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Coming full circle with the Chevy Volt

John / October 12, 2011 / Mobile, Reviews, Technology / Comments Off

As regular readers here will know, I’ve been lucky enough to have seen the Chevy Volt from million dollar prototype stage during the 2010 Olympics, all the way through to the final, shipping product that I got to test drive in Alaska earlier this year.

One thing that I wanted to do from the beginning though, is try out the electric vehicle on my own personal commute. I live in Port Coquitlam and drive to North Vancouver every day. It’s about 70 kilometers round trip. Last week, GM Canada loaned me a Volt to try it out on my local commute.

As with previous posts, this is more a overview of the technology in the car than a traditional car review… so I’m going to focus on a couple of things including the realities of charging an electric car at home, driving one on my daily commute and what you can do with GM’s smartphone app for the Volt.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Volt is meant to be charged with a regular 110V wall outlet. It has a dedicated port on the front left side of the car (complete with push button on the key fob and on the driver’s door to open it). It’s a proprietary port for use with the cable reel that is located in the trunk. I had initially spent way too much time looking for a long extension cord inside my house before I realized the cable reel had plenty of cord to go from my garage outlet to my carport without issue. Using this method takes a depleted battery about 10 hours to charge to 100%. This gives you anywhere from 40 to 80 kilometers of electric travel depending on a number of factors including road/traffic conditions, what you have running inside the car (air conditioning, heated seats, charging up your phone, lights, etc). The gas engine tops up the available range to just over 400 kilometers with a full tank of gas & fully charged battery.

If you want to charge it faster, you can get a 220V outlet installed (think of your washer/dryer connection) and the Volt will charge in 4 hours.

Unfortunately for me, at my office, I wasn’t able to find any parking stalls that had ready access to a wall outlet. I’m sure they exist, I just wasn’t able to get a stall that had one during my loan period. So I had to go all day at work without charging that meant I’d get to see if I’d get to go my full commute under battery power.

On the days that I had the car, I seemed to have had some of the worst traffic days in quite a while so it took longer than normal to get home. At the end of the day though, I usually only had to dip into the gas tank for a couple of liters of gas to get home with the battery getting depleted just minutes from my front door. I think during my whole week of usage, I used less than 10 litres of gas.

Since this is a GM vehicle, it came with OnStar and the model I had included the full navigation system which is an optional add-on to the base Volt.

One thing I really liked was the ‘Traffic Events’ that would pop up on the screen via the OnStar service. It was pretty consistent with what the local news radio station was reporting (slightly more realtime) and also reflected the reality on the road in front of me. The events popped up a few kilometers from where they were and showed me exactly where the accident was located and even suggested alternate routes if any.

I also liked the heads up display with navigation right above the steering wheel with key turn by turn directions (I was being audibly told by the nav system to do a legal u-turn when possible in this photo):

The free OnStar RemoteLink app is available for iPhone and Android smartphones in their respective marketplaces. It gives you a lot of control and information about your car at your fingertips. Everything from being able to lock/unlock & start your car remotely, being able to monitor & review your battery life, tire pressure and other vehicle diagnostic information to even honking the horn.

One particularly cool feature was the navigation tab which would give you the ability to search out a destination on your phone and send the routing information to the car. You can also set reminders for charging the vehicle and schedule the charging to begin at specific times if your electricity is cheaper during different times of the day.

One thing I can say after having a few non-geeks in the car during my time with it is that the dash and display screens can seem overwhelming to the uninitiated. Personally, I loved it but I can see how the large console area with it’s plethora of buttons, busy dash and touchscreens can be confusing. No doubt there is a lot going on in this car. Fortunately, you can turn off the screens and just drive normally if that’s your thing.

I really enjoyed my ‘real world’ week with the Volt. If I was looking to upgrade my car right now, I would give it some serious consideration after reviewing my annual gas expenses and mileage. It’s just too bad my home province of BC doesn’t have any rebates for eco vehicles like many other provinces do. It would make the purchase price that much more attractive.

UPDATE: Looks like BC is finally getting on board with rebates for cars like the Volt beginning December 1, 2011!

Use your iPhone as a 3D scanner with Trimensional

John / July 12, 2011 / 3D Printing, Hardware, Mobile, Technology / 2 Comments

I first saw this app a few months ago, well before I had decided to get into 3D printing.

Trimensional is an iPhone app that lets you take 3D photos. I thought it was just a fun camera app to make animated gifs like these:

That is until they added the ability (via a modest in-app purchase) to export the scans as files that can be read by a 3D printer (.STL), like my MakerBot:

So here’s the scan of my face from above, printed in ‘nuclear green’:

Pretty cool and just a little creepy!

Toon Paint for iPhone

John / May 18, 2011 / Mobile, Photography / Comments Off

I stumbled across a very interesting iPhone app today called Toon Paint. It lets you take or process iPhone photos into line drawings and then gives you the ability to paint them.

I love the look of the converted images and actually prefer the high contrast black and white output rather than the painted images…possibly because I suck at painting. Seems to work really well with Hipstamatic shots which all these examples are.

Here’s an auto painted version (via the in-app purchase of Toon Color):

It’s just available for iPhone but the iPad version is on the way…well worth the $1.99 purchase.

Here’s a few more of my favorite images ‘tooned’ (non-iPhone originals):

I’ll be adding all my Toon Paint images to a set on Flickr.

My latest iPhone 4 case

John / May 10, 2011 / Mobile, Photography / 2 Comments

Likely my last case for the iPhone 4 because it’s awesome and because the iPhone 5 is due out later this year…but I’ve said that before.

It’s from the folks that make my favourite iPhone camera app, Hipstamatic and made by Agent 18.

It’s really overpriced ($40) for what it is and doesn’t offer much protection but I still love it. It comes with a metal tripod mount and a lanyard that is removable.

I bought it here.

Hands on with the Blackberry Playbook

John / April 19, 2011 / Hardware, Mobile, Reviews, Technology / Comments Off

This morning I had an opportunity to check out the new tablet on the block, the Blackberry Playbook from Research in Motion.

Of course, I had to try the camera(s) on the Playbook (shot with the rear camera in low light):

It has a 3mp front facing camera and a 5mp rear facing camera which seemed pretty decent.

The Playbook fits easily inside the touchscreen area of my iPad 2.

What I found surprised me. Here’s my quick takeaways after playing with it for a brief amount of time:

I liked:

Form factor – fits nicely in your hand and is about the size of my Kindle 3 in it’s leather case which means it’s perfect for curling up on the couch with
rubberized back…something I like immensely over the Apple aluminum backed iPad
Multitouch bezels – let’s you swipe from the black bezel areas in order to get to options, switch apps, etc.
Multitasking – works as advertised and you can swipe from side to side in the bezel area to switch between apps
There is a file system! I was able to log into Flickr and use the uploader to access the breakfast photo I took and post it directly online – something I wish was possible with iOS

What I didn’t like:

App World – obviously it’s launch day so there aren’t a ton of apps…this should get better with time if enough people buy the Playbook. I’m still skeptical about the Android integration but we’ll see.
Custom connectors for HDMI – I’m sure it’s a space thing but it would have been nice to have a standard port instead of having to buy a dongle (could have been included at least)
Blackberry required for native email/contacts/calendar – this is a huge dropped ball…other than webmail, there is currently no native email app unless you pair with your BB. I can’t imagine any non-Blackberry owners getting one anytime soon until they release some native apps to address this (which I’m told is coming soon – but it should have been there on day 1)
cheesy neoprene case included in the box

I guess only time will tell if there is a market for the Playbook. It launched at 7am around North America and there wasn’t a single person lined up to buy one (most pre-ordered them I’m told). I also know that my company is giving them a pass, at least this year, which is a little surprising considering the Blackberry centric enterprise I work for.

My thanks to Elliott, Paul and Brittany at Future Shop for the hands on playtime with the Playbook.

Hands on with LG’s Windows Phone 7 smartphones

John / April 6, 2011 / Hardware, Mobile, Reviews / Comments Off

Recently, my friends at LG loaned me a couple of their new smartphones running Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7.

The one on the left, the LG-C900B (aka the LG Quantum) has a slide out keyboard and the one on the right is the LG-E900h (aka LG Optimus 7) which is a full on touchscreen model.

As with previous LG smartphones I’ve reviewed, I found the build quality to be excellent and the form factor, especially on the Quantum, to be great in the hand. The Optimus was a little large and it’s edges a little sharp for my liking.

Both smartphones have 5 megapixel cameras with flash, a dedicated camera shutter button and also a bundled app for taking panoramic photos.

I quite liked the built in panorama app that made it really easy to create images like this one by simply holding the cameraphone up and moving it in the direction you want to capture. The app will snap a photo when you are lined up and take care of the stitching automagically:

My only complaint about the panorama app is that the resolution is quite low considering the ability of the camera.

The camera itself was pretty decent although even at the highest settings, it still looks a little web cammy to me.

I didn’t have a ton of time to really put the phones through their paces but overall I quite liked them. Not unlike the Zune MP3 player, I found the user interface to be fast, responsive and very slick. It felt much more polished than I’ve seen on Android devices and even made me wish my iPhone did some of the same tricks.

During the time I had with the phone, I didn’t get to try a lot of the applications in the marketplace but all the usual suspects were there with quite polished versions of Facebook, Twitter and the like. Even Netflix was there and worked very well.

Like Android & iOS devices, using Windows Phone 7 is centered around a core user account from Microsoft. Android uses Google accounts and Apple uses iTunes. The frustrating thing on WP7 was the fact that if you enter your initial account information incorrectly (I had mistyped my Windows Live password) you are basically screwed. There is no way on the phone to delete the account and try again or even correct the mistyped password. You can add additional accounts but the primary one has to be valid and correct for ANYTHING to work properly on the phone.

The only solution was to do a complete factory reset. While I hadn’t been able to setup much on the phone yet, it was still incredible that the only way to resolve the situation of a mistyped password was to reset the phone.

Initial pains aside, I still really liked the Windows Phone 7 platform based on my brief experience with it…I think it’s an easier platform for people new to smartphones to use and understand compared to the brutally fragmented Android arena. Microsoft also has the potential to really capitalize on its Xbox integration with these devices although the current implementation was a little weak with only minor connectivity to your Xbox Live account. Using your WP7 smartphone as a controller for your Xbox 360 could be very cool indeed.

I’m still not ready to give up my iPhone 4 but I certainly welcome Microsoft and it’s partners like LG to compete on an ever increasingly level playing field. Only time will tell if they can help make things better for all consumers. As I’ve said many times, competition is great to keep Apple in check and we’re finally seeing devices that at least have a chance to compete for market share.

Eye-fi Pro X2 Wireless SD card review

John / January 19, 2011 / Mobile, Photography, Reviews, Technology / 3 Comments

During the holidays, I came across a boxing day deal for the Eye-Fi Pro X2 8GB wireless SD card.

I’ve written about these Eye-Fi cards before but this is a much newer version with some key differences that address the previous model’s shortcomings.

These memory cards are unique in that in addition to being memory cards for storing your photos, they also contain tiny wifi antennas (in this case, with support for 802.11N) that allow you to upload your photos and video straight from the camera. This usually requires you to have already setup a wifi connection (at home, work, school, etc) in advance using a laptop.

The main reason I picked it up is that the Pro line supports ad-hoc wireless modes. This means that I can use my iPhone as a wireless hotspot and have this card connect to the internet directly via my iPhone and upload photos in near real time. It did require advance setup, via a computer, but once setup, you shouldn’t have to do anything for it to work going forward. This is huge for me when I’m shooting events and such and I really want to upload some photos right away, I’m now able to do it with nothing more than my camera and iPhone with me.

My Nikon D7000 has dual SD card slots that are configurable. I’m able to choose what the second slot is used for. Normally, it’s just overflow storage. But when I use an Eye-Fi card in that slot, I set the camera to send a jpeg copy of the photos I’m taking to that card. While the Pro cards now support RAW files, it just seems faster/easier to store RAW on the main card slot and drop a much smaller JPG file onto the second slot for uploading.

You can set the upload options via the Eye-Fi card management software. It can upload everything or you can selectively choose what to upload by using the camera’s ‘protect’ option. This lets you pick and choose which files get uploaded. You also choose where the files are uploaded to via the software with support for a lot of common photo sharing sites, Facebook, etc. Mine all go to Flickr with custom tags, sets and other settings I can setup in advance.

An added feature is that many newer cameras have support for Eye-Fi cards in their menus.

My relatively new Nikon D7000 (as did my older D90) has a menu function to turn off/on the wireless uploads which can save battery if you don’t need to be uploading on the go:

The back LCD screen on the D7000 has an interesting icon that I didn’t immediately notice when an Eye-Fi card is inserted – a wifi icon! It’s static normally and then blinks when it’s actually uploading photos:

I’m currently using this card with my jailbroken iPhone 4 running MyWi as a personal hotspot. Apple recently unveiled a newer firmware for iPhones that may potentially give you this function without having to jailbreak but it’s still to be determined if your carrier will allow that. Eye-Fi also recently announced at CES 2011 an update is coming called Direct Mode which also allow this:

Ziv, one of the Eye-Fi co-founders confirmed on Flickr to me that this will be a free update for X2 card owners which is awesome news.

So any downsides?
I can only see three issues with the card given my use case:

Speed: the cards are only class 6 which is very slow for some cameras…I usually use class 10 (or higher speed) cards but given that I’m only dumping jpegs and not RAWs to the Eye-Fi, it may not be that big of a deal. The upload speed from the card to the internet is pretty fast and a non-issue with it taking around 2 minutes from shot to appearing on Flickr in my tests.
Price: these cards aren’t cheap…my 8gb card is usually around $150. I got mine on sale for $100. In comparison, you can usually get 16gb pro speed SD cards for ~$100 from a name brand company
Post-Processing: while I don’t do much, if any post processing usually, obviously, your photos are going straight from the camera to the cloud…this may be a deal breaker for some photographers. I figure in some cases, it might be better to get the shot online and publish (or replace) that photo with a processed version later otherwise this card may not be that useful to you

I think this card will be a huge asset in my camera bag for event photography where I can truly be a photo ninja.

My birthday wishlist…a kind of rant

John / September 22, 2010 / Mobile, Technology / 5 Comments

Not really a rant, not a real wishlist but as I approach my 40th birthday next month, I thought I’d come up with a few things that I’d love to get…and I have a feeling some of you will want the same.

So here’s my short list, in no particular order, which I may add to:

Nintendo to publish their games on other platforms: Sales are declining and yet the big N continues to be stubborn about not developing their franchise titles for other platforms. I’d LOVE to play Zelda (any version) on my iPad…I’m well aware of the hacks/jailbreaks/etc to do this somewhat but it could be so much better if they simply offered it legitimately on the App Store
Nokia to stop pissing away their market position: Stop being like Palm and giving up your position…suck it up and populate your great hardware with Android – I still think the N97 mini has a better camera than the iPhone 4 and that it would be a killer platform for Android. The dumbphone market isn’t going to keep floating the corporate boat for much longer.
3D TVs to lose the glasses: I recently got to check out Panasonic’s latest 3D offerings and they were extremely impressive but there is no way I’m paying $200 per pair of glasses so my friends & I can watch Avatar….I don’t spend that much on sunglasses either. During the Olympics I got to see a few glasses-free sets and they were cool…plus Nintendo has a glasses-free 3D DS coming out next year so it’s not like it’s technically impossible (as some would lead you to believe). At first I thought the whole 3D TV thing was a fad but after seeing the output from the consumer level 3D camcorders, I may have to revise that thinking – it was easily the most compelling content I’ve seen in 3D and it was just the Panasonic camera rep’s little girl playing in their backyard…families are going to love that way more than watching Pixar movies in 3D
Media companies to realize that Canada wants your content too: I’m so tired of visiting my friends in the US and seeing what they get to play with that we can’t up in Canada due to region locking (and presumably licensing issues). If you can’t get that shit sorted out, and let us legitimately pay for or access your content, we have a simple solution for you: we’ll just steal it..perhaps you’ve heard of bittorrent? Make it hard/impossible for us to watch your stuff, we’ll find workarounds. I’m talking to you Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, all the US TV Networks, BBC, etc.

I don’t think this list is too unreasonable and not too ‘old guy on the porch’ ranty…just a few observations I have about the current Canadian landscape.

Using the iPad microsim with an iPhone 4

John / August 21, 2010 / Hacking, Mobile, Travel / 7 Comments

This past weekend, I had an overnight trip to the US with a friend and wanted to be able to use my iPad/iPhone while away from my Rogers 6gb dataplan. The data roaming options from Rogers (all Canadian carriers actually) are far too overpriced for casual use like a quick trip to Seattle, so I wanted to test out the 3G capabilities of my iPad, which I recently upgraded to the 64gb 3G model.

First thing I needed to do was acquire a microsim card for it. I had heard that AT&T doesn’t give them out and wouldn’t even sell them to non-customers. So I headed to an Apple Store and sure enough, they gave me one with no fuss and for free.

I then popped it into the iPad and proceeded to set it up. Another friend had recently bought a 3G iPad while travelling in the US and told me that he was able to activate the AT&T microsim using a Canadian credit card although it did only work with his American Express. I didn’t even try to use another type of card and proceeded to create an account with my AMEX. Unfortunately, and expectedly, AT&T’s signup form wouldn’t accept a Canadian address in the billing information section. I forced my billing info into the two address lines and used the zipcode/city/state of the Apple Store I was sitting outside of for the service area.

This whole part of the process is painful and seemingly unnecessary – I should be able to simply buy a $25 AT&T card and redeem it for access…why does it matter my service area?

I finally got the account setup and my credit card charged for the 2gb/$25 plan that was good for 30 days. I did a quick test with wifi off and was good to go on the iPad.

I had read online that the iPad data plan used a different APN for accessing data. A quick lookup in the Settings screen confirmed that it was using the APN of ‘broadband’.

Before leaving for Seattle, I had visited the unlockit.co.nz website to create a custom APN profile for the iPad APN and emailed it to myself. To do this you simply visit the site (you need to visit it with your iPhone for it to work), select ‘Custom APN’ and enter ‘broadband’ (no quotes) and leave the Carrier & other fields blank. You can create the profile right then (this would require that you’re already in the US and are on wifi) or you can email the profile to yourself. This is the preferred method as some people had issues applying the profile directly from the site (I didn’t). You may also want to create profiles for any other carriers you’ll be using on your travels at this time – you never know when a site like this could disappear.

I then took the microsim out of the iPad and put it into my software unlocked (via Ultrasn0w) iPhone 4. I then loaded up the APN profile from my email (you just tap on the attachment and hit the install button). You may need to reboot or simply switch into and back out of airplane mode to be able to connect. Then magically, I was connected to AT&T on my iPhone 4 with 2gbs of data. I had no voice or SMS but I didn’t care…I use Google Voice for US based SMS already.

I was able to use FaceTime as well, even though I didn’t technically have a voice line, I was assigned a voice number which showed up on the caller id to my friend that I called via FaceTime. Using the My3G app, I was also able to FaceTime over 3G while driving down the highway.

Once we got to our hotel, we discovered the the wifi was no longer free so I opted to use the MyWi app to share out my data to our iPads. At one point we were both using our iPads while having a FaceTime chat with a friend, all over my 3G data on my iPhone.

Keep in mind that the AT&T data plan for the iPad is a reoccurring charge that you have to cancel if you don’t want to be billed monthly for the service. You can do this from the iPad itself, over wifi, from back in Canada. I’ve got about a gig left after this weekend’s usage that doesn’t expire for a month.

As I mentioned earlier, the whole point of the iPad (and you could also say unlocked iPhones too) being carrier agnostic is so that you can use it while traveling…it shouldn’t be this many hoops to simply give a carrier your money to use their service. As far as I can tell, no carriers in North America have provisions for travelers from outside their country to use their data…of course they all want you to roam and pay through the nose for data from your home carrier. Consumers are smarter than that.

Happy travels!

Nokia N97 Mini and a RV tour of Western Canada

John / July 13, 2010 / Mobile, Photography, Travel / 4 Comments

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.