Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal digital luggage

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I received a message from Aaron, who soon will be relying on his Nokia N95 8GB full time, while travelling through South-East Asia.

From his blog:

soon im off going travelling to south-east asia, for quite some time, and i wanted to be able to stay in touch with everyone back home, i wanted to be able to easily keep an online diary and upload pictures and even plot the pics on a map, but…

i want to keep it simple, i didnt want to be lugging around expensive laptops or sitting in internet cafe’s for hours on end or even having lots of devices with miles of cables and chargers. what i wanted was a simple and very portable solution that fully intergrates all my blogs and facebook etc with as few clicks and hastle as possible.

So after much research i settled on a nokia n95 8g, a wicked smartphone which in theory could do all the above.

So, he now has all the needed equipment and tools:

  • Nokia N95 8GB
  • Nokia SU-8W wireless keyboard
  • Typepad blog (this is because it allows the upload of “text notes”)
  • FlogBlog (blog integration with Facebook)
  • Flickr account (for the pictures)
  • Shozu account (for Geotagging)

The trip has not started yet, but I guess it is interesting to see how Aaron has managed to prepare himself for blogging while traveling:

http://aaronandgeorgie.typepad.com/n95travelblog/

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Comments 11

  1. andi_kam wrote:

    Good luck with that - lifeblog is notoriously bad. Always corrupting the database etc. I have tried to do a backup of my lifeblog data on my computer and it kept saying it was corrupt. It is a clever way of doing it though and I hope it does succeed!

    Posted 18 Feb 2008 at 12:50 pm
  2. aaron wrote:

    hello andi_kam, just to thank you for the heads up on the lifeblog problems, ive not encountered any yet and have been using it for 3 months but i will deffinately use it very intensively over the next few weeks, hopefully nothing happens but if so id like to be able to deal with it now rather than when im in deepest vietnam. thanks

    Posted 18 Feb 2008 at 2:29 pm
  3. Telewaving team wrote:

    Telewaving suggests instead of having 4 web sites, having only one with all the requested features. Why not creating the site powered with WordPress or Drupal and install our mobile blogging client Wavelog on your N95?
    Alternatively, you should be able to use Wavelog with Typepad since they support Metaweblog API.

    Posted 18 Feb 2008 at 5:02 pm
  4. aaron wrote:

    hello telewaving team, yes this looks like a great option to use also im just looking at it now… but will there still need to be more than one site for geotagging purposes? as this is where the sites rack up, currently i use shozu, then post to my flickr, which feeds my google map, which in turn feeds my typepad blog. if there is a simpler way using your software id love to know!!! but as it stands shozu runs in the background on my nokia n95 and like lifeblog plucks the pics from my gallery (shozu also geotags them) so all i really need to do after the initial set up is decide where i want each particular picture to end up, my blog post or on my geotagged map.
    one last thing im currently using lifeblog because i really like the timeline feature, does wavelog have any similar features?
    thanks

    Posted 18 Feb 2008 at 5:16 pm
  5. aaron wrote:

    sorry telewaving team,
    one last thing also with the setup i have currently i know i am using 5 different sites or so but once set up they work perfectly on their own and to get the content to where i want i sent it to the first in the chain and each website does its thing, this way i send the content only once, i was wondering if wavelog does the same or sends it once to each profile/site?
    as this for me would extend the upload time greatly
    thanks

    Posted 18 Feb 2008 at 5:35 pm
  6. Andy wrote:

    Aaron, your blog seems to be a unique site using many of the N95 features linked through variuos third party applications and linked websites. It’s really facinating and I look forward to tracking your travels and success in using the N95.

    I find the camera a bit substandard and the GPS locator too slow. The success of your operation also depends on finding wifi hotspots in Asia. I really hope it works, ven if it doesn’t you’ll have great fun. Make sure you get drunk on Kao San Road in Bangkok!

    Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 12:50 am
  7. Telewaving team wrote:

    There are many attributes that can be registered in EXIF variables of every photo, exposure, timestamp, GPS info, and other. These attributes are added by photo making applications, or applications like Nokia Location Tagger, and could be read and displayed by Web publishing applications.
    Wavelog, our mobile blogging client is neither photo making, nor photo displaying software. It is content publishing client that ensures sending complete information (photo with geotag for example) to a Web server whose task is to display such information. There are plugins for WordPress blogging platform that allow geotagging on photo blogs.
    Our answer to your second question is that the main concept and idea for developing Wavelog mobile blogging client was to offer mobile bloggers a tool to use their own web site (blog) as the platform for publishing multiple content types (text, images, audio and video) and not to have to create accounts on one site for video, another one for photos and so on. How would your audience seamlessly follow your news on all these sites simultaneously? In addition, this offers lower cost of maintenance with one single blog, higher level of privacy protection, reliability and flexibility for site design.
    Concerning the timeline for posting the content, we do not believe that this is the feature that blogging client has to automatically record and we have not implemented it in our application.

    Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 1:13 am
  8. Farhan wrote:

    Buddy you have made the smart choice , I only took my N958gb on my recent Hajj trip to Saudi Arabia , never required anything , I was using Shozu , Gmail client , Nokia Maps , Google Maps , Camera , Islamic Applictions , Quran reader , the device served all the purposes for which my buddy was carrying a laptop around , way to go and keep us posted of the developments , I also suggest a decent phone cover , I took a sachel style ( E65 standard ) which I tied to my belt ( no pockets on my Hajj dress ) and a screen protecter

    Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 9:18 am
  9. aaron wrote:

    cheers andy!!!
    i totally see what your saying about the camera and gps, so far its working better than i expected since i found the GPS data function on my n95, as that gets a lock pretty quick and is a pretty small app. as for the camera again i agree.. but we are willing to take that sacarifice of quality for its potability, im no photographer and id just get drunk and smash an SLR or swear about the thing swinging around my neck
    thanks aaron

    Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 2:18 pm
  10. aaron wrote:

    hey Farhan, thats great news! if only i had had your advice when i started trying to set it all up, im sure you could have stopped many hours of frustration. ill take your word for the case and screen protector and get one asap! but the fact you have done this already is very reassuring!
    thanks for getting in touch pal
    aaron

    Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 2:23 pm
  11. aaron wrote:

    hey there ive made a few alterations to the processin light of location tagger being updated check and see
    http://aaronandgeorgie.typepad.com/n95travelblog/

    Posted 28 Feb 2008 at 9:50 pm

Trackbacks & Pingbacks 10

  1. From Nokia N95 » Blog Archive » Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal digital luggage on 18 Feb 2008 at 11:12 am

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  2. From Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal digital … on 18 Feb 2008 at 11:31 am

    […] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpttagged with:8GB, flickr, n95, nokia, nseries, shozu, travel. I received a message from Aaron, who soon will be relying on his Nokia N95 8GB full time, while travelling through South-East Asia. From his blog: … […]

  3. From Nokia N95 » Blog Archive » Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal digital … on 18 Feb 2008 at 11:54 am

    […] Read the rest of this great post here […]

  4. From Comment on Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal … on 18 Feb 2008 at 9:28 pm

    […] Aaron Katsman wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptsorry telewaving team, one last thing also with the setup i have currently i know i am using 5 different sites or so but once set up they work perfectly on their own and to get the content to where i want i sent it to the first in the … […]

  5. From Work From Home on 18 Feb 2008 at 10:16 pm

    […] Brett A. Noe wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptone last thing also with the setup i have currently i know i am using 5 different sites or so but once set up they work perfectly on their own and to get the content to where i want i sent it to the first in the chain and each website … […]

  6. From Nokia N95 » Blog Archive » Comment on Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal … on 18 Feb 2008 at 10:23 pm

    […] Read the rest of this great post here […]

  7. From Comment on Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal … on 18 Feb 2008 at 10:30 pm

    […] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptsorry telewaving team, one last thing also with the setup i have currently i know i am using 5 different sites or so but once set up they work perfectly on their own and to get the content to where i want i sent it to the first in the … […]

  8. From Comment on Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal … on 19 Feb 2008 at 12:24 am

    […] Dean wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptsorry telewaving team, one last thing also with the setup i have currently i know i am using 5 different sites or so but once set up they work perfectly on their own and to get the content to where i want i sent it to the first in the … […]

  9. From Saudi Arabia » Blog Archive » Comment on Nokia N95 Travel Blog: Reporting back home with minimal ... on 20 Feb 2008 at 8:40 am

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  10. From Nseries WOM World » Blog Archive » N95 8GB is all you need on 20 Feb 2008 at 3:03 pm

    […] Using just the N95 8GB along with the Nokia SU-8W bluetooth keyboard, Jan reports how Aaron will report back on his travels without the need to lug a laptop and associated paraphernalia around in his luggage. Have you done anything similar, how did it work out for you? […]