Nokia has graciously developed a suite of desktop applications for their huge line of phones. After eventually finding all the updates for the N95 I’ve been able to get their Lifeblog application working quite nicely.

First of all don’t bother with the install CD, this is out of date and a hassle to update. Instead download and install Nokia PC Suite from Nokia’s website. Once you’ve done that run the Nokia Series Update Manager:

This will update all the available software for Nokia PC Suite on your computer. This is the only way I’ve been able to find an up to date version of Lifeblog since all of Nokia’s websites are pushing Nokia Photos (which sucks).

Once Lifeblog is installed browse to the photos tab and open it. I’ve had very limited luck with Nokia Photos and Lifeblog is MUCH more responsive and easy to use. Plus I don’t want a multimedia manager, just a posting tool.

When you plug in your phone (or activate Bluetooth) both PC Suite and Lifeblog will recognize your phone. Lifeblog will popup asking you if you would like to automatically sync the phone. Hit yes.

Here is my view of Lifeblog. When you sync with your phone it automatically retrieves the text messages, photos, and videos you have and places them in chronological order. You can zoom in and out. As you can see I shot some test photos and sent a bunch of texts, then the next day I went to the Edmonton car show and sent some more texts.

Double clicking on any item brings up a full screen view of it. Photos fill the screen and provide you with different options in the Properties dialogue.

From this dialogue you can set the description, time/date, and the content and location tags. As well you can view the resolution, size, camera type, and whether the flash was fired or not by hitting the more button.

You can also batch edit items in Lifeblog by selecting multiple items and right-clicking.

The icon bar on the top has the most used actions:

From left to right you can Sync to and from Phone, Export to Burn with Adobe Premier Elements, Delete Item, Email Item, Print, Post to Web, and Flip.

Flipping an item displays any extra meta info in the main view and it useful for quickly viewing location information.

You can flip multiple items at once and the animation is polished and smooth.

Lifeblog also has a Tag Manager which lets you manage and sort by all the tags that you have defined. The manager also gives you a synopsis of how many type of items you have. You can also check off items that you want to hide.

Post to Web is a great capability that Nokia has both on it’s phones and in Lifeblog. Nokia has a partnership with Flickr to provide quick uploading for their services. It’s relatively easy to set up. The one phone uploader only works if you’ve updated your Share Online software for the phone which you can install through PC Suite, but it’s beyond the scope of this review.

http://flickr.com/tools/lifeblog has all the setup instructions you need for adding a new photostream to your Lifeblog. You can also set up a WordPress Lifeblog poster but so far I have had limited success.

When posting to web you can edit the individual photo details and add a description before uploading. If you aren’t interested in messing around with the Flickr uploader or spending a lot of actual time on Flickr (which I find slow and cumbersome) this works well.

You can also Import from PC by right clicking anywhere in the timeline. This allows you to add other photos or text files from your computer. It places them in the timeline based on their date created but it can be changed later.

You can also transfer items from Lifeblog to your phone but personally I find it cumbersome. To do this you need to import items into your timeline and then drag them to the To Phone tab, and then sync.

Realistically you would be better off using the drag and drop area that PC Suite has, and it lets you copy any file format.

Finishing thoughts: I really like the snazzy look and feel of Lifeblog. It’s intuitive enough for a beginner to use but don’t go looking for a photo manager. You can’t create folders or group items into albums. It works great as a nice snap shot of your life through the eyes of your phone and is great for posting a bunch of photos online.

If Nokia could improve one thing it would be to improve blog support. Right now there is a very limited number of services that work in cahoots with Lifeblog.

Personal note: This post was used as my first test of Windows Live Writer. This is also my first real “review”. Please comment on the structure, language, etc. and tell me what you liked and didn’t like.

Luckily the last issue of Technology Review that I will receive before my subscription expires had a great article on the trials and tribulations that Helio has gone through. By the way, Technology Review is a great magazine, however it’s a bit too “sciency” and not enough “techy” for my tastes.

Essentially the ocean is a phone with a revolutionary design. It sports a unique three way spring that allows the phone to slide vertically for making phone calls, and horizontally for a full QWERTY keyboard to type with.

A few amazing features include the ultimate inbox:

Ocean’s integrated messaging dashboard includes out-of-the-box built-in access to AOL email and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! email and Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, EarthLink email and Helio Mail. Ocean will also support push mail from Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN Hotmail, as well as Mail for Microsoft Exchange

Also the Google Maps friends locator, and the 2.4 inch screen that rotates based on orientation. If you are playing a video game the device needs to be rotated so that the d-pad is situated on the left hand side like a normal controller. Probably one of the biggest draws is it’s HTML browser.

SlashGear puts it best:

Dual-slide for both number pad and full QWERTY. 3G for screaming downloads. Two-megapixel camera with flash, GPS, full HTML browser, 2.4-inch 260k colour QVGA display, on-board stereo speakers, 200MB of internal memory and microSD for more than 2GB more, USB Mass Storage Mode with PC and Mac compatibility… I’m throwing all this out in one fat chunk because if I were to talk you through it we’d be here all day.

I would ditch my BlackBerry Pearl for this baby in a heartbeat. Now if it was only available in Canada…