The PhoneBoy Blog » social networking

Path: Social Networking Gone Micro

PhoneBoy — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:23:08 +0000

Every once in a while, a new app comes along that provides a fresh approach to something. For me, Path is doing this for Social Networking. Instead of encouraging to share with as many as possible, it’s encouraging me to share more to fewer people.

According to Path’s website, path is a smart journal that helps you share life with the ones you love. It actually began its life about a year ago as a photo sharing service similar to Instagram with one major limitation: you can only share with a limited number of people. This started out as 50 but was increased to 150. Compare 150 friends with Facebook’s limit of 5000 or Twitter’s unlimited.

From a feature standpoint, there is nothing new in Path. It’s an Android and iPhone app where you can share your thoughts, photos, where you’re at, who you’re with, and what you’re listening to. Rather than being called a status update, though, it’s called a moment. Aside from sharing to your friends in Path, you can also share individual moments with your Twitter or Facebook friends and check-in on Foursquare. You can also be completely private, if you prefer, and show a moment to absolutely no one.

One unique feature I haven’t seen on any app so far is the ability to do an “awake/sleep” post. It automatically posts an “awake” or “sleep” message with time, location (specific to neighborood.city), temperature, and if you’re waking up, how long you slept. It’s a nice touch.

Finding friends is pretty simple. You can use your address book, your Facebook contacts, friends of friends, or just a regular search box. Select whom you want to share your path with. If they confirm you as a friend, you will be able to access each other’s path and your activities will appear in each other’s timeline.

The timeline view is well done. Scrolling is quick and easy. You can see how many people saw a particular moment (and who). You can react to a moment with one of five emoticons: happy, laugh, surprise, sad, or love. You can post a comment of your own. You can see when people become friends with one another.

The iPhone and Android applications are nearly identical, though the Android version is missing a couple features: the ability to share on posts on Twitter and utilize Instragram-like photo filters. Edit: Version 2.0.2 of Path on Android adds support for sharing posts on Twitter.

As I said, none of this is new. Many social media applications do all of these things. Arguably, these things can be done better on existing, well-established platforms.

This isn’t about features, though. It’s about the experience. The experience reminds me of something I used long ago on my Nokia S60 phones–Jaiku. Jaiku had at least some of these features and was tied to a Nokia S60 handset. As far as a social networks go, it had a very intimate feel.

Path definitely has that same intimate feel. By keeping the service phone-only and not providing the ability to share other things like web pages, or allowing you to import content from other services, you really only see moments that people make a conscious effort to share on the service. This keeps the noise relatively low. The upper limit on the number of friend forces you to be a little more choosy about whom you want to be friends with.

I really like Path. It’s clearly not for everyone as you have to have an iPhone or Android device to even use the service. That said, it provides me a new, fun way to share my life with others and be a part of other people’s lives. I wish there was an iPad version of the app, but that’s my only serious complaint. You can download it from the respective App Stores for Android and iOS:

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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My Take on the Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna

PhoneBoy — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:31:22 +0000

Two handsets arrived at Casa de PhoneBoy recently: a Nokia E7 with Symbian^3 and a Nokia E6 with Symbian Anna. In my last post, I reviewed the Nokia E7. This time around, I’m reviewing the Nokia E6. Unlike the E7, which I’ll get to keep, the E6, which went back to WOMWorld.

This will be another long post, so go get your coffee and settle in for a nice read. If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to read my previous post on Symbian^3 and the Nokia E7 as a lot of that also applies here as well.

The Hardware

There are two basic form factors of phones I’ve really liked over the years from Nokia: The Communicator-style, which the Nokia E7 is most like, and the Blackberry-style device, which Nokia began doing with the Nokia E61 and, in my opinion, perfected with the Nokia E71. The Nokia E6 is the next evolution in that line and, at least in terms of the external hardware, they nailed it.

The first part: the keyboard. I really liked typing on the E71 keyboard and find it similarly easy to thumb type on the E6. The phone also has a four-way directional pad with a center button to select items, the standard send and end buttons, and the home/calendar/mail/contacts buttons.

You might have noticed that I didn’t mention the standard left and right select buttons. That’s because they don’t exist on this device: the 640×480 screen (which is physically smaller but has more pixels than the Nokia E7 screen) is now touch-enabled. While multitouch is supported in the places you’d expect, the physically small screen makes it difficult to perform these operations. It also makes the screen challenging to read if your eyesight is not the best.

The phone also has a MicroUSB (which can be used for charging and USB On-The-Go), a MicroSD card slot, a 3.5mm headset jack, volume control, a voice command activation button, the screen lock lever, a place to plug in your standard Nokia 2mm power charger, and a 1500 mAh removable battery. As for the radios, like the E7, the E6 is GSM-based and also has pentaband 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth.

Symbian Anna

Having spent a week with the Nokia E7 helped gear me up for the Nokia E6 with its updated Symbian Anna OS. The icons certainly look different. The problems I noticed with lag with Symbian^3 on the E7 seem to be largely non-existant on the E6. Given the processor on the E6 and E7 is the same, it has to be as a result of using Symbian Anna. Being able to use both hardware keys and touch in most places was largely intuitive. I did notice that a couple of particularly problematic applications on the E7, particularly the WordPress app, work beautifully on the E6.

Since the Nokia E6 has an always-exposed hardware keyboard, and thus does not need to provide an on-screen one, I don’t know if there will be improvements in the on-screen keyboard. I hope it implements one similar to the one that is implemented in Gravity, which itself is similar to the one that exists on iOS and Android.

The most noticeably different thing on Symbian Anna: The web browser. I had forgotten about this, although I had read various reviews of the Nokia E6 and it was most certainly mentioned. The first clue was that the browser had a URL bar up at the top rather than at the bottom. You can type in something in the URL bar and request that it be “searched” for rather than go to a particular URL. It also seems to do a better job at rendering pages, though I will admit I didn’t test that many pages. It should be noted this new browser will actually be backported to a number of older Nokia devices, including the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic I still have.

Something I missed when I talked about Symbian^3 but also exists on Symbian Anna: you can change the default applications for browsing the web, playing music, playing videos, and viewing images. For those who like the non-default choices for the web browser (especially), this is a nice bonus.

Something else I missed: apparently both Symbian^3 and Symbian Anna both detect WiFi hotspots and automatically bring up the home page. I missed this because, at least in my testing in Canada with the Nokia E7, this didn’t happen, but it did happen at my local Starbucks. Nice touch!

Since the SIM slot on the Nokia E6 is not externally accessible while the phone is on, I won’t know if they addressed the issue I raised about changing the SIM card while the phone is on in Symbian^3 is addressed in Symbian Anna or not (yet).

Home Screen and Widgets

Symbian Anna has a customizable home screen, like Symbian^3 and Symbian^1. Unlike on the E7, where each of the three screens have 6 customizable rectangular widgets, the Nokia E6 has three customizable widgets on each of its four screens with a non-customizable section along the left that shows up on all the screens. This section includes the clock, active profile, and notifications (e.g. for missed called, text messages).

The selection of widgets available on Symbian Anna is not significantly different than it is on Symbian^3. Because it doesn’t make sense to hold the device in landscape mode (except to take photos), there is no landscape mode for the widgets, either.

The Camera and Photos

The Nokia E6 includes an 8MP camera and a dual LED flash. While there is no dedicated camera button, the camera can be snapped with the select button in the middle of the 4-way navigation button. Unfortunately, the camera is not any better than the E7 in terms of taking macro shots.

One other thing I noticed on the Nokia E6 with Symbian Anna was that, by default, the camera application now geotags photos. This is also present in the E7 in Symbian^3, but it was disabled by default. Fortunately, the way I found out about this was the camera application told me this was the default when I first loaded the application. The dialog box provided a link to the settings page where this could be disabled, which of course I did right away. Personally, I’d prefer the feature be opt-in rather than opt-out (with a dialog telling you to turn it on if you’d like), but that’s just a personal preference.

Nokia Accounts, Ovi Store

My major complaints with the Ovi Store, and, well, any of the apps that require a Nokia account is that they seem to randomly “forget” I’ve authenticated with them. This happened on Symbian^3 and on Symbian Anna. This is either poorly thought out user experience or some sort of bug.

A Symbian phone should be associated with a Nokia account in much the same way that iOS and Android phones are associated with an iTunes and Google account respectively. The phone should ask for this information once. All applications that require this information should be able to use it with a one-time “ask for permission” (e.g. “can app X use your Nokia account information”).

The one exception to this rule: when doing a chargeable action (e.g. buying something from the Ovi Store). In this case, asking for the password for confirmation makes sense.

Other Included Applications

While, of course, you can buy applications via Ovi Store or get them via third parties, the Nokia E6 includes a number of applications “out of the box.”

If you’ve used a number of Nokia devices over the years, one included application you’ve likely used is the one that allows you to easily copy data between Nokia phones. It’s called Phone Switch and it’s been around since S60 3rd Edition. It uses Bluetooth to send the data between the phones, which works for things like text messages and call logs, but not so well for images and sounds. That said, it’s better than anything I’ve seen for any other platform.

Mapping and Navigation has always been a strong point on higher-end Nokia phones. The ability to download maps and use the mapping features when the phone is effectively offline is vital, especially when the phone is used in places where data is either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. When I first looked at the Nokia E7, I didn’t spend too much time using the mapping. I spent a little more time with the Nokia E6. I was able to easily download maps for offline use–directly from the handset. I could easily see the difference in size downloading the vector-based maps versus the bitmapped based solutions I’ve seen in the past with OpenStreetMap-based applications.

Some other out-of-the-box applications include QuickOffice (the ability to work with Microsoft Office documents), Adobe Reader LE (to read the ubiquitous PDF files) and JoikuSpot (which turns your Nokia phone into a WiFi hotspot). QuickOffice and Adobe Reader LE are “lighter” or even somewhat older versions of their pay cousins, and you are given a special price to “upgrade” to the more recent versions.

The included JoikuSpot is the full version, though it does have one significant limitation: it cannot operate in infrastructure mode, but only in ad-hoc mode. What this means is that’s it’s not a true access point, so not only will some devices (notably Nintendo’s various game consoles) simply not connect, you cannot use WPA as an encryption method. It also has impact on battery life, though Joiku has spent three years optimizing the battery usage as much as possible.

Music and Podcasts

There are no substantial changes from Symbian^3 in this regard. That said, I’m going to re-iterate my complaint about how Nokia even requires music libraries to be refreshed. They don’t make it easy to allow for apps like Podcatcher to automatically update the Music Library, either. Per this thread, applications signed with the Ovi Store certificate or a self-signed one do not allow for this functionality.

The “Phone” Features

While I myself don’t make a ton of calls, I seem to have issues with this phone when making calls from home. I have had a lot of dropped calls while using the Nokia E6–moreso than with my other phones. The phone seems to spend most of its time on 3.5G, which at my house, varies in signal widely. I tend to blame AT&T for this rather than the phone, but one cannot be 100% certain. I’ll have to do some comparisons with the Nokia E7 at some point, since when I was using the E7, I was in Canada and purposefully not making a lot of calls due to the cost of doing so.

Syncing With The Mac

I didn’t have any problems syncing the Nokia E7 with my Mac. The E6, on the other hand, was not recognized by Nokia Multimedia Transfer nor was there an iSync plugin when I initially set up the device. Since then, an iSync plugin for the E6 came out.

MicroUSB Charging

I have to say, I love the idea of devices supporting MicroUSB charging. Considering that I am a regular traveler, I hate taking extra chargers and cables if I don’t have to. Every bit of space helps.

Unfortunately, there is a serious issue in both Symbian^3 and Symbian Anna. While I can’t consistently reproduce this, I have noticed that USB charging doesn’t always work on the Nokia E6 and the Nokia E7 when the device is powered on and I plug in something other than the supplied mains charger. The end result: even though the device is plugged in and is recognized by the computer (i.e. I can use Ovi Suite or Nokia Multimedia Transfer), the device isn’t charging.

If I turn off the phone and plug the same MicroUSB cable in from the same computer, it will charge. If I power up the phone again and plug in the cable, it may (or may not) also start charging. Clearly there’s some sort of software issue here, or maybe there is some issue with my systems. Nokia Care seems to think whatever computer I am hooked up to isn’t putting out enough juice. It’s hard to say, but it is annoying that I have to double check to ensure my device is actually charging.

Did Nokia “Fix” Symbian in Anna?

Clearly Nokia did “fix” Symbian. There’s new bugfixes tweaks and whatnot. In terms of keeping the Symbian faithful faithful, I think it adds some nice features that bring Symbian near the iPhone or Android in terms of usability and functionality, though Apple is still the king of this. Its likely not enough to win new converts to Symbian, though, as Apple and Google continue to iterate on their respective platforms.

That said, I don’t think Symbian is as broken as everyone thinks it is. While usability is arguably better in iOS and Android and a wider variety of applications are available, at the end of the day, I do not need most of those applications on a regular basis. In fact, there are only two “third party” applications I use on a regular basis: Gravity and Podcatcher. I occasionally use Skype, JoikuSpot, QuickOffice, Adobe Reader, and Internet Radio (an audio streaming app), but only occasionally. There are a couple of missing apps that I require only occasionally (namely Evernote, TripIt, textPlus, Boingo, and any sort of application for Plurk). That can be mitigated somewhat by carrying multiple devices, which I do anyway.

The biggest issue isn’t with Symbian, it’s Nokia itself. Having worked for Nokia and seen some of their concepts, I think their vision for mobility is spot-on. Unfortunately, the execution of that vision is problematic, with many high-profile stumbles with flagship products.

Nokia also doesn’t seem to react to changes in the overall market in a timely manner. It took Nokia at least two years to introduce a credible alternative to the Motorola Razr, which came out in July of 2004. Likewise, when Apple introduced the iPhone in June of 2007, It took two years for Nokia to come out with a touch-based phone that, while a nice phone in its own right (the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic), was an inferior experience to the iPhone.

Had Nokia shipped Symbian Anna in 2009 (or even by this time last year), I think their fortunes would be very different. Instead of talking about how Nokia is going to launch Windows Phone 7 devices, people would be talking about how Nokia is going to evolve Symbian and MeeGo. Nokia seems to be following the market rather than leading it.

To be fair, one thing Nokia has always been good at–better than anyone else, in fact–is commoditizing high-end smartphone-like features and pushing them downmarket in lower-end phones. This has happened with cameras, music players, web browsers, even mapping! They can design features that work in environments where data is either not available or simply too expensive. Considering the low end of the market is where the volume is, and not everyone can afford high-end smartphones, Nokia has a real advantage here over their rivals.

The Final Verdict

I really like the Nokia E6 for many reasons, but I have to give the edge to the Nokia E7 for one reason: the screen. A touch interface really only works well on a bigger screen. Even though the E6 has higher resolution (640×480 versus 640×360), the E7 screen is physically bigger and much easier for me to read as well as use the touch interface on. The E7 will be that much better once it receives the update to Symbian Anna in August.

At the moment, I’ve switched back to using a Nokia handset as my primary phone–specifically the Nokia E7. It’s been two years since that’s been the case. That said, it need not be an either-or decision. You can have Symbian, Android, and iOS devices. They don’t necessarily have to be phones.

Comments

6 July 2011, The Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna | WOMWorld/Nokia writes: [...] its camera, its features or even if you wanted to know more about its syncing with a mac, you can read the full post and give us your [...]
6 July 2011, First impressions of the Nokia E6; my T-Mobile SIM is staying in it most of the time | Nokia Experts writes: [...] The PhoneBoy Blog (Dameon D. Welch-Abernathy) [...]
8 July 2011, The iPad 2–What I’ve Been Missing « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] I got it home, and given my recent experiences with the Nokia E6 and Nokia E7, I began to understand why people really love the iPad. The software is one aspect, of course. Then [...]

My Take on the Nokia E7 and Symbian^3

PhoneBoy — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 05:05:39 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to use a new Nokia handset. The last one I got right before the Nokia business unit I worked for was sold to Check Point in April 2009 was a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (Nokia’s first touch handset after the iPhone came out). Even until very recently, despite owing both an iPhone and a Nexus One, I would still carry a Nokia E71 when traveling outside the US as it met my basic needs well.

Through some horsetrading, which included giving up my beloved my Nokia E71, I managed to get a brand new Nokia E7. It arrived at my house the day before I was spending 5 days in Canada, as did a Nokia E6 I got from WOMWorld Nokia for review. Since the E7 arrived first, and it’s also running Symbian^3 versus the newer Symbian Anna on the E6, I decided to road test the E7 so I can see the differences between the two later on.

In any case, this is a long review. I spent a week using the Nokia E7 and used it for, well, a lot of things. Including writing this review in QuickOffice. Go grab a coffee and settle in as I deconstruct the Nokia E7.

The Hardware

One thing I generally like about Nokia phones is the hardware. The E7 doesn’t disappoint with a nice, big, bright capacitive touch screen and a hardware keyboard that, when you push correctly on the left hand side of the handset, appears underneath the screen. The screen itself tilts up to a comfortable viewing angle.

The hardware keyboard is a 4 row chicklet-style keyboard but the keys are comfortably spaced and provide solid feedback when pressed. It has arrow keys, a reasonably sized spacebar in the middle of the keyboard, and shift, control, modifier key, and a symbol key that brings up a touchscreen to input characters not otherwise available on the hardware keyboard. My experience so far is that I rarely have to use this symbol keyboard–a testament to the fact Nokia has chosen what is on their keyboards wisely.

The phone also has a physical home button at the bottom, a screen lock/unlock switch on the left, a rocker switch for volume, a dedicated camera button, a SIM tray, 3.5mm headphone jack, a MicroUSB port that can be used both for charging and hooking other USB devices to using something called USB To Go, and an HDMI port. Notably absent is the standard Nokia 2mm charging port, which doesn’t bother me, the lack of any ability to add storage via MicroUSB (the device has 16GB of internal storage), and a non-removable battery.

Inside, the phone has WiFi, Bluetooth, GSM and WCDMA radios. The phone has all five bands where 3G are used worldwide, including both AT&T and T-Mobile in the US! This isn’t unique to the E7: several of Nokia’s high-end phones are pentaband, which increases your potential carrier choices worldwide without having to sacrifice 3G!

Symbian^3

While S60 and Symbian has remained somewhat consistent over the years, every new iteration has brought changes. Trying to figure out how each phone reacts in a given situation requires some experimentation and hunting to try and figure out where the option to adjust a particular behavior has gone. As I said before, the newest Nokia I had used until recently was the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, which runs S60 5th Edition. I haven’t seen a Symbian^1 device up close and personal, so I had at least two generations of changes to cope with on the E7.

The first thing I struggled with was basic application network connectivity. It didn’t take me long to define the various WiFi access points in my house and add them to the Internet “destination” on my device. I did not want the phone using Celluar Data since Truphone charges quite a bit for that. You can configure each access method within a given destination to prompt before use. You can also configure the phone to simply not use Cellular data at all depending on whether you are in your home country or roaming. Flexible, albeit a little clunky to configure.

On the plus side, applications seem to utilize whatever connection is currently connected much more easily than with previous Symbian iterations I’ve used, including the random hotspots I run across in an airport or elsewhere. Unnecessary prompts are minimized, which is a huge plus in terms of usability.

The next struggle I had, strangely enough, was the home button. It works similar to the Symbian key of old–you push it, it brings up the familiar grid of applications, which hasn’t changed too much, aside from the organization and included apps. The phone includes, among other things, Ovi Maps, Quickoffice, an over-the-air software updater, a web browser, and more.

When you hold down the home key, it brings up a visual representation of running applications that you can swipe through, switch to by touching the image of the running app, or kill by touching the X to kill. Very nice improvement.

The problems I had with the home key really weren’t problems with the home key, per se, but using the home key is the first place I noticed this: lag. Lag is defined as a very delayed response to touch screen or hardware key presses. I notice it throughout the OS in both built-in and third party apps. It was especially noticeable and annoying in QuickOffice.

I remember it took about four iterations of the E71 firmware to eliminate this. I’m currently using 14.002 (PR 1.1) and am not sure how many releases have been issued on the E7. I sincerely hope this is something Symbian Anna fixes because, quite frankly, it’s been a continual problem with Nokia’s Symbian handsets over the years and it’s inexcusable.

While the phone has a hardware keyboard, you can also use an on-screen keyboard either in portrait mode (using a T9-style keyboard) or a four-row QWERTY in landscape mode. If I’m going to type in landscape mode, I might as well use the hardware keyboard, but at least it’s an option if that’s how you roll.

A word about the SIM tray: if you change the SIM card with the phone on, the phone will reboot. Given that you are shown a message to that effect, this is clearly by design. C’mon, Nokia, if Apple can figure out how to implement this, surely you can.

Overall, the OS seems to take advantage of touch where it has to. I haven’t run into anything that I thought was a weird choice so far. The phone seems to understand and utilize multitouch, the long touch (e.g. To bring up a menu) and scrolling with your finger works much better than it did with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It’s still not quite as refined as iOS or Android in terms of usability but it is a nice step up from S60 5th Edition.

Home Screen and Widgets

Like Android, Symbian^3 provides a customizable home screen. It takes a different approach than Android where the screen is made up of a series of widgets rather than being a mix of applications and application icons. Each of the 3 home screens can have 6 widgets on it. A widget is rectangular and can provide certain kinds of information (e.g. Weather, email inbox) or provide 4 application shortcuts.

The upshot of this: the home screen functions both in portrait and landscape mode. When you rotate your phone, so does the widgets (which neither iOS or Android does). The only niggle: you can’t control the layouts independently of each other. If you get the widgets right in one orientation, they may not be the way you want in the other.

Ovi Store

Nokia does not get enough credit for their application store, as in a few ways, it rivals the App Store for iOS or Android Market. Any app that you’ve purchased or downloaded from the Ovi Store shows up in the My Stuff category and can easily be downloaded again to a new device, assuming the app is compatible with your new device. If the application is not compatible with your device, it won’t be shown either in My Stuff or searchable in Ovi Store. Considering the number of handsets Nokia supports with Ovi Store, this is a very nice touch. It supports both direct credit card and (where available) operator billing.

Unfortunately, Ovi Store is not entirely flawless. Some applications have issues downloading correctly (notably WordPress). I also saw different applications available or not because of my Truphone SIM and being in Canada. Instead of listing prices in USD, it was listening them in EUR. I assume once I am back in the US, it will switch back. It also seems to occasionally “forget” I am logged into Ovi Store (despite marking Remember me on this device). I also noticed some issues displaying long lists of applications in the Ovi Store.

Social Networking

Nokia includes a functional Twitter and Facebook application. I am not sure why it is tied to your Ovi account, but it is. In any case, much of the basic functionality is present. The only real benefit I can see in this client is that you can easily share photos to Twitter and Facebook from both the camera and photos app.

If you’re an advanced user, you will ignore the Nokia Social app and buy a copy of Gravity, if you haven’t already (I have five of them). Gravity supports Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, status.net, and Google Reader. It is the premiere Twitter app on any Smartphone platform and is the major reason I am still willing to use a Symbian-based device, despite its faults–it;s that good. On the E7, Gravity is even better with its built-in browser for links, which seems to work a little better than the browser built into Symbian^3.

The Camera and Photos

The Nokia E7 includes an 8MP camera and a dual LED flash. The camera itself is improved from the Nokia E71 but it lacks any ability to focus. Supposedly there is software that is working to improve the overall picture quality, but close-up macro shots that are in focus are impossible to get. Unfortunately this is something I use my smartphone for a lot (especially for receipts). If you forget to disable the flash on close-up shots, you’ll probably find that the flash has washed out your shot, as you can see in this shot:

For the sake of argument, here are a few other shots I took with the Nokia E7 during my recent travels:

The photo gallery app is nothing to write home about. You can look at all the photos on your phone, see specific photo albums, play a slideshow, edit photos (which launches a separate photo editing app), tag photos and organize them into photo albums. The app also supports the typical pinch to zoom made famous on the iPhone.

Music and Podcasts

Nokia’s Music Player has typically been very functional over its various iterations and includes a software equalizer with various presets. A new feature I hadn’t seen before now is the coverflow-style album browser when the phone is in landscape mode.

I have two major complaints. While the app recognizes podcasts, and has a separate section for them, it provides no on-device means for actually downloading them like the Nokia E71 did. Fortunately there is a free program called Podcatcher that you can acquire for this purpose. Why Nokia didn’t port its existing app to the E7, I don’t know.

My second complaint: the need to refresh the music library after downloading podcasts. I assume this is a problem of the Podcatcher app since the built-in app on the Nokia E71 did not suffer this problem. (Update: it turns out Nokia does provide a way for apps to update the Music Library, but it’s not allowed for apps signed by the Ovi Store certificate or a self-signed certificate per this thread). That said, even when I synced my tracks to the device with Nokia Multimedia Suite on my Mac–one of Nokia’s own apps–I still had to refresh the Music Library. Seriously, Nokia. This should just be automatic.

My third issue (not a serious complaint) with podcasts: no ability to listen at variable speed. This is a feature made famous on the iPhone, available on Android only recently via third party software, makes it easier to consume podcasts faster.

The “Phone” Features

While most of the die-hard smartphone users I know rarely use these features, they exist and for the sake of completeness, should be reviewed.

While I didn’t make a ton of phone calls while I was away, the few calls I did make were very easy to hear and I generally found myself understood. The phone benefits from a second microphone on the back that serves as input for noise cancellation. It also benefits from Nokia knowing where to place an antenna in a phone so any “grip of death” effects are minimized.

The included headphones serve well both as regular audio headphones and have a built-in microphone. The headphones I got were the WH-205s which are in-ear–my favorite kind. They also include larger earpads if your ear canals are larger than mine are.

USB On-The-Go

The phone came with a rather odd USB cable–one that plugs into the MicroUSB port on the phone and has a female USB receptacle to plug in another USB device. What you can do with this is plug in a regular mass storage device (say, a thumb drive) and it appears as another drive letter in the operating system. You can then copy files to/from it (e.g. with File Manager), save documents to it in applications, and, well, anything else you might use a thumb drive for. Reports say that Nokia introduced this feature in the N8, so it’s a relatively recent addition that will be very useful indeed!

Maps

Unlike Google and Apple, whom have to license their map data from third parties, Nokia owns Navteq, which produces high-quality mapping data. Also, unlike iOS and Android, which cannot cache map information for offline use (short of using a third party mapping tools based on OpenStreetMap data), Nokia can cache map data–remember, they own the data outright.

While OpenStreetMap can cache data, it tends to be bitmap-based, which means if you need a map for a large area or even a small one at high resolution, it means downloading a ton of data. Nokia’s maps are now vector based. This means a higher level of detail in the maps with much, much smaller downloads.

The mapping application also supports turn-by-turn navigation, traffic information, checkins with Foursquare, city guides, and much more.

The Final Verdict

As much as I like this phone–I will admit that I still have a Symbian bias–Symbian^3 needs some improvements. The lag problem simply has to be fixed. The camera is not usable in one of the situations where I would use it (i.e. for close-up pictures). While Gravity is, in fact, an excellent application, and there are a number of apps available, a couple of key applications aren’t available: Evernote (which I make heavy use of) and TripIt. There are workarounds for this, of course, but they’re not as good as having native apps.

I’m hoping that Symbian Anna will be a big improvement over Symbian^3. Fortunately, I don’t have to wait until Nokia makes Symbian Anna available to my E7 via an over-the-air update (which will happen soon). I have a Nokia E6 from WOMWorld Nokia to review, which should have Symbian Anna on it. We’ll see if that improves things.

Comments

28 June 2011, My take on the E7 and Symbian^3 | WOMWorld/Nokia writes: [...] out all you will ever need to know about the E7 and Symbian^3 in PhoneBoy’s full review [...]
2 July 2011, My Take on the Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] | Recent Posts | Pages « My Review of the Hidden Messenger from Timbuk2 | My Take on the Nokia E7 and Symbian^3 [...]
6 July 2011, The Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna | WOMWorld/Nokia writes: [...] his last post, PhoneBoy reviewed the Nokia E7. More recently, he reviewed the Nokia E6 and Symbian [...]

My Tipping Point Between iOS and Android

PhoneBoy — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:35:23 +0000

I’ve had an iPhone 3GS for nearly two years. For a while now, I’ve also had a Nexus One. I’ve mostly used the iPhone, of course, but I took a renewed interest in the Nexus One with the release of Gingerbread. I saw enough “new” and overall refinements in Gingerbread that I considered making the switch to Android as my primary device.

Then a funny thing happened to my 3GS: the battery decided to take a nosedive. My efforts to get the battery replaced made things worse instead of better. The 3GS still works, but the battery won’t last more than a few hours at best now. I have therefore had no choice but to make the switch to Android, unless I wanted to buy a new phone, which I am thinking about, but the choice is no longer as clear cut as it once was.

So, of course, now I’m looking at new handsets, both an iPhone 4 and at various Android handsets. The main problem I have is that I have very exacting standards for a handset, which are:

Handset must be GSM (this limits me to AT&T and possibly T-Mobile)
Handset must be unlocked (I violated this rule with the 3GS, and given the issues I’ve had with unlocking, the only way I would entertain an iPhone again is if I could buy it factory unlocked)
Handset must be free of operator crapware (This is easy on iPhone, I would prefer a handset that only has stock Android firmware, but I’ll settle for one without operator customizations)
Handset must be have enough “new” compared to either my iPhone 3GS and/or Nexus One to warrant purchase (e.g. difference between Nexus One and Nexus S is minimal, same for iPhone 3GS and 4).

Unfortunately, finding a handset in the US that meets all these requirements (and has a US Warranty) is proving to be difficult. The Samsung Galaxy S II looks really nice, but it’s not available in the US yet and will most likely only be available in an operator crapware-infested version unless I buy an imported one.

Setting the handset issue aside for a moment, I’d like to take a holistic look at the differences between iPhone and Android in terms of the OS and the ecosystem. As I tell people that ask me about these things, you’re not just buying a handset any longer.

The Gingerbread OS Itself

First let’s talk about some of the refinements in the OS. They seem to have removed a lot of the lagginess that I experienced in Froyo. They’ve generally made the notification bar and other things look nicer. When you scroll too far, you get this weird glowing orange effect at the edge. That’s kinda cool.

But for me, the thing that they’ve fixed is the on-screen keyboard. It’s now on-par with the iOS on-screen keyboard, but a little better because you can hold down the letters in the top row to get numbers without having to switch to the number and symbol part of the keyboard. And if you don’t like their keyboard, you can always replace it with a third party one–also a bonus.

Syncing

Being a Mac person, I’m used to the whole iTunes experience and needing that to Sync. On Android, there isn’t really a “solution” for that–especially on the Mac. Actually there is, and it’s called Missing Sync. Unlike iTunes, you can sync wirelessly–either over WiFi or Bluetooth. I can’t get WiFi to work consistently (sure that’s related to my VPN software), so I just use Bluetooth. You can also sync media (e.g. pictures, audio, and video) over USB. You have to load Missing Sync specific apps for the Calendar, but I don’t find that a huge problem.

But also, unlike iTunes, Missing Sync is far from free–$40! I have to do this this way because I am not connecting my phone to our corporate Exchange server.

With the recent addition of Google Music, the need to sync music via a USB cable goes away almost entirely. I can now stream (and store locally) music from my iTunes collection that has already been uploaded into the Google cloud. Any time I buy new tracks in iTunes on my Mac, it automatically uploads to Google’s cloud a couple minutes later.

Email and PIM

Apple’s email program is ok. On Android, I am using the Gmail app. It obviously supports more of Gmail’s feature more directly, which results in a better experience for things like deleting emails (which of course I do a lot). It also supports “undo” if I delete something accidentally. Score one for Android

Contacts and Calendar are about the same. Unfortunately, Missing Sync requires a separate calendar app to view entries synced from my Mac. On the other hand, I don’t actually use Google’s calendar, so that’s not a big deal. Something I will need to do on my Android device: join a bunch of contacts. There are some duplicates being synced to the device from different locations. I suspect it’s because there are duplicates on the computer. I will need to sort this out someday.

Twitter

I’m personally have not been happy with just about any Twitter app, with the possible exception of Gravity on my Nokia E71. On iOS, I use an app called Tweetbot, which does just about everything I want it to. The closest thing I’ve found to perfection on Android is Tweetcaster, which I have also used on iOS as well.

Facebook

The Facebook apps are very different on iOS and Android. I can see groups on iOS, I cannot on Android. I do like the photo stream that shows up in Android now. They are both a wash as far as experience goes.

Photography Apps

iPhone wins here easily. There are so many different camera apps on iOS (as well as apps that do other useful photography apps) that if you’re into that kind of thing, iOS is the way to go. Android has a few different camera/photography apps, but they are nowhere near the quality, or the level of functionality, that is available on iOS.

Games

While I am not a huge game player, every once in a while, I like to play a game. iOS definitely has more, possibly better games at least in the categories I’ve looked at. Given that there is only a few models of iOS devices versus the endless possibilities on Android, it’s much easier to make compelling games that take full advantage of the hardware.

App Stores

With Apple, you only have the one app store–the one that Apple provides. On Android, if you don’t like Google’s app store, there is always Amazon and a number of other choices, including buying from the vendor directly. This makes it more complex to restore your purchased applications if you need to wipe your device for some reason, but there is something nice about the flexibility of being able to get applications from anyone–not just ones Apple approves of selling you. Amazon’s “Free app of the day” promotion is also fantastic. Can’t tell you how many cool apps I’ve picked up that way.

Cloud Offerings

Apple’s recent announcements about iCloud are, no doubt, compelling. Document sharing between Apple devices, the iTunes Match service, among other things, would be very nice to have on an Android-type device. Google Music for Android (as is Amazon’s Cloud offering on Android) is a nice start, but it’s only for music and doesn’t give you the ability to buy music.

It’s a Push

At least for my usage, there’s enough pros and cons on both sides that I could easily be happy with either the iPhone or Android, with the right hardware of course. These days I pretty much exclusively use my Nexus One and other than the occasional game, I rarely go for my iPhone 3GS. Would an unlocked iPhone 4 change that? I’m not 100% sure of that.

That said, Apple hardware is becoming less desirable to me. The fact they have switched to MicroSIMs on the iPhone 4 is problematic since I like to use my SIM card in other phones (yes, I am aware of adapters). The current rumors say that Apple either wants to do a Software SIM or a new SIM card format that is completely different from any other SIM cards in use.

As much as I enjoy the Apple hardware, I really don’t want my phone service to be permanently tied to an iPhone, which a unique SIM card will do for better or worse. That alone may be the tipping point for me to go with Android instead.

Comments

13 June 2011, Ricky Cadden writes: I would highly recommend you check out an Android device with the HTC Sense UI overlay. I realize you want a vanilla experience, but this adds a few of the features that you counted as a loss with Android above. Camera - the new HTC Sense camera application completely replaces the stock Android one with a bevy of customization settings, both real (ISO and the like) and....'fake' (the stylized filters that iPhone users seem to adore). It's also endlessly more enjoyable to use, whereas I despise the stock Android camera app. HTC Sync - the newer HTC Sense devices, such as the HTC Inspire 4G, Sensation, and such all support HTC Sync, which is a desktop syncing application that will handle media, as well as contacts/calendar/etc. You can also use HTCsense.com to access certain features of the phone remotely, include a 'Find my phone' feature and one that lets you activate the ringer on loud, even if you left your phone on silent (useful for finding your phone in the couch cushions). The HTC Sense email app (for Exchange support) is also vastly improved over stock. Feel free to hit me up with any questions - I had the Nexus One and now carry a T-Mobile G2 with the Desire Z (HTC Sense) ROM on it and I absolutely LOVE it.
13 June 2011, PhoneBoy writes: The stock Camera app on Android is crap. I settled on Camera360, which has its own issues. Where iOS still beats Android is on panorama apps... HTC Sync doesn't do anything for my Mac, unfortunately, though I'm sure Missing Sync also works on these phones. :) I'm willing to entertain HTC devices--the Nexus One is, after all, an HTC device--but which one can I get unlocked and untouched by operator crapware? :)
13 June 2011, Ricky Cadden writes: Forgot you're on a Mac. Most of the latest HTC devices can be easily unlocked/rooted with minimal effort. Even if you don't slap a custom ROM on it, that gives you the option of unlocking it and removing any crapware with just a few clicks. This actually frees you up to pick more phones based on hardware. I LOVE my T-Mobile G2 - it comes with vanilla Android, but the Desire Z is the exact same hardware with Sense, so I just swapped the ROM - everything is fully supported, nothing fancy. The Virtuous ROMs strive to be as close to a shipping Sense ROM as possible.
13 June 2011, PhoneBoy writes: I've been debating throwing Cyanogenmod on my Nexus One, but I'm also trying to avoid playing the custom ROM game too. I don't mind rooting my device, but even that potentially presents its own issues. I also want to buy at the top end of the hardware curve to maximize the value of my investment. Especially since this stuff changes so rapidly... :)
14 June 2011, Ed Isaacs writes: Very interesting Daemon, I know that I too have been interested by the Android offering, and being in the USA at the moment and popped into a Verizon store - you wouldn't even know they sell iPhone - it's Droid everywhere. I am a Mac user as well, and am concerned as everything works well that I want right now. My breaking point is the Nokia factor. If you really look at the model that Droid has right now, it's Nokia all over but with a software license model as opposed to a device/HW model like Nokia - instead they have a bunch a vendors making the devices. The user experience is slightly different on each device from each vendor, and some have great battery life, some dont, some have upgrade-ability to new OS's - some dont, some crash - some dont. That reason alone is scaring me from looking at Droid as it reminds me of Nokia again. A saturated market of devices, and they are releasing them faster than Apple is, but if you talk with non-Apple people they state that they are pushing you to a new model every year. There is something to be said for HW control, and SW control - it is more stable, and more restricted. Having said that - I never feel restricted on my iPhone. My middle ground on this will be an Android tablet- It will get me into the droid world, no contract and a decent price. Until I see something massive that would make me want to switch, I'm looking at iPhone 5 from my 3GS.
14 June 2011, PhoneBoy writes: Valid point about Android, Ed. Other than the Nexus line of handsets done for Google, there really isn't a "standard" Android handset. The different manufacturers have their own standards on top of Android, and act differently. Like you say, it's Nokia-style fragmentation. It certainly is scary, but then again, it's selling like hotcakes--kinda like Nokias used to :) There's another area where the device fragmentation creates issues: with accessories. Apple's "one device" strategy means there's a ton of both Apple and third-party accessories that work with the iPhone. The other Android handsets don't have as many unless it happens to be a huge-selling phone. iOS has gotten good enough for most things, quite honestly. I'm sure iOS 5 will also be a huge bonus (especially in the notification department). Now that Apple sells unlocked iPhones in the US, my main problem with the iPhone is the non-standard SIM card--both now and going forward. I travel out of the country a lot. The ability to swap SIM cards matters to me quite a bit.
15 June 2011, Jason Costomiris writes: I spent a bit over a year with a Nexus One (on AT&T). Loved the phone, worked well, but it was little silly things over time that eventually drove me to an iPhone 4. Yes, I was rooted, and was running Cyanogenmod 7, so I did also enjoy some of the Gingerbread whizbang stuff, but in the end, the iPhone won me over. My wife got one a few months ago, and that, along with having spent a few months using my iPad pushed me over the edge. A big factor was phone speed vs battery life. I could enjoy a fast phone, or one that would last me a full day of business use (using SetCPU to manage that). Does your perspective change, now that you can buy an unlocked iPhone 4 direct from Apple? I'm hoping they'll carry that policy forward with the iPhone 4S, 5 or whatever they decide to call it. I really don't think that the unlocked SKUs will sell like wildfire, as people in the US generally don't recognize the value of an unlocked handset, but the option is great to have, IMHO.
15 June 2011, PhoneBoy writes: In terms of overall usability, the iPhone is going to be better, though Android is getting "close enough" for me. The fact you can now buy unlocked iPhones in the US (like you can in most every other civilized country) is a plus, but I'd rather buy at the top end of the washtub curve to maximize my financial investment. We know Apple's doing another iPhone, it's just a matter of when they will announce it. I'm also curious to see what changes they are going to make to the SIM card. Being able to easily switch SIM cards in and out is a plus, and even the current MicroSIMs in the iPhone 4 create some issues with that. This is the equation from hell. It really is.
15 June 2011, I’m Getting Two New Nokia Handsets « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] | Recent Posts | Pages « | My Tipping Point Between iOS and Android [...]

John C. Dvorak’s Mothers Day Comcast Nightmare

PhoneBoy — Mon, 09 May 2011 19:15:00 +0000

There are a couple of salient points brought up by columnist John C. Dvorak in his latest piece entitled My Mothers Day Comcast Nightmare, where he recounts his issues with his Internet connection on Sunday:

I had tweeted this problem earlier on Twitter and found out that Comcast seems to have given up on its effective social media program, as Comcast Bonnie was no longer working there. She relied to me that “they got rid of me.” She was great at what she did, but I’ve seen this sort of thing before. A company has person doing great and important work, and it fires her because some bonehead at the company couldn’t monetize it. Apparently, it values bad PR instead like this. Accountants will eventually ruin all American business.

This is the tricky thing about “social media.”We know it’s good, but it’s hard to quantify exactly how good. When times get rough, it gets paired back or, in the cast of Comcast Bonnie, “eliminated.”

Unfortunately, human beings remember these bad experiences and use them as a basis to make decisions about which services to use in the future. Unfortunately, cable is the only real choice for most people so Comcast can pretty much take on the whole “we don’t care, we don’t have to” mentality on these things.

So I scheduled the service guy to come on Tuesday and just figure I’d limp along at analog modem speeds. In the process, I checked by email and saw a note from one of the editors of my blog, Sergio Gasparrini, who apparently listened to the podcast—from Europe—and suggested that Mother’s Day Skype calls may have been the culprit. I thought this was laughable until mid afternoon when my speeds began to increase by the hour.

By 9 p.m. on Sunday, the speed had ratcheted back up from 1 Mbps around 5 p.m. to 3 Mbps and then increased to 4 Mbps to 9 Mbps to 11 Mbps. It was like clockwork. As I write this, the system has been restored to full speed by itself.

This seems plausible, but only barely. Skype and other Voice over IP tools do not require a lot of bandwidth. It does require low latency, though. The only possible explanation here would be if there were a significant number of video calls–which require both high bandwidth and low latency.

In any case, this is definitely something I remember growing up on the Bell System. Mothers Day was always a big calling day. “All circuits are busy” messages were pretty common. What scares me is how quickly we all forget…

Comments

10 May 2011, ComcastBill writes: I think if you’re going to write a blog post about a Comcast issue and apparently Comcast not responding via Twitter you may want to get all the facts right. Sunday was Mother's Day and as a social media team we support this day as a normal Sunday and have staffing. We reach out as fast as we can and usually within minutes. This Tweet was no different on response time. After the @THErealDVORAK tweeted he was having a Comcast issue he was replied to with an offer to help. All of Sunday and still to this day there has been no response to the offer. We are a social media team not just one person and most of this team have been around since day 1, and we will continue to support our customers on the platform there comfortable in. Below are the Tweet responses to @THErealDVORAK so you can see the time stamps. @THErealDVORAK what can i help with? 1:15 PM May 8th via TweetDeck @THErealDVORAK send me account phone number and ill take a look for you 1:20 PM May 8th via TweetDeck
10 May 2011, PhoneBoy writes: Thanks for providing the other side of the story ComcastBill.

ZoneAlarm’s Newest Security Solution: SocialGuard

PhoneBoy — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:57:37 +0000

From ZoneAlarm’s Newest Security Solution: SocialGuard:

SocialGuard, ZoneAlarm’s newest security solution, promises a groundbreaking new method of monitoring and preventing safety breaches on Facebook the most popular social networking site by a mile, with over 500 million users without “friending” your child and intruding on his/her social space. SocialGuard sends real-time alerts to parents via email–or the SocialGuard interface–whenever suspicious activity is detected on your child’s profile; parents can customize security settings and keywords to trigger such messages if the child is exposed to illicit or inappropriate content. SocialGuard monitors children’s Facebook accounts for threats including cyberbullying, age fraud ensures children are not befriended by adults outside of their network; friend requests, hacked accounts, and link safety flags dangerous/offensive links contained in messages.

The product, available now, can be purchased here.

Check Point, my employer, is behind this. I’ve used the betas of this product and they do precisely what they say without being a huge burden on you or your computer. The price: $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, makes this a no-brainer if you have kids using Facebook!

See what Check Point’s Head of Consumer Business has to say about SocialGuard.

The pingpin.com Challenge

PhoneBoy — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:06:46 +0000

After you sign up for Jryi Engstrom’s latest project (he created Jaiku, which Google bought and killed), you get to play this cool game in your web browser. Played it on the flight from Seattle to San Francisco. It’s tough!

Of course, I wonder what pingpin will be…

How to Protect Yourself From Facebook Places

PhoneBoy — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 06:04:55 +0000

In my last post, I told people how to turn off your friend’s ability to check you in via Facebook Places, the new location-based feature that Facebook made available this week. Of course, in typical Facebook fashion, they left the default settings wide open, potentially exposing users to potential privacy violations! In practical terms, this means:

When you check in some place via Facebook Places, your friends will see it in their Facebook timeline.
Your checkins at this location are logged and can be seen by people checking in there later on.
Friends can check you in places if they are at or near that place.
Third party Facebook applications your friends might use can access places you (or your friends) check you into.

This begs the question: how can you (or your friend) check into a location on Facebook? Right now, checkins are limited to mobile phones with GPS and you must be physically near the location that you check into (or your friend must be). So I can’t, for instance, check my friends into someplace near their hometown unless I happen to be in their hometown near the location in question. Knowing Facebook, though, they could change this later on.

You probably don’t want your friends checking you in places. Or maybe you don’t want to use Facebook Places at all. Here how to adjust your settings for Facebook Places so you can stay as off the grid as you’d like. Note you can click on each image to get a full-size version.

First off, go to Account > Privacy Settings in Facebook:

From the next screen, choose Customize Settings:

First look under Things I Share:

If you want to opt out of Facebook Places. set Places I check In To to Only Me”and uncheck the Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in. Otherwise, adjust these settings as you see fit. If you want to prevent people from checking you into places (whether or not you want to opt out), look under Things Others Share. Set the Friends can check me into Places option to Disabled.

You may also need to go back and prevent third party applications from accessing your Facebook Places checkin data. Click on the Back to Privacy button on top and then click on the Edit your settings link under Applications and Websites.

Make sure to uncheck the Places I check in to option (and any other ones you want to uncheck) and click Save Changes.

If you have set these options to their most restrictive setting, congratulations, you have opted out of Facebook Places (as much as you can, anyway).

[Snippet] How to Prevent Your Friends From Checking You In to Facebook Places (maketecheasier.com)
Data Protection Commission to monitor new Facebook Places feature (politics.ie)
How to avoid being “Checked In” by your friends on Facebook’s Places (shankman.com)
Check into Facebook Places for Your Business (fathomseo.com)
How To Disable Facebook Places (readwriteweb.com)
Check-ins and Facebook Places (tdhurst.com)
Facebook Launches ‘Places’ Service. Will You Use It? (jsyk.com)

Comments

20 August 2010, Friends Can Check You In Places on Facebook. Here’s How to Fix That. « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] | Recent Posts | Pages « How to Protect Yourself From Facebook Places | A Third Way on the Net Neutrality Debate [...]
21 August 2010, Leaving Facebook... | Facebook writes: [...] you're on the real Facebook web site. Also be sure to only download software from sites you trust.http://phoneboy.com/3861/how-to-protect-yourself-from-facebook-placesContinueGo back to FacebookHelpLoginFacebook [...]
22 August 2010, Facebook Application Privacy Changes writes: [...] How to Protect Yourself From Facebook Places (phoneboy.com) [...]

Friends Can Check You In Places on Facebook. Here’s How to Fix That.

PhoneBoy — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 01:31:22 +0000

Go to Account > Privacy Settings, click Customize Settings. Under “Things others share”, set “Friends can check me in to Places” to Disabled. Otherwise, your less scrupulous friends can check you into potentially embarrassing locations.

Optionally, under “Things I share”, adjust the “Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in” and “Places I check in to” settings accordingly.

Update: you should see my more complete guide to changing your Facebook Places settings.

Comments

20 August 2010, How to Protect Yourself From Facebook Places « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] | Recent Posts | Pages « | Friends Can Check You In Places on Facebook. Here’s How to Fix That. [...]

Of Stone Tables and Communities

PhoneBoy — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:47:13 +0000

Here’s a fun tweet I picked up recently:

phoneboy.com has been here for more than 10 years, you might say? Well not the way this person remembers it.

And, of course, he’s right. A lifetime ago in Internet time, phoneboy.com was a different place. The most popular thing on it was an FAQ on FireWall-1, a product made by my current employer, Check Point Software. At the time, I did not work for Check Point, they didn’t have a knowledge base (at least that customers could access), and the product was MUCH simpler then. One person might actually be able to keep track of everything related to it

Since then, the product suite has grown substantially. Before, it was just firewall. Then VPN. Then Floodgate. Then a whole bunch of other add-ons (which have been renamed “Blades”), not to mention appliances, Provider-1, VSX, and now VE (Virtual Edition). Keeping it all straight, along with all the things that can go wrong, is a bit of a challenge.

So what does this have to do with Stone Tablets and Communities? A lot.

Stone Tablets

Back when I ran an FAQ on FireWall-1 on my personal website, I was (at first) using static web pages. Yes, I edited them in VI or using Netscape’s web page editor, depending on my mood. They were static documents that changed only if I decided to change them, either because of personal experience or because someone gave me updated information about the issue.

This is what I like to call the Stone Tablets approach (or Ivory Tower documents, if you prefer). Some wise person comes up with “the answer.” It’s written down, 10 commandments style and is considered gospel. It doesn’t change unless new information comes out (and the “wise man” decides to update it).

Note that this is pretty much how all knowledge bases operate, including Check Point’s SecureKnowledge and the Knowledge Base that I edited for Nokia’s Security Appliance Business.

Communities

Before the stone tablets were written, there was a community. At least in the Check Point world, this was mostly centered around the fw-1-mailinglist, which surprisingly, still exists today (albeit a shadow of its former glory). I got frustrated with the signal to noise ratio on the mailing list, so I created my own moderated list in July of 2000, which I eventually shut down last year. There is also CPUG.org, whom I donated the previous phoneboy.com FireWall-1-related content to during the summer of 2005.

The idea here–and the idea behind many of the attempted FAQ site redesigns I did before–was that communities were, collectively speaking, smarter than the stone tablet guys. Anything that would enable the community to “speak up” would, therefore, be a good thing. If I made my documents editable (or at least they would allow public comments), maybe others would contribute to their goodness?

The part I miscalculated, and the part I now understand after having been through a similar experience helping to build the Voxilla forums is that getting a community built around your site is a lot of work. For every 100 people that visit, 90 will participate mostly in read-only, 9 will participate occasionally, and 1 will participate often.

Those numbers are with forums. With Wikis and the like, it’s more like for every 10,000 people that visit, 9 will occasionally edit things and 1 will be a hardcore editor. In short, my attempt at being a sort of Wikipedia for all things Check Point was an abject failure and I let CPUG see if they could do better with forums.

Why Stone Tablets Are Hard, But Popular

I like stone tablets. A lot. Not because I’m religious–far from it, in fact–but because there is an indescribable feeling one experiences when they see their problem written down on a stone tablet along with a succinct solution. Customers often demand that their obscure problem be written down on a stone tablet–or a knowledge base or some other official document of the day–and made available for everyone to see.

The problem is that things change. That which made the content of the stone tablet true may have changed (e.g. a software upgrade). The guy who wrote the stone tablet may have been wrong in the first place. To make matters worse, the guru who knew about the topic may have disappeared or no longer wants to write things on stone tablets. There’s also people for which the older “truths” are still true (i.e. they’re still running the older software).

Mutable truth is the hardest thing to write on stone tablets. It takes ruthless dedication, an infinite amount of time and patience to extract the truth from those who know it, and of course, the ability to write it down in a coherent fashion. Few people have all of these qualities.

Will I Ever Do An FAQ Page on Check Point Products Again?

While I will never say never, my current circumstances make it highly unlikely I would undertake such a task again. At least independently.

At the time I started the FAQ page, I was doing technical support related to the Check Point product line, which at the time was FireWall-1 and SecuRemote. The main reason I started the FAQ in the first place was so I could keep track of the problems I solved so I didn’t have to solve them again. Granted, I started it with some content from my employer (a Check Point reseller), who had an FAQ page on FireWall-1. I took that content (with permission), updated it and put it on my own site. It ended up being a smart thing since that company got bought by another company who ultimately had nothing to do with Check Point.

In 2010, I work for Check Point. I am also a bit more removed from the realms of technical support. Check Point also has this thing called SecureKnowledge, which did not exist back when I started the FAQ page. SecureKnowledge contains many “stone tablets,” including the collection I wrote/curated during my 10 years at Nokia. While it is nowhere near my current job responsibilities anymore, I have written a couple of SK articles since I joined Check Point. I do consult with the SecureKnowledge team periodically on various higher-level things as well.

Following the Conversation

PhoneBoy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:25:07 +0000

I feel bad, in a way, that I haven’t been posting to my blog. Then again, I think I know why. The conversation is, for the most part, elsewhere.

Does it mean my blog is a failure? Am I not getting the hits I want or the comments I want? Not really.

One of the things I’ve learned is not to try and treat all communication the same way. Not all conversations are the same. Not all mechanisms for conversing are the same.

The trick is knowing where, when, and how to have the right conversation. Sometimes, that’s my blog. Sometimes it’s Twitter, Facebook, a phone call, or in person. Sometimes you have to use all these forms together.

Right now, one of my major conversations is with Check Point Software’s customers. This conversation is mostly on CPUG, but I am also seeking out and having customer conversations on Twitter, Facebook, and other places. Yes, this is my job and my personal blog is not necessarily the right place to have that conversation

Meanwhile, this is the right place for this ephemeral thought. Or is it? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Comments

27 January 2010, Tweets that mention Following the Conversation -- Topsy.com writes: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jonathan Jensen, phoneboyblog. phoneboyblog said: New blog post: Following the Conversation http://phoneboy.com/3317/following-the-conversation-2 [...]
27 January 2010, ernst albus writes: Well, as you may see, I'm from "good old Germany"... Let me put it this way...First your conclusion isn't bad, but the reason why is people in most cases don't have even the idea of communicating on a "higher?" educated level. To me it looks like more than 90% of the people are just sloppy in using their brain...some call it simply DUMB!!! Just look around and you will know what I mean. So, take care, there are some people in the world feeling a bit like you... E.
5 February 2010, Shawn Smith writes: I went through your post and would like to comment on the communication part.We all have such problems and you aren't the only one, earlier I also had such thoughts but I made up my mind to loose it off and I succeeded. So, be cheerful...

Inbox Liquidation, Part 53

PhoneBoy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:55:53 +0000

Time to clean out the inbox once again…

Truphone Bonanza: I have a fair number of items related to Truphone in my inbox. A while ago, they launched an Android calling app for WiFi, making it possible to use their service to make cheap phone calls from Android phones. More recently, they launched their Truphone Anywhere service, which gives you a SIM card that gives you “local” rates in US and the UK and cheaper roaming abroad. It could, theoretically, be your ONLY GSM calling service–calls inside the US are $0.10 a minute inbound and outbound–but data is not exactly cheap at $0.75/MB. It’s a nice prepaid service I will be keeping an eye on. I’m always looking for a way to be reachable when I travel abroad, but don’t want to pay an arm and a leg to do it Oh yeah, and now you can make and receive calls from +883 (iNum) calls thanks to a partnership with Voxbone!

Skype for Symbian Beta: I’ve actually been using this a fair amount of my Nokia E71, especially when I was in Israel several days ago. It was the only way I was able to make calls back home without it costing an arm and a leg. The application is very laggy in terms of startup and shutdown, but the calls were crystal clear! Hopefully, they improve the speed of this app, as it’s my only real complaint. Well that and it does not pass touchtones at all.

CTIA Is Against Network Neutrality for Wireless: From the “no duh” department, my friends at the CTIA–the industry association for the wireless industry in the US–are against net neutrality principles (PDF link) as proposed by the FCC via their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the subject. Seems like a rehash of their usual points (i.e. wireless is different, a competitive market, and the operators are doing nothing wrong). *sigh*

Trapster goes 4.0 on iPhone: The new version of this free speed-trap reporting program for the iPhone and a number of other phones gives you more “trap” types (including roadkill, yum!), shows you were Trapster users have driven recently (to give you confidence in the reported traps), a Caravan mode where you can message and share photos with other Trapster users, and the ability to share Trapster with your iPhone contacts. Wonder what these guys will do next?

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22 January 2010, Tweets that mention Inbox Liquidation, Part 53 -- Topsy.com writes: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by phoneboyblog, scipblogbot. scipblogbot said: Inbox Liquidation, Part 53 http://bit.ly/7yvb3K [...]

What A Long, Strange Trip 2009 Has Been

PhoneBoy — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:42:50 +0000

The beginning of 2009 had a rocky start for me. My employment situation was up in the air thanks to my long-time employer Nokia selling off the Security Appliance Business I worked in to Check Point Software. While I had an idea that I would probably have a job with Check Point, I couldn’t really breathe a sign of relief until I had a job offer in-hand, which did not come until April.

Even before Nokia announced the Security Appliance Business was getting sold at the end of September 2008, I had maneuvered my career into a comfortable, but rather limiting position. My job was not at risk, but I also did not see a way out of it either.

In a sense, this forced employer change was exactly the kind of fresh start I needed. Even though the entire process was downright scary–change often is–I am happy with how things are going now.

Even though it took me a couple of months to get plugged into Check Point, which is typical anytime you change employers, my true mission was known to me almost immediately. There wasn’t a whole lot of discussion about it, either. I just started doing what comes naturally.

I began the process of reconnecting with a community I helped to build many years ago, but more or less walked away from to pursue other interests. I spoke at Check Point events. I established Check Point’s official presence on Twitter, Facebook, and CPUG. I engaged our customers, looking for trouble, finding it, and did my best to find solutions.

What surprised me was that so many people remember the work I did all those years ago, both inside Check Point and in the larger Check Point community. The appreciation and generosity everyone showed was quite humbling. It made the transition back into the Check Point world that much easier.

Then again, I never really left it. Even though I spent a lot of years at Nokia supporting “everything but,” there was always the occasional need for obscure bits of Check Point knowledge that only I had. I also supported various aspects of the IPSO operating system and was the go-to guy when it came to analyzing security vulnerabilities. And yes, I had my hands in the knowledge base almost the whole time I was at Nokia

Mobile Change Happens, Too

One thing that ended with my employment at Nokia was easier access to “free” mobile phones. Between our normal replacement cycles and my contacts, I was able to get a few handsets a year to play with for varying lengths of time. This means, going forward, I have to buy my own stuff. However, for the first time in a decade, I am able to own something other than a Nokia device without feeling like a traitor

So what did I do? I bought an iPhone 3GS, of course. It was a bit of a leap of faith, as I wasn’t sure how I’d like it after playing with it in the Apple Store, but now I love it! It completely changes how and when I use my mobile phone. Not that my Nokia devices didn’t have all this same functionality ages ago, but the laser-like focus Apple puts on user experience, the speed of the iPhone 3GS hardware, and the plethora of applications really showed me what a mobile device could be!

And yes, I agree that the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music–a device I received as a “parting gift” from Nokia–touched more lives than Apple’s device did. It’s no iPhone, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper and easy to get without a contract. However, the iPhone was the mobile device that rocked my world in 2009.

Increasing Social Currency In 2010

One thing I learned in 2009 was that relationships really matter. It is a form of currency–social currency, if you will–that everyone has, regardless of their station in life.

Meanwhile, my friend Ken Camp has a great piece on transforming the world by looking in the mirror. I encourage you all to read it and really let it sink in. My way of transforming the world will be by increasing the social currency in the world–one relationship at a time.

Increasing your social currency is easy. You improve your relationships with others through your words and deeds. Conversely, as you neglect your relationship with words and deeds, your social currency decreases.

The beautiful thing about social currency is that everyone can have it in limitless amounts. When you give your social currency away, you often get it back–with interest.

Comments

7 January 2010, Mobile phones writes: I agree with you now a days mobile revolution is at its peak! number of competitors are ready to compete each other. In such conditions Nokia has made its unique place in mobile market.

Not All Social Networking Services Are Created Equal, Quit Treating Them That Way.

PhoneBoy — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:08:07 +0000

Over the years, I’ve used a number of social networking services. Not just services like Twitter and Facebook, but things called bulletin board systems that you accessed via dialup modems. It wasn’t as cool, as mainstream, or even as technically sophisticated back then, but the basic functions were all there.

As I joined more and more of these services, trying to keep up with all these services is quite a challenge. For a while, I was using services like ping.fm and others to update all the social networking services at the same time. This was nice for me, but the only part of that equation that solves is the “status update.” It does not solve the interaction problem.

As I realized trying to keep up with it all was untenable, I slowly began the process of pairing down. I now use only four of them on any regular basis: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and cpug.org forums. I still use others as well, albeit on a less frequent basis.

As I went through my followers on these various networks and started looking at who I was interacting with on these services, I noticed that different types of people congregated to the different services. I tend to interact with a wider range of people on Twitter, people I work with or know well on Facebook, not too many people on LinkedIn (as relatively few people are using the social networking features), and Check Point-related folks (mostly customers) on the cpug.org forums.

When I look at the services in question, their design and implementation dictate certain usage patterns. Twitter is fairly simplistic, but wide open to everyone. It enables anything from casual to deeper communication. Facebook is more private, but provides a more rich environment to share information, find people, and so on. LinkedIn is very much for maintaining and keeping track of business contacts. cpug.org forums are all about Check Point and their products and services.

At the end of the day, these services are very different. Trying to compare them in any sort of subjective way is difficult at best. Trying to use them in exactly the same way is also a complete waste of time. Realize that, if you are truly going to use these services effectively, you have to treat them differently.

7 Reasons Why I’d Rather Use Twitter Over Other Social Networks (shegeeks.net)
Nearly half of employers look up job candidates on social networks…but your tweets are probably safe (socialmediatoday.com)
19% of Internet users use Twitter or update status site : Up nearly 100% since April (kevin.lexblog.com)
NutshellMail Brings Twitter and Facebook Right to Your Email Box (steverubel.com)
Who Cares About The New Facebook? (thenextweb.com)

Inbox Liquidation, Part 51

PhoneBoy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:44:40 +0000

As usual, a lot of crap gets backed up into my email. Here’s a few of the more interesting bits. I have a few more that I’ll post later.

Callpod Fueltank Uno: As my portable iPhone charger I bought off eBay bit the dust the other day, this particular gadget comes along at a good time. Unfortunately, the website doesn’t say how big the battery is, but it claims to be “more than 4 times the capacity of a standard mobile phone.” It comes with an iPhone/iPod and a mini-USB charging tip. If you don’t have a phone that charges with one of those, a coupon is in the box that lets you get a free charging tip. Extras are $10 each.

Prepaid Phones a Stocking Stuffer?: One of the emails I had from a PR firm suggested that in today’s economy, a prepaid mobile phone might be just the perfect gift to stuff in someone’s stocking. They are certainly inexpensive and can be had for under $30 and do not require either a long-term commitment or a contract. I wouldn’t necessarily pick phones from TracFone, as was suggested by the PR firm, but maybe you can get a prepaid phone one from one of the major carriers, which can also be had for about the same price.

Walgreens Launches an iPhone App: Aside from the usual “store finder” type functions, the new Walgreens app on the iPhone lets you order prescription refills and upload photos for printing at a Walgreens store. It would be nice if I went to Walgreens, which I almost never do.

Social Networking Wars: From the folks who bring you SuperNews, a hilarious animated take on current events, comes Social Networking Wars. You are a nobody working in an office trying to fend off the distractions of social networking. Armed with a stapler, you must fight them off while not hitting your co-workers–or your boss. It’s a silly game, but like social networking, it’s a nice time killer.

More on the Yamaha USB Speakerphone Gadget I reviewed: Jim Courtney sent me a followup letter about the Yamaha USB Speakerphone that I reviewed a few weeks ago. One of the things he points out is that a lot of people are put off by the price, as I mentioned as a concern in the review. If you can make that jump, however, the “on site” experience of using the gadget is quite good and can prove to be valuable. To that end, In Store Solutions wants to encourage user trial and will extend its return policy such that anyone purchasing during this promotion can return it, shipping prepaid but “no questions asked”, for a full credit until January 31, 2010. This gives purchasers a chance to make their own “on site” decision about its value in the end. Nice promo, guys!

Sony Selling AT&T Service at Sony Style stores: Not that I’m a huge fan of Sony Ericsson phones, but if you buy a Sony Ericsson C905a or W518a–presumably at full retail price–and agree to a new two year contract, you get three free accessories. It’s only in stores, not online. And, if you ask me, it’s not that great of a deal. Sony gets points for trying, but I doubt the promotion will be very successful.

Comments

27 November 2009, Letterhead Printing | UPrinting.com writes: I love the Social Network Wars. :-) Really funny. Thank you for sharing these link. Will wait for more :-) Good luck with the liquidation.
28 November 2009, tom writes: prepaid phones are becoming a very big part of my business(i own a small used computer shop.) i would suggest buying one from the major carriers but than activating with someone both cheaper and with much better support. for example buy a verizon prepaid but instead of activating with verizon activate with page plus. your ongoing expense will likely be half or even less and the customer service is outstanding in comparison to dealing with verizon directly. someone will nearly always answer the support line without your being placed on hold and they are more likely to have a quick solution for whatever issue you have. do note that if the phone has been activated on verizon the ESN will not be accepted by pageplus unless the verizon account is cancelled; and that might take several days o happen. so DO NOT activate a verizon prepaid phone with verizon if you plan to use it with pageplus. if it is a new never activated phone the whole setup process is very fast and easy and you get $6.00 in free calling without having to buy anything in advance. if you talk a lot you can get 1200 minutes/1200 texts/50MB data for $29.95/month with no additional fees or taxes. or unlimited minutes/texts/20MB data for $39.95. a reliable sources tells me there will soon be an unlimited(probably with FUP) data option that can be used with a smartphone, data dongle, or MiFi device. p.s. pageplus will also activate any ESN even a phone from another CDMA network; the PRL will have to be set to verizons though. i am currently using a sprint branded palm pre with pageplus and it works great.

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Path: Social Networking Gone Micro

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