A while back - by way of Tommi's S60 Application Blog - I came across Tomi T. Ahonen's brilliant post about the mobile phone as the 7th mass media. Ahonen compares the mobile phone to earlier mass media and - as a remark to those that complain about the mobile experience not matching those of a TV or PC - suggests to focus on the benefits the mobile has over other mass media. Ahonen then lists five characteristics that make the mobile the inherently superior mass media. Two of these characteristics has rummaged around my head since reading this piece: how personal phones are and how close we keep them:

"We don't share our phones even with our spouces, its that personal. Some may think their internet is personal, but even if it may be for some, as a rule, the internet is not personal. It seems personal, but we typically share our internet access at home with our family (children using the family PC etc) and at work our employers have rights to snoop around our e-mails and stored files etc."

"Seven out of ten people sleep with the phone within arm's reach even at night - and the vast majority of those have the phone in bed, yes thats true - that is how close is our relationship to our phone. We do take it to the bathroom with us."

In a similar way at Stephen Johnston's blog, I came across a post on Mark Anderson from Strategic News Service giving a talk at Nokia House in Helsinki, Finland. Anderson talks about his 10 predictions for 2007 and specifically addresses mobile phone issues (that sort of figures…). Anderson also addresses the closeness between people and their phones, and predicts 2007 to be the year the mobile phone will come through as a payment device. Here is a video of Anderson's talk:

Stephen Johnston's post includes his notes from Anderson's talk and they pretty much sum up the video. I will just highlight those of Anderson's remarks, which I took most notice of.

• Oil Prices
• Will not come down again, but increase. To $80/barrel on to $100/barrel and then back down to $80. Just for the heck of it - oil prices not determined by supply and demand.
• Phone as payment device, authentication using fingerprint swipe
• Technology ready for some time, but carriers have been holding back. 2007 will be the year they see the light. Anderson thinks mobile "device" w. swipe will replace keys etc. To me, this seems like techno lust thinking and I think it sort of goes against what we have learnt about tangible interfaces over the last 5-10 years.
• Mesh and parallel computing
• Nobody really knows how to program these computers, except maybe Cray. Microsoft does not know. Mesh computing coming to mobiles.
• Advertising and social networking using location
• DONT: "Shoes are $10 off at the mall up the street". DO: "Where are my kids?". Young people will use technology to re-create lost nuclear family.

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Anna is 1 year old today!. I find it hard to believe a whole year has already passed by!

We are not going to celebrate Anna's birthday with «outsiders» until this Saturday, but Anna's grand parents could somehow not resist popping by this afternoon.

I have posted a video after the jump. (more…)

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Steve Litchfield of «The Smartphones Show» has released his programme no. 28 - a Nokia N95 special.

Overall, Steve considers the N95 to be «a great all-rounder» with a great form factor and weight. I took particular notice of the following observations in Steve's enthusiastic, but critical review:

• The camera is slow - it takes approx. 2 secs to focus and approx. 5 secs to store an image.
• Battery life is poor, obviously. That much was to be expected from the N80 experience.
• Putting the phone to work - using several applications and so forth - results in frequent «Out of memory» errors. Future firmware upgrades will hopefully remedy this.

Steve concludes that the N95 is a «Jack of all trades - Master of none», but the phone really is cutting edge in several areas. Steve labels the N95 as an ultra-converged smartphone and remarks how the ultra-convergence has necessitated some compromises in this year's most desirable piece of electronics.

I remain very excited about the N95 - a great all-round device is just what I want! I expect the N95 to be as strong a communication device as the Nokia N80 (GSM, 3G, Bluetooth, WiFi etc.), but with much better multimedia capabilities (and the added benefit of GPS). Especially regarding camera performance and I am therefore very happy to read how the Martian tint of the prototype N95 images is nowhere to be found in images taken with a final production N95.

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An unforeseen consequence of my new LG KG320S is the distorted perspective or scale, I have developed because of it. After using the phone for a few days and getting used to it in eye and hand, I find the rest of the world starting to appear somewhat chubby and clunky.

I realized this much yesterday when I accidentally got a good, close look at one of the other phones I considered buying before deciding on the KG320S. The phone was a Sony Ericsson K800i - it is a very nice phone - but when compared to the sleek and slickness of the KG320S, do you agree K800i looks kind of bulgy in the picture above?

I have just checked the Sony Ericsson web site and the same perceived bulkiness applies to the K790i and the K750i - two other phones I considered along side the KG320S.

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Anna's regular family daycare is vacationing and thus closed this week. Anna was supposed to go into "guest" daycare at another daycare center, but the municipal daycare office called us Monday morning to let us know that the "care person" (!?) at this other daycare had called in sick. We were offered yet another daycare center to ship Anna off to, but for various reasons we declined that offer.

Instead I got to spend the day at home with Anna. It has been a while since my leave ended so it was great fun. In the morning I took Anna for a long walk in her stroller - we went to the animal folds of nearby Dalum Monastery, to take a look at their highland cattle and deer. As you (almost¹) can see in the pictures below, I tried to capture some of the deer using my LG KG320S.

1. If you look up the pictures on flickr, I have added comments to help locate the deer.
   [back]

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A few impressions from the weekend, caught on video using my new LG KG320S:

Two more videos after the jump. (more…)

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Yesterday, the Danish armed forces launched their very own net-based television channel, www.forsvarskanalen.dk.

The press release reveals that forsvarskanalen.dk expects to air two daily broadcasts. The first show at 09:30 covers main events from the military world, while a later show at 13:30 will provide in depth and background stories. The channel also plans to release historic and thematic broadcasts as supplements to the daily newscasts.

Unfortunately, forsvarskanalen.dk does not work in Firefox.

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