N95

The view from my office

by alec on March 19, 2009

There is a crowd of Spanish speaking men top dressing the lawn beside my patio this morning. Ottawa? March? No. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been in Mexico with my family for our annual vacation in the sun. Frankly, with all that has been happening at iotum, I was worried about taking time away. But you know, I’ve been enormously productive. The sun rises at around 5:30 AM. My routine has been to get up, work for two or three hours while everyone else is asleep, and then rejoin the family for the day’s activities.

It has worked out well for two reasons. The two hour time zone difference has made it easy to interact with my team in Ottawa, and technology has finally caught up with Cancun. There is reasonable WiFi throughout much of the resort, and connectivity – while slow – is constant.

The tools that I rely on?

My HP Mini 1000 netbook. It’s tiny, but with a built microphone, webcam, and enough processing power to substitute as a desktop in a pinch, the HP Mini is the perfect travel companion. Incidentally, the two most common PC’s I’ve seen among travellers here are netbook category devices, and the Macbook Air.

Calliflower, naturally. Early one morning I did a conference call with a polish prospect wanting to take advantage of our new international conference call numbers in Warsaw and Wroclaw. It was a piece of cake. We won their business.

Skype. Both for IM and for calls with the team back at the office. Skype’s awesome audio quality can’t be beat for voice on IM calls.

iPhone. Sitting by the pool, I can be connected via WiFi all day long. I check in on email throughout the day as the need arises. If I need to make a phone call, I use Truphone for iPhone.

Unlocked Nokia N95. When I got here, I grabbed a TelCel pay as you go SIM, and popped it into the phone. Whenever I’m away from the resort, the N95 is my constant companion. No data, but anyone who needs me can reach me on the phone.

Truphone. Truphone has been a lifesaver. I no longer carry roaming plans on my Rogers phones, preferring instead to find a WiFi hotspot or a Truphone anywhere access point in the country I’m visiting. En route, I made calls from John F. Kennedy airport in the USA using Boingo and Truphone. While here, I’ve made numerous calls home, again, using Truphone and WiFi. Compare Truphone’s $.02 per minute to Rogers’ $3.00 / minute Mexican roaming charges, and it’s easy to see the attraction.

It may not be ideal to work through a vacation, but technology has certainly made it far easier to stay connected than in the past. And the view from my office is fantastic…

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Drinking in the Police with Nokia’s N95

by alec on May 2, 2008

The Police, with Elvis Costello as the warm-up act last, played Ottawa last night. There will be lots of reviews of the concert, which was fabulous. So, I’m not going to write about that. Instead… well, our seats, 4 rows from center stage, provided the perfect opportunity to play with some advanced telephony products.

So here is a small paean to the versatility of Nokia’s N95 phone, instead. And fellow Canadians, I’ve heard that there’s a press conference happening at Rogers this morning to announce that the N95 will be coming to Canada. This is a taste of what you’ll all be able to do soon.

One of the defining characteristics of the N95 is camera and optics. With its 5 megapixel camera, it can easily produce print quality photographs. Here’s a straight on shot of the band on-stage, unmodified.

Many people have asked me why the 5 megapixel camera in the N95 is necessary. Why not go with 3 megapixels? The simple answer is that with 5 megapixels I have the versatility to edit. This shot of guitarist Andy Summers shows exactly what I mean. Cropped to a square, it still retains enough sharpness and focus to be a good picture.

The N95 also has a digital zoom feature which was used to capture these two close-ups. Note the noticeable loss of definition (even after digitally sharpening the photograph). While these are not print quality, they’re definitely good enough for sharing with friends on a web site or on the phone itself.

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I was also able to stream video from the show last night. These two videos were made with Qik. The first video, of the Police singing Roxanne, was streamed over an open WiFi access point. The second video, of Elvis Costello singing, was streamed over Rogers 3G network. They’re comparable quality, but the Costello video cost me precious data bandwidth, whereas streaming over WiFi didn’t.

Neither video, however, really shows off what the N95 is capable of. For that, you need to record to local storage rather than streaming. Here’s an MP4 file (warning, 109M – QuickTime required to play) created on the phone of Costello singing Peace Love and Understanding. Notice the dramatic improvement in both sound and video quality.

For people interested in quality mobile content creation, Nokia’s N-Series devices really can’t be beat.

More videos available at http://www.qik.com/asaunders. More photographs at http://www.twango.com/channel/asaunders66.public

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N95 Spring Snapshots

April 22, 2007

One of the things I discovered while shooting photos yesterday was that I had somehow managed to accumulate some dirt on the CCD of my Nikon camera. Apparently this is an occupational hazard with Digital SLRs… remove the lens, and there’s a strong likelihood that you will, at some point, get some muck inside the [...]

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Are you getting the whole N95?

April 13, 2007

The Truphone team have posted a great video showing the differences between the Orange version of the Nokia N95 (under contract), and the unlocked version. Worth a watch, if you're thinking of buying an N95.

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Crippling the N95?

April 12, 2007

My good friend Andy Abramson has uncovered a plot by UK carriers to cripple Nokia's slick new N95 phone. Turn off the VoIP, is the thinking, and we can force the punters to use our GSM network instead. Dumb. I had a conversation yesterday with one of Nokia's competitors, raging at the fact that the [...]

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