Today, online movie streaming site, Netflix announced that it is coming to Canada this fall.
I had a chance to talk about what this means to Canadians with Lisa Christiansen on CBC Radio One’s On the Coast this afternoon (thanks for capturing it Dave!):
Canadian pricing and library availability wasn’t given in their press release but you can visit their site and sign up to be notified of when more details are announced.
Interestingly, Netflix.com, as well as their iPad app (pictured above), when visited from Canada both redirect users to Netflix.ca and the signup form.
Last week, I travelled across Western Canada with a few folks from WOMWorld/Nokia, Michael, April, and Daniel in a RV as part of a cross-Canada promotional tour for Nokia’s latest N-Series smartphone (on Rogers in Canada), the N97 Mini.
We started our trip in Vancouver, ending up in Calgary just in time for the Stampede with stops along the way in Salmon Arm, Lake Louise, Emerald Lake and Banff among other points of interest.
Unfortunately, and ironically, for a good portion of our road trip, we were in the mountains and had no cell (voice or data) reception at all. This was fine with me as it gave me a chance to explore the phone itself (being relatively new to Nokia and it’s Symbian OS) as well as take in the landscape as a passenger for a change instead of being the driver.
The N97 Mini is a slick little smartphone in a candybar style form factor that is smaller (although slightly thicker) than my iPhone 3GS. It’s been out for about six months in the US so there are plenty of reviews around. I thought I’d focus on a few things that interested me about the phone.
The Camera
With an onboard 5 megapixel camera, with autofocus and LED flash, it’s pretty capable and similar to the iPhone 4. Here’s a number of photos I took while travelling around in the RV:
I really liked the depth of field possible with this camera:
I really liked the quality of the images taken with the camera although I found it a little sluggish to use but fairly consistant to an average point and shoot camera which it could easily replace. I found the flash to be pretty decent and to work slightly better than the iPhone 4 which always seemed to suffer for ‘white eyes’ when I used it briefly.
It is also capable of shooting video (with the flash working as an always on light), although only in standard definition. It also has a front facing camera but it’s very low resolution. I never had a chance to try out the video calling features but hope to in the coming weeks while I still have the loaner phone.
Navigation with Ovi Maps
Nokia also includes built in navigation software that is pretty slick.
Three features really stood out about it beyond the standard functions you’d find in a Garmin or TomTom unit:
You can choose and download your maps to the device using desktop software so you don’t need a network connection to use it (especially useful if in a foreign country without data)
Using the Ovi Voice app, you can customize a large portion of the navigation system using your own (or anyones) voice. One of the tasks we were given on the trip was to customize the RV’s phone with our own voices so we had a lot of fun with it as it asks you to record over 50 different phrases and words that it integrates into the navigation…if the RV gets lost along the way, I think they can blame us for having too much fun with the feature.
map updates are free for the life of your phone
Another nice touch is that the N97 Mini comes with a window suction cup mount in the box which makes it even easier to use as an in-car nav system and speakerphone.
Build your own Nokia apps without coding
Nokia recently announced a web based app builder for it’s Ovi Store. Basically it allows you to make a self contained app that pulls in any rss feed you want…so I made one for this site:
It’s pretty basic but it worked pretty well and took all of 5 minutes to create an app, followed by a 24 hour approval process before showing up on the store.
A few other Likes/Dislikes
I liked:
great form factor that is very comfortable in hand and slips into a jeans pocket easily with possibly the best flipout keyboard I’ve ever used on a smartphone…small enough to be hidden well, comfortable enough that I might actually type on it…also has a satisfying click sound when folding away the keyboard
Nokia’s app store (erm, Ovi Store) has a surprisingly deep amount of apps, games and themes – many things that on Android require rooting or jailbraking on the iPhone – although I haven’t had that much time to fully explore their usefulness
true multitasking by simply press’n'hold the ‘wonky button’ (Tom’s British, you know) method for closing running apps
decent battery life…although we were using these phones constantly, they managed to last about a day with heavy use
I didn’t like:
the Symbian OS feels dated and slow compared to Android/iOS…truly feels like the Linux of the mobile world…fine if you’re into command lines but not so much if you’re into a snappy GUI
the phone got very hot while charging or using as a wifi hotspot (or both as we usually used it on the RV), thanks to the metal back plate
some of the apps were pretty pricey…Gravity, seemingly the best (if not only) Twitter client for Nokia was $10
the video mode suffered from an auto exposure strobing effect that I found annoying…I didn’t find an option to lock it in place, just switch it between a few presets
constantly being prompted to ‘go online’ or being told that what I’m about to do would incur data charges or simply being offline & having to press a button or 3 to get an update…no matter what settings I changed, I couldn’t make it stop or stay online. I just wanted to be always online like I can with Android or iPhone. Perhaps this is a holdover from the past when data plans didn’t come in 6gb blocks for less than a mortgage payment
It was a lot of fun to spend time in the RV with other mobile geeks, learning about the phone while travelling around. Tom, our host, mixed things up on a daily basis by giving us challenges to perform using the phone…including dropping us off in an empty parking lot in downtown Calgary. It was early in the morning after a late night at the Stampede then they drove away leaving us with some coordinates to use with Ovi Maps to find our way to breakfast. Fortunately it was only a few blocks to walk but a solid and fun challenge.
I made a couple of timelapse movies during the trip…here’s day one where we travel from Vancouver to Salmon Arm with a brief stop at the Othello Tunnels:
Heading Home
The RV dropped us off at the airport in Calgary and was continuing on out East with a fresh batch of mobile geeks they’d pick up along the way.
While waiting to fly home back to Vancouver, we were entertained at our gate, Stampede style (captured by the N97 Mini), much to Daniel’s chagrin:
All the photos (many taken with the N97 Mini) I took on the trip can be found in my Flickr set.
Huge thanks to my hosts, Tom Hall and Donna Suffling with WOMWorld/Nokia, Chris our awesome RV driver, and my travelmates: Michael, April, and Daniel.
Yesterday, at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled the latest version of the iPhone:
You should watch the design video if you haven’t already seen it…it’s quite the update that I of course am looking forward to getting.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, we still don’t know when the new model will be available for Canadians.
It comes out in the US (and a few other countries) on June 24 with 18 more countries by the end of July and to everyone by the end of September. Most people are expecting this means Canada will get it in July…but there hasn’t been anything specific that says or implies this.(Canada will get it in July – thanks Allen!) All the Canadian carriers have updated their websites with few details other than ‘coming soon’ or promises of more information in the ‘coming weeks’.
Considering this is the third model available in Canada, third year in a row, which is now supported and sold by at least 3 major cellular carriers, I’m left wondering if it’s going to be an upgrade nightmare like it has been in the past.
I know Apple controls the marketing and distribution very tightly so my belief is that the carriers really don’t know (or can’t say) anything until the last moment. AT&T has already begun notifying it’s customers via a text message that lets them know how much it will cost to upgrade to the newest model.
This is smart. It lets each customer know exactly, in advance, if they are eligible to upgrade and how much it will cost – including any additional fees. This isn’t a randomly received text that looks like a marketing pitch, the customer can request a confirmation via SMS by dialing a number and they’ll get a response immediately.
I just hope the Canadian carriers are paying attention and don’t let us down a third time.
My 3GS upgrade process was very frustrating thanks to conflicting account information (Rogers’ system said I was eligible for an upgrade when I called in but the dealer computer system said I wasn’t when I tried to pick up the device) that took many hours of wasted time to resolve followed by a similar process when my wife wanted to upgrade – both situations required intervention at a higher level with help from Rogers social media team whom I engaged via Twitter to get resolution. They were very helpful but it shouldn’t have had to get to that point…and I know I’m not the only one as many friends encountered the same situation and had to spend time wading through the system.
I’m also left wondering what will happen to the data plans in Canada. AT&T has been changing around their offerings (lowering the included allotment for minimal decrease in price). Will the Canadian providers do the same now that we could start chewing through those 6gb plans now that our phones can record bandwidth chomping HD video with a one click button to uploads to YouTube?
I guess we’ll see in the ‘coming weeks’.
Update (June 15, 2010): Looks like something I was hoping for (2nd last paragraph) has happened…Today, Apple updated the Canadian Online iPhone Store (and presumably other countries) to indicate that they will be selling fully unlocked iPhones if you order them from Apple directly:
Of course, these unlocked phones will come at a premium but for those that are contract adverse, travel internationally frequently or just want freedom to move between carriers this is very welcome news. No longer will the cat and mouse game for unlockers matter to people that buy their iPhones this way.
This past weekend was the 5th year of the Northern Voice conference out at UBC…and my 3rd year attending.
Thanks to a recent car accident, I didn’t take many photos but instead spent a couple of days in sessions, visiting with old friends and, as usually happens at Northern Voice, met a bunch of new ones. Strangely, the conference has gotten so big that I actually saw some friends across the room but never had a chance to say hi since the room was so freaking big.
Like previous years, there was a PhotoCamp session and I gave a presentation covering how I make timelapse videos with a still camera. My presentation was loosely based on a post I did a little while ago and was frankly surprised at the positive reception the presentation got. The post covers off, in greater detail, the steps to combine still photos into an image sequence so I won’t bother posting my slides. I showed a number of videos to help illustrate the result including this one made from over 2200 still photos as kind of an end run around the fact that I wasn’t accredited to shoot video, just stills at the Paralympic Games:
On the second day of the conference, I was part of the panel talking about Our Olympic Experience which covered the social media outcomes from the games. Also on the panel was Andrew Lavigne talking about With Glowing Hearts, the feature length documentary he’s working on about the impacts the olympic games have on the local community. He shot a ton of footage before, during and after the games…including a few bits with me. Andrew talked about the film and showed the latest cut of the demo reel for it. They are currently looking for distribution options to help complete the editing of the film.
Once again I had a great time…even if I was heavily medicated during most of it thanks to my back injury. I was also able to give both presentations via my iPad and the VGA cable which worked great.
All the sessions were videotaped so once they are packaged up, I’ll update this post with any relevant links or embeds.
Update: Stephen Hui has some photos up on the Georgia Straight’s site that he took at the conference. I finally got to meet Stephen in person and he also spoke about his Olympic experiences alongside Andrew, kk, Scales and myself.
