Listening to BlueBox podcast and others on the Nokia N80i while I work on answering email on my Treo with the wireess keyboard. You can’t see the Treo because it was taking the picture.
Filed by Ken at 6:45 pm under General
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I’m ready to head off to San Francisco for O’Reilly ETel tomorrow. Finding my road warrior bag, while packed neatly and efficiently, is still more than I really want to carry.
That’s after tightening, revamping and really turning my bag into a field journalist’s bag as much as anything else. Still have room for a paperback, a bottle of water (after I clear security) and some munchies. That also doesn’t count the Treo and N80i on my person.
I’m ready to party.
I just got a note from Jeff Pulver that prompted me to go check out something I haven’t made time for until now. Those who know Jeff know he’s really driving video on the net these days.
There’s a a promotional video that was developed to create awareness of Jeff’s new video startup - Network2 ( http://network2.tv ).
The video is posted on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3CGwT5AuJg
At the moment they have 339 shows across 38 different categories.
When you have a chance, please drop by http://network2.tv and discover some of the new “long tail” Internet TV shows now available. I just did and it’s pretty impressive.
Filed by Ken at 5:10 pm under Technology, Unified Communications
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Just caught this on NetworkWorld. Sure, it’s chump change to Microsoft and a bargain at twice the price, but it heralds an interesting time ahead as the other related suits are considered and Microsoft squeals for an appeal.
Jury orders Microsoft to pay Lucent-Alcatel $1.5B fine
By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service, 02/22/07Microsoft Corp. must pay US$1.5 billion in damages to Lucent-Alcatel SA for infringing on patents for MP3 encoding and decoding technology, a U.S. jury said Thursday.
Lucent-Alcatel, which was then Lucent Technologies, first filed suit in 2003 against Microsoft customers Dell Inc. and Gateway Computer Corp. for infringing on 15 patented technologies it said were being used in Microsoft’s Windows Media Player in its Windows client OS. Microsoft filed a countersuit in a U.S. District Court in San Diego against Lucent-Alcatel to discourage additional legal action against its customers.
[Read full article]
Technorati Tags: Mircosoft, Lucent Technologies, Lucent-Alcatel, patent infringement
Filed by Ken at 4:06 pm under Technology
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He’s not always chatty, but thanks to Skype, I got a little jot that it’s BMO’s birthday today.
Cheers
Technorati Tags: Brian Moffatt, BMO
Filed by Ken at 1:45 pm under General
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Blogger relations programs are an interesting new approach. Some work really well. I think Nokia’s program is a shining example of one done really well. On the flip side, Microsoft recently took a lot of heat about a blogger program with laptops running Vista.
Because many of us who write blogs are also consultants, writers, and industry analysts, there’s real value to the sponsors of these programs in spreading information about their products and services. A formal blogger relations signals, to me, a company that’s looking to the future for ways of sharing information about what they do. Company 2.0, if you will.
I’ve been invited to participate in a new Covad Blogger Relations Program that’s just getting started. As a prelude to that, I spent some time on the phone yesterday with Eric Weiss, Chief Marketing Officer at Covad.
For those of you unfamiliar with Covad
In talking with Eric, here are some points I took away as important.
They’re the largest nationwide DSL provider. DLS is their foundation, and they’ve been an early and longstanding leader in DSL delivery. Beyond DSL, they’re quickly becoming a key player in VoIP services, both as managed, or hosted services and as a solution provider. That’s an interesting and very unique approach because it means they compete with themselves.
They don’t focus on technology when it comes to small and medium business. They really seem to be focused on solutions. My sense is that they aren’t focused on either price or feature checklists as their approach. They’re really looking at value added solutions that work. I didn’t hear them use the words turnkey or out of the box, but they seem to be really focused on nearly out-of-the-box, easy implementation of solutions.
Their overarching theme is being easy to do business with. Everyone I talked to who’s worked with Covad seems to echo that they’re achieving that. We talked a lot about the needs of small businesses. I got a solid sense that Covad is committed to delivering solutions that work to small business.
They’re very interested in the SaaS approach of software as a service, or solutions as a service. VoIP is the focal point right now, but broader unified communications and unified applications service are clearly on their radar.
I’ll be meeting Eric in person at the O’Reilly ETel conference next week in San Francisco, and I’m sure I’ll be bringing you more news from Covad in the weeks and months ahead.
Technorati Tags: Covad, Talkswitch, unified communications, VoIP, broadband
Filed by Ken at 11:46 am under Technology, Unified Communications
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It seems that every time there’s a conference some set of bloggers, and I’m in that set, start getting more press releases and press queries. This trend is rising as more of us are involved as not just bloggers, but as industry analysts and even accorded press courtesies. Conferences that let us register as press put us on alist to receive email and PR pitches. I’m good with that.
I appreciate the benefits, and I don’t even mind getting poorly targeted queries for the most part. In general, I’ve gained access to more information through this process.
There are however, some approaches that don’t get too far with me. First, if your email begins “Dear Eric” I must assume you have me confused with someone else. If you know your clients business and their story, even if it doesn’t fit, I respect a good try.
If you don’t, please stay out of the game. You’re harming your clients. I’m keeping this very generic as I know of and am a fan of the product in question here. But sending me an email about a new handset and asking if it might be of interest in my discussions of software oriented architecture indicates that either you don’t know that a handset is hardware, or you don’t have a clue what SOA is, but because hardware runs software, there must be a link.
It’s a good way to get a pitch ignored. That’s what’s happening in this case. In sales, we call it an elevator pitch, but if you want to get a strike, the pitch has to be near the plate.
Filed by Ken at 4:27 pm under Technology, Unified Communications
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I’ve written in the past about SOA initiatives. At the enterprise customer level, we don’t seem to hear a lot about this. But the developer community and solutions providers behind the scenes are constantly workiin on tighter integration.
Last week I noticed that even unified communications is being talking about in terms of unified applications and services.
In the past I’ve linked to an article or two written by colleague James Maguire on SOA. Well, he’s posted another.
SOA the Easy Way (If That’s Possible)By James Maguire
In a research report about getting started with Service Oriented Architecture, Forrester analyst Randy Heffner warned that SOA strategy “carries heavy risks of being overly theoretical and academic.â€
That is undoubtedly true, as plenty of companies have learned. Attempting to implement a ‘grand vision’ for SOA can be unwieldy enough to swamp the enterprise in myriad complexities.
For many companies, the question becomes: how can we realize the promise of SOA without developing and following an exhaustive 400-page platform plan?
In the word, Heffner says, the concept to keep in the forefront is “evolutionary.â€
[Read full article]
It’s only a couple of pages, but contains some really key points to keep i mind as you look at SOA deployment. Highly recommended.
Technorati Tags: SOA, Software Oriented Architecture, unified communications
Filed by Ken at 1:32 pm under Technology
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Ok, so the last post may have been a tad premature. Shozu seemed fine on the N93 at first, but queue up a couple of posts and try a couple different things, then go back to the camera, and the phone’s hosed in precisely the same way as the N80i. Slow and sluggish with nothing working right. Uninstall Shozu and everything’s back to normal.
I know they say the N73 is their phone of choice, but I have to say to the Shozu guys, you don’t want me installing it on an N73 and finding problems again. You won’t like what I have to say if that goes south. So in the interest of fairness, I’m not going to do that for a day or two. I’m back to the N80i becaise I like Gizmo project, and Shozu…well it’s on the back burner for now.
Technorati Tags: Shozu, Nokia N-series, N93
Filed by Ken at 11:33 pm under Mobility & Handheld
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In the interest of fairness I want to make sure I write this up. The Shozu support team did respond to my query. It took a while, but they did respond. I suspect the problem is that the internal data schema for the N80i isn’t quite identical to the N80. They said they’ve got some N80i handsets on order to do some testing and get the kinks worked out. I suspect they may find they encounter the same problem with the N93 to N93i change as well.
I was a bit frustrated when they suggested the N73. Sure, I’ve got one, and it’s a great camera. But the WiFi is a huge differentiatior (yes, Nokia, HUGE). Of course I’d use the 3G network to upload photos and stuff if I needed to. At the moment, it’s just not the phone I was focused on using.
In order to fairly test, I installed Shozu on my N93 first. It seems clean and works fine with testing. So for a few days at least, I’ll do a bit more with the N93 and a bit less with the N80i. In fact, with my Treo 700w on the fritz, that makes the N93 my primary phone for the moment.
Keep in mind that with several other phones in my bag, a SIM card swap could change that at any time.
Technorati Tags: Shozu, Nokia N-series, N80i, N93, N73
Filed by Ken at 10:50 pm under Mobility & Handheld
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Since one friend here asked if my wife’s health permitted her enjoying the rainy weekend beach outing, I’ll go out on a limb and post photographic evidence that she was able to make the trip.
She’s still recovering, but back to babysitting Connor and Keira part time and will probably go back to her part time work for the Superintendent of Schools in another week or two.
Filed by Ken at 9:51 pm under General
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This isn’t well thought or planned. It’s a knee-jerk post and nothing more.
I was literally without cell/1XRTT/3G/EVDO coverage for the weekend. It was actually kind of a nice change. My Treo appears to be quite ill. The data half works to EVDO, but it can no longer synch. The phone radio appears to be dead, and quite insistent that there’s no phone network, which there is. That means tomorrow I go looking to fix/replace the Treo on the Verizon CDMA network. Most likely, it will be another Treo 700w, but I may see what else they have. If they had the Blackjack, I might be inclined to give it a whirl, but the Motorola Q seems to be nothing more than a piece of crap. I won’t be switching to that.
To catch up on Shozu, I do owe it to the support team there to acknowledge their comments on the blog and eamil messages. I feel I’ve got mixed signals. They did say the N80i is different internally than the N80. I have other confirmation of that, so the problem makes sense. I’m not tickled that they say the N73 is their phone of choice. No WiFi, so it’s not the phone of choice for a lot of people, including me. Mark was nice enough to send the older SISX file and I’ve just installed it. But I also hear from others who’ve killed N80i phones with Shozu. I’m going to try this install because Shozu worked flawlessly before that last upgrade. If it chokes the N80i, I’l try it on the N93 and N73 and deal with the N80i issue if there is one. Point to consider - Shozu does work flawlessly on the Treo 700w. I tried it and proved that. I just don’t need or want it on my Treo.
Lots of interesting blog posts over the weekend. I’m reading and catching up, and likely to comment on nary a one. I’m just not going to clobber myself trying to catch up with them all.
Update: An hours or so later, Shozu installed fine, but the application won’t even open to validate. I’m writing it off on the N80i until sometime later when they have it fixed. Or I’ll beta test for them. Then again, I may well lose interest and be gone to another phone or something entirely different by then. I can install it on the N73 and N93, but frankly, it doesn’t interest me much on either of those. The N73 has no WiFi and the N93 is primarily video files that are too big for Shozu to upload. It’s pretty much marginalized for my use on either of those.
Technorati Tags: Shozu, Nokia N-series. N73, N93, N80i, Treo 700W
Filed by Ken at 6:23 pm under General
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After a weekend away on the beach, I’m back home. You have to put weekend’s on the beach in perspectice, because, this is after all, Washington. It was 62 and sunny leaving home. That naturally mean it was 50, raining and windy at the beach. But in Wasthington, that doesn’t stop the beach.
Nice dinners, oysters from Oysterville, pictures, a walk on the beach, pictures (some nice, some vicious, mean waves). There were quite a few tent campers down for fishing and the last weekend of clamming. Glad to have the 5th wheel and just lounge around inside and get some rest.
I’ll get pictures posted up online and will likely share some once I get around to it.
Technorati Tags: home, weekend away
Filed by Ken at 5:53 pm under General
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Filed by Ken at 12:47 pm under Lifeblog
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Like a good customer, I tried reporting the problem I had to the Shozu support team. You can see here for some of the trouble I’m having within on the N80i.
First, the support forum refuses to send the requisite validation email so I can post in the support forums. It could be me. I’ve only gone through the process ten or twelve times before I gave up. So instead I used the standar Contact Us form. I’ll give the credit for one thing. Their auto-responder does auto-respond with a reference code.
The problem I see is that, well there’s silence. No followup. Nothing in the forum. Nothing but silence.
In hopes they were working on it, I actually downloaded and reinstalled Shozu on the N80i. I did this because in their helpfulness downloading and installed, the only way to see what the current version is is to install and go to the About menu option. That’s pretty lame. And why the heck can’t I download the older version that actually worked. You guys have hidden everything from users.
So while I like Shozu as a program…no actually I love it, I’ll drop it loke a hot rock as soon as I see anything comparable. And I won’t look back. You make it too hard to be a supportive user. And before this, if you told me I had to pay for it, I’d have whipped out my credit card and given you whatever price you asked. Now you’ll probably just see me fade away.
That’s how to treat 2.0 customers with 1.0 support. All of a sudden it looks less like a phone problem and more like a software problem.
Technorati Tags: Shozu, crappy support
Filed by Ken at 10:04 pm under Mobility & Handheld
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Several months ago I posted Ken Camp - Presenting a Workshop on VoIP Security. It’s been on my schedule for quite some time and was something I’ve really been looking forward to. I don’t often get opportunities to do full-day workshops or week-long classes these days, and that’s my favorite sort of platform time.
Due to my wife’s recent health issues, I’ve had to withdraw, mostly because of the Florida travel. I’m not cutting out all travel, but am keeping it down for a while and sticking closer to home. I’ll be at the O’Reilly ETel conference in Sand Francisco in a couple of weeks, but I can get home from there quickly if needed.
I hope this opportunity comes again next year. I was really looking forward to it.
Technorati Tags: InfoSec Workd, VoIP security, VoIPSec, Ken Camp
Filed by Ken at 12:22 pm under General
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My friend Peter Zotollo, aka The SightSpeed Guy is in the new this week. There’s a new consumer-produced video show called “The Fizz Newzz†that’s about to launch on DirecTV. It’s being hosted by none other than Peter, who’s been gaining quite a reputation and a large following for his “News of the Day†posts on YouTube. Peter was discovered by The Fizz Newzz producers through the power of the Internet—which appears to be replacing the Hollywood drugstore as a venue for the entertainment industry’s search for talent.
Many of us have really been watching how video increases not just visibility, but how it adds to business value. Seeing Peter picked up by DirecTV demonstrates how an individual can gain exposure and move into new ventures. This is a real “if you build it, they will come” story that demonstrates Peter’s value and screen presence.
This from Peter Csathy, SightSpeed CEO
Vlogging … The New Way to Get Discovered
Amanda Congdon of Rocketboom, Jessica Rose (aka Lonelygirl15) now on Revver, and … Peter Zottolo (aka The SightSpeed Guy) now on DirecTV?
Yes, it’s true — our very own talent, Peter Zottolo from our crack Customer Support team who moonlighted as “The SightSpeed Guy” on our web site and in our newsletters, has been selected by DirecTV to host its new original vlogging news show “The Fizz Newzz.”
Peter’s new newzz show on DirecTV can be seen on Channel 101 beginning
February 18 (and will air every other Sunday at 6 pm and 9 pm EST).
More of his insights also can be seen on a new site called Vlip — www.vlip.com.
Congrats to Peter!
Technorati Tags: SightSpeed, The SightSpeed Guy, Peter Zotollo, video, unified communications
Filed by Ken at 10:20 am under Unified Communications
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After testing the Nokia N-Series for some time now, across the N73, N93 and N80i, I have to say the single biggest problem is the poor memory management in the Symbian OS.
I’ve noticed comparable problems across the N-series phones I’ve tested, and I don’t believe it’s related to the caliber of software that’s been developed. I think it’s all in the OS.
The other day I noted some problems I’ve had with fring and why I removed it. Since then, I replaced the 1G MiniSD in my N80i with a 2G MiniSD. Because I’d installed Shozu on the memory card, I had to reinstall.
First off, I got a note from someone I trust who said enver ever install an app on a memory card. Why? Can’t Nokia figure out how to do it right? I’ve installed numerous apps on the SD card in my Treo 700w and they work just fine. No problem at all.
When I reinstalled Shozu, I got a notice that it was a minor upgrade (dot release level). Since that time, it just plain doesn’t work. The phone exhibits the same painfully slow performance problem it did with fring. Shozu doesn’t work. I’ve reinstalled and deleted at least 20 times. To phone. To card. Delete and clean install. Upgrade install over the top. The bottom line is that the N80i can’t handle it any longer.
Damn shame. I really like Shozu. It works flawlessly on my Treo where I have no use for it and don’t want it, but on the Nokia’s? All it does is make them useless.
Again, I don’t think it’s the application. I think it’s shoddy memory management.
Unfortunately, this third party add-on is what made the N80i it’s most useful to me. Without it, well, the N80i is just one more thing in my pocket. Will I use it? Sure, I’ll continue testing. But now I feel I can’t install any third party apps on the N-series. I’ve had too many failures, and they’ve all been related to memory management (mismanagement or poor management).
I’m disappointed, because without third party software enhancements, the Nokia N-series is a set of nice, albeit expensive phones, that I just won’t use long term. I have them as part of the Nokia Blogger Relations program, and I will certainly continue to test and use them as long as I have them. But I’m deeply disappointed.
Truth be told, if Nokia told me I could keep them, I’d give them all away and stick with my Treo 700w at this point. They just dont live up to my needs. They’re too usntable and unpredictable. And while many things work wonderfully and are truly impressive, I find them unstable. A tweak here or a third poart add-on their, and they’re off in the twilight zone. I can’t accept that kind of performance in a mobile device that’s my primary tool for business. And for me my mobile is my primary tool.
Color me disappointed today.
Technorati Tags: Nokia, N-Series, N80i, N73, N93. memory management problems
Filed by Ken at 3:26 pm under Mobility & Handheld
3 Comments
I’ve been using the Nokia N80i pretty extensively the last few weeks. I’m very disapppointed that the combination of swapping a 1G MiniSD card for a 2G card, and reinstalling Shozu (forced by the card swap) led to an upgrade that left Shozu as notihng but unusable crap dysfunctional software.
One thing Shozu enables, when it works, is easy background upload to Flickr. Here’s a picture that got a comment about how good the detail is for a camera phone. If you have doubts about the resolution capabilities, click through on Flickr to the original size (2048X1536) and you’ll find more detail that you might expect
Technorati Tags: Nokia, N80i, N-series, digital camera
Filed by Ken at 6:41 pm under Mobility & Handheld
2 Comments
The views and opinions expressed here do not represent those of any past or present employer. Sometimes they aren't even mine.
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