Sunday, February 28, 2010

N Focus Episode #1: A Very Rocky Start

Well, here it is. Our first episode, and boy oh boy is it a mess. We apologize for the poor quality. Like any new endeavor, the first steps are usually the hardest, and this was certainly the case with our first N Focus video. The audio quality is ridiculous, the audio sync was off by a mile [we now know the reason for this], and my frustration of editing video footage over the course of almost half a week shows up in clearly in the final cut. All in all, this first episode, which was supposed to be such an exciting pilot, was a disaster.

However, even in light of all that, we did learn a lot about editing video on the Nokia N97 and are not discouraged one bit. We are already working on episode 2, and have found a solution to the audio sync issue. The intro [as cool as I thought it was] has been scaled down to the bare minimum, we are trying out a common yet tricky editing technique, and we're working on a fix for the sound recording quality too. Please stay tuned as we continue to grow and learn with us here at NET9 as we build our N Focus portfolio. We've got a long way to go, and this is just the beginning of the beginning.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

We're Getting N Focus

We've been busy over the last few weeks getting a grasp on the latest news from MWC 2010, and we have had a real hard time trying to keep up with all the exciting announcements. Everything from the Symbian^3 news, to the Nokia and Intel announcement of MeeGo, to the Samsung Wave with the new Bada OS and a Super AMOLED screen. Of course we can't leave out the Windows Phone 7 Series news. Sure, there's a whole lot more news we'd like to cover in more detail here, but we have been running extremely short on time lately and have come to the conclusion that we need a faster [and more entertaining] way of getting the news out.

That's why we're proud to announce N Focus, our new video channel for NET9 where we will mix as much of the latest news with our thoughts and opinions about that news. But that's not all. The way in which we are recording and editing is the most interesting part. We'll be doing it all on the mobile devices at hand. In this case, the Nokia N97. I have to say, this is the most challenging project we've tackled due to the very very very few video editing options available on the device. Needless to say, our next device will have to have slightly better than average video and photo editing software for our requirements.

We're still working on the first episode, and we hope to get your feedback as soon as we post it. As with any new project, we know there will be room for improvement, and we hope you'll stay tuned as we continue to learn and improve our content.



Friday, February 12, 2010

A Buzzing Sound Heard Around The World

The latest buzz around the web has to be the new Google Buzz feature in Gmail and Google Maps for Mobile. I won't go into detail how it works, as the site does a well enough job itself, but it's basically a real time status updater similar to Twitter or Facebook. It's social networking meets geo-location, and it works pretty well.

I've been using it since I heard about it, and the buzz is growing fast. It will be interesting to see where users take this new social tool, and of course we can't wait to see what Google has planned as well.

Follow along as we discover cool new uses for this very cool new feature.



Thursday, February 04, 2010

Huge News Surrounding Nokia And Symbian

Talk about huge news...this has to be the biggest today. Symbian is now completely Open Source, which means many things for device manufacturers, developers, and consumers alike. I believe this day will be looked back on as one of the greatest moments in mobile history.

Now there's "Top Free", "Best Sellers", and "New" tabs for the various genres of content in the store. Apparently this is will speed access to the content you are looking for. Search, it seems, is still not working at it's best though.

We're not sure if this is an actual Nokia device just yet, but if it is, we'll most likely get more information about it at MWC. From the images, it looks to be a low to mid-end device. Let's just hope the C stands for "cheap" as in price and not in terms of device quality.

The top-down racer is finally in the Ovi Store for free download [for a limited time?], and is pretty cool from my brief time playing it. Race on default tracks, custom tracks, or build your own tracks, and burn out!

Thanks to Nokia releasing free navigation for Ovi Maps, a huge number of downloads of the app have been made in just one week's time. This is big, and there's no doubt that the number

This is a pretty simple and self-explanatory application. It allows users to diagnose, troubleshoot, and configure their device on their own. Lets hope even more features are added to the list. I know I would like to see a touchscreen calibrator, brightness control, camera test, microphone speaker test, buttons test, and sensors [accelerometer, GPS, compass, etc.] test.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Latest Nokia N97 Update

The latest firmware update for the N97 is now version 21.0.045, which brings a few nice treats for device owners:

  • A little more RAM after booting [up to 53MB]
  • Improved call reliability
  • Smoother touchscreen scrolling
  • Cool new default theme [black]
  • Browser improvements [faster load times]
  • Music player improvements
  • Improved image and video stability

To me, the device is much more responsive as a whole. Smoother transitions, apps launch quicker, auto-rotate is snappier, etc. Great job Nokia!

The iPad Has No Future In The Mobile Space

That's right, I'm going outright and stating that Apple's new iPad will fail as a truly mobile device...
- It's not mobile enough [can't fit in anyone but MC Hammer's old parachute pants pockets].
- It has no built-in camera [dumb, dumb, and dumb].
- It has no definitive purpose [big smartphone? e-book reader? Internet tablet? what the heck is this thing?! at least we knew the iPod was definitely an mp3 player].
- It's being built around an operating system that already has a device [sure it can make use of all the iPhone and iPod Touch apps, but so can the iPhone and the iPod Touch!].
- It uses the micro-SIM card that hardly anyone uses...yet [okay, this is just Apple being difficult again. Can we at least get two options of the standards for the SIM format? Way to lock down a new device Apple.]