Status-Q

An interesting idea: Nokia are trying to convince people that their N95 phone is a real camera by sponsoring an exhibition of photos taken with it.

On the (somewhat wearisome) occasions when I have to visit trade shows, it always amazes me how many exhibition stands give you absolutely no idea of what the company does. There's a company logo and some meaningless catchphrase... you know the kind of thing:

FOOTLE & WIRBLE INC Bringing the Best to Your Customers

and a couple of guys standing around in suits wondering why nobody comes and talks to them. If you're HP, people will know what you do and you don't need to tell them. But if you're Footle & Wirble, you need to get the message across in the time it takes me to walk slowly past your stand. Especially if you don't have any pretty girls there. My pal Dennis Crespo at DisplayLink has done a lovely, succinct 1-minute demo of what you can do with their technology. I'm not sure if he intended it for exhibition stands, but this is the sort of thing that I think would work well.

It has often bugged me that the only way to recharge the batteries for my MacBook Pro is to plug them into my MacBook Pro.

Usually, I want to run them down in my laptop, and charge them up somewhere else! I have one spare battery, and I'd love to be able to charge one while using the other and then swap them over. This would be good when curled up on the sofa, but even better at a conference when I may want to use the laptop all day with no power sockets in reach of my chair!

So I was very pleased to discover that NewerTech make exactly what I need. It's not cheap, but I think it'll be worthwhile. Have ordered one...

Cool! There's a VNC viewer for the iPhone, and, presumably, the iPod Touch.

Thanks to Steve Talbott for the link.

Coming in just under two months. I love the iPhone - more so since having played with it - but I think I'll probably wait for a 3G one.

More info from the Beeb.

When it's an iPod touch. Announced yesterday.

The first iPod with wifi, and a nice web browser. This is very cool.

It's interesting that they decided not to include an email app. Perhaps to keep more clear water between it and the iPhone?

Also, quite intriguing, is the new partnership with Starbucks which lets you buy the track currently playing (and anything else on the iTunes Music store) in a Starbucks outlet using their wifi network. A new icon appears on the iPod when you're in range. Howard Schultz says that he hopes Starbucks will become a key place for music discovery. Mmm. Is this what will replace the traditional high-street music stores?

The iPhone has also dropped significantly in price - now only $399 for the 8GB model, not including the contract of course - but that just makes the various unlocking projects look even more significant.

Steve Jobs keynote is here.

Here's a thought...

My Nokia E61 can be used as a 3G modem via its Bluetooth connection. The very popular Nokia N95 does the same. But they also have WiFi. I wonder if it would be possible to create software that would allow them to become WiFi routers? I don't know enough about the radio hardware involved to know whether this is viable. I fear not, or somebody would have done it by now.

Lots of interesting devices now have WiFi - the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the Nintendo DS... Just imagine if I could just switch on my pocket WiFi basestation and give them all 3G connectivity. That would be exceedingly cool.

What's the nearest I can get to this - anybody know?

There are some interesting things for sale at Maplin. This, for example, looks like an ordinary UK mains adaptor. But it isn't. Oh no.

It's actually a cellphone. More information here.

If you're concerned, however, that your mischievous kids might start planting these things around the house, I should point out that each one costs about the same as the more expensive model of iPhone.

Michael and I got a couple of new toys for the Ndiyo office. We took them out of the box and plugged them in, ran some of our experimental software, and they just worked.

So we decided to point a camcorder at them and make a little movie...

We're biased, of course, but we think this is quite cool.

In case anyone else is Googling for this...

Nokia have released the Nokia Media Transfer app which allows Mac users to copy media to their phones conveniently. Only certain phones are supported at present, but a few more than they let on... If you have an E-series Nokia it may be worth trying.

Basically, you install the application, let it search for your phone, and if it sees it but says it isn't supported, then quit the app and see if you can find a 'profile' file for your device here. Put it in /Library/Application Support/Nokia Media Transfer/Profiles and then remove anything in your ~/Library/Application Support/Nokia Media Transfer/ folder. Restart the application and you should find your phone is supported.

More info in this thread. Many thanks to all concerned- it works on my E61.