Lifeblog

Putting stuff on YouTube - Nokia Conversations' Channel

For the past year or so, Nokia has been posting product and other videos (and other media) onto the Web, albeit, here and there. Now, as part of my new role, I'll be posting a lot of things to the Web, too.

Indeed, even though we are building a site to put up some of our own content, we're going to make use of tools out there to provide multiple channels for folks to find and recombine the material we produce. We will also, of course, scour the Web for cool things produced by others and link to them from our site.

We don't have a name for the site, but you can guess what we're thinking. We also don't have a site, though we are in the process of getting it up and running.

In the mean time, we are still making and finding and pointing to stuff already out there.

Today we put up our first videos from the team (one of them embedded below), showcasing two phones that were launched today. As we produce more, I expect things to look better, feel better, sound better, and smell better.

Enjoy.

Link: YouTube - NokiaConversations's Channel:

This is the YouTube channel for the Social Media Communications team at Nokia. We'll be posting as many videos on Nokia stories, products, services, and people as we can get our hands on or produce ourselves.

Aggregating your social network - a list of services

Ah, a nice day browsing ideas on the Web, taking me forward and backwards.

I found this nice list (below) from last summer on a bunch of services (many I knew already) for helping users manage multiple social networks. These services do it in different ways, which is good, since it samples the possibility space for me.

Yeah, my head had been deep in this area for a long time and I'm now particularly interested in one facet of it (almost frantic about it).

Alas, the most I will be able to do is pass on the thinking to the Ovi.com team as I wrap things up (hopefully this week).

Link: 20 Ways To Aggregate Your Social Networking Profiles:

In an inspired blog post, Jason Kottke said that social networks aren’t helping us organize; since all of them require different credentials to log in, they’re just adding to the noise. He just might be up to something there. It’s getting harder and harder to remember all those logins, passwords, and most importantly to remember which of your friends are using what network.

Social network aggregators is a relatively new breed of applications which try to consolidate all your various social networking profiles into one, with varying success. Let’s check out 20 biggest competitors in this field.

Where you at?

Funny video. [via Peter B]

Google Calendar for iPhone

Stumbled upon this yesterday. So pretty.

Sigh.

And, yes, there is One Web, but if you can tailor the experience, then do it.

Link: Google Calendar:

Just launched!

Stay on task with Google Calendar on your iPhone
With an easy-to-read interface, Google Calendar now works (and looks) better on your iPhone. Enhanced 'touch-screen' buttons and color-coded events make keeping track of your schedule - and viewing others' calendars - even easier while you're on the go. Learn more.

Nokia Lifeblog on Wikipedia!

Heh, Hugo vK tipped me off that Lifeblog has a wiki page. And on that page you can find setting to your heart's content.

I think these settings can also be used in the web uploader on some Nseries devices, as well.

Way to go, Hugo!

Filtering the noise on Twitter

Just heard about a new feature in Twitter that lets you ignore the noise and get alerted to the signal, albeit a signal you choose.

In my ramble on noise, this is the kind of thing I was thinking about, but this is the current digital version of it, whereby you still need to specify the filter, so nothing new there.

Alas, the signal comes in the usual form - a Twitter message. I wonder how that could come a different way.

Also, if everyone understood that their Twitter streams were being watched, how long before folks modified how they 'tagged' their twits to be caught by these filters (ugh, maybe even causing signal spam)?

It'd be interesting to get some stats on this after a while.

Link: [hat tip, alexdc] Twitter Blog: Tracking Twitter:

You can create as many of these as you want, so send "track drinking tea", "track iphone", "track walking san francisco" and you'll receive matches for all. Want to get a list of what you're currently tracking? Send "track" alone (or "stats"). Turn them all off by sending "track off".

The veil between Web and Desktop becomes even less defined.

I don't know when it was launched, but I am sure all of you do.

One of the biggest downsides of going completely online with all these rich internet apps was that when you were not connected - a fair chance these days - then you were unable to do anything with your fancy rich internet app: no catching up with your email, no working on a document, no messing with your spreadsheet, no updating or accessing your calendar.

Of course, I expected there to be a day when the internet-only folks realized that they needed an offline version of their popular apps. Our team here at least understands that it's not an either-or proposition, but that there is continuum between full Web app to various mixtures of internet and desktop to some full desktop app. The internet is the network behind it all, but various degrees of local storage can do wonders.*

I'm gonna install it as soon as I have the time.

Link: Google Gears (BETA):

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using the following JavaScript APIs

• Store and serve application resources locally
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

*Heh, this seems to be recapitulating the whole transition from dummy terminal to networked desktop computing.

A Nokia Mac app! Hooray! Nokia Media Transfer is now out!

I've been using this for a while and it really is nice. It plugs a gap between my phone and my Mac.

Dare I say Nokia is finally playing properly with Apple? Well, I don't know, but I do know that Nokia phones are no longer second class citizens in the Mac universe. This is indeed a step in the right direction. Together with iSync, you can now transfer contacts, calendar, photos, videos, and music between your dearly paid for Mac and your dearly paid for Nokia phone (alas, only Nseries phones).*

This app makes it easier to transfer music from iTunes to your phone. It also makes it easier to get photos and videos into iPhoto (and back). It doesn't work on DRM'd (hiss, Apple FairPlay) music and videos, but free stuff will be properly converted to play on your device (assuming you have the right device, yada yada). UPDATE [10jun]: It can also transfer iTunes Plus (purchased but not DRMed music). See Nokia Media Transfer FAQ on Music for more info.

Yes, you can have your cake and eat it!

Link: Nokia - Download - Main - Download software - Get support and software:

The Nokia Media Transfer application enables you to transfer pictures, videos, podcasts, music, and files between your Nokia mobile device and your Mac.

*ah, but I also want to synch my to-dos and notes and bookmarks, too. sigh.

Man, Google is smooth (Google Calendar)

I've been using Google Calendar at home for the joint family calendar. Makes it easier than me manually typing the calendar ever week or so.

Being the mobile guy, I kept looking for any hint that there's a mobile version.

Well, after looking at some of the mobile-savvy URLs that Google has, I was able to guess the URL for Google Calendar Mobile: <http://www.google.com/calendar/m>.

It really works well, quite mobile-savvy.

Google has constantly been delivering quality mobile apps that make great use of the Internet. We could all learn a lot from watching them.

Download the Nokia N73 Time Zone Upgrader

Go figure. I had recently heard of the new Daylight Savings Time rules in the US (at least) and saw some discussion regarding Apple and such.

Well, at least my companie's hands are sort of clean. :-) Here (link below) is a file to update the time zones on an N73. I guess there are other ones for other Nokia phones. At least the S60 ones.

This makes me proud.

I'm curious to know who else had been making such files available - Apple? Sony Ericsson? Microsoft? Please let me know.

Link: Nokia - Smartphone - Phone software - Nokia N73 - Product support - Get support and software:

Nokia Time Zone Upgrader
Nokia_N73_TimeZone_upgrader.SIS
23-Feb-2007 | 15.30 KB | English

The date of the "Daylight saving time" will be changing in certain countries during 2007. This application updates database in the device containing the daylight saving time dates. This will help e.g. in avoiding a conflict in calendar synchronisation if the device and PC are having a different time. Please restart your device after installation for the changes to take effect.

Update: While I was posting this, I was doing an SW Update check and, lo!, Apple is also offering a Time Zone update. Yeah!