Yellow Arrows, celltracking and moblogging

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Annelogue points me back to a project I read about in Wired some months ago. The disussion at her site suggests ways to place the Yellow Arrows geographically.

I just installed a small program on my Nokia 6630 mobile called CellSpotting. It works like this:

Your mobile is always connected to a mobile transmitter somewhere. These transmitters have unique ID’s and are called Cells. By reading what Cell you are connected to and do a lookup in a database on that particular cell, your location can be roughly determined (I think at a level of detail down to a couple of hundred meters).

With CellSpotting installed on your mobile you can always hit a “Go cellspotting” button. What it does is that it makes note of the cell you are connected to and do a lookup in a database on the web. If someone has spotted that cell already and submitted a description you will recieve that description. It could be anything. Info on nearby points of interest or simply a greeting. If the cell is “undiscovered” you can fill in info on the cell yourself. Anyone visiting that cell after you will get your info if they hit “Go CellSpotting” in the cellspotting application.

Now, if the people behind the CellSpotting program could enhance it with the following two features:

1. A possibility to let people snap a picture with their phone and add to the description of a cell
Would be great fun to be able to look up pictures of the surroundings where you are. Both because it would help you decide if the walk to the park described would be worth it and because having pictures from the actual spot you are, from different seasons and different points of time could be interesting in its own way.

2. A possibility to record the latitude and longitude and add it to your spot if you have a GPS connected to your phone

3. Some kind of possibility to send a mail from your phone with the cell and a link to the description in the CellSpotting database. Would be great information to add when moblogging

….anyway. CellSpotting is kind of Yellow Arrows… without the arrows.

Related post:
Odda GeoBlogged!

Yellow Arrows, celltracking and moblogging

HighPad Media Control – PDA Remote for Windows Media Center

eirikso9 Comments

I continue my quest to find a PDA based remote solution that lets me control my music without having to pick up the stylus on the PDA. I have talked about other solutions here and now I have played around with a promising package from Germany.

Meet HighPad – another PDA-remote solution. Here is my first impression.

The approach is quite ambitious. The HighPad Media Control solution promises to do the following:

1. Give you remote control of your media libraries
2. Give you remote streaming of your media to your device
3. Give you a possibility to sync media to your PDA
4. Function as a plain remote control for MCE
5. Give you a possibility to program the PVR in MCE

The HighPad Media Control will be able to control a full Media Center Edition System or a plain Windows XP computer running Windows Media Player. The system consist of a server application running on your media box and a client application running on your PDA.
And if you are like me, you want the conclusion right away:
This is an impressive package that is very powerful already (it is in version 1.02). It packs huge amounts of features but not all of them works perfectly well. Because of the fact that the most important features works well, and the other ones have great potential this is an addition to your home media center that is very interesting. Still, you should spend some minutes on testing the Niveus Remote (for ease of use) and NetRemote (for flexibility). You can read more on those here.

The installer is one file. During installation you choose if you want to install the client, the server or both.

At this point I ran into a little trouble.
Continue reading “HighPad Media Control – PDA Remote for Windows Media Center” →

HighPad Media Control – PDA Remote for Windows Media Center

Reaching the world

eirikso1 Comment

It never stops fascinating me where I can reach using the internet. I have done lots of presentations and it is always a thrill to comunicate to many people. The biggest presentation I have done so far was in front of about 1200 people.

That is nothing compared to the amount of people I reach with my blog. And, even doing international presentations while working for the consulting company Accenture, I never reached out to the same divere audience that I do through eirikso.com

My little comic strip about Bob the Millionaire is one of my most popular posts. I have fun using Babelfish and friends mastering other languages to try to understand what people have to say about my ramblings. My comic has even been translated into French. My wife speaks French and could confirm that the translation was well done.

And, I can even use my own blog to get help when more than 10 000 users reach my blog from a Duch web site and I don’t know what they are saying…

Now, I have some problems with this one and this one. Still, it is interesting to see that people from all over the world reach my page!

Reaching the world

My brief encounter with a Creative Zen Touch

eirikso3 Comments

I recently bought a Creative Zen Touch. My plan was to use it for podcast listening, audiobooks and music. A good price, 24 hour battery life and a nice and sturdy construction tempted me. As my regular readers may know, I run a quite advanced media system at home, built on Windows Media Center Edition. The only reason for not buying an Apple iPod was that I wanted a player that could communicate as seamless as possible with my existing media. The Zen Touch plays WMA including the files with DRM. According to all the reviews I found a firmware upgrade was due some time late 2004 to make the Creative Zen Touch fully Microsoft “plays for sure” compliant.

And, yes. I was naive. I did not do my homework…
Continue reading “My brief encounter with a Creative Zen Touch” →

My brief encounter with a Creative Zen Touch

Using a Nokia 6630 to listen to podcasts and MP3

eirikso8 Comments

Edit:
After I wrote this post the Viking MP3-player has been updated with a bookmark resume from last position feature that makes it remember the track and the exact position of the last file you where playing. This makes the Viking MP3-player my clear choise for listening to audio books and podcasts on my Nokia.

Previously I have mentioned that I use my Nokia 6630 to listen to podcasts. It plays MP3, and the memory card can be synced easily using Windows Media Player. However, I am not satisfied with the built in player in the phone. Mostly because of the poor fast forward possibilities. So I asked my friend Mr. Google and he found a couple of players. The Viking MP3Player 3.33, the UltraMP3 and MP3Go looked like the most promising so I gave them a try.

MP3Go
On my 6630 this one gave a horrible sound quality and featured a not-so-intuitive interface. So, okay – NEXT!

UltraMP3
Good sound quality, fancy interface with advanced skinning possibilities and a slightly better fast forward than the built in RealPlayer. Basically a huge amount of stuff that I don’t need and a minor improvement on the functionallity I want. NEXT!

Viking MP3Player 3.33
Good sound quality. A very nice and clean interface. Easy and intuitive. A possibility to change the background picture. Very good fast forward and rewind functionallity. The price is $18 and this one enhance my listening experience enough to justify a purchase! Now, if the Vikings could include functionallity to let the player remember where I left off for each file I play and resume at the same place we would have a very nice player for podcast listening on the 6630.

OggPlay
I just added OggPlay to the list of players that you should try. Thanks, Phil Wilson! OggPlay is free, fast, clean and gives quite good fast forward and rewind possibilities. No bookmark-functionallity to make the player remember where you left off here either. Support for advanced skins and user defineable keyboard shortcuts.

The next step is to do a mod to my headphones. Something like this, so I can use my Koss Portapro and my Sony Noise Cancelling headphones with my Nokia. I will post back here…

Edit2:
And now I have modified my headphones. You can read more about that here.

Related posts:
How to listen to podcasts on your mobile phone
Modify your Nokia headphones.
Closing all programs on a 6630 or 6680
How to completely reset your Nokia 6630

Using a Nokia 6630 to listen to podcasts and MP3

Norwegian strawberries

eiriksoLeave a comment

The Norwegian strawberries are exeptional. Because of the relatively cold summer with much light the strawberries get very tasty and good here up north.

Still, large scale production does it best to destroy the whole thing. Now 90% of the berries grown in Norway are of the same type, Corona.

So much for diversity…

The Corona berries are grown using fertilizers and all kinds of tricks to get them grow with no defects, grow fast and get big.

So much for the taste…

Well, as I said, the Norwegian berries are exeptional, so despite these efforts to destroy one of natures wonders we can still enjoy quite sweet and tasty berries every summer. The reason for my irritation towards the large scale production is the berries on the pictures. They are grown by myself on our balcony. They taste like heaven and remind me of how real strawberries should be.

My tip to the Norwegian Asociation of Strawberry Producers (if something like that exist) is to start thinking about quality and give up the sensless focus on quantity.

Norwegian strawberries

Living in Norway

eirikso8 Comments

The main reason we can live here at all is the gulf stream. It brings hot water from the Mexican Gulf all the way up along the coast of Norway. Bringing the temperatures up to a resonable level. Still, the difference between summer and winter can be quite remarkable.

Check out the two pictures shot out of my window. One, showing +31 degrees Ceslius (87 F) at the 9th of July 2005. The other one showing -16 degrees Celsius (3.2 F) at the 3rd of February 2005.

One slightly too hot and one slightly too cold. Give me something between -5 and +25 degrees Celsius (23 – 77 F) and I am just fine.

Living in Norway

Who can you trust?

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I know that the web is crowded with unreliable info. I know how to always check a story from several sources before I make up my mind. However, I actually trust some of the more serious web sites. Or, maybe not!

I mentioned some roumors about Microsoft and a company called Claria a while ago. I read the story on Ed Bott. Now the story has reached out and it seems like it suddenly, out of nothing has been confirmed that Microsoft actually has bought Claria. Apparently BoingBoing is as trustworthy as an average TukTuk driver in Bangkok.

Ed Bott has summed this crappy piece of journalism up here.

This is actually even more scary than the Microsoft – Claria story itself. It means that I can not trust one of my favourite web sites, BoingBoing?

Who can you trust?