confessions of a serial hobbyist

So apparently I was tagged in this a couple of weeks ago by Jonathan Greene at atmaspheric | endeavors. But things having been crazy with work and all I missed it, but to follow on I’ll see about what I have…

I’m currently switching between two devices, the Apple iPhone and the Nokia N95. I have a few others phones (N80, N75, about 30 others…) but I don’t use them much so they don’t count.

Let’s start with the iPhone because it’s the least interesting in terms of what’s on there. I use the iPhone primarily as my iPod, a web tablet (it is in my opinion superior to say the Nokia 770/N800, despite lacking flash support), for email, and sometimes I even use it as a phone. I do have a little bit of extra software installed:

1. Mobile Terminal – The quite nice (though a pain to install) terminal emulator for the iPhone. I actually end up using it more than one might expect… Unfortunately it doesn’t fully support ANSI escape sequences and what-not so it’s not 100% usable as a unix terminal yet.
2. SSH – what I use the Mobile Terminal for. I frequently SSH into my machines at home etc. to check on things (and once popped on IRC just because I could, though it didn’t work so well…see above comment about ANSI escape sequences).

That’s it – afterall what else is there for the iPhone? Even these required me to spend most of a morning running shady applications to break into my own device. However, having a usable terminal on my phone is such a godsend that it has me thinking of picking up a Nokia E61i – the qwerty on the iPhone is probably the biggest reason I like using it for email etc. over my N95.

Then there’s my N95… I use it often as my phone, and for a slightly larger number of apps – some officially released and some not.

1. Snakes – Yeah I know, it comes on the phone, but for some reason I still have a blast playing it (and replaying it, as I start from scratch every time there’s a firmware update).
2. Podcasting – The s60 podcasting app. Sure I have my iPhone to listen to my podcasts, watch my vidcasts, and generally handle all my media, but I feel it’s my right, nay my DUTY to download as many of those podcasts onto my n95 as I can (especially over EDGE…I’m paying for unlimited data, I should use it). The n95 has the one big win over the iPhone for podcasting – I can actually check for and download new episodes as I’m on the road, and can frequently start downloading an episode as I walk to lunch, and have it downloaded for listening as I eat.
3. Nokia Sports Tracker – I’m an engineer, which almost automatically means I’m out of shape. And so I’ve been using this (along with the GPS built in to the N95) to keep an idea of how much I’m walking…trying to keep up around 2 miles a day atleast.
4. Widsets – I primarily use this for the Jaiku widset. Unfortunately I’m not special enough to get in on the Jaiku mobile beta, and as such have been stuck with the older Jaiku mobile client. It works ok for making a post, and the automatic location updating (based on cell tower information apparently) is great – but being unable to read comments or read more than the last post of other people makes it useless…
5. Mobile Search – as I often do most of my emailing on the device it’s important to be able to search through things. Sure I use my iPhone more than the n95 for emailing (even soft-qwerty beats out t9 when it comes to typing) but since I use IMAP for email, I keep it synced both places. Hint to Nokia by the way – support saving sent emails to a IMAP Sent folder! Currently I have to CC myself, and then have my computer run a rule on incoming email that if it’s from me, move it to the IMAP Sent folder (so it’s saved on the iPhone and my laptop as well).
6. Nokia Maps – I haven’t used it too much, but when I have, it’s come in EXTREMELY handy. This is especially true with the latest firmware where it gets GPS locks a lot faster. And as I’ll be doing a bit more traveling in the coming months, I’m sure I’ll be using it even more.
7. K-Rally – A fun little racing game that took me a while to get into, but then quickly had me hooked. One of the highest quality mobile games I’ve played…and having worked in mobile games for years that MAYBE says something?
8. loopt – Loopt is a mobile-phone based social networking community app. I’ll note RIGHT NOW that this isn’t actually available for S60, or for most phones really – it’s a new service that’s being rolled out a carrier at a time, and the only reason I have it is that loopt happens to be one of my company’s clients. I figured if I’m working on their product, I should be using it – and if I’m going to use it I had to make it work on the phone I use.

So there we have it, most of the apps I use on my Nokia with any kind of regularness (I’m fully aware, thanks to the spell checking built into Safari, that that’s not a word). One thing I noticed as I typed this out – most of those are Nokia apps! I’m not sure if this is a good sign or not… I had previously used QuickOffice for writing up notes, but typing anything serious with t9 was just too painful so I stopped – this may be something I start using again if/when I break down and get an e61i (or e90). I should also note that there are some other things installed on my n95 (generally my company’s own products) but as they’re unannounced, they’ll remain so here – plus I’ll probably have to push them in a new blog post at some point in the future.