too bad. I think some of the issues on the N800 were 770 apps that weren’t properly ported over, or the firmware being too new (it’s ridiculous that firmware that’s too new should be a bad thing) for some apps that hadn’t been updated, so perhaps the older firmware of the 770 might work to its advantage in those cases. One other thing that might be a caveat, besides the 770′s overall slowness (so many reviews have mentioned), is its memory card support. It only supports RS-MMC cards, which seem to be hard to find right now. I’ll have to scrounge around for a 2GB card; a quick Google search showed links to eBay for a 2GB card for about $25, so it might not be that big a deal. People complain about companies like Sony using proprietary memory cards, but at least with “non-standard” cards like Memory Sticks, I can actually find those at the store! Oh well, once I get one 2GB RS-MMC, that’ll be the last I’ll need to worry about it, I hope.
This 770 Internet Tablet is my first Woot! purchase. I hope all goes well with the order processing. Supposedly it’ll be shipped within 5 business days, but I don’t even know what method of shipping they’ll use. I guess I should just expect it in a couple weeks so that I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it shows up earlier. I’ll try to post some kind of comparison with my experiences with the N800. I’ll try to wrestle with installing 3rd-party software on the 770 and see if it annoys me as much as it did on the N800. Maybe that’ll jog my memory for the 4th part of the N800 review I’ve been promising all this time!
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June 25, 2007 | Categories: 770, awesome, e-book reader, gadgets, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, Nokia, Tech | 2 Comments »
Late last night I posted the following to Twitter and Jaiku after an hour or two of wrestling with Rhapsody to try to get subscription tracks to work on my N95 after I read that the N95 supports Rhapsody:
“Oh for crying out loud, I HATE Rhapsody. I’ll be canceling it ASAP. (I’m a poet and didn’t know it)”
Today one of my Jaiku friends asked me why I hate Rhapsody since he loves it. Below is my response that I started typing as a reply in Jaiku, but realized it was rather lengthy, and decided to blog it instead. *smirk*
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Well, back when I bought my iRiver Clix 2, I signed up for Rhapsody To Go so I could try out subscription music on the device. I bought the Clix 2 2 or 3 months ago, and up until now, I have not yet been able to actually play subscription music on any portable device except for my computer. And the software is so bloaty and crashed so many times when I tried connecting my Clix 2 that for a long time I just left it alone and never tried much to figure out what was going on. I had thought I had a workaround by downloading the tracks on Rhapsody’s client and then transferring them over using MediaMonkey (another music management app that supports PlaysForSure devices) or even using Windows Media Player itself, but that didn’t work. When I tried to play the subscription tracks on the Clix 2, they wouldn’t play because of licensing issues, even though transferring the tracks over with WMP is something that other people have vouched for. At least when I tried out the Sandisk Sansa Connect, I was able to listen to Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription tracks both from transferring them to the device from my PC, and from downloading them directly to the Connect over its WiFi connection.
I’d read that the Clix 2, while compatible with PlaysForSure, had some issues with Rhapsody, so I forgave that, even though some people have gotten it to work on their Clix 2s through various methods (that didn’t work for me). But when I tried to put subscription tracks on my Toshiba Gigabeat S, that failed. And I excused that because I tried it at work a while back, and I thought that perhaps something in our firewall was blocking the licensing info or something, even though I’ve been able to play subscription tracks on my laptop just fine from work. I hadn’t bothered to follow up on this at home until last night.
I read that the N95 could play Rhapsody tracks, so I thought I’d try it. Everytime I tried transferring files over, I got “insufficient rights” problems. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software, deauthorizing and reauthorizing both my laptop and the N95 multiple times, I deleted the Rhapsody directory in the Application Data folder, as one of their troubleshooting tips suggested, and tried various other things. I have not once been able to get the subscription tracks onto a portable music device even though I’m paying extra to do so. I shouldn’t have to work so hard to get this stuff working in the first place. Obviously the DRM is a problem, and until they make it absolutely transparent to the user, if they’re going to insist on using this crap anyway, I’m not going to be paying for it.
It’s a shame because I really liked the subscription model, being able to pull up music that I hear about, or remember, or whatever, and usually being able to listen to tracks fully (not a 30-second sample, though I guess now that I think about it, some songs on Rhapsody are limited to 30-sec samples…) right away. I guess I have been thoroughly annoyed at certain albums being “purchase only” and having some albums not even fully available for subscription usage (only a selection of tracks available, often not the popular singles from the album, of course), so that’s another fault I see with subscription models in general. Feh. I have wasted a lot of time trying to make Rhapsody work, a lot more than I think it deserves. It works great if I just listen to it on my little laptop, or even logging on to Rhapsody.com on my iMac and streaming music through the web interface, which I did for a while. But I mainly listen to audio on my portable devices, so seamless listening on my laptop or online doesn’t help me a lot. Plus, I’m paying for the privilege of transferring those tracks over to my portables (up to 3, they claim), and Rhapsody has not delivered. So I’m dumping them very soon.
P.S. Rhapsody doesn’t even provide a way for canceling your subscription online; I checked. I may have been really annoyed with Yahoo Music Unlimited because of their annoying, bloaty software, but they at least had an option for me to cancel my trial subscription directly online, no hassle.
June 16, 2007 | Categories: Clix 2, gadgets, gripe, iRiver, Mobile Tech, music subscription service, N95, Nokia, PITA, PlaysForSure, portable media player, Real Networks, Rhapsody, Tech | 8 Comments »
Part 3: Built-in Software
The N800′s built-in software suite is a bit limited, but if you don’t download any other software to the device, you could get by, especially if you’re as dependent on web apps like Google’s suite of Gmail, Google Reader, etc. as I am. Of course, if you want to get the most out of the N800, it would benefit you to explore 3rd-party apps (to be discussed later).
Among the built-in apps, I mainly tested out the Opera web browser (of course), the PDF viewer, the media player, and the RSS reader. I briefly played with the sketch program to write out a short ink blog post from the N800. One hardware-related issue I forgot to mention was that when I wrote on the screen with the stylus, the screen felt really soft and I could see “trails” left by the stylus, similar to what you’d see if you poked your LCD monitor with your finger. It was a bit disconcerting! I would suggest that in a future hardware rev for the N800, the screen be made a bit more robust so that the squishy screen feeling wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Built-in IM Client
Also, I checked out the built-in Google Talk chat client once. Actually, IMing back and forth using the on-screen thumb keyboard was a pretty good experience. I wasn’t as fast a typist as I normally am on a physical QWERTY keyboard, but I still was able to type responses in a reasonable amount of time. I think it worked as well as texting on my MDA, and the MDA has a slide-out thumb keyboard. I think that the N800 would be a pretty good device for mobile IMing despite the lack of physical keyboard. However, there was one thing I didn’t like about the built-in Google Talk client. There didn’t seem to be a way to configure it not to log on automatically. At work, the firewall didn’t allow the GTalk client to connect, so I always had to tap on the presence indicator and change it to offline so that I wouldn’t keep seeing the pop-up dialog indicating it couldn’t log in to certain accounts. It would’ve been nice to be able to configure GTalk not to connect automatically. Update: Commenter Alexander let me know that there is a way to disable automatic logon for the IM client in Tools -> Control Panel -> Accounts. Thanks, Alexander!
Built-in RSS Reader
The RSS reader was okay, but since I use Google Reader, I was not that interested in the N800′s RSS reader, besides testing how well it could be used as a podcatcher client (not very). As far as basic RSS aggregator functionality, it was pretty basic. I didn’t see a way to change the screen layout; I prefer to read individual feeds in “river of news” style, with each item’s full text viewable (like Google Reader). I’m pretty particular about how I want to read my RSS feeds, so it didn’t take me long to realize that the built-in aggregator wouldn’t be of use to me. There also didn’t seem to be a way to import OPML files to bulk import feeds, which is a kiss of death to any aggregator application I try out. No way do I like to input RSS feed links one by one! The main screen widget for the RSS aggregator was okay, but I eventually turned it off.
Built-in Media Player
I thought the media player was very bare bones and not really worth using. I played some audio and a sample video on the N800, and while the playback was good (full-screen video looked great), that’s the only good thing I could say about the built-in media player. It was not intuitive to me to figure out how to set up a playlist of items from the library. I had copied a bunch of podcasts to an SD card and wanted try out the media player as my podcast player, but I could not figure out a way to either create a playlist on the N800 itself, or create a playlist on my desktop and copy it over to the N800 (not just the tracks in the playlist, but also the order of the tracks). The media player’s “now playing” list seemed to randomly populate itself with all of the items in my library, and I couldn’t see an option for clearing out the list to start over. Perhaps this all is user error, but considering how easy it is to use other mobile media player interfaces, I was disappointed with how frustrating the N800′s media player app was.
Also, the controls were not very good. The on-screen playback control buttons are big enough to tap at with your fingers, but the controls to rewind/forward through the track were not. You basically had to scrub through the track via the small time remaining slider/indicator; there weren’t on-screen buttons that you could hold down to rew/ff. And the hardware buttons were not mapped to control playback as I expected. Usually on a PDA or mp3 player, a d-pad is mapped so that the left and right buttons can skip through tracks if you tap them, or you could scrub through the track if you held down on the buttons. And either the center button or one of the up/down buttons would be mapped to play/pause. There was no way to configure the d-pad or any of the hard buttons to make controlling media play back easier. There was too much dependence on the touchscreen, which I guess is okay for playing tracks back at your desk.
However, I used the built-in media player to play a podcast on my commute in to work, and the media player controls were not car-operation friendly. Switching between “Now Playing” mode and library mode was not a one-click affair, which is another feature I’d expect from a normal media player. And there is no way to set up which folders the N800 looks at for media. It did find my media on the SD card automatically, but I think a user would want configurability for this. It just seems like the interface for media player was really not given much thought, which was a bad idea, IMO, because a lot of people are going to pick up an N800 thinking it’ll be a great media player, with that huge screen and stereo speakers, but be truly disappointed by the media player GUI. Users shouldn’t have to install a 3rd-party application just to get a decent media player interface.
Built-in Web Browser
The N800′s web browser was pretty good. It’s not branded as Opera, but that is the underlying component of the N800 browser. It’s very cool to be able to see most webpages as they would look on a PC. This is a big feature for the N800 to differentiate itself from other WiFi-enabled PDAs or smartphones, one that really made me think about getting the N800 in the first place, since I was fed up with the lame mobile browsers on my MDA. The N800 browser handles page rendering pretty well, even when you zoom in or out to fit the page to the width of the screen, or enlarge the text for readability. There are some pages it still hiccups on, most notably the desktop version of Google Reader (ugh!), and other pages that have too many fancy Ajax or Flash elements, but often you can tell that the desktop version of Opera would probably also falter on some of these pages (even Google Reader to some degree).
Overall it was so nice to be able to surf on such a small device like the N800 and be able to see the full versions of webpages, not the wimpy, stripped-down mobile versions. My main complaint about my T-Mobile MDA was that I hated having to navigate desktop-formatted websites on Pocket IE or Opera Mini. Those browsers did their best to reformat the pages, but they often turned out really mangled, barely readable, and barely usable. That’s why I was very interested to try out the N800 and other Nokia devices with Symbian OS. I had often heard that the built-in browsers on Symbian S60 devices are very good at rendering pages for a small screen. Web browsing on the N800 is a good experience. For people who use a lot of web apps as opposed to desktop apps, the N800 could be a great mobile device for them to access their online accounts on the go, without needing a laptop.
Built-in PDF Viewer
Just as I was impressed with the browser on the N800, I was really impressed by the built-in PDF viewer. Just to make a comparison, I have a Sony Reader which I really like for reading e-books. Its screen size is great at approximating paperback-sized pages, which makes it a little nicer to read e-books on than smaller-screened PDAs/smartphones. Although it does support PDFs, its rendering engine for PDFs is not very good at handling files that aren’t formatted for the Reader’s smaller screen. The files are often just shrunken down to fit the Reader’s screen, which makes the fonts miniscule. So, you have to use some software to try to wrangle the original PDF into something more readable. The N800′s PDF viewer is way more capable than the Sony Reader at automatically reformatting for the N800′s screen, and the N800′s screen is smaller than the Reader’s! I tried out a few PDF files, an e-book from WOWIO that seemed like it was formatted for a smaller screen (but not specifically formatted for the N800), and a couple regular PDF e-books for viewing on a PC. All three files were totally readable on the N800′s screen. Even if I zoomed in to make the fonts bigger, they never got pixelated. The pictures in one of the PDFs (a back issue of JPG Magazine) would eventually get pixelated from the zooming, but the fonts never did. Scrolling around the pages to read the content, while not ideal, was not that bad of an experience, either. You could use the d-pad to scroll around, or tap and drag on the screen directly. The whole concept of not having to go through a process to reformat PDFs for the N800 was very nice. I’ve had enough of file conversion to deal with for my other devices; the less of that I have to do, the better. One thing I didn’t like about the PDF viewer was navigating from page to page. If the document fit the width of the screen, switching pages was an easy click of the d-pad. However, if you had to let the document be wider than the screen for readability, there was no easy way to “flip” pages because the d-pad was used for scrolling around the screen. I either had to click on the context menu button and navigate through a couple levels of menus to hit the next or prev page option, or essentially do the same thing using the stylus and the menu bar at the top of the screen. Not cool. Also, I couldn’t find an option for rotating the screen in the built-in PDF viewer. While reading e-books in landscape mode seemed better for larger font sizes or whatever, it would’ve been nice to have the option for reading in portrait mode.
So, with only the built-in applications on the N800, I think it would be best as a mobile web browser — awesome full versions of web pages, no lame WAP or uber-simplified pages necessary, unless you want to surf those types of pages — and a PDF/e-book reader. The media player is fine for the most basic playback of audio tracks or videos, but don’t expect much usability from the GUI. The sketch program is okay for quick sketches, short handwritten notes (also typed notes? I didn’t try that), or very rudimentary ink blog posts, if you’re so inclined. The RSS reader is also quite basic and lacking in configurability. I thought IMing using the built-in Google Talk client (I believe it is configurable for other IM accounts, but not sure which ones) was pretty decent, and if my workplace didn’t block the client from connecting, I probably would’ve used it a lot more as a mobile IMing device. I didn’t get a chance to do video chatting with Google Talk, but I hear it’s also a pretty good experience. But the camera itself is pretty low-res, so YMMV. These were the built-in applications that mattered to me most. I know I left out things like the Internet radio streaming, but I wasn’t very interested in that, so I never really tested it. I also did not set up the built-in e-mail client because a) I didn’t want my e-mail getting downloaded to the device, and b) I mainly access my Gmail account via the web, so I had no need. As I said earlier, if you were only interested web browsing, some light IMing, and mainly viewing PDFs for work or as e-books, the built-in apps will do just fine. But the N800′s Linux-based OS sort of cries out for installing 3rd-party apps, so I’ll discuss that a bit in the next part of my review.
May 23, 2007 | Categories: e-book reader, gadgets, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, N800, Nokia, review, Tech | 6 Comments »
Wireless Radios
Bluetooth
I didn’t really try to use the N800′s bluetooth capabilities, other than sending the N800 a file from my Tablet PC (fast transfer), and pairing my phone. Unfortunately I don’t have a 3G data plan on my MDA, so I didn’t even bother trying to figure out whether or not I could tether the MDA to the N800 and use the MDA as my data connection. I don’t have any BT headphones yet, so I couldn’t try that out, but that would probably be a nice experience if you’re streaming music on the N800.
WiFi
The N800′s WiFi radio seems a bit weak. The WiFi connectivity was kind of flaky, and it actually was a rather frustrating part of the N800 experience, which wasn’t favorable, considering the N800 is supposed to be a device that is very dependent on wireless connectivity to the net. Now, I can’t really fault the N800 for the flakiness of my home or work WiFi networks, but I do fault the N800 for not automatically restoring its connection to the WiFi AP as a regular PC or most smartphones would.
I tried tweaking the network settings, and asked other N800 users about whether or not their N800s would automatically reconnect to the network if the connection were lost, and from what I gathered, the N800 doesn’t do this. The N800 does connect to a network automatically if you were not previously connected at the time you decide open a web browser page, or when it’s trying to automatically refresh RSS feeds. But if you were previously connected and lose the connection while streaming music or browsing, you will have to fix the problem yourself.
WiFi hotspots or home/work networks aren’t always going to be rock solid, so the N800 should account for that. Everytime I lost connection to the network, I had to manually disconnect and reconnect to the AP. The N800 didn’t actually indicate that the connection to the AP was lost; it just wouldn’t load any webpages or stream any music on Rhapsody. Also, despite having a preferred WiFi network configured for both home and work, when I had to manually reconnect to those networks, I had to choose the APs from a list. When the N800 connected automatically to refresh RSS feeds, or some similar task, it would pick out the preferred networks fine.
Conversely, when I have used my T-Mobile MDA to send off an e-mail or surf and it lost its wireless connection during either of these tasks, I would see indication that the connection was lost, and then it would repeatedly try to reconnect to my home network automatically until it either timed out or successfully reconnected. I expected the N800 to do the same. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to. If I missed some magic network settings for it to do this, I’d appreciate some feedback. Looking in the user’s guide on the N800 for help on the network settings was not as helpful as I would have hoped.
The glitchy network connectivity issues were especially annoying while listening to streaming music. I can deal with momentary drops, or garbled audio if the device would reconnect on its own, as you’d expect on a desktop browser, but having to fix the connection manually every time it was lost (which at my home network’s worst performance happened every 4 or 5 minutes; I never heard the end of a song on Rhapsody that time), made the user experience really awful. I waited for a little while to see if the N800 would reconnect by itself, and I checked if other computers on my home network could still connect. All other networked devices but the N800 were fine. This was actually rather disappointing, because so many people talked up the wonders of the N800 Rhapsody client. I really liked it when it worked, but losing the network connection multiple times really put a damper on things, especially when it would cause the Rhapsody client to crash. Unfortunately, the N800 cannot download Rhapsody subscription tracks because it’s not a PlaysForSure device, so I couldn’t even work around the streaming issues that way. IMO, this should be the first thing Nokia should fix in the next firmware update for the N800. It should be robust enough to deal with loss of network connection and reconnect to the preferred networks as desktop and notebook computers do.
Part 3 will discuss the N800′s built-in software, and perhaps delve into the issues I had with some of the 3rd-party apps I tried out.
May 21, 2007 | Categories: gadgets, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, N800, Nokia, review, Tech | 3 Comments »
I finished my 2-week evaluation period with the N800 (thanks, WOMWorld!). Unfortunately, it arrived around the same time I was ramping up my photography hobby stuff because of the nice weather we finally got out here in Chicagoland, so I didn’t have a chance to delve in to as many features and 3rd-party apps for the N800 as I wanted. However, I did get enough play time to figure out a few things about it. I find that I’m remembering a lot of information I want to point out, so I think I’m going to break this up into multiple parts.
Part One: Hardware
The hardware was very nice. As I mentioned in my initial post about the N800, I think it’s pretty sleek and well-built. The materials, while not all metal and super-high-end, didn’t feel cheap. In fact, the N800 felt very solid. There was no creaking or flexing of the plastic. The weight balance was good, and the N800 felt very comfortable to hold, even for long periods of time. The screen was huge, high-res, and bright. It reminded me of the awesome high-res screen on the Dell Axim x50v that I used to use, but bigger. Fonts and pictures were crisp. When you think about all of the functionality that was crammed into this very pocketable device, the sleek design is even more impressive.
The buttons to the left of the screen were laid out well and had good tactile feedback. There was a 5-button d-pad, an escape button, a button to bring up the menu bar options, and a home button that assisted you in switching among open applications, or going to the home screen. These buttons made navigation a lot easier. However the 4 buttons on the top — -, full screen, +, and power — were a bit small and set too close together, which made it easy to accidentally press the wrong button sometimes. However, once I got used to the thin, small buttons, it wasn’t that hard to operate them without looking. When pressed quickly, the power button brought up a menu screen with various powering-down options like locking the screen and going to sleep, completely switching off the device, or turning off the wireless radios. At first I kept turning the device off completely when I was done with it, but it took too long to come back from a cold boot, so after finding that out, I just put the N800 into sleep mode for quicker access. The +/- buttons either zoomed in or out on a screen to enlarge fonts or images, whether it was the browser or the PDF viewer. In media playback apps, they controlled the volume. The full-screen button toggled the app screens into or out of full-screen mode. Reading, browsing, or viewing videos in full-screen mode was really awesome thanks to the high-resolution, brightness, and crisp font display.
As can be seen in the picture, there’s a little circle on the top left side of the N800. That’s the little camera that you can press on to pop it out. It’s swivelable so that you can aim it at yourself for video chatting or video VOIP calls. I played with it a little bit, but since I didn’t have anyone to test out the video Google Talk with and I don’t like pointing cameras at myself, I didn’t really give it much attention. It was rather low-res, but considering how small the form-factor was, it’s relatively impressive that you can actually use it for video calls.
The touchscreen was pretty responsive. I had read about how the touchscreen can distinguish between a stylus tap and a finger press on the screen, and displays an appropriately-sized menu or on-screen keyboard. I was very surprised to hear this; I’d never had a device with this type of functionality before. This actually worked pretty well. Sometimes I accidentally brought up the stylus menus when I tapped the screen with my fingernail, but if I re-tapped the text field with my finger tip, it switched the keyboard to the “thumb keyboard” version. I’d say about 75% – 80% of the time I used my fingers to navigate menus and type in URLs, notes, and other text, and it was completely comfortable and usable. I composed my first blog post about the loaner N800 on the N800 itself, using the virtual thumb keyboard. It took a little bit of getting used to, figuring out where the numbers and symbols are, etc., but after a little while, I felt pretty comfortable using it as if it were a physical thumb keyboard. If the iPhone’s on-screen virtual keyboard works as well as the N800′s, I think most people will be fine with not having a physical keyboard. However, because I used my fingers a lot to interact with the N800, the screen was smudged up with fingerprints, but it was a very nice touch not to have to use the stylus most of the time.
The fold-out stand was a great addition, and I like how it was contoured to fit the lines of the N800 when folded. I definitely appreciated that it was a built-in stand. There are many mobile devices out there like the PSP, or other media players that should have some kind of built-in stand, but don’t. This was a nice design detail from Nokia. It offered a couple angles at which to prop up the N800, and satisfyingly clicked into place at the two different detents. The stand made it easy to listen to music or watch video, hands-free, converting the N800 into a mini-stereo or mini-video-player. When the stand is folded out, it revealed a mini-USB port on the right side, and a covered SD slot on the bottom, very clever. I worried about how thin the stand was, though. It seemed like the most fragile thing on the N800. And because of how the stand is laid out in relation to the mini-USB port, I was wary about using the USB port, because if something would have fallen on top of the N800 to make it tip backwards and inadvertently close the stand, it seemed like the stand would break when it hit the plugged-in USB cable. Of course, if you’re careful, this shouldn’t be an issue, but still, accidents can happen.
The stereo speakers on the N800 sounded very good, and were relatively loud for their small footprint. Listening to music or podcasts through these speakers was a great experience. I’ve always been sort of an advocate for mobile media devices having some kind of built-in speaker setup so that I wouldn’t have to resort to using some kind of speaker dock or the like just to listen to the content if I don’t want to use headphones. Obviously the N800 isn’t going to replace your home theatre set up, but for the size of this device, the speakers were very clear without much distortion at higher volumes. I’m not an audiophile, so YMMV. The stereo speakers plus the big, high-res screen could make for a very nice video-watching experience, probably better than watching videos on a Sony PSP (though I didn’t have a chance to do this comparison).
The two hidden SD slots allowed you to have up to 4GB of external storage, 2GB SD cards supported on each slot. One slot was hidden on the bottom edge of the N800, under the flip-out stand, and the other slot was inside the battery compartment. I didn’t try putting an SD card in the battery compartment slot, but the SD slot on the bottom of the N800 was fairly easy to access. However, I noticed that the slot didn’t have a spring mechanism for removing the card. Instead, you would have to rely on the very small ridge at the bottom front edge of an SD card to pry out the card with something like your fingernail. Since I had used a 2GB mini-SD card in an adapter, it was more difficult to wrangle the card out of the slot. I had to take the mini-SD card out of the adapter, then use a pair of needle-nosed pliers to remove the adapter. That’s when I found out the SD slot didn’t have the normal spring-loaded mechanism that I’m used to!
Well, this brings us to the end of part one. For the next part of the review, I’ll get into the wireless radios, and the N800′s built-in apps.
May 17, 2007 | Categories: gadgets, Internet tablet, Mobile Tech, N800, Nokia, review, Tech | 3 Comments »
Figuring out titles for blog posts is easy when the subject has such a fun name. WOWIO is a website that offers free PDF e-book downloads that have no DRM. I found this site via Featured Maemo Apps, while looking for cool apps to load onto my loaner Nokia N800. According to Featured Maemo Apps, these PDFs are well-suited for reading on the N800 using the built-in PDF viewer, without any additional reformatting. Sweet.
Normally I kind of gloss over sites like this because I am not very interested in public domain books from sites like Project Gutenberg. There are a few classic titles that I would probably read some time after my long “to read” list is exhausted, but for the most part, I’m just not that interested in these public domain titles. However, I took a look at their collection, and there are some interesting newer titles. What caught my eye was a book by K. Eric Drexler about nanotechnology — Engines of Creation 2.0. I’ve been really interested in reading Engines of Creation, but like most books, have not gotten around to it yet. Perhaps now that it’s available via WOWIO, I’ll actually read it now…maybe. Since all of the downloads are DRM-free — they limit you to 5 downloads a day, and the books are somehow ad-supported — I’ll definitely sign up and at least download the K. Eric Drexler book. I’ll have to peruse their catalog some more.
I love reading e-books as opposed to paper books because it’s a lot more convenient to carry around many titles and read a few pages at a time during little chunks of spare time throughout the day. I hope that sites like WOWIO become popular enough to drive publishers to consider e-books as a more viable format.
P.S. Since we’re talking about DRM-free e-books, I have to mention that all of Cory Doctorow’s (he’s a contributor to the popular blog Boing Boing) books are available in various e-book formats on his site, Craphound. He is a science-fiction novelist, and his books are of the cyberpunk-y, William Gibson-esque, Neal Stephenson-ish ilk. He has made all of his books available online for free, while still selling dead-tree versions. I wish more authors would do this! I put his latest collection of short stories on my Sony Reader soon after I got it. Good stuff!
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May 3, 2007 | Categories: e-book reader, e-books, gadgets, Mobile Tech, N800, Nokia, Tech, WOWIO | 1 Comment »
