Phones

The hilarious thing about Nokia’s slavish devotion to the Windows platform is that Microsoft themselves has banned their employees from buying Nokia phones. Microsoft encourage their employees to buy smart phones using Windows mobile edition and Nokia uses the Symbian OS.

I’m reading Dealing with Darwin; How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of their Evolution. My biggest take away so far is that incremental innovation doesn’t pass muster. But that’s exactly the kind of innovation our industry has prided itself in so far — the nice protect the status quo kind of innovation. You have to go bold or go home; creating a breakaway product with a clear value proposition that cannot be beat. The IPOD and Motorola Razor are the latest example. The last time anyone in the newspaper industry did this was with the launch of USATODAY.

Today, I am very sad to report that my Nokia N-Gage cell phone has officially taken a permanent dirt nap. That’s right, after almost two solid years of phone calls, emails, text messages, Tiger Woods’ Golf and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the N-Gage has gone down swinging.

On a lighter note, and in preparation for our trip, I’ve added a little Google Map to the sidebar. It’ll show you where we are, so long as I can get enough signal to update our location on the blackberry.

I tried using the Treo 650 over a year ago and hated the phone. It’s bluetooth was horrible and they keyboard was so small, it was impossible to really type effectively on it. The Treo 700/750 hasn’t been widely available for GSM yet so I kept looking to the most obvious choice, Blackberry. I wasn’t thrilled about spending the monthly Blackberry connection fee that most carriers charge. The fee to use your Blackberry is typically much higher than just having unlimited GPRS/EDGE access. I kept looking around and came across the Nokia E61. The phone had most of what I wanted but it wasn’t yet released in the US. I looked around on eBay and found a store near by that had the phone for $350 all in. I picked up a Nokia E61 a few days before Labor Day and have been playing with it for the last three weeks.

Since I’m not working this week and my sister is away on vacation, I thought I’d spend some relaxing time with my mother. Well, it was fun but not exactly relaxing! We started with a list: She wanted to get a new digital box for her TV (and my sister had kindly mentioned that I knew how to set it up - she thinks if I know computers I must know digital TV. It’s all electrical, right?). We had to collect a package, go to the bank, buy some shoes and I wanted to introduce her to my new hobby - making greeting cards - so we had to visit a craft shop. Then of course we needed to get to work on sbc dsl satillite. We got all the errands completed in less than 2 hours, then went for lunch and did some grocery shopping. She’d finally decided on a digital box and a new VCR/DVD player, so I spent 3 hours trying to get them to all work together. We also bought all the craft stuff, but didn’t get a chance to play with it. We did get to sbc dsl satillite, but not until late. At the end of the day, I was wiped out but my mother was still going strong and settled down for her first experience of QVC. I wouldn’t mind, but she’s 86!

Did you know Nokia phones come with a reserve battery? Just press the keys *3370# and your cellphone will restart with this reserve and you will have a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged the next time you charge your phone.

In a wireless world it is hard to write about something looks like a box of spaghetti when it arrives. I was intrigued by the technology of this choker-style microphone. Everyone who saw me with this laughed and commented on some S&M choker reference, but it’s not for the office or home. It’s for paintball, watersports, motorsports. I tested the product using my Treo 650 and Treo 700 mobile phones and my Motorola FRS Talkabout radios but it did not work with the Chatterbox Communicators.

So here I am, yippie! I am also looking for a mobile app to blog with. As many of you know I have a Treo 650 (yeah I’m a HUGE geek) but it helps me stay connected, so help out if you know of something.