4 posts tagged “smstextnews”
Thanks to the complete and utter uselessness of some of the 'essential' gadgets I took away with me to Glastonbury this year, the blogging has fallen somewhat short! I shall endeavour to catch up forthwith...
In the meantime - if gadgets are your thing - take a look at this post that I wrote for SMS Text News last Wednesday, (in the car, en route to the festival - in fact I believe it was somewhere between this video and this picture to be precise), outlining just a few(!) of the technological wonders that I was packing in my rucksack...
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Evening readers, Whatley here, writing this on my laptop en route to Pilton for the festival that is known as Glastonbury.
As you know from my last post, the multitude of tools available to the modern day, festival going mobile geek really is quite something... So here, for your pleasure, is a quick rundown of what I am taking with me, starting with the hardware...
Handsets:
I’ve packed my N95, my N95 8GB and my E61i. The E61i is perfect as an ‘emergency’ as the battery on that baby is HUGE and it lasts FOREVER, (well – about 5 days). So if it all goes pear-shaped I can resort to using that. The N95s I’m going to tag-team throughout the day/festival. One to carry with me and one to charge. Speaking of chargers...
Power:
When it comes to keeping the batteries fully topped up, I’ve covered all bases with this one. I’ve got a Nokia DC-8 battery charger, bought this today, £25. Steep, but I’m a sucker for the branded stuff. :-) It’s worked ok so far.
I’ve also got a Free Loader Solar Charger – this thing gets kudos just for the fact that out of all of the chargers, this was the only one that came with a Nintendo DS adaptor. Which made my girlfriend very happy indeed; Mario Kart for her while I type this passing Stonehenge, (fact).
Finally I have a ‘GoHello’ wind-up charger and, as Ben Smith so rightly said in the last podcast, "they ain’t called 'wind-ups' for nothing" ...seriously, I’ve got nothing out of this thing yet. Nothing. Boo.
On top of all that lot, I’ve got four N95 batteries. All (currently) fully charged. So we shall see how long they last!
Software:
Well, stuff like Qik, Google Maps, VOX, SpinVox, Moblog etc... I kinda covered this last time round. I want to talk about the new stuff. Since writing that original piece I’ve acquired two pieces of software; both of which have – so far – impressed me much.
First up is ‘ViewRanger’.
I downloaded this in the week and first take I thought ‘What a load of
rubbish’. However... THEN I downloaded the Glastonbury specific maps –
aka ‘Worthy Farm’ – and WOW, was I impressed! Check out this screenshot:
You can see that they’ve pre-loaded the app with the relative ‘points of interest’ – heh – and if I hit ‘GPS’ it’ll tell me where I am. Rock on. Can’t wait to use this properly.
The other piece of software is from Orange. It’s called ‘GlastoNav’ and at first I really couldn’t get this to work..
..however, once they ironed out the gremlins etc this little app has turned out to be very handy indeed. Not only can I look at the (much richer interpretation) of the map, but also I can plan my schedule for the event... and THEN I can share that schedule with my fellow festival-goers!
That – so far – has again, really impressed me. :-)
For actual ‘mobile’ stuff, that’s all. But, I have also been given some other cool pieces of gadgetry to use/play with. One is the Flip, which I think Ewan has spoken about a fair amount – my only problem with this is that once my hour of recording is up, I can’t upload it until I get to a USB connection. Bah! We’ll see how I get on with that one... The other piece of REALLY COOL stuff I’ve been given is the Loc8tor which, hand on heart, is the best thing yet (in theory anyway).
I attach the small part to something I might lose (i.e. the other half) and then, if I do lose her, I switch the big part on and it beeps to tell me how close I am etc... I had a play before I left the house and it rocked my socks. So... again, we’ll see how we get on.
That’s it from me, I’m nearly at Glastonbury and my laptop is about to die. Thanks to Ben Smith for editing this for me and putting the media in etc... You can keep up with my exploits at http://www.glastonblog.co.uk.
See you soon!
J.
In the first of this year's Glastonblog-posts -
I bring you a quick review of last year's gadgetry plus a view towards this year's...
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Greetings readers, your friendly neighbourhood Whatley here!
While some of us are off gallivanting around the Maldives... sorry, ahem... A DESERT ISLAND ...other bloggers, like myself, have to make do with the festival season to amuse themselves here back in the UK.
And what better festival other than the Mother of all festivals: Glastonbury!
:)
Yes, it really IS that muddy. I took that photo myself.
Last year, I think I’m pretty safe in saying;
I was the ONLY person to live blog Glastonbury from a mobile phone.
Yes. That’s right, I blogged the whole darn thing (well as much as my battery would allow) from my Nokia N95-1 (the original silver one, the one with the REALLY poor battery, y’know?).
In fact the only reason my current blog exists is because of my then(?) obsession with Mobile Blogging.
You can go back and read some of my exploits here, here and here if you’d like.
But really, all you need to know is, at the time, the only way I could do this (AFAIK) was through VOX.
VOX has a neat little application that sits on some/most Nseries phones that you can download and is also available as one of the upload options in the Share Online app, also found on most Nseries phones.
Power wise, again only for last year, I had three N95 batteries (BL-5Fs for the true geeks among you) and these two things below:
That on the left is an independent battery charge-base and that on the right, a portable double AA battery powered phone charger.
The former proved itself to be extremely useful, then and indeed over the past year of ownership too. With that handy little device I can always have one battery in my phone, while another charges. This, of course, is all well and good until you go and lose the damn thing... which is what I did a matter of days ago.
I digress.
The thing on the right, I bought that from Amazon, thing is mind...
It . Was. Rubbish.
In fact I think it actually USED more battery power than it actually gave back. I ended up passing it onto some fellow festival-ite in our circle of tents...it conveniently came with a bunch of other adaptors – not just Nokia; covered SE, Motorola, Blackberry... the lot. You name it. So at least that much was handy about it...
However, for me – it was no good...
And don’t even start me on the quite frankly RIDICULOUS "Orange Charge Tent".
I mean, who wants to QUEUE for an hour to charge their handset, only to discover that when they get to the front, they then have to wait around for a further two hours to watch their phone charge at an unsecured bar.
Joined up thinking really not their speciality it would seem...
So... How did I stay charged?
Well, while the Orange monkeys were missing out on potentially 3hrs of great music, I managed to find a little store amongst the clothes stalls and falafel vendors, which specialised in phone charging.
You paid a fiver a go and it was kept under lock and key and all was fine. The system the guy had running behind him reminded me a little of chargebox and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were one and the same... I’ll ask them this year and see. Anyway, this little store became a daily haunt for my good self.
In the morning I’d get up, review any content from the night before, write a quick post or two and then upload as much as I could before my battery died. After that I’d mosey on down to aforementioned phone charging establishment, pay my fiver, and then go off and meet friends who I’d arranged to meet at a later time (do you remember when we did that?!).
Later that afternoon I would pick up my phone, liaise with all the folk that had been trying to reach me for God knows how long, and then get off to another stage where upon I’d take more photos/videos that I would later, no doubt upload.
Lovely stuff.
So aside from the not-so-brilliant portable phone charger, last year was a reasonable success.
But what about this year?
Well, my VOX blog is still up and running.
So I’ve got that working just fine, but now – look at all the other things I can do!
I can upload via SMS, MMS or Email via Moblog.
I can simply make a phone call and speak a blog post through SpinVox.
I can boot up Qik and stream LIVE content direct to the internet. Not only direct to my QIK page, but if I hit ‘55’ while I’m streaming, my 500-odd followers on Twitter will get told about it too!
The plethora of Social Tools now available to the modern, festival-going geek, really... truly... is a spectacle to behold.
I shall be using ALL of those services/apps/tools I’ve listed above... and probably more.
The question is Dear Readers, which ones do YOU think I should be using?
What should your Mobile Geek of Glastonbury be packing in his rucksack to ensure a complete all round mobile performance?
Leave your suggestions below or, if you have anything you want showcased/tested over the coming festival season, email ewan@smstextnews.com
Yes – I know he’s on a 'desert island', but he’s already emailed me twice today with two new products that he’s been sent to give to me try out in the mud of Pilton...
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The Glastonblog begins!
"I'm holding a phone! I work with phones. That counts as work"
Anywhoo - if that's the case then that's me over there
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Being busy.
:p
Ok ok ok - so I've been neglecting my VOX a little bit of late. I've had some good reasons mind. Most of which will hopefully become clear by the time you finish reading.
Er... that is if you finish reading at the end of this post. Not if you finish reading NOW for instance.
That'd be rubbish.
So let's crack on shall we?!
Right - the 'to-blog' list from my last-but-one post read a little something like this:
- My business trip to San Francisco, (well - everything that happened after the first 24hrs anyway)
- Social Networks through SpinVox
- And all of the news and coverage that followed that... Because it's NOW LIVE folks! Go! Get it!
- A couple of other blogging projects that I want to talk about
- Mobile Geeks of London III (I'm waiting on ONE PERSON to come back to me before we move ahead)
First up:
My business trip to San Francisco
I'm going to duck out at this point at say that it deserves a post all to itself. So I'm going to cheat a bit and defer that to another post. Not the best of starts.
Next:
Social Networks through SpinVox
Again - saving this for a separate post - it's a bit of a SpinVox love in to be honest - and I can't wait to share it!
(the news and coverage falls into this too)
What else:
Mobile Geeks of London III -
The plan was to get this out and done by the end of November - but what with it being two days until December you and I both know that that just is not going to happen. However, the ONE PERSON who I was waiting for DID get back to me - and we're making plans to get it up and running early 2008. So watch this space.
Finally:
The couple of other blogging projects that I've been working on - this is the thing that's been taking up my time - hence the VOX neglect - but hey - I'm back now huh?
First up - Remember how I told you that you could Blog through SpinVox?
Well - NOOOOOOW - Yours truly is now officially 'Editor-in-Chief' over at the new SpinVox Blog.
Wheeeeee! Which is just cool.
(remind me to change my email sig - hehe)
It's only been going for a little while now and, although I'm still finding my feet a little bit, I've got some great support from the team around me and hopefully it'll go from strength to strength. Got some great ideas for the next three months or so.... so do me a favour and add the SpinVox Blog Feed to your RSS reader today!
(and if you don't like the content - at least you know who to complain to!) ;)
Ok - so now - onto my other blogging project - and this kind of ties into my last post too - in that you've probably been waiting for 'part 2' of the review. Well - sorry to break it to you - but part 2 isn't coming...
What happened was my mate Ewan Macleod, Editor over at SMS Text News, saw my "Future of Mobile - Part 1" post (which I did, live, from my N95 - thank you VOX - haven't done that for a while), and dropped me a sneaky text asking if he could have a full write-up.
"Sure thing" I said. So he wrote a leading piece and then I followed it up with the full write up.
:)
All of which seemed to go down pretty well. Ewan's a top guy and I've done some things with him in the past so it was nice to actually sit down and properly contribute to his, quite frankly, fantastic site.
Anywhoo - this lead onto another conversation which in turn resulted with the following question -
"How about doing it regularly? Not reporting per se, but more of a weekly opinion piece... "
So with SpinVox' blessing (thanks guys!) "Whatley Wednesday" was born.
Subjects covered so far: Flashmobbing and the Nokia N81 8GB.
Again - quite a new project - but regular Whatleydude content, week in week out?! You can't complain!
;)
So where does that leave my VOX blog?
My SpinVox-y chatter has found a home and now it seems my Mobile chatter has found a home too.
Well as I've already said - I've still got stuff I want to write up - but if you remember - I originally started this VOX so I could blog the Glastonbury Festival LIVE from my mobile.
And even though that had geeky overtones - it was still more of a personal thing.
So... I'm gonna try and take this blog back to its roots!
After all - the address is on my Moo Card so I best make sure the content is up to date!
Until next time....
Me and and buddy from Team Mippin went to this lovely little soirée last night - very good it was too...
Ewan and his team from SMS Text News were great hosts and it was fantastic to meet them all at long last.
More can be read here:
http://www.smstextnews.com/2007/08/unlimited_drinks_thanks_for_coming.html
And there'll be a main review coming later I'm sure...
;o)
(and in case you're wondering - that's me in the white shirt & blue jeans showing off Mippin!)
