All posts by James Clay

nokia

Nokia N810 – it’s not a phone!

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A week or so back I managed to get my hands on a Nokia N810 as part of our MoLeNET project, one of many mobile devices we have got to support the project. These devices are for two main reasons, firstly from a learner support perspective, if they have them, how do they work and how does our mobile content play on them? Secondly to evaluate them from a college perspective so that if and when we get more mobile devices for our learners we can go with a device we have used, checked and know works. We can also use that information to advise and recommend devices to learners.

So what do I think of the Nokia n810?

Nokia N810 - it's not a phone!

So far I have been quite impressed with the Nokia N810, it is a neat smart device, which works as you expect it to work.

Browsing is good, as are other internet applications. It either uses wi-fi or you use a Bluetooth connection to your phone and use your phone’s 3G data connection. Thing to remember is that it is not a phone!

I found the keyboard though small, much easier and better than any mobile phone keypad for typing in text and the predictive text entry means you can go quite fast.

Haven’t yet tried video on the device as in an actual video file, tried it with an online video, BBC’s iPlayer, and the Flash video playback was very poor, jerky and unwatchable. I am guessing that is a similar reason why Apple have not implemented Flash on the iPhone and the iPod touch – though I have also heard it was more down to PDF reading and implementation!

Battery life is good and much better than a lot of UMPCs out there, so it has that going for it.

The Register has a really detailed and good review of the Nokia n810 on their website.

Nokia’s approach for the N810 is pretty simple: phone screens are too small for decent web browsing, so surely a separate portable device that has a bigger screen and Wi-Fi connectivity is needed for serious portable web access.

Their verdict?

Taken at face value, Nokia’s N810 not a bad box of tricks. For surfing the web, email and as an internet communication device it is a handy little gadget, while the operating system is easy to use, feature rich and robust. The relative abundance of software is another plus. But that lack of a SIM slot does niggle just a bit.

I believe that the Nokia n810 is a great portable internet device for learning and I really like it.

I don’t believe it is suitable as a device to give to learners, for two main reasons, number one it is expensive for what it does, two, it is too “delicate” and “stylish” and I don’t think it is robust enough to be given out to students in the way that a PSP or even an iPod touch could be given out.

stuff

Yahoo to adopt “semantic web”

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Yahoo is going to adopt some of the key standards of the “semantic web” in order to improve the search experience for its users, reports the BBC.

The technology is widely seen as the next step for the world wide web and it involves a much richer understanding of the masses of data placed online.

Andy Powell Pete Johnston makes some additional observations on his blog entry:

It is worth bearing in mind the note of caution from Paul Miller that such an approach brings with it the challenges of dealing with malicious or mischievous attempts to spam rankings, and as I think Micah Dubinko’s post makes clear, this is not going to be an aggregator of all the RDF data on the Web.

Wikipedia on the semantic web.

Edit: Corrected who wrote the blog entry on eFoundations.

stuff

Please do not send 17MB Word attachments…

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As per usual when I am out of the office for a while I get the usual “Your mailbox is over its size limit” as I do send and receive a large amount of e-mail (even more so when I am out of the office as it is my main form of communication).

Please do not send 17MB Word attachments…

Now it’s very difficult to archive from a remote location, so I do go through and trim a few e-mails and download and then delete large attachments.

However was very surprised to see literally one day after doing this he “Your mailbox is over its size limit” message again, I checked I hadn’t received any new BIG e-mails for a while, so I thought I know I suspect that an all staff e-mail with a large attachment had been sent round.

And boy was I right!

Somone (who shall remain nameless as this is a public blog) had sent for sending to all staff an e-mail with a single Word document as an attachment.

This Word document was a single page document, with some pictures on it.

This Word document in terms of file size was large, nay huge, nay really really BIG!

It was 17MB, that’s right seventeen MB!

17MB for a single page document!

Obviously the person who had created the document had taken some photographs with a digital camera and inserted them into the word document, resized them so they fit on the page, but not resized them in terms of file size!

17MB for a single page document!

Now with other a thousand staff, that means the mail server was choked with 20GB from a single e-mail!

I suspect I was not the only one who received the “Your mailbox is over its size limit” e-mail this weekend and I suspect that there will be a lot of people who will be very annoyed and will just delete the Word document without opening or downloading it.

Really that file should have never been sent, posted as a link perhaps (but would you download a 17MB Word document).

I did go ahead and print it as a PDF and got it down to 300KB without trying which is still large, but so much better than 17MB.

Maybe next time a simple text e-mail would have sufficed.

stuff

Learning on the Wii

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A MoLeNET colleague of mine has been playing working hard on seeing how the Nintendo Wii can be used to support learners.

Learning on the Wii

http://www.xlearn.co.uk/2008/03/learning-on-wii.html

http://www.xlearn.co.uk/2008/03/getting-your-wii-on-net.html

I’ve finally got round to buying some points and downloading Opera on my Wii. I’m excited by quite a few possibilities in its use for education, especially since some colleges I know have bought them to support learners in their Entry Level courses for the Learning for Living and Work projects.

From my perspective this device can be used for mobile learning in addition to learning in college.

For some learners this is their “mobile” device.

If learning while mobile means learning at home using a console, that has to be an advantage over “not” learning at home.

If I am at home learning on the net on my wifi capable Nokia N95 is that more or less mobile than learning on the net on my 17″ MacBook Pro on Brighton beach using the free Pier to Pier wireless network?

Do you have to be at Starbucks using their wifi for it to be mobile learning?

Surely it is all about choice, and learner choice at that?

iphone, ipod touch, video

BBC launches iPlayer for iPod touch and iPhone

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The BBC launches a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

The BBC has launched a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. It is the first time the software has been available on portable devices. The software, which allows users to download programmes from the last seven days, will work over a wi-fi connection but not over the mobile network.

Read more.

I am really pleased to see this happen. I do use the (flash version) of the iPlayer on my Macs now and again to catch up with the odd BBC TV programme either I miss or my EyeTV misses.

This will allow me to catch up either at home or say over lunch at work (on our new learner wireless network).

Obviously from a licensing perspective we can’t use this within the college to show BBC programmes to learners, but this does now allow learners who have an iPhone or an iPod touch to watch the useful or interesting BBC programme on the iPlayer.