What I liked in Nokia N900/Maemo

It’s been more than a week since I started using Nokia N900 smart phone. At the same time an android phone visited me (Samsung Galaxy S) which failed to impress! I continued using N900 & handed that device over to Santosh to write a guest review on Tech Bangalore. Since it’s too late to write a detailed review of N900, I’m just pointing out what all features I liked on this phone.

Build:

Many said it’s bulky/heavy, but I personally like the way it is built. It perfectly sits in my hands & makes it totally comfortable to use QWERTY keyboard. You will feel it’s bulkiness when you keep it in pocket, you cannot keep anything other than the N900 in your pocket!

Browser:

Almost all N900 reviews talk more about browser! Though I had an option of using Firefox (AFAIK only smart phone which runs Firefox), I liked using the default browser. Default browser is powered by mozilla technology & gives desktop browsing experience. I was really impressed by capabilities of this browser. For ex: Few days ago I wrote a simple location aware foursquare app using Geo APIs supported by Firefox. Out of curiosity I tried accessing this app from N900 & voila, N900 gave my application GPS location & my app worked perfectly fine. I had actually written the code without any intentions of accessing GPS location, all done by the browser.

Angry Birds!

Killing time in power cuts is not that easy. Angry Birds make me feel like Power, don’t come for another hour please!. Angry Birds is a simple yet very addictive game which first came on Maemo & then launched for iPhone too. It’s one of the most selling games on iPhone app store. Game is simple, just throw birds at pigs and kill them!

Vagalume:

I hugely rely on last.fm (I don’t know how many times I said that!) for music. I wouldn’t buy a phone if it can’t play last.fm radio, it is so important for me. Vagalume is a last.fm client for Maemo platform which can play last.fm radios. Unlike other last.fm clients I have seen, vagalume automatically downloads free tracks on last.fm while playing a radio. That means, it plays that track locally instead of streaming it again. One more unique feature I liked on Vagalume is that, you can enter a last.fm url & play that radio. It can be friend’s library, friend’s loved track, similar artists page…anything.

Joikuspot:

The application which enables you to carry wifi hotspot wherever you go, Joikuspot is my favorite right from the day they launched it for Symbian. Thanks to MyNokiaWorld which gave away a premium license of Joikuspot to me. If you aren’t already aware of, Joikuspot uses your GPRS/EDGE/3G connection & converts your phone into a wifi hotspot. Other devices like laptops, iPod touch, tablets can connect to this hotspot & access internet.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) has this feature inbuilt, you don’t have to install/buy any application to do it.

Tunewiki Widget:

Tunewiki widget automatically fetches lyrics of the song you are currently playing on N900′s music player. Tunewiki syncs the lyrics with the playback which enables you to sing with your favorite track. This can be ultimate karaoke machine!!

I wrote about only these many features to just to maintain uniqueness of my writeup. There are lot other things which I like on N900 like unified conversations, unified contacts, camera, email client, customizable multiple desktops, community support….and lot others.

As a special offer to Tech Bangalore readers, you will get a stereo bluetooth  headset free with the purchase of N900 worth Rs.4000. Store price of the handset is around Rs.24k. Leave a comment below to know how to avail this exclusive offer.

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Norton 360 is a complete security solution for PCs, not just an anti-virus software. It includes lot of tools which makes your PC totally safe. Let’s go through each one of them in brief:

PC Security:

Norton 360 comes with all in one set it & forget it automated virus & spyware protection. This system effectively blocks viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, worms, bots, and rootkits. Norton Bootable Recovery Tool repairs, restores and boots severely infected, which is very useful when your PC is not booting because of an infection. Norton has Real-time SONAR technology which detects emerging spyware and viruses before traditional definitions are available making sure you are protected from upcoming threats. Norton firewall quietly defends against hackers from hacking your PC.

Identity protection:

Norton Identity protection securely stores your login, credit card details & makes it easy to shop at online stores. It guards against key-loggers by auto filling the forms with your credentials. Blocks phishing websites automatically to make sure your personal information doesn’t land in wrong hands.

Back up & Restore:

Norton backup allows you to back up important data securely on their servers. Backup can be setup in three simple steps:

What? – What all data you want to backup. Select all the directories which you want to backup.

Whare? – Where you want to store the backup. You will get to choose between local drive & online storage which Norton provides. Norton provides upto 25 GB of online storage based on the package you are buying.

When? – When you want to run backups. Here you can choose between Automatic, weekly, monthly or manual.

PC Tuneup:

PC tuneup comes with set of tools which helps keep your PC clean. Disk optimization optimizes the hard drive and free ups more disk space. PC Tuneup automatically finds and fixes the problems which are making your PC slow. It also has clean up utilities to take care of unwanted temporary files & cookies which improves the start-up speed of the computer.

Overall Norton 360 is a total solution with set it & forget it protection. You have to go through the setup only once & concentrate on work which you want to do rather thinking about security risks.

Every website uses services like Stat Counter, Google Analytics to tracks visitors & get detailed analytics about their visitors. But, these tracking systems are mainly concentrated at visits made from computers. Though it tracks visits from mobile devices, details are very less. With growing smart phone popularity, you can’t just ignore this space. I personally underestimated traffic which comes from mobile devices to Tech Bangalore, which I found 20% of overall traffic after enabling mobile analytics!

PercentMobile:

PercentMobile is a free mobile analytics service which gives granular details about visitors browsing your website from mobile devices. Details which PercentMobile gives you is just awesome, like, how many devices were wifi enabled, how many were touch screen, how many were smart phones, how many had QWERTY keyboard…etc. PecentMobile also lists all the devices which are used to browse your website.

I enabled PercentMobile for Tech Bangalore few days ago & above screenshot shows how much detail you can get from PercentMobile. Screenshot is partial, there’s more to look in analytics, like Network provider, region, most visited URLs, referrer…etc.

So, head over to PercentMobile & enable mobile analytics to your website!

Bump Top is a 3D desktop environment which aims to provide user an interface to manage desktop which is close to real desk. Bump Top converts your desktop into a 3D environment where you can play around with the icons, pile up similar files,  and do hell lot of stuff using well defined gestures. Though Bump Top works on normal desktops & laptops, it’s more usable & intuitive on touch screen tablets. Have a look at this video which can give you an idea about Bump Top:

Acquisition by Google:

Google has acquired Bump top few days ago. There is no clear picture about what Google is going to do with it. First thing which comes to my mind is Chrome OS, next Android & then rumored tablet from Google! Definitely, Google isn’t really interested in the product & more interested in technology which it can use in it’s various products. As a result of this acquisition Bump Top will no longer be available to download, after a week.

So, this is your last chance to download and try it out if you haven’t yet done. Download it over here and have fun playing with your desktop!

Seriously, been using free anti virus since years, but my computer is still vulnerable & keep getting affected again & again. I don’t understand why they aren’t powerful. For me, an anti-virus software should be “Install & Forget”, it should be capable of taking care off all sorts of malicious bad software, trojans, spywares & let me concentrate on work!

Norton Internet Security 2010 does just what I wanted to. It takes care of all bad stuff & allows me to do my work peacefully. As you can see in the below screenshot, NIS has got really nice dashboard which tell you everything about current processes.

Clicking on the performance button shows how NIS is performing on your machine, how many issues it has found, details of the issues it found, memory/CPU consumption ..etc, everything plotted over a nice graph.

Elegant settings window allows you to configure NIS as per your requirements. Certain things which you might already know like scheduling scans, network settings, computer settings, web settings, everything comes under this. All these settings have a simple button which can turn ‘on’ or ‘off’ anytime .

We surf internet all the time. But, the fact is we find new sites via search engines (or I can say just Google?). NIS nicely integrates with Google search results page & shows whether the listed links are safe to visit or not. In my opinion this itself hugely reduces chance of getting infected!

With NIS you can have better understanding of installed applications. Norton scans every installed application & automatically finds out whether to trust the application or not & assigns proper access rights. Norton also tracks CPU & memory usage history of all applications!

Today, my friend’s came come with an infected thumb drive & asked me to format it since he was unable to fix it with the free anti-virus he had. I just plugged the thumb drive in, NIS automatically scanned the drive, found the threat!! I just clicked “Fix” & bingo! NIS took around 5 to 10 seconds to fix it & all the data was safe.

It just covers everything! I don’t think my PC would ever get affected with NIS installed on it! There’s still a lot of settings & configuration available, I just gone through few which impressed me.

I have been using Windows Seven from few days. For those who (still) don’t know about Windows Seven, it’s the successor of Windows Vista. Seven looks a lot better than all other windows including XP. I am completely using it on my laptop. Seven simplifies lot of things which used to be pain before with old OSs.

On fresh installation of windows seven, with no PC Suite installed, no drivers installed, I simply connected Nokia N97 to check what happens. Voila!! Seven automatically detects the phone & gives a pop up with options to add music, browse pictures, browse files…etc. This makes life hell lot simpler!! Checkout the screenshot below (Click to Enlarge):

Well, there are already ‘n’ number of reviews out there on web about Nokia N97! So, I don’t want to go through all that again. This write up is only concentrated on Internet capabilities of N97. So, let’s start!

Browser:

When we are talking about internet, first thing comes up in mind is Browser. Nokia N97 has very powerful web browser which is capable of loading almost any website on internet. Pages render much faster compared to browser on S60 3rd edition phones. Browser comes with advanced features like “Overview” where you can see the whole web page & select any area to zoom in. User can also tap on any portion of the web page to zoom in & tap again to zoom out. Javascript/AJAX fields, dropdown box works well as in PC browser. Browser supports tabbed browsing, but my complaint about the browser remains since there is no option to open a new tab (or concurrent window). New tab open only when you are clicking on a link which open in new window (target=_blank). Overall browser experience is amazing with powerful browser & a wide display, I prefer browsing in landscape mode.

Email/Calendar/Contact Synchronization:

Though Nokia has it’s own push email service Nokia Mail, I prefer System Seven push email service for it’s simplicity. Both of them are really good in features & real time email. I configured two email IDs on Seven, one is Gmail & the other one Google Apps email. Similar to Nokia Email, Seven also provides calendar & contacts synchronization. Personally I don’t prefer to use contact synchronization since it messes up the Phonebook. But calendar sync is one amazing feature I use a lot, create an entry either on web or phone, it’s reflected everywhere.

for Business users:

It’s time to say bye to Blackberrys where business users are forced to use completely business oriented phones & not at all looking at personal life! Configuring Microsoft Exchange server is 10 minutes job! Just install MFE (Mail For Exchange) & configure server details to start using it. MFE also provides contacts & calendar synchronization. Right now N97 is not listed under supported devices for MFE, but I can see a blank MFE folder in the phone which gives a clue that MFE might be out for N97 soon. If your Outlook server provides Web Access (webmail), it can also be configured on System Seven. Users can also open attachments including MS Word, Excel & PowerPoint, edit them & send it back. Though editing requires Quick Office license, it shouldn’t be a big overhead for corporates. So, N97 fills all your requirement as a business user & also let’s you enjoy multimedia features on phone.

Facebook, Orkut:

Nokia bundles Facebook application with the phone. This app is seriously made for the phone, just perfectly fits in! Facebook app let’s you perform all the operations you do in web interface. Update status, view friends status messages, accept/decline friend requests, view photo galleries…etc. Unlike Facebook there’s no bundled app for Orkut, but you can get it by going to m.google.com/orkut on phone’s browser. Orkut app also works really well & let’s you do all stuff, but since this is not really made for N97 (J2ME App), app is not touch sensitive. You have to use navigation keys on keyboard to navigate through menus.

Twitter – Gravity:

I have been using Gravity from day 1 it got released. I must say it’s *the* best app I ever used on a Symbian device. To all who still don’t know about Gravity, it’s an S60 twitter client with hell lot of features! Gravity has a very nice, glossy user interface with options to do almost everything. I have seen lot of iPhone Twitter Apps, all of them load a new page when tapped on a tweet. But Gravity loads all the options inline with a smooth slide down effect when tapped on a Tweet, which is so convenient & reduces number of clicks to achieve certain task. It’s clear that developer of Gravity gives a lot of concentration towards usablity of the app. With additional support for other services like Twitpic, Posterous, MobyPicture, Yfrog, Instapaper, img.ly, TwitGoo, Delicious…etc Gravity makes N97 an awesome Tweeting device!

Feed Reading – Google Reader:

Feed Reading is a daily exercise for me to keep up with the latest news & trends. And there is no better option than Google reader for feed reading. Mobile version of Google Reader isn’t that great & there are no good application on Symbian platform yet for it. But there is a separate version of Google Reader for iPhones! This AJAXified iPhone version of  Google Reader can be accessed over http://google.com/reader/i . You can also perform Star, Share, Share with Note, Email operations for each feed entry. Since Nokia’s browser is also built on same platform (webkit), this version is well supported on N97.

Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Skype – Fring:

Fring is a IM/VoIP client for Symbian phones which supports multiple protocols including Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger & Skype. Fring helps you keep in touch with friends on the move. Fring not just enables you to chat with your friends, but also let’s you make a call & talk as in Google talk or Skype. Call quality will be better when you are connected to a WiFi network since India still don’t have 3G.

So I have got enough reasons to say Nokia N97 is an ultimate internet device!

What you say!?

Though I started photo blogging long back, not shared it with anyone. www.bangalorepix.com is the photo blog I started long back. Photos posted at Bangalore Pix are live pictures. I posts them from phone itself once I take them. I am using Flickr’s post to blog feature which creates unique email ID to post pictures. Sending pictures to that ID will not only posts it to Flickr, but also specified blog. I am also using twitterfeed to post tweets about the new photo entry to Twitter.

The Big Idea:

The big idea behind this photo blog will come into picture in long run. There are drastic changes happening in Bangalore due to Bangalore Metro & few road widening projects. As I keep posting pictures of different streets, popular places of Bangalore, in few years you can see how the place was looking before & now. And that’s keep continuing! I have taken this as my lifetime project & keep posting till my end! It will be a great experience to look back at old pictures taken years ago.

Right now I am using Nokia E66 to post the pictures, but picture quality is not so good since it has 3.2 MP camera. It will be great if somebody sponsors a good camera phone (Nokia? Sony Erricson? Samsung?)

GoAnimate.com

Creating animation was always a professional job, you should be master in many tools to create one. But Go Animate, an online tool which makes easy to create animation without any expert/professional knowledge. At Go Animate you can create, share animations & watch animations created by others.

Go Animate provides you with simple interface using which you can drag & drop characters, give transition effects, background music, talk bubbles…etc. To start with, you can use available templates & modify it according to your taste. For ex: I used a template & changed the characters faces with my friends faces! Check out that animation below: