Archive Page 10

Back from Lake Maggiore, Italy

Just returned from our 9 days honeymoon to Lago Maggiore, Italy.

It was amazing!! Beautiful landscape, magnificent view, some 400 pictures and videos weighing over 4 GB. It will take some time to sort everything out, and much like our NYC trip, there will be a ‘101 guide to Lago Maggiore’ post, soon.

In the meantime, couple of pictures, a teaser to what’s coming ahead. Enjoy!

The view from our room, Hotel Astoria Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy

The view from our room @ Hotel Astoria Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy

Our Mercedes-Benz SLK 200 - Thanks Hertz for the upgrade :-)

Our Mercedes-Benz SLK 200 - Thanks Hertz for the upgrade 🙂

Lago Maggiore, taken from Mottarone Mt.

Lago Maggiore, taken from Mottarone Mt.

Emmys: Mad Men and The Big Bang Theory

I was very excited to hear the 2010 Emmy Winners, specifically Jim Parsons’ (Dr. Sheldon Cooper) win for The Big Bang Theory, Mad Men’s 3rd consecutive win for Best Drama and Modern Family‘s double win, for Best Comedy and Best Supporting Actor. Well deserved!! Watch them.

Boys Club - Inside Man Med | Rolling Stones

Picture part of a photo gallery, by Rolling Stones, ‘Inside Mad-Men‘.

Review: Nokia Booklet 3G

The Nokia Booklet 3G isn’t something’s you’d expect to see from the world’s largest cellular manufacturer, but times have changed.

Nokia is still #1 in terms of market-share, but its dominance isn’t as strong as it used to be, with Apple, Google, and Microsoft making industry-changing initiatives – and basically saying ‘we can play in multiple fields, not just our own’. Those initiative brought Google to the hardware market with the Nexus One, Microsoft to strengthen her investments in search and mobile and Apple with iPhone/iPad. The three screens (also as PDF) model also helped the cellular industry push forward, diminishing the boundary between software/IT/technology companies – everyone is doing everything now.

Nokia Booklet 3G

Nokia Booklet 3G

The Nokia Booklet 3G is Nokia’s first attempt to enter the PC ‘war-zone’, and the particularly hot netbook scene. Nokia is hoping its close ties with mobile operators will help push the Booklet 3G, making it an alternative to all the Asus/Lenovo/HP/Samsung/Dell netbooks out there. And after spending 2 weeks with it – Nokia has a winner in its hands.

The Booklet is beautiful, especially in the light blue I received (Black and White also available), and draw quite the attention. The clean design is also surprising, with neat, rounded lines, very Apple-like of Nokia. All ports are located on the right and left sides, leaving the front and back areas clear. The bottom keeps this theme, with just 2 clips to eject the battery – which means there’s no way to increase RAM.

Nokia Booklet 3G alongside Logitech Harmony One

Nokia Booklet 3G alongside Logitech Harmony One

Nokia booklet 3G comes with the usual specifications of the niche market, although I expected more power in the RAM and HD portions (1GB and 120GB, respectively). Even so, the Intel Atom Z530 running at 1.6GHz is doing a solid work with Windows 7 Starter, fast response, navigating multiple applications, wake-up from sleep and all. One of the best features in netbooks (and a major reason for buying mine) is the battery time. A year ago, 7-8 hours were considered amazing, now the numbers are reaching 10 and even 12 hours. Nokia Booklet 3G did a fine job in that area as well, giving solid 9 hours of intense work.

Nokia Booklet 3G: Lots of ports - USB 2.0 and HDMI

Lots of ports - USB 2.0 and HDMI

In terms of connectivity, the Booklet comes fully stocked, as expected from a world leader: 802.11 b/g/n wifi, BT 2.1 with EDR, built-in 3G modem (sim-card slot) for data only, and on-board GPS chip for use with OVi Maps service. The official specs also mentions motion sensor, but I couldn’t find how to enable/use it.

There’s plenty of data transfer options too: 3 USB 2.0, HDMI slot, SD Card reader, sim-card slot (data only), and a combined headphones+microphone socket, for Skype calls (integrated 1.3 Mega-pixel).

Eventually, it all boils down to pricing and plans. In Israel, netbooks are very popular, and in 2009 increased their market share over traditional laptops. Top 3 cellular providers all have plans that offer you a netbook+data package for 36 months at $10/month, a lucrative proposition, especially for students or for families with kids, as a 2nd or 3rd laptop.

Nokia did a fine work on its first non-cellphone device. With Nokia World 2010 just around the corner, I’m looking forward to see how Nokia is planning on building-up the lineup, with various OS options (MeeGo perhaps), and respond to the touch phenomena that’s overwhelming the western world.

The Real Life Facebook LIKE Button

The Coca-Cola Village is an Israeli summer tradition.

Every year, in July-August, thousands of kids in their summer break attend ‘The Village’, a 5-day camp, organized by Coca-Cola Israel, with fun activities, pool, social games and Coca Cola drinks of course. This year, e-dologic, the interactive agency working with Coca-Cola Israel, has developed a very cool solution for connecting the offline world with the online – facebook.

The real life life button - coca-cola village

The real life life button - coca-cola village

Each kid upon entering the village received an RFID bracelet, with his/her facebook profile saved, securely, in that chip. In turn, the kid was able to ‘Like’ each activity he/she performed at the village, showing up on their facebook profile as a 15sec video, outlining the activity, which was pre-recorded.

The ‘Real life facebook like button’ was a huge success (Hebrew), with tens of thousands #LIKES, for a total of under 1,000 participants! Facebook sent over Mark Cowan, VP Operationsת Europe, to visit the village and experience ‘The Like Machine‘ first-hand, after Mark Zukerberg heard about it at Cannes Lions by Enon Landenberg, e-dologic CEO.

Update on privacy: in a related post (Hebrew) by Jonathan Klinger, it was suggested that the RFID tag stores the username and password details of each participant, thus making it easy to steal the credentials using a simple RFID reader (or in the event of lost/stolen tag). I double-checked with e-dologic the info I had: The RFID tag only stores a unique id number, worthless on its own. When a participant moves his hand near the RFID reader in the village, the on-site server (protected both physically and virtually) receives the participant location and unique id number, to match against its own DB. Every cycle (Coca-Cola Village has 5-7 cycles, each one 3 days) the DB is formatted, for security reasons. On top of that, participants pay a 15US$ fee to receive the RFID tag, refundable upon return of the tag.

The Real Life LIKE Butoon – Case Study – Coca-Cola Village:

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.