When you go car shopping do you go to your local gas station? When you want to buy a television do you call DirecTV? Do you buy light bulbs from your local electric company?

Then why are you buying a cell phone from a carrier?

Swank new phones are something any individual can appreciate. Old or young, people welcome the attention they suddenly receive when that glorious piece of molded steel or hardened ABS plastic is removed from your pocket. One would believe that mobile phones are cheap as dirt if you landed in America. Signing two year contracts seem to be the norm. Yet consumers aren’t educated about choice, and that is hurting the industry in a world where mobile communications are experiencing what economists might call, a boom.

The 4 main providers in the US are Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Sprint (NYSE: S), Cingular and T-Mobile (NYSE: DT). The first two are CDMA carriers, the later use GSM technology. CDMA is by definition a monopoly and destructor of choice. GSM is a rebirth of packet technology, but knowledge of its capabilities isn’t known thru out the land.

American consumers aren’t educated because American carriers aren’t doing their job. As a carrier one should sell service, period. The phone on the other hand, that decision is left to the user, where he can explore the dizzying amounts of available headsets to his hearts content. Many discussions arise when it comes time to choose a carrier, and one more often then not is selected simply because of a phone that one may have due to an exclusivity deal; the other carrier who might be cheaper or more reliable is shafted since he doesn’t sell that omniscient RAZR. This is bullshit.

People need to come to the realization that a handset is carrier independent. That any GSM phone will work on any GSM network provided that person has a valid SIM card. The SIM card is your passport to the world via a cellular connection. Why would anyone choose a carrier simply based on the phones they subsidize hurts any sense of logic one might have.

The revolution that needs to happen isn’t going to happen via a technological battle, but by the uphill struggle to educate consumers. Someone needs to shine a light in their face and show them that there is a world of cell phones out there beyond the 15 that your carrier might sell at any given time. Someone needs to tell people that you can switch carriers at any time and keep your cell phone, you just need to swap your SIM. We live in a world where people actually need to get phones unlocked, why? Stop the madness and let users be free to choose. Carriers are competing not on network reliability or speed, but by who sells which phones. When will a carrier step up to the plate and sell only SIM cards and have the courage to tell the consumer than they can use any damn GSM phone they desire.

I use T-Mobile, why, because I get unlimited GPRS for $6 a month. Not because of the exclusive T-mobile Dash, or the exclusive T-Mobile Sidekick, but because my carrier provides a service that is priced competitively in comparison to the competition. This is the mentality that people need to have when shopping. Your phone has nothing to do with you carrier, but your carrier has a lot to do with what your phone is capable of. The mobile internet experience is ready to begin, the only thing holding it back is carriers charging $40 a month, for a certain amount of megabytes per month, on top of a voice plan. People don’t want to switch because they don’t want to loose their phone. People can’t switch because carriers lock the mobiles they “give away” after you sign away 2 years of your life. This does not fly in other countries where cell phones are sold in the same fashion as any other consumer electronic device.

Who will rise to the occasion and inform the public? Who will rid people of the shackles imposed by carriers?

I can’t thank my Nona Maas enough. Earlier today I posted a request for some assistance. I couldn’t get my bluetooth enabled laptop to use my Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E61 as a modem. Well low and behold I finally cracked it! I’m posting this guide so that anyone in the future can figure it out.

Read the full article »

I will be going to CES this January and I would like to blog from my hotel room if I have some spare time. If it’s anything like the last 2 times I was in Vegas, I’m going to be charged $10 for 24 hours worth of internet access. That is excessive and just plain thievery. Now my laptop has bluetooth and so dos my E61. I tried using the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) PC Suite, as well as Windows XP’s built in network manager to attempt to go online via my GPRS connection.

I’ve failed. I can’t get it to work. I don’t really want to call T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) and ask for help because I think they’ll try and just sell me their laptop connect data plan, instead of actually offering me any technical support. Now I’ve googled the issue, tried several things, including changing the number that is dialed, but I haven’t gotten it to work.

Any suggestions, tips, or tricks, would be greatly appreciated. I wish the Nokia Network Bridge worked over bluetooth, it makes more sense to me as well to use IP pass thru as opposed to making your Nokia mobile a modem. Having to select a carrier, finding out the login, password, number to dial, it’s a headache! IP pass thru however is what the Nokia PC Suite should be using as well.

So Nokia: either add bluetooth support to the Nokia Network Bridge, or enable IP pass thru on the Nokia PC Suite. Please. Plane leaves first week of the new year, if I can’t get help from you, my readers, then I’ll just end up calling my carrier.

I’ve got some spare time while I sit here in genetics lab waiting for some results to turn out. This is officially my first blog post from my E61.

If you haven’t been to the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) World blog then get there now! The coverage is great. Check out the flickr stream too.

I don’t have any way to input html tags so just point your browser to www.nokia.com/fromthefloor

UPDATE: Link fixed and I just got home, let the blogging begin

I’m tired and I’m not going to be able to make it the night. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) World kicks off in 2 hours and I simply can’t take it anymore. Today I had a very long organic chemistry lab, and after doing that Opera Mini review I’ve just wanted to rest.

So for the sake of the quality of the blog, I’ll just lay down now. Tomorrow is a new day. I can’t wait to have my mail box flooded with press releases.

If you catch any Nokia related news feel free to send me a line, my contact information is listed right under my picture.

Goodnight to me, midnight in my time zone, and good morning to everyone who is getting ready for one of the most kick ass conferences to begin.

Ed is the blogger from www.e-series.org, a resource of abundant information on anything relating to the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E Series mobile phones. He is one of the many bloggers who I came upon during my research to purchase a Nokia E61, and eventually a Vaja case. This guy has been blogging since the begining of the summer and I think he’s proved his worth. I’ve befriended him and asked him to keep me updated on his trip to Amsterdam, a place I would love to visit after I finish my degree, and he just informed me that he safely arrived yet has heard nothing yet from Nokia. He sent me this picture.

Can someone please contact him and just send him a bloody invite!? Time is ticking and having one more blogger report his findings on your conference is going to help spread the word immensely. One day someone will be researching a Nokia device, and they will stumble across Ed’s blog just like I did several weeks ago. Let information flow, invite Ed. Thanks for the pint Ed, may Nokia raise a glass to you too.

The Nokia (NYSE: NOK) PC Suite represents the final link in the chain that is holding back Nokia phones from truly becoming mobile computers.

Frankly I understand the logic of developing such an application. People need a method for inputting and exporting data on their mobile. The Nokia PC Suite serves as that middleware application that sits between my phone and my computer. However in 2006 with the explosion of rich AJAX based websites more and more data is being stored in, what developers call, the cloud. I just call it the net. This is one way in which the Nokia PC Suite has become useless. We manage our calendars online, we use web based email, and RSS feeds are consumed via Bloglines or my personal favorite Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Reader. Data doesn’t reside on a single machine, it is however accessible on any machine.

My router, DSL modem, and server are devices that fascinate me because they have the same rich functionality that a site such as Google Reader does. How is that so? I can simply type a URL into any computer connected to the net and have full control of any of those devices. Remote management is usually a topic discussed amongst IT administrators, but I think it has a critical untapped role in the consumer space.

Here is a user scenario that is completely plausible, yet isn’t implemented by anyone:

There is a knock on my door, and it is the FedEx man. He arrives with my brand new Nokia phone. I sign for the package and immediately start the ritualistic unboxing process. I pop my SIM card into the phone and turn it on for the first time. It asks me to register my device on nokia.com to be able to interact with it in a rich way. Why not? I double click the browser icon on my PC and point it to nokia.com.

At the website I enter in the typical registration details, and I create a username, devilsrejection, that in turn gives me my own private page at devilsrejection.nokia.com. My friend Jennifer calls me to come over to hang out later tonight. I agree to this rendezvous.

I’m at my friends house and we’re listening to a new CD she just purchased. I really am enjoying track 7 and I would like to take it with me. I take my phone out of my pocket and click the "manage by pc" button. The phone says "enabled" and I walk over to my friend’s computer. I open up her browser and type in devilsrejection.nokia.com, login, and I am presented with a UI that gives me access to the contacts on my phone, my to-do list, my calendar, the pictures I took, basically everything that I can manipulate on my phone is accessible via this website. I click "upload a file" and then select the mp3 she just ripped for me, and off it goes, directly onto my mobile phone. After that process is finished, and I left my friends house, I’m on the train going home. I plug my headphones into my Nokia and enjoy the song that I just uploaded to it while I was spending time with Jennifer.

Now did you understand what happened in that user scenario? I have a Nokia device that I register on nokia.com which then gives me my own private URL, in this case devilsrejection.nokia.com. My mobile has a built in web server; when I click the "manage by pc" button on my phone it pings nokia.com my IP address therefore setting up the forwarding correctly similar to dyndns. It then proceeds to enable the web server I hold in my hands. When I go to devilsrejection.nokia.com it is the remote management console to my device. I am literally manipulating data on my mobile via a web browser.

Think about the possibilities for a moment. The Google Suite, Outlook Web Access, and Zimbra show us that a PIM is in every way shape and form as capable as its desktop counterpart. The problem most people have is that they want to be able to manipulate that data in Outlook and have it stay in sync on multiple devices. Why not just rethink this prospect to data centralization, on my Nokia, and have it manageable on every device that can connect to the internet. Better yet, for the safety conscious out there, why not let Nokia backup all the data on my phone incase something were to go wrong.

Consumers don’t understand exchange servers, or push email. They do however understand going to a website. Many people take pictures on their phone, but don’t know how to take that image off. Even worse carriers are charging ridiculous prices for each MMS you send. How nice would it be to spend a day with your family, go back to their home, use their computer and give them all the pictures you took today for their collection without ever having to plug in a cable.

Better yet imagine being at a public terminal that you know has no USB ports, so therefore that USB flash drive you got for Christmas is useless. However, you put your document on your phone via that remote management site at home, and then you download that file to a public terminal via that same handy dandy remote management website.

I encourage you to check out these screenshots of Zimbra

Those are in a browser window, very very rich AJAX. Take Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Outlook out of the damn equation. Why do I need to install an application that can mange calendar data, then install an application to sync calendar data, just so I can stay organized? You know what really sucks the most about having to install those 2 applications? It limits me to manipulating my data to either my phone, or that sole machine which has the Nokia PC Suite and Outlook installed. Can you say ineffective?! Imagine if my phone had a web server with Zimbra installed. Enterprise class data management in the palm (NSDQ: PALM) of my hand, anywhere I go, just a web browser away.

Now I don’t have a degree in programming or networking, but if anything I said is not possible then please tell me. I do think everything I discussed in this article is implementable; it’s just that no one has done it yet. My only question is why?

My laptop is my life, but my phone however … the potential is only limited to your imagination Nokia. If you need me to further elaborate on any of these ideas then feel free to contact me and start a conversation. I refuse to call your phones mobile computers since they do such a poor job at the most crucial feature of today’s idea of computing, and that is networking.

This weekend, I’ll be preparing for a trip to Amsterdam to attend the NokiaWorld event with my Foldera and MobileCrunch buddy Oliver Starr. We’ve been invited to blog the event, billed as the mobility event of the year. The agenda looks fantastic and features speakers from a stellar group of companies including Adobe, Cisco, Citigroup, Orange, Sony, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), Warner Brothers, and Yahoo.

Source: ZD-Net Office Evolution Blog

I want to build a list for myself to make sure I can get a maximum amount of NokiaWorld coverage. So if you know who is going to be blogging this event please let me know! As for Marc’s blog … subscribed!

What about Ed? Did anyone contact him with an invite?

There will be a long pause in my blogging today, I’m going to spend the afternoon/evening with my family and friends.

Even if Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday celebrated in your country, give your mom or dad a call and tell them how much you love them for the sake of doing it.

E-Series is a blog
that I found on the net which sparked my interest in the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E61; it is what ultimately
led to my purchase of the device. Not only that but this blog is a testament to
the passion this bloke has for the Nokia E-Series.

Now he’s going to be in
Amsterdam, during the same time as Nokia World. Sad thing is registration
is closed, and even if it wasn’t closed, he couldn’t afford the out of pocket
expense.

So this is my open request to you Nokia: Let this blogger do his job, let him attend the show, and may he share whatever knowledge he gains at Nokia World with the rest of us. It isn’t
everyday that a passionate user just happens to be in the same place and same time
as the company he is passionate about.