Year: 2010

MeeGo? Symbian^4? Product demo? Fake? Closer look

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Update: The original video was removed after Nokia claimed it. Re-uploaded for people, who might have missed it. Will be removed soon. Meanwhile, a post from AAS also shown Ovi client being built for N8, I think Ovi store here look similar to that one. Isn’t it?

Web and social sites seen lots of vibes coming from one youtube link that was followed by a short blog post by today only. In last 24 hours the video has seen around 44, 000 hits, which clearly shows that how eagerly people might be waiting for Nokia to rule again.

Though already a post from Mark Guim pushed others from writing anything further on the same video (brilliant post mate), but later on raised doubts and speculations (the original poster says its MeeGo), I thought to contribute few of my own words over the same from a Maemo lover’s perspective. Let’s watch the eye candy first …

There been a huge buzz around the new OS followed by this Meego in last two days and sure experts are holding themselves to say anything on this due to obvious reasons (bad experiences with N97), but something could be said for sure about this.

This is only a presentation video of functionality, running on some simulator, so there should be no talk about snappy performances or anything like that, that would be too good to be true.

Let’s dissect it again …

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Though video was not HD and pics is blurry, but if you look harder then the bottom left line says …

@Nokia 2009/ 2010 Secret

Now that creates doubts as Secret is sure not an official term to be used, companies usually prefer confidential, but leave that here.

When look at the top, then the video/ presentation clearly aims to demonstrate five chapters in short…

  1. Starting up and signing in
  2. Powerful Multi-Tasking UI
  3. Get Connected
  4. Ovi Store
  5. Music Player

Starting up and signing in:

The music widget been the permanent resident of home screen for many and stock updates might be of worth, when you will looking at your mobile screen more than anything else (sure beauties)

We always heard of Nokia-Facebook deals and Nokia-Twitter deals, but the way the screenshot below shows updates from Ovi and Facebook on homepage, when someone touches that green new updates icon in bottom right corner, shows that Nokia is very much planning to push its own Ovi as somewhat a twitter like service and may be wishing to make it as popular one.

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Social Networking widget in green  at bottom right shows number of updates, which look cool in popping up bubble way. There are comments, responses and sure like buttons will be as well. Posting is simple like Android or iOS might be doing, but I will also like to see that if it has got any improvement only touch phones (without qwerty).

As this is just a simulation, the poster taken the liberty of not showing the touch keypad as that wasn’t gonna look cool, if was going to take most of the screen like current touch keypad screens do.

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The next cool thing was to see integration of contacts. We already seen the smooth integration of contacts with social services. There were only facebook and ovi updates on home screen, but contacts app shows that twitter integration is there for sure. not only that but it looks too cool (reminds me N900)

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If you look closer then there are 4 tabs in bottom of contact. Info, Social History, Extra and history.

Info must be what being shown on screen
Social history should shows recent status updates.
History should show last call details, last message details or chat details for that person
I still wonder that what would be in Extra, GPS? NFC?

No mention of Video Call here like Nokia N900, neither anything like Facetime in pics, really? Hope we gonna see something like that included in contacts. Meanings of Get Connected going to be changed again.

Powerful Multi-Tasking UI

If you have played with Maemo and N900 for once, then whenever someone talks about Multi-Tasking, your mind start comparing the same with Maemo only.

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Looks similar? Can’t say that it will be card like as in Symbian^3 or Maemo like, but switching seems to be exactly as was in Nokia N900, pretty good reasons to wait for the next OS.. I wonder if they would provide that left top icon and side click kind of innovations we seen with Maemo on N900.

Though at the end, it will all depend on RAM and Application Memory provided. It was pretty neat with N900, but if they are targeting to be cheaper than others, then ….

Ovi Store

Idea of using get Application button seems to be inspired from Add/Remove control panel applet and sure makes the better sense.

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Ovi Store looked neat with surprising entry of Gravity and Acrobat along with Angry Bird. @Janole hasn’t confirmed a Gravity for MeeGo yet and sure the appearance of the same pushed some doubts there, but I think if the apps would be running on Qt runtime, then it will be immaterial that you are on Symbian^3 ^4 or MeeGo.

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Ovi store looks neat and no filters like recommended, applications, games etc.

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Display page for individual apps also look pretty neat, informatory and well navigated.

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Cool, when it shows the application being installed with short blue status bar under the app icon. Same with the payment method, where you would be having your credit card registered for payments. Are they thinking of debit cards as well? And what about all applications on trial?

Music Player Strange that why it was not demonstrated like Nokia N8? With cool Album poster display?

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Seems almost like any of the best music apps out there, if you talk about work.

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They didn’t went for landscape mode, otherwise, we might have seen some more awesomeness, but it wasn’t displayed that where will be the option to send, share or set as ringtone fo the currently playing song? Is it that blue icon on the top right?

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Pretty neat and awesome? I warn you that don’t make assumptions and expectations like people started with N97 Classic demo videos. Actual speed varies on the basis of final hardware and such a UI will do wonder when gets at least 512 MB RAM and 1GHz processor.  Statius updates will still not be flashy without a very good internet connection or 3G. So, expect the experience to be awesome, but be realistic in opinions. Its the OS, not some particular device.

What you think?

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Twitter down for big fat five hours

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I don’t know when was the last time, when you seen some of your favorite service go down for big fat five hours. Imagine if some day Google went down for five hours or WikiPedia? We all love twitter, we really do and somehow know that whatever they might be doing, must be doing for some cause, for making the service more better… but five hours.. they must come up with something really superb.

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Yes!! Twitter is down again with different image to show off like above. They have made their status clear on Friday itself. Right now, their blog doesn’t say anything on it yet, but their status blog says this ….

 

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I really don’t know if any other service in the world needs to maintain the status blog in this kind of ways. They talked about reliability issues many times like this, but really is the load on them is this much huge that might be impossible to maintain?

In geeky terms, it is in some ways. Yes! there are other services like Google, Gmail, Microsoft updates, Facebook, WordPress that get many requests, but sure there is nothing in the world compared to twitter that might be getting these many requests per second. Could understand that what they might be going through.

What we all could do, is to chill and wish them all the best to come back soon and well,

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Jolicloud 1.0 is here

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Received a mail from Jolicloud today that its finally reached to versions 1.0. Readers might be aware of the same Netbook OS that I tested on Nokia Booklet 3G sometimes back. Worth to check out.

Below is the mail, I received …

Jolicloud Computer

Welcome to Jolicloud 1.0!

Hello Nitish,

We are excited to announce that you are now able to upgrade your machine to Jolicloud 1.0, the version of Jolicloud we’ve envisioned since the start.

To upgrade: Open "My Jolicloud" and click on "Updates". Just follow the instructions and restart, making sure that you are connected to the Internet to activate your new Jolicloud. You can get more details and screenshots on the Jolicloud 1.0 Upgrade Guide.

Here are some of the cool new features you’ll get to experience in a few moments:

A Simpler, Customizable Launcher Entirely Built in HTML5
It’s up to you to organize your apps the way you want – your launcher is customizable.

An Exhaustive App Center
Jolicloud has selected 700+ of the best free apps to install and share with your friends.

A Social Stream
Through our new Stream feature, you can feel the pulse of the Jolicloud community and discover the apps that your friends recommend.

A Universal File System
Because everything is in one place, it’s easy to manage your files and data, whether they’re on your machine or in the Cloud.

Experience the Anywhere OS
You can install Jolicloud on as many devices as you’d like, and they will always be automatically synchronized. Any app you download, delete, or move around will be the same on all your other machines with no extra work on your part.

To see more details about the new features, read our blog post.

Please send us your feedback. As usual, for support about the service, you can join one of our many user communities on Twitter, Facebook, and GetSatisfaction.

If you blog or record a video about Jolicloud please let us know and don’t forget to add the ‘jolicloud’ tag on Flickr, or YouTube.

All our users upgrading to Jolicloud 1.0 are tweeting about it, click here to send yours.

Enjoy!

The Jolicloud Team.
http://www.jolicloud.com/

Take a look.. might be something with this new update that may strike you much more.

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Nokia N8 finally seems to be on schedule

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Started with @Sirajsoft words and twitpic (given below), my timeline seemed to be buzzing about Nokia N8 release date all day long and what seems to be spinning out in the air was something we were waiting since long … Nokia N8 finally seems to be on schedule. Yes!! the worldwide release will include India as well and its all set to be released in first week of September 2010.

 n8

There were words that some site claiming that it would be available within 4 weeks, if you order it now, but that seemed a fake as there are no official words from Nokia and anything such should come from Nokia officials first and four weeks?? Sounds too good to be true.

All of Indian bloggers started flooding Official Nokia sources like @NokiaIndia and finally we got something that we could call the official words ….

N8 Launch

Though pushing more over price point, they were in No Comments mode and replied ..

N8Launch 

So, officially we could say that Nokia N8 coming to India in first week September (that would be before my birthday September 23), though there are no official words over price, but its seems to be something around or little more than ` 24, 000 (otherwise, they would have commented over price for sure) and probably lesser than ` 27, 000.

Well!! that also make things more interesting about some other things like price of Nokia N900. In the same way, we are expecting a price drop for Nokia 5800 after launch of Nokia X6 8Gb, we should be expecting a price drop for Nokia N900 as well. That sure gonna make the confusion more interesting, what if Nokia N900 like open device on offer for ` 20, 000 ?

What you think?

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Netbook and Nokia N900 when Nokia N8 is coming

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The most perfect words about Nokia N900 that I came to read very long back,

The people behind it, you know those other guys in that other building, are probably a bunch of geeks with a sense of mission. Somehow, someone at Nokia stole a prototype from their lab and decided to slap a N Series logo and a number “900” on it and actually released it to the mainstream. Those lab guys don’t even make phones. They make internet tablets. They have nothing to do with big old Symbian. They have their own open source based OS called Maemo (pronounce My Mo). – via 360east.com

Beautiful and very accurate were the words and struck right there with me and … we seen more and more words being told about this beast, many stories, many myths broken, every day a new idea, every night a new invention, whenever you run of reasons that why should you buy a N900 adding up a few limitations from here and there, another morning wakes you up telling that every other day of N900 is another reason to talk about Nokia N900.

We all know that something such big as Nokia N8 is coming, we all keep on hearing that what new things that would be able to do, we all know that there will be an all time best camera phone in hands of you all, but still sometimes I think that why is my post about N900 vs N8 still topping in blog stats? Why WomWorld still has more posts over Nokia N900 than anything else?

 

May be I thought to post it much earlier, may be it was something else in my mind that I thought to give few words, but the credit is for sure of Inspect-A-Gadget’s post, where he discards Nokia N900 a viable alternative to Netbook. I am really feeling like pushed to say something … really something

Why Nokia N900 competes well with a Netbook?

First of all, why we needed a Netbook?

Compact size? More easy to carry? You are always online in the way you wanted. You could check on emails, you posts and surf blogs, you share pics, you make even occasional edits via its inbuilt tools, make sketches, music and whatever you like to do in moments, you sneak out a few moments.

You are in a conference but you do not need a table to put anything like others (at least 10” I guess) and still you are on …. in each step with others with your just 3.5” device … you are not typing like others might be, but you are making occasional touch gestures and sometimes your fingers racing on small but perfect keypad of your Nokia N900. Sounds gracious na?

 

Some argue that its limited by it caliber and a full fledge windows is something that a Maemo wont do ever. But tell me, do you really wanna do some photo shopping on the go? Or Studio like FX-Effects? But does a Windows 7 Starter with probably 1GB RAM at most serves the purpose for some photo shopping or movie editing? Does Windows Starter really work that way or if we choose any other operating system or do some Photo shopping, then does Netbooks really provide you those acclaimed 8 hours?

I know Zahib doesn’t actually meant that and still many more examples could be given and I always pointed that it was kind of natural right for Nokia N900 to opt for a 1500 mAh battery.. but still think about trade offs of carrying a device exclusively with you for purpose or having something that is always with you.

Think you are going to a family wedding and made promises with family that no more office chik chik, no more sneaking into those laptops. Will you really explain your granny that its a Netbook not laptop? Will you carry a Netbook to the wedding place? Really? But you could stand tall with Nokia N900. You will say its a phone dude and the coolest one, you might have seen around. While you all might be waiting for this function to be over and by morning, you will all be uploading pics to facebook, blogs etc… hey hold it there.. I am already done, while I was taking drinks with you. Get a look on my page.

And inside you say… sigh!!! thanks God, I didn’t missed that mail and replied too with collected facts from some googling. That’s all when you weren’t thinking that you will be needed to do something like that here in the wedding.

Believe me, its Nokia N900 that you wanted, not some Netbook that screams that I am underpowered and even if small, no one can figure me out much different from a traditional Laptop…. damnn man!! you cant even carry a iPad everywhere with you, sure not in your pocket.

For me, its never a question that if Nokia N900 can serve as a Netbook, but the question is what a Netbook serves? A sense of limits whenever you think of doing something serious and a sense of burden, when you thought you going to carry light? Are Netbooks going to be pagers of past or will they fight with Notebooks more than mobiles of today?

Nokia N8 and Nokia N900

You see some iMorons all around looking for reasons to eat another iCrap, because web seems to be echoing about that, because that’s probably most well marketed thing in the world.

But why you are finding reasons to choose Nokia N900 over Nokia N8, when no one seems to be marketing things that way? Why you feel that Nokia N8 will do many new things, but still think that there seems to be no limit that you will do with Nokia N900.

Well!! I am confused, totally confused and I know you all are … at least many of you really are. I know coz I see search terms like N8 Vs N900 hitting my blog without missing a day. I know because I still think that when someone said the lines below, then it wasn’t Nokia N8, but Nokia N900 in the mind ….

Its not the technology, but its what you do with it.

Current price as ` 24, 500, while Nokia N8 scaring with quotes like 600$  or ` 30, 000 and that too when it will make it to India (not before in September 2010 and if it went like Nokia loves to do with India then …. ). I bet, the wait isn’t pretty easier for you and there are reasons to think once again … its a complete touch device, when it comes to Nokia N8, are you all for that?

What’s currently not right with with Nokia N900?

Due to more attention to Intel-Nokia MeeGo, focus was very early moved from Nokia N900 than it should have. We still get just a basic Ovi Maps over a top-notch A-GPS unit and no Google Maps here due to lack of Java Support. Honestly speaking… that annoy… annoy big time, when we already were somehow compromising without Gravity (even Android, Apple, BB users doing, so not that much complaining).

Nokia N900 shouldn’t be a step child to Nokia, it has rights to get cared of and sure rights to get promised for update option to MeeGo.

One day, I hear that Nokia N900 received some update an could do portraits as efficient as other things, another day, I hear that there is something that could make your Nokia N900 a remote control of your TV via its IR port, another day, hermes integrates contacts with Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype, MSN, Ovi or whatever you think, another day you get Fcam libraries got released, another day… … story moves on.

You cry that why you were so naive, when Paul wrote you for giving an Nokia N900 for trial? Why you were so lost in Alice‘s Wonderland of magic that forgot that its just 14 days? Why you think that you would have been doing much much more with the N900 than you actually did? Why you think that if there was a time machine that could have been taken you back to the time, when Nokia N900 was in your hands and then pauses the time right there.

Why do you wish that may be someday Paul or Katie may be extra generous to you for sending an N900 this way again or some NokiaIndia or WomWorldIndia (?) or Blogger’s Mind or anything such think of pouring some love over you again? Yes! a dream chase … I do wanna get a second chance with my EX… a second chance to rectify my mistakes that I didn’t given her the treatment, she deserved … 15 days were so little for someone, who got a first trial device, when it was a N900.

Is it DATE? #NokiaDate?

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VLC Player got updated to 1.1.1

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VLC 1.1.1 is a bugfix release of VLC media player. It brings many bugfixes and small improvements notably in: libVLC, Windows video output, DxVA2 decoding on ATI GPU (with Catalyst 10.7), interfaces, demuxers and decoders and updates in the translations

VLC

Its been few minutes before VLC Player  got updated to 1.1.1 from 1.1.0. Like most of the earlier updates, its not a major one and does some bug fixes (really? we though VLC is perfect) only. Download from here.

It doesn’t seem to be updated in their wiki, so can’t put the exact details right now, but an update is always better.

Just thought to put a quick update here, though generally I wasn’t doing such posts. VLC is such a hell of piece that one could really wishes to write more and more pages for it, but I guess their official Wiki Pages do a great job about that and people should read them.

What VLC can do?

Most of us know VLC as something that could play almost anything that exists on this planet, but this is something bigger than that. Media Streaming, conversion, audio extraction … a lot of it. Get a good read of the stuffs here.

VLC How To’s

Did you know that you can use your VLC for converting media files so that you could view them on your iPOD or Symbian phone? Did you knew that VLC could help you in making DVD? or if you could use VLC capabilities in other applications as well? There would be a lot to learn, if you look at here.

Many cools things that people generally don’t use

How many of you ever thought of skinning already cool and simple enough VLC player? Or by any chance, do you know that what your mouse could do with its movements with VLC controls? Try some readings here and here or some mad and Geeky things here.

Yes!! VLC stands as the best open source software ever existed, just like Firefox.. why not try to know more about it and wish that something like this is coming for our mobile phones very soon.

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NGPay closes its recharge facility

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Sometimes, you really hate when something you liked most about something drops the same service. Around two and half month back, I wrote about NGPay. The best part of the service was mobile top-ups at the moments, you might need them urgently and no other options might be nearest. Sorry to say you guys,  NGPay decided to close down the service since last few days, if I know right.

Not sure, since when the service is closed down, but I came to know around few days back only, the very first mention on tweet from NGpay side was on July 19, 2010, when they claimed that due to too high failure levels, they are forced to remove the service from their catalogue.

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More sad part was their re-confirmation on the day next, adding that the services wont be returning soon.

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What kind of issues they might be facing?

As I wasn’t able to find any link for any of their blog neither does their own site has any updates on it except this twitter account, nothing confirms that this service is closed permanently.

Issues as much we could guess were particularly related to failed recharges due to communication issues due to limited capacity of mobile internet, delays in secure communication channels, in-correct recharge amounts and something like these.

But still I think it was a business decision due to low margins against high risk factor and too many channels required to resolve issues otherwise IRCTC sure has much more high failure rate in comparison of mobile recharges. I myself faced any issue with recharges rarely, while got more than 5-6 times refunds while using IRCTC through NGPay. But still IRCTC is in their catalogue, while mobile recharges are not… why?

Problem lies in the same thing, NGPay came in existence for. No unified system, there are no perfect routes to return the money from the mobile service providers while IRCTC refunds are very well made and functioning perfectly in comparison.

Still we wish that they may overcome these issues very soon.

What are the alternatives?

I am not really sure that why government or mobile operators are not coming on their own to provide a unified service that could provide online recharges to everyone for any of the provider available across India. May be  there are options of online recharge from individual service providers like Vodafone or Airtel or any other, but nothing matches with a unified system that could be accesses via a simple application in your mobile itself.

One such still available application/ service is mCheck that is still working for recharges.. not sure till when..

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