All posts in Travel

Glacier Ice Hiking in Seward, Alaska

John / July 8, 2011 / Photography, Travel, Video / 1 Comment

I just got back from spending the better part of an amazing week in Alaska as part of a media tour for the launch of the new Chevy Volt electric vehicle which will be available in Canada this fall. But more on that part of the trip in a future post.

One of the activities our group chose to do was glacier ice hiking. This involved meeting up with Exit Glacier Guides in Seward, Alaska where our guide, Julian, outfitted us with crampons, trekking poles and backpacks and gave us some introductory tips for hiking on the glacier.

We then took a van (powered by bio-fuel!) to the local airstrip a few minutes away where we got on a helicopter for a 7 minute flight up to the Godwin Glacier.

Much to my delight, Sean, our helicopter pilot already had a GoPro mount on the front of the helicopter and offered to let me shoot footage of our flight up to the glacier…so enjoy the breathtaking scenery in Alaska:

I also had the GoPro mounted to my helmet the entire time we were hiking shooting still photos so here’s some of the best shots combined with ones taken by my Nikon D7000:

View the full photoset on Flickr.

My huge thanks to Adria, Veronica, Garry and Lisa for making this trip possible and the rest of my hiking crew Kathy, Alex, Jason, Garry and our excellent guide, Julian.

The guys at Exit Glacier Guides were fabulous and I can’t recommend them enough if you every want to check out this experience for yourself.

Definitely the trip of a lifetime!

Disclosure: GM Canada paid for this activity as part of the media tour of Alaska that I was on.

Driving to WSSF 2011

John / April 24, 2011 / Photography, Travel / Comments Off

This past weekend, my friends at GM Canada loaned me a red 2011 Camero convertible to drive up to Whistler to attend the Whistler Ski & Snowboard Festival, aka WSSF.

Since the weather was perfect, it seemed fitting to strap the GoPro to the trunk and make a time-lapse of the trip up:

The video starts in Burnaby, through downtown Vancouver where I pick up Kris Krug in Gastown and then over the Lions Gate Bridge and up the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler.

More videos soon from the Big Air competition!

SXSW 2011 and the epic roadtrip is a wrap!

John / March 24, 2011 / Photography, Travel / 7 Comments

And like that, the craziest roadtrip I’ve ever been on is over. We got back to Vancouver late Sunday afternoon. It was an emotional farewell to the EhTeam as we all went our separate ways after spending the better part of two weeks together in a Chevy Traverse driving nearly 8500 kilometers as we drove from Vancouver to Austin and back again.

We visited 9 different states, stayed in 9 different hotels, and visited countless gas stations, restaurants and rest stops along the way. We wouldn’t change anything about it.

Nine other teams from around North America were all doing the same thing as we were – driving to Austin from various parts of North America. We had 11 challenges to do during the trip down and we were judged on our creativity and execution of those challenges. We did our best considering the lack of internet connectivity (more on that in a bit) we had as well as the longer distances we had to drive compared to other teams. Early on during the trip down, we were discouraged by the scoring system used for the challenge aspect of our roadtrip (we would get scoring updates the following day after posting our challenge responses the next before).

As a team, we decided to do the best we could on the challenges but also not let them get in the way of us enjoying the trip and the many amazing places we got to visit along the way. Things started on a more positive angle when we came upon Wilson’s Arch in Moab, Utah:

As a team, we spent a good hour climbing around the natural rock formations and stunning scenery. It really seemed to energize us.

Some other favorite destinations along the way included:

A burned out train car and building along the Great Salt Lake in Utah:

Meeting some great grade 1 kids in Twin Falls, Idaho:

Doing little photoshoots at any interesting ‘scenic viewpoints’ we came across:

A very quick stopover in Las Vegas on St. Patrick’s Day:

and probably my favorite part of the trip: visiting Area 51 and the Extraterrestrial Highway:

The only real point of pain during the trip was truly a “Nerd World Problem”: our internet connectivity while driving.

Considering we had 5 different wireless devices, we had so much trouble with internet connectivity. Of course this is because we were literally in the middle of nowhere so was kind of expected a little bit of the time.

We had a Bell MyFi, an AutoTel CarFi, a Droid Incredible with personal hotspot (on Verizon), a Samsung Galaxy S with personal hotspot (roaming on Telus) and my iPhone 4 (on AT&T) with MyWi running. We would all try to connect to the various devices to complete our challenges and upload them to various places with many times, the uploads failing at 95% due to us driving out of signal range. Eventually we’d have to stop somewhere and grab some real wifi to complete the challenges.

Once we got to Austin and SXSW Interactive, it was nice to park the Traverse and spend the next 5 days walking everywhere or taking the occasional pedicab.

Some of my favorite things from SXSWi this year include:

Retrollect – I kept seeing people everywhere using what I thought were old school Viewmasters but it turns out a new app is paving the way for a comeback of these fun 3D viewers. Using an iPhone or Android device, you create your own disc of images and tweets that can be shared with others online…the company behind it is hoping to offer the ability to get your own physical disks printed so you can pop them into a viewer. ~~I’m still working on my disc of photos from the roadtrip.~~You can view my disc here using photos I took with my iPhone on the roadtrip.
Nikon + Vimeo’s Light After Dark event which I already wrote about
Group.Me – basically BBM groups for everyone else. All the roadtrip team captains had a Droid Incredible smartphone (which I quite liked) and we used Group.Me to stay in contact, get our next challenges and even find out which hotel we were staying at that night. It worked great (when we had connectivity) and would fall back to SMS based chat if we lost our internet signals
Chevy Photo Boom – although it might sound biased since they sponsored our roadtrip, but Chevy really had the coolest photobooth I’ve ever seen on the SXSW tradeshow floor. Using 30 DSLR cameras and a few Mac Minis, they were able to stitch together Matrix-style animated clips of people jumping and wearing costumes. The Eh Team chose to (try to) all jump in front of the Canadian flag:

We also got to hang out with some celebrities like Jake Gyllenhaal (star of Source Code):

Michelle Monaghan (Source Code co-star):

Grammy winning producers Play-N-Skills (with Wayne):

Eclectic Method (one my favorite photos from the trip):

and Diplo:

See interesting ‘works of art’ done in cheese at the Icanhascheezburger party:

and race each other in pedicabs across town:

The final night in Austin was also pretty special.

The Eh Team got together one last time in Austin and headed to the ServerBeach Geek Party at Venue 222. Special thanks to Ramon at Peer 1 for inviting us.

It was happening at the same time as the Foo Fighters were taking the stage at the official SXSWi closing party but the Geek party seemed more like our thing and we had a fabulous time.

They even handed out nerdy glasses with tape on them to everyone, which surprisingly, almost everyone wore for the whole night. Seeing Neiliyo perform was also a highlight:

It’s hard for me to say if this year at SXSW was better than last year. It was just different…in the best possible way since last year was such an amazing experience for me, especially happening immediately after the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. The roadtrip really added a completely new dimension to the experience and the friendships made with my team and the other teams will be life long. For that, I can’t thank Chevy enough for the opportunity.

I’d like to thank everyone that donated to our Raise-A-Reader fund and all our sponsors: Atlantia, GM, Local Public Eatery, London Drugs, Oakley, Olympus Canada, Red Truck, Sandisk, Sharks + Hammers, and Whistler/Blackcomb who all contributed in some way to make our trip fun and successful.

I especially want to thank a few people that worked tirelessly around the clock to make sure we were all safe, comfortable and had fun during the roadtrip. Chrissie, Lisa, and Adria who handled all our travel, hotel and vehicle logistics, all the folks at the special events group at OnStar for helping us during the trip and everyone at GM & GM Canada that worked behind the scenes to make everything happen.

I also have to thank my wonderful teammates Michelle, Wayne, Amber and Leila who truly made the trip enjoyable and fun.

I already can’t wait for next year.

Check out all my photos from the trip and the Eh Team’s Flickr Group.

UPDATE: Our friends at Jones Soda, who we met in Austin did up an Eh Team label for us and are sending us some…too cool! Thanks Todd & the Jones crew!

Wait, do you still have a day job?

John / February 23, 2011 / Photography, Travel, Video / 10 Comments

The title of this post is a question I’ve been asked a lot lately…and yes, I do still have a day job. I’ve been fortunate enough lately to be able to take some vacation time off and do quite a bit of traveling with more to come. I thought I’d post an update on some of the things I’ve been getting up to.

A few weeks ago, my pal Rebecca asked if I could fill in for her on a tour of Vancouver Island as she was unable to attend do to some last minute passport & visa issues related to her then upcoming trip to Africa.

So before I knew it, I was on a plane to the Comox Valley for a 5 day media tour of Vancouver Island. I’ve lived in the Vancouver area for 25 years and never made it further than Duncan so it was all new to me. Probably an ideal way to explore it anyways.

The media tour was jam packed with outdoor activities and culinary experiences. It was called the Snow to Surf tour and it included snowshoeing on Mt. Washington, caving in Horne Lake, surfing in Ucluelet and a zodiac boat tour in the Pacific Rim National Park.

I had a chance to really see some fantastic sights in my own province…it really made me think about all the trips I do outside the province and what I’m missing in my own backyard.

As soon as I got back from Vancouver Island, I literally had a few hours to do some laundry, sleep in my own bed for one night and then jump back on a plane and head to Whitehorse to cover Hockey Day in Canada. I had a chance to experience the Yukon for one day during the 2010 Winter Olympics as part of a media tour they had setup and when I found out Whitehorse was hosting the Hockey Day event, jumped at the chance to go back. Thanks to Travel Yukon, I got that chance.

So from surfing in Ucluelet one day to standing in the middle of town in Whitehorse the next.

Rebecca & her husband John were also supposed to go (and were unable to make the media trip during the Olympics), with Rebecca covering the event for Scotiabank, one of the event’s sponsors. Unfortunately, due to a last minute family emergency, they had to stay home so I offered to pick up the slack to help them out since I was already going. I was able to post a few things on a daily basis on Rebecca’s site (Gearing up, Gala Banquet and the big day) and tweet a lot of photos during the events over four days in Whitehorse.

I shot hundreds of photos during the event and got to meet and talk with so many hockey legends, frenzied fans and excited kids.

A little behind the scenes of the filming of Hockey Night in Canada:

The night I arrived in Whitehorse, I was given a ticket to the Stolen from a Hockey Card show at the Yukon Arts Centre. I really had no idea what to expect and it was a very special event that I’m still thinking about weeks later.

The format was a short film festival with live musical performances by Sarah Harmer, Kim Barlow, Buck 65, Geoff Berner, Dave Bidini, CR Avery, Mathias Kom and John K Samson in between the films – all with a hockey flavor. There was also some fun intros, stories and banter from various hockey celebs.

The highlight was definitely the music with six different acts performing new works, specifically written for or about hockey. I got introduced to a number of performers that I was unaware of and was happy to find out the one of my favorites from the evening is from East Vancouver, CR Avery who I got to chat with later on during the weekend:

CBC Radio 2 ~~will be~~ is streaming the concert on their Concerts on Demand site ~~very soon~~ now. If you’re a fan of hockey or great Canadian music, you’ll want to have a listen. They even used (with permission) a number of my photos from the event.

The true highlight of the trip though, had to be the flight home. Not because I was tired from all the travelling, but because I was fortunate enough to be seated on the plane home beside an icon in Vancouver broadcasting, Jim Robson:

Just had a great flight from Whitehorse with Jim Robson telling me hockey stories the whole way home.

Jim was such a treat to talk to and shared some great hockey stories with me on the way home.

It truly was a great way to end a fantastic, hockey lovers weekend away in Whitehorse.

So what’s next?

As regular readers of this site will know, I’ll be heading to Austin, Texas soon to attend the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in mid-March. I’m not speaking this year (my panel wasn’t accepted) but it’s shaping up to be a fantastic event.

This year however, there is a little twist to my trip: I’m driving from Vancouver to Austin. Chevy is sponsoring 10 teams from around North America to drive to Austin from their home cities, while competing in challenges along the way against the other teams. We don’t even know the route we’ll be driving yet, as it’s a closely guarded secret. I’ve got a rockstar team assembled to help me with the driving and the challenges. We’ve named ourselves The Eh Team and plan on documenting our adventures along the way. You can follow along on our website that we’re just getting set up – expect a lot to happen on there once we’re on the road beginning March 7th. We’re going to be online in the vehicle as well so will be updating as we drive (and have 3G service).

UPDATE: You can read about the roadtrip here.

360° immersive video

John / January 12, 2011 / Technology, Travel / 5 Comments

I got to see something today that really impressed me…and that takes a lot. The folks at northStudio360 have been working on some very cool 360° video technology and showcased their latest project today.

Working with the stunning Nimmo Bay Resort (I haven’t been), which is a heli-adventure and fly fishing lodge on Vancouver Island, they have found an innovative way to capture the experience of visiting the lodge.

How did they do this and how did it impress me? Ryan Whitehead at northStudio360 took 6 Canon 5d MkII DSLR cameras and attached them to a pole that was mounted to the helicopter and then flew around the landscape. Using technology he developed, then stitched all the video together to really create something amazing.

Enough talk, check it out yourself (make sure you view it full screen ~~and sorry about the autoplay – I’d kill it if I could~~):

Use your mouse or arrow keys to navigate around the video….I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anything this slick in immersive video….arguably, this is cooler than 3D video (to me at least).

This technology has many potential applications and Ryan is working on extending it with the ability to embed geotagged photos into the video so after you visit a place like Nimmo Bay, you can upload your photos and see/navigate to them in the context of the video so that the video evolves and grows as people contribute content to it. Also coming soon is iPad/iPhone compatible viewers since the video above is embedded flash.

Very cool stuff.

Touring the Thompson/Okanagan

John / December 7, 2010 / Photography, Travel / Comments Off

Last month I traveled around the BC Interior as a guest blogger for my friend Rebecca who couldn’t attend due to prior commitments. Tough break for her…awesome break for me!

You can read about the trip including tours of a brewery & a couple of brew pubs, a few wineries, a fabulous hotel & restaurant and even a wildlife park where I got to feed a grizzly bear:

Why am I mentioning this? Well, the folks at the Thompson Okaganan Tourism Association (TOTA) have given me (well, technically Rebecca, who is running the contest on her site) a prize pack of goodies including:

One nights’ accommodation for two at Accent Inns
A ‘Red and White Vinotherapy’ spa lotion and 20 “Spa Dollars” from Beyond Wrapture Spa in Kelowna
On night’s accomodation for two at the Best Western in Kelowna
An Okanagan wine cheese plate made from recycled VQA Wine bottles
One bottle of Okanagan-Similkameen wine from the Okanagan Wine Festivals Society
Complementary upgrade to one bedroom executive suite for two people and a $25 Chop gift certificate from the Sandman Group Kelowna & Chop Restaurant
One body butter cream sample from Smudge
$10 coupon towards a wine purchase at the wine shop and a tasting and tour gift certificate from Summerhill Pyramid Winery
A copy of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association 2010 Vacation Guide
One nights’ accommodation in a complementary suite and a $50 credit at the wine bar from Watermark Beach Resort
A copy of Wineries Refined Magazine, Fall/Winter 2010

~~You can enter to win all of the above by simply filling out the form below:~~

Contest closes on Friday, December 10, 2010 with a random winner drawn from all entries will win the prize pack. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to Shannon A. who won the prize pack!

Check out the rest of my tour photos on Flickr which included stops in Kelowna, Vernon, Chase and Kamloops BC.

Who wants to go to Whistler?

John / November 18, 2010 / Travel / 18 Comments

So I’m about to do something I’ve never done on this site before – give away something! Since I like taking photos, I’m hoping this is a slightly more interesting entry process.

My friends at Whistler/Blackcomb have given me a sweet little prize pack to give to my readers/followers. All you have to do is show me your favorite winter photo – it doesn’t have to be professional, it just has to be of some kind of winter fun.

It can be anywhere (not just at Whistler), and anytime as long as it’s during the winter. So dig out those polaroids from the 80s or find that awesome photo on your cameraphone from during the Olympics.

Who can and how do you enter?
Anyone can (even you Quebec – well maybe not actually, just say you live in Ontario and we’re cool) and it’s easy to enter – either link it in my comments or tweet a link to your photo (twitpic, flickr, etc. doesn’t matter) on Twitter using the hashtag: #JBSendsU2WB (you’re not required to link to this post in your tweet)

Who decides the winner?
I do…of course. I’ll choose my favorite photo entry from all the entries/tweets and that’s who will win the prize. No magic random voodoo, just my personal favorite of all entries. I’ll retweet the winning photo as well.

When does the contest close?
Contest closes on Thursday, November 25th @ 9am PST. I’ll announce the winner at the Whistler Tweetup later that evening.

What’s the prize?
There will be one prize in which the winner (chosen by me) will receive a one night stay at a Lodging Ovations hotel in Whistler Creekside along with 2 x 1 day lift passes to Whistler/Blackcomb (so you can bring a friend!). You can use the prize anytime during the season up until April 2011. You’re responsible for getting yourself to and from Whistler as well as any other expenses (equipment rentals, food, hotel room porn, etc.).

You can enter as many times as you want but each ‘entry’ has to be a different photo of ‘winter fun’.

Good luck!

UPDATE: After a tough deliberation this morning, I’ve selected Steve (@stv) as the winner of the Whistler prize pack with his cross country skiing photo (taken at Cypress) which really captured the ‘winter fun’ theme I was looking for.

Thanks to everyone who entered – some truly awesome photos were submitted…I’m going to have to do more photo contests like this in the future! An extra special thanks to Whistler/Blackcomb and Lodging Ovations for the prize pack!

Enjoy your trip Steve!

Travelling without a laptop

John / September 28, 2010 / Photography, Travel / 2 Comments

Recently, I booked a last minute trip to Northern California for a week. Whenever I travel, I always struggle with what I will want to have on hand while away. I try to travel as light as possible, whenever possible. For this trip, I decided that I was going to start by leaving my laptop behind and only rely on my iPad and iPhone for internet connectivity.

This means that I can potentially take a smaller bag, without the need for a laptop sleeve/slot. I opted to take a small camera kit (my DSLR, a couple of lenses and the iPad connection kit). Using the iPad’s camera kit is great if you’re not taking a ton of photos since your storage is limited to the size of your iPad. I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing so as a backup, I brought along a small portable external hard drive that I could dump my memory cards onto using my friend’s computer where I was visiting. This was also useful to store a bunch of movies for watching during my flights (again, using my friend’s computer to swap videos around on memory cards that then attached to the iPad).

While not ideal, at least this meant I didn’t have to bring more gear. Of course, this wouldn’t necessarily work if you were going somewhere without local computer access but for this trip, it worked just fine.

So what did I miss out on by only bringing the iPad? A few things:

software updates – while I was away, there were some updates released for the iPad & iPhone. I couldn’t update them since Apple still doesn’t have over the air updates or syncing without connecting to a real computer. Wouldn’t have really mattered since my iDevices are jailbroken and I wasn’t compelled to undo that for the features that the updates brought anyway, and I wasn’t about to wipe the devices using my friend’s computer either
clunky photo file uploads – I regularly use Flickr’s email posting method to post photos from my iPhone. This also works great with my iPad but the preset tags I use on Flickr are meant for iPhone usage so it required me to manually change things around once the photos were posted. As of this writing, there still isn’t an elegant Flickr uploader for the iPad that I’m aware of. There is also no way (that I’ve found) to do any kind of batch organization with Flickr on the iPad as they haven’t updated Flickr to recognize an iPad and its touch interface. I also could have used my friend’s computer or simply waited until I got home to upload any photos/video.

That’s pretty much it…it was a pretty decent way to travel.

I made future trips even easier to decide by selling my laptop recently. I’m going to see if I can ‘get by’ with simply an iPad and my desktop machine at home. Considering I’d rarely used my laptop aside from a few key times (for my work VPN and to give a hands-on software demo – both of which I could likely borrow someone else’s in a pinch), it shouldn’t be a problem.

We’ll see how long that lasts. Do you think you could survive travel without a laptop?

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.