inquiline weblog: 04.2004

A walk in the urban jungle

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood - so I took this snapshot of the sculpture in federal plaza, downtown Chicago.

I was going after a more vivid orange, but at the expense of the color saturation of the rest of the image. Camera phones have their limitations - big ones.

Mobile phones on planes

I can't decide if I really want to be able to have everyone and their gabby cousin chatting away on their mobile phones on planes that I'm flying on.

Really, air travel is one of the few sanctuaries left in the world, free from the menace of 2nd hand mobile phone conversations. Movie theaters, church, and the top of Mt. Rainier being among the short list of other havens.

And of course, the airlines will be towing their line...

Airlines are reluctant to turn themselves into network operators, despite the prospect of lucrative roaming charges. Instead, they will probably team up with existing mobile operators or satellite operators. On-board telephony may be linked to loyalty schemes, giving regular customers lower rates or loyalty points when they make calls.

I'm never surprised anymore. Never.

MSN Tech & Gadgets : Nokia Lifeblog

I love a good gadget site, and MSN Tech & Gadgets fits the bill. Sleek and content-rich, they cover many aspects of current technology issues in a very user-friendly style. Take their entry on Nokia and the Lifeblog innovation as an example.

Nokia is quickly becoming known for its interesting keypad layouts, and the 7610 is no exception. But that's not what caught our attention. For us, it was the combination of the GSM phone's features (a 1-megapixel camera and video recorder, an external 64MB MMC card for added memory, and Bluetooth, to name a few) and the company's new Lifeblog application. Essentially, you can use them to sync all the images, messages, and videos on your phone with your PC. The information is then organized for you chronologically, turning that content into a multimedia diary that you can save on your PC and, thereby, freeing up the memory on the phone.