Why Dont You Blog?

Following my rant earlier in the week about the annoying habits my N73 had developed, Pedro Timóteo pointed out a software upgrade was crying out as the best solution. This should have warned me that my entire week was going to be highlighted by generalised acts of stupidity on my behalf, but blithely I carried on as normal. The consequences have been discussed in previous posts.

Anyway, two days ago, in a fit of common sense, I went to the Nokia site and began the upgrade. This was not without problems but I had backed up all my data (phew) and it was fairly painless to reinstall it all. Except Lifeblog. Three, in their infinitesimal wisdom send out the N73 without Lifeblog installed — mainly, one suspects, because they are too tight fisted to provide a mini-SD card with the phone, which Lifeblog needs to be present. This must save them all of £10 per phone.

This makes all manner of problems crop up, as going to the Nokia website you are told you can’t download this application because it comes pre-installed on the N73. What N73 owners do after an upgrade is beyond me. Anyway, the only solution I could find was to download the version for the N71 and install that. You get a few warning messages about the application not working on this phone, but it seems to work.

Generally, in the time since I have run the upgrade, the phone seems to be working better. Not as good as when I first got it, but the delay between pressing send and regaining control has returned. Setting caller specific ring tones still causes the phone to reboot though. Oddly, the upgrade has meant I now get a stronger signal at home. I find that quite strange, to be honest but then again, I am having a stupid week.

I must say a big thanks to Pedro Timóteo for reminding me to get an upgrade. It seems to have improved things a fair bit. Has it changed my opinions of the phone? Not yet.

[tags]3, 3g, bad service, Bad Shops, Cameraphone, Cell Phone, communication, Hardware, hutchinson, mobile phone, N73, Nokia, Nokia N73, Opera, phone, Phone Browser, symbian, Technology, Telephone, three, penny pinching, idiot, lifeblog[/tags]

Popularity: 52% [?]

Popularity: 52% [?]

As previously mentioned, I am the “proud” owner of a Nokia N73 phone (which unfortunately suffers from a few “build quality issues”). As this is a phone with more functionality than a PC I bought ten years ago (512MB disk space for example), and it runs on the Symbian OS I am curious about its susceptibility to virus attacks.

The Nokia N73 is used for mobile email (thanks to 3) and came with a free trial of F-Secure AntiVirus. This has now run out. The free trial was excellent, however given that it was for about six weeks duration and during that time, my phone was not set up for mobile mail it seems to have been a bit wasted.

Turning to the wonders of the Internet for inspiration, I thought it would be fairly easy to find a free Anti Virus package for the phone. A trip to AVG (Grisoft) was no use, as while they do many versions for Linux, BSD, Windows etc, there was nothing which would run on the phone.

So, off to the search engines. A quick run on Google found a post on Mobiledia.com which claimed Symantec had released a free AV package for Symbian phones. Looks good to me, so off to the URL in the article, I go. Sadly this simply redirected to the Vista PublicBETA page which needs Vista and a PC to work. Not much use for my Nokia N73. Searching the Symbian site finds an AV for Symbian but it is $44.95 rather than free - and a quick look at the Mobiledia.com site shows the post was made in March 05. Ah. Back to Google.

Continued searches on a variety of engines seems to only throw up conflicting data. Some sites assert the S60 V3 operating system on the N73 doesn’t need AV yet (strikes me as madness, Nokias are popular phones and as such major targets for virus writers) and most of the others are posts by people looking for N73 AV software. I have found a few sites which offer it although none for free (lots free for V2 of the OS though). Just as despair was about to set in, I found the BullGuard Mobile Antivirus site. Could this be the answer? A download later, and I am pushing the .SIS file through the Nokia Application Installer. After a few seconds, the installer pops up “Please finish the install on the phone user interface” so I look at the phone.

Sadly the phone says “Installation of BullGuard_S60.sis not supported” and quits out.

Back to the drawing board. If you know of any free AV packages for N73 phones PLEASE let me know. Also if you know of any plugins which allow the N73 / Lifeblog software to talk to WordPress I will be your friend for life.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Popularity: 42% [?]

Right, generally speaking, I much prefer Word Press as a blogging tool over Blogger and Typepad - however it seems a typepad account is on the cards.

Why?

It is the only one which works with the Lifeblog software on my Nokia phone. Bah. The Lifeblog software was itself a comedy of errors as despite Nokia saying “it comes installed (N73 phone)” the one I was supplied with by 3 didn’t have it. Would Nokia provide it as a download? No. I had to (after much web searching) get the version supplied for the N80 and then install it. Typical wonder of todays modern world.

Anyway, as I was saying, the Lifeblog software will only “talk” to Typepad. There is an interesting thing on the Nokia site:

Interested in Partnering with Lifeblog?
Lifeblog has an open posting protocol so anyone can make their blog service compatible with our software. To find out more, download our blogging specification document:

However, call me old fashioned but isn’t it the job of the “new software” to be able to talk to the old ones not the other way round. I can post to Wordpad from Flickr, Deepest Sender, Performancing even MS packages. What is so special about Nokia? Bah.

Well at least it being an open protocol means I can either see what chances I have of writing a connector between wordpress and Lifeblog or finding out some one else has already done it.

If not - you will soon see a typepad blog supporting this

Popularity: 17% [?]

Popularity: 17% [?]