Recently I made a post on one of the internet blogs about some no brand digital picture frame. Later on I found out, that those funky things boast DPF acronym like many things in our daily life these days… SMS, MMS, MMC, VOD, MP3, LCD etc etc. Unfortunately it seems that quite a few products released these days always lack the “final link” to make it perfect. A few examples relate to mobile technology; Nokia’s flagship model – N95…gorgeous device but lacks two things in my opinion; #1 being multi band 3G and #2 – the design…let’s face it it’s slightly on a cheap side.
Another example (again…in mobile area) would be recent Samsung Symbian N95 killer device.. GORGEOUS design, STURDY like a tank from what I see YET crippled by only three GSM bands and a single 3G band..WHY OH WHY I ask.
So this brings me to the state of digital photo frames. After I wrote my posting on the (un)mentioned blog (I believe it was www.engadget.com) I received an e-mail from Hannes from Digital Photo Frame blog asking If I’d be interested in sharing my opinion about digital photo frames.. SURE. I can whore myself out a bit on the net J Since I’m just an average Joe in real and virtual life, it was a nice way to say “I’m interested in hearing what you have to say” so thanks Hannes for giving me the opportunity to voice my opinion.
Back on track…The comment I made was about the lack of WiFi on the photo frame which was discussed in the posting. I think DPF’s are a cool gadget to have but with the current implementation (at least in my household) it would quickly become a 5-minute gadget. The technology made me lazy. DPF’s that require from me to connect them to the computer or preload media on a memory card are just that…a 5 minute gadgets. They will be fun for a day or two, then you’d become less inclined to pull the card out, take it to your computer, fiddle around and figure out which photos to upload and then watch the same photos over and over and over for a week, two, three…then you’d just become TOO lazy to deal with it and the device you had so much fun with for 5 minutes would just collect the dust.
Enter the world of (some sort) of online connectivity…be it Bluetooth, or WiFi. Imagine now you won’t have to get up to yank the photos from your pc to the frame. Instead it would be nice to be able to link it to an online service (flickr for example) and stream all those photos you took with your camera phone or better yet be surprised with photos streamed from your favourites.
Hannes made a point by saying that not everyone has the need for WiFi enabled frames. I countered his comment and said that it’s out of pure convenience. I do not expect those frames to become movie or music download portals but simply a devices that can connect to online albums for pure convenience. In my opinion a frame without online connectivity is like photo albums where before you show it to your friends you take it to another room in your house, place 10-15 photos inside and show it to your friend. After they see 10-15 photos, you take it back, remove the old photos, put the new ones in and show the album again…obviously a pain in the neck process. Now imagine the same album but with 1000 pages…less running, less changing of the photos and more enjoinment from the actual fun of viewing the photos.
WiFi technology became so cheap these days that I don’t think person who decides to buy a DPF would skimp $10-15 extra to enable WiFi connectivity. So where are these super connected frames??? Only a handful exists on the market. We are being flooded by a low quality frames with even lower resolution displays. For many manufacturers instead of releasing 7inch frame with blue, red, yellow or what else color bezel and 6.5 and 7 inch displays WHY not releasing ONE but GOOD or at least decent device; 7inch 800×480 display, WiFi, and 256 MB of internal memory (with possible for expansion IF needed via memory card). Internal memory would be only for buffering purposes or if you’d want to give the frame as a gift to Grandma.
So the SAD state if DPF’s is just that…sad. Are we going to see some innovation from the manufacturers of those gizmos? I hope so. Until then I will be staying away from devices that lack online connectivity since for me it does not make a sense to waste money on a “half alive” device just like I would not buy an MP3 player without a display, or a cellular phone with three bands instead of four, or pc with the slowest cpu….you get the point.
Textually.org writes about recent Parliament elections in Poland and the use of text messaging to promote the elections and get more people to vote… Read on for more.. http://www.textually.org/textblog/mt-tb.cgi/17759
Due to the fact that I’m still in Poland caring for my mom I will not be updating anything for a while. It’s just too hard to think about geek stuff at the moment.
Nokia just released Share Online v3.0. V1.0 was what was originally preloaded on your N95. Then v2.0 was released which allowed semi-transparent background uploading. Now v3.0 seems to be catching up with Shozu. Hopefully it won’t be as big of a memory hog as Shozu is. I’ll give it a try and will post some feedback later on. Click here to go to Nokia Beta Labs download site.
Today I arrived in Poland where I’ll be for a couple of due to personal reasons. I flew from Chicago to Dublin and then on to Warsaw. In Chicago I went through hell where Aer Lingus staff was taking their sweet time and took over an hour to issue one ticket. The ground experience sucked as it seemed like nobody cared about anything. The flight on the other hand was quite nice however i though I’d never say it but it was too short (only just over six hours). When I fly directly yo Poland at least I have enough time to sleep. This flight on the other hand departed Chicago at 4.20 pm and arrived in Dublin, Ireland at 5 am (which made it 11 pm Chicago time…WHICH is the time I go to sleep) and after arrival I had the whole day ahead of me. Two hours wait for my connection to Warsaw. After arrival in Warsaw I did not make it on yet another connecting flight to my hometown due to weight restrictions on the aircraft…that’s the joy of employee travel so now I have to wait five hours for next flight. I’m barely awake and the only way to get on the net (besides depleting completely my prepaid sim card by running on 3.5G) was to connect through hot spot at the airport hotel (Marriott) for PLN 35.00 which today equals $13 for one hour. This is a total robbery but what’s a geek to do….. I’m surrounded by a load of business people…some are negotiating deals other is interviewing a girl for some kind of job…and all are on their smart phones…So far only one on BlackBerry and about 10 with Nokias…ranginf from the new slim 6300 (ok..not so smart..after all it’s only S40) then some on 6630, a couple of N70’s. As far as the laptops…only one is the fashion conscious Mac user. The rest are using PC machines….. I just peeked at the girl that’s being interviewed by the businessman…she’s a wreck…chuckles and giggles from time to time but stress is showing on her forehead…poor thang… I hope she gets the job (or at least that the job is worth the stress).
Back to phones….I’ve noticed that the businessmen around me have funny ring tones on their devices…noting that comes preloaded on the phone. Mr. “Interviewer” has Mission Impossible theme, another one had some funky song that sound familiar but I can’t recall the title…and here I thought Euro Businessmen were so stiff and serious. I’ve had three cups of tea already and if I have another one I’ll be jumping up and down so I better stop. Ooopppss…just spotted another crackberry….
I don’t think anyone saw this one coming but I opened up my google news today and was greeted by a news that Nokia is set to acquire Chicago based Navteq. This means that Nokia will become a MAJOR player in the GPS market. GO NOKIA. Below is an excerpt from Bloomberg’s article.
Nokia to Acquire Navteq for $8.1 Billion in Cash (Update1)
By Juho Erkheikki
Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) — Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest mobile-phone company, agreed to buy Navteq Corp., the biggest maker of maps used in car-navigation equipment, for $8.1 billion in cash to add more data services.
Nokia will pay $78 a share, the companies said in a statement issued on the Hugin newswire. The bid is 34 percent higher than Navteq’s price a month ago, the companies said. Navteq closed at $77.97 on Sept. 28.
A purchase of Chicago-based Navteq, the world’s biggest maker of maps used in car-navigation equipment, would help Nokia add more features to its phones to attract customers. Sales of personal mapping devices will triple to $12.8 billion by 2010 over four years, according to iSuppli Corp., a research firm. Espoo, Finland-based Nokia already is adding music and games.