Nokia is coming out with a new interactive flash-based N800 Internet Tablet site called The Internet Walk. It shows off the features of the N800 in funny ways — identify a new species of crab while walking on the beach, use Google Maps to look for the nearest pharmacy, get information before attempting to walk through hot coals, check the weather while scaling a snowy mountain peak, and video chat with your mom while bungee jumping. Note the slick morphing effect of the legs as it goes from one scene to another. Be prepared however to wait for a minute or two to download the whole flash presentation over broadband.
Just an FYI, the main page of Internet Tablet Talk flashes for just about a second when gets displayed just before the flash starts.YAY! Also, for those who have been surfing Tableteer via their Internet Tablets, Nokia also just added Internet Tablet Talk under the “Discover” category. Thanks Nokia!!!
Head on to the The Internet Walk - Internet Tablet Talk preview:
For me, the 38-minute train ride from Montclair into New York City is my prime personal time for computing and writing. And fast or slow, the WiFi-ization of America won’t reach that zone for a long while I’m sure.* That means the commute is offline for now and hereafter.
So I diligently worked out a plan to pluck information off the web every morning, put it automatically into my preferred reading format and transfer the info to my internet tablet to read in FBReader.
Since FBReader gobbles up the Plucker pdb format rather handily and Plucker desktop efficiently automates the webpage plucking, I thought this would work nicely.
I was wrong.
Too much me
The process involves me too much and requires two computers. It’s a system that was designed to use a person’s desktop computer for the plucking and processing, synch to a Palm PDA, and utilize the Palm for reading.
But why should I have to synch? My internet tablet has WiFi. It will run a python program. It’s got a great e-reader already.
Ah, the Linux version of Plucker desktop uses wxWindows. I can’t run it on my internet tablet. Plus it has all the synch-to-Palm conduit stuff.
What’s needed is an interface written for the internet tablet that sits on top of the already-written Python plucking code.
Then every morning (and afternoon), the stuff I want to look at would be grabbed, streamlined and made ready for me to read on the train.
Python-meister available?
Would that I could develop this on my own.
But, besides not being a developer, I found Python unintelligible in my two attempts to learn it (and then found Ruby the complete opposite — clear, elegant, intuitive). I realize I need someone who knows what they’re doing to guide me when I get stuck, which is often, even at my noice level (or: because of my novice level).
Still, the Python tools available for the Maemo are so powerful and give me a real reason (and platform) to develop that I look longingly at this project and wonder, What can I do to make it a reality?
If there’s a Python-meister who sees in this a project not too complex and which could be incredibly fruitful for the internet tablet community . . . well, I’ll sign on as chief cook-and-bottle-washer. Tester, UI guide and documenter. Evangelist.
I’ll do everything I can to make the project succeed, apart from the, um, Python part. We await only the emergence of a true code master.
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* I could connect to a phone’s data plan and surf — I’ve done that, it’s great! — if I chose to squander my discretionary income on that instead of extravagances like children.
Between a late-afternoon interview and schmooze time at the Nokia-Pop Sci party, I had a chance to talk with Ari Jaaksi for more than 90 minutes on Tuesday. Best moment: when he discussed the work the internet tablet team has done on optimizing the software stack and improving (among other things) video playback. He doesn’t claim to have achieved the ultimate Flash viewing experience, but said that now YouTube video wouldn’t be like watching a slideshow.
And then he proved it by going to YouTube and playing videos there. I made him play one video I’ve watched a lot (”Learn to Speak Body Tape 5” by Mitchell Rose) so I’d have a sense of how well it was playing. It was fine. In fact, because that tape has actors in static poses at times, Ari apologized for some hitches that didn’t actually occur.
The “short term” in his internet tablet road map is described as “a few weeks” and he used the same time frame in our discussion. Still talking Flash 7 and nothing beyond what the blog says, but I’ll say from my firsthand experience that the improvement coming is major.
Best of all is how Ari expresses the benchmark evaluating the browsing and Flash experience for the Nokia tablets — “what you experience on your PC.” To equal and (in some cases, like WiFi connectivity) exceed that.
So whatever we get come March isn’t going to be the end.
iNdT is at it again and this time releases Carman - an On Board Diagnostics (OBD-II) analyzer application for the Maemo platform. Carman lets you monitor and detect problems on your automobile by accessing the data stored on your car’s on-board computer, the same data that service technicians use. If you have an OBD-II compliant automobile (most cars after 1996 are), you can use a Scan Tool device (about $116+) and connect Carman to it via USB (ElmScan 5) or wirelessly via Bluetooth (using a Firefly or Elm 327).
You need Python 2.5 for Maemo to run Carman and a Nokia 770 (with 16MB of free virtual memory), or a Nokia N800. More information as well as the application download link can be found at the Carman garage.
Internet Tablet Talk exclusive (at least for a few minutes)*
Nokia and Popular Science magazine announced a challenge to users of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet to come up with their own improvements to the device, with
two winners to be showcased in the May and June issues of the magazine.
Winners will also each receive a free N800 tablet.
Given the wide range of software that has already appeared, it seems the contest is oriented at the right group of people. Specifically, Nokia and PopSci say they’re looking for innovative applications, scripts, services or hardware additions. A widget that monitors auctions, an application that controls your home security system, and software enabling the N800 to be utilized as a city guide are among the suggested types of applications.
Applications can be server- or network-based and can be utilized through the browser, email, chat or other inbuilt applications.
It reminds me of the contest I read about some months back for cleverest Maemo hacks at Guadec. Some of the winners then were NFlick (browse your Flickr collection from your tablet), KanjiLearner and Dasher (input via steering, rather than tapping).
As the requirements stress “exciting, new innovations,” presumably exciting existing innovations like VidConvert or FBReader do not qualify.
Deadline for the innovation that would be included in the May issue is February 27; for the June issue, March 29. Nokia reserves the right to include winning ideas in future OS or tablet releases.
Here are some applications I’d like to see, but won’t be developing myself:
An app that runs on a server that would capture my end of an internet call, except I don’t really want to capture a call, I want to video whatever it is I’m looking at and have the video stored on that server instead of my local SD card
A mash-up that would take GPS co-ordinates as I’m walking around Paris, say, or Rome and show me websites for the, um, sites I’m touring
An app that would read a web-page aloud to me while I’m driving
Heck, an app that would take the book I’m reading in FBReader and read it aloud
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* I attended the party announcing this challenge at the New York Nokia store on 57th Street, and I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to post on this topic since I left even before they held the drawing to win one of three N800’s. And otherwise the press release won’t go out electronically till tomorrow morning. So you heard it here first. Probably.
I asked Dr. Ari Jaaksi, head of Open Source Development at Nokia and of internet tablet development, “If you were outside Nokia developing an app for the internet tablet, you — who knows the device’s capabilities better than anyone else — what would you be working on?”
And he said, “I don’t know about the application. But aspects I’d like to see in it . . . an app or service (it doesn’t have to be inside the device, it could be on the network) that demands online, constant access.”
This underscored something he had said a few minutes earlier when he had described the experience of building a device from the ground up that wasn’t a laptop, wasn’t a cellphone, wasn’t a PDA, but fit in the space between these devices, more portable, better-screened and so on. The internet tablet he described needed to be “really good for the internet experience … [because it is for the person with a] strong and active online life, [who] wants that internet experience wherever you go.” The 770 and the N800, he pointed out, put that first, as those other devices do not.
I’m always thinking about the Nokia 770 or N800 as computers, as e-readers, as entertainment devices. The way Ari Jaaksi puts the emphasis on the internet experience makes me trust his declaration that the Flash and browser issues will be resolved. It’s the space where these devices has to shine.
I put the loaner Nokia N800 I have in the back pocket of my backpack. I carried the backpack with me whenever I left the house. I did not surf or listen to music or read using the N800. I didn’t turn it off, either.
Eight days later, when I pulled the internet tablet out of its sleeve, was glowing (as it always does when I pick it up) and one bar showed on the battery.
How long will the battery charge last?
I don’t know. I can’t last longer than eight days!
Ari Jaaksi, head of Open Source Development for Nokia and head of the Internet Tablet development team, is in New York, as we can see from the shot from his hotel room at 1 a.m. this morning. A little birdie tells me LinuxWorld has something to do with his arrival here. Nice picture from a camera-phone (the Nokia N91).
DL.TV (eg, Digital Life) has a 9:13 video segment on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. What’s interesting to me is to see the surfing capabilities and PDF viewing tested/demonstrated without pause, going from one website to another so casually I lost track of how many sites were visited. Someone who has not seen an N800 demonstrated gets a real sense of its speed here.
The video capabilities of the device are admired, not overly, but acknowledging the difficulties and room for improvement (and no mention of YouTube) and the comparisons are made to cellphones for surfing not to laptops. The video VoIP coming is offhandedly described as a killer app, which I really believe. And twice the tablet is called a toy. This may be because the hosts aren’t really interested in it as a general-purpose machine (”I believe, I’m not positive, but I believe it’s built on top of Linux,” we’re told) and how one would go about adding applications or running Python, say, doesn’t appear to have shown up on their checklist of features to check out.
Nonetheless, their admiration shown is real, not feigned, based on what they perceive as the N800’s real capabilities.
One thing the Nokia 770 and N800 Internet Tablets have going for them is that they are the lowest-priced smallest-full-screened general-purpose portable devices around.
Oh, you know what I mean — they run a full OS with an 800-pixel-wide screen, they’re large-pocket-sized and they cost half the price of a comparably capable UMPC.
So what does that mean for us internet tablet users?
Last year, I pointed out that portable, electronic chess-playing devices cost a hundred dollars or more. Putting Gnu Chess into the Nokia 770 and N800 Internet Tablets obviated the need to buy a specialized chess device.
And no chess device has the incredible 225-pixel-per-inch resolution of the 770 or N800.
Half a dozen specialized e-reading devices — the Iliad, the Sony Librie, and others* — offer e-reading off a carryaround screen, a need that FBReader and Plucker Viewer** meet wonderfully well on the Nokia tablets, at a lower price.
Nokia is preparing to sell a Navicore GPS kit for the N800*** — a Bluetooth GPS receiver, 2 GB worth of European maps, a 1 GB memory card, car charger — so that your internet tablet’s large screen can be utilized very effectively in a situation where the visual really counts.
I know, do-it-yourself GPS-and-maps are already here. But already-packaged and Nokia-supported sounds attractive for the non-do-it-yourselfer. And I like the spoken directions — is that part of the GPS receiver? You want it, obviously, for driving use.
The GPS/Internet Tablet combo plays to the strengths of the N800 — there’s nothing it can do here that you can’t do also with a Bluetoothed notebook computer, but who considers that practical? Oh, I should add that the kit includes a car mount to hold the N800 in a position the driver can easily view. Probably not an option you can find for your notebook.
For us internet tablet users, the adaptability of the 770 and the N800 means our devices keep becoming more useful and more versatile and not less.
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* Not to mention the original e-readers from the 20th century like the RocketeBook (still sold today, rebranded eBookwise) and the Softbook devices.
