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Homebrew - Double Hopped IPA

India Pale Ale (IPA) as legend has it was invented because the journey beer took from Britain to the colonies in India was too harsh on regular beers so the amount of hops added to the ale was increased and the recipe changed to increase the alcohol content slightly. This combination helped the beer weather the long trip a lot better and gavethe new style its name - IPA.

Ingredients

• 1 tin Thomas Coopers IPA
• 1 packet yeast (included with  tin above)
• 1 packet of Morgans finishing hops - Goldings variety
• 1 kilo of Munton’s light dry malt
• 1 mug of raw cane sugar

Preparation

Preparation was straightforward for this kit brew but I did take the special step of preparing the yeast properly. Thirty minutes before pitching the wort I added the yeast to a small, warm, pre-boiled mug of water with a few teaspoons of the light dry malt. This was then covered up, left for fifteen minutes and stirred before leaving it another fifteen minutes and added to the wort.

The finishing hops were also prepared thirty minutes before the rest of the ingredients were added to the fermenter.  The hop bag, which is rather like a teabag, was simply steeped in hot boiled water for thirty minutes and covered up.

The content of the tin was then added to the fermenter with two litres of boiling water. The dry malt and raw sugar was then slowly stirred in. The fermenter was filled up to the 23 litre mark with cold tap water. The final steps were to add the hop  bag and the water it was steeped in and pour the now bubbling away yeast into the mix.

After taking a specific gravity reading the original gravity came out to be 1052.

Outcome

The brew began bubbling vigorously but not aggressively within the first twelve hours. After five days it had settled down and I took another reading. Two days later it was ready to bottle with a final gravity of 1009. With this reading it should be 6.1% alcohol. Perfect for a pale ale.

Tasting

Since this beer was looking so good in theory I was keen to try it out and within three days of bottling it I couldn’t resist and cracked open my first. Suffice to say I was not disappointed, although still young and very harsh due to the large amount of hops I could detect the fruitiness of a well brewed ale.

A month on, I’ve almost run out as it’s been a hit. The harshness has all but dissolved away and what we’re left with is a brew that has a very fruity aroma, quite a bite and a slightly malty after taste.

Some say there are two types of homebrew - the one where people ask for more and the type where when offered more people politely decline. This was definitely the former.

Is the iphone just a fad?

The definition of a fad varies a little from dictionary to dictionary but essentially what they all boil down to is this (from Wiktionary):

“A phenomenon that becomes popular for a very short time”

There is no denying that the iphone meets at least half the definition of a fad. It has become very popular in a very short period. Not long enough to make it to the list of enduring fads like the Rubik’s Cube or Skateboards.

In fact it wasn’t until the second iphone was created and launched world wide just over a year ago now that it really began to pick up pace.

The question is though, will the iphone just turn out to be a fad? Will all the cool kids be carrying around the next Motorola, Nokia or LG by this time next year?

One thing we can be sure of is that it’s starting to lose its street cred or “geek cred” as some call it. When you see grannies and stay at home mums using a phone that used to be the sole the domain of designers and the “technorati” you know it’s nearing the end of its adoption lifecycle. In fact someone did a lot of research into this a while ago and came up with something called Roger’s bell curve and the technology adoption lifecycle. The iphone is indeed in the late majority phase (where your slower than average adopters are). In other words it is no longer cool. Sorry Mr Stephen Fry.

This by no means proves it as a fad. No more than being called a shiny, stupid toy by the haters does.

What all this leads me to is an article I read about the death of the Croc shoe. Who’s death unlike the iphone I could not possibly even shed a single tear for.  What an ugly, ugly excuse for a shoe. At least the iphone looks nice.

You know those stupid pieces of footwear that started off as a fairly niche product suited for a single purpose that were very well marketed as being a shiny all rounder type shoe that might even work on public pavements. Kind of like sticking a phone on a multimedia player and calling it a smartphone. Yes! I am going somewhere. Crocs are to shoes as iphones are to, well … phones.

The article - named How Crocs Crashed was very positive and actually went on not to so much focus on how the Crocs fad failed but how you can keep your brand fresh. What I got out of it being a negative nelly and all is the exact opposite. I saw the massive parallels between what Apple are doing right and what they are doing wrong.

The keys to keeping a brand “hot” from Ries’ pieces. Along with my iphone take on them:

1. Dampen demand

This is one thing Apple certainly isn’t doing. In fact they’re adding so much fuel to the iphone fire I’m beginning to wonder whether they were behind the invasion of Iraq.

You just can’t escape the brand in Sydney. If you’re not walking past an Apple store you’re looking at an Apple ad on the back of a bus, on the side of a bus shelter in a magazine, newspaper. They’ve even managed to convince the media that there is no other phone. I’m sure this is the same in any major first world city.

Apple’s marketing department are flogging the iphone for all its worth. It’s almost as if they think it might dissapear overnight. A sure sign of a fad if ever there was a good sign.

2. Resist line extension

This is one area in which Apple, at least when it comes to the iphone, have managed to resist all temptation. Even when their biggest fans have yelled and screamed about it. If you pay any attention to the iphone you would have heard the rumours about the iphone nano, the apple tablet and a qwerty iphone. That’s it. They’re all rumours.

You maybe applauding Apple right now and thinking how smart their marketing department are. However, they aren’t just doing it because they’ve read Ries’ blog. They’re doing it because they’ve seen what it does to the big boys’ profit margins. It reduces them, drastically. In fact Nokia barely make a few dollars on most of their phones while Apple continue to make hundreds.

3. Control Distribution

Apple initially did the right thing in this area by making the phone exclusive to a particular provider in a particular country but the lock-in in their biggest market, the USA, is starting to have a damaging effect.

No longer is the AT&T/Apple partnership considered exclusive. It’s now considered a burden by an ever increasing portion of Apple’s customer and potential customer base. People might actually soon be ditching their iphones just because of AT&T.

4. Focus on Core Consumers

This is probably what will finally lose the battle for Apple. That young, technology savvy and high disposable income core that the iphone rode the wave of are now starting to tire of it. The endless lock in, the lack of customisation, the ever growing list of wants will finally be fulfilled by someone else if Apple don’t pay attention to it. This is where the flood gates will open and the wave of oppressed customers will finally escape. It will only take someone to open it and like the Croc the wave will just go somewhere else.

5. Expand globally

Well you can’t fault Apple on this one. They did this, but as with the Croc Apple flooded the market. There’s some countries that Apple just stepped into too quickly and lost a lot of face and rapport doing so.

Will the iphone just turn out to be a fad or it will it stay with us? Only time will tell but there’s no doubting that given some of the warning signs it will be an interesting product to follow.

Full disclosure: I am actually the author of iphones suck so I come full of bias. This is a blog after all and what are blogs if not opinionated.

Homebrew Blog

I finally took the plunge this week and did what every Australian male has to do one time or another during his life and that is make my own home brew.

I picked up a kit from Dave’s Home Brew in North Sydney for a shade under $90. The amount of beer that can be made from this initial kit, which includes all the ingredients, would cost you $100 from the bottle shop so it’s worth a try. Even if you do need to hold your nose every time you drink your first brew.

So on Saturday evening I cleaned and sanitised all the equipment then panicked. As every brewer knows the enemy of the brew is germs and my nose was leaking and I was coughing after a pretty nasty cold.  Having to mix everything up in the bathroom as well didn’t help my confidence levels. Regardless I moved on and mixed the batch up - what will hopefully become a nice pilsener. The kit used was a Morgan’s Golden Saaz Pilsener.

Fermentation

After mixing the batch up and sealing the bucket all there was to do was to wait for some bubbling action through the airlock. I waited and waited and come Sunday there was no action to speak of, except for the occasional bubble every twenty minutes. Once again I was panicking. By Sunday evening though the airlock was bubbling away which continued through until Tuesday evening when it stopped again.

After reading through the forums on the net I decided Wednesday evening to crack open the bucket and take a reading using the hydrometer. This reading was 1011 which according the hydrometer markings is a finished beer. The colour is a bright yellow and slightly cloudy with a fair amount of carbonation even though bottling and secondary fermentation is meant to achieve carbonation.

Tomorrow I’ll take another reading and if it’s the same then it’s time to bottle. Finding 30 750 ml bottles is going to be a challenge though. My collection currently stands at two. Luckily I have a friend who may be able to help out.

Bottling

It’s Saturday, exactly a week after I mixed up the brew and it seems to have finished.

As it turned out my friend didn’t have anywhere near enough standard sized bottles. So I forked out $36 for 30 PET plastic homebrew bottles. So it looks like I’m going to at least have to brew two batches to make it a worthwhile investment. Given the ingredients for the next batch should run to about $30 I’ll probably just break even.

I took another reading of Specific Gravity (SG) this time the proper way by using the valve at the bottom of the bucket. Allowing 100 mls or so to drain off then taking the reading from another couple of hundred mls. I knew I was going to get different readings because the last was taken from the top and this time it appears to be 1014 (a little high for a finished beer). I don’t know how much I trust these readings as getting an accurate reading with this equipment is like trying to get a cat to sit still. The hydrometer just keeps bobbing about and sticking to the edges of the test tube.

You’re not really meant to bottle while you’re getting different SG figures but it’s been a week with the brew at a pretty constant 22C and it tastes ready. In fact it’s tasting pretty good now. It’s got quite a malty flavour and not as hoppy or metallic as I was expecting from a Pilsner.

Update: I’m holding off on bottling and will check the SG again in a few days. The general consensus on the interwebs is that the SG is far too high. Plus after moving the bucket a bit and letting it settle down it bubbled a bit more so I think it’s just taking its time.

The Saturday after

It’s been two weeks now since I “pitched” my brew and since checking on Wednesday the SG has remained at 1011. Still high but it’s time to go. After spending a couple of hours cleaning the kitchen and sanitising the bottles I bottled most of it. Except for a spare I kept to refrigerate and drink that night. Boy did that give me nightmares, but that may be because it was too young. I’m hoping once the minimum of a week is up I can try a fully carbonated beer that doesn’t taste like a lollypop and won’t leave me wondering what those dreams were about the next day.

More updates in a week or two when it’s time to crack open the finished product.

The drinking

Two weeks after bottling the beer it has matured enough to drink. Pouring the chilled beer shows it is well carbonated but has almost no head. It is slightly cloudy and has a very rich sugary yellow colour.

It smells like beer, slightly yeasty.

Given my un-trained palate I would say it tastes caramelish with a slight medicinal taste (I suspect idophor sanitiser). There are hints of ginger. The aftertaste is very much like apple.

Although the alcohol level seems quite low I’m very happy. I can drink a couple of  bottles without having nightmares or feeling ill the next day. Time to brew my second batch soon.

The death of the travel guide (book)

I’ve just arrived back from a belated honey moon with my wife. It was like many holidays for Australians in the northern hemisphere, a whirlwind tour of four countries in Europe. As Australians we have to do as much as possible. Since getting there and back takes the best part of three days, unlike our northern hemisphere friends.

Although going overseas for Australians seems like a national past time even with the jet age it still means long travel hours, much cost and a need to make the most of our time when on holidays.

None of what I say is extraordinary on its own but for the fact that this was the first time we did not lug around with us any travel guides - You know those heavy tomes full of coloured tabs and scrawled notes in the margins. These books that are the the mark of a lost tourist. You see them and their owners at the cafes near tourist areas. You see them a mere street away from the major tourist attractions with the owner gesticulating at a page to an obviously confused local.

This time we decided to ditch the guide book. All four we would have needed to make our way through England, France, Portugal and Spain and instead took a single mobile phone. A smart phone.

One cannot discount the need for a guide, of some description or another. However, we found that the benefits a travel guide book bring a traveller can now be wrapped up in a little phone 1/4 the size of your typical guide book and so much lighter. No longer does the weary tourist have to lug around lugage containing more weight in paper than clothes.

This article will cover what our particular device and approach to traveling did for us. Depending on how you like to organise your holidays and which mobile phone you own your mileage (so to speak) will vary.

Planning the trip

We take our trip planning quite seriously when traveling and in fact I do have to admit we found the travel guide books quite handy in choosing which destinations to go to and four how long but there are also a plethora of forums on the internet like the ever popular Trip Advisor that will give you as good advice if not better. An itinery was built up using Excel and plane tickets booked through travel agents and online. This itinery along with all the travel documents and email receipts were stored on the phone as well as printed out.

Day by day guides were built from information on message boards, guide books, Wiki Travel, friends advice and historical research. When matched with a good itinery we had a fairly good idea up front of what do do each day. There are also electronic travel guide books available for most of the major smart phone platforms from the various publishers.

Each hotel that we booked was plotted on Nokia’s Ovi Maps service and synchronised with my Nokia E71’s maps software. This would later prove invaluable in making it from our arrival point into the city to our hotel.

I also visited the Wiki Travel page for each town, city, region and country we were going to visit or were even thinking of visiting and saved the web pages for offline use. While Wiki Travel is no Lonely Planet replacement the information supplied did supplement some of our research in our day by day guides.

Getting Around

Nokia/Ovi maps both on the phone and on the desktop is one of the most amazing and fully featured mapping experiences there is. Nokia should not be shy about maps.ovi.com this site equals if not beats Google maps in every area. On the desktop it’s just neat but on your mobile it is invaluable. To be able to plot all the places you will be going to ahead of time and synchronise them with your mobile then have access to the locations and even 3d models of the major tourist destinations is just something no one else can offer. Offline anyway, and offline is the keyword. Roaming charges are just too prohibitive to depend on mapping applications like Google maps which require a constant connection. Ovi Maps stores everything on your phone.

Keeping a travel diary

Active notes on the Nokia is a great application which allows you to combine text notes with sound recordings, video and photos to create a truly multimedia log of your journey. The only regrets I have about it is that there was no easy way to just publish our day’s exploits to this blog with the press of a button. Which is probably a good thing as writing notes on the go is rather unpolished and I will over the next few weeks take my brief notes and give them some polish. Eventually publishing some travel blog entries.

The downsides

Roaming - data charges when overseas are exhorbitantly expensive. You need to make sure you disable any 3G connectivity if you don’t feel like being charged $20 a megabyte. Use Wi-Fi where available. I became an expert at spotting “free wi-fi” signs while on holiday and even two weeks later I’m still spotting them back home.

Positioning -  The built-in GPS receiver on mobile phones is woeful. They all rely in some form or another, on data connections, which cost money. This is called Assisted A-GPS. Without A-GPS you need a good distance between buildings otherwise the phones internal GPS doesn’t get a good enough signal. In these situations knowing how to navigate just using a map and the closest cross street comes in handy. The phone we took with us doesn’t have an internal compass which as all orienteers know would have been very useful when the internal GPS failed us.

Next time we’ll probably invest in an international roaming data package which brings down the cost of data when overseas but at least for Australians can cost as much as a night in a 4 star hotel. The next phone I buy will also need to have a compass just in case GPS fails us.

Summary

We’re never going back to lugging around travel books. They are heavy, smelly and a one thousand page book contains about 990 pages of information you don’t need. The smart phone is quickly becoming a true pocket sized computer.

Quicky: Shameless Plug

In order to quell my rampant hatred of the iPhone and save the readers of this blog from too much anti-iPhone propoganda I’ve decided to setup a new blog. iPhones Suck - every day I’ll publish at least one or two reasons why the iPhone is indeed the worst smart phone on the planet. I’ll especially talk about why iPhone users are morons. Not necessarily always being this way with but after using a device as dumb as the iPhone their brains possibly melted.

Anyway head on over to iPhones suck and please remember to give us a few reasons why. Even if you are a drooling, zombified fanboy.

How apple is hindering mobile to desktop convergence

It has long been a dream of mine and many others that one day the web experience on your mobile is exactly the same as on your desktop. Albeit on a smaller screen.

Imagine going to youtube and watching videos with the same experience as the full website or yahoo  mail  with all its ajaxy bling and instant messenger built right in.

In many ways we’re almost there and I have to say Apple and the iphone deserve some credit. The experience is good but its not all there yet. Try going to youtube and playing a video … Oops you can’t. But why is it that with my nokia, windows mobile etc smartphone and the built in browser or Skyfire I can? Because my browser has an important plugin - called flash. Ubiquitous on the desktop but strangely missing on the iphone.

Right about now I hear the  unified screams of the iphone fanboys yelling ‘but we have an app to do that!’ this is true but I am talking about convergence here. Parity. I as a developer doesn’t want to have to write a separate codebase for every mobile phone out there but because of the iphone’s  popularity and lack of a key feature. I have to.

Adobe just announced flash 10 will be coming to pretty much every smartphone out there bar one the iphone. Why? Not because Adobe doesn’t want to provide it. They have gone so far as to actually having written Flash for the iphone already, it’s Apple and their typical closed door approach.

Apple, please open up your platform. You’re slowing down the future. Remember when you used to accuse Microsoft of doing the same. Stop the hypocrisy.

On Retrofitting and Vintage Technology

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to really say and what I saw this morning has to be one the craziest “inventions” I have ever seen. It compelled me to write and it made me think a bit and realise something. People really do care for the technology of the past.

Johan Van den Brande has written a twitter client for the Commodore C64. Which begs me to think - “Why?”. Why would you want to write a Twitter client for a 25 year old computer system.

I can understand why people write emulators and play games on them. That is driven by and generates a feeling of nostalgia. Nothing feels better than remembering your misspent youth. The C64, Amiga and finally the PC (once it caught up) all bring back warm and fuzzy feelings when I think about them but I’d rather play James Pond, International Soccer or
Pitstop on an emulator than waiting 20 minutes for it load off a tape or worse. Having it fail half way through.

With the above being said I must say that I’m in love with Super 8 film. I love the grainy texture and blown out colours but I definitely don’t want to work on making it capable of the picture clarity of modern HD cameras. I like it because of its warts not because I want to clear it of them.  That being said there is a lot of very capable people out there like Pro8mm who like Johan like to keep their favourite outdated technology up to date. It’s certainly stunning to see what the C64 and Super 8 are capable of.

This little project got me wondering about who else out there is actively keeping our favourite technology from the past up to date. So I spent a little time on the interwebs and tracked down some interesting projects - past and present.  Feel free to add some of your finds to the comments.

Grinnal Cars

These guys do some amazing work. Their car was based on the body of a Triumph TR7 a car first produced over 32 years ago. The TR7 was often ridiculed in its day, mainly because it was released minus the soft top (convertible) model and v8 engine it should have had.

Grinnal took the original concept and updated it for the nineties. By adding a body kit and a high powered engine they reinvented Triumph’s original idea. They made a car that even today has a modern look. That being said the TR7’s original design was edgy and even today people still think it’s only maybe 10 years old.

(Full disclosure: I actually used to own a TR7 and I loved it. They handle better than a gokart and when it was properly tuned I could keep up with most sports
cars from the 90s and 2000s)

DOS

Good old Disk Operating System (DOS). Forerunner of Windows and still essentially at the very heart of even Windows 7.0. A complete ripoff of CP/M which in itself is a shrunk down version of Unix it’s heritage goes right back to the 1960s. Not to be outdown by Unix and Linux which have no qualms about admitting that their family tree goes back for almost 50 years. Truly the most retrofitted operating system ever. There is a beautiful chart which demonstrates truly how inbred these systems are

Record Players and Records

For those of you too young to remember them the Long Play record known fondly as the LP all but died with the introduction of the Compact Disk (CD). While a few hard coreproponents of the LP held on with their adamanant fanaticism about the far greater fidelity of the LP - The rest of us moved in droves over to this new format that sounded far better than a tape and quite frankly was a hell of a lot smaller than a CD. Most people couldn’t tell the difference in sound quality. A few year’s after the first portable MP3 player hit the market in 1998 the audio cassette’s fate was sealed and it along with the already long dead LP fell in to distant memory. Long live digital music.

That was until 2007 when the RIAA, the fellows responsible for tracking sales and prosecuting music downloaders, noticed something strange. Record sales had previously hovered around one million units a year for the last few years, bottoming out in 2006 at 900,000 but the 2007 numbers were a real surpise - they had climbed to 1.3 million and by 2008 had
over tripled to 2.9 million units a year. Granted this is a blip in the scale of total music sales but the old, supposedly dead LP had done something amazing. It achieved a sales growth year on year of 120%. The same year CD sales dipped 25%.

This didn’t go unnoticed and audio equipment manufacturers for the first time in years have started releasing new turn tables. We’ll have to see where it leads but I think a format from the past might just have survived. All due to nostalgia. Oh and all the wanna be DJs out there.

Is there any technology from the past that you know of which is being kept up to date for the modern age?

Nokia’s Ovi Store - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

With the storm of controversy over Nokia’s Ovi Store slowly starting to settle the nitty gritty of the store’s features are starting to become clear. In this article I will present what I found to be the best content on offer and also some of the worst. All prices have been listed in Australian Dollars. As we usually pay a high price for most products in this country you’ll probably find most things are half the price in Euros or US Dollars.

Just a note: One of the most glaringly obvious problems with the Ovi Store is that most of the apps available on your phone are not available on the website. So don’t be  surprised if you can’t find some of these programs on the website.

The Good

There really are too many great apps and games to list but here’s some of the ones I find to be invaluable.

All of the City Guides ( $8 - $26.99 )
The Ovi Store is chocked full of mobile travel guides from DK and Lonely Planet. I have used these before and believe me, when you’re on holidays and traveling around 10+ European cities in a month you don’t want to drag around 10 different guide books. For the same price as a paper city guide I’d buy 10 of the mobile versions instead.

Fring (FREE)
Fring is quite simply the best instant messaging client out there. It supports all the major IM networks (AOL,ICQ,GTalk,MSN,Yahoo etc) and on top of that you can do some basic management of your social networks like Twitter, Facebook and so on. I still can’t believe this application is free. I would pay top dollar for the time it saves me and the mobility it affords.

Joikuspot Mobile Wifi Hotspot ($19.99)
This application turns your mobile phone into a mobile hotspot. What this means is that without any special software on your laptop use your phone for internet access. With all you can eat and high gigabyte allowances these days its a great way to be able to jump on the Internet anywhere you want. The best bit is, you
can share it with your friends.

PDF+ Basic ($6.60)
The E series of Nokia phones already come with a PDF reader which I find invaluable. If you find something interesting on the web or need to catchup on an important document before that meeting tomorrow you can print the doc to PDF on your computer and save it for later reading on your mobile. So if your phone doesn’t have a PDF reader already then I recommend picking up this one.

Powerboot (FREE)
Powerboot allows you to specify which apps you’d like to load when your phone is turned on or reset. If you want your phone to automatically check your email or load up your most used applications then you can’t go past this one. Best of all, it’s FREE!

Psiloc Wireless Presenter (FREE)
This app allows you to control your powerpoint presentations from your mobile phone. It works over bluetooth and even shows notes from the presentation on the phone’s screen in case you need some help along the way. I’ve found this one invaluable when giving presentations to large audiences. Note: If you own an E-series phone it’s probably already installed.

Bubble Bash ($6.60)
Frozen Bubble was one of my favourite games on my Nokia E65 but sadly on my E71 the game doesn’t make use of the screen space
available. So with that in mind I’m recommending Bubble Bash as it’s a fine Puzzle Bubble clone.

The Bad

It looks as if the Ovi Store is trying to one up Apple’s iPhone App store in terms of 99 cent junk applications. While there’s nothing for 99 cents (the cheapest is $2) the quality and usefulness of some of the cheapest apps is questionable.

The Noise Machine ( $2 )
Not quite as useless as the iPhone fart applications but its pretty close. For your $2 you get an app that makes a variety of noises from crowds cheering to a drum roll.

Mysterious Fortune Ball ( $2 )
“Ask a question and the Mysterious Fortune Ball will give you an answer from beyond!” - Enough said really, a waste of 99kb of solid state storage space.

Every single paid wallpaper and ringtone ($2 - $8)
Why anyone would think I would pay $8 for a an MP3 ringtone of some Rihanna song is beyond me. For about $2 I could download the full song from the Nokia store, iTunes or for a few bucks more I could buy the whole album at a record store.

The Ugly

Here’s a list of applications that just can’t justify their asking price.

Happy Wakeup ( $68.99 )
This has to be the most expensive alarm clock I have ever come across. For almost seventy dollars I could go out and buy about 5 real alarm clocks. Is this
really a joke like the $999 I’m Rich iPhone app or is it someone trying to milk as much as they can out of the Ovi Store.

Security Shield Pro Edition ( $68.99 )
“Our patented scanning technologies are not ‘reworks’ of PC methodologies.” - I guess that’s what makes it worth seventy dollars. The app claims to be some sort of all in one security, privacy and anti spam software. Why you’d really need all this on a phone is beyond me.

MOT Finnish-English ($54.99)
A Finnish/English dictionary translator application. Why would I pay that much when I can buy a book for about $15 that will do the same thing. Even more ridiculous is
the fact that the rest of the MOT series of apps are all $16. Right about what I’d be prepared to pay. Is Finnish that hard to translate?

Summary

In summary there’s a lot of good applications and games on the store. Many of the most useful apps are available for free. However, like the iPhone store the Ovi Store is at risk from being plagued by an onslaught of “junk” applications. Nokia may have circumvented this somewhat by charging higher setup fees than apple does. Some see this increased barrier to entry as a bad thing  but the way I see it is that unless you write an app or game that people will seriously want then the Ovi Store is not for you.

Nokia’s Ovi Store - First Impressions

Nokia has finally started rolling out the Nokia store to selected countries. At this point I believe just Ireland and Australia but within a few days most countries should be online. For those who are not in the know it is basically Nokia’s answer to the iPhone app store and will be accessible from both your mobile phone (as an application itself) and the Ovi Store website.

Before I start talking about the application I’m sure you’ll want to know how to install it yourself or at least check to see if it’s available for you. So without delay, here’s the instructions:

1. Locate the download functionality on your phone. For recent E and N series there should be a download icon in the main menu. You may have to look under extras
2. Download should tell you it needs to update the catalogue. If it doesn’t choose options and refresh list.
3. Select Ovi Store and wait while it downloads and installs the app
4. The installer will ask you to reboot the phone
5. Once you’ve rebooted go to the home menu and navigate to where apps are normally installed for you (installations/extras). You will find a brand new icon for the Ovi Store. Fire it up and enjoy.

The first thing you have to do before you can enjoy any of the Ovi Store content is to login. Yes, even free content requires a login. If you haven’t got an account don’t worry. You can create one on the spot without a computer.

After you’ve gone through the sign in/sign up process you are presented with the following screen. Notice how all the apps recommended to you initially are free. They want to hook you in. They’ve done a great job here as there’s almost 20 apps and videos you can download without charge to get a feel for the service.

Scrolling left and right takes you across the major tabs in the Ovi Store where content is broken down into Apps, Recommended, Games, Audio & Video (media not apps), Personalisation (wallpapers and ring tones) and My Stuff. At first navigation seems daunting - pages and pages of apps, music and other stuff.  Go through to the options menu and you’ll find that most content is categorised and all content can be filtered by cost, popularity and by recency.

The application prices are surprisingly reasonable. I was expecting developers to be holding out for $20 + as they did in the old Nokia store. Games seem to start at AUD $6.60 and do go up to AUD $12.00 where you do have to think twice before buying. Videos on the other hand are either free or come at a nominal price. There’s a wide range available as well with everything from movie trailers, to travel guides to stand up comedy routines. Pricing is definitely not the same as the iPhone app store where programs start at USD 0.99 but the quality on Ovi Store seems vastly superior. I haven’t seen any fart apps so far. I know I’m prepared to pay more for quality software that does more than play funny sounds or allow you to shake a baby to death.

Installing apps is, surprisingly, even more pleasant than the already quite agreeable standard way of installing apps. It’s completely seamless - once you’ve selected an App to install (and possibly paid for it) you’ll see a progress bar indicating the download progress and then another giving you the install progress. When the application is ready to be run you’ll be prompted to start it. If like me you’re so keen on installing as much free software and media as you can it will go into your installed applications folder on the phone for later use.

Once you’ve installed an app you can write a full review, right there on the phone.

So far the experience is good and I enjoyed the new found freedom I have. The old application download service was horrible. However, I will reserve my full judgement of the service for when they launch the full PC website and to see how that integrates using Nokia Suite with the phone itself. As you can see from the screen shots there’s not much chance I’ll be doing all my app purchasing on the E71s 320×240 screen.

The ultimate question is - “Will this bring Nokia enough hype and backing to take on some of Apple’s slice of new smart phone uptake?”

Autism, Vaccines and Grannies

Every time I hear about more middle class, educated parents not vaccinating their children or another outbreak of easily preventable diseases in our schools it makes me angry. Vaccines are fundamental to our way of life.

We in the western world have it lucky. Our health care, hygiene and preventative measures against disease and epidemics has never been better. Smallpox was the first disease to be eradicated completely thanks to Edward Jenner’s vaccine and a world wide program of systematic vaccination.  This disease (I use the past tense) used to kill an estimated 400,000 Europeans a year in the 1800s. Considering the population of Europe during this century was under a quarter of what it is today that would mean in today’s figures over 1.5 million deaths a year. Just in Europe. Polio is a disease that is incurable, debilitating and up until the 1970s was still affecting Western populations. Today it is all but eradicated. Without the help of vaccines our lives would be a lot shorter.

There is no denying that vaccines have been the biggest single contributor to our good health and long lives. Having all but eradicated any disease that vaccines exist for.  Why then are there parents out there who are refusing to vaccinate their babies?  Awareness and myopia are to blame somewhat. Vaccines are voluntary and most parents have grown up free from the horrors of these diseases. They simply don’t know why it is so important to immunise their children. The government needs to spend more on awareness, it’s a simple fix for these people. However, there is another group who cannot be reasoned with it seems. These people are convinced that vaccines are causing autism.

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