Schmap.me’s Ten Minutes September 19, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in contacts, information, maps, mobile apps.add a comment
What is it: Schmap.me is an easy way to add a link to your location for emails, signatures, SMS messages etc. (I wrote about Schmap in my DestinAsian column a year ago.)
Executive summary: does what it promises quickly and smartly.
My ten minutes: Setting things up is easy enough.
Type in the name you want to have as your address www.schmap.me/loosewire, for example:
If it’s available the box will turn green.
Enter the address on the next page and the Google Map on the left of the address will immediately jump to that location:
There’s a room for notes, which is smart for driving directions:
(There are more fields available if you want them.)
The resulting page is simplicity itself:
It also looks good on a phone:
Verdict: Great stuff. This space is always a bit of a nightmare and while it’s possible to send people links to Google Maps, the page is usually a bit ugly and certainly not pleasant to view on a phone. Nice to see something simple and neat and doing what it promises without lots of unnecessary extras.
Nokia PC Suite’s Ten Minutes May 20, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in cameraphones, cellphones, connectivity, contacts, file sending, SMS.4 comments
(Update, Sept 1 2008: Check out this post over at sister site Loose Wire Blog for a look at the more recent version of PC Suite)
A while back I took a look at how to send messages from your (Nokia) phone via your computer. With a recent upgrade of their PC Suite Nokia have gone one better–simplifying the process so you can easily send stuff to and from the phone via one window and (although this probably isn’t so new) via Bluetooth.
Here’s how:
You’ll need the newer versions of the Nokia PC Suite. They should look like this:
While the interface is shiny and new, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s much better. There’s lots about it that frankly stinks. But I like the left hand panel. More on that in a minute.
I’ve started ditching the cable in favor of Bluetooth. You’ll need the cable for hardware upgrades, and if you’re doing a lot of transferring big files (lots of pix, videos or music). But for SMS messages and small stuff Bluetooth works well.
Setting up the Bluetooth is the usual fiddly process that I won’t go into here. Once you’re connected, though, the two devices should usually establish contact without you having to do very much. You can even set up the PC Suite so that it automatically downloads photos etc, and synchronizes contacts, when the two come into contact with one another. Not a bad idea.
But what I like is the left panel. A close up looks like this:
Automatically, you can see, incoming SMS messages will appear in the bottom panel. You can scroll through them with the arrow keys. Double click on the message itself and you’ll get the full message in its own window:
Which you can reply to by clicking on the envelope icon. Straightforward, and not hugely different from previous Suites, but having it so accessible is definitely a plus.
Click on the calendar icon and a month will pop up, along with all the appointments stored in your phone:
The last bit I like is the drag and drop feature. Drag a photo, music file or document and it will be uploaded from your computer to your phone. If it’s a music file you’ll be asked if you want to convert it first:
And a bar will notify you of the conversion progress:
All this may not be that new, but it’s new to me, and I think it takes us one step closer to the goal of a phone really becoming something that is closely wedded to our desktop and laptop world. This was always the promise of Bluetooth, that has remained elusive until now: a piconet where our devices wordlessly talk to each other and update each other, where we don’t have to worry about formats, file sizes or other irrelevances.
I can now send and receive SMS messages from my computer without me having to do anything first. (Note to Nokia: Have the software automatically update the computer on incoming messages, so the phone can be ignored entirely and kept in a drawer on silent. And make it easier to save SMS messages from the Phone Browser.)
And I moved text, spreadsheet and PDF files across and they all opened as expected on my phone. We’d been able to do this before, but never, as far as I know, as easily. Kudos to Nokia. (And this is where Mac fans say they have been able to do this between iPhone and MacBooks.)
Ten Minutes With Jaiku April 26, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in cellphones, connectivity, contacts, photo sharing, presence, SMS, social networking, wireless.1 comment so far
What is it: Jaiku is a “rich presence” tool that allows users to create and share a “life stream” of updates about their location, their thoughts, their photos, the music they’re listening to, as well as links to their blogsand pretty much anything else they’re doing that can be accessed via an RSS feed.
What the company calls it: “Jaiku’s main goal is to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their presence. For us, presence is about everyday things as they happen – what you’re up to, how you’re feeling, where you’re going. We offer a way to connect with the people you care about by sharing presence updates with them on the Web and mobile.”
Executive Summary: It sounds like a waste of time, but it’s not. If you have people you’d like to stay in touch with, it’s a great way of keeping them updated, and following them. Especially if you have a Nokia phone. It’s also the future.
My ten minutes: Jaiku isn’t the easiest thing to get up to speed on. Sign up with a name, screen name, email address and password, and then you’ll see a box at the top of the screen where you can enter up to 140 characters. Those are your Jaikus.
So far, so Twitter. Jaiku is more about presence than chatter, though, so it make sense to add more feeds if you have them: they can be Flickr photos, Last.fm songs playing on your computer, or blogs you keep. These will end up in the same list as your Jaikus, meaning that if anyone is interested in you, they can also see at a glance what else you’re doing beyond Jaiku-ing. (You can add your Twitter feed as well, if you like.) Not that adding these feeds is terribly easy. Some are straightforward, some aren’t.
Once this is done, and you have a Nokia S60 type phone, this is where things get more useful. Download a small program and your cellphone’s contact list becomes alive, as anyone on your Jaiku contact list folds into the list and will have their Jaiku information updated in your phone. Similarly, you can update your Jaiku presence by simply opening a small window and typing in a short message. This is all done via data, not SMS.
Quibbles: Only working with Nokia phones severely limits the appeal of Jaiku outside the office. And finding other people on Jaiku is not easy. But it’s definitely a great way to ‘stalk’ your friends, and to allow other people to know what you’re up to. Good for families wanting to keep in touch without endless SMS messages along the lines of “where are you?”
Plus, there’s a certain snob appeal about Jaiku: it’s early days but there’s less riff-raff than on Twitter, and by focusing on ‘presence’ than on a sort of avian diarrhea of twittering, Jaiku saves itself from the occasional sensation Twitter gives off of mind numbing inanity.
I’m jeremy on Jaiku.
Verdict: Only for the truly inquisitive, for the stalker in you, or someone interested in what life is going to be like in the future.
Score: 7 out of 10
Ten Minutes With Highrise March 20, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in calendars, collaboration, contacts, organizers.add a comment
Intro: Highrise is another product from 37Signals, who make project-organizing, collaborative websites like Basecamp, Campfire and Backpack. Highrise focuses on organizing your contacts in a more imaginative way than an address book: “Highrise is your homebase for everyone that’s important to your business. It puts together all those little points of contact so you can see the bigger picture. It makes one history out of many interactions. Highrise helps you make sense of it all.”
Exec Sum: Quick to figure out, useful if you’re having problems keeping tabs on the people your company is dealing with. Not, though, if you don’t like paying for stuff, or hate entering data.
My tenminut.es: Having used 37Signals stuff before it all looked familiar, perhaps too much so. At first I thought it looked too much like their other services to be, well, different. But it doesn’t take long to figure out the distinguishing marks: Basecamp builds itself around projects and collaboration; Campfire is group-oriented chat. Backpack is a dumping ground for stuff. Highrise is a group database of who your business is dealng with. It’s built around “cases” – closing a sale, getting a jaded and elusive journalist to write about your product, etc.
To make it work, of course, you have to add your data. It’s easy enough, with all the AJAXy niceness you’d expect, but it could be easier. There are separate fields, for example for first and second names. That’s one extra step I don’t want to make if I’m dragging or copying from somewhere else. I could upload a vCard instead, but if I can do that, why not let me import my whole address book, or at least select from a list?
Once you’ve entered a few key contacts you can add notes, tasks and other information about them and about your dealings with them. Great if more than one of you is dealing with them. You can group these notes around “cases” as well as people; so, say, you’re trying to woo a WSJ columnist you can build a case called “WSJ wooing” and have colleagues involved in the wooing share their information (including emails) on one page. I couldn’t test this because the free version doesn’t allow you to add cases (prices go from $12 a month to $150 a month.)
Verdict: As usual a quality product from 37Signals that is intuitive and well-thought out. I’d like to see more generous features in the free version, and less legwork to get it up and keep it running.
Score: 7 out of 10
Update March 23: Impressively, 37Signals have listened to feedback and changed some of their plans. The free option now includes 1 case open at any one time, and increased the number of contacts from 25 to 250. More details here. I’d still like to see easier uploading of contacts, and of course synchronizing with other programs and devices. But this is a good start.
