My mate Dean and I brushing our teeth.
A daily ritutal.
Next, this photo of Glastonbury really doesn’t communicate the overwhelming sprawl of the place.
Cloudy weather, which made a change. Most of the time it was either rain or shine.
Rarely anywhere in-between.
This next one is of me and my bamboo.
And then finally… This very random front-end of a plane.
Which made up a long bar… With 50’s music and dancing.. Lots of fun!
And it’s only Thursday!
“I have just seen a priest playing bongos. Now I have seen everything.”
spoken through SpinVox
Morning has arrived on the field of Pilton. There are tents as far as the eye can see and I’m blogging this live! As I type this to you I’m sitting outside, brew in hand and soaking up what rays there are (via my solar charger, natch).
Everyone’s here now..
Time for breakfast methinks – then we’re off to explore!
In the meantime, check out these pics 🙂
– A fair few tents! –
– Prepare for rain… –
– Soaking up the rays –
We’re sat down. Beer in hand.
Arrived at 11pm. Found our friends at midnight. Tents up by quarter to one..
And now..?
We can relax and start to take it in. Funnily enough though… Right now?
It’s bed time 🙂
Night, night Glastonbury – see you in the morning 🙂
We made it to the car park!
Only, we arrived on the EAST SIDE and we’re camping on the WEST SIDE.
According to my map, this is going to be a fair old trek…
Bugger.
Evening readers, Whatley here, writing this on my laptop en route to Pilton for the festival that is known as Glastonbury.
As you know from my last post, the multitude of tools available to the modern day, festival going Mobile Geek really is quite something… So here, for your pleasure, is a quick rundown of what I am taking with me, starting with the hardware…
Handsets:
I’ve packed my N95, my N95 8GB and my E61i. The E61i is perfect as an emergency, backup handset as the battery on that baby is HUGE and it lasts FOREVER (well, about 5 days). So if it all goes pear-shaped I can resort to using that. The N95s I’m going to tag-team throughout the day/festival. One to carry with me and one to charge. Speaking of chargers…
Power:
When it comes to keeping the batteries fully topped up, I?ve covered all bases with this one. I’ve got a Nokia DC-8 battery charger, bought this today, £25. Steep, but I?m a sucker for the branded stuff (and it’s worked OK so far).
I’ve also got a Free Loader Solar Charger (see below). This thing gets kudos just for the fact that out of all of the chargers, this was the only one that came with one for the Nintendo DS. Which has made my friends very happy indeed; Mario Kart for them while I type this passing Stone Henge, (fact).
Finally, I have this ‘GoHello’ wind-up charger and, as Ben Smith so rightly said in a recent Mobile Industry Review podcast – “…they ain’t called wind-ups for nothing”.
Seriously, I’ve got nothing out of this thing yet. Nothing. Boo.
On top of all that lot, I’ve got four (count ’em), N95 batteries. All fully charged before departure so let’s see how long they last shall we?! 🙂
Software:
Well stuff like Qik, Google Maps, VOX, SpinVox, Moblog etc… I kinda covered this last time round. I want to talk about the new stuff. Since writing that original piece I?’ve acquired two pieces of software; both of which have – so far – impressed me much.
First up is ViewRanger. I downloaded this earlier in the week and my thought was: What a load of rubbish!
However…
THEN I downloaded the Glastonbury specific maps – aka Worthy Farm etc, and WOW! Impressed!
Check out this screenshot:
You can see that they’ve pre-loaded the app with the relative points of interest. Which is so awesome; things like cash machines, toilets, stages etc… And on top of that if I hit ‘Lock to GPS’ it’ll tell me where I am.
Rock on. I cannot wait to use this properly 🙂
The other piece of software is from Orange. It’s called GlastoNav and at first I really couldn’t get this to work..
Eek!
A few days after this, once they had ironed out the gremlins and suchlike, this little app has turned out to be very handy indeed. Not only can I look at the (much richer interpretation) of the map, but also I can plan my schedule for the event… and THEN I can share that schedule with my fellow festival-goers!
So far (again), this has really impressed me 🙂
For actual mobile stuff, that’s all.
But, I have also been given some other cool pieces of gadgetry to use/play with. One of which is the Flip video camera. This is something that I think Ewan has spoken about a fair amount – my only problem with it however is that once my hour of recording is up, I can’t upload it until I get to a USB connection.
Bah! We’ll see how I get on with that one…
The other piece of REALLY COOL stuff I’ve been given is this Loc8tor device which, hand on heart, is the best thing yet (in theory anyway).
I attach the small part to something I might lose – i.e. my friends – and then, if I lose them, I switch the big part on and it beeps to tell me how close I am etc…
I had a play before I left the house and it rocked my socks.
So… again, we’ll see how we get on.
That’s it from me, I’m nearly at Glastonbury and my laptop is about to die. Thanks to Ben Smith for editing this for me and putting the media in etc…
You can keep up with my exploits at http://www.glastonblog.co.uk
See you soon!
J.
…we’re on our way!
Morning readers, Whatley here, just got this over MSN from a friend of mine at Nokia;
“Hey Whatley, we are buying Symbian and will donate it + S60 to an open source foundation!”
To which my response was a resounding – “Eh?”
You can read the official Nokia press releases here and here
Now, I’m not a developer. I’m ready to admit my knowledge in this area isn’t great. Ewan’s in the Maldives, the rest of the SMSTN Team are (still) sleeping so it’s down to me to make something of this.
Looking around online there is little opinion up yet – however, unsurprisingly, All About Symbian has the news too and Steve Litchfield says that ‘This is officially HUGE‘.
I dropped the news into Twitter just over an hour ago (at the time of publishing) and got few responses back.
One of my followers and all round smart chap, Jof Arnold, emailed over his thoughts, which he’s kindly given me permission to publish here – I for one am interested to find out what this actually means for the industry as a whole and, more importantly, what’s your opinion on this latest Nokia acquistion?
_________________
Over to Jof:
In practice well, that all depends on Nokia and I couldn’t possibly comment on their track history of OSS projects – cos I have no idea.
In theory? Potentially an awful lot. Compare to the iPhone and you’ll see why. Remember all those people trying to jail-break the iPhone? Those projects were successful because fundamentally the operating system pissed off many people; cut and paste; closed apps; no file explorer. Now, had apple open-sourced it fully you’d have a situation where the masses would be contributing huge amounts of their time into making the iPhone just how they wanted it all under Apple’s approval of course.
But, Apple won’t do that and developers are annoyed. Which is why any system that allows developed to tinker with the core operating system is going to be attractive to them. All of a sudden, developers have a conundrum;
Impossible to say what will happen, but developers have always had a soft-spot for Symbian. This is potentially game-changing, but Nokia/Symbian’s got their work cut out; despite all this, Apple is a marketing monster and is hard to resist.
Jof Arnold
http://www.brainbakery.com
http://twitter.com/jofarnold
_________________
Thanks for those thoughts Jof. There’s a live webcast scheduled in for 11am today.
We’ll have more news, as it breaks.
Thoughts?
In the first of this year's Glastonblog-posts –
I bring you a quick review of last year's gadgetry plus a view towards this year's…
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Greetings readers, your friendly neighbourhood Whatley here!
While some of us are off gallivanting around the Maldives… sorry, ahem… A DESERT ISLAND …other bloggers, like myself, have to make do with the festival season to amuse themselves here back in the UK.
And what better festival other than the Mother of all festivals: Glastonbury!
🙂
Yes, it really IS that muddy. I took that photo myself.
Last year, I think I’m pretty safe in saying;
I was the ONLY person to live blog Glastonbury from a mobile phone.
Yes. That’s right, I blogged the whole darn thing (well as much as my battery would allow) from my Nokia N95-1 (the original silver one, the one with the REALLY poor battery, y’know?).
In fact the only reason my current blog exists is because of my then(?) obsession with Mobile Blogging.
You can go back and read some of my exploits here, here and here if you’d like.
But really, all you need to know is, at the time, the only way I could do this (AFAIK) was through VOX.
VOX has a neat little application that sits on some/most Nseries phones that you can download and is also available as one of the upload options in the Share Online app, also found on most Nseries phones.
Power wise, again only for last year, I had three N95 batteries (BL-5Fs for the true geeks among you) and these two things below:
That on the left is an independent battery charge-base and that on the right, a portable double AA battery powered phone charger.
The former proved itself to be extremely useful, then and indeed over the past year of ownership too. With that handy little device I can always have one battery in my phone, while another charges. This, of course, is all well and good until you go and lose the damn thing… which is what I did a matter of days ago.
I digress.
The thing on the right, I bought that from Amazon, thing is mind…
It . Was. Rubbish.
In fact I think it actually USED more battery power than it actually gave back. I ended up passing it onto some fellow festival-ite in our circle of tents…it conveniently came with a bunch of other adaptors – not just Nokia; covered SE, Motorola, Blackberry… the lot. You name it. So at least that much was handy about it…
However, for me – it was no good…
And don’t even start me on the quite frankly RIDICULOUS "Orange Charge Tent".
I mean, who wants to QUEUE for an hour to charge their handset, only to discover that when they get to the front, they then have to wait around for a further two hours to watch their phone charge at an unsecured bar.
Joined up thinking really not their speciality it would seem…
So… How did I stay charged?
Well, while the Orange monkeys were missing out on potentially 3hrs of great music, I managed to find a little store amongst the clothes stalls and falafel vendors, which specialised in phone charging.
You paid a fiver a go and it was kept under lock and key and all was fine. The system the guy had running behind him reminded me a little of chargebox and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were one and the same… I’ll ask them this year and see. Anyway, this little store became a daily haunt for my good self.
In the morning I’d get up, review any content from the night before, write a quick post or two and then upload as much as I could before my battery died. After that I’d mosey on down to aforementioned phone charging establishment, pay my fiver, and then go off and meet friends who I’d arranged to meet at a later time (do you remember when we did that?!).
Later that afternoon I would pick up my phone, liaise with all the folk that had been trying to reach me for God knows how long, and then get off to another stage where upon I’d take more photos/videos that I would later, no doubt upload.
Lovely stuff.
So aside from the not-so-brilliant portable phone charger, last year was a reasonable success.
But what about this year?
Well, my VOX blog is still up and running.
So I’ve got that working just fine, but now – look at all the other things I can do!
I can upload via SMS, MMS or Email via Moblog.
I can simply make a phone call and speak a blog post through SpinVox.
I can boot up Qik and stream LIVE content direct to the internet. Not only direct to my QIK page, but if I hit ‘55’ while I’m streaming, my 500-odd followers on Twitter will get told about it too!
The plethora of Social Tools now available to the modern, festival-going geek, really… truly… is a spectacle to behold.
I shall be using ALL of those services/apps/tools I’ve listed above… and probably more.
The question is Dear Readers, which ones do YOU think I should be using?
What should your Mobile Geek of Glastonbury be packing in his rucksack to ensure a complete all round mobile performance?
Leave your suggestions below or, if you have anything you want showcased/tested over the coming festival season, email ewan@smstextnews.com
Yes – I know he’s on a 'desert island', but he’s already emailed me twice today with two new products that he’s been sent to give to me try out in the mud of Pilton…
________________________
The Glastonblog begins!
or – “A rant about convergence, or lack thereof”
Right, if you’re reading this and you have any idea of the kind of person I am, you know how I feel about my mobile phone. You know I love it, you know I’m never far from it and you know that above all, if I could, I’d use it for just about everything.
This last point is the kicker for me.
To give you a rough idea of what I’m talking about, here are just some of the things I use my phone for:
Because I carry my N95 8GB (pictured above) in my pocket, quite a small device take note, I don’t have to carry an iPod, Nintendo, TV, Camera, TomTom, PC, map… the list goes on.
All of these things (and many others) are no longer clogging up my pockets thanks to this rather awesome little handset.
Why?
Well this is, in part, down to the innovations of the team at Nokia. However it is also owes a lot to my own personal preference; Nokia have enabled me to do all these things and have by doing so have also empowered me to stop carrying all of the other devices.
I don’t like carrying lots of things in my pockets. At best, I will leave the house with my keys, my phone and my bankcard. That’s it. Only those three items.
Right then. Keeping all of the above in mind, let’s direct our attention for a moment to this thing:
– Barclays PIN Sentry –
Could it be…
My First Calculator?
The latest toy from The Early Learning Centre?
Or maybe even a band new phone maybe?
No. No. And No.
That, there, is Barclays ‘PIN Sentry’.
Excusing the ridiculous name for a second, let’s take a look at what it’s actually for.
Any time I want to log into MY internet banking, I have to put my Debit Card into that contraption, enter my PIN number and then, and only then, will my bank allow me to log into MY account.
First up, the whole sodding point of having internet banking, to my mind, is so that I can access my account from anywhere where there is INTERNET.
Until they truly crack mobile internet banking (and trust me – on the basis of this – we’re going to be waiting a long time), then this really is the only option for anyone wanting to access their account anywhere… (short of actually going into a branch, but really, does anyone do that anymore?).
Second, I get the whole security aspect of it all, really I do, but do I actually need this thing as well?!
I already have a unique 12 digit unique ID number, an 8 digit secret password and a five digit passcode.
Do I really NEED more security?
Surely there has to be line drawn between security to entry and barriers to entry? Right?
…sigh…
Next point – it is clear, from the points laid out above, that I like convergence. I want one device to do everything for me…
…Of convergence, I am a fan.
I do not want to be carrying that stupid, stupid piece of plastic around with me everywhere I go just in case I might want to log in to my internet banking. Idiots. Really.
Just no joined-up thinking whatsoever.
Finally… This post has been a long time coming; Barclays started introducing this towards the end of last year, (as did a few other banks, so I’ve been told), so I apologise if it seems a bit late in the day as it were… But yes, the final point –
I’ve actually spoken to Barclays about this and I’ve outlined my point of view. As a result, I have now been opted-out of this new system and my PIN Sentry is happily gathering dust in a draw somewhere in my room.
WOO!
If you’re a Barclays customer and you find this idea as absurd as I do then I would strongly urge you to do the same.
Call your bank, tell them they’re idiots and get yourself opted out. The opportunity cost of this, just so you know, means that you will be unable to set up any ‘new payees’ via your online banking. I’m happy to live with this. I don’t often pay new people and if and when the situation does arise I can simply call the bank and get them to do it for me.
Here endeth the rant.
……..
On a lighter note – have been working my backside off lately, (super exciting new project for SpinVox), so next weekend I’m going to head off down to Pilton to a little music festival you may’ve heard of…
Next weekend I’m headed back to Glastonbury.
And I can’t WAIT!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Read about my Glastonbury Mobile Geek plans over on SMS Text News and yes, you guessed it, just like last year, I’ll be blogging the whole thing from my mobile phone, (although I doubt very much I’ll be doing any internet banking).
😉
whatleydude.com 