The evolution of mobile reporting
Archive for February, 2009
What about video quality on coming mobile phones?
Feb 24th
It seems like the number of megapixels are of the biggest interest for web sites writing about mobile phones. Most of the posts I read from Mobile World Congress where about how glossy a phone was, how high the number of megapixels was and so on. I think the producers are on the wrong track, missing out on an important trend. People want quality and honest features. If you cramp up the number of megapixels on a tiny picture sensor, the quality won’t get better, but the files will increase in size. I guess that most people will discover that bigger file size, without the same rize in quality won’t take you to Nirvana. Sony Ericsson was among the earliest to introduce 12 mega-pixels. LG are some what reluctantly following. Nokia seems to be a decent exemption with their N86, increasing the size of the picture sensor itself. Offering 8 megapixels. The size of the picture sensor is supposed to be of the same size as Nikon Coolpix L18.
As you have have guessed, I’m mostly interested in the video quality. With the N96 I think Nokia made a mess of some good intentions, and I hope they do better with the N86. It seems like the video quality won’t increase, but a better lens and a bigger picture sensor can still produce better video quality. Since they have ditched a decent flash for two LED lamps, I guess they have thought about video quality to. Being able to use the two LED’s when recording video in the dark, was the only thing about the N96 i liked.
What I really would like was if the companies producing mobile phones thought about smart ways to push the content to social media platforms. Shozu is my favorite app for pushing content. It may be via e-mail, FTP, directly to Flickr, YouTube or a another platform. The biggest problem is the 10 MB size limit. If any of you guys at Shozu read this: I will gladly pay money for the option to transfer bigger files than 10 MB. I will also fall deeply in love with the first phone that comes on the market with this function integrated.
So please mobile producers! Focus on the quality on still images and video and give me applications that can easily put my stuff out on the web. Don’t make it all into a race against higher and higher megapixels on the phones.
If you support my case, please endorce it by putting your support in the comments field – showing mobile producers what we want!
Better streaming from Bambuser?
Feb 24th
Well, that remains to be proven, but Bambuser has released a new client software for phones using Symbian 60 and UIQ. The new version is supposed to be better on latency. If the flow of data from your data carrier ain’t coping with the flow of data from the video you’re streaming, the client will still drop frames, but after your done steaming, it will upload missing frames of video and audio to the server. In theory, your on demand clips should have better quality than your clips. The QIK client has featured this function for some time. Bambuser’s upgrade is therefore long time overdue.
Organizing web feeds
Feb 23rd
RSS icons
So, we have played with the syntax of XML and RSS. It’s now time to put what we’ve learned into practise. In this post I’ll focus on how you can mange to follow a large number of blogs and other web sites, without spending your entire day on the net. This is useful both if you’re working as a journalist, covering an area or a special topic, or you just want to stay informed.
Could a high quality pre-amp solve the problem?
Feb 19th
A couple of years ago I had to fill in as the head of technology at the place where I worked. At a technical conference, one of the key speakers showed me this little gadget. It is a high quality pre-amp, designed to increase the sound quality on MP3 recorders. As you may have read, I have pussled a lot with the sound quality on my Nokia N82 lately. Today I came to think of this product from Maycom. The TubeMic.
It’s a long time since I saw this product for the first time. I guess the quality is even better now, but I really haven’t tried it myself. I got a quick demonstration at the conference, but our need at that point where aimed towards high-end recorders, so I really didn’t bother thinking about it.
I have tried a couple of solution so far when it comes to external microphones on Nokia N-series, and my conclusion is that you got to boost the signal level high to get good quality when recording with an external microphone. It’s almost like old time MP3 recorders, which really needed gain strengt for line signal, not microphone. With this device it should even be possible to use a dynamic mic, since it has built in battery power. I haven’t tried, but I’m curios if there’s anyone out who has. Drop us a line in the comment field and share your experience.
Retarded spammers
Feb 12th
Today my blog passed 2000 attempts on spamming. Since may last year, all the worlds retarded spammers have tried to ruin my blog with sleazy ads. Only two posts have manged to get published on my site. They have been removed manually within hours. So why do they keep on spamming? The efficeny rate on blogs set up on Wordpress is low, but they keep trying. Thats what makes me belive they must be retarded.
XML – the Esperanto of the web
Feb 10th
XML – the Extensible Markup Language is something you should know a little about if you plan to truly understand the social web. RSS and ATOM are dialects of XML. If you understand XML, you understand them both. Here at Mojo Evolution I’ll try to walk you through the basics of the social web. I’ll start by talking about XML, since this technology is the core of social media when it comes to syndication.
External microphone on Nokia N82 and N95
Feb 10th
More info about the Zoom H2 recorder. One thing i didn’t mention is that you can record audio in full quality on your memory card, while recording on your N-series. If you also work for radio or want to make a podcast of it later, you can then produce a story inn superb sound quality. The H2 also works as a USB microphone. You can use it to put voice-over on you laptop when you’re editing .
To connect the recorder to your phone you first have to connect the original Nokia cable to the phone. You then get four choices for connection. Choose ‘headset’. There is a microswitch in the Nokia and this is now opening for incoming sound from the yellow connector on the cable.
To achive good audio quality you also need a 3.5 mm minijack stereo to phone mono adapter. This is a special adapter and you can buy it from RadioShack or Ebay. I got mine one Ebay. The last connector you need is a phone to phone adapter.
The Nokia N82 and N95 requires higher sound level in than you might be used to. You have to experiment with this. On the H2 recorder, you are taking the sound from the headset outlet. In this recording, the sound on headset outlet was set to 60. I had the same level for recording. If you loose your lip sync, set recording format to WAV, 48 khz, 16 bit. The N82 and N95 record audio in this format.
Live traffic feed
Feb 7th
As you may understand, I’m spending some time testisting out new plug-ins and other widgets for my Wordpress powered site. This time it’s a live traffic feed from FEEDJIT. The service try to identify your location based on your IP-range. I’ve put it all open, so you can follow the users yourself.
Mojo Evolution in your language
Feb 6th
As you can see on the top right of my site I have put up a translator. The site can now be translated into 33 languages. As always, the Google translator makes it readable, but not much more. Since my native language is Norwegian, I guess these blog posts aren’t poetic in the beginning. If it comes out as totally gibberish in your language - leave a message and I’ll remove the widget. It could also be that this service is slowing the site down because of all the caching. I’ll give it a go for a couple of weeks.
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