Category Archives: Nseries

GPS-enabled Google Maps on the N95

So even though Google’s own site doesn’t mention it, it appears that they’ve released an update of their Google Maps application for the N95. Anyone can get it by going to google.com/gmm, or you can just use this mobile code:

Google Maps on N95

This new version is light years ahead of the older one in terms of ease of use. The map scrolling is smoother and easier to use, and the interface is cleaner. Here’s a screenshot of the application in action:

Google Maps on the N95

I can even switch it to satellite view and see things like traffic patterns.

Google Maps on the N95

Hey, notice that text across the top of the screen? That’s right, I asked the program to show my location, so it’s activated the GPS receiver on the N95 and is attempting to get a lock on the position. Once it has a lock, then it zooms in and centers on your location (indicated by a blinking blue dot).

Google Maps on the N95

I love it.

GuitarChords widget for S60

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It seems that Nokia is taking a page from the record industry and putting out all of their big releases on Tuesdays.

The second big release today was the developer beta for Nokia Web Widgets. This release is really meant for tech developers only, unless of course, you want to download and install a 336MB C++ SDK (requires login), but the point of it all is that pretty soon you’ll be able to install widgets on your S60 mobile phone.

What some people might not realize is that the web browser on S60 devices is based on WebKit, which is the same codebase that’s used on Safari on Mac OS X and the Dashboard widgets built into the Mac OS. So as I test, I decided to see how easy it would be to try and get my GuitarChords widget for Dashboard up and running on the new beta for S60.

After installing the developer beta, I had to make a few changes to the info.plist file, and disable the custom code for the GuitarChords Plugin, and voila!

GuitarChords on S60

The application showed up just fine in the emulator and when I clicked on it, the widget launched on the device!

GuitarChords on S60

Obviously, I’ve got to do some work on the UI to get it to scale properly, and I’ll probably need to re-think the interaction so that it’s more appropriate for mobile devices, but this isn’t a bad start for 20 minutes of work… More soon….

Device Status for N95

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Device Status, some new software from Nokia Beta Labs showed up in my Bloglines this morning. I did a quick download and install, and I absolutely love it. It’s not rocket science, just a really nice diagnostic tool that shows you a lot of information about what’s on your device. Things like installed applications, network settings and (gasp!) the amount of free RAM in the system. It’s really nice to see these kind of tools being released publicly by the manufacturers themselves and I’m sure it’s going to help them tremendously when troubleshooting support issues.

I’d love it if a future version would have GPS information or the ability to actually edit your phone’s settings (all of the displayed data is read-only), but for a first release this is pretty slick and informative.

N95 + bluetooth keyboard – worth it?

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For my day job, I spend a lot of time on airplanes flying back and forth between the US and Europe. I don’t mind the travel and you’d be amazed at how much you can accomplish when you’ve got a laptop, a power supply, and a seven hour block of time with no distractions, no incoming emails or IM and no phone calls. A typical flight works like this:

Plane takes off
Flight attendants allow you to use electronics
Open up my laptop, plug in my headphones and start typing
Get lots of work done for the next 6+ hours with little distraction

At least it’s supposed to work this way. What happens is that tired people sitting in front of me lean their seat all the way back and I can’t open my laptop. No laptop means no fun, and I’m faced with six hours of bad movies, the inability to sleep, and the anxiety that I will have lots of work to do once I land and get off the plane. This experience is often referred to as Airline Laptop Syndrome. I’ve attached a diagram.

Laptop Seat Pitch Problem

So how do you fix this problem? If you’re lucky, then you have a seat on the plane without someone who leans back, but I’d rather not leave it to chance. So what I’m considering instead is buying the Nokia Wireless Keyboard. This way I can use the keyboard with my N95 and do writing, emailing, Python programming, you name it. I can still listen to my music, and the phone is so small that I can get lots of work and emails done regardless of how far the person in front of me leans back. Sounds like a plan, right?

Well, no. You see, the Nokia Wireless Keyboard is out of stock everywhere. Nokia is out of stock, Dell wants you to wait 3-5 weeks, Amazon doesn’t have it, Buy.com has it backordered. I can’t imagine that this is in huge demand, and it’s been in production for over two years, so my guess is that it’s being discontinued, or else they’re going to come out with a new one soon.

Anyway, in the meantime I’ve started looking for alternatives and am curious if anyone has a recommendation? The iGo Stowaway keyboard says that it’s still being tested with the N95, and I’m hesitant to buy an older bluetooth keyboard off eBay as I’m not sure it will work with the N95.

Thanks in advance for the help.

GPS quality on the N95

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Earlier this week, Nokia released another firmware update for the N95. One key feature included in this release is the support for Assisted GPS (A-GPS) on the device. Assisted GPS works by combining the normal GPS satellite functionality with your cellular network connection. The end result is that you supposedly get faster, more accurate readings, while also using up less battery life.

But how accurate is GPS on the N95? Does this new firmware really make a difference? I’ve started doing some very unscientific experiments to find the answer and wanted to share some results.

The tests were done using Nokia’s Sports Tracker program with my N95. Sports Tracker works by recording your GPS position over time and using that information to display details about your speed, location, and distance travelled. One of the very cool features of this program is that it allows you to export your running routes and GPS data to a number of different formats including Google Earth.

I had a few workouts saved in Sports Tracker before the recent firmware update, and last night I went on the same run, but this time with the new firmware update. How did they compare?

N95 GPS comparison

The GPS route captured using the latest firmware definitely stays closer to the path than previously, however, the route also seems to zig zag a bit more than before. This can be critical if you’re using Sports Tracker to track distances as it can lead to inaccurate data.

For instance, I did a speed walk from my house to my friend’s house and I did the walk in 24 minutes. According to the map, the distance between the homes is 1.75 miles (2.82km). However, when I walked there using Sports Tracker, it said the distance was 2.18 miles (3.5km). This seemed like a huge difference, but when you compare the results on a map you can see why.

N95 GPS comparison

It seems that over time, the small zig zags in the GPS readings add up to big differences in distance, and also the average speed. According to Sports Tracker, I did the walk to my friend’s house at a pace of 5.4 mph (8.7 km/h), when in reality the pace was closer to 4.4 mph (7.1 km/h). So if you’re using the program to train or to accurately predict a workout, you should be cautious when examining the results.

What have other N95 owners experienced with the accuracy of their GPS data?

Importing Google Maps to your Nokia N95

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In May, I went to Oregon on vacation, and in preparation for the trip I put together a custom map of restaurants and locations using Google Maps. This was pretty easy, and certainly helped me visualize where all the restaurants were in relation to each other, however, this wasn’t going to help me when actually walking around town. What I really needed was a way to get this Google Map onto my N95. That way I could look up the locations and directions using my mobile’s built-in mapping features.

Luckily, this wasn’t hard to do. Google Maps uses the KML format for all of its custom maps and the Nokia N95 uses the LMX format for landmarks, so all I had to do was come up with a converter from one format to the other. Both formats are just XML files, so I figured the easiest, most portable way to do the conversion was using XSLT.

And here’s the result.
(download also in the sidebar with a GeoRSS version too)..

Of course, you can’t really expect most people to download a KML file, download an XSL file, run them through an XSL processor, then upload the result to your device. So I created a simple web form that makes things a little easier for testing and development.

Just enter the URL for your KML or GeoRSS feed, and then select the type. Once you click the update button, it will generate a link where you can download the LMX file. If you want to download the LMX file straight to your N95, then you can do that using the generated DataMatrix code.

Enter your information here:
URL for data feed
Feed Type

Import this LMX file to your N95
Full URL:	http://wubbahed.com/
DataMatrix

This is definitely something developed in about an hour, and it’s only had limited testing, so there are no guarantees this will work for everyone, and I’m interested in any bugs you find or enhancements you’d like to see in the future.

using the N95 as remote STILL camera?

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So I’m interested in doing some remote still photography with the N95, but I’m having a hard time finding any tools that would allow me to do this. I have seen (and tried) numerous programs like ComVu and Mobiola which allow you to stream video from your camera to somewhere else, however, what I’m more interested in doing is taking advantage of the 5 MP camera to create higher quality still images rather than moving video.

I have tried playing around with Nokia’s Mobile Web Server, and this seems like it might work, but it also seems to be very slow… It’s taking on average around 15 seconds to process a 640×480 image using the built in Wi-Fi.

So I’m thinking that maybe I could roll my own program in Python, which is looking like the best option at this point, unless anyone out there has a recommendation for a program that would do this for me? Thanks…

Landmark Files (lmx) on Nseries Devices

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Click on the blue marker in the above Google map, then scan the data matrix using your N95, N93, N80, or N73.

What you will download is a landmark file (lmx file). LMX files are small, simple XML documents, but on S60 3rd edition devices they are automatically read as geographic information that can be saved to your device and then shown on a map. This mapping software is built in to the N95, but any S60 3rd edition devices can download the beta for free from smart2go.

There’s a lot of possibility here for what you could do, but the data matrix example shows how easily you could display information on the web and then download it directly to your device. Next, I’m going to see if I can get this working entirely within the mobile browser.

UPDATE: mobile browsers can just download the LMX file

Flickr, Geotagging, GPS and the Nokia N95

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Over the weekend I was able to play around with the new Nokia N95 and the results were pretty cool (except that the battery crapped out before I could finish).

For those not interested in the geek bits, here’s the end result.

For those interested in the geek bits, here’s what happened.

I walked around the park. Whenever I saw something interesting I would take a picture using the Nokia N95.
Once the picture was taken, then the picture would automatically get uploaded to Flickr using Shozu.
I was using Shozu because it’s the only program that allows your photos to be geotagged directly in the N95 (it’s not supported natively in the S60 software).
Once uploaded to Flickr (which happened in the background while I was walking), then I was able to put all the pictures in a set.
Flickr then provides a visual interface to display all of the results on a map.

Overall, it was pretty simple to use. Some features that I’d like to try and develop (or have someone else develop) are:

the ability to have Shozu/N95 automatically upload to a specific Flickr set
the ability to plot the N95′s “Trip Distance” on a map as well. This way it would show the exact route that you took on a map in addition to where you took pictures.
the ability to embed these maps directly on my blog (I know there’s a mashup solution using Google maps and the Flickr API (details here) but I’d like to extend this using sets and not just a general Flickr feed. Maybe I can integrate Flickr set RSS feeds with Google Maps

Anyway, check it out. Curious to hear your feedback.