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Chris Pirillo uses Windows. The context for that remark becomes clear once you’ve taken the time to listen to this podcast…

Cameron’s G’day World is a show that I’ve been an ardent follower of for quite a while. One of the better ones is episode 266, an attempt at an interview with the LockerGnome himself. None other than Chris Pirillo. It’s quite a feat for someone to prevent the Cam from getting a word in edgewise! Pirillo provides some excellent commentary – thought-provoking, and certainly an avenue for further research. Get the podcast here and enjoy. It’s rare to find two guys so passionate about a certain topic!

By the way, Chris: your use of Windows is forgiven

RSS readers are a must have on a mobile device. I set my devices to connect to my wireless network and download the latest feeds for reading whenever I have a spare moment. On the N95, I initially tried Resco’s News, but finally settled on WildPalm’s HeadLine. Resco News is still a beta product and did show some quirks during my testing period. Nothing serious, and I certainly liked the huge selection of feeds that are included – all or some of these may be selected to build up an initial list of feeds to get going. I preferred the HeadLine interface. It’s cleaner and seems to work better, though I’d suggest you try them both to see which suits you.

HeadLine includes a small selection of popular feeds. These are categorized according to their content. Adding a new feed is relatively simple, and it is possible to import existing feed lists saved in OPML format.

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Well, two tips, actually. The first relates to software installations, and that not only for Symbian devices, but also for those running Windows Mobile. I don’t know how often I’ve installed an application only to have it fail on me with some ridiculous error. My philosophy is to install all applications to the storage card, leaving as much system memory available for the device. In the case of the N95 that’s a good idea, since the memory management isn’t always up to scratch. Except that some applications find it necessary to be installed in the main memory and cannot deal with being relegated to something as second-class as auxiliary storage. Regardless how often this has happened to me, it takes a number of thought cycles to retry the installation of the application to the device storage. Often, the strange error message disappears, and the application runs as it should…

The second tip is for those wanting to connect their Nokia phone to Linux. Open a terminal session and run tail -f /var/log/messages. Insert the USB cable and select Mass storage mode on the phone. You should see a variety of system messages, of which at least one should indicate the size of the external storage card in your phone. For my N95, I see something like this

Jul 27 21:23:12 localhost kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] 2012160 512-byte hardware sectors (1030 MB)

That’s the indication that the 1GB Micro-SD card has been recognized. My Fedora system doesn’t automatically mount the storage card for immediate access, though. To determine where the device is attached, the text in the angular brackets should provide a clue. In the text string above, [sdd] is the location to use when mounting. Create a directory and assign appropriate permissions. I used the following as root (or sudo for Ubuntu):
mkdir /media/n95
chmod 777 /media/n95

Then, access the content of the storage card once the appropriate mount command has been issued. In my example mount /dev/sdd /media/n95

Fedora 7 has replaced Ubuntu as my favourite Linux distribution. I consider it more stable than Feisty, though the loading of updates is heavy on bandwidth: instead of grabbing only those components that have changed, Fedora 7 enjoys pulling down entire rpm’s for updated packages. OpenOffice is one example. An update downloads the entire 100MB or more rpm for that.

One of the proposed features that are planned for the next release address that issue by including an add-in for yum called Presto. Presto downloads only changes to rpm’s, also called deltarpm’s, leading to significantly less bandwidth-intensive update sessions. Fedora 8 should be available in November of this year,

And quite a few other innovations are to be part of that release, namely

• fully graphical startup, without switching between terminal text and graphics. This should appeal more to existing Windows and Mac users and make the overall boot process a bit faster and certainly slicker. Let’s hope they rid us of those balloons…
• a Codec Buddy to assist users with the installation and choice of multimedia codecs. Very similar to the automated codec installer in Ubuntu
• the inclusion of the KDE 4 graphical desktop manager. Fedora 8 will be the first major Linux distribution to incorporate KDE 4. I’m a Gnome user myself, but am looking forward to seeing how radical the functionality and stability will be in the new KDE
• Ubuntu already has all network-related settings integrated in the Network Manager. Fedora 8 will provide a similar one-stop network configuration application.

The new Ubuntu release Gutsy Gibbon will be available just prior to Fedora 8. A good opportunity to see how the new versions stack up against each other.

Another cool Lego sculpture: the H.R. Giger Alien.

There are two applications I cannot live without on any handheld. The first is a wallet for passwords and other important details. The second is a list management application. Handy Safe ably fulfills the first need and was quickly discovered. On the Symbian platform, it took me some time to find a suitable list manager, though. Having used Ilium’s ListPro on Windows Mobile, I was looking for at least a similar experience on the N95. Enter Projekt by Kylom.

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I’ve been trying to finish Dr. Strangelove’s Game: A Brief History of Economic Genius by Paul Strathern for more than four months. It’s a fascinating book, detailing the origin of economic concepts and structures. Most notably, the lives of the influential thinkers who conceptualized economic theory are described. Considering the topic, this is no boring book! I just can’t seem to get through it, somehow.

It’s far easier to listen to a book than read it oneself, though. If you’re into science fiction and enjoy a great page-turner (or in this case, skip-to-next-track accelerator) do yourself a favour and listen to the 7th Son trilogy by J.C. Hutchins.

I’ve zipped through Book 1: Descent in record time. In that book, the reader is introduced to the beta clones, the evil alpha clone and the government program behind the 7th Son project. Of course, there’s a decent mix of action thrown in.

The author reads the chapters himself and certainly does a great job. The consideration of podcasting the books and making them available was to determine whether or not a viable audience would make itself known. Now, J.C. Hutchins has a deal with a publisher to bring the actual novels into bookstores sometime later this year.

The podcasts are available for individual download, allowing anyone to catch up with the story, or listen to it at a comfortable pace. I can almost guarantee that you won’t be able to pluck out your earphones until you’re through with the lot

Pardon the Nokia slant. I’ll move away from that in a little while and get on to other topics.

For now, I have the run of a Nokia N91 and hope to provide some detailed feedback on that phone. Thanks to the team at Nokia’s N-series WOM World for hooking me up with a test unit.

With an 8GB hard drive on board, there’s plenty of space for music. As a phone, it’s functional. Buttons are not terribly easy to use – dialing a number is a pain due to the small keys and the slider holding the media playback controls. The black exterior is attractive, but the overall form factor a bit on the large side.

More in a bit…

This is the first Nokia firmware update I’ve completed in some time. My memory of a quick (possibly unsanctioned) flash upgrade for a phone like the 6210 is obviously quite antiquated: there’s nothing quick about the 112MB firmware upgrade for the N95…

Not wanting to brick my latest toy, I made sure the battery was fully charged. A last backup of the phone memory to the 1GB memory card was quickly completed. I made a list of the applications I had installed. On most devices, all content is lost after such an upgrade and it’s often not possible to remember all applications one has installed. Download the newest Nokia upgrade application, make sure the phone’s profile is set to General and connect using the USB cable.

Start the updater and…nothing much happens. Get connected to the Internet. That should be obvious. Restart the whole operation. This time, the updater indicates the latest available firmware version.

A few warnings, click Ok.

Wait. Wait. And wait some more. The download of the 112MB file took at least an hour and a half. Not sure whether that’s always the case, but with the N95 it’s no wonder they tell you to charge the battery all the way! A better solution would be to make the firmware available as a manual download – then, the updater could verify it’s validity and continue with the fairly quick transfer to the phone. The actual firmware update takes around about 15 minutes or so. During that time, the phone is reset, a new USB driver is installed in XP and the firmware is flashed.

Except for the huge amount of time taken by the firmware file download, the procedure is painless and seems quite robust. You’ll want a quick Internet connection. And make sure you create a backup of the phone memory. When the phone is restarted after the update, the OS automatically restores all previous content, including signed applications! That’s a great feature, and means one needs to worry only about unsigned applications. No more re-entry of registration keys for applications, either.

I can say that the connectivity to my wireless network has certainly improved, with better range and connectivity being evident. GPS acquisition times are similar to before, so the A-GPS (Assisted GPS) is possibly not geared for ZA. For the rest, there’s little I’ve noticed to be different, but some intensive use in the next week will provide a more balanced opinion of what version 12.0.013 makes possible.

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