Announcements

Pausing for station identification

Posted on by charlie

On another blog I manage that’s work related, it was pointed out to me that it wasn’t clear who owned the blog (it was an oversight). So I updated the About page to reflect the nature of the blog and ‘paused for a station identification’ so that it would be clear what was going on.

In a way, I think it’s important to do the same here, since I actually haven’t really revealed myself much here (I am not comfortable promoting myself).

Cognections is a personal site and has two public blogs:

  • The main home blog – On this blog I post musings, statements, and reflections, looking for connections between precognition, cognition, and recognition (how philosophical). It’s pretty personal. This is the one I use to mostly blog images and videos.
  • My Lifeblog blog (this one) – since I am head of marketing and sales in the Lifeblog team at Nokia, Lifeblog is a large part of my life. I am hooked on it, especially on my phone. Of course, being in my position, I get nervous promoting my enthusiasm for Lifeblog (it’s an authenticity thing), so I try to frequently make the point clear that, additionally, I am on the Lifeblog team, especially the more enthusiastic I get. I AM MAKING THAT POINT NOW, AGAIN.

Also, I am very very careful not to turn this blog into some sort of sales and marketing site for Nokia. That would be gross. Such a site I would locate smack-dab in the middle of Nokia.com. Right? Here I just want to be myself – enthusiastic for Nokia products (which I was before I joined Nokia – you can Google for proof), excited to share what I know, and a bit on the edge, just to stir things up.

Nonetheless, this is a personal blog, and I try to be honest and up-front with everything I do. Now that you’ve read this, don’t forget to whack me when it seems I am deviating from my mission.

Thanks!

Reflections

Stickers

Posted on by charlie
My phone
My phone
My computer
My computer


Joi Ito recently posted a picture of some stickers on a laptop cover. Seems like not only was the laptop cover prominent in a movie, but had a sticker from his dear Infoseek.

He’s posted other photos of laptop stickers before, and so have I (Mena and Minna, for example). But, since I’m not so computer-based, it’s my phone that gets plastered.

This is my second phone I’ve done this to. Most of my stickers actually have some story associated with them, sometimes even after I stuck them on. And I’m already on my second layer as some stickers fade or lose relevance and I stick another on top.

I find it fun, like some physical substantiation of thoughts and memories. And unlike some 17-inch PowerBook, I don’t have much space, so I need to be thoughtful and creative.

In contrast, the first thing I did when I got my laptop was to actually remove the Windows and Intel stickers. The only sticker I put on was an RFID sticker that SMSs me ‘I have your laptop’ when some one reads it with a Nokia NFC cover. So maybe not as many stickers on my laptop as others, but at least mine does something cool.

General

Anina is something

Posted on by charlie

I have the good fortune of being able to meet creative, enthusiastic, and interesting people. Through some wierd path, I met Anina, truly a new kind of supermodel.

After some long chats, I relized that all she needed was a bit of support to flower and do some really cool things with Lifeblog (she contacted me because she realized what she could do). She’s really mobile crazy (check out her movies and graphics) and technically savvy and has come up with some great ideas for blogging.

One of her ideas is a ‘caught blogging’ where she posts a hint as to where she’s at or going to be and folks need to ‘catch’ her, usually with a photo that they can post.

Link: LIFEBLOG.anina.net: Cought blogging!.

Another idea is to duel someone with blogs where they basically try to out-blog each other. Her first duel ended in a disaster because for some reason (maybe Lifeblog?) nothing worked and she couldn’t post.

Link: LIFEBLOG.anina.net: Kicking the living Lifeblog out of me!

And then of course, she’s gone nuts with her Digital Pen.

Link: LIFEBLOG.anina.net: Today’s post

She’s not doing this for me (or Lifeblog or Nokia), but for herelf (she’s not some Nokia spokesperson or anything – ugh!). It’s really her thing. She’s the one coming up with the ideas and doing everything. I just supply her with gadgets and not much else. I just find it interesting to watch, and what happens, happens.

Like I said, creative folks only need a bit of support. And I like what creative folks like her do.

General

Lifeblog on other service providers (Six Apart partners)

Posted on by charlie

As you probably know, Lifeblog works with Six Apart’s TypePad service. Well, it so happens that Six Apart has other partners that use TypePad for their own customers. I know that for some of them Lifeblog will work fine, I just don’t know which ones and am waiting to hear back from Six Apart for more info (Hallo, Jean-Yves!).

But, the Six Apart Europe web page is so nice and informative, that I couldn’t wait to talk about this.

The list of partners:

They are also available in a bunch of local languages:

The Six Apart Japan team is also not sitting on their butts and have also started a list of impressive partners:

                        

If you have a Lifeblog phone and want to use one of these blog services with Lifeblog, let me know how it goes (good or bad). I hope to eventually have a list of services that work with Lifeblog.

Tips & Tricks

Using a Nokia Digital Pen with Lifeblog

Posted on by charlie

I use the Nokia Digital Pen to doodle, take notes, and
sometimes make something to post. One problem is that the pen
saves images in “.gif” format and not the “.jpg” that Lifeblog is looking for.
So, I trawled the net for an app that would help out. Would you believe that
there are no imaging apps that do the conversion? I guess it’s not a major use
case here.

Well, the funny thing is that I found an app buried in Forum
Nokia. The app is part of a tutorial on graphics formats, so it’s really just a
programming example (hence the generic icon). But, hey, it serves the purpose
here.

Here is the file: ImageConverter.SIS (don’t know if I’m allowed to distribute this, though)

How to get your digital pen drawings into Lifeblog on the
phone:

0) Transfer the drawing to your phone and save it where you
can find it. Remember the file name!
1) Open the Image converter app
2) Find the file to be converted: Options->Open then
browse to find the file.
3) To convert it: Options->Save As. This opens a list of
formats to save to. Select JPEG. Press OK!
4) Select where you want to save it to.
5) Give it a name and end the name with ".jpg".
You need the extension for Lifeblog to pick it up.
6) Once you’ve saves the JPEG with the extension, Lifeblog
will automatically pick it up. Hooray!

Now, wouldn’t it be easier if Lifeblog just supported GIFs?
I’ve been asking for almost a year now. Guess I haven’t convinced them yet.

Sigh.

Have fun.

General

Digital memories: we can forget them for you wholesale! | The Register

Posted on by charlie

Andrew Orlowski from The Register had a chat with our Fealess Leader, Christian Lindholm, about the memory banking business and the future of memories.

Link: Digital memories: we can forget them for you wholesale! | The Register.

But one of the more awkward questions is what happens to "Our Stuff", once we trust it to the digital void. This was brought starkly into relief when I met Nokia user interface designer Christian Lindholm, at 3GSM in Cannes last week.

Musings

The Brightest Blast, noticed by a very small creature

Posted on by charlie

Link: Sky and Telescope – The Brightest Blast.

The "superflare," from a magnetar named SGR 1806–20, irradiated Earth with more total energy than a powerful solar flare. Yet this object is an estimated 50,000 light-years away in Sagittarius, on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy behind dense interstellar clouds. "This is mind-boggling when you think about how far away it is," says Kevin C. Hurley (University of California, Berkeley), one of the lead investigators.

I can’t help but think of how tiny and insignificant we can sometimes seem. Isn’t it a marvel that we exist at all? Think of it: beings that are constantly going against entropy, living on a think crust of a little ball of molten rock, spinning around a tiny star, part of an immense galaxy, in a universe we can’t even fathom the size of?

Sigh.