New firmware available for N95 – 11.0.026

From the NSU team:

Dear Updaters

We are pleased to announce a new software release for the Nokia N95 available through the Nokia Software Updater.

Due to potential backup/restore incompatibilities, we strongly recommend synchronising your Calendar details before updating your software.

Version 11.0.026 is available for most product codes, but please note that not all operator variants are included yet. These will be added as soon as they are available.

Warm regards,
The Nokia Software Updater team

Details and how-tos here.

Gonna try it out for myself too!

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Need Profilactic friends!

Profilactic

Lol, every time I type that word I giggle.

Anyone Profilacticing yet? Yeah, they are barely 1.0, but pretty nifty already. And they support every site, web 2.0 or otherwise!

Here's my mashup page and also my mashup rss (you've subscribed to this, right??)

They're working really hard to improve things too and very open to suggestions and feedback. I've helped them fix a bug. Well, ok, they fixed it, but I reported it and suggested the possible solution. I guess it helped because the turnaround time was one hour. Wow, if we could fix bugs so quickly at work…

But the main reason I'm writing this is… I need some friends! When I go to my friends page, I see, Boo you have no friends…. they try to console me by saying "We like you, anyway." although behind my back they tell everyone else "That is just plain sad." Grrr….

Well, I know I have all you wonderful friends here at Vox, I want ya'll to list/aggregate all your sites too so I can stalk you at those sites as well ;) j/k. I just think it's a fun and useful tool, and if you decide the same, don't forget to add me as a friend!

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The N800 experience… prelude

Has it been 3 weeks already? wow, time flies. I'm enjoying my N800 very much. Will post my thoughts on the device soon, and probably from the device.

In the meantime, for a thorough review with some nice pics, check out Nokia N800 Review at Cellnology.

And to add a little more substance to my post, in LonelyBob fashion, here are some food photos taken with my N95:

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Replying messages and comments

Not sure if this is a widely known (javascript?) feature, but I thought it's pretty cool.

Sometimes when you reply to a comment or message, you might want to quote it. There's no obvious way to do it, but all you have to do is highlight the text (so you can select the whole message or just part of it).

Voxreply1

And then when you hit "reply", the selected text will be quoted in the reply entry field.

Voxreply2

This is more useful for messages than comments (here at Vox), because there's no copy of sent messages. With my deteriorating memory, sometimes I get a response that I have no idea what it's in reference to. So please help me out if you can :)

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QotD: Should Have Been Mine

Girl, boy, game you should have won, job you should have gotten…tell us about one that got away. 
Submitted by Phil.

Well… I'm not a very competitive person by nature. I kinda let things come to me mostly. And I've been really lucky for the most part. But if there's something (or someone) I really REALLY want, I'd go all out for it (him). And when that happens, there's no stopping me, I won't let it get away without a fight.

I'm one of those who'd rather regret something I did than regret something I didn't do. So no, I can't think of one that got away (that really mattered). Maybe except my youth… it's slipping away, and there isn't a darn thing I can do about it.

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A good enough lust fantasy?

My sister and I went to a concert, “An Evening of Romantic Music”, by the UTD Musica Nova (I was part of it before, and still guest perform with them occasionally). They played works by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Barber, and even Bernstein. My favorite piece is this “Lust Fantasy” (I believe it’s called? **) by Robert Xavier Rodriguez (also the director of Musica Nova), performed by Jeff Lankov on the piano.

(** It’s Fantasia Lussuriosa in Italian)

Video1008-001

If you don’t have time (or patience/interest/whatever) to watch the whole clip, at least forward to the 5:00 mark (close to the middle of the clip but not quite… it’s about 12 min long) for an interesting twist on the performance.

The original file was huge… like 250MB. I used Helix Mobile Producer to convert it to H.264, reduced the frame size from VGA to QVGA, and the bitrate from almost 3Mbps to less than 500kbps. The resultant file is less than 40MB, and I tried uploading it to youtube but forgot that besides the 100MB size limit they also had a 10min time limit. Vox is better in this regard!!

Playback of the two files on the N95 don’t look too different. However if you do a seek, you can see the smaller file has less I-frames and so you get ghost-images for a couple of seconds if you seek to a non I-Frame (I think I set it to every 5 sec.). And of course since the resolution is different, the first file will look better output to TV, although I haven’t tried.

I’m not a good pianist by any means, but playing the piano is one of the best ways I can find to relax. It has been a tense weekend with tax returns and all, so I’m glad I had the piano for company. Plus I wanted to see if the AV Sync issue has been fixed with the firmware update. (Yes, it has!) If you like Evanescence and are brave enough to hear my playing, here’s the piano part of “Good Enough”:

Evanescence – Good Enough (Piano)

Same edits were made with HMP as with the previous clip. While the AV Sync and audio gain are much improved, I really don’t care for the washed-out effect. It’s as if someone turned the EV way up (in photos too). I think the retail version of the firmware doesn’t have this problem though (which is good). Mine is supposed to be a newer version but apparently they changed something in the wrong direction.

I guess then these are not very good examples of N95’s video capabilities? Oh well, just an excuse to share some piano music. Hope you like the first one and can tolerate the second….

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QotD: Also Known As

What's in a screen/user name? Tell us how you found yours.
Submitted by Bill.

I'm back! I've quite a few posts in the works. Let's start off with a QotD.

How did Cybette come about? Back in 1994, my first year in college… (did I just give away my age? oh what the heck)… I discovered IRC. At first I rotated among a few nickname like Cyborg and Zildjian… but people would assume I'm a guy, plus they are not unique enough and caused frequent "nick collisions". Then I met a guy online and we started dating (but that's another story…). Anyway his nickname was Cyberbabe, and I switched to using Cyberbabette. However it was kinda long and some servers didn't like that, so I trimmed its midsection and ended up with Cybette. Been using it ever since!

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Will return soon

Brb

Hey everyone, sorry for not blogging or replying comments/messages recently. Some family stuff going on that I need to attend to. Plus a new project I'm quite excited about. Anyway, I'll be returning soon. Thanks for your patience! Miss ya'll.

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QotD: Extraterrestrial

Do you believe there is intelligent life on other planets?

What do you think? :)

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Meme: Symbian history

I've been tagged by Stefan to list all the Symbian devices that I've had in my purse at one time or other. It took me a while to come up with the list… I didn't even realize I have been using Symbian devices for 4 years now! And the list is quite long too, to my own amazement. Interesting how these meme things help me discover not just more about others but also about myself…

Without further ado, here are the devices that I can remember using as a personal phone anywhere from a few days to 2 years. And yes, most are prototypes. And SOS = Symbian OS.

1. Nokia 3620, SOS 6.1, S60 1st Ed FP1. Marking my first Symbian experience around March 2003, after working with mostly Series 30 and 40 phones. It's the then-popular 3650 with regular keypad instead of the awkward circular one, as well as 850Mhz band.
2. Nokia 6620, SOS 7.0s, S60 2nd Ed FP1. Moved from a Mobile phones product group to Series 60 (before it became "S60") platform group. I only used this for about a month, but it's significant because it's my introduction to S60 2nd Edition, and the longest wait between two Symbian devices for me (more than a year).
3. Nokia 6630, SOS 8.0a, S60 2nd Ed FP2. My team spent countless weeknights and weekends (including my first trip to Finland) to deliver the video engine for this phone. It has been my primary device for the longest time, from Q3 2004 to Q3 2006. Although there was a break of a few months when my handbag was stolen in Vienna and the phone was in it… so I had to find a replacement. (And the one in the bag was a retail unit, not a proto!!). Many people don't like its funky shape, but I kinda adore that… 6630 will always have a special place in my heart. I even bought a pretty purple faceplate for it.
4. Nokia 7710, SOS 7.0s, Series 90. I think this is the only Series 90 device ever sold. Shortly after, Series 90 merged with Series 60 and became S60. 7710 has a touch screen and supports DVB-H. I used it on and off throughout 2005.
5. Nokia 6680, SOS 8.0a, S60 2nd Ed FP2. Started using this when I lost my first 6630. The two are very similar actually. However the 6680 I had was an early prototype and many things didn't work well, including the camera (which didn't work at all) so I chucked it in a corner of my drawer after less than 2 months.
6. Nokia N90, SOS 8.1a, S60 2nd Ed FP3. Another reason why I gave up on the 6680 so quickly is because I got my hands on the N90, my first NSeries device! I think it was the first flip and twist "camcorder" form factor, the predecessor of the N93. The picture quality from it was quite good actually (is this the first one with Carl Zeiss optics?), but my impression was that the FP3 was slower than FP2. Plus it was kinda bulky. Plus it was a flip (I prefer candybars). So while I had fun showing it off in Q4 2005, once I found another 6630 to use, I switched back.
7. Nokia 9500, SOS 7.0s, Series 80 v2.0. The only "Communicator" I've had so far. Because of its size, I don't use it much. But I really like the qwerty keyboard on this one, and it renders webpages and displays documents quite nicely (although quite slowly too – by todays standards). I brought it with me on a couple of trips in 2006: in place of a laptop on a leisure trip and to supplement my laptop on a business trip.
8. Nokia E60, SOS 9.1, S60 3rd Ed. Two firsts here: first ESeries device for me and first look at 3rd Edition. I used this more for development and testing than anything else, although I do like the form factor and its minimalistic look, and probably would have used it as my primary phone if I didn't have the 6630 (yeah, I had a long love affair with the 6630, so don't be surprised if I mention it again before this post is over!)
9. Nokia N93, SOS 9.1, S60 3rd Ed. I've had this for a long time… well, more precisely, I've had different proto versions of this over the course of one year. From one that you can't even charge a battery in to the current one which takes better pictures than my N95 (in my opinion). I would probably carry it around more if it were slimmer and shinier (i.e. N93i). Good phone to have as a backup nonetheless. (N93 as backup? I'm definitely spoilt!)
10. Nokia 3250, SOS 9.1, S60 3rd Ed. While I like most candybar or block designs, I didn't care for this one. Too boxy. Even the pink version of this couldn't look cute. And the keys are too small. I tried it out for a few days, and passed it on to someone else who needed it for testing. I did think the "twist" idea was kinda cool though.
11. Nokia E70, SOS 9.1, S60 3rd Ed. Another handset I used mainly for development. I tried to use it for my personal phone briefly, but found that this flip-out qwerty keyboard does not work for me too well. I actually type faster with one hand on a regular keypad like the 6630 (with T9 predictive input) than with two hands on the E70. It does have a decent camera for an ESeries device however.
12. Nokia E62, SOS 9.1, S60 3rd Ed. I received this mid-2006 to test the Chinese input feature. I didn't think too much of it at first… no camera, no WLAN. So after the initial Chinese testing, a coworker asked to borrow it for a while and I didn't see it again for several months. Got it back ~ two months ago, and began rediscovering it. The qwerty on the E62 works for me in fact. Great for SMS and emails… big screen nice for browsing the web. And I fell in love with it when I brought it with me to Hawaii. Wonder if it's something about Hawaii or something about E62? :) Anyway it's one of my current devices.
13. Nokia N73, SOS 9.1, S60 3rd Ed. With the merger and name changes of AWS / Cingular (which one are they now?) I was getting less and less reliable signals with my 6630, so I desperately needed a phone with the 850Mhz band, and found myself a quad-band N73. For making calls and surfing the web, it was more than adequate. Looks great too. But the photo quality was bad… I wasn't sure if it was a hardware issue (proto) or firmware, and I couldn't locate any updated firmware to try out. It could have continued to be my main device past Q4 2006 if the photo quality was better (like the production units). Or maybe not! Since I was lucky enough to get a …..
14. Nokia N95, SOS 9.2, S60 3rd Ed FP1. The initial firmware when I received it last November was very buggy. Apps were crashing left and right. When I updated it in January things were MUCH better. It's really fun to use and it's actually thanks to N95 that I started here on Vox. I've since gotten another firmware update, and together with the E62 (and the non-Symbian N800), they keep me happy and satisfied.
15. Nokia 6290, SOS 9.2, S60 3rd Ed FP1. Not my personal phone, but currently I use it everyday for development at work. So sometimes when I bring work home, I'll have it in my purse ;)

Whew… a great trip down memory lane. And looking forward to see what future Symbian devices will be like! In the meantime, I'm gonna tag you folks to pass on this "Symbian History" meme:

• LonelyBob
• PhoneBoy
• Stephen

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