Open Source Blogging

2009 is the year of reality. It’s the year when hype goes away (except for hype about Twitter). When many of us get back to the basics: health, happiness, fitness, family.

We might still believe that the one who dies with the most toys wins, but only a few of us can afford that this year. In previous years I would have already bought several new gadgets. I want a new Apple monitor. A Canon 5D MK II camera. A new Kindle. A new netbook. And on and on.

I have bought none of them, and am hardly alone. This is … Continue Reading

Maryam wanted a video camera. She asked her friends and they recommended the FlipCam. She thought it was safe from me. She got an ugly one (orange and white) just to make it very unlikely that I’d steal it. After all, if it isn’t an Apple product, or cool and black, it probably was safe from her geeky husband, right?

But I tried it out one day and found that it gave me a lot better quality that my Nokia cell phone with Qik.

Since that day I haven’t given it back. All the recent videos on my Kyte … Continue Reading

So, my wrap up after Nokia World here in Barcelona, Spain?

Steve Jobs doesn’t have anything to worry about.

Apple still has the best mobile OS out there with the best developer support.

Nokia customers should, however, thank Steve Jobs because their OS is seeing pretty dramatic improvements thanks to the pressure from Apple and Google’s Android OS.

It’s interesting. Yesterday I went to the Barcelona Zoo. Lots of fun, but I was keeping track of what the kids were using. I did not see a single iPhone. Nokia owns the Spanish marketplace. Nokia’s challenge was to get close enough to the iPhone to … Continue Reading

UPDATE: here’s a short video of the N97 in action last night at dinner.

I have a second video that shows the photo viewing, which looks a lot like how the iPhone does it.

Nokia just announced the N97. I got a chance to play with it last night and realized they have built the ultimate Facebook device. Now, I’m sure, lots of you will wonder how it compares to the iPhone. Well, for a Facebook user it … Continue Reading

UPDATE: here’s a short video of the N97 in action last night at dinner.

I have a second video that shows the photo viewing, which looks a lot like how the iPhone does it.

Nokia just announced the N97. I got a chance to play with it last night and realized they have built the ultimate Facebook device. Now, I’m sure, lots of you will wonder how it compares to the iPhone. Well, for a Facebook user it … Continue Reading

We’ve arrived in Barcelona, Spain for Nokia World, a week where Nokia talks to its top customers.

When we got here a Nokia executive met me and bragged that the Internet has no clue what they will announce this week. I asked “what about the touch screen cell phone that I’ve seen rumors about?” He said that no one had gotten it right yet. The announcements are on Wednesday morning (it’s early Monday morning as I post this) so we’ll have to wait to see what they announce. He told me this is one of the only times he can … Continue Reading

We’ve arrived in Barcelona, Spain for Nokia World, a week where Nokia talks to its top customers.

When we got here a Nokia executive met me and bragged that the Internet has no clue what they will announce this week. I asked “what about the touch screen cell phone that I’ve seen rumors about?” He said that no one had gotten it right yet. The announcements are on Wednesday morning (it’s early Monday morning as I post this) so we’ll have to wait to see what they announce. He told me this is one of the only times he can … Continue Reading

Funny, I couldn’t Qik this video. Why? It was embargoed until tonight. So, I used a Flip camera instead of my Nokia phone.

But Qik is moving fast to support the most handsets out there.

For the people who don’t know what Qik does it lets you broadcast live video from your cell phone.

Anyway, a whole team of Russians made this because it’s hard to get video access on a Blackberry. In the video you meet the team behind Qik.

Want to read up on the moves instead of watch a video? Here are some others who’ve written about this news:

TechCrunch…. Continue Reading

Yesterday at the Mobile Web Wars event (here’s video of that), held right before the TechCrunch party, David Hornik, partner at August Capital (he’s the host of the TechCrunch party) told the audience that he would not invest in pure iPhone apps because the iPhone had too small a market share and that anyone who wanted to get big in the mobile space should go after all phones, not just the iPhone, which, while it’s hot with early-adopter types and is seeing people waiting in lines to buy around the world, hasn’t yet made a dent in, say, Nokia’s … Continue Reading

I imagine everyone who cares about the new iPhone knows where to find the news, but I imagine there might be one of you who just woke up from a coma, or arrived from Mars, and needs to know what is going on. TechMeme has almost wall-to-wall coverage of all the new iPhone stuff.

Me? My 14-year-old son loaded all of our iPhones (we own three) with iPhone 2.0 firmware update. He also did a little review on Qik for me.

We’ll be at the San Francisco Apple store to get the new iPhone. We should arrive at about 6:30 … Continue Reading