I depart for CES this Sunday and I have much to do:
Haircut
Prepare mobile blogging and site feeds for auto-upload
Charge all batteries
Pack
Finalize schedule
Then it looks something like this:
Sunday:
Drive to Vegas, check in to hotel
Registration and badge pick-up
Samsung press event (maybe)
Monday:
Interview SanDisk
Visit Sony (Mylo2?)
Visit Asus (if I don't get the real interview)
Stop by CES BlogHaus
Tuesday:
Visit Samsung
Wander show floor
Lunch@Piero's, meet with VIA
Tablet PC/UMPC party at Las Vegas Cheeseburger
Wednesday:
Wander show floor
Interview TabletKiosk
CES 2008 "It Won't Stay In Vegas" blogger party at the Atomic Test Museum
Thursday:
Tie up loose ends, visit the ones I forgot, get swag
Check out, drive home.
Still waiting for solid times from: - Nokia - And I want to spend a lot of time with them! - Asus (if I get in this one - I hope!) - Sprint - Grandpa! (I am supposed to have lunch or dinner with him.)
It's been a stellar year for Nokia Internet Tablets, software, developers, and the community. Thanks to all of them, it's been a stellar year for me here too. This post is parallel to a similar 2007 retrospective on UltraMobileGeek.com with the "Coffee with ThoughtFix" and "Predictions" sections on the bottom identical. In this 286th and final post for 2007, I am hand-picking my favorites of the year:
The first beta of Canola2 is out. I saw an earlier beta and am so impressed that it may replace my iPod touch as an in-car entertainment device. I'll download the latest soon and give it my usual treatment in video.
OS2008. What can I say? That article yesterday was passed around more than a hockey puck (thanks, everyone, for linking to me) but it only covered the installation and features and not so much with software installation.
Downloads are STILL terrible. I don't know what happened here, but Nokia needs to contract a good CDN (not the one you chose) for high bandwidth delivery. In fact - Keep all your sites on a CDN all the time and just pay for overage when you get bandwidth spikes like this.
Repositories are still getting hammered as well. I am getting numerous reports of Python and others still being wholly unavailable.
Input methods have changed quite a bit. I do rather miss the fact that stylus taps on the main menus no longer open "stylus sized" menus. Jonathan of maemoapps.com pointed out that some "missing" input methods come from a full system restore. Apparently there's a bug. If you flash to OS2008, start fresh until this is fixed!
Eugenia of osnews reports that video support is not what it should be - especially with H.264. She and I started talking about this and she sent me some videos over to test. I haven't had a chance to hack on them yet but will report my findings to her and here.
So we see there are a few stumbling blocks on this OS release. Nokia and the developers have a good chance to fly or fall in the next week or so. We'll see what happens. In the meantime: You do remember how to file a bug, right?
Finally - I was expecting to have more ready for the live show tonight but was slowed down by bug hunting and troubleshooting. With that in mind, tonight's scheduled live show will be postponed until I can catch up - Most likely until late next week. When is a good time for everyone?
(This post is huge with stacks of photos so I temporarily changed my site feed to "short." Visit tabletblog.com directly for the full article. I will return to full content feeds in a few days.)
Being a blogger has allowed me some access I wouldn't have had as a regular consumer. In fact, I consider "access" to be the biggest reward of this blog. Recently, I've been invited to test some rather impressive multimedia software. I played with it for a full evening and took notes on bugs/crashes and what I liked and disliked, and then sent in my comments. I do my best to give as much feedback as possible and sent in a report that night before I went to bed. The following morning, I had a response back from a developer with notes on my feedback, asking for clarification on some of the bugs, and comments on feature requests. The last bit caught my eye:
"I think it's worth the countless nights around the clock when we read things like these."
Developers can be so cool. That bring me to my point: Beta software is not free software. Developers release beta software to allow limited users to evaluate and test the software but depend on those users to report bugs, request features, and provide feedback. They depend on the beta users to let them know why the software is not ready for full release. By downloading and installing beta software, users have an implied (though not enforced) responsibility to send the developers feedback.
Take a look at the beta software you have installed. When is the last time it crashed? What would you like changed on it? Let the developers know. They'll be glad for it. While no one will hunt you down if you don't file bug reports, those reports are very valuable to them. The beta period is also when developers are more receptive to feature requests, so put in your two cents early.
MicroB gets AdBlock Plus! And if you're wondering why an ad-supported blogger is promoting AdBlock extensions, I wrote about that in my personal (noncommercial/ad-free) blog a couple weeks ago.
Navteq shareholders approve Nokia buyout. This won't effect us tableteers any time soon as our mapping is provided by Wayfinder, but Nokia having an in-house GPS team can't hurt in the long run.
On December 22, 1988, Robert Gentleman (my father) passed away in a car accident. It was the hardest thing I ever had to live through - especially just before the holiday. The Orchant family is going through the same. My family continued on with the help of friends and community support.
Community support is of utmost importance at times like this.
A donation button has been set up to assist the Orchant family. If you ever wanted to contribute directly to any individual behind the mobile technology blogging community, now is the time. Thank you very much.
Results of my last poll: Will you buy an N810? As soon as I can! 147 (35%) Likely, but I will wait for reviews. 43 (10%) No. I have an N800 and OS2008 is fine for me. 116 (27%) No. I will get an N800 instead. 68 (16%) No. I am just here because I am curious about tablets (or have a 770 and don't intend to upgrade) 44 (10%) Interesting stuff! Now on to the next one: Which is your tablet?
Nokia 770
Nokia N800
Nokia N810
I'm just tablet-curious.
What tablet? I just think ThoughtFix is one sexy geek!
Thanks to everyone participating in previous polls! I am allowing multiple answers on this one since some of us have two or all three. Vote in the right side bar of tabletblog.com
Okay - it' a couple weeks shy of two years, but I wanted to post something topical while it was still topical. Thank you, Warner, for recognizing me as "Best New Mobile Computing Blogger" in the Life on the Wicked Stage 3rd Annual Ink Blot Awards. I'm truly flattered and it means a lot to be recognized by my highly esteemed peers. He also had me tied with JKOnTheRun for "Best We're Trying Really Hard To Get a Coffee Company To Sponsor Our Blog." Wherewouldhegetthatidea?
Here are some raw stats. It's not a lot for (almost) two years, but not bad for a blogging newbie. I'd say I'm a blogging newbie flying solo but that's not the case. I get news tips, article ideas, and inbound links from the community. If you're reading this, you're part of my blogging team. The stats are for tabletblog.com and ultramobilegeek.com combined:
Total Posts: 604, including this one.
Total Videos: 94
Total Photos: Hundreds
Different Machines Used/Reviewed: Nokia 770, N0kia N800, Nokia N810, Kohjinsha SA1, TabletKiosk eo v7110, Samsung Q1b, Raon Digital Vega, Asus EeePC
Trips: Three, with one more planned. CES 2007, Nokia Nseries Unlocked Event, Web 2.0 Summit, and CES 2008
Total Unique Visitors: About 600,000
Total Pageviews: About 1.1 million
Total Video Views: YouTube reports about 835,000
Total RSS Subscribers: Feedburner reports over 2,300
Wonderful bloggers, developers, users, community member, PR reps, system designers, and enthusiasts I've talked to online: Too many to count.
Mobile Tech Blogging - Is it worth the time and money sunk into it over the last two years? A certain resounding YES.
p.s. If you're still wondering where the actual "N810 Review" and "OS2008 Review" articles are - they're coming! I don't want to review beta/preproduction releases so I, like the rest of you, have to wait.
Two of my all-time favorite applications are getting even better. Johnathan Greene has the scoop on maemoapps:
Canola's overhaul is exceeding all expectations. I can't wait to install this - especially on an N800 with two big fat SD cards.
Maemo Mapper has gone to 2.2. This will be a significant boon to those who do not wish to subscribe to Wayfinder's service.
I wish Nokia could actually put all these wonderful applications in their commercial advertising. If a healthy advertising budget backing ALL the abilities of OS2008 combined, we'd see N800's and N810s in more pockets.
Congratulations to those who entered the Nokia N810 Giveaway Contest. There was a tie but the winners sent in their preferences on what they wanted more so they were given whatever was highest on their list.
I want to thank everyone for their videos, Reggie, Jonathan, and John again for helping determine finalists, and the InternetTabletTalk community for choosing the winner. I also want to send another extra special thanks to Dynamism.com as they are providing the additional prizes and are shipping the prizes out to the winners. This contest is much more fun with their help.
The winners, videos, and prizes are as follows:
Jennifer (jdsvid) - A mom who wants the N810 to help organize her family life. She is the lucky winner of the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet.
Thomas (n1njatuned) is a systems librarian at a university who would use an N810 to help students without being tethered to his desk. His chosen prize is a Star Wars Thumb Drive in the shape of Darth Vader.
Craig (SunWalker2007) will walk the way all the way across Japan for five months and would use the Internet Tablet to blog the whole experience. Going along with him is a Nohonhon desk character in green for health.
The tie includes Aaron (PKickTalk) is a talented young documentary filmmaker (his father submitted the video on his behalf) traveling to southern Africa and would use an Internet Tablet to help him navigate and maximize his brief visits to wireless hotspots by collecting RSS news and using Skype to call home. He'll be getting a fun Puchi Puchi bubble wrap toy.
The other side of the tie is Joe (joedavi) who uses his 770 to hold PDFs (2395 pages for his shop manual!) to work on his motorcycle, communicate with other bikers in the forums, and comparison shop for parts all from his garage. He'd even use the N810's GPS to get to the part dealers, then show (and haggle for) the part to the dealer on the .PDF. I hope he enjoys his new Laser Clock!
Again - a wonderful thanks to all users who entered. If you weren't selected as a finalist, I still want to do some short features on how others proposed to use their tablets. I hope you'll leave the other video submissions up for a while.
