iNdT just announced Tapioca v0.3.9 for Maemo. Tapioca is a GoogleTalk client with VoIP and Instant messaging capabilities, with a simpler user interface. It can be installed on the Nokia 770 together with the built-in Gtalk client.
The review doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been written before, giving the 770 its due on the compact size of the device, the marvelous screen and the spendid web-browsing and faulting its other apps and its choice of memory card and CPU. It is in fact so un-new, not even mentioning VoIP using Google Talk, for instance, that I thought it was a review written last December and inadvertently re-posted on the occasion of OS 2006 showing up. But Mossberg advised me by email that he got a review 770 only two weeks ago, so the comments are all current.
Mossberg falls into the camp of those who wish the 770 were more like other devices — faster CPU, built-in keyboard — and who don’t give Nokia any credit for releasing a product a third the price of the UMPC and more than a year in advance of all but Sanyo’s device. So he can say with a straight face, “If you … just want to surf the Web on a small device with a great screen, the 770 might be for you. But for most mainstream users, the 770 is a disappointment.” Perhaps next year when all those clunky, heavy, expensive UMPCs start showing up, he’ll appreciate what we have now.
Springer, a major publisher of “high-quality STM journals, book series, books [and] reference works,” has just introduced its own portal for its collection of scientific, technical and medical works. Already there are about 11,000 titles available, including journal articles, book chapters, monographs and atlases. About 3,000 titles are expected to be added annually.
The big news here is that Springer is not requiring subscribers to submit to some system of digital restrictions management. The works are available in html and pdf form, libraries own ebooks they purchase in perpetuity, and everything is readable on the Nokia 770 Tnternet Tablet. Yes, you can use FBReader to read these works.
Smart move for Springer. Good news for Nokia 770 owners.
The NY Times ran a story today discussing the visionary Marshall Brown and his efforts to provide free wireless access in 18 locations in 10 parks in New York City, via his company called Wi-Fi Salon. This will benefit those “prescient enough to pack laptops or other paraphernalia critical to mobile connectivity,” the Times says. It notes that “Mr. Brown’s attempt to plug into what he calls ‘neighborhood hot spots’ has unfolded in fits, starts and setbacks since the city awarded him the parks contract in October 2004 after Verizon withdrew from the project.”
The effort differs, btw, in a lot of ways from wi-fi clouds. The Times writes, “This month Wi-Fi Salon activated the first of its wireless ‘hot spots’ in Battery Park, and Mr. Brown says the portal there will offer a historical slide show, a tour of the Dutch gardens, and a video-cam hookup to the Statue of Liberty. In Mr. Brown’s wireless neighborhoods, connectivity is accompanied by educational content.”
Here’s more detail on the effort, with a surprise kicker in the last sentence:
Mr. Brown and the team of consultants who comprise Wi-Fi Salon — “I love technology, but I know this much about myself: I’m not detail-oriented enough to be a coder or an engineer†— are resigned to running “in the red†for the first half of what is essentially a three-year, $90,000 contract. Meaning, Wi-Fi Salon is paying the city for the right to serve as its wireless conduit, with all 18 locations expected to be functional by the end of August. He admits it helps that his wife, Pauline, “is a high-powered corporate executive†at Avon. She supports his wireless dream so long as he doesn’t bring his gadgets along on vacations. Still, the arrangement with the city was in danger of falling apart after Wi-Fi’s initial sponsor reneged; a pact with Nokia, a Finnish manufacturer, salvaged the situation.
Hm-m. Nokia saves the day. Well, it’s obvious that free and ubiquitous wi-fi hot spots make Nokia 770 Internet Tablets (and UMPCs) loads more practical. Forget the laptops the Times mentions. This is definitely for devices meant for the walkaround web, like the 770 — 800-pixels wide and light enough to carry with you everywhere. Of course, wi-fi outside buildings is the natural benefactor of the walkaround web. I see that it’s Nokia’s multimedia division that stepped into the breach, with specific reference to Nokia’s N-series phones with built-in wireless as well as the 770. I wonder what the precise link between Nokia’s support and its 770 efforts is, or if it’s just a matter of support for wireless across its lines. Whatever, I’m excited to hear about it.
Way to go, Nokia!
It seems silly to write this without identifying the free wi-fi locations:
Battery Park (already active)
8 locations in Central Park
The Dairy
Boathouse
Summerstage
Sheep Meadow
Delacorte Theatre
The Charles Dana Discovery Center
The Pinetum
Central Park Zoo
Washington Square Park
Union Square Park
Riverside Park (Boat Basin/Cafe at 79th Street)
Prospect Park (Boathouse, Picnic House)
USTA Tennis Center at Corona Flushing Meadows park
OK, I know it sounds early, considering that I haven’t yet installed or used IT 2006, the new OS for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. I don’t know what it really does or doesn’t do well. But I’ve already started forming my wish list for the next OS release.
My two biggest frustrations with the 770 are fairly personal and one of them is so personal as to be idiosyncratic. But they both deal with the unrealized potential of the 770 for note-taking and organization.
Btw, I don’t want the 770 to be a PIM replacement, though clearly lots of other folk do. Phone numbers, addresses, alarm reminders — I’m happy enough with those functions in my cell phone.
But note taking is a whole ‘nother category.
No one believes tapping into Notes or an editor like AbiWord is fast enough to make notes while you’re thinking or in a meeting. And don’t even mention BT keyboards — I do my best thinking on the twenty-minute walk between work and the train station.
I’ve been exploring use of the GTD system propounded by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done, and despite my highly electronified state, I’m heavily dependent on scribbling things on 3×5 cards. No other way to get so much information down quickly enough.
But I can’t use the handwriting recognition engine in the Nokia 770 because it just doesn’t work. (”Adequate” is a failing grade here.)
The screen resolution of the 770 is 225 pixels per inch — about five times that of the UMPC and most laptops. It’s so high that it seems ideal for actually being able to decipher handwriting and translate scribbles into keystrokes.
I urge Nokia to license the PhatWare HWR engine used in Calligrapher and PenOffice and use it instead of their current feeble software. I really would use Notes then for just what it’s supposed to be, to jot down quick notes.
As for my other wish: Like others, I’m wanting more capability out of Opera. But in my case, giving me a complete desktop Opera 9.0 wouldn’t satisfy me.
That’s because I like to use a TiddlyWiki-based micro-content wiki called MonkeyGTD. (Jeremy Ruston wrote TW, and Simon Baird customized it to MonkeyGTD.) TW and its derivants are single-html-page wikis, whose “tiddlies” correspond to pages in a standard wiki and which typically are short entries rather than the full-blown kinds of things you want and expect from a full page. A TiddlyWiki is meant to be stored locally and is perfect for tracking lots of cross-linked notes. All the programming in TW is done in Javascript.
My problem is that Opera won’t save changes you make within it to an html file, even one stored locally. (A modification lets you do this through Java on a desktop machine with Opera.) So I’m ready for a different browser, and if Nokia doesn’t supply it, I’d like to be able to remove Opera and free up that space for a browser that can do what I need.
Being able to quickly make notes with a viable HWR application and to consult, add to and check off all the things I need to do in a small browser-based GTD application — these are how I’d like to make the 770 work for me. Can we get those in the next go-around, please?
The new version of Internet Tablet 2006 OS has passed from beta to release. Don’t know what date that was official, but it had been promised for the end of the second quarter, which was Friday. I consider anything before start of business today, Monday, as being on-time, so congratulations are in order for Ari Jaaksi and his crew.
The big news of this second major OS release for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is of course the capability to make VoIP calls and to use Nokia-supplied instant messaging, both via Google Talk. Users of the beta have noted faster, more reliable operation in this release as well. A large “finger” keyboard for easier input is a notable addition.
We heard about it from Ari Jaaksi’s blog, which includes five screen captures and a pointer to tableteer.nokia.com, a 770-specialized site that provides visitors who arrive there on a 770 with special content (you get the regular Nokia 770 page with other computers). It is oriented towards new users, at least at present, with guidance on how to take advantage of the 770’s capabilities.
Btw, there’s a new Flash animation showing off the 770 at Nokia.com.
The NY Times ran 
