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Very few hotels are gadget friendly.

First of all, you never know in advance if a hotel is going to have an internet connection or not. On their web pages they will tell you that there are *color* televisions in the room, that hairdriers are available and so on - but nothing about internet.

And if you call and ask, they will either not understand the question or simply reply "yes". But a "yes" might just as well mean that they have a "dataport" at the back of the telephone in the room so you can connect your laptop using its built in modem...

Once you arrive, you ask about wifi during checkin and - if you're lucky - they will tell you that WiFi is available ... for 30 euros/dollars per day. Yes, really, this is the price here at Holiday Inn in Cannes, France today: 30 euros for 24 hours using Hubtelecom. Fortunatelly, a single Orange hotspot was also within range, offering 24 hours internet access for "only" 9.90 euros.

Ok, you protest but you know you'll cough it up since, well, internet access is invaluable (and GSM/3G roming charges are even more expensive so you can't rely on tethering your cell phone either).

You enter your room, take out your laptop and realize there are no electrical plugs anywhere. Eventually, after crawling around on all four underneath a desk where the rug has been poorly vacuumed for a decade, you find that one plug that the desk lamp uses.

Finally you get around to actually start using your expensive internet connection. You log in and start using the net. Then you take out your WiFi enabled smartphone to make use of WiFi and avoid those expensive roaming charges for data - but that won't work. That expensive internet connection works only with one device, the one you used to log in. And what about that WiFi enabled digital camera that is now filled with travel photos and would need to be uploaded? No luck. You would need to buy three WiFi connections in parallell for a total of 90 euros per day. And if there are two of you, that makes six devices. Right now, I'm sitting in this Holliday Inn room with two laptops, two iPhones and two WiFi enabled cameras - and the hotel offered a 30 euros a day WiFi connection that can only be used by one device.

I have been in this situation before, many times, so come equpied. I'm now carrying the Asus "Portable Wireless Access Point" WL-330gE. A small USB powered external box with two WiFi devices: one is a client that connects to the hotel WiFi and the other is a base station that "forwards" the internet connection it has aquired to all of your devices. Since it uses NAT (Network Address Translation), the hotel WiFi hotspot will only see the Asus device and not all of your different devices.

You connect the USB power cable to the Asus box and now you will be able to see a new WiFi base station with whatever name you have given it. You connect your laptop to the asus device and go to 192.168.1.220 (its default ip) and you see a web based admin interface where the Asus device lists all external WiFi base stations it can see. You select the hotel WiFi network and the Asus will then connect to it and forward it to your laptop and all your other devices that connect to the Asus. You can, and should of course, configure the Asus to provide password protected access to your devices so that only your own devices can make use of it and not the entire neighbourhood.

Sharing a connection like this might be agains the licens agreement with some providers and in that case you should of course respect that agreement and pay 180 euros a day for your hotel internet connection...

Apple's success with the App Store has pushed Nokia to create something similar for their Symbian based smartphones. Nokia has had limited success in the US and their phones are not always even considered to be smartphones but regardless of what you call them, you can install third party applications on them - it's just really, really difficult. Globally, there are probably a hundred million Symbian Series 40 and 60 devices in use and if Nokia can create a simple way for these users to find and install applications, it would be huge.

According to today's press release by Nokia, that is exactly what they will do and the "Ovi Store" will open in May. The press release makes it sound like Ovi Store is a guaranteed success, but if you read carefully, there is one interesting detail hidden in there:

"Nokia's global developer support program, will also continue to support, educate and challenge its more than 4 million registered developers"

That's right, there are already 4 million (!) registered Symbian developers out there, and they have been around for years. And what has Nokia got to show for this?

If this is what 4 million Symbian developers can accomplish then perhaps there is something more fundamentally wrong with Symbian than the lack of an App Store? No matter how good the Ovi Store is going to be, it will not make developing software for Nokia phones any easier.

There has been much talk about how great Apple's App Store is, but Apple's success with the App Store is ultimately based on how good their Software Development Kit (SDK) is and how easy it is to write great software for the iPhone.

So in May, if the Ovi Store doesn't quite measure up to the App Store, this just might be the reason.

So I tried Windows 7. Now, remind me again; why is this not called Vista SP3?
Yes, they changed the way the task bar looks, but...
Is Microsoft just desperately trying to dump the "Vista" -brand and all the negative associations with it? How is this different from Microsoft's "Mojave experiment"?

I can't remember the last time I withdrew money from an ATM machine. In fact, I can't remember the last time I used cash. These days, I pay for everything using cards or on-line banking services. It has certainly been months since I last used cash, perhaps even half a year or more.

This year I will pay attention to my payment habits and see if I can make it trough the year (2009) without using cash. This is not a new year's resolution or an active attempt to avoid cash, it is simply an observation to find out if use cash at all during the year - and if so, how many times. If I do use, I'll make a comment every time at the end of this blog posting.

The Helsinki-Vantaa airport, Finlands largest, has finally gotten free WiFi that covers the entire airport. About time.
A small cost for the aiport that will greatly improve how many travelers experience waiting for their flights. Finavia, the former Finnish Civil Aviation Administration, that runs the airport pays for the service so that it is free for its customers.

Now it's only another 10-20 years and we'll have WiFi on the actual flights as well...

I grew up watching DHL advertisements showing a guy in a helicopter delivering a package to some outrageously remote places.

In reality, of course, it's a guy in a van who can't find your door.

I frequently buy small gadgets from dealextreme.com in Hong Kong. The put the stuff in padded envelopes, slap some stamps on it and bring it to the Hong Kong postal office. They then e-mail me a tracking code and at hongkongpost.com I can see real time information about when the package has been put on a plane out of China. About 15 hours later I can use that same tracking code at the postal office web site here in Finland. I can see that the package has arrived at a airport warehouse and follow it as it moves all the way to the local post office. Once it has arrived I just walk over (it's a few blocks away) and pick it up - any day of the week. It's open until nine in the evening on weekdays and six on weekends.

Shipment takes about five days all in all and costs practically nothing.

In the United States, however, US Mail is almost never an option when I order something. Instead, I am offered the chance to enjoy the services of the best private companies in the field of logistics.

I recently bought the new Eye-Fi Explorer SD memory card from the US and the cheapest delivery method cost 50 USD. That for a product that weights about as much as a stamp. Well, ok, with packaging it ways about as much as a chocolate bar. Delivery took four days.

The basic principle of all express logistics companies is that private persons never ever order anything and thus delivery never takes place when people are at home, only during weekdays at office hours. And even if you are at home, there is that sense of excitement: at any moment, without any warning, the doorbell may ring and then you have about 15 seconds to respond our you will have to try again the next day.

My experience is that the delivery is unlikely to reach my door on the first attempt. In stead the package will be returned to a logistics center and I will get a message saying for example "missing door code" and I have to call them and tell them to try to find the right door since we don't have a door with a code lock. And of course this always happens on a friday so I have to wait three days until they try again.

You might try to order it to your work address, but as I work as a subcontractor they never find me or deliver to the wrong company.

Right now, I am waiting for a package sent with DHL from Germany. It has now been on it's way for five days and the tracking system does not work. And of course now it's Friday so during the next two days nothing will happen.

This is supposed to be one of the building blocks in our global economy - getting stuff reliably from sellers to customers. How come it's this difficult?

I have had a number of Nokia smart phones for ten years now and during these ten years I have bought only one application for them.

There have always been add-on software available for Nokia's smart phones. Nokia has been pushing the software development kit (SDK) and generally tried to encourage third party software development for Nokias mobile platform trough all kinds of support programs. The potential market has also been huge, Nokia has been the largest handset manufacturer for years.

During my first few weeks with the iPhone I already bought three applications. I have also installed far more free applications in these few weeks than I ever did with my different Nokia Communicators and Symbian phones.

Why? Buying and installing applications for Nokia phones is complicated while doing the same with the iPhone is a joy. Not only is the App Store a simple to use uniform marketplace that makes finding software simple and and paying for them safe. The App Store is also a place where you don't have to worry about being fooled into installing malware and know software will live up to certain basic quality standards.

Developers have been complaining about the restrictions Apple put on them - no being able to run applications in the background and so on. I love this restriction. Of all the free applications that I installed in my Nokia phones, half took the liberty to run in the background.

Did they run smoothly and withouth making the phone unstable? Of course not.
Did they even need to run in the background in the first place? Of course not.

Not allowing third party applications to run in the background is the only option and I salute Apple for having the currage to stand up to developers and forcing them to play nice with peoples phones.

The iPhone is a tightly controlled and locked down environment and the App Store a carefully controlled walled garden and this is it's streangth.

I don't want every 15-year-old self-taught coder to invent his or her own user interface standard or making his or her own additions to the Application Programming Interface. OpenClip? No thank you.

What is good for the developer may give short term gains but to get long term gains you have to do what is good for the end users that expect simplicity and consistency.

There is room in the market space for the other extreme too, the fully open anything goes platform Android. Both models have their own benefits as neither can offer everything to everyone.

Screenshot: GTS World Racing on the iPhone 3G (5,99 € in AppStore)

One week later than all the cool kids, but now I too have bought an iPhone 3G. The iPhone will be replacing my Nokia E90 Communicator although the iPhone, even unsubsidized, costs far less than the E90 (about 520€ compared to about 820€).

The touch-screen -keyboard used in the iPhone is terrible while the large qwerty keyboard in the E90 is superb. Apart from that, the iPhone is superior: more responsive, more stable, easier to use, more fun, smaller and so on. I have read some complaints about battery life and slow 3G speed but I have not had any of those problems.

One really big improvement over the E90 is the quick positioning service. With the E90 I spent minutes waiting for a GPS signal but the iPhone finds my position immediately and with great precision - even indoors, probably by using the wifi based Skyhook positioning system if a GPS signal is unavailable. And then there is the AppStore - it is a joy to search for and install additional software compared to doing it with a Symbian phone and it keeps all your third party softwares perfectly up-to-date.

Front page, full page ad in Finland's largest newspaper advertising the iPhone 3G on Sunday the 13th of July - two days after it was launched ... and sold out.

The text says "iPhone, that you have been waiting for". It really should say "iPhone, that you are still waiting for".

On Monday (14th of July), I called different stores that Sonera (the operator selling the iPhone in Finland) listed as places selling the iPhone and none had any, they where all sold out.

Well, kind of. They do have phones, but their not for sale as they are reserved.

About a month ago when Jobs showed of the new iPhone, said it would cost a maximum of 200 dollars around the world and the launch date was set - Sonera, started a reservation list. The price in Finland was not published, but it seems many belived the price would actually be something like 125€ - not realizing that the price of the phone is just an arbitrary number as it is subsidized and the real price is made up trough large montly "subscription" fees. By the time the phone went on sale and these same persons realized it would end up costing something like 800€ and not offer unlimited data, many on the reservation list chose not to buy the phone - but they did not cancel their place on the list either. So now stores have phones that are reserved by people with no intention of buying one while those intent on buying have to walk out of stores empty handed.

I was going to update the firmware in my Nokia E90 so I launched VMWare Fusion under OS X to get Windows going. Problem is, Nokia Software Updater requires XP. That's right, no OS X support and no Vista support. It seems the Vista SP1 update broke Nokia's updater software and they still haven't managed to fix it.

I wish they would simply have an update application in the phone that would periodically check for updates and when found, offer to download over WiFi or 3G to the memory card and then allow you to install the new firmware right there in the phone. Now you have to install a poorly functional Windows application and you actually have to pop the battery in the phone to find a serial number in order to check on-line if there is an update available. This is the kind of thing built in auto-update software is supposed to keep track of.