Category: mobile phones

direct access to multimedia content (N95)

I am yet to figure out how to actually improve the different services provided by my new Nokia N95, and since I am a? bit short in time these days, I try to limit my current N95 activities to small issues – discovering new stuff one by one.

What I eventually managed to run as a service is the streaming of video podcast. This service is just sweet as it enables me to download videocasts through a WLAN (@ home & @ work) or GPRS/UMTS (3G) directly from? the phone.

==> Whereas an iPod Video still requires some syncing with iTunes + the pysical connection to a host computer (dito the Zen Vision:M I had used for some time), the N95 directly accesses the net. This way, all you need is network coverage and some memory space on your phone (I just ordered a 2 GB microSD card).

My next task will be to figure out how to make screenshots from the phone…

m.uhuru.de & co

Earlier this year in March, I discovered that the WP-ShorStat plugin I had been using for a long time actually congested my database, so I cleaned up the database by simply deleting all WP-SS values on my db.

I had to do the same today, as – just in a time span of 4 months – WP-ShortStat again bloated my db to an extent I just didn’t like. Mzeecedric already suggested the other day to use external statistic tools only – which is a very smart idea to keep your WP-database clean.

While visiting Christian at his desk on friday afternoon, we talked about using Google Analytics, and I really have to admit that I am a bit slow when it comes to implementing new stuff on my site. ‘Nways, I consequently switched all my statistics to Google Analytics and currently looking for a plugin that implements some important stats (= whatever you like to appear on your GoogleAnalytics dashboard) to the WP dashboard – just what WP-ShortStat did, but much better.

Oh, and in case you’re using WP on your site + are tired of implementing the code into you site, pls try this awesome GoogleAnalytics plugin that does a bit more than simply adding the GA code.

Also, I took this opportunity to activate the WordPress Mobile Plugin by Andy Moore, who is an active member of the dotMobi group.
Considering that mobile phones are rapidly becoming the IT platform / interface for those who don’t use a desktop pc / notebook, it does make sense to prepare websites so that they run on the tiny screens of most mobile phones. Oh, and Andy also blogged on the upcoming Mobile Web 2.0 conference… :-)

You know these ppl want you to register another domain ending on the top level .mobi – which I think is a bit absurd, as subdomains actually do the job:

m.uhuru.de ==> kikuyumoja.com, optimized* for mobile phones

Using the “m” subdomain makes much more sense to me (and others), unless of course you’re Mzeecedric who is already using the m. subdomain to extend his zung.us domain into m.zung.us :-)

*[at the moment, m.uhuru.de is just a redirector to my blog, which has the above mentioned WP Mobile Plugin installed – so the optimized content is only visible through mobile phones or emulators…]

the mobile code

One of the initial reasons for getting a new phone was that I wanted to have a good tool that allows me to blog “from the road”, as I had already done that last year on December 30th through my old Nokia 6230i while waiting in the lobby of a neat Hotel in Mombasa. With the Nokia N95 in my hands, this task seems to be a bit easier now, although I still have to figure out how to enter hyperlinks + the keyboard keypad is a bit disappointing. Should I switch to a Nokia E61i?

And….haiiyaaa…there’s SO much more to write about this new gadget, but then – the internet is full of interesting stories + I am horribly short in time these days, so the mobile code below actually says it all. Ama? :-)

JKE's mobile code :-)

w00t!

Dear Colleagues,

in case I happen to be out of office during the next few weeks – here’s why:

SANY0651

Seriously, after 1hour of playing with this awesome gadget, figuring out all important shortcuts & testing various applications like surfing & phoning via WLAN (VoIP…sweet!) or the internal GPS, I realized that this new phone really is a kick-ass gadgetimoja. In fact, it is the best Nokia I’ve ever used.
Especially since I am migrating from a Nokia 6230i which runs on the S40/2nd edition operating system, whereas the Nokia N95 comes with a cool S60/3rd edition OS.

For my non-techie readers:

  • S40/2nd = driving to Mombasa in a Toyota Corolla
  • S60/3rd = being driven to Mombasa in a luxurious Mercedes Viano mini bus, with nice music, a great video system, a playstation on board as well as a broadband internet connection all the way from downtown Nbo to Likoni ferry.
  • (this phone with an external wireless keyboard, available as an optional extension = flying to Mombasa)

N.B.:
1. The Ministry of Finance has not been informed on this purchase.
2. Financing for this device has been secured through external fundings, with lots of donors support and a fair interest rate.
3. WTx is an iPhone? :-)

Wie komme ich an ein Nokia N95?

Motiviert durch meinen Vertragswechsel letztens von Vodafone zu Blau.de, und sicherlich auch durch den momentan berechtigten Hype ums iPhone habe ich gestern abend kurz bei eBay reingeschaut: auf der Suche nach einer guten Finanzierungsalternative fürs gewünschte Nokia N95.

Die Vorgeschichte
Bisher bin ich natürlich ein Handyvertragsmensch gewesen, d.h., alle zwei Jahre ergab sich die Möglichkeit, ein Handy zu Vertragsverlängerung finanziert zu bekommen. So entschied ich mich letztes Jahr für das eher schon ältere Nokia 6230i, welches im Gegensatz zum erst kurz getesteten 6233 über eine entscheidende Unterfunktion im Kurzmitteilungsmenü verfügte: die Auswahl einer Kurzmitteilungszentrale (SMC) direkt vorm Versenden einer SMS – was für die Fortführung meines alten Vertrages mit DM-Preisen bzw den Versand vergünstigter netzinterner SMS von elementarer Bedeutung war. Nach dem Anbieterwechsel fiel dieses Kriterium jedoch komplett vom Tisch, so dass ich endlich ganz unabhängig vom Vertrag & anderen Einschränkungen in Zukunft jedes beliebige Handy verwenden kann.

Was will ich?
Gewohnt durch den Komfort des Abrufens meiner e-mails via GPRS bzw. direkt vom Handy aus in Kenia (!), zahle ich bei Blau jetzt fast genauso wenig wie bei Safaricom für das Megabyte an Daten via GPRS. Durch die Möglichkeit, jetzt auch noch UMTS als prepaid Kunde nutzen zu können, erscheint diese Technologie bei den relativ geringen Kosten natürlich in einem viel besseren Licht.
GPRS, EDGE und UMTS, sowie – natürlich – WLAN und Bluetooth möchte ich auf jeden Fall in einem neuen Gerät haben. WLAN alleine schon deswegen weil ich dadurch eine Menge Kohle sparen und zB zu Hause via FritzBox telefonieren kann.
Dazu eine vernünftige Kamera mit Autofokus und mind 3,2 MPx, einem Blitz/guter LED zur Beleuchtung bei Dunkelheit und einen vernünftigen MP3 Player. Mit vernünftig bezeichne ich jene Player, die nicht bei jedem Neustart des Handys die MP3 Sammlung komplett einlesen und daraus einen Index erstellen wollen und dann auch noch irgendwann im Betrieb abstürzen – so wie es leider bei meinem 6230i in Verbindung mit der 2GB Speicherkarte der Fall ist.
Einzig die fehlende QWERTY/Z Tastatur macht mich ein bißchen stutzig, denn einer der Gründe wieso ich unbedingt so ein besonderes Telefon haben möchte wenn man doch meist eigentlich nur telefoniert und Kurzmitteilungen verschickt, ist natürlich die Möglichkeit, unterwegs Texte ausformulieren zu können. Das mache ich nämlich am liebsten unterwegs – texten :-)
Das Nokia E61, so nen BlackberryClone mit Tastatur, wäre so ne Alternative zum Nokia N95, allerdings ohne Blitz/LED, dafür für ca. die Hälfte des Preises zu bekommen. Hmm.

Was zahle ich?
Bestandskunden werden in Dland irgendwie schlechter behandelt als Neukunden – insofern erscheinen die meisten Neuverträge günstiger zu sein, als wenn man jetzt seinen Vertrag verlängert. Da ich ja jetzt eh prepaid Kunde bin, muss ich mir das Handy vollkommen selber beschaffen. Nur wie?

Wie finanzieren diese Typen es, ständig ein neues Handy mit sich rumzuschleppen? Neukauf, 2monatige Benutzung und dann wieder verkaufen? Bisher fallen mir nur folgende Optionen ein:

A) Im Versandhandel neu bestellen, lt. Preisvergleichsdienst schon für ca. 590,- EUR zu bekommen. => zu teuer!

B) Gebraucht kaufen, zB bei Ebay. Kostet aber im Grunde meist fast genauso viel wie wenn man es neu kauft. => zu teuer!

C) Einen Neuvertrag abschließen bei einem der vier Anbieter und mindestens ca. 250,- EUR dazu zahlen, sowie mindestens 9,95 EUR monatlich. => zu teuer!

D) Zwei Neuverträge abschließen und monatlich ca. 20,- EUR an Grundgebühr bzw. Mindestumsatz bezahlen. Für Studenten sogar schon ab 7,96 EUR/Monat/Vertrag.
Hmm. Macht das Sinn? 24 Monate x 20,- EUR = 480,- EUR. Wäre immerhin günstiger als Lösung a) & b).

E) …. ?

Fazit
Momentan erscheint mir nur der Abschluss von zwei Verträgen ? je 9,95 als kostengünstige Lösung attraktiv. Hmm…

AOB:

> Hallo liebes Blau Team,
>
> wieviele Rufnummern kann ich auf den neuen UMTSfähigen SIM Karten
> speichern? Handelt es sich dabei auch wieder nur um 16k Karten, auf
> denen man nur 100 Rufnummern speichern kann?
>
> Vielen Dank!

…

Auf der SIM Karte können Sie bis zu 10 Rufnummern speichern.
Weitere Daten können auf dem Handy gespeichert werden.

Viel Spaß beim Sparen

Wer spart hier?

HelloHowRUIAmFineOkGoodBye

It’s almost like as if they are already keeping the thumb on the phone’s red button.

Trying to call someone in Nairobi from abroad is easy and cheap, lakini most jamaas there – it seems – are used to 10 seconds conversation: no long greetings, a very short smalltalk and then an abrupt ending.

“Hellooo?”
– “Eh, hello, this is JKE calling.”
“Oh, r u in Nairobi?”
– “No, I am calling from Germany…so, how are you?”
“Oh, here everything is just fine.”

… (~ 20 seconds)

“Ok, goodbye & thx for calling.”
– “Ah…?”

-click-

Irritating, especially since I am the one who is calling and paying for the call.

AOB: came across this textbook on “Swahili for Starters” yesterday while strolling through our local (university) library.

SANY0464

I just had to borrow something as all the books I went there for were already taken by someone else and since the really interesting stuff (as pictured below) wasn’t available for lending.

07-05a-000

Kikuyu-English Dictionary, by T.G.Benson, Oxford @ Clarendon Press, 1964

(and the best thing I saw there was a Lingala-English dictionary…*sigh*)

07-05a-001

6230i @ 99,- EUR

It almost broke my heart today when I saw a relatively modern Nokia 6230i (series40) phone selling for EUR 99,- EUR in a bundle together with a prepaid sim card in Germany.

Buy that phone, take it to Kenya and remove the simlock.

EUR 99,- is how many Kshs.? ~ 9100 Kshs? And afaik those refurbished ones for sale in Nbo sell for at least 12.500 Kshs or even more.

Why can’t they have Nokia phones with Series60 OS on such deals? Damn…

(The Nokia 6230i has become a very popular phone on the european market since it’s release two years ago and currently retails at around EUR 159,-, without branding or any other software restrictions.)

On the other hand, though, since I already dropped my Vodafone contract (= no subsidized phone every 24 month), I shall get my next phone @ Moi Avenue in beloved Nairobi.

Buy me a soda Nokia N95….

Whenever I awake my WinXP laptop from standby or hibernation mode, it doesn’t allow me to surf. Skype connects fine, but my email client as well as the browser just refuse to work properly. And this also applies to my desktop computer which comes with another wlan card. Both machines are connected via WLAN to a FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN router, which is btw a very nice little dslmodem-wlan-router and has of course the latest firmware installed. I really like this router as it allows me to directly connect a normal phone to it – which I configured with my sipgate VoIP number. No need for any additional hardware or USB Skype phones etc.. Neat!

However, the standby/hibernation problem has become more and more annoying, and even the reinstallation of new drivers hasn’t changed anything to the better. My workaround for the time being is to log-off from the system and to log-in again – et voil? , Madame Winsock (and I suppose it’s a Winsock issue) is back in her working mood.

Has anyone experienced similar problems under Windows XP? And how is it on Macs? All I want is to switch on my computer from hibernation mode, and instantly start surfing the web where I stopped before. Simpoool, sindiyo?

Also, for those “aahh…lemme just check my mails” situations, I’ve started using my mobile phone and accessing my email account via GPRS. I’ve really started to appreciate this convenient and quick method during my stay in Kenya. GPRS as a prepaid customer costs Kshs. 12.60 / MB (~ 0,14 EUR) via Safaricom, and for checking your mails you won’t even need a whole Megabyte.

Now, while the GPRS is relatively cheap in Kenya (especially compared to other internet access alternatives), GPRS usage has been and, unfortunately, often still is very expensive over here in Germany. Don’t ask me why, I don’t even know about the situation in other European countries, but fact is that all four german mobile phone network operators charge between EUR 5,- and 20,- per Megabyte, unless of course you’re coughing up an extra monthly sum (monthly = at least for three months!) that gives you a lousy GPRS flatrate. For those who use GPRS on a daily basis and have their mobile internet needs, this makes sense to some extend. However, as a private consumer, who just wants to quickly check his mails and/or do a few small things online, all these packages are way too expensive.

Only recently, some resellers operating within the German E-Plus mobile phone network, started offering relatively cheap GPRS access rates at about EUR 0,24 /MB. The downside to this of course is that these often only come with prepaid offers – meaning: you’ll need to get a DUAL SIM card holder if you want to use both SIM cards on your phone (or wait for these DUAL SIM phones instead).
The other alternative is to completely switch networks, get a new number and start paying considerably less for your monthly telephone needs. I did that.

And yes, with the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) as part of the 3G mobile phone technology, downloading data through the phone becomes more and more important. If you just want to check your mails, GPRS is good enough though.

With GPRS being available at a reasonably price, surfing the net through the tiny display on your Nokia 6230i quickly becomes annoying. While it certainly fascinates to see how much content actually fits into Opera’s free Minibrowser, the materialistic part in me has started eyeing for a new toy gadget.

Since I am a complete Nokia geek, my next phone is very much likely to be another Nokia. SonyEricsson’s recent phones also caught my attention, but there’s something about them I don’t like. Maybe it’s just the menu system, but I think it’s more than that. And Nokia’s latest models during 2006 have been very disappointing for me – I initially ordered a Nokia 6233 when I extended my previous contract, but sent it back the same day as it didn’t come with some required functions I was used to (choosing different short message centers while typing SMS). That’s why I stuck to the Nokia 6230i (based on Series 40 operating system), which proved to be a very reliable and convenient phone. Compared to Series 60 phones though, it doesn’t offer the same ….phone 2.0??…functionality, and Nokia for some peculiar reason has in the past lost a few customers to the competition as they had this brilliantly stupid product managing of either delaying their market starts, and or missing a few vital functions on their phones. While the very popular SE W810i GSM phone comes with a very fast mp3 player and a normal LED that helps to substitute missing flash lights, many Nokia phones in 2006 came without any proper flash light. Stupid? Maybe.

Take the new Nokia E65, for instance. A brilliant slider smartphone for business users that comes with a camera. However, we’re in 2007 now, and the cam still only gives a 2MP resolution and has NO flash at all. Stupid? Maybe.

There are in fact a lot of things one could dislike about today’s phones from Nokia. If you directly compare Nokia phones with Sony Ericssons, the latter ones (in my opinion) are the better option. Yaniiii , me I like Nokia phones…

N95
Nokia N95

And then there’s Nokia’s new N95. At a retail price of about EUR 649,-, the phone still is somewhat expensive. But baby, this gadgetimoja is hot!! :-)

Check these selected features:

  • Integrated GPS system (ati? GPS? kewl…)
  • 5 Megapixel (2592 x 1944) digital camera with Flickr support, Carl Zeiss Optics, autofocus & digital zoom (+ flash)
  • Video recording 640 x 480 @ 30 fps
  • Wi-Fi 802.11g with WPA2, WPA (jaabadabadooo!!)
  • HSDPA (3.5G) – 3.6 MBit/s download speed
  • Quad band GSM / GPRS / EDGE: GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900 Singleband UMTS / HSDPA: W-CDMA 2100
  • 160MB of internal memory
  • 3.5 mm audio jack (smart, just very smart)
  • A2DP wireless stereo headphone support
  • UPnP (sexy!)
  • Fully hardware accelerated PowerVR 3D graphics from Imagination Technologies (including OpenGL ES 1.1 and M3G, see JBenchmark) (hola?)(for German readers, pls free to check out this brilliant review )

While I actually don’t need HSDPA at the moment, the combination of a decent digicam and Wi-Fi WPA access is just very very sweet for a nerd geek like me. GPS just tops it and draws the line between the N95 and the N80. Obviously, the new Nokia N95 is a great pocket device! Me I want…. :-)

(@Mentholarithmetics: get this one and make sure to properly hide it from your extended family :-)