Google has finally gone ahead and released its Google Mobile App for the iPhone.  All the fuss about Google breaking Apple’s App Store rules with this app notwithstanding, it truly is a remarkable application.

Currently number twenty-one on the free list of apps, the Google Mobile App currently has a rating of 3.5/5 stars.  While it does serve the seemingly mundane and pedestrian purpose of searching the web for information, it simplifies and streamlines the process in a way that it becomes a very useful tool for the iPhone.  Suppose you’re out, and you’d like to find the nearest Indian restaurant.  Normally, you might use the Maps application and search the term “Indian,” but that would only work if the restaurants around you actually had the word “Indian” in their business name, e.g. Taj Indian Cuisine.  Your other option might be to use a restaurant review site, such as Restaurantica, but in finding a restaurant on that particular site, you’d be limited by the restaurant list they have, as well as your knowledge of your immediate surrounding (intersections, zip/postal codes).  

The Google Mobile App allows you to search by simply saying “What is the nearest Indian restaurant?” It uses your GPS to understand your location, and uses a specialized Google search to find the requested information.  Since it uses speech recognition, the time it would take for you to get results versus opening Safari, searching Google and obtaining results is drastically reduced.  In my independent tests, I found it took me 20-25 seconds to get to the search results page via Safari, and only about 14 seconds with the Google Mobile App.  Not only that, your results can find businesses and establishments near you.  The speech recognition program for me, was excellent at its job, and unbelievably fast in recording, uploading and understanding the audio bit.  The caveat here, is that it’s geared towards North American accents, so if you have any other kind of accent, it may not work as well.  North America and especially Canada is quite the melting pot of ethnic backgrounds, so it’d be nice to have more flexibility in this area, but understandably, its quite difficult for an application to understand so many different accents.  The other drawback here is that, like all speech detection applications, its accuracy falls dramatically in the presence of ambient noise.  Unless you’re at home, in a private office or alone in your vehicle, background noise is bound to be present.  A restaurant or something like that won’t bother this app that much, but other people chatting around you will confuse the heck out of it!  During these situations, you can enter your search terms manually, and while this isn’t that different from searching in Safari, you at least have the added benefit of localized results should you need them.

Finding things around you quickly is not the only strong suit of the Google Mobile App.  It can offer up any kind of information you’d use Google or Google Maps for.  It can quickly show you a Wikipedia page on Chuck, the TV show, much faster than you could find it by typing it in yourself.  Like the iPhone itself, the features of the Google Mobile App aren’t exactly revolutionary by themselves, rather, its the method of interaction that is quite unique as well as useful, two things that don’t always go hand in hand.  I think that as a result of what it offers, Google Mobile will probably end up being one of your most used applications, and will probably find its way to your first page of apps.  

Design-wise, this app looks very professional indeed, and adheres to the Google/Apple simplistic method of design.  A row of buttons is found along the bottom, similar to what you’d see in the iPod app.  During my testing period, I found no graphical glitches at all; the Google Mobile app looked and ran just like an app from Apple.

The glue that holds the features of this app together is the speed with which everything happens.  I have seen many an application that offers up a lot in terms of usefulness, but falls short in the end because of slow startup, glitches, freezes or operational speed issues.  Thankfully, this is not the case with Google’s app, and I’m pleased to report that I didn’t encounter any bugs during my testing.  This is an app which I wouldn’t mind paying for, but as with everything Google, it is free. 

I give Google Mobile App a 4.5 out of 5.

I’ve owned my own unibody Macbook Pro for about two months now, and it’s time to sit back and look at it objectively, now that the hormones have subsided a little.  Here are some thoughts…

I’ve come to realize that in terms of actual hardware capability, this new Macbook Pro isn’t much different from the old one, with the exception of the 9600M GT for games.  Since I have three consoles to play games on, the only game I tried was Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X.  Being an avid flight sim geek, I knew that FSX is extremely CPU-bound, and that it prefers Nvidia cards over ATi, sorry, AMD ones.  From benchmarks at Tom’s Hardware, I also knew that the 9600 GT (desktop version) was one of the best-performing graphics cards (for FSX), so you could say my curiosity was piqued.  As it turned out, FSX ran like a fat kid in phys. ed. class due to the relatively slow CPU, so I suppose gaming won’t be happening for me on this laptop.   That doesn’t mean the CPU is slow, that’s just the case for FSX (it can struggle to display 30 fps on an overclocked Core i7).  A 2.4 GHz Penryn is pretty decent for a laptop.

I also pondered upon the value of this Macbook Pro.  I’ve defended my Apple computers to naysayers by pointing out the build quality, tactile feel and virtues of the OS X operating system, but after the heartbreak that was FSX, I was questioning my decision to drop two large on this laptop.  After all, I could have gotten an amazing Windows laptop that had a faster CPU, more RAM, a Blu-Ray drive, more HDD space, better graphics and a better screen for the same or less moolah.  After giving it some thought, I realized that, as a writer, I needed a reliable computer, one that wouldn’t be affected by viruses and other issues.  Having struggled through university with a constantly vulnerable PC, I’ve become quite complacent now that I’m using Macs.  I can download freely from Limewire, for example, knowing well that most files are viruses.  All they do is not open, so I can just delete them and move on.  I never need to format and reinstall, so my files are always safe; no more family photographs lost.  This comfort comes at a cost, that is the premium associated with Apple computers.  

I have dabbled in running OS X on PCs quite a bit, and while that was a good interim solution and an introduction to OS X, it’s not how I would choose to run my computer, wondering if the next update will break my install.  All things considered, I’ve come to terms paying the premium for the OS X operating system… it is worth it.  You simply can’t believe how much of a relief it is to be able to just use the computer without having to worry about malware, viruses, broken installs and other issues.  

The complaints I have aren’t all that great in number, but are niggles nonetheless.  The battery was reduced in capacity… as an Indian associate of mine says, “senses not making.”  With the LED display, low-powered graphics card and 45 nm CPU, instead of getting the same battery life as the old model, this one could have had 20% better life.  There are laptops out there that get 6+ hours on a single charge, but none of Apple’s laptops come even close.  The hinge, while having a delectably smooth operation, is not strong enough.  I’ve seen complaints on Apple’s forums where they think this is blasphemy and that Apple should compensate for their losses.  While the problem isn’t that big (they think you should be able to tilt the laptop 90 degrees so that the keyboard is like a wall, and not have the display tilt at all), it certainly deserves some attention. Heat, that eternal issue plaguing Apple laptops hasn’t loosened its grip even slightly, and the MBP does get pretty hot, pretty fast.  If only the underdeveloped world could afford Macbooks, birth rates could be controlled (it’s a conspiracy, cue X-Files theme).  The eject button for the DVD drive is software-based, not hardware.  It wouldn’t have killed anyone at Apple (I think) to have it hardwired as well.  It would make using Windows less complicated (as having software do something as vanilla as eject a DVD can have unpredictable results in the world of Bill), and while we’re on the subject, trackpad usage in Windows needs help.  It doesn’t register all the fancy new moves all the time, which to say the least, makes you very, very frustrated.  Even when in OS X, the trackpad’s detection needs a bit of help.  An update was released a couple of days ago, but I don’t notice anything different.  I was also expecting a bit of a boost with the DDR3, but in real-world usage and benchmarks, there is no difference.  While we’re on the subject, a $2000 laptop should definitely have 4 GB of RAM, especially with an Apple laptop where people are bound to be running Parallels, VMware or any of the other professional apps that Macbook Pro users love.  I will be upgrading to 4 GB very soon, the slow speeds of Parallels just has me down in the dumps.  

I haven’t outgrown the looks of this beautiful laptop, even if I’ve grown out of the gaga stage the beginning. I’m a sucker for anything well-built, and I notice minute differences in things, such as the solidity of the Japan-made PSP versus the relatively cheap feel of the Chinese-made one.  One of the best things about the new MBP is how solid it is.  This unibody thing Apple touts is more than a gimmick or simple selling point, it actually makes a big difference in a product that is portable.  Unlike a desktop computer where your interaction is limited to the mouse and keyboard, you’ll immediately notice the build quality of a laptop that you open, close and adjust frequently.  And since the keyboard and trackpad are integrated into the computer, you’ll notice if it creaks or feels cheap, but thankfully, this laptop does none of that.  The older Macbook Pros had a bit of a design flaw in that over time, the area to the right of the trackpad, where you’d normally place your right palm, would deform under the weight of your hand and change the shape of the DVD drive opening.  In  some cases, getting DVDs in and out would not be possible after this happened.  It looks like Apple has learned from this, and I can find zero issues of this type.  In fact, I was very impressed with the quality of machining… all the cuts and openings are positively jewel-like and the overall finish looks speckled, for lack of a better term.  Aluminum is just a wonderful material to work with, it’s light, attractive, strong (when anodized) and won’t wear like plastic.  The trackpad is now glass, but you wouldn’t know it if someone didn’t tell you, and even then, you might not believe them.  At first, I was skeptical, but I appreciate the fact that it is no longer plastic, and I’ll tell you why.  Any Macbook’s trackpad, be it black, white or aluminum, would show wear within just a few months.  What happens is that the oil from your skin along with the grooves that make up your fingerprints sand the area that you normally use.  In the beginning you can only see it from an angle, but as time goes on, it becomes increasingly noticeable. I’ve noticed nothing of the sort with this new glass trackpad, so that by itself will add to the longevity, as least aesthetically.  Finally, the writer’s instrument, the keyboard.  It is the best keyboard I’ve seen on a laptop, along with the Macbook Air’s.  I was a disbeliever in laptop keyboards until I tried these!  They have short, positive travel, and allow me to deliver my fastest typing speeds.  Months of hard, fast typing hasn’t changed them at all (not on the Macbook Pro, nor my aluminum keyboard for the iMac).  These are a vast improvement over the previous mushy, Cadbury Dairy Milk-looking keys on the last Macbook Pro.  Did I mention I love the backlighting?  I like it so much I can’t see myself ever buying a laptop without this feature.

I’m glad to see that the laptop is holding up well, and true to my experience with OS X, has given me no issues at all so far.  I can just use the laptop for whatever I want without worry, which is why I got it in the first place.  I think that Macbooks and Macbook Pros are great for anyone that values reliability over gaming, the only area where Windows laptops have an advantage.  The only thing is, you’d have to cough up a little extra cash to get them, but at least you know they’ll run OS X well for a few years to come, as even the oldest Intel Macs can run the latest version of OS X well.  And if you’re in the market for an Apple laptop, you can save yourself about $100, and wait till within a week of Snow Leopard’s release.  That way, you’ll get a coupon to get it for free, or get it in the box itself.  I welcome your thoughts!

It’s pretty convenient to whip out your iPhone or iPod Touch and have a look at the weather for the next few days.  Along with my home city of Toronto, Ontario, I also have the weather displayed for Honolulu, Hawaii… just to muster up some self-pity when the white stuff falls.  The included Weather app is not the only choice for such information though, as I recently found out while testing Aerosoft’s AeroWeather app.  

So what about AeroWeather is different from Weather?  While Weather provides you with the temperature and a picture depicting the weather (sunshine, clouds, rain, snow etc.) along with a miniaturized version of the same for a few days to follow, AeroWeather provides you with extremely detailed information that is delivered from airport weather stations, such as wind direction and speed, barometric pressure etc.  You can search by city of course, but the program prefers ICAO airport codes (like KLGA for Laguardia, CYYZ for Toronto and KLAX for Los Angeles).  These aren’t codes that the average person would know, and I’m only familiar with them because of my uber-geeky fascination with flight simming.  So while AeroWeather is informative, its more about fulfilling your pilot fetish than having quick, relevant information at a glance.  

The interface in AeroWeather is not what I’d call user-friendly, in that, it’s not designed with the style typical of most apps, especially first-party ones.  Everything presented is textual, and when you tap on an airport/location to get yet more information, you’re presented with METAR data.  If you find this useful, I suppose this app might be something you like, but for the average person, it’s just too detailed, and the presentation format too boring.  

AeroWeather looks like it was programmed by someone very technically adept, but what that means is that there is little to no eye candy.  That itself is not so bad, but the too-common crashes are the final nail on the coffin of everyday usability.  I found that the app crashed frequently when trying to refresh information, and took far longer than it should have to get up and running.

Aerosoft’s AeroWeather costs the can’t-say-no price of zero dollars, but it’s more trouble than its worth for most people.  For others, if you think that it’s important that your iPhone deliver METAR information and want to know the exact speed and direction of wind beyond the look-at-what-my-iPhone-can-do factor, hit the App Store for this unique yet unpolished app that has potential for the future.

I give AeroWeather a 3/5 stars.

So its come time for you to create a website, and you’re looking for a web hosting provider.  Do you ask around?  Do you go on the advertisements you see?  What if the company fails to deliver in some way?  Is it slow?  Is there a lot of downtime?  There are so many variables in this equation, it’ll make anyone’s head spin.  When looking for hosting for Geekliness, I had to do weeks of research to find a reputable provider, and it wasn’t easy.  

I’ve come across a site that’s like the CNET for web hosting companies… they review, compare and recommend providers based on your criteria.  There are comparisons of price and features along with reviews, and what I think is most useful, articles about getting started.  There’s just so much information to process out there, guides are a good way to get started.  Start by looking at this introduction page.  

More info at Cheap Web Hosting

Yes, that dignified expert of all experts, the man that invented sound itself has set out to redefine headphones with new in-ear headphones branded with, of course, his name.  Technically adept and IQ-loaded as Monsieur Dre may (or probably may not) be, much of the credit really goes to overpriced cable manufacturer Monster.  

Someone must have really been high and hooked another someone up in the back of a tinted Hummer on 26″ rims, because not in my wildest hallucinogen-induced dreams would I have pictured the teaming of Dr. Dre, Monster and Apple.  That’s right, these are on sale at the Apple store!  

So what makes these in-ear headphones worth the absurd $150??  Well, come on.  Who doesn’t want what appears to be standard SATA cables coming from their ears?  They make a point of the gold teeth, sorry, my bad.. gold contacts, because gold plating must be pretty expensive, otherwise you wouldn’t find it on $1.99 3.5mm extension cables from China on eBay… oh, wait.  

They also make a point of the isolating design of the triple-layer flanged tips, something Lord Dre has christened “Airlocks.”  They’re made of incredibly exotic, rare material that totally justifies the Benjamin-and-a-half, rubber.  

Should you not be able to resist the very ‘phones that will change sound and music forever, you can pick them up at the Apple store.  I, ever the blasphemous disbeliever, will have to stick to my Sennheisers for now.

With its new 2.53 System Update, Sony has finally enabled full-screen Flash video playback through the browser.  You can now fullscreen your Youtube, Hulu, Dailymotion or whatever else you might use for your streamed content, but it’s not quite what you’d expect of an expensive machine with multiple processing cores… the video is downright choppy.  

Even with lower quality Youtube videos, you’ll find they play more smoothly on just about everything else, including Sony’s own simple CPU-possessing PSP with PSPtube.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Youtube videos probably look smoothest on the PSP with PSPtube and the iPhone/iPod Touch twins, but that’s another story.  

The PS3 displays out of memory errors with HD Hulu, and often fails to play audio or video with higher quality Youtube videos, and both the browser and system itself crashed a couple of times.  I’d have thought that at this point in development, we wouldn’t have such issues, but clearly, I’m wrong.  Like I accuse Nokia of doing, Sony seems to have given up development on their browser.  Instead of pushing software development and getting their marketing department to promote the PS3 as an internet hub as well, Sony seems to be resting on their laurels.  The PS3’s browser is now terribly out of date, and its about time that they either update it, or make apps for net-based video streaming.

The first few review samples are making their way out, but I had the opportunity to play around with Apple’s new 24″ LED-backlit Cinema Display a bit.  Apple seems to be going “with the flow” and riding the wave of design success it’s been experiencing lately, by aluminizing and glassing everything it can.  It certainly does work for sales, and even though every review you’ve seen puts the glass displays down because of reflections, that is only helping to draw attention to them.  Yes, the facts actually are these:  Apple’s sales have been increasing at a phenomenal rate, and real buyers (as opposed to internet trolls) have voted with their currency… glass is good for Apple.  

It is true that the glass screens attract more reflections, duh.  However, what is also true is that they offer up more punch and contrast.  Colours look more vivid, blacks look blacker, things that people tend to like. In the case of laptops, an argument can be made for not having a glossy screen, or at least the option of a matte one, but with a desktop display such as this ACD, it’s not actually that important.  Increasing the brightness alleviates most of the problems with the glass panel, and if your workspace is bright enough to conjure up glare and reflections, then the additional brightness won’t be a problem either.  

I’m glad to see that Apple has finally included a wider range of brightness adjustments, as the 24″ iMac display is so unbelievably bright that, even at minimum brightness, it brands the Apple logo on your retinas.  I simply have no solution to this problem with my 24″ iMac!

The LED backlight is not something you’ll “just notice.”  It doesn’t really look all that different from the 24″ monitor in the iMac, something that isn’t surprising considering they’re both S-IPS panels.  The whites are a little different though, but the main advantage gained by the LED backlight is evenness.  24″ iMacs have long had uneven backlight issues, and when I was personally shopping for an iMac a while back, every single iMac I looked at in every Apple store, Best Buy and Future Shop had gradient (uneven backlight) issues.  It wasn’t until months later that I was able to get one that didn’t have the problem.  So now, we find that the backlight is no longer an issue, which is great.  I didn’t see any dead pixels on the display I evaluated, but dead pixels are more common with Apple displays than others, for some reason.  Perhaps its the S-IPS technology, but I think its high time that expensive displays such as this one have better quality control.  Only time will tell if these displays are prone to the dead pixel issues facing other Apple displays.

One of the best things Apple did was integrate many of the little accessories that might occupy one’s desk.  This display comes with speakers, a microphone and a webcam built right in.  This lends to the value, of which there isn’t that much, given the extremely high price of this monitor.  Some of it can be justified by the S-IPS panel, some by the LED backlighting and integrated accessories.  But all told, I think the monitor is still overpriced by about $150.  Also, Apple’s warranty doesn’t hold a candle to Dell’s for its Ultrasharp models, against which this panel will actually compete.  

Overall, I think that the monitor hits the target aesthetically, includes a lot of features, and performs very well with its superior panel.  It falls short in the areas of pricing and value, warranty and the fact that it cannot, at least for the time being, connect to anything other than the new unibody Macbook and Macbook Pro.  Quite the stupid decision in my opinion, because this is exactly the device that could have been sold to PC users who’d like the style and integration of Apple’s computers, but do not want to be forced to buy an iMac.  

I give this monitor a 7 out of 10!

Nokia, while having 38% market global market share, has never truly been a presence in the world’s two largest economies, America and Japan.  We can speculate as to why this is, but the main reasons behind it are lack of support from providers, and products that weren’t exactly what consumers in these markets were looking for at certain points in time.

Certainly, Nokia is an innovator in the industry, their Series 40 operating system was regarded by many Europeans and Asians as the benchmark.   However, what happened after that?  Why were other newcomers such as Samsung and Sony Ericsson able to gain so much, so fast?  My opinion is that Nokia stopped thinking out of the box, and tried to apply the Kaizen (continuous improvement) philosophy to something that required constant innovation and reinvention instead.

You see, cell phones are not perfect devices.  There are devices we have that serve their purposes singularly well, almost to the point of perfection.  Take a Japanese knife, for example.  It has been engineered and refined over time, to a point where the balance is as perfect as possible, the blade is as sharp as possible and the aesthetics have reached their height as well.  There isn’t much more that we will likely do with such a knife.  This evolutionary approach is fine for things like Japanese knives, but not for new technology that hasn’t quite found a permanent footing.

We are just beginning to explore what a personal handheld device can do for us, and in the last few years, what have we seen?  The single biggest leap was the iPhone.  Not because of any features mind you, but because of the way we interact with the device.  It, single-handedly, has changed how we will interact with devices forever. Microsoft has taken a page from the iPhone book, and has talked of the idea of a large pane of glass with multi-touch inputs.  Apple has taken iPhone-style input and added it to the trackpads in their latest laptops, and just about every manufacturer has, or in the near future, will come out with a phone with an extra large touch input on the front.

Forward thinking design is what makes the iPhone so unique, and it continues to this day.  Google for example, takes advantage of the GPS, proximity sensor, microphone and 3G connection to offer a very usable search program that can find results catered to your surroundings faster than a similar text entry could be input.

Has Nokia innovated in this fashion?  Arguably, in the cell phone world, not many have, but expectations of the market leader are high.

Nokia took the right decision to go down the smartphone road way back with the 7650.  That was a very innovative phone, even a little ahead of its time.  Running an open operating system, integrated camera, sliding design, the 7650 could have stormed North America and Japan.  It was easily capable of MP3 and video playback, custom ringtunes, and a host of other features that are popular with today’s phones.  Nokia really did not market the device as well as it should have, especially in the markets that matter the most.

From the 7650, Nokia moved to devices like the 6600 and 3650.  What sort of progress did Nokia make with this step?  Next to nothing.  The 7650 had an operating system, Symbian, that allowed for applications to be installed.  European and Asian developers started making all kinds of programs for the phone, from frontends to Office document viewers, to file explorers, MP3 players, video players and much more.  The phone was equipped with a camera, and the fairly open operating system allowed for a quite a lot of development.

The supposedly next-generation 6600 offered little in the way of improvement.  A different form factor, candybar, rather than slider, but the same screen with the same resolution and size, no major differences to the OS and the exact same battery meant that it was an aesthetic makeover more than anything.  The 6600 took off in popularity in the European and Asian markets, and in 2005, made its way to North America as well, where it didn’t find the kind of success it did abroad.  Another phone was released around the same time, the 3650, which was largely the same as the 6600, but was aimed at the youth markets with its funky styling.

After these came the 7610, which followed Nokia’s now-common practice of aesthetic changes combined with a higher pricetag.  It offered a marginally better 1-megapixel camera, but by now, the Symbian OS had third-party software upconversion of photos that interpolated 1 megapixel images out of the VGA camera in the 6600 and 3650.  These interpolated images that looked almost the same as those from the true 1-megapixel 7610.

The “next-gen” 6630 was the first 3G smartphone from Nokia, and that, along with the stereo headphone output was all that was new. It didn’t quite make full use of the 3G, because 2-way video calls were something that was considered part and parcel of 3G phones, and the 6630 didn’t have a front-facing camera.

Nokia did, however, sell a dock with an integrated camera separately, so that 2-way calls could be made.  The dock had to be plugged in though, so in operation, it wasn’t much different from using a computer with a webcam, and wasn’t very “mobile.”  Even though all of Nokia’s smartphones were more than capable of MP3 playback, none had stereo audio output (smart, Nokia), even though the iPod’s popularity could clearly be seen at the time.  Users were restricted to monaural audio playing back through the loudspeaker, through the wired monaural headset, or through a low-quality monaural Bluetooth headset.  Yes, they all had Bluetooth, from the start!

When we got to the 6680, Nokia added a slightly better camera in the back, and a front-facing VGA camera for 3G video calls, after learning their lesson with the 6630.

Curiously, there were no other changes.  By now, Nokia’s innovation had slowed to a standstill.  In contrast, Apple released a product that didn’t do that much more technically, but really stood behind the software and continually pushed its development with each firmware update, something that Nokia could have done, having the most superior hardware and software at the time.

At this point, Nokia decided it needed to rejuvenate its image through the marketing department, and then came the N-series phones.  These were again, not fundamentally different from the preceding phones, but were marketed as being better, as being “multimedia computers.”  They started adding more features this time around, such as better cameras, Carl Zeiss lenses, optical zoom on a model or two, and finally Wi-Fi.  Some models were just rehashes of existing models; check out the similarities between the 6680 and the N70.

With the N-series came a newer version of Symbian, one that would not run most of the existing applications.  As consumers, we know the stigma of not having backwards compatibility (cough, MS Vista, cough PS3, cough), so the development cycle began anew.  What’s interesting to note is that even though the Symbian platform got an update, it didn’t look or feel any different.  It never had the animated menus and ease of use that Sony Ericsson’s phones had, but with the fancy OS, there should have been more changes.

Applications have always been short of memory on the Symbian platform, and with the exorbitant prices that Nokia has always charged, more memory wouldn’t have hurt.  Even in its latest iteration, the Symbian platform is not what you’d call smooth, relative to the iPhone OS or Blackberry OS.  Apps don’t co-operate the way they should.  If you receive a Word document in your e-mail, it won’t necessarily open up with the correct viewer, and in the rare event that it tries, crashes and slow speeds are a surity.  Nokia came out with a good browser on the N80, and has used it since, but its welcome has worn off.  It was great when it first came out, miles beyond everyone else’s browser.  Since then, apparently, little development has been made.  It’s still a royal pain in the butt to surf, and even more so on flash-heavy sites.  Flash of course, doesn’t work fully.  Imagine if they made it work… it’d be the first phone capable of browsing the full internet, something even the iPhone struggles with.  The N90 and N93 were certainly interesting, but were plagued with the same issues.  The N93 had a flip-open mode, just as this new N97 does, but it wouldn’t always register the flip and go into landscape mode, or, would do it very slowly.

While the N95 has been Nokia’s magnum opus for some time now, its software is eons behind iPhone and even Blackberry in its reliability.  Crashes and slow boot times don’t make for a good user experience, and consequently unhappy customers.

Another problem has been that the reality of the features hasn’t lived up to the hype.  Integrated GPS was a great idea in the N95, but Nokia didn’t include any usable turn-by-turn navigation software, and instead, wanted to charge for it.  Slow to lock on and often inaccurate, the GPS was largely a waste.  The N95 featured a 5-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, but took fairly mediocre pictures that were easily beat by a cheap handheld camera.   The time needed to go from application start to picture taken was unbelievably long too.  Meanwhile, Samsung’s phones in Korea and the Japan-only phones had excellent cameras.

Smartphones need good screens.  Plus, consumers love big screens.  Sounds like a no-brainer… have a good screen, right?  Nokia went from using lowish resolution 2.2″ screens to a brilliant 352×406 screen in the N90 and N80 that had pixels so tight, they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.

Granted, the screen size was small, but this attempt was in the right direction.  Unbelievably, after the N80, Nokia went right back to using low resolution screens, exclusively.  Until now, they increased size, but not resolution.

Given all that, I think you can see why Nokia hasn’t fared all that well in North America and Japan.  For all their flaws, each new phone cost the amount of a full blown laptop, something that doesn’t settle all that well with value-centric North Americans (we spend more than anyone else on the planet, but want to get our money’s worth!).

And now we get to Nokia’s new baby.  The N97.  Clearly, Nokia wants to play off the popularity of the N95 by following its alphanumeric pattern, but oddly, this seems to make light of the fact that the N96 was quite the dud.  Essentially the exact same as the N95 (what is with that?) with 16 GB vs. 8, we never really saw it take off… It made the blogs, people reported buying them in Singapore and wherever, and now… Nokia has moved on.  Anyways, good for them that they did, because the N97 is clearly the first big step since that classic 7650.

Nokia finally seems to have understood that finger-based touch input is here to stay, and has included one hell of a screen to quiet my complaining.  640 x 360 resolution, which makes it a 16:9 display, perfectly friendly with oh, modern TV and movies, something that 20 and 30somethings would love.  Incidentally, they are the ones who’d spend on such a device… good Nokia, good!  You’re finally beginning to understand your target market!  They’ve gone a step ahead and included tactile feedback.  This is more software than hardware, because the iPhone is technically capable of this too, but I’m curious to see how well-implemented it is.  There were mice with tactile feedback some time ago, where you’d roll the cursor over a link and you’d “feel” the link there.  I’m not sure if that helps in any way, but hey, if Nokia found a way to make it useful… awesome.

Also, Nokia apparently realizes that the internet is important, and so, a full tactile QWERTY keyboard flips out.  This is a great feature, which will certainly find favour here.

It’s interesting to see how much Nokia has borrowed from the iPhone in terms of style… it can be seen the most when the screen is off.

HSDPA and WiFi radios were a must, and they’re there, but hopefully the WiFi is N-grade this time around and has decent range.  32 GB of onboard storage AND a microSD slot shows they’ve been listening to what people want, and this feature solidly trumps the iPhones unexpandable memory.  They say the camera is 5 megapixel, Carl Zeiss lens, and can shoot VGA video at 30 fps.  Well, so what?  My 2.5-year old N93 could do that.  In 2009, the phone should have been able to do at least 720p video with sound equivalent to the N93. I think this is the weakest part of the phone, frankly.

Finally, one of the most important pieces of the puzzle, the OS, gets a real upgrade.  From the pictures, it looks like Nokia has taken its previous ideas, and elevated them to a new level.  The “today” screen, present on the last few generations, would present calendar appointments, to-do notes, e-mail and text messages on the main screen, letting you know what you need to at a glance.  They’ve given it the glossy Apple treatment this time around, and the today screen, thanks to the large resolution and size, now includes Facebook, Myspace, weather and a number of other alerts.  This too, in my opinion, trumps the iPhone in terms of real usability, because you can get tons of useful information at a glance, rather than having to go into individual applications.  Clear big buttons (in the pictures) indicate that this version might be easier to use, something Symbian desperately needed.  If the software is as good as it looks, and the touchscreen works as well or better than the iPhone’s, it looks like we have a real winner on our hands.

The pricing for this will be well into the $800s unlocked, but if North American carriers pick it up and offer it at a decent price, this phone could really do well if Nokia markets it right.  I’m looking forward to testing it!

They say PC gaming is dying, but Microsoft would like to think otherwise.  They’ve just released a new keyboard they call the Sidewinder X6 and the Sidewinder X5 mouse.  Black and robotic-looking with red lighting, the keyboard looks weird and geeky to me, but that’s good in a way.  At least it’s going for a certain look, and that gives it some personality.  

The design and layout isn’t that bad, the number pad can be attached on the left or the right, and it has dials for volume and lighting.  Yes, it is backlit… something I think is a fairly valuable feature, as most of the Homo Sapiens Geeks tend to hang out in dimly lit basements or secluded rooms away from the burning reality of daytime.  The keyboard and mouse will cost a reasonable $80 and $60 respectively, not bad as far as keyboards and mice go these days.  

Via Gizmodo

American cars are often perceived as being, cheesy, tacky, plasticky, crappy and other such things, but one car that often shoots those accusations down with its performance figures is the Corvette.  The world really took notice when the Z06 came around, as it was a car that could offer blistering performance for a lot less than other sports cars.  Take for example, the much appreciated BMW M3.  The Z06 cost around the same, yet beat it 3.8 to 4.8 in the 0-60, pulled 1.02 g on the skidpad vs. 0.87 g and destroyed in every other single performance category as well.  Interestingly, owners reported that 26+ MPG on the highway was possible with the Vette too, with standard Vettes exceeded 30 MPG on long runs.  

Chevy has now come out with its Super-Vette, the ZR1.  Vettes always tend to represent good value, and this is no exception.  At $100,000 though, not everyone will see the value in the ZR1, and poseur-types will flock to buy something German, maybe something Italian or the current object of popularity in California, the GT-R (Car & Driver said they’ve never gotten so much attention in any car, ever).  The ZR1 is meant for people who value performance over posing, and value over sheer cost.  So how does it add up, overall?  

It still looks a little tacky, and plasticky, and it certainly doesn’t have a bunch of overhead cams with little doohickeys that manage er… something.  Nor are those engine innards timed by little Japanese robots or whatever makes the Godzilla go, but what it does have is a proper, modern-day American V8.  Putting out 638 horsepower.  And 605 lb-ft of torque.  To put that in perspective, that’s around 6 Honda Fit engines, more than 2 NSX engines, or almost 2 Mustang V8 engines.  And, are you ready for this? It has more horsepower and torque than the almighty Mclaren F1’s custom BMW V12 engine had.  

And while most people, myself included, sometimes like to talk about the V8 in Corvettes as a crude-but-effective manner of generating power, the truth is, it is very well-engineered.  It uses titanium connecting rods, just like the NSX did, sodium-filled valves, and a host of other features that make it incredibly good at doing what it does.  

Overhead valves and large displacement usually spell unsophisticated for many car enthusiasts, as they like to see engines that generate a lot of horsepower for their displacement, have variable valve timing on intake and exhaust valves, variable intake manifolds, individual throttle butterflies, things of that nature. Real-life realities are quite different, though.  The outgoing M3 had a very sophisticated inline-6 engine, that displaced 3.2 liters and generated 333 hp and 269 lb-ft of torque.  Both the horsepower and the torque numbers are exceptional for the size of the engine, but this sort of power does come at a price - fuel economy.  The M3’s I-6 would not have the 28-32 highway mpg of a good Honda or Toyota V6, and not the reliability either.  Honda factors reliability into the equation as well, but the penalty is still fuel with their high-performance engines.  

So while the Corvette’s V8 seems simple and unassuming, it isn’t.  It delivers tsunamis (not just waves) of torque, and because of that, can offer you everyday thrills without having to rev into the five-digit range.  A by-product of this is reasonable fuel economy considering what the engine outputs.  This is the standard 7-liter Corvette V8 I’m talking about though.  What about the ZR1 V8?  Well, its displacement is reduced to 6.2-liters, and forced induction is applied.  Supercharging!  It’s an excellent choice, much better than going with turbo(s), because there is essentially no lag as with a turbo, and it is much easier on the engine than a turbo is.  Speaking of the engine, the walls and other components have been strengthened to deal with the torque.  Two intercoolers exist along with the supercharger.  

Other parts of the ZR1 are equally impressive, such as the huge carbon-ceramic Brembo brakes and the aerodynamic improvements.  Reportedly the carbon fiber splitter at the front generates so much downforce that the entire fascia had to be redesigned just so it wouldn’t deform from the force.  Of course, it uses magnetorheological shock absorbers that are entirely controlled by computer.  This is one of GM’s most innovative products, ever, in my opinion.  Depending on the charge being passed through, the viscosity of the fluid inside the shock absorber can change, thereby completely changing the dynamics of the suspension.  And all this can happen in fractions of a second - the geek in me just eats this stuff up.  

The interior, tacky and cheap as it is, is pretty comfortable in terms of size.  It will seat two oversized North Americans in a good deal of comfort, which is a bigger deal than you might think.  Many if not most two-seat cars are too small to drive around for more than short stints, and the size and comfort make the Vette something of a GT.  It’s a shame Chevy can’t get their hands on better interior designers though.  That would really make this car an ultimate two-seat GT.  

You can drive the ZR1 on long road trips, and it’s a great cruiser, but I’m pretty sure it won’t like the winter. So if you’re Canadian, or an American living in the snowbelt, you’ll probably need another vehicle for the white stuff.  That aside, it’s one of the most practical supercars ever, just like the NSX was when it first came out.  

Via Popular Mechanics