Memorial Day Weekend Nokia 770 Stories
 

I thought some people might be excited to share stories about how they utilized their Nokia 770s this holiday weekend, especially since there are a lot of travelers and since the Nokia 770 is supposed to be a mobile device, and since my Memorial Day Weekend ended early, I'll start with mine. It's a little boring, but I think it really highlights the strengths of the Nokia 770; hopefully other people will have better stories. Include links to any software (or hardware?) used, although I hope this doesn't make the stories sound like advertisements...

I started by using Maemo Mapper (of course) on my Nokia 770 (attached to the windshield of my car, connected via Bluetooth to my iBlue GPS Receiver) to guide me to my parents' cabin in the woods, including one pit stop at a particular location to pick up my sister. I'd been to the cabin many times before, so I knew exactly how to get there, but I couldn't resist the chance to test out Maemo Mapper and show it off to my sister at the same time.

Maemo Mapper (through Google Maps via my GPX Driving Directions web service) offered me an interesting route that I had never tried before (or even knew had existed, for that matter), and even though the cabin is in a relatively-uninhabited area, Google Maps had great coverage in the area, so I decided to try it out.

I have flite (Festival Lite, a low-memory-footprint version of the free speech synthesis software) installed on my Nokia 770, so Maemo Mapper politely notified me of every turn that was coming up on our way to the cabin. My sister was impressed - she loved the sound of the synthesized voice (for comical reasons).

Despite the fun with flite, there was a slight problem with the directions. As has happened to me before when trusting Google Maps, it ended up leading me to a dead-end street. The maps seemed to show that the right roads existed, but one of those roads turned out to be a driveway that may or may not have somehow connected to the next road in the route - is Google Maps using driveways as public roads now!?

I was a little miffed, but I didn't want to turn around and go back to my usual route, which was now relatively distant from my current location. Rather than trespass onto private property, I turned to Maemo Mapper and looked at the map for an alternate route. I knew the point on the map where I was, and I knew the point on the map where I needed to be, so I just used the map to find a route, followed that route, and got to my destination in almost no time.

So, although Maemo Mapper got me lost with Google Maps's inaccurate directions (remember, folks, these direction are "for planning purposes only"), at least it redeemed itself by showing me a map that allowed me to get there without backtracking. I actually only lost a few minutes of time, and it was worth it to hear Maemo Mapper speak the directions to me (even though the directions led me through someone's front yard).


My parents don't have a computer or internet access at the cabin, because they're only there a few weekends per month, so when I had a few spare minutes, I spent my time reading Sherlock Holmes on the Nokia 770 with FBReader.

So far during my trip, despite the fact that the Nokia 770 is an Internet Tablet, I have not even touched the internet since I downloaded those faulty directions before my weekend actually started. This is what I love about the Nokia 770 - it's fine as an internet tablet, but I love the fact that I can make it into something more than just an internet tablet by coding to Maemo/Hildon and an API that I know and love. Personally, I think $350USD is a lot of money for an "internet tablet", but 3rd party software turns it into a much more valuable commodity. I'm really looking forward to the improvements coming with the 2006 OS, which (with its real, actual packaging infrastructure) should open the door to even more 3rd party software (after the initial obsoletion of current 3rd-party software with the incompatibility).

On a whim, I checked around the house for any kind of wifi connection, and to my surprise, one of our neighbors had an open WAP set up, and if I stepped outside and toward their house, I could get enough signal (2 bars) to use it to connect to the internet.

So, when I wasn't doing woodsie things (and don't get me wrong, we had a lot of non-Nokia-770-related fun; I'm not a complete geek :) - I'm not a hippie either, though!), I was on the web checking my email and the ITT forums, or I was reading ebooks when I was inside and away from the WAP.

And of course, on the last day of my trip, I downloaded the route from the cabin back home and used Maemo Mapper again on the drive back. I have named by Nokia 770-based navigation system "Mr. Roboto" due to the lovely voice synthesis provided by flite. So whenever the Google Maps directions lead me astray, I can always blame Mr. Roboto.

I love my Nokia 770!