Tag: lumia

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Weekly Wrap 216: The return, the throat, the stress

The Tower at Dusk: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 21 to Sunday 27 July 2014 is just about to end, after a month of virtual silence on this website. I’ve been active elsewhere, just not here. So what’s the story?

I’ve been exhausted. A few weeks ago I made the mistake of spending a Friday evening in a Sydney mass-market bar with ordinary people, and I seem to have picked up some sort of disease. An infection. A lurgy. Whatever. As far as I can tell, it’s something that’s currently doing the rounds in Sydney. A sore throat with fatigue that’s difficult to shake. So I’m not too worried, just annoyed.

I also went for nearly a week without a computer, when my MacBook Pro had to go in for repairs. That was more disruptive to my work patterns than I’d hoped. Maybe I’ll write about that soon. Maybe not. The short version is that an iPad is just not the same.

And as a third disruption, there was a technical crisis that affected the clients of my other little business, and which took over my attention for two long days. I don’t think I’ll write about that at all, because it’s annoying.

The combined result, however, is that I’ve only had energy to focus on those things, plus the things that I’d committed to do and which generated immediate revenue. Well, some of them anyway. And everything else has been burned.

I plan to back-fill the missing posts of media appearances and the like, but they’ll have to wait for about a week. Meanwhile, this Weekly Wrap contains the links to the stuff that is available now, and a plan for the week ahead. And a photo.

Oh, and I should also mention that on Thursday and Friday I had the distinct pleasure of presenting a two-day “Writing for the Web” course at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). It made a lovely change from my usual solitary work.

Articles

Here’s everything I’ve written since Weekly Wrap 211.

Media Appearances

Quite a few since the last Weekly Wrap, but none this week. Watch out for blog posts as I publish the backlog.

5at5

Is listing them here pointless? Just head over to the 5at5 site, and either subscribe or browse back through the recent editions.

Corporate Largesse

None this week. I’ll report the rest in the next Weekly Wrap.

The Week Ahead

Monday is about finishing a column for ZDNet Australia and producing an episode of The 9pm Edict, as well as wrapping up some geekery for a client.

Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be in Sydney covering the ADMA Global Forum for Crikey and Technology Spectator. I’m particularly looking forward to meeting Bob Garfield, co-presenter of WNYC’s On the Media.

Also on Tuesday evening I’m heading to the OpenAustralia Foundation pub night.

On Thursday there’s a media briefing on various information security matters by Cisco and, in the evening, drinks with executives from Oracle.

Friday will see me wrapping up whatever media objects need completing, and then the weekend is unplanned.

And at various points through the week I’ll be trialling a Microsoft Nokia Lumia 930 smartphone, their latest flagship model, with particular attention being given to the camera.

[Photo: The Tower at Dusk, being a shot of a mobile phone tower at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains earlier this evening.]

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Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 39

En route, a frame from Strathfield to Central: click to embiggenI’ve finally wrapped up my Nokia Lumia 925 / Windows Phone 8 trial. I’m impressed with both the phone and the operating system, but is it too little too late for both Nokia and Microsoft? Who knows? I’ve made a video! You can scroll down for that.

That possible problem with Wi-Fi dropouts that I detailed last time? I couldn’t reproduce it with the replacement handset — or at least not in a way that couldn’t also be explained by the swirling electromagnetic soup in the vicinity of my desk and all the wireless devices thereupon — so let’s just write that off as a false alarm.

So where does that leave us?

Well, to reiterate, the Nokia Lumia 925 is a nice piece of kit, in keeping with the best traditions of the brand. Windows Phone 8 is also a solid forward-looking operating system. I’d been told about Windows 8’s design heritage at TechEd on the Gold Coast last year. Now, having used it for a month, I can see where it’s heading. App developers should be able to do good things with it.

But with both Nokia smartphones and Windows Phone 8 having such a tiny market share, will it all have been in vain? Has the flood of iOS and Android mobile devices taught the business world that, no, they’re not actually shackled to Microsoft’s products after all? That there are other ways of doing things? And that “producing documents” isn’t actually the purpose of business?

Sometimes when I look at Microsoft’s strategy with Nokia, or the previous one when they inserted Yahoo! into Bing, that the two potentially troubled companies are clutching to each other in terror as they plunge, each hoping the other brought a parachute. And maybe they have. But all the talk I’ve heard so far is your common or garden variety corporate waffle. Good luck, guys.

The only other loose end is to post the video I shot. And here it is. Over the fold is the full 16-minute video Strathfield to Central, shot on the Nokia Lumia 925 at full 1080p resolution, and all other video settings on their defaults.

Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 39”

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Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 10

Mountains dawn: click to embiggen“‘Day 10’? But the last post was Day 5,” I hear you complaining. Well, the dynamic of my Nokia Lumia 925 / Windows Phone 8 trial changed a bit last week, so I’m skipping over the dull bits.

Day 10 is Thursday 8 August 2013, and the photograph with this post was taken one minute before dawn on that day.

In the intervening days, I had continued to use the Lumia 925 much as I had been, and I continue to appreciate the quality of the camera and the ability to customise the start screen in Windows Phone 8. It makes the iOS grid of icons look positively old-fashioned.

However you may remember that I was having trouble with the Wi-Fi link dropping out when the phone was physically handled. Well, I put that question to Nokia and Microsoft on Monday.

Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 10”

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Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 5

Penrith railway station at dusk: click to embiggenIt’s time to catch up on my Nokia Lumia 925 / Windows Phone 8 trial, skipping over Day 4 to Day 5, Saturday 3 August 2013 — when I finally discovered the proper way to synchronise the phone with my MacBook Pro.

I’d been frustrated by the slow process of using Bluetooth to transfer photos. Nowhere in the “Welcome” booklet that comes with the phone is there even a suggestion that you can plug the phone into a computer, let alone that there exists an official Microsoft Windows Phone for OS X application!

And it works!

Furthermore, if you use Apple’s default workflows for managing your images in iPhoto and your music in iTunes, then that all works too.

OK, so I’m an idiot. Maybe I should have looked, or perhaps browsed Nokia’s support site. But I still think this is something worth mentioning from the beginning — particularly as certain phone configuration options are only available from the management software.

Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 5”

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Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 3

Approaching Sydney Central, a frame from "Strathfield to Central": click to embiggenOn Thursday I decided to check out the Nokia Lumia 925’s video capabilities. That’s a frame grab above I continue to be impressed with this phone’s image quality.

Indeed the video, which I’ve entitled Strathfield to Central for obvious reasons, is the highlight not only of Day 3 of my Nokia Lumia 925 / Windows Phone 8 trial but of the entire trial so far.

I had hoped to embed the full video here. But I’m on mobile bandwidth today, and unless I upload a gigabyte or two of data, it simply won’t do it justice. So it’ll have to wait a while. Stand by.

Meanwhile, here’s the rest of my bullet-point observations from Day 3.

Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 3”