It’s a blast to ride a long board or motorboard to the office and around Philly. Sometimes you bail. If you’re always recording video, sometimes you bail while recording the whole thing… Stuff happens.

Nokia makes freakishly strong phones. Despite a slam and slide down a sidewalk with 160 pounds on it, the N82 still works.

Listen for the death scream at the end where my foot comes down hard on top of the phone and slides it down the sidewalk like a bar of Ivory.

Read on to see videos and pics of the aftermath…

During the week I used the phone as my primary personal cell phone. Usually I carry an iPhone for work and a Nokia N82 for photography and personal calls. Having the iPhone and G1 on me for a week made for some great comparisons and a little benchmarking.

I do not recommend this phone. You should probably not buy this phone. BlackBerry and the iPhone are both superior in almost every aspect.

The Good

1. Great (for plastic) screen. Bright, smooth movement, and fairly durable. The Flashlight application is bright.
2. Terrific email client (see remarks about keypad below)
3. Market (aka Android App Store) describes exactly what systems (GPS, PIM, 3G, etc) an application requires before one installs it
4. Excellent USB implementation – The G1 reports as a removable drive when plugged in to a computer, and charges from the USB
5. 3G beats the heck out of EDGE – It’s about 75% of the speed of AT&T’s 3G here in Philadelphia, but it’s 4x faster than EDGE
6. Amazon MP3 store integration
7. 3 megapixel camera has better resolution than the iPhone or current BlackBerry units, but is still antiquated enough to generate smile fatigue
8. Hardware keypad is useful for customers who aren’t willing to type more quickly on a virtual keypad
9. “Chin” section reminds us of the 1995 Motorola phones – Great way to reminisce
10. Google logo on the back

Today I hit 100 miles of running with Nike+. It shows how poorly I’ve been keeping up with running (Galina is in to 200+ now). It’s a nice feature they offer… Rewards keep participants interested. I’d still like to see more non-flash integration with blogs.

The stats for my first hundred with Nike+:

• 26 runs
• 3.81 miles per run
• Average pace of 7’24″

I’m still tracking with both Nike+ (today’s) and Nokia SportsTracker (today’s). The SportsTracker, with GPS, is slightly more interesting because it maps your progress while on the run and offers live mapping. I’d still like to have SportsTracker integrated in a blog – it’s a pain to share otherwise.

Something else of interest during today’s run… Everyone on the trail was in a great mood! I offered, “Good Morning!” to eight people and received eight positive responses. In Philadelphia this is a first. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s a fluke. But either way, it’s awesome to return from vacation with a strong positive vibe.

Good Morning!

Link to today’s run

I love running. I skip wearing headphones or listening to music because I love hearing the world race past me. Things that interfere with the actual experience of being there aren’t interesting to me.

Nike+ on an iPod (a music player first and foremost) thankfully has the option to do a workout without music (and without a headset). I’ve been using this since Christmas 2007 when my wife gave it to me. It’s great! Nike has training programs you can follow to get you the next level.

Recently discovered when I got an N82 is the Nokia Sportstracker app. It keeps track with GPS and gives an amazing amount of live metadata. Not only are you able to follow your speed, pace, average pace, distance, location, etc, in real time, you can pump the data live to the web.

There are a couple things lacking with both systems: Social interaction outside their gardens. Both offer links to back to your workout pages, but neither supports easy placement of the data elsewhere (read: No RSS feeds of the content).

An RSS feed of the workouts would be an ideal next step for either company. RSS being available would allow WordPress and TypePad widget development much more easily.

It would also be slick to have Twitter and Facebook integrations (Nike+ has some Facebook apps written by third parties – I haven’t been impressed with these since they’re all Flash).

Running profiles:

• Nike+: http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/?l=runners,runs,1089318170
• Nokia: http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/user/profile.do?u=solyoung

I picked up the Nokia N82 yesterday from Import GSM, a great hybrid brick-and-mortage / online store. Think Dynamism for phones. It was my first visit, right at closing, and despite trying to get stuff out the door for the evening shipment the guys helped out with descriptions and subtle nuances between the N95 and N82 (special thanks to Eric – good guy).

Anyway, so why the heck would someone get a Nokia N82 when the iPhone 3G is getting released tomorrow? There are five reasons, one for each megapixel, and a lot of backup arguments. The iPhone 3G doesn’t hold a candle to the image sensor quality, flash, or lens quality.

This wasn’t meant to be an N82 vs. iPhone 3G post. They’re both the best mobile equipment one can get (imo).

The N82 is going to be my net enabled camera and broadcast machine. No more notebook + Canon SD-1000 combo!

The iPhone 3G is for everything else. I had the iPhone (1.0 / original / whatever). iPhones are the best for usability and communication. I gave it to my wife and she’s gone from check-email-and-browse-at-home to check-email-send-texts-and-monitor-weather-while-away. The wife-o-meter was pegged.

The Nokia’s OS, after 30 hours of tweaking, is finally usable for me. Very steep appreciation curve. I would only recommend such a phone to a power user needing the best tool for quality images… I can’t wait to start posting and qik’ing them.

• sol on Qik
• solyoung on Viddler
• sol on Twitter

A quick post for T-Mobile subscribers trying to figure out their voicemail number. I just picked up a Nokia N82 and had to set this manually. It took a decent chunk of time to find it on T-Mobile’s site and I don’t want you to have to waste your time doing the same…

The magic number: +1 805 MESSAGE (+1 805 637-7243).

Why you should use their US number…

For the longest time I would just dial my own number and it would go straight to voicemail. Works great if you’re on T-Mo’s US service. If you’re roaming, especially abroad, you’ll incur double roaming charges plus international calling (roaming call while dialing out, long distance calling abroad to a US number, and another roaming call for the forwarding back to your roaming phone). Dialing the 805-MESSAGE number results in a single roaming call.

Most smartphones slated for release over the next 12-months include a GPS receiver, built in. After that, it will be a marked failure to not include a GPS in a phone. The functionality that comes with GPS is outstanding – mapping, directions, location based experiences, etc. We’re about to enter an age of advancement in technological capabilities that we’re just beginning to imagine.

Consumers are moving to smartphones. The hottest smartphones (iPhone 3G, BlackBerry Bold 9000, most of Nokia’s Symbian and HTC’s Windows Mobile offerings) all include GPS and an exposed API for developing applications utilizing their hardware. Anything people can conceive of for location based mashups will be coming (more on these mashups in later posts)…

Here’s a first application…

BlackBerry is a leader in mobile phone GPS. Recently a few services that announce the location of one’s phone emerged. Initially these were billed as a sort of low-jack for one’s phone, a security service for the insecure (or those who want to spy on their kids, etc).

I decided to try a few of these. Most felt slimy, like, “you always know where your phone is, and you could also know where your wife is!” … I don’t know about you, but my phone is loyal and doesn’t run off with strangers… And I trust my wife far more than a phone.

My goal with trying these services was to mash Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, and other social networking services with my location. Such a mashup will allow me to share my real-time location with all friends. I came across BlackberryTracker.com. Much like the others, the idea is to provide you with the location of your phone. However, they have something the other’s don’t… Facebook and Google Earth integration (as well as a drop-dead-simple semi-RESTful API).

Friends can pinpoint me down to the meter on my Facebook profile, updated every 30 seconds. To be honest, it feels strange to openly publish this data. Security, and lack thereof, has us believing we shouldn’t share such information. But this fear is caused by the exception and not the rule. And in reality, my location in public isn’t private. Additionally, there are laws and common courtesies we live by, and I trust that people are inherently good.

Soon these services will be in the mainstream. Everyone will be able to pinpoint the location of anyone. Let me emphasize that… Soon everyone will be able to pinpoint the location of anyone. Not publishing your location will be like not having a mobile phone.

Apple iPhone vs. Nokia N82, or complimentary citizens

.

That’s it! Twice in a week I’ve been left with a dead iPhone from snapping pics and pushing them live at an event or outing. Don’t get me wrong; I love the iPhone for most everything, but the lack of a swappable battery is adding some hate to the relationship (lack of video has also been a bone of contention).

The Nokia N82 is looking like a sweet option. Everything but a useable keyboard…

I’d go for that. I’ve written about what I like about Yahoo! and the reasons I like them as a company without search. Nokia making a play for Yahoo! makes sense. It creates a strong combination as a mobile platform company from two forward thinking complimentary companies…

So unlikely, yet I couldn’t hope for a better Yahoo! suitor. I’m sure we’ll be seeing mobile manufacturers picking up more of the web-co’s.