Simon's Mess » design

My first steps with the N810

admin — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:10:07 +0000

It’s been already a full week since I got my little toy (the N810 for those of you who don’t follow), and what a week !!!
I spent the first two days (over the week end) with the tablet replacing my second hand ! The third day, at work, I just had time to configure the local wifi connection (which is by the way as easy as it could be) before entering an hectic week that took me to friday night without having touched my toy except for a couple of minutes late one night in the remote countryside of Rodez !!!
Anyhow, now is time for a little roundup of my first impressions… I won’t do the traditional unboxing as there are already a couple out there, and clearly I don’t understand how those people have the patience to take pictures when opening that box ! (Oh wait … Someone tells me they’re getting payed sponsored … No comment !) I’ll rather share with you some points of focus on this device, how I used it, and my feelings about it.
First point : It is a really neat device, looks cool, is beautiful, and simply turning it on makes me happy. Okay maybe this is because it’s been only a week since I got it, but I really don’t think so ! Supposably the kind of feeling you can only get when buying an iPhone Apple product … I’m sorry Mika, but I’m really glad I have this Nokia device
Second point :Apprehension is really easy as I got wifi connectivity less than 5 minutes after powering it for the first time. The next day I connected it using my bluetooth phone as a gprs/edge modem (Actually I had to slightly modify the default Orange Entreprises settings to match my settings after a failed attempt), evene demoed to some friends over lunch. Starting from that, basic Internet usage is as simple as it can get. The browser is Firefox like and the web pages I hang around most of the time were really sharp looking despite the slightly smaller screen. This of course includes Google Mail and Reader (although for this last one I would recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts).
Third point :Portability was the key interest for me, and it delivered big time ! This mean I can follow my little boy everywhere he goes (and believe me, for him, stability is a 2min timespan ) while typing this message, or watch a girly serie with my wife while getting my day’s fix of RSS. Of course this also includes chatting with Clowny while watching the pittyfull defeat of France versus Croatia in the European Handball Championship semifinal. Of course it comes with some drawbacks that is it is hard to loose the device, for example when going to bed (ask my wife) or when some attention is strongly required (ask my son).
Fourth point : Global usability is very good. The OS2008 comes with some pre-installed programs as well as a program to facilitate the installation of new programs provided you configured the correct repositories … Does it ring any Ubuntu bell ? It sure does and it’s for the best of it !
The keyboard, although kind of small, is really efficient and I got acquainted with it very fast ! Typing isn’t as fast as it can be on a real one, but it’s much better than T9, and makes the available autocompletion feature almost useless after a week of training !
Fifth point : Now lets start with some complaints ! Battery life is not rising to my expectations. At first I would always leave Wifi on … Bad habit as the device would not pass the day without being charged. Altough I understood that quickly and now use the easily acessible offline mode as soon as possible, I find that a small deception that I cannot stay connected a full day, even with a fully charged battery at the start of it. Anyhow with this usage rule, I can go a week without charging the toy, which is largely enough for me !
Sixth point : I’m slightly disappointed with the default applications as they don’t make a full use of the device. For example to make video calls, you have to use Gizmo (I don’t know a lot of people using this program) as Skype does not seem to support it (Even sound seems a problem). There is no default application for recording videos or taking pictures. The official app “Camera” does not yet support video . There is no real efficient app to manage podcasts/videocasts as the available ones don’t really work (no flv playback, no capability to differenciate articles from podcasts …). Even blog reading is slightly hectic as offline reading is not that well implemented …
Seventh point : I have not yet really tried the GPS but I know I’m going to be disapointed with it. The few times I tried it, it took like forever to “fix”. The navigation app is actually not free, and does not seem to be up to the level of TomTom for example (Anybody up for the port ?). And although some workaround (other apps) are available, none of them seem to really work offline.

Well I thin I’m going to wrap things up here … I wrote the full article from the toy itself(One other reason why I bought it) with MaemoWordPy (Yes there are some gems out there for this blogging device), an offline writing tool for WordPress. Only thing kind of lengthy to integrate are links … For the rest of it, it’s great ! So all in all I’m definitely thrilled with the N810, even though I waited a long time for it !

See you later for some more feedbacks and insiders tells on the N810

Design Roundup

admin — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:19:00 +0000

Here are a few design items I found on TrendHunter and other sites I thought where worth sharing …

Those are actual portable lamps made of LEDs (Seems like a new technology coming to us which allows to build really cool light providing items !). You can charge those and they are supposed to work for 10 hours … Must be really cool for kids to play in the dark ! Or during parties with your friends.

More LED lamps, but his time embedded in ice cubes. Put those in your freezer, and get them out for your next party … Success guaranteed ! And all that for only a couple of $ !

Russian roulette was big couple hundreds years ago … For us techies who are sick of the poker mania running out there, here is a new toy. Up to four players put their fingers in the device, then a button is pushed, and after a few long seconds one of the players receives an electric shock ! Is it really as cool as it looks ?

Sick of those mobile phones that have the dumbest ringtone in your openspace … Or just don’t want to be one of those ? Well this mobile phone dock is for you as it will flash when your mobile is supposed to ring ! Nice and silent, at last your workplace will become a nice place to be all day long.

On sundays, when its barbecue time, you always look around for matches … When you find them they are either wet or every time you try to ignite one, it breaks in two pieces ? Then this little toy is for you ! First it keeps your matches away from humidity, and as a bonus, they automatically ignite !!! So who’s gonna look real cool two days from now ?

And to conclude this roundup, a “special dedicace” to the cabiste boy, who’s a big fan of Caca, specially when speaking about twitter … So why should we not be talking about iMac, iPod, iPhone, and other iToys as iCaca ?

Flip Flop Freeride

admin — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:34:00 +0000

With the summer (well, at least its july) comes its share of flip flops ! As indecently trendy, as the joy of having a plastic piece in between your toes is, this new kind of shoes are everywhere nowadays. And you can’t say that it’s not comfortable to feel the breeze of fresh air down there (unless you cubmate is in lack of affection with his soap ;-( ).
But who here really likes having something indecently wanting to separate big toe from his friends ? And who here really wants to look like a german tourist on holidays in the south of France ?
Well, I have the answer for you : topless sandals (no sexy picture involved )

Those are flip flops you simply stick under your feet. Of course you can get them off any time you want and it seems you can re-use them a couple of times (although I really don’t think it will work). From the advertising video, they seem to stick enough to walk around, flirt with Pamela on the beach, and even play some friendly soccer with friends … And all of that for under 10 bucks !!! So go ahead, look trendy, feel comfortable, and let them believe its the next piercing “a la mode” !

More on skinning !

admin — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 21:00:00 +0000

In a recent post, I presented a company that offered skins for your laptop. Looking at the comments and speaking with some friends, turns out laptops are not the only things that may be skinned !
Of course T-Shirts have long been an apparel that may be customized through various sites like Spreadshirt, lafraise, or others … Even got some really close friends who are deep into that (Free pub, sorry :-p )
Anyhow, turns out other sites like or are letting you skin pretty much anything ! From iPods to laptops to mobile phones, anything can be customized to make your latest devices as cool as it should be ! You can even choose your own photo as a motif for your skin !
So now you don’t have any reason for sticking with the default Dell or Apple shinny but so everyone cover And who knows you may even get to know this cute blondie afterwards

Lego Forever !

admin — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:00:00 +0000

As a young kid I always loved Legos. It is really a cool toy which lets you crank your imagination up and build thing from the ground up. I’m sure all of you fans out there had the same idea to build a gigantic full size statue of your biggest idol, preferred car, or other toy. Well, Mr Sawaya actually went past the dream, did it, and is now exposing he’s art in museums … Isn’t that the best proof that some people actually do succeed while keeping the child in them .

Here are two nice realisations. On the left is a tribute to the city of New Orleans following Katrina. On the right is of course Mr Solo !

Museum Link here

Laptop Skins

admin — Wed, 30 May 2007 06:35:00 +0000

So you like your laptop PC so much you would not change it for anything in the world … Specially for this brand new iMac that your colleagues have been bragging about for the past few weeks : “isn’t that the nicest laptop you’ve ever seen ?” … So what ?
Now you can make all of them jealous thanks to these laptopskins !
LaptopSkins sells some covers like this :

If you are a little bit of a geek, you might go for for these :

The website basically allows you to enter the size of your laptop (nice thing seeing all the different sizes available out there), select the skin you’d like, and for a mere 25$/19.95€ you can get your skin. If you are not even sure of you’re laptop size (specially with all the inches/cm conversion), you can always give your laptop model and they’ll figure the perfect size out for you !

And after that, I’m almost sure you’ll be the new guy with the cool computer everyone will be bragging about … Or at least you can try