Category: gadget

Thoughts on Proximity Information

March 29th, 2008 · Peter Paul Bakker · gadget, thoughts No comments - Tags: , , ,

More and more phones, laptops and other devices that you can carry around have bluetooth and/or wifi capabilities.

This opens up interesting use of local wifi sites. In London center area there is free wifi internet access. Every 5 minutes an advertisement shows and the bandwidth is limited. You can also pay and subscribe to the service. That disables the advertisements and provides more bandwidth.

When I visited the Westminster area I had access to a freely available wifi connection. Unfortunately, the connection did not let me get online.

Instead it supplied a couple of web pages with local information: car park information and prices, a list of public buildings in the vicinity, local museums opening times,… Very clever…

An interesting concept: the wifi channel acts like a local information and advertisement bulletin board.

This can be done anywhere: proximity information! Think of music festivals that show the latest news and actual schedules. Or conferences that show background information for visitors.

Local contacts: when you walk into a hotel you automatically are assigned some phone numbers in your phone for room service and complaints. These are removed when you leave the building.

Bluetooth matching: State your interests with a bluetooth list on a trade fair. It will make your phone buzz when you walk past a stand that matches one or more of your interests… what is the progress there? I have heard of bluetooth dating on the streets this way, called toothing. Or was it a hoax?

Anyway, now that I have a wifi enabled phone, every now and again I scan the available networks wherever I am. And the shear number of them surprises me. It is a pity that a lot of them are not or public use. (And I love the names that some people think of for their wireless networks…)

Whatever happened to that project I was mailed about two years ago: get a wireless modem for 5 bugs. That was cheap! The deal was that you had to share your connection with everybody.

To make it useable and safe, it actually provided two wifi channels: one private for your local network, and one public. Now that wifi phones are available, this makes so much more sense!!!

update 9 april 2008: Recently I was at a pop concert in a big hall, and being surrounded by all these people I thought to check the bluetooth phones around me. And I was surprised to see so many devices listed! Half of the time it was ust the phone name, but the other half were names of the owners: “Suusje”, “Peter Br”, … So with bluetooth you can actually spot who is around you…

More Mac Wireless Keyboard for Nokia E51

March 1st, 2008 · Peter Paul Bakker · gadget, mac No comments

Using the internet browser on the E51 with the Mac Wireless Keyboard (MWK) was a bit annoying: pressing the return button on top of a link or button only “activated” that control but it did not press the button or follow the link. I had to press the big square button on the phone to do that.

But I found a solution: use ctrl-return!

Next step: would it not be nice to map the function keys to phone shortcut keys?

That is functionality that is provided on the wireless keyboard(s) for the Palm. I found this because I wanted to link the MWK to my Palm TX.

The only wireless keyboard drivers for bluetooth that I found were for very specific keyboads. No generic driver. I tried some of them, the Palm driver would recognize the MWK, but then warns that the device is not a wireless keyboard. No success.

Mega keyboard for a little phone

February 28th, 2008 · Peter Paul Bakker · gadget, mac No comments - Tags: , , , ,

This is an experiment. Last weekend I picked up a new phone: a Nokia E51. It is slim, relatively small and has lots of great features, such as voice over IP (via WiFi) and fast data connections.

It was tempting to get one of the new blackberry phones, that come with the qwerty keyboard. But that phone was bigger and thicker.

Then I spotted this ‘wireless keyboard’ icon on the Nokia in the office tools. Hmmm, Apple has this nice wireless keyboard with bluetooth support. Will that work?

Well, I just picked one up, and in a couple of minutes I was up and running. I am actually typing this blog entry from the keyboard on the E51. It works!

This opens up possibilities. No longer I have to bring the whole laptop, but only the keyboard and the phone, and I can generate emails and notes.

There is also support for other phone keys: the arrows work like the “move” key on the phone, the left and right command work like the left and right blue option buttons on the phone. This makes it possible to navigate through the apps on the phone.

I like this!