Ok, so just like most mortals I haven’t seen this phone, but I’ve looked at the torrent of reviews and other people’s thoughts and had some of my own. So here they are. First up, Scoble loves the hell out of this phone, says that it is hands down better than the iPhone. WSJ, at least in the free bits, is more clinical in its evaluation. Gizmodo was ok with it, too.

Now it’s true it’s got video which the iPhone doesn’t have and a 5 megapixel camera which doesn’t suck (unlike the iPhone’s 2mp, which kinda does, although in more reasonable conditions it pulls out an ok shot). If that’s your priority, well then, the N97’s your phone. But moving on.

First up, it’s 30% thicker than the iPhone. This thing looks chunky, see for yourself. To become a mainstream device - and make no mistake, smartphones need to be mainstream now to compete - getting the developers to build the apps to create lockin and mindshare around your phone means market and mindshare is a must. I don’t think most of the mainstream world wants chunky phones - this includes you G1. Early sales are good, but long term? I have strong doubts.

Second of all, it’s a slide out phone with a wide qwerty keyboard. It seems like phone companies love this, but do people? This sort of thing restricts you to easy typing only with two hands (you can’t one hand a landscape keyboard) which is weak. Second it seems like there’s no option for a soft keyboard in portrait mode - none of the reviews say this, but none of them mention of soft keyboard at all, so I jumped to conclusions. This is similar to the G1 and is weak. I like typing in portrait mode - it makes one hand operation easy.

Third of all, it seems that it doesn’t actually have apps, but it has widgets. Not a lot of explanation goes into this, but it sounds to me like these widgets are web based and we already went through why web based apps are no substitute for actual native apps. It is surprising to me that Nokia would go live with this as their app solution at a time where everyone is building app stores and trying to woo developers into their clutches. At first blush it makes me seem like they are a bit out of touch.

Fourth of all, this is a touchified version of their Symbian OS. I’m not making any big proclamations, but it seems to me that all the existing OS’s are not fit for mainstream adoption. If the interface had been good something would have clicked by now, unfortunately, no existing smartphone has come close to the mainstream. So putting on a touch screen and running with a slightly modified version of your old OS isn’t likely to be a winning strategy. It didn’t work for the Blackberry Storm and their OS was closest to real consumer adoption. I’m just saying, competitors need to step it up.

Here’s what I think. I think the N97 suffers from checklist-itis. It will look great on paper, hey man, it’s got video and the camera, it’s got crazy memory (32GB + external!), it can copy and paste and you can replace the batteries! Gosh! But you know what? The N96 had just about all that, too. People want a great user experience now and so far nothing but the iPhone is really satisfying that crave (for most people). In my opinion right now the competitors are the iPhone and its closest runner up is RIM pushing out classic BB’s with the hard keyboard in portrait mode. At this point that’s what people want, until something else like those come out or something genuinely new hits the scenes, there might be a big entry but long term fizzle is in the future. Landscape sliders? Pfah. That’s so mid-2000’s.

Dec 2nd, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: gphone · iphone · nokia

This one is wierd, I think you will admit. It seems that Finland has copyrighted their M/05 camouflage pattern (based on digital photos of Finnish forests, dontchaknow). (via) This is a wierd enough idea, but oh, it gets more interesting. In the aftermath of the invasion of Georgia by Russia, the Finns are hard at work investigating… whether or not the Russians were sporting M/05 uniforms. What? Yup. The Russians, of course, are all, “What the hell are you talking about? Go away.” and the Finns are all like, “Yeah, we were just kidding. Sort of. But really, is that M/05? Hahha, kidding. Sort of….”

This is pretty wierd too, in a you never really think about this sort of way. So, Honeycrisp apples seem to be the new red delicious in the apple world. (via) But it was a long time coming and who knew there was a whole apple breeding program and branding and what not? It’s like a whole apple sub-culture out there. I just found out about them when I went apple picking this season, some lady in line ahead of me was all a little too in love with the Honeycrisps. I picked some but it tasted quite a bit like an apple to me, I don’t remember having my mind blown. I guess I’ll try again next season and see, maybe I picked some bum apples.

Finally, I don’t know if this is old news, but last I heard I thought that Caprica was off? Well, I don’t know what you heard, but it seems like it is on again. It looks like SciFi has put in a full order for Caprica and there was even a pilot shot this year! That’s pretty good, of course Moore and Eick are producing the show unfortunately it won’t show till early 2010. Which is a long ways away. Sigh.

Dec 2nd, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: breakfast links · food · sci-fi · tv

Ok, this is the third time back to the well, but this cat is some kinda kitty movie prodigy. Man, I mean… why does he keep sticking his head in there? Cats hate water! Is he looking at the water when it hits the bowl? Or does he just like getting wet? I love around :45 in when you see him resisting…. resisiting… can’t take it anymore!

(via)

Dec 1st, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: animals · cute · video

Posting this late due to the holidays. Most most sincere apologies, I know how depressed and unfulfilled you must have felt without it. But rejoice for here it is, a recap of the last of sweeps.

Terminator: Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point

Ok, this week’s Sarah Connor Chronicles was kind of just ok. You know? The main plot line - that whole Dakara chip thing was eh. Although, you do kind of have to love the whole Stargate shoutout - starring Netan with the company named after the Jaffa capital. Good times. But still, that whole thing… was kinda boring, fund raising companies? That isn’t exciting material as far as I’m concerned. I mean, it was kinda funny when they busted in on the actor and what not but overall, I wasn’t feeling it.

I liked when Cameron was poking the g-man’s lawn and when he shines the light in her face she’s all “go back to sleep.” Which I suppose he does. The whole Riley/Jesse thing, though, is really good. Thank god, something really interesting seems to be brewing on that front because I like both those characters but they didn’t really seem to be going anywhere, other than providing a foil for mom Connor. And of course the return of Cromartie, a little dramatic and predictable, but still pretty good. I’m down to see what’s up next.

True Blood: You’ll Be The Death Of Me

Well that’s it. Season Finale. Sigh. We’ll see if they actually make it back on next summer, I hope they do. The finale was good, not great. Obviously the big story was Rene finally trying to finish the job. Man, that guy was awesome. Awesome. It sort of blew my mind when he dropped the accent. I wish everyone spoke in that accent. For realz. They played that whole thing very well, if you ask me. Obviously he wasn’t going to kill the Sooks, but still it was pretty durn tense. But the gross bits of naked dog Sam getting the crap kicked out of him and then bacon bits Bill burning up and getting carried by naked Sam. Well, that’s pretty damn over the top.

The big question for me is what has befallen Lafayette. I doubt he’s off the show, but something untoward seems to have befallen him. It’d be something if he came back a vampire, but I don’t know if they’d do that. I guess 6 months and we’ll know. I also like the Maryann business, what’s up with her vibrating with the pig? Is she a shifter, too? Is there some kinda greater shifter society also? Her connection with Sam and his safe full of cash. Lots of interesting stuff going on - they really made a huge effort to pack this episode full of cliff hangers, which is part of the problem with the episode. In some ways it was like a mid-season show that is just setting up for future events. Ah well, I suppose a show’s gotta do what a shows gotta do.

I guess last week in sweeps they get to take it a little easy - they already got you and they don’t need to keep you around for next week. Ah well, it was a good run. At least Terminator’s still going if not True Blood and Entourage. Sigh.

Dec 1st, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: review · sci-fi · tv

Art for Monday. Believe it.

Once more we venture over to the land across the Atlantic. This time, it seems that the police - fed up with drunks messing up their town centers have hit upon an ingenious new solution - provide them with bubbles upon their exiting the pubs. (via) Hmm.. interesting. This, it seems, will give them something to do other than causing mayhem in the wee hours. If you ask me, though, given that Britain is the #1 casual sex having country in the world the police could instead be providing free cab rides home which would be getting them revellers off the streets and back in the bedroom where they were heading anyway. Or provide them some french men, who require the biggest condoms in Europe (at least as far as they say) to help encourage things along.

See, now if the Britain was full of geeks they could have just posted some notes saying how Michael Heilemann has posted an incredible stash of photos of Star Wars storyboards and filming off images to flickr. (via) It’s pretty amazing stuff - where else would you see Mark Hamill and David Prowse fencing - not in costume? Ah, it’s a really interesting look back at the trilogy.

And for something a little more modern, you’ll be happy to know that the Dr. Horrible DVD is available for pre-order now and is selling like gang busters. (via) Wow, it seems that the series had grossed over $2 million from iTunes sales in the first few weeks - man. And the DVD’s promise many great special features. The commentary is musical. You get that? You hear that? Do you smell what the Joss is cooking?

Dec 1st, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: breakfast links

Well today’s the day, so no blogging. Yo. It’s always a little wierd for me, Thanksgiving, being vegan and all. So this year I decided to help some sort of turkey karmic balance I’d donate money to the Farm Sanctuary’s “Adopt a Turkey” program. I think I’ll do that every year - they’re a great organization. It’s a real easy program - you don’t really adopt a turkey, he doesn’t move in with you and hate you in his teenage years while looking for his real biological parents only to discover that he’s an alien, no. You just donate $25 one time towards the care and feeding of one of their rescued turkeys. And you can give a little extra to help out the organization as well. Long Weekend. Yay! I’m thankful as hell for that! As well as for my four readers.

Nov 27th, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: navel gazing

You know, yesterday’s Palm post made me long for the ol’ days where I was an unabashed Palm apologist. So here’s another one. Yay for Palm!

After I wrote that and then had a short discussion with Ronin I’d been thinking about what Palm has going for it. What would make it distinct from another new entrant into a burgeoning smartphone market. The obvious answer is, assuming they maintain backwards compatibility, is their deep but aging library of applications. While Ronin didn’t think much of this, the Palm store that I used when I had my treo says it’s got over 30,000 apps loaded. 30 Thousand. By comparison Pocket Gear, that site’s sister site has over 7,000 WinMob apps. Not sure how many apps in the App Store, probably several thousand by now. Beyond that, looking at new and updated software in that store tons of them are current.

Now I’m just saying. That’s a lot of apps, when I was a Palm user looking for random stuff, the long tail was quite fulfilled. Every possible thing you might want to track had some selection, every particular fad that needed an app had one. If Palm comes to the table with 30k apps and a wealth of experienced developers (even the ones that have stopped developing for them), well that is not nothing. A good os with a good emulator could really provide a boost for Palm.

Beyond the apps, though, what I think Palm could have that’s interesting is their addiction to syncing. Hell, they love syncing so much they almost made a whole device who’s purpose in life was to sync with a Treo. I will guess that when this phone comes out it will have a desktop component, which gives it a leg up against cloud only Android. Even more interesting, though, will be if they continue their Palm tradition of allowing developers to program conduits that hook into the desktop sync process which lets them sync their own desktop apps at the same time as the rest of the sync.

The lack of this is one of the really annoying things about the iPhone. Since it is so closed, when I attach the wire all it does is sync some Apple stuff and backs up everything. I got SplashId which is Ok, but how annoying is it that I have to manually go into the app in the iPhone (after making sure the desktop component is on) and then go through three clicks to start the sync? On the Palm my password program synced to the desktop app everytime I synced my Palm. That’s the way it should work for the best user experience, no? The iPhone simply can’t scale on that front and maybe that’s the trend, maybe desktop apps are passé - but given that the iPhone has no push wired or wireless. This is a huge problem for Apple that annoys me almost daily as I simply don’t want to go to each of my apps and hit update all the time.

Palm could be the first of the next gen smartphone OS’s to really allow a full developer friendly system. Phone apps, desktop apps and the connection between them. I don’t know about you, but I like wired syncs - they’re fast and they’re furious. So while, honestly, I don’t have too many hopes about Palm based on years and years and years and years and years of historical disappointment - if this new management has managed to inject some new life into the company and they do a good job on Nova, well, I think there’s DNA in there that could really offer something compelling to the world.

So… too much crack? Is Palm already dead but they simply haven’t realized it yet? Or is there hope?

Nov 26th, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: palm · smartphones

Found this in Jason’s Reader shares and it’s pretty great. Apparently this holiday season UPS is doing some delivery’s by bike messenger! (via) It’s doing this in San Francisco after some efforts in Portland turned out to be successful. Now that is pretty awesome, I’d love to know how well that works - I mean how many bicycles does it take to replace one of those massive trucks - especially during the holiday season. UPS buys the bikes, the safety gear and puts each rider through training. To be honest, it seems like a fleet of new couriers may not be the most efficient unless they’re hiring experienced ones to supplement their fleet, but I am so all for it. I wish that would happen in NYC! Save gas, save pollution, save the cheerleader, save the world!

Speaking of Heroes, if you want to watch it there’s a new game in town, Sling.com. This is Slingboxes’ competitor to Hulu.com. I wonder how much they paid for that sling.com domain… Anyhow, strangely in clicking around some shows and movies it seems like almost all of their content is from hulu.com. Out of about 8 clicks I did for stuff I only found one that wasn’t hulu content. Go figure, anyhow more is better, right? Wonder if I’ll get this on my AppleTV’s Boxee.

Finally you should check out Addictionary. It’s the new Sniglets. Fake words are submitted and then voted upon. If that’s too free form for you there’s a daily “there oughta be a word” where the site suggests a definition and everyone posts their ideas, voting ensues. Come on it’s pretty awesome. It’s also a nicely designed site, fancy ligatures and everything. I mean you have to appreciate bitecycle. Dontcha?

Nov 26th, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: breakfast links · tv · web2.0

You know what makes Snoop so compelling? Is that it seems like he’s genuinely a wierd guy but he isn’t really crazy. Crazy, like Tom Cruise crazy, that if you see what I’m saying.

(via)

Parkaaa-aaay.

Nov 25th, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: crazy · video

It’s been a long time but I’m still waiting for the next gen Palm OS, Nova. There’s a Barron’s piece that calls into question Palm’s timing - it believes that 2009 may be too late to be launching an OS given the big moves into the smartphone market that the iPhone, Android and even RIMM and Nokia are doing. (via)

I’ve long been of the opinion that it largely doesn’t matter what happens between now and when Palm launches Nova, everything is just filler. I hope I’m not wrong, but I had been working on the assumption that it had a pile of cash to keep it going - I mean, they did when they got the Elevation Partners on board, but now it seems like they spent all of it doing that. I totally spaced on that aspect, reading it as a cash positive when in fact it was an oh so cash negative. So now that they’re laying off people, G1’s selling like gangbusters and the Bold is selling for free - things look a little touchy for the company. I still doubt that they’re going under before Nova, I mean, Elevation has to want to see it through to at least see how it does, no?

Here’s where I question the Barron’s piece, though. They believe that Palm is too late to the smartphone party. I believe while, sure it’d have been nice to have had Nova 2 years ago, it’s really never too late. I mean, does Barron’s believe that the current contenders are the only ones that can exist now? That’s it, game over? The smartphone market is still in its infancy - the iPhone more or less created the market and while some of the players have existed for awhile, everything is being remade in Apple’s image. People are only just beginning to move from regular phones to smart phones and there’s plenty of room for more.

Another thing I believe is that Nova is going to be backwards compatible with Palm OS software. I believe it almost has to be. This is Palm’s ace in the hole, it has a metric crapperfull of apps out there, sure some of them are actually crap, but there’s more apps than you can shake a fist at. Years of application development before any iPhone, RIM or Android apps were even considered. If they can put in a robust compatibility layer, this could be a really great starting point for the company.

Of course, they’ll need their own App Store, no more relying on 3rd party websites and stupid manual installation of apps. But if they can pull all of this together on top of an OS that is actually good? I think they’ve still got a decent shot. Their interface was always excellent - much better than what they were competing with prior to the iPhone. I believe they can build a better user experience than the also linux based G1 because Google kind of sucks at building good, consistent UIs and beyond that is saddled with 30 of its best friends’ opinions as to how it should work. And like Apple and RIM, with Nova Palm will once again be a company that builds the entire stack from hardware through OS and that is an advantage.

Time will tell on this one, I’m still trying to be optimistic that it’s all going to work out for Palm. I think if they execute the hell out of it (which would be extremely uncharacteristic of them, but hey, it’s desperate times for them so it could very well happen) Nova could be a real saviour and a serious entrant into the smartphone market. Do you think they can do it? Or is it just more wishful thinking on my part?

Nov 25th, 2008 · · · · · · Tags: palm · smartphones