@nechbi

At 18:30 on Friday evening I let the train take the strain on my trip to the onedotzero / Nokia N900 event in London over the weekend, which I was kindly invited to by the folks at WOM World / Nokia.

For more technical details see my hands-on Nokia N900 review at mypocketOS.com.

Arriving in London

On arriving at Paddington Station at 20:40, I set about getting across London to the hotel.

Using a Nokia N82 I was able to navigate my way around the London Underground using a trusty little app, that I use every time I go to London, call MetrO. Its great as you don’t need to worry about looking at and understanding the Underground map and figuring out where you are and need to head, you just enter you start and end locations, and it will tell you which line to take and in which direction, and where you need to get off and change. So easy!

I arrived at the hotel at 21.45 and checked in, got to my room and crashed.

Meet & Greet breakfast

Down to breakfast on the first day, and it was time to meet my fellow bloggers that have also travelled to London for the event, as well as Donna and Robbie from WOM World / Nokia.

Jay Montano (My Nokia Blog) came up from Cardiff
Gerry Moth (NokiAAddict) flew down from Glasgow
Valerio Valerio (Valerio Valerio’s Blog) had flown in from Portugal
Mike Evans (Mobile Mentalism) took the short journey from Reading
and Roger Sperberg flew in from New Jersey.

On arrival we were presented with 3 Nokia N900 handsets to have a play with over breakfast.

N900 Workshops

A couple of workshops were set-up for us, that allowed us to have a better play with the Nokia N900’s plus also to meet the N900 Prodcut Manager. So we headed over to the BFI Southbank after breakfast.

For more details on the workshops, head over to mypocketos.com for a hands on review of the N900.

Lunch

Finding a nice place to eat on the Southbank allowed everybody to have a chat about their first impressions of the Nokia N900 and the discussions with Jussi, the Product Manager.

The London Eye

After lunch, it was time for a spot of sightseeing, and what better way to do that than on the London Eye.

The onedotzero ‘identity’ installation

Later on that evening we were back at the Southbank to see the Nokia onedotzero ‘identity’ installation outside the BFI.

Read more about the onedotzero / Nokia N900 installation at mypocketOS.com.

Sunday

After a hearty breakfast, it was a great time for all the bloggers to share more details about their own websites, mobile experiences and of course talk about the events of the previous day, plus also try and grab some time online.

Later that afternoon, we were back at the BFI again, for the Hackers Workshop, where we were presented with some cool retro 80’s products brought up-to-date using the new Nokia N900.

Read more about the Nokia Push N900 Project at myPocketOS.com

After the event closed at 5, it was time to head back to Paddington for the journey back home.

You can read more about the Nokia N900 and other mobile news at my main site mypocketOS.com.

This weekend I have been invited to London to take part in some Nokia workshops to see the newly announced N900 courtesy of WOM World/Nokia.

The event is taking place at the BFI Southbank in London and will allow myself and 5 other bloggers the chance to have a play with the new Nokia N900 (not currently available to the public) and to get to speak to the Product Manager for the handset.

For more information and updates about my trip to London head over to mypocketOS.com for all the details.

After 4 1/2 years of use sat under my TV as the media hub for my living room, it was time to say good bye.

I bought the Mac Mini in March 2005 not long after the ground breaking piece of hardware from Apple was announced. This was my first venture into being a Mac owner, and my very first Apple product.

Equipped with an Apple wireless Keyboard and mouse, the Mac Mini was perfect for watching movies, playing music via iTunes and surfing the Internet on a large LCD TV connected to a surround sound system.

Having found the joys of using a Mac so pleasurable, it then led me on to purchase numerous iPods over the years and eventually to the iMac that I have today.

Sadly the original G4 Mac Mini was starting to show its age, and creak under the demands of today’s software.  It just was not up to the job of playing HD content, as it would stutter it’s way through films.

Also as more and more software was being developed primiraly for Intel based Mac’s my G4 Mac Mini was starting to get left in the dark.  And with Snow Leopard just launched last week, the Mac Mini’s days are well and truly numbered.

Luckily the Mac Mini has found himself a new owner and a new home.

Today saw the launch of my brand new website My Pocket OS a site focussing on those Operating Systems (OSes) that are starting to invade our pockets.

Mobiles have been around for years, but only now are they starting to be more than just a device for making calls and sending text messages.

Since the dramatic arrival of the iPhone in 2007, Apple have set a benchmark for others to follow. Google released its Android operating system a year later and the likes of Nokia have being struggling to play catch-up with it’s Symbian platform.

Today’s mobiles are turning into mobile computers – the Mobile OS wars have commenced..

Check out My Pocket OS and let me know what you think.

All good things come to an end they say, and that is what has happened to iGadgetLife.com, well for me anyway.

I have sold the site to new owners, who will take over the iGadgetLife helm and expand on the work that I started.

It was a tough decision to let iGadgetLife go, as having built it up from a hobby blog (nechbi.com) I kinda got attached to it.

Through the site I have met some cool people, been to great places and of course been able to get my hands on some very exciting new technology!

For now I can be found here on blog.nechbi.com and on Twitter.

Thanks to everybody that stopped by and got involved, it has been fun!

OK – I really could not resist temptation any longer and picked myself up an Apple iPhone yesterday!

For those of you in the UK, you’ll probably be aware that o2, who exclusively have the iPhone, slashed £100 off the price of the 8GB iPhone to £169 as it would appear that the handset is going ‘end of line’.

I have been toying with the idea of just getting an iPod Touch since that first appeared, but now that the 8GB iPhone is cheaper than an iPod Touch, I just had to do it..

Of course I didn’t want to sign up to an expensive o2 tarrif for 18 months, so promplty Jailboke the handset within minutes of getting it home..

I’ll keep you posted about my experiences with the handset and how, it compares to the market leaders Nokia and their Nseries handsets.

The monster that is Mobile World Congress has come and gone.. and I for one was lucky enough to be able to attend.

So what did people make of the announcements by Nokia?

The N96 - lovely as it is, is really just a refined N95 with some extra bells and whistles.. mainly DVB-H which isn’t even available in most countries  yet.  I understand that when you have a pretty good product in the N95 – you don’t need to re-invent the wheel, just make it better  and I think that they (hopefully) have done that.

Again the same can be said for the N78 – which is the N73 replacement.. Again – its taken the best of its sibling and enhanced on it..

Overall have we heard anything groundbreaking?  Well actually I think not..  Nokia Maps – lovely as it is.. its a Beta, again its just an update (ok a major improvement on the original) but not really anything new.

So what happened to Touch?  This is the one thing that I was really hoping to see.  Sadly it was a no-show (in handset terms at least).

As much as I like the look of the new handsets and the improvements to the software – I did come a way a little underwhelmed..  Thankfully the whole experience of being at WMC and having access to the Nokia Product Managers while there more than made up for it.

Being an Apple fan – we love the big bang announcements and the Steve Jobs Key Note – you really do get that wow factor.  I know that nobody can match Apple for this. The problem is that they raise the bar and I just expect others to follow..

That being said – I really cannot wait to get my hands on the N96 when it comes out – it rocks!

[Note:  I've been a little slow on the blogging front recently, this was drafted shortly after my trip to WMC, I thought I just as well post it, even if it is a bit late in the day..]

A quick video showing some of my highlights of the WOM World trip to Mobile World Congress, Barcelona.

From meeting the WOM World Attendees, to Nokia Product Managers and finally getting down at the S60 Party.

Day 2 kicked off bright and early with breakfast at 7.30, with an 8.00am coach pickup to take us back into the City. Traffic was very heavy, and it took us longer than expected to get to WMC.

On arrival we had to go pick up our Nokia Exhibition Passes. As you can imagine there were a few other people trying to do the same.

When we finally get our passes we made our way over to the Nokia Hospitality Suite (our base during our time at WMC) to watch a live webcast of the Keynote Speech.

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I am now back in the UK again after spending a few days at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Unfortunately due to some very ropey WiFi at both the event and the hotel, I wasn’t able to bring you guys live coverage as I’d initially hoped. I have quite a bit of work to catch up on (sorting photos & videos etc) so all being well, I’ll have more detailed coverage in the next day or so. For the time here’s a bit about my trip to Barcelona.

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