Tag Archives: N97

Giving Away a Mobile to Give Into Opportunity

1 to Have, 1 to Review - Share on OviOver on my personal site, I wrote a pretty long piece talking about me giving away the Nokia N97 that I’ve had for the past two years. I’m quite at peace with giving it away, but not for the reasons I used to give away mobiles. Here’s a snippet:

…Then the N97 leaves my possession. I’ll have only two mobiles, the X6 and my N8. The X6 might stick with me since it has a crack in the screen – unless someone comes along that needs it more than I need to keep it as a backup. I’m not wedded to keeping so many mobiles anymore (as I said in an earlier post). But, I’m also not content in people just getting a mobile for the sake of having it. These devices should enable something more than simply calling or texting someone. It should be more than saying “I’ve got screen, after, screen, after screen of applications that I rarely use.” No. These mobiles should connect us to the things that matter. Educating one another, preventing disease, sharing our spiritual travels. These are the things that matter, and what mobile should foster.

For me, I’m clearly in a phase of life where if it doesn’t improve someone else’s life in those kinds of ways, then mobile doesn’t matter. If all it does is sit as a trinket, then I might as well give it away to someone who can change the world with it much more than I.

Read the rest at Blog.AntoineRJWright.

It has been a good while since we’ve talked about giving devices away and contentment. What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you think that the way we view mobile and technology lends to grow into these kinds of decisions? Or, does some aspect of consumerism or security override those moments?

May Videocast

I know that last month that we talked about doing a monthly podcast, but you wouldn’t believe how hard it can sometimes be to get schedules and technologies to work together. Nevertheless, there’s not a lot that’s impossible with mobile these days, and so I recorded a video cast while in between meetings using Qik and my Nokia N97. Lord willing, this looks good, because we don’t edit while on the go… at least not yet ;)

View the MMM May Videocast via Qik.

Failing to Remember the Bible App Experience

Screenshot of Palm Bible+ running on Palm T5Over at my personal website, I threw open a thought about how I forgot about the experience aspect of Bible applications because of changes in how I engaged the content. Here’s a snippet:

It used to be the case with Bible apps that I was very tied to the user experience within the application. But, I that changed a bit as I got involved with the Katana project. Yes, there is/was a need for getting a solid and usable experience for Bibles on the Maemo platform, but it wasn’t a pressing need for me. In fact, I wanted that project more because of the needs a visitor to MMM had more than my own. By the time the application got to a testing state, I was already steering away from the collection of Bibles that I owned, the application(s) that accessed them, and spent more time in-between the text pasting snippets of Scripture to notes and linking comments to pages and commentary online.

Read the rest of Failing to Remember the Bible App Experience.

Many of you have talked about the juggling of Bible software platforms because of different content offerings. Because of that juggling (of applications or libraries), does the software platform matter more or less than the content and what you can do with it?

Why There Are No Books on My iPad

I will chime in again with just about everyone else who’s used an iPad for any amount of time – its a very good device for consumption-based reading/browsing, and the battery life is phenomenal. Thing is, its not so great when you want to read certain types of content – mainly because, some things just aren’t available anywhere but in a browser (hence the title of this post).

When I purchased the iPad, I knew that there was a smattering of (e)books that could be downloaded to it. And I was very excited and intrigued about any perodicals which would use the Bonner’s Mag+ Concept as I knew that for such a device, making the content fit into a unique immersive reading experience was very key to enjoying the device.

What I didn’t expect was that I’d have to grapple with vendor lock-in and a lack of being able to port content easily.

It’s an Apple device. There’s not Windows, webOS, Symbian, MeeGo, or any other mobile platform coming out that can skillfully run on this hardware (without a ton of hacking). It’s not meant to be open or opened, and that keeps some things in a positive light – until you want to do something more and not go through iTunes or the AppStore to do it. I wish that in the respect to other software platforms, other tablets would use platforms as a means to enhance the consumer experience, not just tie them down.

The major beef for me though has to do with porting content from the iPad to my N97 (or whatever the mobile of the week is). Outside of those things that appear within a browser, I’m generally having to make the decision to either download on the mobile and put in a email draft folder to share with the iPad, or put it on one device and ignore the fact that I switch between devices frequently, but want to keep my content wherever.

And therefore, I’ve only downloaded samples of books. I can’t handle the idea of reading something on an iPad to be locked there, and then between Apple and the publishers to not have access to content that I purchased on any other mobile device that I own.

Saddest of these is that I’ve not really liked the Bible experience on the iPad. I’ve been looking at YouVersion for a few weeks now and it comes closest to the functionality that I get from Google Reader – I can read and note on any device, and both the native and web-based applications keep my information accessible no matter which device I’m using. There aren’t too many apps – or content streams – which do this in the PC world, let alone the mobile world.

Ideally, I’d love to be able to simply purchase the licenses to a (e)book and then be able to read/consume/share that content accordingly. But, right now, this has to happen more on the side of the Bible software developer to account for the user and the licenses, not so much on the side of the publisher. And with such the niche that Biblical software is, some items just are better left not purchased unless you can make the time investment into the device they are targeting.

So I’m left reading samples of some items, and sharpening my search and research skills for other items. I refuse to get into the game of jailbreaking (hacking) my iPad just to share content easier; and definitley don’t walk the line into piracy – the men and women who take the time to create, test, and market this software deserve to be compensated fairly for their labors. I just wish that it were easier to abstract the content from specific platforms, so that it would make for a better value proposition for me the consumer of the content.

Maybe if that happens, I can stop looking to paper books as models of truely mobile content.

Just Mobile-ing Along

Image: Two Nokia N97 smartphones

Just taking things a few devices at a time, or something like that.

I’ve gone ahead and consolidated my N95 and N800 into the new Nokia N97 (read my review at Brighthand). I like this device, and its pretty much the one that I’ve been waiting for since moving to Symbian devices.

Some of the positive aspects from using the N97 has been the screen and keyboard. Its a tiny bit larger of a screen than the 5800XM, and the built in 32GB of memory and sliding keyboard really speak well towards getting things done, or just letting me know how life is rolling on the internet-side of things.

Its also been attracting some interesting attention in church from folks who have mobile devices that do the sliding keyboard or touchscreen thing but want Bibles on their device. Its almost as if the N97 is more approachable in that context..

Now that I have the hardware I want, I wonder if things will improve with software like the mobile web server (like this) and aggregated address books (like this) so that connectivity can be more instinctive of a process, and then we can just get to the matter of using mobile/tech to solve issues.