The Nokia Guide

Nokia N800 as a Home Monitoring and security tool

I recently got one of those wireless home monitoring cameras from Linksys, the WVC54GCA. It’s a pretty cost effective way of adding cameras to your house to keep an eye on things. Due to the fact that it’s relatively cheap and wireless you can add several of them without the hassle of network wires. The coolest thing about this system is that you can wirelessly stream live video to just about any browser, while using your home WiFi or accessing it via the Internet while on the go. I’ve been using it as they recommended in the product manual: accessing the live streaming video from the camera through a browsers on my Notebook or Desktop PC. If you happen to be using either one of these it sure is convenient having live streaming video streaming of what is happening around your house. This is helpful for those of you with large properties or maybe you just want to keep an eye on the kids playing outside.

The problem is that when I’m at home I usually move around a lot: one minute I’m watching TV in the living room, the other I’m outside reading the daily news paper and I usually I don’t want to be walking around with my notebook. It’s much more convenient to have something that’s easy to carry, but yet has a big enough screen to show you what’s happening around your home, using the strategically placed home monitoring cameras. This where the N800 steps in. The N800 is portable enough to be carried around, yet has a big enough screen to give you a detailed view as to what is happening. Most importantly the browser is capable of handling the 640x480 streaming video just fine. This is all made possible by the web-based setup and monitoring of the camera. Using the N800’s browser I can change the camera’s settings on the fly and monitor what is going around my home while I’m actually at home or even out and about during your daily commute. Because the system uses ordinary WiFi I can quite easily bookmark the address of several cameras and monitor different areas through different cameras around the house.   I did try to access the web interface on the N95 8GB and while the entire web interface works, the actual video being streamed isn’t displayed. There is a mobile streaming setting, but in the end the N95 8GB just ends up downloading a file that only keeps increasing in size, but the actual video is never displayed. I’ll have to play with the settings a bit to see if I can get it up and running on the N95 8GB.

This is how the interface looks on the PC:

And this is how it looks like on the N800:

A pretty nice and portable way of keeping an eye on things.

The best GPS solution: an attachable modular GPS unit?

Currently I’m finishing my Nokia LD-4W external GPS review and one thing that stands out is the added precision and speed of these external units when compared to the internal receivers. That got me thinking: when Nokia builds a phone with a built-in GPS like for example the N96 or N95, due to power and size restriction such GPS units would have to be less powerful than those external ones. The external GPS units are certainly better performers, but they are less convenient as you have an extra unit to carry around. What if they could build an external unit that has its own battery just like one of those external GPS units, but this time it can attach to phone from the back in some sort of a modular design. The consumer could always just buy the phone with its built-in GPS receiver but once they want a better performing unit, they could buy one of these “modular GPS units” that attaches on the back side of the phone without covering the camera. Attaching the unit would also signal the phone to temporarily disable its internal GPS. The users could always remove the module when they would like a thinner, lighter device or attach the unit when they are going on some trip where they need the extra speed and accuracy. The added benefit of such design would come from the fact that the unit would have its own separate battery (just like an external GPS unit), saving the phone’s main battery. Also due to more space being available, the designers would have more room to put in more powerful equipment inside. The end result would like of one those extended protruding N95 batteries like on the picture on the left. Is an attachable modular GPS unit the answer to our GPS problems?

What do you get when you cross an N95 with a picture frame? Perfect media phone?

I loved my N93, sure it was big and bulky, but nothing beats that cool twisting screen.  I remember I could put it in “laptop mode” and it would be perfect to watch videos or view pictures. You could place it just about anywhere and it would stay exactly how you left it. I miss that with sliders and candy bar phones. If you’ve tried this with the N95 you’d know it’s a hit and miss situation: either it doesn’t stand on its side or it falls at the slightest movement.

Now I was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if they could somehow integrate a pull-out stand in upcoming candy bar and sliders? To give you an idea what I mean, the idea is similar to what’s used in one of those picture frames. You know that little stand-thingy that keeps the picture frame upright? The handy part is that when you don’t need the stand it would fold flat. Well, that could be integrated into the battery cover and you could pull it out for instant media viewing. This might ruin the overall look a bit, but it sure would be convenient. They already have external stands like this one that Ricky talked about. (It sure does look cool), but nothing beats an integrated solution. What do you guys think? Any other alternatives?