Nokia Sports Tracker

One of the best apps I have downloaded since acquiring my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is Nokia Sports Tracker (NST). A Nokia GPS enabled phone is a requirement, and while currently Nokia don't officially support the 5800, Version 2.05 works perfectly on my phone.

After some basic setting up, and entering your NST account details, you choose your activity (walking, running, cycling, skiing and other), wait for the phone to find satellite connections, and then hit start. Touch screen is supported. On the phone screen you'll see your activity time, pace and distance covered. It's not the best UI I've ever seen, but the numbers are big and clear enough. Admittedly, the 5800 screen is hopeless in direct sunlight.

If selected in the options, the block in the top left can incorporate a map, but obviously this will mean using a fair amount of data. On conclusion of your activity, you have the option to upload your workout to the net. After logging in to Sports Tracker, you will see the dashboard, which looks something like this:

The routes taken on all your workouts are colour-coded, and shown on the map beside the summary. Selecting one of the workouts presents you with more detail:

The map, courtesy of Google Maps, is now zoomed in to show your route in detail, with your points of highest and lowest altitude, as well as fastest and lowest speeds indicated. As usual with Google Maps, you can switch between map and satellite modes.

To the right of the map is the profile, showing speed and altitude against time. As you can see, heart rate is also accomodated for owners of the Nokia N79 Active, which comes bundled with a Polar Bluetooth chest strap. To my knowledge these are not available separately, which is a great pity, and a huge oversight.

One of the best features of NST is the ability to upload any photographs taken along your route. The location of each photo is indicated on the map by the camera icon, and clicking it opens a larger view. A great addition!

There is also a nice social aspect to the program, and you can choose to share your workouts with friends, create groups, comment on other people's workouts, and so on.

I'm still pretty new to the service, so there are many features that I haven't touched on here. I already have a very comprehensive cycling computer/heart rate monitor, but it'll be really great to record some of my regular routes to share with friends, and I have already started a group for my local cycling club.

Of some concern, unfortunately, are comments from TheGuru over at symbian-guru.com, that Nokia have lost interest in the service. This would be very disappointing - to my knowledge Apple don't offer anything like this for the iPhone! You can read his blog here.

Thanks for reading.

2009 Tour de France Review

Photo credit ©Sirotti

The 2009 Tour de France came to an end yesterday with Mark Cavendish taking his 6th stage win on on a packed Champs-Élysées in Paris, and Alberto Contador taking the top top step on the podium with a well deserved victory overall.

Photo credit ©Sirotti

For me, however, the last week of the Tour was an anti-climax. All the ingredients for an exciting showdown in Alps were there, but unfortunately the team tactics, and the supreme power, of the Astana Team prevented this from happening.

The gentleman's agreement that exists between cyclists prevented 7 times winner, Lance Armstrong, from showing his potential in the high mountains. Could he have attacked Contador and claimed victory for himself? We'll never know. Contador proved himself a worthy winner though, and even more than his seemingly effortless marking of any attacks on the big climbs, his victory in the final Individual Time Trial showed that he was a worthy winner of the this year's Tour.

Photo credit ©Sirotti

In second place overall, Andy Schleck of Team Saxo Bank showed his form in the mountains, and was the only rider to remotely challenge the dominance of Contador. Contador was up to the task though, but Andy has many years left in the sport, and I have no doubt he'll claim the top step in the coming years.

Photo credit ©Bettini

Third, of course, was Lance Armstrong. Some people thought Lance would win his 8th Tour this year, others wrote him off due to his age. Armstrong proved his detractors wrong, and despite some serious conflict in the Astana camp following the stage into Andorra, where Contador disobeyed team orders and attacked on the final climb, he adopted the supporting role to Contador, and undoubtedly assisted the Spaniard to his victory.

Photo credit ©Sirotti

Normally, I wouldn't comment on 4th place, but Bradley Wiggins of Garmin - Slipstream deserves a mention. A former track star, and multiple Olympic Gold Medal winner, Wiggins was, for me, the revelation of the Tour. His ability in the mountains was totally unexpected, and I would not be surprised if he were to improve on this position in the years to come.

And so, while we reflect on the last 3 weeks, I can't help looking forward to 2010.

Lance Armstrong has announced he is forming a new team with sponsorship from RadioShack, and probably with his mentor, Johan Bruyneel, at the helm. I have no doubt Armstrong will be the undisputed leader of the new team, which is as it should be. There is only room for 1 leader in a team. At 35, can Armstrong make a bid for win number 8? Contador and Schleck will have other ideas, but Lance will be better prepared after a full year training and racing; I'm looking forward to it already!

Thanks for reading.

The Problem with Nokia Music

I was really excited to see that Nokia Music had been updated to version 1.3; hopefully some useful functionality had at last been added. But once again I was disappointed.

I own a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and when I chose this phone, I imagined that it would replace my aging iPod Nano as my MP3 player of choice. After all, this was Nokia's music phone, and my expectations were high. iPods have been around for ages, so surely Nokia would have raised the bar in terms of functionality?

Well, apparently the programmers working on the Nokia Music application have never heard of the iPod, nor do they have much interest in music.

You see, I listen to a lot of music via my PC (MediaMonkey) and my MP3 player, and my music collection on my PC is in excess of 30Gb. However, with only 8Gb available on my Nano I am able to keep my music fresh and valid with the use of 3 key function:

1. Ratings: I use the simple star functions to rate the music I like most. These can be changed on the Nano while I am listening to the track, and they automatically update the ratings on my PC when I sync.
2. Play count and Last Played: Similarly, this data is updated on my PC when I sync.
3. Auto Playlists: Most important of all, I have created autoplaylists on my PC that update the Playlist based on the above.

Based on the above, fresh playlists of all my favourite tracks are created every time I connect my iPod to my PC. Depending on the set of autoplaylists selected for the device, recently listened to tracks are automatically removed and new content is added.

Doesn't everyone do this?

Why then does Nokia's premier phone and PC app not have any of this essential functionality?

In fact, while it is relatively easy to add new music to the phone via the useful drag & drop function, I have still not been able to successfully remove older content with Nokia Music, let alone conduct a proper 'sync'. After having had to reformat my memory card twice I have given up trying, and now use the very basic music app included in PC Suite.

Nokia have put a lot of work into the Nokia Music Store, which is accessed via the Nokia Music app. However, tracks downloaded from the Store have DRM embedded, so despite the reasonable pricing (in SA), I won't be bothering anytime soon. The 'My Music' player side of the app is slow and clunky. It battles with my mere 30Gb; how would it be with 100Gb?

What the team at Nokia seem to have forgotten, however, is that people actually listen to their music, both on the PCs and on their MP3 players, and for that to work properly, Nokia Music has to be their music player of choice. I'll be sticking with MediaMonkey!

Thanks for reading.

Tour de France Entry List

The 2009 version of the Tour de France is underway, and after the first 2 stages it looks set to be one of the best races in a while.

I prepared a crib sheet of all the riders and teams, which you can download here.

How to Improve the Google Experience

We all know that Google has expanded far beyond just Search, but from the outside looking in, it feels like Google have developed a whole bunch of individual apps, and are now trying to link them up. This is understandable, as many of these apps were companies Google bought out when they showed some promise in the market. Obviously, we mere mortals are not privy to the Google Master Plan, but the whole process seems very disjointed to me.

Central to Google’s effort are Contacts. This is the Facebook equivalent to ‘Friends’, and is the list of people you communicate with regularly, via Gmail or Chat, tag or share with in Picasa Web Albums, share blogs with in Reader, and if you’re using Google Sync, speak to on your cell phone. Web 2.0 is about Social Networking, and Social Networking is about friends, and Contacts are your Google friends. That’s great, but I just think the integration has been poorly executed to date. Let me explain.

In Picasa Web Albums they introduced face recognition. It’s a brilliant technology, and often surprises me with its accuracy. The app chooses a common face from the album you’re analysing, then offers a list of your Contacts to choose from. If the person is not a contact, you can then add their name and that name is added to your contacts. Google assumes that anyone you’re prepared to name in a photo deserves to be on your Contacts list. I actually don’t have a problem with that, although the result is that my ‘All Contacts’ is full of our kids’ friends, who still being in the single digits age-wise, don’t have cell phones or email addresses!

Anyway, where Google could improve the process, in my opinion, is when it comes to adding details to those contacts. After clicking on ‘Add a picture’ on their page in Contacts, you’re presented with a number of options to add a picture:

However, choosing the Picasa Web Albums option should take you to a suitable series of their tagged photos, but it doesn’t. It gives you a list of all your albums, and you have to hunt for that elusive photo that you tagged in the first place!

In Reader the integration is even worse. You have the option to share items from reader with your friends. The options are your Friends, or Chat buddies. Problem is, is that Friends refers to your ‘Friends’ part of your Contacts. Click on friends, and they’re all given access. Ah, there’s an option to remove each individually, that’s great. Remove a couple who you don’t think would be interested in your reading habits, and guess what? They’ve been removed from your Friends within Contacts! Next, you want to share with someone from Family, or perhaps a Co-worker? Can’t be done, unless you add them to Friends of course. Come on Google, this is an easy one to fix.

One of the features I would love to see Google add, with regard to Contacts, is integration with Calendar. Google recently added a function to add birthdays and anniversaries to your Contacts. So how hard would it be to automatically add those dates into Calendar? Problem is, Google Calendar doesn’t know how to handle birthdays. It adds them as all day events, which is fine within their app. It adds a pretty little block to the top of the specified day. However, sync that with your phone’s calendar, and you end up with an event running from midnight to midnight. Google needs to take a leaf out of almost any other Calendar; it needs options to add birthdays/anniversaries, reminders and notes to the main calendar, in addition to meetings, and the newly added Tasks. Unfortunately, Tasks don’t get added to the main calendar, so aren’t included in the sync.

I don’t think these changes would be that hard to implement. If there’re any Google employees reading, how about using your 20% time to fix these?

Thanks for reading.

Are You Ready To Do The Google Wave?

I’m a big fan of Google; like most people I use Search, but I also use Gmail, Calendar, Reader and Docs on a daily basis. I also use Picasa for quick viewing my photos, and Picasa Web Albums to share them on the internet. I use Google Maps, Earth and obviously Blogger.

There are other products that do the same thing, and I use some of those too, but I like the way that Google is starting to integrate these services. For example, when you use the face recognition feature in Web Albums, it offers a list of your contacts (just like Facebook’s photo tagging), and if you add someone new, it automatically adds that person to your contacts.

Contacts has now been given its own page, as well as being bundled with Gmail, which indicates Google has bigger plans for Contacts than just email.

Which brings us to Google Wave. If you haven’t heard about Google Wave yet, you can read about it here. In it’s simplest form, Google Wave is described as next generation email, or as Lars Rasumussen (one of the developers) put it, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”

But it’s so much more than that. Google Wave combines email and instant messaging, and offers them in real time. It also allows drag and drop functionality for adding photos to a ‘wave’, which then immediately become visible to the other participants in the wave. Oh, did I mention that any wave can have multiple participants? All you have to do to add people is drag them in from your Contacts list. If they’re on-line, indicated by a green dot, the wave will pop up in their in-box and they’ll be able to join the conversation. If they’re off-line, they’ll be able to open the wave and read it like an email, and doing so would bring the wave back to live status.

I can imagine that if you had a number of people commenting simultaneously it might become very busy; all this live action might take some getting used to.

So what is Google really trying to do? I see this as Google’s entry into social networking. Consider Facebook. Facebook has  a profile page and a list of Friends, Google also has a Profile page and its Contacts. Facebook allows sharing of photos and the facility to allow friends to comment, Google Wave does the same. Facebook shows which friends are on-line, and allows instant messaging. Google Wave has a dynamic combination of email and IM.

The major difference in their approach is push and pull. Google Wave requires one to ‘push’ the content to one’s friends; on Facebook one uploads content and relies on friends accessing (‘pulling’) it. Which system is better remains to be seen.

One of the common complaints is that there are too many ways to communicate on-line. I would love one communication tool. Facebook has a form of microblogging, photo sharing, IM and is soon going to add email. This must be a worry to Google. They already have email, IM and photo sharing, but Wave combines them into one application, adds Twitter integration, gaming, document collaboration (did I mention those?), and a lot more.

Will people want both services, or will people choose between them. At the end of the day, I think people will go with whichever service offers the cleanest, simplest user interface, and I fear Google Wave might be too complicated and confusing. It’ll certainly gain a lot of attention when it’s released later this year, and I can’t wait to give it a try.

Thanks for reading.

Nashua Mobile Sucks

An agent from my cell phone service provider (Nashua Mobile) phoned the other day to advise that I was legible for an upgrade if I was prepared to sign-up for another 24 month contract. Standard practice. No objection. I asked him what my options were; I had had my eye on the new Nokia 5800:

	Current	Option #1	Option #2a
	MTN MyCall 100	MTN AnyTime 200	Vodacom Weekender
Monthly Included Minutes:	85 off peak mins 15 peak minutes	86 any time mins (approx)	120 off peak mins
Once off cost:	R0.00	R0.00	R1,799.00
Cost/month:	R135.00	R257.50	R135.00
Cost/24 months:	R3,240.00	R6,180	R5,039

Unfortunately, MTN have discontinued their popular MyCall 100 package, so my preference was for the Vodacom Weekender; it offered the most similar package to my current package, which had always been adequate for my needs, at a similar monthly cost. What I didn’t like was the once off charge; it seemed excessive for a mid-range phone.

So I shopped around:

	Option #2b
	Vodacom Weekender
Monthly Included Minutes:	120 off peak mins
Once off cost:	R299.00
Cost/month:	R135.00
Cost/24 months:	R3,539.00

That sounded a lot better. Phone Nashua Mobile back and sent I wanted to give notice on my contract asap, and port my number to Vodacom and a new service provider. “That early termination, and will incur a penalty”, I was informed, “there’s still 4 weeks until the end of the contract.” Now I was prepared to pay the monthly subs until the end of my contract, so why the penalty? Because I wanted to port my number (retain my number, despite switching to Vodacom). OK, how bad could it be, there’s only 4 weeks remaining (I didn’t want to miss the offer I had been quoted on):

R2,622.00! You’re kidding me, right?

Well, screw ‘em. I have been a customer with Nashua Mobile since my very first cell phone all those years ago, except for the 2 years I was overseas, and even then I went back to them when I returned, and now they’re pulling this petty ‘early termination’ crap because they can’t match the deal their competitor’s offering. Times are hard, and loyalty takes 2^nd place to price I’m afraid.

So on Friday I filled out the cancellation form, and next weekend I'll sign a new contract with Vodacom, via the VodaShop. I thought that was the end of it. No way! This morning I received the following SMS:

"From Nashua Mobile at 01/06/2009 09:07 Your subscription discount of R50.00 expires on 01/06/2009. Please note that standard charges will now be applicable."

This discount was part of the agreement when I renewed my contract 2 years ago, so I'm pretty sure they can't change the terms, but it's just not worth the argument. 

Come on Nashua Mobile, you’re better than this. Keep your customers with good service and the best prices. Don’t resort to underhand tactics to try and keep your customers; you’ll lose every time!

Thanks for reading.