Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

Review of my video iPod

I’ve had my video iPod (iPod  5.0) for over a month now, and it’s time to give you a review. In a nutshell, get yourself one, but the 60GB version !

So again in bullet fomat, the positive side:

• this device is just beautiful. It comes in a slim version (the one I have = 30GB), and a fatter version (60GB). I think the slim version looks much much nicer, but with all my video podcasts subscriptions, I’m nearing the 30Gb limit soon, and it’s been only 6 weeks that I’ve had it. Clearly we’ll need either a larger hard disk drive, or a better software to manage the sync settings between a computer and a laptop (it’s hidden somewhere in the options of iTunes).
• the iPod comes in white and black, and I think the black is awesome (that’s the one I have). It comes with a polished metal back, very nice.
• The speed of sync between a computer and the iPod is very very quick (I used to copy MP3s from my PC to my phone, and it took forever); just great.
• the screen is great, and very comfortable to watch any show or vlog.
• I listen to a lot of podcasts and to some music, clearly more than before owning the device.

The negative side:

• way too expensive for what it is: an MP3 player
• I hate using different computers, as I can’t easily sync my iPod with my laptop on the road (I usually use my home desktop). I’m sure someone has figured this out already, so please let me know how you do it.
• my black iPod came with WHITE earphones. Ugly, but I understand the marketing coup of having everyone on the street being recognised as an iPod user with white earphones. They are however of rather poor quality. I use other earphones.
• I find the navigation system slightly too sensitive. Sensitivity should be a parameter, as I often select another program than the one I intended.
• the protective hose is cheap: it came white, and is now really grey (only a few weeks later).  I’m glad it comes with the iPod, but I would have paid a couple of euros more for a better protective case.
• Since I only use the iPod for podcasts, it would be great to completely reprogram the interface and cancel all the options I don’t use (you can cancel the Photo option for instance somewhere in the settings)

What I’d like:

• yeah of course, everyone will say the Apple phone. I actually would like it to have an FM receiver and tuner. I use the device to listen to audio and watch video: so I need it to extend to FM, and potentially to digital terrestrial TV (stuff that phones are having).
• Griffin already offers external mics, but the iPod should come with an intergrated mic for podcasts, etc.
• I really miss an external speaker on this device: my Nokia 7710 has a great speaker. Why doesn’t the iPod have one ?
• finally, I’d love a better battery life!

I guess we should get an updated version (as usual) of the iPod at the upcoming Mac conference in SF in 2 weeks. I wouldn’t buy anything from Apple for 2 weeks, until I hear about the new stuff

In-depth review of the Nokia N90

Here’s an update to my previous review of the Nokia N90 phone. I’ve been using it for one month now, and this report is based on my usage of it in the past month, on a daily basis.

As you know, I got myself an unlimited price plan for a 3G card from Orange, allowing me to connect from anywhere. I tried using the card with my laptop for a while, but in spite of the PCMCIA card being more convenient to use than a phone + a USB cable it hisses with my internal speakers making it pretty useless. And as my data price plan forbids me to place phone calls, I have not used the voice capabilities at all, and have concentrated on using it as a PDA + mobile modem.

Quick notes in bullet format; on the negative side:

• the phone is a bit big. The N90 is actually bigger than my Sony DSC P150 digital camera. However since I also carry my video iPod, my other Nokia 7710 phone, my digital camera… size doesn’t really matter anymore. But indeed, someone has to figure out how to make me carry less devices in my pocket.
• the operating system felt faster than the 7710 at first, but I still feel that this Symbian phone is too slow for a convenient usage. It has an extra second or 2 of delay when you set the phone into picture mode or into video mode.
• I don’t get the point of having an external screen and an internal screen, in particular of different screen resolutions. Since the phone’s tap can move in any direction, Nokia should maybe consider using only one omnidirectional screen (the phone would also be slimmer).
• the battery life is really disappointing. Regular usage of the phone during the day drains the whole device in just 2 hours. Clearly not enough to carry a mobile modem around without the charger.
• Nokia introduced a new charger with this device, and it comes with an adapter for the older chargers. Why not… But in so many occasions I have asked around whether anyone had a “Nokia charger”. And it would always work. Now, I need to carry at least the adapter with me to be safe.
• Videos I take tend to be too yellow. I’ve tried the white balance setting a couple of times, but they still come out in yellow under interior or low light conditions.
• Videos in night setting are useless (something like 10 frames/second) making them look in very slow motion with the sound over.
• Pictures are not of great quality: I suppose I have to change a setting somewhere, but it’s already been a month…
• Nokia bundles a lot of different applications known as the Nokia PC Suite: I don’t really use them, and copy my pictures & videos by hand on my computer. I don’t use the rest of the apps.
• Configuring email applications on the phone is still a chore: the interface needs to be simplified, or it should be possible to do so on the PC and sync the settings to the phone.
• Navigation in the menus is weird: there’s a default home desktop, and another desktop when you press the menu button. Confusing.
• Starting the phone is painfully slow.
• I wish I could find a bluetooth profile somewhere in order not to limit the transmission speed to 115Kbps.

On the positive side:

• I’m glad to have a 3G modem with me all the time. Very useful. The disappointment is the speed of mobile networks, which is an issue with teh mobile carrier, not the phone manufacturer. Web surfing however with my laptop is almost comfortable: I have to wait a bit for pictures, and can’t really watch videos.
• Videos taken during daylight are really of great quality: the ability to immediately email them to vpod.tv and publish them is great. They aren’t perfect for web viewing, but show up really great on the video iPod (320*240 * 256K colors). Kudos for that achievement.
• I was expecting the phone to get hot real quick. You notice it gets warm sometimes after some use, but as I usually jsut put the phone on the table for my 3G connections, I don’t really mind.
• I found the lifeblog application after a while in a folder. It should be on the main menu. I haven’t used it really.
• There’s a great joystick on the side of the phone, very useful for navigation. Too bad the other joystick above the keys is not too ergonomical. I sometimes get confused by the 2 side buttons (picture button and joystick).
• the phone came with a nice leather strap: almost insignificant, but the leather touch is nice. well done.
• very very easy to take out the battery, and even the SIM holder is easy to deal with (it has a little thing to help you pull out the SIM, but somehow it doesn’t really work with my phone)
• the phone is solid: it has fallen on the floor 3 times already, with the screen opening up: I’ve put it back in place in a snap, and nothing is broken.
• the keys on the phone have a nice touch
• although I can’t use voice, I still get SMS with it (I could also send them, but I didn’t activate this option).

Things I miss:

• I really loved the MP3 player app in my iTunes: I haven’t found it on this phone. Maybe it’s there, but I haven’t looked hard enough (but after one month…)
• Visualradio was a great application on my 7710: I love listening to radio, and don’t have it here. It can probably be downloaded from somewhere ? But indeed I now use my iPod for podcasts. Nevertheless, it would be great to have it back (Inma – help ! )
• somehow I got used to typing with stylus on the 7710: I’ve tried typing again with predictive texting (T9) on the N90, it feels now less natural

Summary:

the N90 is a great phone with multimedia features for picture & video. It still is a bit big, the battery is poor, and the Symbian OS (or the phone’s microprocessor) is still a bit slow. Expect nevertheless the features of this high-end phone to become mainstream in 12–18 months. And I wish Orange would allow me to use voice with my unlimited data plan.

Note: there’s a good series of pictures of the phone here.

What are you doing for New Year's Eve ?

So what are your plans? My plans for tomorrow night are to have dinner at my place in Paris with 3 other famous bloggers + families + kids .

On the table so far: smoked salmon, foie gras, risotto, Meursault, Sauternes, cantucci…

Why don’t we try something ? We should all try to film a little bit of the dinner/night. You can then email them to me and I’ll do a short movie from celebrations around the world ! What do you think ?

Moving to a new datacenter - a real story

Scaling up your infrastructure regularly seems to be a chore but an usual task for web 2.0 companies. Mark Fletcher from bloglines is posting a series of very interesting notes on how they did their recent migration. Check it out:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

(and it’s not yet finished…)

blog.vpod.tv is up

A quick note just to let you know that the official blog of vpod.tv is up at http://blog.vpod.tv ;)

It should start to become active in early 2006 with all our official info and updates.
So far I've just crossposted some of the notes on this post. Enjoy.

Hi from Monaco

Monaco Palace, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

Slow blogging these days: I'm in Monaco for the week with my family-in-law. As a matter of fact many members of my family-in-law were born here for many generations, although with either Italian or French nationalities.

Hence I spent the whole day yesterday in the French Archives Départementales in Nice researching some old documents, and dropped by the Monaco townhall for some additional ones today.

That's what I usually do to relax on holidays after Christmas and in the summer: go back to the family puzzle for a few days.

I'm connected most of the day using my new 3G card from Orange: I get a pretty decent connection at around 420Kbps in download, 10x less in upload. So I'm surfing the web, doing emails, etc. but not watching videos, as it takes slightly too long for me to wait.

So some footage shooting (see pix above), lots of reading, and trying to figure out why it's so cold here this year, the temperature was about 0°C this morning in Monaco-ville. It even snowed this morning. Brrr...

You should definitively be reading David Hornik's blog

Om Malik calls him the most savvy investor in web 2.0. I was with David Hornik recently on a panel discussing investing in this area (watch the video here). I truly recommend his blog, and for example his latest post on where the money is in the Long Tail.

Good compression settings for iPod videos

“ I've been tinkering with compression settings on videos, trying to find the best balance of size, quality, compression settings and compatibility for my video-capable iPod  […]

• Choose Settings... and pick the 3ivx D4 4.5.1 codec, set the quality to medium, the frame rate to 24 and bitrate to 400 kbits/sec.
• Then adjust the size. If you have a 740x480 video file, then shrink it down to 360x240.
• Set the sound to AAC 44.100 kHz Stereo at 160kbps.
• If you are hosting the file online, check the Prepare for Internet Streaming box and select Fast Start.”

 (via Tuaw, via digg)

I’m sure many of you have wondered what settings to use to compress video onto your iPod. There’s even a page somewhere on Apple’s site on how to do so. I agree with the TUAW’s article, “H.264 is very nice and cool, but it takes forever and a day to compress using QuickTime Pro's export to iPod option”, although it doesn’t take that long on my Mac iG5. Actually the settings I use with Quicktime pro are:

• H.264 codec
• 24fps, automatic key frames, automatic bitrate (I do not recommend using anything above 350kbps if you want it to be a confortable experience on a 512kbps connection)
• Quality: High quality compression (not highest, which produces to big a file)
• custome size: 320*240
• Audio: AAC, 44,1 Khz stereo, 96kps

What do you use ?

Update: I had bookmarked another post a while ago on TUAW about how to put your videos on your iPod, something I’m asked about regularly. You’ll notice the settings here are different, and the piece of software is different and not free.

 So what settings do you use ?

Update2: other settings are discussed on the Yahoo!Groups Videoblogging mailing list, and summarized here on freevlog.org.

Google to start renting videos?

About a month ago, a number of popular bloggers respected a no GYM (Google Yahoo! Microsoft) moratorium for about 2 weeks. I guess we should give it some additional consideration for 2006, because writing all the time about a new feature here and there is kinda silly. In the meantime, since I’ve still got a few days to go until 2006, here’s an interesting piece of news found on ZDnet, via digg.

“ The video upload program terms and conditions had a major upgrade this morning, and with it comes some insight into new features that Google may be preparing to launch for Google Video — including rentals.

The new terms of service suggest that they will be adding the ability to download videos rather than simply streaming them.  Some users have already taken this feature into their own hands by creating easy ways to download videos directly from Google Video — which I might add is definitely against the terms of use.”

More than 1400 days in captivity for Ingrid Betancourt

Great weekend of joy and children smiles, thanks to Christmas celebrations.

Let's not forget those less lucky than us; in particular Ingrid Betancourt celebrated her 1400 days as a hostage in the Colombian jungle (my posts here for the 1,000 days in captivity, and 3 years in captivity).
The official site is on www.betancourt.info .

And please have a thought also for the other 3,000 hostages in Columbia, and all the other less fortunate folks around the world.

Let's hope 2006 will see the liberation of the hostages, and an improvement in life conditions for the others.

Nota: by the way, Ingrid Betancourt turned 44 today. Happy birthday from us all on the net !