ICUBE Blog

These are all the Nokia phones that I ever have or use. 

I haven't written to my blog since April.  Been quite busy with my full time job which is doing consultancy on e-commerce projects.  Since I acquired my Macbook Air and my world Apple centric, there hasn't been much new gadgets that excited me.  However, 2012 is going to be the year where I might cycle and shuffle my gadgets again :)

So what I've been up to lately?

1. Digital Content and Media Server

Living in a country where streaming is not possible and entertainment is quite behind from where I use to be (note: Bali, Indonesia), I have to be creative with how I obtain and consume my digital content.  In the forefront, I thank God for Amazon where I can still obtain Kindle books easily on my iPads and iPhones (yes, plural, I have 3 iPads and 2 iPhones at my house).   Love Amazon for doing this.  I can enjoy the same books quality whereever I am.  

For audio and music, the same thing, both Amazon MP3 and iTunes have been the main resource for my collection.  Unfortunately, due to my geography location, services such as Spotify is out of reach for now.  There are other alternative to it but nothing as great.  Streaming experience here still pretty aweful.   That goes the same with Apple iTunes match and Amazon Cloud music service, no good for me.  Well I hope this can change in the near future.

Movies, this is the big struggle.  If streaming music is painful, streaming movies is impossible.  Yes I can stream short clip from YouTube (my 6 years old addicted to YouTube and watching his episodes of BeyBlade on it everyday :P), but full length video is completely out of reach.  Even I can circumvent the geo IP location restriction by using VPN, I won't be able to access my Amazon video content or Netflix easily.   So, download, download, download, that is my best friend for now.  I end up with quite a ton of video collection now.    So this is where the fun part, I need a good Media Server for this collection.  I tried Boxee, Plex and iTunes and so far Plex is the winner (plexapp).  Love it, love it, love it.   I also get myself a ACRyan mini for my living room so that I can plug in my hard drive and watch it on my TV flawless.

Alright, on the next blog, I will talk about my thought on smart phones and feature phones.

After using Posterous to power my other personal blog, mobiotz.me,  I decided to move my gadget-oriented blog "ICUBE" to Posterous too.  The fact that I can easily post via email is a huge win for me.  I can easily capture any gadget related news or photos and email it to Posterous to post.  That will cut down my time on writing blog and hopefully that translated to more post from me :)

Thanks to the Posterous team for such a wonderful blog system.

Last week, I finally pulled my trigger to sell my final Windows laptop. I posted my beloved Sony VAIO TZ for sale on eBay and able to recoup almost half of my buying price from two years ago. Not a bad deal considering the laptop is two years old and in technology calendar that feels like century :) On the bright side, I did made somebody happy as the person who bought my TZ is replacing his broken one and I am pretty sure he will be very happy with my unit. So why all the sudden selling my TZ? It has been my companion for travel for these couple years and there hasn't been a good replacement for it. Until recently, with the arrival of 11 inches Apple MacBook Air. It is a perfect substitution for my Sony. It has the portability that I need, the long lasting battery that I love and the super fast SSD that I've been drooling for (too bad the hard disk size is only limited to 128GB). Moreover, I've been relying more and more in Mac OS to do all my tasks. Mac OS gives me the flexibility to run all my favorite Mac OS applications and yet still enjoying all my Windows applications as is. And the fact that I got a good deal from Amazon (I bought a pre-loved unit), pulling the trigger was much easier to me. This my first weekend with my Mac Air and I am loving it more and more everyday. The only thing that bothering me so far is the touch pad. It is a bit erratic on its function. It might be a faulty unit but I will keep monitoring it for the next several days before doing anything drastic. Worst case scenario, I will get it repair at Apple store when it is needed. So finally I am all Mac now. I have Mac Mini for my entertainment unit that hook up to my TV at home. I have my 2 years old MacBook Pro that has all the horse power I need for my day to day development task. Now I complete my collection with my super-travel-friendly Macbook Air that is going to accompany me wherever I go. As I use this Mac Air more and more, I will share my tips and tricks on it. Now the hunting for accessories begins!!

I use my Mac Mini (CoreDuo 1.8, 2MB) as my centerpiece for all my digital video audio playback. It is working nicely. I use Boxee for the media center application, download my favorite TV shows (I've been living in Bali for 6 month now, and to catch up with my favorite TV shows, download through torrent is my only option so far) Everything works nice and dandy until my friend lends me his hard drive with all the Blue-Ray quality MKV 1080p video files. For some, it plays okay and then mostly it plays aweful: choppy and unresponsive. I use VLC player to play these MKV files. It doesn't make sense to me. There are dedicated hardware such as HD Ryan and it can play these files well. Why Mac Mini can't do it? I google and google and finally found this tip and it works great! The choppiness is reduced greatly (almost to none) and now I can enjoy my HD movies again. Here are the steps: 1. Download the latest VLC player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) 2. Open up preference and change the drop down from basic to advance 3. Under input/codecs, you should find FFMpeg setting. 4. Set the "Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding to "all" (see attached image) 5. That's it. Enjoy your HD videos Well hope this tip works for you too. Cheers :)

After waited so many months, I finally pulled the trigger to get myself Nokia N8. Symbian OS has always had been special in my heart. I have been waiting for this update from Nokia/Symbian; not only just playing catch up but something original and something reflects the quality of both Nokia and Symbian, and I am not disappointed with Nokia N8.

My history with Symbian went long back when I am using a PDA from a company called Psion. Psion owned Symbian OS at that time and had created one of the best hardware/software combination devices (just like today i-Devices and iOS combo). Too bad the company stopped their hardware production and then at the end Nokia took over the Symbian OS development. Before iPhone came in, I think Nokia had a good run on the area of PDA phone. Their communicator series are one of the best despite the steep price. Even their regular N series and E series phones are one of the most stable and good usability phone. This is what I always say about Nokia phone: "Nokia made a phone that is phone first and then PDA second". So the phone can really be a phone (good phone and signal quality, making sure all the phone functionalities perfectly well). It is also about the form factor too. For some reason, I don't really dig in the iPhone form factor (a bit too wide for holding in one hand and perform one hand operation). Nokia design has always been narrower and I think that is what I like about it. Easier to carry in one hand.

So Nokia N8 carries all these good tradition that I love. Narrow and slim design, superb phone quality, familiarity on functions and usages, very snappy performance (despite slower processor), connectivity works out of the box and sexy phone design :) I think a lot of reviewers out there agree with me. Nokia has attempted to play catch up and release some sloppy phones out there (not mature enough in testing) such as N97 (which should be put on their hall of shame wall). This time N8 is different. The old Nokia is back. I just hope that it is not too late where everybody has forgotten who and what is Nokia all about.

So here are a quick list of my good and bad check point on the new N8:

GOOD:

1. Good design, love form factor
2. Good phone functionalities (quality of voice, etc)
3. Camera function -> nothing beats N8
4. Touch screen work well - at least much better than my Blackberry Torch for sure
5. Loves the physical lock button to lock the screen
6. Virtual keyboard works great
7. Performance is very acceptable and snappier than I expected (with the processor only 600Mhz)
8. Update on the Symbian ^3 is well done. Keep the traditional familiarity but adjusted for touch experience
9. OVI store is much better

BAD:

1. I am not digging the small one home button on the lower left corner. It is hard to press (too small) and not positioning well.
2. Not much contextual menu happening. In the world of button-less phone, there should be more contextual menu to perform certain functionalities easier (such as tap and hold gesture on the screen trigger additional action - even new BB 0S 6 has this now)
3. No "back button". It will be great for one hand operation, to be easily go back to the prior screen on the phone.
4. The widget is hit and miss. Some of them are too small for to be useful on the main screen. I rather have a big screen showing me all the notifications (ala Android or BB OS 6) that shows me all the update rather than a small scroll widget of FB updates which doesn't tell much

Well this list are very short. I only play with the device for one day. So far I love it and I think I will keep this as one of the keeper phone (use it for more than a year in my world :P).

As I learn new trick and find new stuff, I will keep you guys updated.

PS: I bought the silver one! It looks gorgeous :)

Recently, Google prompted me to upgrade/transitioned my Google app account. After I did that, all the sudden my iPad, iPod Touch, Blackberry stop working and not able to check the email. They keep prompting me that the password is incorrect. I google this problem on the Internet and found a lot of people has been experiencing this issue. There are several tips on how to solve this out there but none of them work for me (some suggested to use UnlockCaptcha approach, some suggested to reduce the frequence of checking the email, etc). Then I noticed something, everytime I try to login to my Google app, it log me out on my other Gmail session. I became suspicious and dig into my account setting. And voila, I find the culprit (at least for my problem). This is how I solved my issue: 1. Using your browser, login to your google app email web / gmail 2. Go to Settings -> Accounts 3. Click on Google Account Settings 4. Make sure the "Multiple Sign-In" is turn ON (mine suddenly was turned off during one of the mail upgrade). If it is OFF, just click edit and turn it ON. Well I hope either this or one of the suggested tips from Google forum works for you.

As I blogged previously, I am currently working at Indonesia (or some of you may be familiar with Bali then the actual country name). In the next couple weeks, I will be moving to Sanur, Bali as my wife got a job there. Once again I have to figure out my Internet connection there as my work requires a reliable speed so that I can use Skype to make call to the United States. I spent more than 4 hours on the phone a day and Skype is my only buddy here if I don't want to break my bank spending outrageous in long distance bill :) At Surabaya, I have been relying on Speedy to provide me Internet connection. Speedy is one of the DSL provider here and I am paying premium to get the connection I need. In theory, I should use the same service there in Bali when I move. However, there is one problem I am facing with this new place. We just learned that the previous tenant of the house failed to pay their phone bill and the phone line is blacklisted! Well I am not going to blog to tedious paperwork here to deal with that problem. I have to come up with plan B soon. I have been trying several options for HSDPA connection providers here in Indonesia. Most of them have a decent download speed. However, their upload speed is horrible! Most of them only provides up to 72kb up which is not acceptable within Skype standard. While GSM/HSDPA provider give me the flexibility of switching providers (simply switching the SIM card), this time I decide to see if there are options here for CDMA/EVDO. Recently Bakrie Telecommunication just announced EVDO RevA service in conduction with Google service called AHA. The option and the pricing model is very attractive and it seems promising. However, unfortunately their service doesn't reach Bali yet. As I research around, I finally found another one, SMART. I checked their service map and EVDO pricing options, I think I found one that will work for what I need. I decided to go to local store directly to pick up one of their starter kit package which includes one USB modem C100 and 100 days of free Internet access. To my amazing, I tested the device and able to get close to 700kb down and 250kb up during the day (trust me this is good for Indonesia). That should work for what I need. I did a quick Skype call to my mom and the sound quality is good. I am pretty happy with the result. Now all I need is one of those wireless router so that I can share the connection with multiple devices. Well I have 100 days to test this out. I will report back if I found any problems with this solution. EVDO rules!

The more I think about it, it is amazing to see how many varieties are offered here in Indonesia for the mobile plan choices. From CDMA to GSM, post-paid and pre-paid, 3G or non 3G, you name it, they have it all. And it is very common here in this country that customers to have more than one mobile devices and more that one services. For each choices and carriers, it has each own strength and weaknesses as far as the service offering goes. Secondly, it allows the customers to take advantage on so many different offers and promotions that each choices has. In the last couple weeks, due to my plan of relocation from Surabaya to Bali, I was on the hunt for the most cost effective and reliable way to make a lot of phone calls back to the United States. With the choices, I explore from trying to take advantage of the high speed but metered 3G network for using Skype or simply choosing the right long distance plan for the calls. I choose to keep my mobile selection pre-paid. That way there will be no contract and I can switch to any carriers and plans at any time. One carrier offers up to 1000 minutes call to US for merely $15 per month. Another carrier gives me better phone clarity at 3 cents per minute rate (or approximately $3 per hour. I decide to take both options to compliment my day-to-day Skype call via my home DSL line. We don't see this kind of varieties and choices in the US. The pre-paid plans offered in the US are so expensive that it doesn't compete at all to the ones that force you to the long term 2 years contract. This makes the mobile business less competitive in my opinion. The market is no longer has the liberty to choose the best plan and switch to a better plan easily as it becomes available. Another good example, with the Blackberry services, here in Indonesia, the carriers are very creative. They pretty much have options for just about every variation of BB service that you can think of. you need just BBM and no email, you can have that. You want BBM and Facebook only (Facebook is very popular here), you got it. You pay only a fraction of the normal price for this sub-set selection. This way, the carriers Blackberry plan is able to penetrate to almost any type of users and makes the Blackberry devices to be the number one devices of must-have for everybody. The same with the data plan. They give you options such as, you want high speed with capped monthly bandwidth or you want unlimited bandwidth but the speed will be reduce after a certain amount of bandwidth usage. You can have daily plan, monthly plan, pay-per-use plan. This is all I think good for us, the customers. All of these are good for the mobile retail businesses too. This keep the businesses more fluid and not static or stagnant. The structure encourages people to keep hunting for bargains, better plans, better services, better offers. Not like in the US, where the carrier store controls the market. Too bad all these choices here is not backed up with a quality service. That is just due to lack of quality technology infrastructure to begin with. Well I hope the rest of the worlds adopt more and more choices like this and not the behemoth monopoly service like those we found in the US. With these choices, they make the global communication for travelers and world-mobile-user like me be able to work anywhere I want. That's what we call a TRUE mobile.

iPad is becoming more and more integral to my day-to-day life. Thanks to so many great applications that makes it possible. Obviously at home, the device has been the subject of "fight" between my wife, my kids and I :)

If you have a 5 years old and a 3 years old like me, iPad becoming their first choice over Nintendo DS and PSP, can you imagine that? You will think that they will choose NDS and PSP in the heartbeat but the reality both devices are sitting around collecting dust now. The variety of activity that they get from from iPad is far more greater. For example, tell me how many games in NDS that gearing toward education? The last time I check, I could not find a game in NDS or PSP that will teach the kid how to read or pronounce! That is mind boggling to me. For those games, I have to buy my kids Leap Frog system which the screen is so sub-par compare to what they get from iPad.

As for my wife, she enjoy reading books and browse the Internet. With iPad, she doesn't have to need to carry around her Sony TZ anymore (she is still using since I have to take the iPad away from her time to time to work :P). Now she is requesting me to purchase another iPad just for her. She just could not wait for the share anymore! Oh I forgot to mention, she is a gamer and Plant vs Zombie and Traffic Rush are her favorites !!

For me, I use iPad daily for so many task. From simple browsing, remote desktop to my PC, emails, tweeting, and much more. And the things that I do with iPad are growing everyday. Just today, I purchased an app called Air Display which allows me to use my iPad as my second screen for my Mac !! For only $10 (the software cost) and I get a 2nd monitor, what a bargain. Reading my business documents in iPad is a pleasure. Even with my "offline" life at Indonesia, with proper apps installed (offline browser, iCab, GoodReader, DropBox) , I am all set.

Now all I need is to wait this fall where OS 4.0 becomes available to my iPad. I will definitely looking forward to see how multi-task will enhance my experience even more with my iPad!!