Technology summary for August 28, 2008

Today, I'm going to start a new thing, writing a technology summary of the news that I have read for that day and writing my own comments. Hopefully, it will be easier to read than having to post so many posts a day and inundating people reading my blog.

The first news to share is that of Palm. People know that I have a Palm Zire 71 and I haven't upgraded it. It's actually not in use right now since I have found out that the Nokia N82 is serving my needs quite well for now. It seems that Palm is coming out with the Palm Treo Pro, and by the looks of it, it's getting some good reviews and looks really sleek.



It's been a while since Palm came out with a good device, Palm has lost its PDA and smartphone marketshare to Apple's iPhone, RIM and Windows Mobile. This shows that Palm is still not dead yet. In fact, in this article, Palm has a plan to come back into the game. They just hired Jon Rubinstein to help them out with their design and save Palm. Jon Rubinstein apparently is noted in the industry, he helped Apple get back on its feet with the hit iMac and iPod designs. In fact, Jon has hired a bunch of other employees previously working at Apple, to reign the ships at Palm. I think this is really good news for Palm. And Palm is working on their next generation OS, Palm OS 2.0 which features stuff from BeOS that Palm bought a couple of years ago. Let's see how this goes, having many competitors boosts great value for customers.



The second news is that an Android phone maybe coming to market this year. Android is the software from Google for creating a mobile phone OS that is open source. There has been talk about Android for a while now, but no actual phones that are powered by Android. There are rumours that T-Mobile in the US is going to come out with an Android phone called the HTC Dream later this year. More details can be found here. Latest news that I've found is that the date for launch of the HTC Dream is October 13. I think this will spur great innovation and customer choice in making the phone become more open source and allowing developers to develop easily for phones as they can now for PCs. I can see great momentum and excitement in the mobile arena. Can't wait to see how the Android phone will look like. I wonder how many will buy the Android phone and how the numbers will compare to Apple's first launch of the iPhone.



Third bit of news is that Japan is planning to open up their technology for wallet phones that uses a computer chip called FeliCa for allowing you to pay for goods using a reader installed at cash terminals. I think it uses NFC communications. I've been waiting for a eWallet like this, I carry so many cards (as I'm sure many of you do as well) it would be nice to loosen my pants (not physically of course!). And how many times you can't find the right credit card or loyalty card because you left it at home!

Anyways, this sounds something similar to RF tags like Esso's SpeedPass or the Dexit tag which I've tried back in Canada. I would love this on my phone. Of course, one thing to make note of is that if I were to lose my phone, there needs to be an option where others wouldn't be able to access my credentials. Maybe something where the phone automatically erases all the information when an attacker tries to get in or the phone explodes. Kind of like a sci-fi scene.

Went to Bird's Nest and Water Cube!

I had the wonderful privilege last week to go watch the Olympic athletics events at the National Olympic Stadium aka Bird's Nest. I also was able to see the Water Cube from outside (didn't get tickets for inside). The views of both are breathtaking. You can see the photos here on Ovi:



Beijing has really put on a spectacular show for the Olympics to the world and it is going to be difficult for London in 2012 to top this off.

Also, I've updated photos from the Beijing Food channel and Around Beijing channel where I went to see the Temple of Heaven and Wangfujing.

Around Beijing:



Beijing Food:



Enjoy!

On Technorati: Beijing Olympics

Toronto TTC may finally be with the rest of the world

I just read this post from BlogTO today about how the Toronto Transit Commission will be ordering new TTC subways and transforming their stations with a system that actually lights up and announces the current station and next station is in the subway cars. Some photos of this here courtesy of BlogTO:

LED lights in the subway car of the route you are taking:



Outside of the subway car:



Inside the new subway car:



Finally, the TTC is getting along with the times. After riding subways in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, I'm so fascinated at the efficiency and promptness of these subway systems and wonder why Toronto can't do the same. A transit system is behind the life of a city, it is what makes the city thrive. As I am in Beijing now, I am impressed at how Beijing was able to get so many new subway lines installed and operating this year for the Olympics. The subway system in Beijing here is just great, it runs smoothly and it is a pleasure to use. When I always come back to Toronto, I really envy the subway system abroad and wish Toronto would have a system like that. Well, it looks like Toronto may finally have, and about time too!

On Technorati: Toronto Transit System

2008 Computer History Museum Fellow Awards

Three people have been inducted as Fellow Awards at the Computer History Museum. They are Jean Bartik, Robert Metcalfe and Linus Torvalds. I'm sure most of you know Robert Metcalfe as the one who invented ethernet and is now a VC and Linus Torvalds, the inventor of Linux. But I never heard of Jean Bartik, which apparently according to the Computer History Museum Fellow Awards web site is one of the first programmers of the groundbreaking ENIAC computing system in 1945.

Congratulations to Jean, Robert and Linus! I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Computer History Museum and post photos of my trip there.

On Technorati: Computer History Museum, Linus Torvalds, Bob Metcalfe

new Beijing photo channels on Ovi

I've organized my photos into several channels for easy access in Ovi. They are the following:

1. Beijing Olympics channel



2. Around Beijing channel



3. Beijing food channel



Enjoy and post comments if you have any.

Nokia SportsTracker Beta

One of the cool things with the Nokia N82 cell phone is that you can download an application called Nokia SportsTracker Beta which allows you to record your workouts like jogging or walking using GPS and accelerometer to track your speed, altitude and location on a map. I tried out this feature and just uploaded my walk from the bus stop that I got off to Oakwood residence . You can see the results of this walk here.

Let me know what you think by putting comments on this blog or on my SportsTracker Beta
web page!

Final torch relay in Beijing before opening ceremonies tonight

Today, I had the wonderful privilege on behalf of Nokia to witness and see the torch relay in our area (Beijing Economic Technological and Development Area). Today is the final leg of the torch relay before it enters the National Olympic Stadium for tonight's opening Olympic ceremonies. It seems so surreal that I'm actually here in Beijing and witnessing this live.

I managed to take some pictures which I've uploaded to Nokia's Ovi service using my Nokia N82 cell phone. Unfortunately, the most important event when the torch flame was exchanged between the torch bearer and the other one here at leg 114 (seen
below), I wasn't able to capture because my cell phone ran out of battery!



Here is a picture of me below.



By the way, you can view more pics from this momentous event from Ovi here. And if you want to try out Ovi (instructions here), it's quite nice, it seems to work pretty well and you can download the Ovi client on your Nseries phone to view pictures and your friends' pictures.

Testing out Nokia Ovi

Nokia has a software service called Ovi that allows for easy management and uploading of media from an Nseries Nokia phone to the web. We all have many photos and videos that we like to share with people. It's very easy to download these media to your computer, however it is very time consuming to share it with others. You need to find the media once it is downloaded to the computer, then select a web site that can upload those photos or download some software to allow you to upload to that web site. In my case, I use Flickr Uploadr or Shutterfly Studio which allows me to drag and drop which photos I want and I configure the web service with my account information and the name of the online album that I want to create. However, once that is done, then I have to go to the online album that I have created and then select all the recipients that I want to share with. With Shutterfly, it's really strange, you have to either share the album which is a cryptic link within an e-mail or you can make a special URL to a collection. But within that e-mail that is sent from Shutterfly, I can't change the title and message of the e-mail!

If I want to embed the photos to my blog then I can either link the entire album online or have to choose each photo separately with the embedded link. In Flickr, the link is cryptic and long so it becomes very time consuming. Sometimes, it takes so long that I don't even do it. How to make this process of uploading and sharing photos from your device much easier? Nokia aims to do this with Ovi.

You can subscribe to the Ovi service by making an account and then downloading the Ovi Suite program. This creates programs to synchronize your calendar and contacts with the Nokia Nseries phone (in my case the N82), and to synchronize photos and videos from the phone to a designated folder on the computer automatically. It also includes a Nokia Application installer to install apps on the phone, a program to view contents on the phone via a phone browser, a gallery to view the photos and videos, a 3D gallery that shows your photos in space by time. It also includes a Music Manager to help manage your music from your computer to the phone (like Apple's iTunes). To upload and share the photos and videos with your friends, you use Ovi's share service.

I then followed the instructions to upload the files using Firefox, which allows you to use the Web Publishing Wizard in Windows Explorer to publish to a web place which is Ovi. It's pretty easy to set up and use. In less than 10 minutes I was able to make a share on the web of my pictures that were downloaded from my Nokia N82 mobile phone. These are my photos of my tour around the city of Beijing.

Mobile phone barcode

I've got a mobile phone barcode for my contact info which I've created at Nokia so if you have a mobile phone with a barcode reader like N93,N93i,N95, E90 then you can scan and save it as my contact on your phone. You'll see it at the sidebar below my Blogger profile.

Going around Beijing

While I'm not at Nokia Research, I'm going around Beijing along with my wife. This past weekend we were looking at apartments to rent. Here are some pictures around Beijing.

Enjoy! It's really hot in Beijing now and everyone is gearing up for the Olympics. There are so many people wearing Beijing Olympics T-shirts with a red-band on their hand, these people are Olympic volunteers who will direct people to the Olympic venues. Apparently, those volunteers get to ride free on the Beijing subway!