Nokia E71: How I use mine & thoughts in general

I have had a Nokia E71 device for several months and thought I would share what apps I am using on it and experiences so far.  All the applications mentioned in here were freely available for download.

I previously had an Okta Touch (aka HTC Touch) which was a touch screen device so I wasn’t how I would find the E71.  After one day with the E71 I was however pleasantly surprised to find that I was really enjoying the E71 and was not missing the touch screen much at all.  This still holds today although I must say I am tempted to get an iPhone.

Connections

One of the best applications I installed early on was Birdstep SmartConnect.  This enabled me to create connection groups and to then put a number of my connections (e.g. HomeWifi, WorkWifi, Telecom Data) into a group and prioritise them.  This group is then treated as a standard connection for any of my applications.  This enables me to then be using Wifi if I am in range of one of my known Wifi spots or if not to use standard Mobile Data.

It is also worth mentioning that the Nokia E71 works excellently with my BlueAnt Supertooth 3 bluetooth handsfree kit.

Profiles & Similar Settings

The E71 enables me to have different profiles for Work and Personal.  I decided not to bother with having two and knowing whether if I was changing a setting that was global or for a single profile. 

I configured my screen to also have applications that I regularly use, including the camera at the top right so that it is quick to get to (unlock, move left, click).

Applications

For a Web browser, I have tried the pre-installed Web browser and Opera Mini and can’t say I’ve really enjoyed any of them, but do tend to keep going back to the pre-installed Web browser which is usable but nothing special. [Update 9 Nov: I have just tried Opera Mobile 10 Beta and it seems to be the best Symbian browser I have used]

For mapping the pre-installed Nokia Maps application is okay, but my preference by far is Google Maps.  This is a must to install, inc the YouTube app and Search box.  I update my location on an ad hoc basis using Google Latitude, but make sure to exit Maps (or whatever Google app I have running) properly so as not to consume lots of data.

I have tried lots of Twitter clients and found Tweets60 to be the one I keep going back to.

I have found Sports Tracker to be quite useful for getting data about how far I’ve walked, how fast I managed to ski a run etc.  It has even motivated me to to go out for a walk, and it is nice how if you take a photo during your exercise, this will be marked on the map with where you were at the timestamp of the photo.

The camera (from what I’ve found) doesn’t support geo-tagging of photos.  The photos incidentally are of a reasonable quality, although it’s not the best in low light conditions.

I use Mail for Exchange regularly.  Despite it not synchronising items sent from my computer, the functionality in general is good enough.  I do like how it keeps my Contacts synchronised across my PC and Mobile, regardless of what I update it in.

I updated the version of QuickOffice that came with my phone and have found this to be very useful, particularly for reading attachments in email messages.

I use Shozu for uploading of photos to Twitter (via Twitpic) or Flickr.  Shozu also supports lots of other sites too (YouTube, Facebook, Blogger, MySpace and many more).  I have found however that it doesn’t always exit, but its not a biggie.

For currency conversions I use WorldMate.  This was installed by default but I needed to update to the latest version.

Midomi is quite cool for singing/humming a song and getting Song Name and Artist back, although it appears my singing is quite bad.

Other

One useful feature I found early on was that holding down the Home key displays all applications currently running.  I have found this to be a useful way to know whether I’m running something that might be consuming data in the background.

All-in-all I find the E71 to be a good device with good voice quality, form factor, and quite like having a full QWERTY keyboard (Yes, I find it is big enough to use).

[Disclosure: I work for Telecom, but these are my personal views, and not influenced in any way whatsoever by my employer]

Sliders: What’s important for your project?

I was recently in an excellent session with key stakeholders for a project, the aim being for the key stakeholders to jointly agree the importance of each of Scope, Cost, Time, Quality, Users and Team and how fixed or flexible each of these is.  Represented by Sliders that cannot be at the same level, this aids in providing a basis for the rest of the project to aid in decision making when trade-offs are required.Source: Rob Thomsett, Agile Academy http://www.agileacademy.com.au/agile/sites/default/files/aboutpdfs/AgilePracticesSlidersAgile%20Academy.pdf

Getting agreement by all key stakeholders as to what is important for the project should be achieved in a single session, but what is interesting is the discussion required to get agreement and the information that all parties glean from the process.

Barcamp Auckland 3 Synopsis

Following on from the largest tweetup I've ever attended on Friday night with 50+ people in Auckland (and was awesome), I attended Barcamp Auckland 3 (#bca3) today (which was also awesome). These were both excellent opportunities to network with a wide variety of people, have some great discussions and learn from them.

If you want to know what a Barcamp or Unconference is check out my synopsis of Barcamp Auckland 2.

I attended a number of sessions throughout the day. My key notes (as aggregated from my twitter stream):

Easy iPhone Game Development

• cocos2d-iphone is a framework similar to Flash.
• The Spaceship Tutorial (based on cocos2d-iphone ) sounds like it is worth checking out as an introduction to iPhone game development.

Augmented Reality

• Different types: projector based, window based, retinal display (most common).
• Augmented Reality Phone requires GPS + Compass + Video + Accelerometer.
• More information can be found at http://www.8degrees.co.nz/2009/07/12/is-augmented-reality-really-a-reality-barcamp-auckland-notes/
  

Marketing & Blogs

• Blog with a consistent schedule and always be on topic.
  
• Check out Ben's blog at http://blog.bwagy.com/
  
• Check out Ben Young's book 'The Best Ideas are Free'.

HTML5

• HTML5 attribute types looks great.
• HTML5 could replace Flash, Silverlight and other proprietary technologies.
• Apparently more than 90% of Alexa Top 500 sites are not valid HTML.

Starting a business - Making sure you make money

• Why do people start businesses? "To change the world" is the primary reason, focusing on $ as the primary reason is wrong.
• Offer something nobody else does: Be first, be best, be available, sell.
• Consider how to lock people in to your product. "Be likable" vs trying to lock people in (i.e. don't be evil).
• Most important part of starting a business: Prove the concept.
• Getting Things Done: Gaps in skill, time, money, milestones, processes.
• To address gaps in skill for a startup, consider giving people equity.
• Have good governance as your company grows, get good legal and tax advice.

Miscellaneous

• Expand your horizons. Do something new for 100 hours. Further information can be found at http://moss.geek.nz/2009/07/11/barcamp/
• puppet sounds good for distribution of configurations to multiple machines.
• Check out http://www.geocaching.com/ to find out about a grown ups version of hide and seek.
  

An excellent event well facilitated by Ludwig and the Bartenders.

Other writeups of the day worth checking out:

• Serendipity IT Ltd: Interesting things from BarCamp Auckland 3

Be Remarkable, Focus on the Innovators and Early Adopters

Having read Tribes from Seth Godin and enjoyed it I decided to give Purple Cow a go. Written in a very similar, easy-reading style, I took away two key messages from Purple Cow:

1. Be Remarkable
2. Focus on the Innovators and Early Adopters

Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff, a lot of brown cows, but you can bet they won’t forget a Purple Cow. By building remarkable features into products (as opposed to thinking of marketing as just slapping some paint on top of the product or service) the idea is that the Innovators and Early Adopters (aka the “Sneezers”) will essentially sell the product or service for you. It is therefore important to ensure that it is an easy sell for them.

I found many of the examples to be a bit too US centric but the key points were still easy to comprehend. Whilst the message is very simple, this book provides some great motivational passion for creating products that stand out and make a difference. A recommended read.

Web hosting providers impact language usage: Understand the constraints

There are a significant number of web hosting providers that support PHP or .NET, but I am continually surprised at how few support Java EE, or even basic JSPs.

Some providers also then offer a shared tomcat version which is then only reloaded once a day for changes to deployed apps, which is definitely not ideal if you want to rapidly release a new application.

There are definitely valid reasons for why some languages are supported and others aren’t. In the case of Java it is probably due to the fact there is no safe way (as far as I know) to deploy code into a share VM and it is probably significantly more resource intensive (particularly with what remains in memory). This then drives a higher price point which is often not appropriate for the hobbyist just tinkering with a site.

Google App Engine’s support for Java is definitely a welcome addition, although therefore are many other languages out there that are likely to more commonly used if a significant number of bulk web hosting providers supported them.

I know that I have decided what to develop in based on what the web hosting providers offer at a competitive price. It is worth considering where you are planning to host your site, whether you intend to use a slice of a machine up front, and understanding the constraints before you go too far down a particular path.

Moving Firefox Profile to another drive or directory: How-to

In many organisations a user's Profile size is restricted to a certain size and there is a constant juggling act to try and keep under your Profile quota.

Firefox is an example of one application that was taking up lots of space in my quota, but I found that there is a nice and easy way to relocate the Firefox Profile to another drive or directory.

Check out Mozilla's Step-by-step instructions for how to do this. This worked fine for me using Firefox v3.0.8 on Windows XP.

Make it easy for your product to be evaluated

I often evaluate products to determine their fit to the requirements I am trying to address.  I do find however that I am often disappointed at how hard it is to find the information I am looking for.

I tend to have lists of functional, technical, operational, commercial and financial criteria I am trying to assess against and the first step is to identity a list of Solution Option candidates upon which I will then rapidly do an initial assessment and triage.

My ideal is to be able to easily find one or two pages that contain the majority of the information I am looking for.  Some sites however make it a very painful process.  Having to watch a video or look through piles of documentation is not desirable.  http://drupal.org/features is a great example of what is good; this is a simple page that contains lots of useful information, and links to further detail. 

I was using a major Software vendors site recently and knew they had a product covering what I was looking for, but couldn't find it by browsing.  The Search Engine on many sites is often the only way to really find content, which is not ideal.

Sometimes companies actually have too many products that only slightly differ, and whilst there may be valid reasons for this, it should be very easy for somebody not familiar with the intricate details of each product (or the desire to evaluate each separately) to determine what it best placed to address their needs. 

If it’s too hard to find relevant information quickly this is a deterrent.  Consider who your audience is and what they are looking for and make their experience enjoyable.  It may be the difference between somebody choosing your product over your competitors.