Palm Pre and WebOS, what is it for you?

Palm introduced a new and fancy Palm Pre in CES some time ago. Palm isn't so popular in Finland (or in Scandinavia?) but I believe it has some interesting possibilities for all of us. The main enabler is it's new operating system called WebOS. At the moment there isn't too much information about the WebOS, but all in all this seems like an interesting mobile phone and concept.

1. Palm Pre. Images available at Palm Pre -gallery.

It is interesting to see how market will adopt touch-screen with a slider. I think this is a good idea, because the user has an option to use either one. I really like Nokia N96's slider mechanism, but every now and then I wish it would have also a touch-screen.

Pre's technical specifications are quite similar to any other smartphone; big screen, all necessary communication methods (GSM, 3G, WiFi, bluetooth), enough memory and good processor. One interesting detail is that Palm offers a cordless charger for Pre. The charger uses induction for charging, but if I understood correctly this is not included in the sales package.

Although Palm Pre is meant for anyone, I've listed some of the possibilities that it offers to users and developers.

Users

As a user, you are probably enjoying the big screen that is suitable for example for browsing and watching movies. As a "all-in-one" device, I believe Palm offers a good music experience also. Palm has basically the same Webkit-based browser that S60 devices and iPhone/iPod Touch have.

You can use Pre with our without physical keyboard and I believe most of the users like this kind of possibility. Touchstone, the cordless charger, sounds first nice but when you start thinking it a little more, it might not be so convenient. At least I usually browse or play with my phone when it is being charged. When using Touchstone, this is difficult or impossible. So I think you will need 2 different chargers. On the other hand, cordless charging is a really nice feature which will be more and more popular in the future.

It doesn't matter which smartphone you are using, still you usually need to install some 3rd party software to make your life easier and better. Hude wrote a really good article about mobile platform diverseness and Palm brings yet another platform to the markets. Although platform is based on web technologies, it might take some time before you'll get all your favourite applications working in Palm Pre.

One of the coolest (and probably one of the most useful) feature is combining contacts and other information from different services, like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and corporate e-mail system. Palm Pre should be also able to combine conversations meaning that you can start with IM and continue with SMS and they are shown as an one conversation thread. Palm calls this feature Synergy. These kind of features are really good when people are using more and more different services. It is really time consuming to be active in several social networks.

Palm Pre promises that it is able to automate (or think ahead) in some services, for example if you are running late from a meeting, Palm Pre should be able to estimate your arrival time using GPS and maps and send a note to meeting participants. It is interesting to see how well these automated features work because usually they don't.

It is interesting to see what happens now that there are more and more devices with a really good browser. Good browsers combined with today's "cloud thinking" can be a success. Companies are for example taking or investigating if it would be beneficiary to take some of the services to a cloud. When the services are in the cloud, employees could easily access them with their mobile phone as long as the communication channel is secure enough. I believe this will fasten the mobile browsing even more. One of the obstacles offering intranet services for mobile employees have been wrongly designed intranet and connections to intranet.

Developers

As a developer, you must be thrilled that all the applications in Palm Pre have been build using web technologies (XHTML, JavaScript and CSS) or atleast they are stating this in the introduction video.

According to Palm, there are around 10 million web developers, so there should be a big enough developer community. Application distribution program will be vital, just like Apple has shown. I still have difficulties believing that there are more than 15.000 applications in Apple's AppStore. It remains to be seen how well Palm will handle this.

I believe that due to lack of information, developers have more questions than answers. Here are some questions that came to my mind:

• Will the WebOS be fully open? Are there some restrictions that application can or cannot do?


• Can application access memory card or SIM? Is this possible via browser?


• What kind of billing system there will be? In Palm and in the Application Store.


• When the SDK will be available?


• How easy is it to port existing Palm software to be interoperable with Palm Pre?

Unfortunately there isn't too much information available yet about Palm Pre and my views are based on the Palm Pre introduction video. See it yourself and check if you are also amazed at the people applausing for the fact that Palm Pre has a removable battery?!?

Streaming your favourite music with your mobile phone

Streaming music has been possible to your home computer for a quite some time, e.g. using internet radios or different music services. Smartphones are getting closer and closer to computers, and it has been possible to stream music to your S60 smartphone using Nokia's Internet radio. You can find installing instructions in above mentioned link if your S60 doesn't have it pre-installed, my Nokia N96 had it.

One of the services that offers streaming music through a browser is Last.fm. One of its benefits is that it offers you the music that you like or at least similar artists when traditional radio stations play random music. You can also share your favourite music/genre/artist with your friends. It was nice to notice that it is possible to use Last.fm -service with S60, the only thing you need is Mobbler. Mobbler is a Last.fm music player and it also enables you to scrobble tracks that are played with S60 Music player.

1. Mobbler in S60 plays the artists you've added to Last.fm.

2. Mobbler looks nice also in landscape.

3. If you are using S60's Music player, Mobbler scrobbles music that you've listened.

When you choose the left icon, Mobbler enables you to buy music from Amazon's aStore, but the store is not mobile optimized. This weakens the user experience. You can also "Love a track", choose next track or "Ban a track".

4. There is also a possibility to buy tracks from Amazon's aStore.

5. Unfortunatey Amazon's store isn't optimized for mobile.

6. Amazon's aStore and S60's browser.

Mobbler enables you to easily expand the music that you are listening and you don't need to carry all your favorite music with you. You can also easily offer better musical experiences in different parties, because you can always choose the desired music based on the people and / or the feeling just by opening Mobbler. If you have your music in your S60 and there is right equipment available, you can use your smartphone as a media center.

When you are using Mobbler for streaming, you should use WiFi or have unlimited dataplan, otherwise your phone bill will be enormous. I've experienced that 3G is enough for music streaming.

One other thing that you need to keep in mind when using these "always-on" services is battery life. At the moment batteries don't last too long, but luckily this is improving all the time. For the time being, you should make sure your charger is near.

Putting videos to your phone

Phone screens are getting bigger and better all the time. This gives the users the opportunity to watch their favourite videos or TV series wherever whenever. For encouraging the users to do this, Nokia atleast have included some movies or trailers to their smartphones. Nokia N96 had Transformers, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic had Dark Knight's trailer and if I remember correctly Nokia N95 had Spider Man 3.

Sony on the other hand has taken little different approach and they are selling UMD movies that can be used in Sony PSP. Personally I don't understand this kind of approach because why should I buy another copy of my favourite movie which I have on DVD (or on Blu-Ray)?

Unfortunatelly putting videos to your phone is not too straight-forward because you need to convert the desired video so that it has the right resolution, good enough bitrate for video and sound and good enough frame rate. The better quality you want, the longer converting usually takes and the bigger output file gets.

Nokia offers a tool for this called Nokia Video Converter that is bundled to PC Suite and Ovi Suite. Unfortunatelly the program has still some flaws. I tried to use it for few times but it crashed and when it didn't crash, my Nokia N96 didn't have any video - only sound.

Luckily there are other (free) converting tools for Windows like Super, HandBrake, MediaCoder and Vio. I thought to test all of these, just to get some experiences and to see do they work similarly and are there big difference in converting speed.

My test environment were Windows Vista Home Premium with 2 GB of memory and a 17 minute avi-file with DVD quality. The file size was 121 MB, frame width 800 and frame height 450.

Basically every software converted the desired file in almost same time (7-9 minutes), and with same output size (56 MB). For some reason files converted using HandBrake and MediaCoder refused to work in N96. I didn't investigate the reason, probably some wrong setting caused this because MediaCoder used to work with different file some time ago.

Vio offered broad list of settings for different phones, but it lacked N96. Overall this is really important because settings are something than clear. Vio suggested 128 bitrate for N95, which seemed to be ok also in N96 but 400 that I used with Super was much better. With Vio's settings, the whole process was extremely fast, it only took 2 minutes and the output file was only 20 MB.

It seems that the most important thing in converting is to use pre-loaded settings. After this converting is easy and it can take some time and it is worth it. In future your trips will go much faster by watching interesting movies or series.

Inspired on discussions in Jaiku I'll try out soon a VGA quality video in my N96, then I could watch it from hotel's tv when I'm travelling. After all, N96 came with a S-Video cable.

Broadcasting your life with Nokia viNe

Nokia announced viNe sometime ago. Someone could call it as a modified SportsTracker that gives you the opportunity to share the route you have traveled, pictures and videos you have taken, or songs you have listened. ViNe records your journey using GPS when it is available. If it is not available, viNe will connect last and current position with the shortest possible line.

1. Starting point.

2. ViNe saves the music you've listened and pictures and videos you've taken.

3. After you've accomplished your route, you can add tags to your viNe.

I'm not sure what one should call it, in a way it is a modified SportsTracker but it is also a subset of SportsTracker because the application doesn't offer as much training information as SportsTracker. Maybe viNe is a SportsTracker for an everyday user who is not interested in all the possible training information? You cannot for example specify type of workout and see as much information about your journey/training but the upload is much more convenient and you can add tags. ViNe shares your information to everyone and you cannot restrict this in any way. In SportsTracker you were able to restrict your audience. I think this is something that some users will not like.

Few other differences between SportsTracker and viNe are that in viNe you are able to move in the map. It doesn't utilize the map information that Maps is using but it caches the map information so it works quite fine. When you are viNing, you cannot see any details of your route, e.g. distance and speed that you can see when you are using SportsTracker.

When you upload your viNe it will go to two different places, to viNe and to SportsTracker. ViNe will also replace your SportsTracker user ID with Nokia Account user ID. This means that you will get rid of one useless user ID. ViNe probably tells you about this, but I didn't notice this and had some difficulties accessing SportsTracker before I realized that my user ID had changed. I think that this was a really good idea from Nokia. I hope this trend continues because nobody likes too many user IDs.

4. Your viNes are published to viNe -service.

5. Same time your viNes are published to SportsTracker -service.

I don't know what is the main idea behing viNe, and I haven't seen any discussion about this, although I haven't been searching so much. One idea that came to my mind is that Nokia tries to use social networks for modeling the world's most interesting places. This would be different approach than Google's Drive. Do you have any other ideas?

I first thought that viNe would have been introduced through Nokia Beta Labs like SportsTracker, but apparently Nokia thinks it is a finalized product. I would like to disagree with this because at least I have had some difficulties with it, e.g. it crashes quite often with my N96. I just updated my N96 to version 12.043. I hope viNe works better with this new software version.

Here is a list of bugs and some features I would like to see in the future:

• It tags only the first songs name and artist. (See picture 3.)
• Sometimes it tags city (Helsinki) but not always. It could also tag parts of the city like Punavuori, Ullanlinna and Kamppi.
• It could show album art of the listened music.

6. Album art is not shown.

• ViNe's internet service's search should work better. At the moment it is difficult to find anything or anybody.
• Could there be a way of following your friends?
• Could there be a possibility to restrict your audience?
• Could there be a possiblity to buy music that someone else has been listening in their viNes'?
• ViNe should automatically upload pictures and videos to Share on Ovi.
• Embedded widget could show only desired viNes, e.g. your own or your friends. Usually there are desired audience you want to share information with or follow.

7. Embedded viNe widget shows all the viNes.

• Could viNe be combined with FriendView? You could see where your friend has been or is at the moment?
• Could viNe updates be offered in RSS format?
• Could you send your viNe to some of your friend, e.g. "look at my cool journey"? This could be also available in mobile format.
• Could you provide more information during viNing, e.g. distance?
• Could viNe show a dotted line in saved journey when GPS hasn't been available?
• Could viNe use either cellular or WiFi positioning when GPS is not available?
• Is Nokia doing any co-operation with different heart rate monitoring companies, e.g. Polar or Suunto? This kind of co-operation would provide all the necessary information that you need when working out.

All in all this application seems interesting and I think I'll continue using both viNe and SportsTracker. You have to remember that viNe and SportsTracker are almost identical; viNe is basically a SportsTracker with a facelift. If you want to follow my viNes, search for teppoj.

AppStore vs. Download! - The good, the bad and the ugly

I'm not a great Apple fan, but I must say that I admire how they have been able to change people's way of using different mobile applications. There is a wide range of different mobile applications for S60 and other mobile devices, but still the usage is relatively low if you compare it with applications available for iPhone or iTouch. Kai Öistämö from Nokia mentioned in Symbian Smartphone Show that there are around 10.000 applications for S60. This is quite a big number of applications but the truth is that without a proper distribution channel and easy enough installation method nobody will use these applications.

Apple on the other hand have managed to introduce 10.000 applications through AppStore in a relatively short time. If I remember correctly AppStore was opened on around June 2008 which means 10.000 applications in less than 6 months. 148apps.com have created a tribute page which shows all the applications available in AppStore.

I listed some of the good, bad and ugly in Apple's and Nokia's way of offering applications and installing them. After these lists, there are multiple screenshots illustrating the user experience of finding and installing an application.

AppStore

The good (positive):

• Offers wide range of applications.


• Search works really well. This is important when you have lots of applications.


• Fast. iPhone doesn't ask too many questions when using AppStore.


• Really easy to use. Just browse to an application that you like, click install and installation process starts.


• Updates. AppStore informs the user about possible updates.


• Easy payment process. Uses iTunes payment methods.

The bad (negative):

• The only place for finding applications.


• Applications don't have a test period, at least I haven't noticed this.


• iTunes id is needed for installing even free applications.


• iTunes is the only payment method.

The ugly (improvements and thoughts):

• Suggestions. AppStore could suggest applications that other users have installed, just like e.g. Amazon.com. AppStore through iTunes does this.


• What happens to compatibility if Apple introduces more devices?

Download!

The good (positive):

• Not the only place for finding applications because you can find applications anywhere from the Internet.


• Most of the applications offer trial period possibilities.


• You can use any credit card for paying.

The bad (negative):

• Only limited number of applications.


• Search doesn't work well enough.


• Somebody can find it difficult to use because device asks quite many questions, e.g. used internet connection and where to install the application.


• Relatively slow when updating content in different folders.

The ugly (improvements and thoughts):

• Usability should be much better.


• Updating different folders should be more seamless, not asking question from the user all the time.


• Number of available applications should be much higher.

Screenshots of installing an application from the AppStore:

1. You can find AppStore from the main menu. AppStore also informs the user about possible updates (red 1 in AppStore's top-right corner).


2. AppStore advertises recent applications.


3. Applications are divided to Paid and Free sections.


4. There is also an application Top list.


5. Searching for Facebook application.


6. Search results.


7. More information about the application.


8. Free button toggles to Install button when you press it. After pressing Install, the installation starts.


9. You need to use iTunes' credentials to be able to install applications.


10. Installation process ongoing.


11. Installation finished. You can find installed application from the main menu.

Screenshots of installing an application from Download!:

1. You'll find Download! from the main menu.


2. Download! asks used connection really often, although phone should be able to choose desired connection.


3. Search possibilities after choosing Options - Search and about to search Facebook -application.


4. One search result but it is not shown on the first page.


5. You have to scroll down to see all the results.


6. The search result.


7. After choosing Details - Get, phone shows information about the application.


8. Choosing where to install the application.


9. After installation application can be found from Applications folder.


10. Most of the applications have trial possibilities like ForecaWeather.


11. You can also use multiple credit cards for paying.

First impressions on Ovi Suite - no thanks

I thought that I'll explore Nokia's relatively new Ovi Suite and start using it with my Nokia N96. After all Ovi Suite should be designed for NSeries phones. How wrong could I have been?

I'm not going to go through all the features Ovi Suite has because it has lots of those. Maybe best way of describing Ovi Suite is to say: "Ovi Suite tries to be your 'home entertainment center' that has everything, from music to maps and from videos to software updater and phone backups."

My first impression was that it is just a big mess and it is difficult to find or do anything. I don't know the reason for this because, for example, I think Nokia's phones, especially S60 phones are easy to use and I can find all the features easily. If I compare Ovi Suite to iTunes, iTunes was much easier to use in the beginning. I think the reason for this is a little similar to the fact some say that iPhone is much easier to use than S60 phones. After all with only few features it is easy to make usable product. This is a really big challenge for Nokia because they want to do all the possible things with their Ovi concept.

I have to be honest and say that I haven't used Ovi Suite enough to make a final decision, but it didn't impress me in the beginning. I'm for example getting "runtime error" when I've chosen "Yes, show me what's new" and try to resize the window.

This is something that you shouldn't get in this kind of product.

I'm a big fan of PC Suite and use it daily at work for synchronising calendar and contacts and sending SMSs using my PC. It seems that Ovi Suite is missing all these features; at least I didn't find them.

If I understood correctly, Nokia remade everything from scratch when they created Ovi Suite, and might eventually stop supporting PC Suite. I would like to say that this will not happen any time soon.

I think I'll try to reserve some time on weekend and explore Ovi Suite more, maybe my thoughts will change...

Should you be scared of mobile viruses?

I attended to a quite big party recently and noticed that someone was trying to send me something via bluetooth. As you can guess, it was a mobile virus.

I did two things that you should never do. Firstly I had switched on bluetooth and secondly I answered yes to every possible question. I received a virus to my phone, but it refused to install. The reason for this was platform diverseness. Virus was from a S60 2nd edition phone and my phone (N96) was 3rd edition Feature Pack 2.

Now you might ask why did I do these things? The reason for this is work. I'm working with different kind of technologies and security is also part of it. The second reason is that I'm just interested in these things.

To answer the question in the title, I would say "No, not yet". There are a few mobile viruses, but at the moment there isn't any business case for virus writers / criminals. I have received a virus via bluetooth 5 times in 3 years or so. Here is a simple list how to avoid mobile viruses:

1. Switch off bluetooth. Bluetooth is a really common way to distribute viruses because usually operators filter viruses that are included in MMSes.


2. Don't install any programs if you haven't initiated the installation process. Viruses don't install themselves, usually the user needs to answer "yes" multiple times. It is also good to remember that cracked software can contain viruses, so don't use cracked software.


3. Don't give your phone to anyone you don't trust. At the moment there are some keyloggers for phones and software that records your phone calls, but if you don't allow anyone to install these, you are safe.


4. Install Anti-Virus software. If you want to be 100-percent sure, install Anti-Virus software. They work pretty well nowadays and don't slow down other processes in your phone.