In late November 2010 I was challenged by Vodafone to travel from Lands End to John o’Groats with no money or food. I was given five  £10 pay-as-you-go FreeBees SIM cards to use as currency and I bartered my way for 900 miles using social media.
I took only my iPhone 4 for photos, video and audio and a macbook air 11″ to edit on the move.
The dust has just about settled after the Vodafone 360 launch and after having no clue at all as to what I was going to see, I now have much more of an idea and am genuinely excited about what is in the pipeline for mobile users.
I’ve never really subscribed to the platforms spawned by the mobile giants, either from the carriers or the handset makers. I made a point of avoiding Vodafone Live as when I was ready for mobile web I wanted it to be on my terms. I didn’t want to be spoon fed sport and weather on a naff mobile browser. Wap or no Wap.
Then there was Nokia’s Ovi.. Well, being a Mac user there seemed little point.
Vodafone 360 may well change the way we look at mobile forever. (Or at least the foreseeable future). If you ever dabbled in ZYB you will have a rough idea of what’s in store.
I guess cloud mobile hints towards it too but this is way more than what you get with your dot mac account.
This is not just syncing this is a suite of internet services morphing your contacts, status updates and messaging all in ‘the cloud’. This will integrate all your social networks with your address book and provide a two way editable pipeline between you and your contacts.
The flexibility and configuration options are mind boggling and I haven’t even gone into the realtime location integration.
Of course there will be some people (normally me) screaming “What about our privacy?!” From what I could see this has been taken way more seriously than any other platform developer has bothered in the past. After a few wines were had this conversation on audioboo ended up on Kathryn Corrick’s blog and Terence Eden‘s comment on the bottom explains things better than I could.
I thought I was getting close to a cloud mobile experience with my Apple devices and some of the apps I use. But Apple is as Apple does and I’m fed up with the controls and restraints Apple put in place to guarantee ever increasing profits while it’s users are drip fed new tech. Always wanting and waiting for Apple to do the right thing. Jobs acting like a Wizard of Oz over his minions.
Vodafone is a massive faceless behemoth yes, but I’m thinking with this move so much is going to decide on the community making it happen. From macro to microcosm. From the coding community building the apps to the cross platform communities meeting in their hand held device.
360 is meant to work on all devices with all carriers. Obviously Vodafone are going to make sure they have the most suitable devices on offer and having got my hands on the Samsung H1 running the LiMo Platform, It’s feels like really decent handset.
Sturdy, well styled and feature packed. The camera really impressed me as did the fact that this wasn’t another phone trying to win the megapixel stakes. It’s not the number of pixels in a camera it’s how they are used and on a WVGA AMLED display it’s easy to see the quality of your image.
On first impressions low light images looked better than some of the compact cameras I use and the 720p video quality seemed good enough for me to leave my other devices at home.
The touch screen interface felt a little sluggish compared to the iPhone but I was assured this is still really early days and the interface with be honed and refined as the weeks go by.
With the €1,000,000 prize fund in place for coders to collect should they create new and innovative apps I feel we may see an app store that begins with quality over quantity and I really have to get my hands on the phone just to experiment with new apps as and when they begin appear.
The universal contact list called ‘Vodafone People’ clearly puts contacts and content at the forefront of the 360.com ethos a suite of services that apears to be dripping with social media potential.
If a beast like Vodafone has bitten the bullet and finally embraced social media this may be the confirmation all the early adopters have been waiting for. Why is it we have been hanging around this social media fad thing for so long.. Well maybe this is really it. With so much potential to expand and innovate with the mobile communication tools at our finger tips starting to do what we want them to do.. This is what we have been waiting for.
Of course in the not too distant future we will no doubt be excited about hardware breakthroughs as battery life, bandwidth and memory capacity going through the roof.. That doesn’t change what Vodafone may have done here right now for mobile communication. I would not have imagined them opening up elements of it’s network to third parties.. This is a different and hopefully leading a mindset. Once you let social networks and open source operating systems enhance your devices, you are placing an awful lot of power into the hands of the community. I am sure the control will stay with Vodafone. The lack of Google maps at this stage hints towards this and they seem to have invested a hell of a lot into this move to take too many risks.
Still, I am excited to see where this goes. And with this new level of connectivity bridging previously unconnected networks, I imagine it will be a magical mystery tour where everyone is on the bus.
For more interviews with the people in the know click on this atom feed
I have had a personal wifi hotspot of sorts for a while now. A 3 mobile 3G router and dongle have been taking up a large space in my tech bag whenever I am out and about. If I am near a socket it runs from the mains. If I am mobile or in the middle of nowhere I use a Power Gorilla. It has given me internet access on trains, in cars, at festivals and when in my top box, even on my motorbike.
Although not that compact, it has been an affordable solution as regards to getting a 3G internet connection shared across all my devices, no matter where I may be. With an ever increasing bag of gadgets to lug about though, I’m always looking for ways to minimize my tech burden.
The moment the Novatel MiFi 2352 personal wireless hotspot came through the door I knew things had just got simpler, easier and much more compact.
The Website lists these features:
• Connects up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices simultaneously
• Computers, PDA’s, cameras, music players, personal and game players and more
• Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery
• GPS- enabled
• Advanced internal antenna system
• NovaSpeed® capable
• Auto-install and auto-connectivity
• 10M (30 ft) range of network coverage
So far I love it. Whether I’m using it with my iPhone, laptop, camera enabled with an Eye-Fi card or all of them together! It takes up little to no space, weighs next to nothing and makes it really easy to give the gift of a wifi connection to those around you, no matter where you may be.
I look forward to the possibility of a future device that can take multiple sims and auto select the carrier with the fastest connection or perhaps even allow streaming across more than one network.
For more information on the MiFi 2352 and other Personal WiFi Hotspot devices by Novatel Wireless, check out their website at http://www.NovatelWireless.com
The other week while on assignment at Reuters with @sizemore, I was talking to @ilicco about how the more kit i try to juggle the more diluted the content can become.
I was sat at the front of an almost exciting talk from the FSA with laptop, iPhone, N95, Kodak Zi6 and a pocket camera. Back in my bag was a pro Nikon SLR, an audio recorder and yet another laptop.
This is the burden of the blogger. We tend to move faster than the tech can keep up and the convergence of our various gadgets still only gives us one device that does lots of things in a mediocre fashion.. and then only for as long as it’s over stretched battery holds out.
I joked about buying Shiva Media. I thought a multi-armed kit wielding blogger would make a great logo. Apart from the fact this may be insulting the top Hindu God of Gods.. the name has already been taken anyway.
Here’s a guy who looks like he has found a happy medium. Adam is a radio journalist dabbling in video. Using a compact camera, a HD video camera and an audio recorder he may have to juggle a little but by not choosing to live update through twitter, ping gps, and live stream he still has time to script his interviews and get the job done.
Maybe Multi Media does not have to be Multi-multi-media..
In an ideal world, if I were going back into a warzone, or tackling something I only had one shot at, I’d want to work in a team. Much as I prefer traveling alone, I do find a more superior batch of content comes from using a team, who like super heroes, all have their own individual strengths.
Along with Stills, HD video and audio, I also like to (where possible) live stream, micro blog (Twitter, Audioboo) and gps tag as i go. I find so much more value in logging the live progress as ‘news’ which preempts the final edit. This not only raises awareness of the project as it is happening but opens up all sorts of real time resources & conversations, as connections are made as you document.
At the moment to do a multimedia job well you’d need a snapper and a videographer, perhaps an audio guy too but you may be able to manage this between two at a stretch. Both people must also be able to live blog, capture, edit, archive and back up their own content and on top of this, write and do stuff to camera.
When I mean ‘do it well’, I mean suck up and absorb as much of the surrounding content/story/information in high quality for the later edit and lo-fi for live blogging.
As I have never been embedded, a team also offers a certain amount of safety and security. Depending on where you are, sometimes it can just draw attention. Although mainly traveling alone for ease, I’ve often worked with a friend. Someone I would trust with my life.
In Iraq I didn’t really know what I was going to do. There was little planning. I just went to see for myself and apart from moving fast and laying low, I was just taking photos and logging my GPS position, either pinging it back via sat phone or texting when there was GSM. The photos I took went to accompany a couple of news stories my friend was writing and finally to make my first real video podcast.
On assignment in Jordan for the UNHCR I had more experience but limited time. I decided against video and just worked with stills and audio. Much of what I was going to do was arranged in advance by a friend who knew the area well and acted as a fixer. With a simple hand held Zoom H2 on the floor i could record the stories of the refugees and use my Nikon D300 to take pictures in the pauses, editing out the shutter sound later. During the live video blogging of the project I was contacted by Bill Cammack who ended up editing the final stills and interviews into a film.
I guess when there is less at stake.. Back in the UK, either covering a geek conference or on a job for a corporate client, you can experiment and test new methods of data capture and transmission. This is when we can get silly with our tech. Finding out what works and what is a waste of time and resources. What medium has the greatest reach for the least amount of effort.
If I had a tech lab at my disposal, something similar to what Ironman or Batman had in their gargantuan basements.. I would not hesitate to create the ultimate journalists tool. Some single device that once and for all did everything a blogger/journalist needed.
It only exists in my head right now but would have the video capture qualities of RED.. A 15-200mm f1.4 lens with an integral Binaural auto zooming microphone. High definition stills could be extracted from the film and edited in camera. All the GPS and audio to text tagged footage could be separated into audio, video and stills onto solid state cards or streamed via wifi, wimax, or compressed for GSM, or satellite enabling it to be sent all over the world but also to a sister pod situated within the same city retrieving the footage and archiving live.
Oh.. and it tweets.
Failing that.. I’d be happy for the iPhone to have a decent battery, shoot 5 mega pixel photos even in low light and shoot reasonable video from two decent front and back cameras.
This I feel would be far easier to achieve and may even be with us next year. In the meantime I, along with many bloggers and tech lovers will be carting around small to medium backpacks clanking with lensed gadgets. Always on the look out for an unused plug socket so we can recharge and ultimately.. reconnect.
My ‘normal’ podcast is only in the 40′s!.. OK.. some will argue that they are a little more honed and probably better quality than some of my mini rants and rambles but who cares? Think of how easy it is now to podcast, albeit limited to 5 minutes. Think of all the people without the technical know how to hand code an XML file. It takes me literally hours to do my normal podcast so i can see the finished item on iTunes.. I can now do it in seconds.
Yes you need an iPhone but this will not be so in the future. And besides, look at the kit you used to need. Even on the cheap you are looking at some kind of audio recorder and a computer. Some people use mixers. Now all you need is a free app AudioBoo and an iPhone.
I guess the reason why I go on and on about how i am impressed with all of this is that I have a feeling we are going to see so many newly inspired multimedia producers not only equipped with the tech but using it in new and innovative ways. These new producers won’t be fault finding for 8 hours at a time after 5 hours of making a podcast wondering why their show hasn’t appeared in iTunes. I am not going to miss any of that.
I feel that once again I have moved from developing my own film to taking my first Polaroid. Yes it requires less work and you have not sweat blood to get the final result. Perhaps it does seem a little disposable and the purists will see it as a tweet next to a well thought out and composed blog post.
It doesn’t make the final work any less valuable. The world online is moving pretty fast now. I listen to fewer and fewer 40 minute podcasts and more and more shorter ones. I am chosing the Haiku over the ‘Long Poem‘.
This doesn’t mean i am going to stop doing my longer podcast editied in garageband.. not yet.
But it does mean you have something else to subscribe to.. If you want. Something shorter, quicker, rawer, off the cuff, unedited, not a programme, not an edited broadcast.. A little slice of life. A moment in time. An audio tweet. A Boo.
Video has finally arrived for the un-cracked iphone! Well.. video in the shape of a video slideshow, which as far as I am concerned is a bloody miracle judging by the way Apple seems to be restricting development of video based apps. Or is it AT&T and O2 not wanting people to stream with their ‘unlimited’ data?
I have to say I am so happy that it is 12seconds.tv that has started to build this bridge across the video void.. It’s a long time coming and for a start up with little to no cash, this is like building home made space suits and heading off to the moon.
They are top guys too..
The next thing I need to do is invite them over here to the UK so they realise although we are a little island we have big gobs and could have started spreading the word way before the US woke up.. This would have eased the world into 12Seconds and been a great way of flushing out the inevitable bugs before everybody rushed in..
The US could then have woken up with a massive 12Second alarm call.. Here in England it is now the end of the day and I have had the app sitting dormant and broken on my iPhone until only a short while ago.. All day out and about i have been checking it like it was a pacemaker and my life depended on it.. I won’t go into how frustrating that is. I initially thought the app had been launched broken.
I think my frustration stems only from my anticipation and the fact I knew it was a really important release as far as iPhone apps go.
Of course.. if i had taken a proper look at the text on the app store it would have told me I would have the app before it was going to work, but you know me.. Ever so slightly impatient when it comes to the release of new tech.
Still.. it has now sprung to life and I can actually talk about it. I dropped a tweet out yesterday mentioning it by accident but managed to delete it before I caused too much trouble. (Sorry Guys)..
So what are you waiting for?! The application cost a dollar (59p) it’s a bargain.
It is so straight forward. If you don’t have a 12Seconds account get one and then get the app.. Hell, why not get the app first! You can sign up through the app on the phone.
Once you have it.. Log in.. take three photos, add 12 seconds of audio and click to share it on the 12seconds site. It really is that easy you could do it drunk.. you no doubt will..
So if you are reading this as a noob and don’t know about 12Seconds.. get on it. Be it through the app or through the site.. I’ll see you there.
If you do download the app.. please review it and help the guys get the respect they deserve.
I have made some good friends through 12Seconds and I’m looking forward to making more. As soon as you are ready to go.. come let me know.. It may come as little surprise that I am on there as Documentally.
Anyone with an iPhone loves it’s ability to carry around various flavours of multimedia whilst enjoying it’s syncability with everything Mac. Occasionally we even find ourselves drawn to play with app after app, be it some GPS twitter tool we ca’t now live without, or a game we’ve bought for a few coins.
We can’t do it for long though. The iPhone battery is rubbish. Especially if you are a blogger and have a tendency to tweet, tag, snap pix and roam for more than an hour or two.
All this may be about to change. No Apple haven’t got their act together, third party companies are designing some pretty cool bolt-on’s.
This last week my iPhone has almost been behaving like a normal handset. I can now get through the day without planning my outings from power source to power source. Trips in the car no longer start with mirror-phonecharger-signal-maneuver and I am now not even thinking about whether or not I should have wifi enabled or not.
This is all thanks to a very tidy and pocketable iPhone power booster I found online. The ‘iPhone Power Station’.
This funky little device cost around a tenner and can be temporarily inserted into the base of your iPhone to either be charged simultaneously as the phone is being charged or when your phone battery is running low, inserted and activated to boost the power. On the occasions I have had to top my phone up from 20% empty warning this little 1000mAh lithium ion gizmo has replenished my battery to 100%. This has been enough to last out the day and I don’t mind having this little 48g device knocking about in a jacket pocket or my bag as it’s far more convenient than carrying a charger on the off chance I pass a plug socket.
As it only takes two hours to charge It’s also handy if you are off grid with a solar charger as now you can charge the booster in the sun independently of your phone.
Of course Ideally Apple will get it right third time with the third generation iPhone and actually produce a device that shoots video, has open architecture, bluetooth that works, is not tied to O2, allows memory expansion and has a battery capacity at least comparable to other phones on the market.
In the meantime.. we have the iPhone Power Station and all the other little bolt-ons that are required to satisfy our tech needs.
Just Google iPhone Power Station to see places online where you can buy.. If you need one that is..
Monday morning for me this week will start at 4am as i rise, wash and head over to my friends for 5am, the official start of our trip into the wilderness.
We will drive nearly 500 miles north into Scotland to Mallaig. From there we hope to be in time for the ferry over to Inverie on the Knoydart Peninsular, mainland Britain’s last wilderness.
From there who knows… We plan to hike across, find a nice spot in a wood on the northern coastline of the peninsular where we can build camp, enjoy the wilderness and perhaps even do a little fishing.
We plan to exercise our bushcraft skills and although not packing a tent, we will be taking hammocks to sleep in unless it is as cold as it was last week where we may find it better to dig snow holes.
For my friend Dave it is an extension of the kind of weekends we find ourselves on in the summer. He will be practicing his axe skills, carving stuff, fishing, hunting and general camp craft. For me i also want to enjoy the wilds of Scotland but in addition, I am keen to see if i can blog, record and capture the great outdoors by using solar power and the no doubt limited cell phone coverage.
If you don’t here from me on Twitter or through my normal channels for a week, it’s because there is no mobile signal at all. Although not traveling too light, there was no room for a satellite modem as i wanted to make sure we had enough food and whiskey.
If you don’t hear from us for longer than ten days.. Expect to hear a story about how two stupid bushcrafters misjudged the weather and perished in the wilds of Scotland.
That said.. there will be a video diary shot along the way so the news should have more than enough decent footage.
For those interested in the kit I will be taking, i have tagged a flickr photo below.
(Please click on the photo)
Amongst other bits and bobs, Dave will be packing the first aid kit, axe, skillet, fishing kit, and flares. I’m not sure if anyone will actually pay any attention to flares around Bonfire night..
Before you say.. “The fools.. they will surely perish out there.” I must tell you that i’ve packed a Handpresso coffee machine.. I refuse to perish without caffeine in my blood.
Please don’t email or call unless it’s important. If i can get a mobile signal i will most likely be blogging via Twitter. You can find me on http://www.twitter.com/documentally
On this very wet British morning my postman handed me a soggy jiffy bag from China. Inside was a black box containing my new iPhone Solar powered sheath (as they call it).
It was well packaged and only took a week to get here. If i remember rightly i payed around $50 including postage and packaging from a company in Hong Kong called Brando.
Here is a first look..
So far so good, the instructions are pretty easy to follow and at the moment the iPhone is sat on my office window quietly charging.
I will tell you more after a proper test.
UPDATE:
After a day of testing my solar powered case appears to have died. Do not buy one of these until I find out what exactly has happened. It appears that during heavy use whilst with the battery switched to charge, the unit over heats and the battery breaks. It got really hot during use and now the lights won’t work and it doesn’t charge the iPhone. More info when i have it.
Don’t forget you can support this blog and then i can by more juicy tech to try out.. Or you can just send me the tech.
If like me you were a little pissed off to see that many of the iPod and iPhone chargers would not work with the new iPhone 3G you may be pleased to know I have finally stumbled upon an in car charger that works with the new iPhone.
Apparently there are a few that work floating around and it is something to do with some using the firewire voltage and some using USB voltage that is the issue.
Up until now I have been using the Power Monkey Explorer and it’s iPod adapter when out and about. It only seemed to last a few minutes but it was enough to top up my iPhone till I got to a plug socket.
I have a solar panel set up I like to use when on a shoot or as I did at the Geeknbury Festival but up until now I have had to use the mains plug adapter with an inverter into the cigarette lighter socket.
Not any more though. Today whilst in Milton Keynes I managed to find something that actually works.
I had popped into town to go to the Apple store but it wasn’t there I found the working charger. When I asked them, they told me that due to the new iPhone 3G not working with any of their previous 3rd party car chargers, they had to discontinue all makes!
Sheesh.. You would think Apple would have thought of looking into supplying a mobile charger for their pride and joy prior to it’s release.
I left disheartened but just a few doors down in the O2 store they told me they had just taken delivery (2 in stock) of an new car charger called the XtremeMac Incharge Auto.
At the inflated price of £14.99 ($30) I still thought I would take a chance and after the other devices I have tried recently, this turned out to be third time lucky.
Although it works, the packaging has no mention of the iPhone 3G, just the iPhone and the iPod like all the others I have tried. Still i’m not complaining. I’m very gratefull in fact, as now I can feed my power hungry iPhone whilst on the move. And Lord know it needs it.
I have been loving the apps especially Life Cast by @SleepyDog but blogging on the move with all the GPS functionality is draining the battery before the day is out.
Forget the new plastic back.. they should have stuck some solar cells on it.
It’s been a real pain in the ass finding this basic accessory for my new phone. I hopes this will assist you if you are having similar issues and should you come across any other makes that work, please leave a note in the comments.
