In Las Vegas, where the CTIA Wireless 2008 show is going on, Nokia officially announced its N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition today at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.
Because WiMAX signals extend 2-3 miles — as compared to a few hundred feet for WiFi — WiMAX networks enable broadband internet connections (2-4 Mbps, with peaks of up to 10 Mbps) for users on the move.
The device will be “available in the United States during the summer of 2008 in areas where WiMAX connectivity is available.”
Nokia also announced an
upgraded OS2008 [that] introduces useful new features to the platform, including an enhanced e-mail client, support for Chinese character rendering in the browser and RSS feeds and Seamless Software Update functionality to eliminate manual software updates, making periodic updates of the operating system quick and easy. While standard on the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition, current owners of Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets with earlier operating systems will be able to upgrade their device to the revised operating system for free during the second quarter of 2008.
I’m not sure if this adds anything to what we already knew about the next OS release, but since Reggie is having all the fun in Las Vegas, I’m reduced to reading and re-reading the press release.
Here’s the obligatory statement of significance by an upper-level executive:
“By delivering the kind of open Internet experience that consumers previously only expected on a desktop PC, the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition is a compelling example of how next generation broadband wireless technology will not only change the way people think about the Internet, it will change the very nature of the Internet itself,” said Ari Virtanen, Vice President of Convergence Products for Nokia.
“Much in the way that the evolution of the fixed Internet from dial-up to broadband enabled a host of new Internet services and changed people’s expectations of what an Internet experience should be, the transition to a broadband Internet experience set free from the constraints of a fixed network will spark the next wave of new mobile Internet services, and will forever change the perception of what the Internet can be.”
I think Ari means the walkaround web is a totally new experience and the new tablet will be the first to deliver it in this form. No argument there. (I guess if you’re in one of those WiMAX locations, we’re talking about the drive-around web, actually.)
Just so there’s no confusion about this new tablet: When not in range of a WiMAX network, the Nokia N810 WE can also “access the Internet over Wi-Fi or via conventional cellular data networks by pairing to a compatible mobile phone via Bluetooth technology.”
Nokia’s press release ambiguously notes that “a number of VoIP and IM clients are available, including Skype, Google Talk, and Gizmo5, which can also take advantage of the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition’s built-in web cam for video calls.” Whether this statement includes Skype among the VoIP clients that can make cam calls depends upon how you parse the sentence. Clarification is already being sought on this.
Added later:
Where will you find WiMAX? Alex Vorn at World of Gadgets cites these locales in 2008: Baltimore, Washington DC and Chicago (with Boston “soon” and New York after that).
I’m at work and haven’t had opportunity to flash the new OS.
But I read this comment from TabulaRasa in the thread about the new release with Skype and Flash9:
When I run Gtalk and open the webcam, the camera shows up within Gtalk.
Well, I know there’s a Google Talk plugin for PC’s with a webcam that allow you to use video and even have video calls with Skype users. It’s called Festoon. It came out last year, and I have no idea why I can’t reach the festooninc.com website now. Out of business? Bought by somebody bigger? Just a bad day on the internet?
At any rate, maybe someone with the new OS could let us know more about the interplay between webcam, Google Talk and video calls with PC’s using a Festooned Google Talk.
Updated:Read the comments to this post to see that now cam calling ispossible from N800 to N800 with Google Talk.
* * *
Second update:
After some back-and-forth with Thoughtfix, I think I understand this a little better now.
We’ve had a cam-call app, and I guess we’ve been able to connect to other N800’s using either Google Talk or Nokia’s service. And Nokia’s service was also potentially connecting you to a PC with a webcam.
I don’t know; I never connected to someone with a PC and webcam using Nokia’s invite.
And, gee, I guess the only video internet calls I made were to people with gmail addresses and they went through Google Talk. But when people said they were making calls through GTalk, I thought it was through the IM app — and not the webcam app I’ve been using all along. (Well, sometimes using. This is a terribly under-utilized feature right now.)
Once the Skype service adds video, gee, maybe it will be activated through the Skype app. Or maybe it will use the same app we already have and use Skype’s network (is that the right word?).
And since I don’t know of any way to get webcams connected through Google Talk other than from N800 to N800, we’re still on the outside, waiting to join the larger community of cam callers, while still participating fully in the walkaround web.
For me, the promised addition of Skype to the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet has meant the ability to connect to millions of Skype users for free voip calls — a network far larger than Gizmo and Google Talk offer — and, of course, video internet calls.
Maybe I’ve been missing the boat on this.
A forum post here at ITT alerted us to a post at jkontherun with a photo of Skype running on the N800 and a few pieces of information: July. No video yet.
No cam calls? What’s the point? I thought.
And then I wondered why the photo showed a “Buy Skype credit” link in the app. You only use that when you pay for Skype calls, which is only when you’re calling someone who doesn’t have Skype.
Yikes!
Will I be able to call anyone on any landline or cellphone whatsoever from my Internet Tablet? Looks like it to me.
That, I think, is maybe going to ease my unhappiness at having to wait for Skype cam calls. More than a lot, I should say.
Update: Two days a week I work from home, and I tie up the house phone for an hour at a time with weekly conference calls.
The cellphone reception right where we are (at the bottom of a hill) is poor, else I’d consider our cellphones as alternate home phones.
In the past, we’ve had two lines, but we never knew when we needed the second line and the expense has never seemed justified. But what a pain it is sometimes having just one phone line.
My “use Skype for a second line” and “well, use Gizmo then” efforts were abysmal failures. Maybe it was my cheap headset. But things didn’t work out. And I sure didn’t like being tethered to the upstairs computer anytime I wanted to make a call.
I realize now that my N800 and 770 aren’t two new phones. They’re two new phone lines. (Hey, with two children entering precocious years, I might need more than two additional lines.) Low rates, too — $30/year for unlimited calling to regular phones on Skype (eg, $2.50/month) and just 1.9 cents per minute at Gizmo with no minimum monthly.
Could be a very easy way to enable each of us to be able to talk (and wander around the house!) at the same time.
A first for me: on the train ride in from Montclair today, the fellow sitting next to me was another Internet Tablet user, which we discovered when I pulled out an N800 to work on. Having a particular interest in the Gizmo Project, he suggested we talk later, Gizmo to Gizmo, N800 to N800 (or maybe it was N800 to 770).
As it happens WiFi is conscientiously blocked where I work, so I’ll have to try this later, perhaps tonight. But a visit to the Gizmo Project (from which I’ve been absent, lo this last half year) shows that versions for the N800 and the 770 are both available (not to mention the Nokia N80, one of the six or more WiFi-capable Nokia cellphones). (Screenshots link from here [N800] and here [770].)
Gizmo, of course, is SIP-based VoIP, with free computer-based calls (that includes Internet Tablets) to other Gizmo users or any SIP-based software, such as Google Talk. This is as opposed to proprietary approaches like Skype. The Gizmo Project’s value-add is that it offers users the option to pay nominal fees to connect to landline and mobile phones.
I’ve used Gizmo, and I’ve used Skype, and I’ve used Google Talk, and I’ve used Vonage, and I’ve used cellphones (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile), and so on, and so on. (Landlines!) We all have. I know that pointing to another way to talk to people doesn’t make your heart beat faster, even if it does use a non-proprietary protocol. And I can scarcely think of times when I’ve had fewer than 2 or 3 options available to make a call at one time or location. But …
But Gizmo lets you talk using your Internet Tablet to anyone with any phone. Now. (Actually, dating back to July. Some months yet before Skype joins the fray.) That’s a big step up from “talk to other people with Google Talk on their computer.”
Sometimes I’m so busy with getting somewhere, I don’t see that the landscape has changed. Drastically.
Maybe Gizmo will make my heart beat faster after all …
In the blitz about the new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, one thing that seems to be underplayed in my opinion is Nokia-Skype collaboration to “develop a new mobile experience.”
With the N800, Skype frees itself from desktops and laptops. Now Skype is mobile, like any cellphone.
With Skype, the Internet Tablet acquires real phone capabilities, able to connect not just to millions of Skype users’ computers but to any phone.
But beyond that, you have video with your conversation. And not at the sky-high cellular carrier prices but at the opposite end of the price spectrum where VoIP and Linux and the internet in general are camped.
See, for instance, Festoon, where there are Skype and Google Talk video plugins. Up to 8 callers with cameras can participate in a Skype video conference with Festoon without bankrupting themselves. Who knows? I expect Nokia-Skype will have its own video plugin by the time the collaboration comes to fruition in six months, don’t you? With all the software comfortably built-in, of course.
So the N800’s webcam and WiFi and mobility make Skype limitless. And Skype makes the N800 a true two-way communication device, where the walkaround web meets the talk-all-day crowd. What a combo!
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.
[M]aemo 2.0 [has the] tools needed for application development at maemo. The purpose of this beta is to give tools for the developers to get their apps & stuff ported on the new software.
And he adds:
The beta is beta! It has its problems but I believe it is very usable for this purpose. It is not intended for regular consumers but for developers. So be careful out there. It may bite!
Here we go! Soon it will be not just in these developers’ hands but in us users’ hands, with the updated apps too.
We know now that the 2006 OS will come with at least one new application pre-installed — Google Talk, with its instant messaging and VoIP phone capabilities.
Since Nokia has been promising IM and VoIP by mid-2006 for 51 weeks (hey! one more week till the announcement anniversary!), we knew this was coming.
I wonder if there will be any other pre-installed applications? Maybe FBReader, the world-class e-reader, for instance. We know that the 770 is an ideal e-book reader and that e-books are becoming more significant.
Or maybe there will be some additional games — Nako, Battlegweled and IceBreaker seem obvious candidates. Maybe a sturdy text editor to supplement Notes. Or built-in XTerm and CPU/MEM load graph. I would add PIM apps to this list, if there were any such available. I’m not envisioning the Nokia developers creating new apps with so much already on their plate.
I’ve definitely made my opinion known that FBReader is a natural application for the Nokia 770. But maybe not everyone agrees. RemoteUser (aka Gene Mosher) believes in the 770 as a remote control device. A whole crowd is making it a mapping/GPS displaying device. Not to mention others developing its audio and video playing side.
If Nokia isn’t going to pre-install all of these apps, and is wary of picking only one or another of them, I hope Ari Jaaksi and his crew provide a good clean automatic way to install and update them that even a rank beginner will be able to follow, as they’ve hinted will happen. If there are “click to install” links to add some of these apps, that will be the next thing to “pre-installed.”
Years ago, the New Yorker magazine was beginning to lose advertising and looked like it would enter the long decline of high-class magazines. I knew someone who worked there and owned a few shares of stock (about $500 each) and who suggested I buy some, to help support the magazine. I thought about its prospects and decided there was no way to make money positioned where it was. I thought the end was inevitable. I didn’t invest any money.
Condé Nast Publications, however, saw the New Yorker as a cheap way to supply a ready-made outlet for its high-end advertisers buying pages in other CNP publications. And selling those pages pre-empted the ads’ going to competitors. The New Yorker completed Condé Nast’s suite of offerings and saved the company from having to launch a magazine from scratch. CNP had a way to make money with the New Yorker, and indeed it has prospered since then.
I wonder if in the same way the Nokia 770 isn’t so valuable on its own but invaluable as it completes Google’s package of attractions.
The Nokia 770 might not be able to singlehandedly create this new niche of handheld web tablets, but it gives Google an opening into the walkaround web. (You think they want to promote Microsoft’s UMPC initiative?) Now you can check your gmail from anywhere, not just at your desk. Now you can use Google Talk from anywhere — now you can really talk using Google Talk.*
You think I’m exaggerating when I say “from anywhere.” But isn’t Google providing a WiFi cloud over all of San Francisco? What do you bet that every city large enough to have a pro sports franchise gets a WiFi cloud within the next three years? And maybe Google will be helping the effort. Remember: the more WiFi, the better for Google.
And maybe Google will be a broadband provider. Bet you see “free Nokia 770 with 1 year signup” offers then. Actually, I bet we start seeing it from all sorts of broadband suppliers soon.
We’re all going to live in the walkaround web sooner or later. Google benefits from that, especially in its head-to-head competition with Microsoft. Like the New Yorker was to Condé Nast, the Internet Tablet is more valuable to Google than to anyone else — and you know they have a way to make money from it.
* I wonder if this is why Google chose to use a standard protocol for its Google Talk rather than set up something proprietary like Microsoft and AOL did. It means that people using other applications — like Gizmo, right? — will be able to connect with Google Talk. Could be a hard shove downward at Skype’s prospects too, eh?
Full disclosure: Years ago, I used to work for CNP as an editor.
Years ago, the New Yorker magazine was beginning to lose advertising and looked like it would enter the long decline of high-class magazines. I knew someone who worked there and owned a few shares of stock (about $500 each) and who suggested I buy some, to help support the magazine. I thought about its prospects and decided there was no way to make money positioned where it was. I thought the end was inevitable. I didn’t invest any money.
