Nokia S60 News and Reviews

Eisa Awards 2008 Results: S60 scores 1, Nokia 0

In the past Nokia has won the Eisa Award (European Imaging and Sound Association) of Media Phone since the category was created in 2005. This year, 2008, the category was changed into Smart Phone. After Nokia's winning streak with the N90, the N93 and last year with the N95 the award now goes to the Windows 6.1 Pro running HTC Touch Diamond. Quoting Eisa's statement on the new winner:

Burn-Out Test of My Nokia N95 During a Fortnight of Vacation

For the summer vacation I planned two weeks of R&R for myself. For my Nokia N95 it became two weeks of very hard work. It was continuously at my beck and call, multitasking to every whim I felt. The perfect electronic slave. On vacation I tend to rove around like a little mars explorer on steroids. Reading books in restaurants, coffee shops while taking a break from cruising the cities and countryside. Besides it was raining a lot during my trip,  a good excuse for not hiking too much ;^)

Breaking News: T-Mobile USA Outage Affects Western USA

An unconfirmed and unnamed T-Mobile source says that there has been a major failure at the data center in Atlanta, GA, The failure is effecting all services: voice, messaging and data have been intermittent, slow or unavailable for many customers west of the Mississippi River. Users on Howard Forums are reporting all of these issues in various parts of the country. Some areas have voice only, others only messaging and still others have only data. In here in Dallas/Ft Worth all my services are currently working, although messaging appears to be delayed at times, as has been the case since last yesterday evening.

Does Race Affect The Way Technology Is Used?

Darla and I were talking recently about something that came about because she is black, Blatalian ( Black Italian) if you ask her. Is there a Blatalian on the Census form and I missed it? Regardless, she wondered why or even how this one site that rates web sites on popularity knew she was black in the first place and in turn rated nominated  as her among the best black bloggers: not bloggers, but black bloggers. If a site claims they catalog sites and let the users vote and rate the sites cataloged, how would this site know what the race or even gender of the author, much care. This is made more interesting by the fact Darla doesn't mention and certainly flaunt her race or gender. Comments left by readers even reinforce the idea when they discover she is black from the surprised inflection in their writing. Despite my and Darla's best efforts, we could not explain it.

Twitter Downgrades

It seems Twitter is interested in making money, eventually, with the announcement they are dropping outbound SMS from their UK based number. The move leaves everyone outside of the USA, Canada and India in the lurch. In the meantime Twitter recommended a number of web-based alternatives. Twitter is promising a number of more local numbers for any country that it is cost effective to do so. Best of luck to all my foreign Twitter friends however, on the bright side, Jaiku still works globally via SMS. Don't have a Jaiku account? Visit Jaiku Invites and request one. Not to discriminate against those in the USA, Canada or India but I do have a few Jaiku invites I'll share with any international readers who leave a comment. Be sure the email address used to leave the comment is valid, I'll use it to send your invite.

Allowances Aren't Just For Kids

I was glad to see T-Mobile take the step of incorporating cost control measures recently. While the name "Family Allowances" may sound deceiving, this feature isn't just for the kids: even if they were the inspiration.

I admit curiosity got the better of me and I couldn't resist adding the feature to our account to play with a little. I was able to add the feature online within a couple of minutes. A minute later I was toying with the allowances on the lines and messing with the wife, she was a good sport though.

If There Were a 16GB N95... Would You Buy One?

Nokia has always been full of surprises when it comes to listening to consumer feedback.  Of course I'm only going by the things that I've noticed over the years but I'm sure that many people can agree with that statement.

One of the reasons that I purchased the 16GB iPhone over the 8GB is because I want all of my favorite music with me.  Some video clips, TV shows and audiobooks follow me wherever I go, but in the powerhouse of the popular N95... is more memory needed?  I mean I know none of us like getting that "memory full" error message, especially when we can't really target where it's coming from and what makes it happen.