mobilehogs.com

Details have yet to be finalized, but it looks like I’ll be going to a Nokia Mobile workshop (paid for by Nokia, including carbon offsets!) September 10-14,2008 being organzied by Nokia’s WOMWorld folks. Sounds like fun. Maybe I can lead a session on Mobile Muse and SIFTTool.

Here’s a portion of their invite:

QUOTE

It’s taking place in September between the 11th and 14th, and will be the first of its kind hosted by Nokia. We’re contacting everyone from creative’s, designers, video producers to open source software bloggers and mobile tech pioneers. There will be a number of workshops that’ll see discussion with participants, and with Nokia guys, about the future of different online arenas and mobile technology. Workshops that we hope you’d like to join in with and make yourself heard.

END QUOTE

In the meantime, time to start my travel research. If anybody has been to Helsinki, love to have the following questions [...]

After the 2.01 firmware upgrade, AirMe never locks on with the GPS and finds my location even if I am outside in locations where it used to work with the old firmware. Yay for bugs (Yes my GPS is enabled). Do I have to do some sort of funky GPS reset dance to make it work again?

My Bug Bundle has been delayed until September. Bug is switching to Poky Linux and they closed a 3rd round of funding. I am still very enthusiastic about The Bug but it’s hard to be an enthusiast when you are itching to experiment and shipment is delayed by 3 months. And as I have said before I don’t really like simulators. Oh well, perhaps I’ll activate one of my dormant iPhone application ideas!

Well I went to FutureShop expecting more of the same old same old and I wasn’t disappointed :-). Cleaner lines and better organized stuff but really not much different. Oh well.

Here’s what I want: a store staffed by people who are all like the "Apple Geniuses" i.e. if I am looking for an iPhone lanyard strap, I could talk to an iPhone expert, if I am looking for a washing machine, I could talk to an washing machine expert. And there would be WiFi and computers so I could do my research in-house. I’d rather queue for somebody who knows what they are talking about than have to deal with three friendly people who don’t.

I don’t really enjoy dealing with staff who obviously don’t have any product knowledge or who know less that what a Google Search would reveal. Unfortunately that’s the norm for stores like these.

However, I am dreaming [...]

Not so great when you have over 300 tags! Oh well time to go back to Ecto which is not very pretty but does tag search and auto-complete

Mobile phones and notebooks are being reviewed and discussed all over the Internet. It’s a no-brainer that if you have to work away from your home or office, you’re going to need a good one, or both. What if you are on a business trip though? What other things might you need to have with you?

Mobile Printer - There are many different smallish mobile printers out there. The prices can vary quite a lot, depending on the speed, size and quality of printing. If you do a lot of printing on the road, I highly recommend investing in your own mobile printer.
Portable File Storage - Your phone may not have much space to keep track of everything in one place. Also, of course, you need to keep good backups of all of your work files. Having a portable file storage device is an excellent idea all around.
Battery Backup [...]

As I was trolling my usual Geeky haunts for news, I happened to find the link to the Gadget of the Year awards that I posted a few minutes ago. Low and behold, I found something else very cool on that site.
Take a look through the many things you can enter to win on the T3 site. They’re giving away everything from Bluetooth headsets, to monitors and even electric shavers! You can’t beat free stuff!
Drop over to T3 and enter for your chances to win today!

Voting is going strong for the T3 Gadget of the Year. Here are the top five gadgets being voted on, after much input from all of you.

Xbox 360 Elite A power house of gaming glory encased in a Darth Vader-inspired shell.
Asus Eee PC She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weeny pink or white Eee PC-ini.
Apple iPod Touch The good music bit of the iPhone without the monthly contract and the pants camera.
TomTom Go 930 All hail king sat-nav. Nuff said.
Apple Mac Book Air Thin enough to float on water. Hold on, the Jesus phone, a lappie that can float (walk) on water, we see a pattern…

Go on over and vote for your favorite now. Simply by casting your vote, you are going to be entered to win a load of Garmin goodies.

UPDATE: Vincent Janelle says that it could be that the Eye-Fi card is not approved by the CRTC.  Thanks Vince!

I am going on Darren’s client Future Shop’s blogger opening tonight and I know it’s off topic but I have a question for Future Shop buyers: Why don’t you sell the cool gadgets? Like the Eye-Fi card which IMHO is mass market (and to my knowledge has been available in the USA for over 6 months but is still unavailable from Canadian mass market retailers)  but still cool?

I have always loved gadgets. Ever since I have been a kid back in the 1970s I have been buying (via mail order) gadgets that were unavailable in Canada. Things are better now, since we have E-Bay (which I loathe, but that’s another blog post) but we are still behind. Perhaps somebody should open up a retail version of TigerDirect.ca? I’d pay a premium [...]

Apple’s App Store is up to over 1000 apps available for the iPhone 3G, and its 2.0 operating system… with over 25 million downloads being reported. Microsoft, on the other hand, fell far short of its target recently.

Even though Microsoft fell short of its highly publicized brag that it would sell 20 million Windows Mobile software licenses in the past year, the company was able to put a good spin on things. They expect Windows Mobile phones to continue to outsell iPhones in both consumer and enterprise shipments, and by 2012, Windows Mobile is expected to double sales over the iPhone in the consumer space, and have nearly nine times the amount of enterprise deployments.
“Looking ahead, Microsoft’s unique vision and approach will continue to create opportunities for the partners and the entire industry, while connecting people to the information they care about most.
As we are enter Fiscal Year [...]