For the last day or so I’ve been kicking the tires of the new Jaiku, and I must say it’s pretty impressive.

You have the status message you know from Twitter, but that’s not even half of it. You can comment directly on other peoples “jaikus” (that’s what they call your status updates), and the coolest thing is that you can add other feeds to be displayed in your Jaiku stream. So, if you have a blog, it will appear amidst your Jaiku messages when you update it with a new post. I’ve added my moblog to the feeds list. (I also tried to add this blog, but Jaiku told me it couldn’t find a feed :-/ I’ve contacted Jaiku about the bug). In addition, you can add your Last.fm feed, so that others can see what your listening to at the moment, your Flickr feed, your del.icio.us feed — even your Twitter feed! So when you update Twitter, Jaiku will automatically also be updated.

Both services has it’s pros and cons. The beautiful thing about Twitter is its simplicity and that it is text message based. Everybody can participate — no need to download anything to your phone. Also, Twitter is easily grokked. Send a text message to Twitter with what you’re doing, and you’re done. Other people subscribing to your updates will instantly get a text message with what you’re doing.

But not everyone wants their phone to beep every single time someone on your friends list updates their status. Of course, you could turn off updates, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of the service. Jaiku, on the other hand, is more like a presence service for mobile phones, and this makes Jaiku more discrete than Twitter. The Jaiku program on your phone mirrors your phone book and displays your Jaiku contacts appear on top of your contact list with their latest update is shown. This way, you’ll have a chance of knowing whether your friend is available before you call them. If your friends latest status message says “Visiting grandma in the hospital”, and his update was less than an hour ago, it would probably be a good idea to postpone your call for a while. The subtle thing about this is you don’t get beeps every other minute if you have many friends on Jaiku like you would on Twitter. You’ll have to check their status yourself, which is a key difference between Twitter and Jaiku. One thing that would rock, though, would be the ability to make the Jaiku software notify you if any of your contacts status messages changed. This way, users could have it both ways: Beeping updates like Twitter, or subtle presence updates when you need them.

Other things that propels Jaiku ahead of Twitter are the ability to:

• display your location (based on cell tower info)
• see how many people (or rather, bluetooth devices) are nearby
• display your current phone profile and if you’re currently using the phone
• integrate your calendar with Jaiku, so that your contacts can see if you’re currently in a meeting etc.

The barrier of entry is a bit higher with Jaiku than Twitter. I could never get my mom or dad to install Jaiku on their phones and learn how to use it. Twitter, on the other hand, would be easy for them, as all they’d have to do to update the service is send a text message, which comes right after voice call on the easiest-things-to-do-on-your-mobile list.

Anyway, to understand the power of Jaiku you’ll have to try it out for yourself. I’m madsb on Jaiku, if you want to add me.

=)

I caved. Got a Nokia N800 three weeks ago. And it is the most versatile gadget I have ever had in my hands.

I won’t make a review of it — there are dozens of other excellent reviews on the internet, but what I’ve done is make a list of the top things I’ve done with my N800 since I got it. Click on to see my recommendations.

1. Install Canola (when it gets here)

Canola is a front-end for the N800 with focus on media, and it looks absolutely stunning. It should be right around the corner, but until it gets here, take a look at a demo that Jonathan Greene from Atmaspheric | Endeavours put on YouTube the other day:

2. Change the theme

One thing that immediately annoyed me about the N800 was the eye-sore that is the default theme. Tigert to the rescue! Download and install his Plankton theme, and behold the beauty that is your new N800:

Immensely nicer than the standard theme, wouldn’t you agree?

3. Install Orb on your desktop PC

Having access to your picture, music and video collection on the go is also something I find amazingly cool, and Orb can deliver just that. Tip: To get video streaming to work with the N800, I had to use Real Media at 80 kbps, otherwise I would get a “video format not supported” error from Media player. Real Media at 80 kbps isn’t the prettiest, so here’s hoping that a future firmware update from Nokia will enable some higher resolutions.

4. Get a decent sized SD card (or two!)

The N800 should be able to utilize SD cards all the way up to 32 Gb (although only 8 Gb cards are available at the time this was written), but not with the current firmware. Cards with capacities at or above 4 Gb are called SDHC cards, but the current software version (OS 2007 edition v. 2.2006.51-6) only supports regular SD cards, with capacities of up to 4 Gb. I bought two 4 Gb SDHC cards by mistake, thinking they were regular SD cards, so I’m hoping for a swift upgrade from Nokia. In the meantime I have two useless chunks of plastic lying around on my desk.

5. Remote control your desktop PC with VNC

This is one of the coolest things: Being able to remote control your desktop computer from anywhere with VNC Viewer.

I actually got this to work with my desktop computer with TightVNC when I was running Windows XP. Then I upgraded to Vista, and I haven’t been able to get it working again. I just get a black screen on the tablet. If anyone has tips for getting TightVNC (or some other VNC server) to run on Vista, please let me know.

6. Get a decent screen protector

You don’t want any scratches on that gorgeous screen, and trust me, you’ll get scratches in no time if you don’t use a screen protector. I read that people have had good results using protectors made for the Sony PSP and cutting them to fit, but I actually just use the one that came with the N800. Just remove the white sticker from the plastic, and away you go.

7. Get familiar with repositories

I had absolutely no experience with Linux before I got the N800. It took me a while to figure out that you had to define repositories before you could install programs. I’m still a complete noob with regards to repositories and installing programs. Half the time I’m stabbing in the dark, but I’m learning along the way. Makes me wonder if the N800 is really meant for consumers or primarily developers.

8. Wait for Nokia to get its act together and release a decent firmware upgrade

Flash video performance is laughable, which renders YouTube or Google Video watching almost impossible with a framerate of 1-2 fps. Here’s hoping for an upgrade to Flash Player 9, which was recently released for Linux. Nokia/Adobe, please port it to the Maemo platform!

General video performance with the Media player is also under heavy criticism. My dream scenario would be to just drag’n'drop DivX files onto the N800 and watch them on my train ride to work, but the device has almost no decoders installed. Only a fraction of video formats can play, and good luck finding out what formats those are, and the encoding settings you have to use. What’s even more annoying, the videos that the N800 actually can open has choppy playback and tearing all over the place. If you want to use this device for watching video (like I do), you’re better off waiting for a firmware upgrade from Nokia. I’m checking this page every day, hoping for an update.

9. Enable the FM radio

Yes, the N800 has an FM radio, a feature that was unknown until recently. Install the fm radio application from the Application manager and start it by adding the new FM radio applet to the Home screen (from the Home screen, click the Home dropdown, click Select applets… and select the FM radio applet). The radio uses your headphones as antenna, so you’ll have to plug those in to get anything other than static. You can still listen to the radio through the speakers, though.

10. Install a wireless access point

Well, this actually belongs on the number one spot, since the N800 lives and breathes WiFi, but while I wrote this post I figured it was probably a bit redundant. If you don’t already have a wireless access point, you will need one. The N800 isn’t any fun if it isn’t connected. Although it is usable with a Bluetooth connection to your phone, the N800 deserves the speed (and lower cost) of a regular internet connection.

Those are my top ten things. There are other insanely cool things you can do with it (pairing it with a Bluetooth GPS receiver and using it for driving directions, for example), and I cannot even begin to imagine the things you can do with it in a couple of months time, when the developer community has had more time to play with it. But for now, I’m holding my breath until Canola comes out, together with a firmware upgrade that actually enables watchable video. But please, hurry — I’m getting blue in the face!

Just got an email from Neonode:

We are expecting. Visit www.neonode.com to find out more or go directly to www.pregnantmanblog.com to see the latest.

/Neonode

The original Neonode was a massively hyped but never launched device from a Swedish manufacturer by the same name. It was diminutive in size, ran some sort of Windows CE OS and had a touch screen. I was quite impressed by the specs then, but alas … it never launched. For now, it’s all hype again (don’t they ever learn). No specifications have been announced yet. It seems they plan to unveil the device at 3GSM next week. When — or if — we’ll be able to buy one I have yet to find out.

After last time’s big disappointment I think some skepticism is in place.

2. Open Source

The Nokia N800 is a Linux device based on a modified version of Debian GNU/Linux that they call “Internet Tablet OS 2007 edition”. Nokia created the open source Maemo development platform for the 770 and N800. They’ve worked hard to encourage developers to port applications to this platform. You can find more info at maemo.org.

The iPhone is far from open. We’re still not sure what Steve Jobs meant when he said that the iPhone runs “OS X”, but it’s most certainly not the full-blown “Mac OS X” that comes on a new Macbook. While the core of the phone’s OS may someday be open sourced (like Darwin), it’s highly unlikely that Apple will ever open source the entire OS or even share the iPhone APIs that would allow developers to make new iPhone apps.

I could definately swap my PSP for the N800.

Just for the fun of it, a little size comparison:

It’s like a slap in the face for a Nokia user, especially when you open your newsreader and take a look at the new themes for the Nokia N93i:

Image from Darla Mack

Aww, come on Nokia… I know you can do better than that! Well, at least you have to now.

Read Carlo Longinos post instead. Couldn’t agree with him more.

I realize that this blog is turning out to be a Nokia N95 fanboy blog, but to be honest I’ve never been more excited about a mobile phone ever. Can’t wait till it hits the shelves. I might have to trade in some of my other gadgets, though, but as they say in the video: “You might as well throw away your digital camera, your phone, your GPS, your computer, your MP3 player, whatever else you have, cuz… it’s a killer!”

Firstly and most importantly of all, […] light is everything. It’s photons of light that trigger charge in the camera’s sensor, and the more of them the more accurate the reading from each sensor pixel. In good light, there’s more than enough information being gathered and your Nseries camera will produce results comparable to those from standalone cameras. In poor light, either in the evening or under flash conditions or in a dimly lit room, there simply aren’t enough photons hitting each pixel for the sensor to be absolutely sure what value to report, which is why you get ‘noise’, flecks of random colours in your photo.

AAS Feature: How to: Take better photos on your Nokia Nseries smartphone