I’ve been looking at the new upcoming Nokia N97 for a while now, doing research, watching videos and what not. I’ve noticed I’m drooling more than I thought I would. My initial thought was that it just looked way too chunky, and I guess yes, it is pretty damn chubby. But couldn’t it be worth it?

It looks like it is a pretty fast device, which is one of my biggest concern when it comes to Smartphones/PPC’s. But the one thing I truly dread however, is that I think the buttons at the bottom, the Send/End buttons, are “touch buttons” or whatchamacallit. I had this on the E-Ten Glofiish M800 (PhoneArena review) and it was just horrific. You always touch them by mistake and either hang up on the caller or just switch screens on yourself. Not too exciting when driving using the GPS… And with a slow device as it was, it drove me nuts all over…

The N97 has got some nice specs as reported by CrunchGear and nokian97.org (which of course is down at this particular moment) amongst others, including an impressive amount of memory:

• OS: Symbian S60 (5th Edition)
• Size: 117.2mm x 55.3mm x 15.9mm
• Weight: ca 150g (ca 0.33lbs)
• Memory: Up to 48GB memory (32GB built-in + 16GB microSD)
• Display: 3.5 inch TFT up to 16M colors nHD 16:9 (640px × 360px)
• Talk time: Up to in min. 320 (3G) / 400 (GSM)
• Standby time: Up to in hrs 400 (3G) / hrs (GSM)
• Video playback: Up to 4.5 hrs (offline mode)
• Music playback: Up to 37 hrs (offline mode)
• Image capture: Up to 5 MP (2584 x 1938) JPEG/EXIF (16.7M/24-bit color)
• Input: Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• GPS: A-GPS with electronic compass

I never really got the whole 2G/3G specs. Well, of course I understand them, but in my opinion, who the heck switches 3G on and off? Or, who wants to switch it on and off? I’ve had 3G phones for many years now, and the “better” the technology gets, the worse off are we when it comes to battery life, and this becomes almost necessary if you want to have a phone turned on for one lousy day. C’mon people, give us some better batteries! Go nuclear batteries go! Wonder if that’d be possible…

No reports of the keyboard being less than good what I can find so far. I wish I could get my hands on it to test it myself. I’m a bit worried the upper row of keys could be too close to the screen, so you’d have trouble hitting them without interference. But the keys look large and to be spaced out enough.

If any phone should be referred to as a possible iPhone 3G killer, shouldn’t the Nokia N97 be it? And are you as tired as I am at that expression? iPhone killer…

A very nice hands-on video by Phone Scoop where both hardware and software is discussed and captured:

But joking aside, what it is, is really human negotiation, between the buyer and seller. I asked Brian Kupetz, Director of Development for the La Canada, CA based company Zigabid to tell me a little about what makes Zigabid so unique:

Zigabid allows buyers and sellers to sell entertainment tickets without a fixed price. It’s is the first company to offer a dynamic pricing model for tickets, with many competitors introducing similar features in 2009. The concept is rather simple: tickets are a commodity and should not sell at a fixed price, they should sell like any other commodity in which pricing is market-driven.

The initial feature set we have introduced is a negotiation system which provides buyers and sellers the means to determine a mutually agreeable sale price. The ticket market space is extremely crowded and Zigabid not only differentiates itself from Ticketmaster, Live Nation, Stubhub and Tickets Now by its stock market style functionality, but it is also very transparent about its service fees.

Zigabid is restricted to the US so far, so I haven’t had the pleasure of actually using their services myself, but since I was part of the development, I know that it’s real simple to use. I asked Brian how many tickets their system is currently holding, and he said that they have an estimate of 200′000 seats listed, mostly sports and concert tickets.

Ok, that was harsh of me. But uTorrent is by far my favorite torrent client for Windows. Very lightweight, rich on features, stable etc. It does its job, and more. Except to exist for Mac OS X.

Other clients like Transmission and Tomato has done a good job of filling the void in my heart, and Transmission did get quite close, but not all the way.

I’ve been trying out the beta release of uTorrent for Mac today and I’m liking it. Stable so far, light and fancy looking. RSS is missing and they say the release may have some “serious bugs”, but they think it’s “stable enough to share”. Well, so far I’m real happy with it. Fancy seeing you.

Go get uTorrent for Mac beta I tell ya!

On the Boxee blog I read some good news for all of you who’s waiting on the Windows version of Boxee to be released.

Some 200 people have signed up for the pre-alpha testing of boxee for Window, but I can imagine that number will grow rather quickly when word gets out more. Not sure how many testers they’re planning letting in though.

To the general we can add local media scanning, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and CNN and Hulu. For me, local media scanning hasn’t been an issue at all, I’m just hoping that they address the network media scanning and improve that.

Right now, I’m tossed between the super fast network scanning by my Xbox 360 but inability to play all my file types, and the super slow network scanning by Boxee but ability to play all and everything I throw at it. And the fact that I don’t have an Xbox in my bedroom.

Oh hey, Boxee team! You should definitely have a look at the MtvMusic service. How cool would that be to have in Boxee? Buuuut like everything else, if you’re not in the States, you’re not allowed to watch jack. Damn it. They did however allow me to watch music videos for a while when they released the website. Then they slammed the door in my face.

Oh and people, if you like Boxee, you should nominate them for The Crunchies!

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

Boxee, my new favorite media center application just announced that they landed a $4 million investment from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures at 50% each, and this brings me joy and sparkles in my eyes.

Since I last reviewed Boxee, and re-reviewed it, I have really fallen even more in love with this application. I can only assume this investment will bring more awesomeness to the application and the Boxee team. Maybe they can do the network browsing a bit faster, have settings stick (When I change “View” under say Movies, then go up or down a level and back, the View setting is reset). And I don’t know if caching is busted somehow, but thumbnail view is slow as snails. Actually, every time I enter Movies, the system has to think for way too long for me not to get testy. Another thing I’ve been wondering about is if the system respects folder names/structures, or if it uses the media file only for data.

Anyway, on with the good cash flow.

They say their goals for 2009 are:

• grow out of our comfortable closed-alpha cocoon and launch a kick-ass beta
• build even more functionality and content into boxee while making it easier to navigate
• listen to user requests, ideas and frustrations (and improve the product accordingly)
• work with team-xbmc, developers and partners to extend boxee beyond the confines of our limited resources
• finish the year with ~ 1,000,000 users

Not so many concrete goals I have to say. But yeah, we’d like to see improvements… They hit 100′000 sign-ups last week, that’s a good start. Congratulations Boxee!

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

So Oblong Industries is developing the g-speak spatial operating environment. Right. I was watching the two videos (below) and it’s just sick. I have no idea really how this is achieved, but it all seems a bit jiggly, but seriously… How cool is that!?

“The g-speak platform is built around free-hand, three-space gestural input. Applications are controlled by hand poses, movement and pointing. Finger and hand motion are tracked to 0.1mm at 100 hz; pointing is pixel-accurate. Two-handed and multi-user input are fully supported.“

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

G-Speak is supposed to offer “solutions to real-world problems” including:

• analysis of large data sets
• operation of three-dimensional interfaces
• construction of efficient multi-user collaborative applications
• integration of large screens and multiple computers into room- and building-scale work environments
• development of large-scale applications that run interactively across enterprise networks

luminous room demos from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

The platform, that runs on Linux and Mac, is apparently already in active use at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, and universities. Here’s a list of application areas:

• Financial services
• Telepresence
• Network operations centers
• Logistics and supply chain management
• Military and intelligence
• Automotive
• Natural resource exploration
• Data mining and analytics
• Medical imaging
• High-touch retail
• Trade shows and theatrical presentations
• Consumer electronics interfaces

I can’t say I understand what all this mean in practice, but it sounds legit. What I would love to see is a hands-on video from either of the above mentioned institutes where someone actually puts this to use with an intent. Maybe we could see a true purpose of this, one we can understand. But for now, I guess it’s all wow-and-awe.

More at oblong.com, CrunchGear and Engadget

With all the updates Apple has been pushing out lately, I can’t but wonder… What about our little friend the Mac Mini? Many are talking about the lack of information. Speculations are thriving, and rumors suggest that there might be something going on. Maybe. Something. But not now. Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo.com states “two major retailers in Europe have confirmed to me that they can’t order any more of the little computers. While this could signal an updated model coming in, they have been told by Apple to expect no more of it.“.

Intel suggests (”Intel”… Mac… , I know, I’m so sneaky. I should get a job at the CIA) that no updates are to due before Christmas, that their “Holiday line-up is set”, terminating previous rumors about the Mac Mini and the iMacs would be updated before the holidays.

So from what I can tell with the information/rumors presented, we are not to expect anything exciting under our trees this year, given that Apple isn’t just playing us… But I doubt it. I have to say, I can definitely see some interesting boosts to this Multi-Purpose desktop machine. The server/media center/workstation/carputer that it is. Maybe a SSD… Some reports say that the new Mac Mini could be available with two SATA HDDs and no optical drive, now with the Remote Disc technology was introduced with the Macbook Air. Interesting option say I. What else could they have up their sleeves? Too bad G-Technology discontinued their G-Mini.

I was watching this demo video by Gotta Be Mobile’s author Rob Bushway the other day, where he was testing the Multi-Touch software for Windows 7, and it’s looking… well, far from usable.

But like I said, it’s all pre-beta on pre-beta, and it’s likely to improve drastically before either is released as a final product. It’s cool to see the Windows environment with the Multi-Touch screen, and I agree with Matt Burns that it does look good. But I’m not impressed. It looks incredibly “jerky” as Rob Bushway says in his article. But let’s be patient shall we?

To be honest, I did expect a better performance from a public beta release. I suppose one could argue that it’s the best way to get lots of feedback, but how do you think the feedback would sound on a beta release like this? I’m still hopeful though, and I’m sure like I said, improvements will be made.

But how funny is this guy? He shows us just how “jerky” it is, and sums it up pretty well… Although, I’d have to say that “the fruit” looks far juicier than the software in question.

If you’re running Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude XT, you can download the drivers at N-Trig.com and give it a spin. Please note the spec requirements “DuoSense technology enabled and the Windows 7 pre-beta version installed on your Dell Latitude XT“

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Starts off pretty good huh? OK, before you read any further, don’t get your hopes up. This device doesn’t exist. But please, read on.

You have the voice translator, for those international business meetings. The Pomegranate Phone NS08 gives you an opportunity to save money not having to bring that translator of yours who always drinks all the coffee.

Oh, but wait! You don’t ever again have to be without your caffeine fix again. The Pomegranate Phone NS08 got you covered. Just make sure you bring a couple of those single brew packets and you’re set. The ultimate mobile coffee making device.

So what is this? Well, it’s not a mobile device. It’s an advertisement for Nova Scotia…

Thanks Greg for the tip!

This video shows a short guided tour of the new, improved Taskbar for Windows 7, and I must say, it really looks good. Some of the features could really help improve productivity, if you’re the mouse-browsing type. Personally, when using Windows (XP), I tend to navigate through the system using the keyboard only, so the “Aero Peek” (a.k.a. “Peek” for short) would render rather useless for me. However, I tend to change my way of working with things every now and then. No matter what, it looks and works nicely indeed and I’m certain many will appreciate it. Check it out:

Update: I found this article on Gizmodo where they show us a “hidden feature” called “Aero Shake”. Not sure why it’s referred to as “hidden”, it could as far as I know always have been there and nobody noticed it. Or if you have to activate the feature as it might have been turned off for beta testers (hence “hidden”), who knows. I just think it’s truly awesome, a really really good idea. It’s one of those things that stands out, and might even think “Ha, not even Mac OS X does that”. Judge for yourselves: