I was on my way today to a high-security area near the Beirut International Airport when the inevitable happened and I got lost twice: once near Dahyeh and once near Burj el Brajneh. I pulled out Ovi Maps on my Nokia N97 Mini (which I had stubbornly decided not to use because the instructions were simple enough and I couldn’t possibly get lost, could I?!) and eventually arrived to my destination safe and sound. But I had to go through roads that I normally would avoid and it took some courage to keep stepping on the gas and trust Ovi Maps to get me through when all I wanted to do was make a u-turn and get outta there as soon as possible.
Now I’m pretty sure the situation wasn’t as draconian as I make it sound like and that the streets I went through are perfectly safe, but it got me thinking about the need for a special version of Ovi Maps for Lebanon which I describe to you below with my usual tongue-in-cheek style. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Lebanon, Ovi Maps, Politics, Religion, Tongue In Cheek
I’ve been using my iPod Touch (which was accumulating dust in my drawer) for more than a month now, as a 2nd device next to my Nokia N97 Mini. With this device combination, I can pretty much do anything I want to do on my computer and with as much convenience. It’s a joy to be able to know that two small things that fit into my pocket can easily replace a full computer.
One problem I have run into though is the lack of a way to transfer files from my Nokia N97 Mini to my iPod Touch and vice versa. Now before you start screaming for the disgrace as the iPod Touch doesn’t have an accessible file system and thus can’t really communicate with other devices on this basis, I want to point out that my iTouch is hacker/cracked/jailbroken/whatever-u-wanna-call it. I’m also pretty sure that there’s a way to do this but I’m sort of missing something.
Ovi Maps, oh my!
If you told me one year ago that I’d be using Ovi Maps (of all other mapping services) for a life-changing decision, I’d have laughed at you so hard I’d have snorted. I was a loyal Google Maps user at the time, and didn’t see myself switching anytime soon.
But Ovi Maps came a long way since then. First with the synchronization of favorites and routes with the Ovi account service, then by making the maps for Lebanon (where I live) available and fully detailed, and lastly by providing all walk and drive navigation free. All of a sudden, I hadn’t just switched to Ovi Maps, I was evangelizing it, to a point where my mom (yes, mom, who actually hates anything related to technology and tells me my passion with phones is a waste of time) kept asking me to demonstrate Ovi Maps to anyone who visited us or anyone we visited. “Show them the map and how it tells you where to go!”, “zoom, zoom… this is where we are”, all followed by a smile and “it’s free”.
Actually my mom is the reason I’m writing this. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Now don’t take the title of this article in a bad way. No. Far from that. Actually, I have tons of admiration for Apple for being able to pull this off without customers screaming their heart out that the company is just feeding them one lie after another and deciding to boycott the hell out of it.
Disclaimer: I’m writing this article from my Macbook, with my iPod Touch on the couch beside me. So you know I’m not a hater. I don’t have an iPhone though, I have a Nokia N97 Mini and I’m an active writer in the Symbian Blogosphere.
Let’s go back, what, 3 years has it been now?! Yes, 3 years I think, and a few months give or take. Rewind to Apple’s positions on the iPhone 1st gen launch.
- Apple claim #1: You don’t need 3G. Edge is fast enough.
- Apple claim #2: You don’t need native apps. Web apps are the future.
- Apple claim #3: You don’t need GPS. Cell triangulation is super accurate.
- Apple claim #4: Menu & Folder organization is over complicated. Make it simple with only icons.
- Apple claim #5: You don’t need multitasking. Our system remembers where you left off when you relaunch.
- Apple claim #6: You don’t need a physical keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is faaaaaast and accurate.
While updating my Facebook Privacy Settings today due to their new mess of a policy, my eyes got caught on a link I have added under my websites: http://www.poemhunter.com/rita-el-khoury. No, that isn’t a typo. Unbelievable as it may be to those who know me from the Symbian/Nokia blogging scene, I used to be a young (rising) poet once.
I started writing in 1996, at the age of 11, but I eventually threw away everything I wrote in 2000 and decided to start fresh. At the beginning, it was exclusively all French poetry, until 2003 when I noticed I knew enough English words to venture in that area as well. I also have some random Arabic poems here and there. The problem though is that my last poem dates back to October 2007 and it saddens me. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Facebook, PoemHunter, Poetry
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