BarCampHelsinki is Go!

So, via jaiku i signed up to attempt to help out with BarCampHelsinki (and yes it should be written like that :).

Details at BarCampHelsinki. This might be the first bar camp organised over Jaiku, as discussion are planned over at BarCampHelsinki channel on Jaiku
For more details on what is BarCamp, read the links on the RightHand side of the page.

Here are a couple of articles with somethings that could do with thinking about.
http://www.capulet.com/weblog/darren/how-to-run-a-great-barcamp
http://www.cleverclevergirl.com/?p=10

Any volunteers?

Chip&Pin Not secure - not a big surprise

via boingboing which links to a google video of how easy it is to hack the terminals.

I have always thought chip&pin was a really dumb idea. Take something (the PIN code) that you use rarely on a very secure network (ATMs are linked using a VERY secure network), and now get ordinary people (mass humanity is never that smart!) to enter these codes multiple times a day.

The old system of using a biometric (your signature), always seemed more secure to me.

Why i see the iPhone as good For Nokia

So now that the general noise has calmed down, i thought i would put down my thoughts on this.
Disclaimer; i have paid, out of my own pocket, for an E90, so i am probably a little biased towards the Nokia/S60 world view.

The best thing, IMNSHO, to come out of the iPhone announcement is that, with all of the coverage of the iPhone (in the various media forms) it has introduced the general public to the term "smart Phone".
It has also allowed Americans to get used to the concept that mobile phones (handsets) can actually cost money and also be objects of desire. From my readings (and i have no first hand knowledge of this) the American market is being held back by the operators, so Apple being able to force one of them into concessions, and remove the operator branding is a good thing.

Now everything has strengths and weaknesses, but here i am listing what i see as the major weakness of each "platform" when compared to the other (i.e. the limitations of one are mostly a strength for the other)

Limitations of iPhone;

• closed platform. Being able to send a short-cut to a web-page/service to the start screen *really* is not that big of a deal.
• no memory expansion. SDHC cards are now up to 8GB, with 16GB a month or so away.
• screen rotation only works for a couple of the applications (pictures and movies, from what i have seen). For me this makes the screen rotation feature a bit "meh"
• officially only available in a couple of markets

Limitations of Nokia's current S60 range:

• QVGA (320*240 or 240*320) just does not cut it any more (and never has for web browsing!)
• the native S60 browser is rubbish. Nokia should go back to bundling Opera Mobile rather than trying to build their own, as the development resources could be better spent elsewhere.
• Synchronisation needs to "just work"(TM). Calendar and contacts as a bare minimum, tasks and notes being a nice to have (for me at least)
• specify the current preferred "data connection" once and all applications should use this, and if it is no longer available *then* prompt for what connection to use. Remember not everyone has a good data package, so if WiFi/WLAN is not available then we do not always want an automatic connection.

Where they are both strong;

• both have lots of "small" software companies developing utilities to extend their platform. Admittedly in Apple's case this is only for their desktop OS currently.
  
• The software on both platforms normally has a "low-price". My experience is that it is in the range of some tens of Euros/Dollars, so quite a low risk to buy.
• Basic usage does the expected thing, but it is possible to extend past this using free scripting tools. My thinking here is Apple has applescript, Nokia has Python.
• Both have their "fan boys" (this is a plus and a minus for both :) )
  

By showing users things that are fun or cool to do once you have good data rates, should help in *forcing* carriers to offer better packages to everyone.
Both Nokia and Apple are doing this. Nokia via it's Ovi.com initiative, and Apple by making almost all of the features need a data rate to provide any real value.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

wrong on a numer of points

so i was on boingboing and came across a link to this article, which attempts to educate people about the Nordic countries, shame they got sauna & Santa Claus in the wrong country.

so what is the point of plazes, dopplr etc

So following on from joining Jaiku, where i finally sort of got the point of some of these Web2.0 things, i had also signed-up for both plazes and dopplr (on the day it came out of closed Beta).

Dopplr i could sort of see a WIIFM (What's In It For Me), in that i could publish up-coming trips and this would then get sent into Facebook, where people i know could see it and try to meet up.
Plazes on the other hand i could not see a use for, it certainly looked nice, but almost no-one i know is all cutting edge web2.0.

But i found this post which made a use case for both. Now i just need someone to mash it up so i only need to enter the data once.

New levels of security theater

Just before the Christmas season I needed to travel to the UK for work for a couple of days, and encountered a new twist in the dance that you need to go through to get on the plane.
I have a Finnish first name and a non-standard (for the UK at least) spelling of my middle name, so i have always used the short form of my middle name.
On these flights, for the first time ever, at both ends the check-in person was upset/concerned that the booking was not in *exaxtly* in the same form as in my passport.
I am not sure how this latest idea helps with security, and when did this change.

Me as a Simpsons character

Don't want to rush into these things eh ;)


from http://simpsonizeme.com/

ahh, childhood memories

random suffing link http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/
Bings back childhood memories of walking into the local shop and asking for "a quarter of..."

Salty liquorice mint drinks...

Sounds so wrong but somehow it works

How i configured GMail IMAP on my E90

Posted here in case some-one else finds it useful, or i need it again

Use the Wizard to create the account, then open "Email settings", then select "connection Settings"
- incoming e-mail
User name - @gmail.com
Password - Gmail password
incoming mail server - imap.gmail.com
Mailbox type - imap4
Security (ports) - SSL/TLS
Port - 993

- outgoing e-mail
email address - @gmail.com
user name - @gmail.com
password - Gmail password
outgoing mail server - smtp.gmail.com
Security(ports) - StartTLS
Port - 587

details taken from http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78799