Category: technology

Playing with OAI-PMH with Simple DC

Setting up ircount has got me quite interested in OAI-PMH, so I thought I would have a little play. I was particularly interested in seeing if there was a way to count the number of full text items in a repository, as ROAR does not generally provide this information.

Perl script

I decided to use the http::oai perl module by Tim Brody (who not-so-coincidentally is also responsible for ROAR, which ircount gets its data from).

A couple of hours later I have a very basic script which will roughly report on the number of records and the number of full text items within a repository, you just need to pass it a URL for the OAI-PMH interface.

To show the outcome of my efforts, here is the verbose output of the script when pointed at the University of Sussex repository (Sussex Research Online).

Here is the output for a sample record (see here for the actual oai output for this record, you may want to ‘view source’ to see the XML):

oai:eprints.sussex.ac.uk:67 2006-09-19
Retreat of chalk cliffs in the eastern English Channel during the last century
relation: http://eprints.sussex.ac.uk/67/01/Dornbusch_coast_1124460539.pdf
MATCH http://eprints.sussex.ac.uk/67/01/Dornbusch_coast_1124460539.pdf
relation: http://www.journalofmaps.com/article_depository/europe/Dornbusch_coast_1124460539.pdf
dc.identifier: http://eprints.sussex.ac.uk/67/
full text found for id oai:eprints.sussex.ac.uk:67, current total of items with fulltext 6
id oai:eprints.sussex.ac.uk:67 is the 29 record we have seen

It first lists the identifier and date, the next line shows the title, it then shows a dc.relation field which contains a full text item on the eprints server, because it looks like a full text item and on the same server the next line shows it has found a line that MATCHed the criteria which means we add this item to the count of items with full text items attached.

The next line is another dc.identifier, again pointing to a fulltext URL for this item. However this time it is on a different server (i.e. the publishers), so this line is not treated as a fulltext item, and so it does not show a MATCH (i.e. had the first identifier line not existed, this record would not be considered one with a fulltext item).

Finally another dc.identifier is shown, then a summary generated by the script concluding that this item does have fulltext, is the sixth record seen with fulltext, and is the 29th record we have seen.

The script, as we will now see, has to use various ‘hacky’ methods to try and guess the number of fulltext items within a repository, as different systems populate simple Dublin Core in different ways.

Repositories and OAI-PMH/Simple Dublin Core.

It quickly became clear on experimenting with different repositories that the different repository software populate Simple Dublin Core in a different manner. Here are some examples:

Eprints2: As you can see above in the Sussex example, fulltext items are added as a dc.relation field, but so too are any publisher/official URLs, which we don’t want to count. The only way to differentiate between the two is to check the domain name within the dc.relation url and see if it matches that of the OAI interface we are working with. This is no means solid, quite possible for a system to have more than one hostname and what the user gives as the OAI URL may not match what the system gives as the URLs for fulltext items.

Eprints3: I’ll use the Warwick repository for this, see the HTML and OAI-PMH for the record used in this example.

<dc:format>application/pdf</dc:format>
<dc:identifier>http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/46/1/WRAP_Slade_jel_paper_may07.pdf</dc:identifier>
<dc:relation>http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jel.45.3.629</dc:relation>
<dc:identifier>Lafontaine, Francine and Slade, Margaret (2007) Vertical integration and firm boundaries: the evidence. Journal of Economic Literature, Vol.45 (No.3). pp. 631-687. ISSN 0022-0515</dc:identifier>
<dc:relation>http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/46/</dc:relation>

Unlike Eprints2, the fulltext item is now in a dc.identifier field, the official/publisher URL is still a dc.relation field, which makes it easier to count the former without the latter. EP3 also seems to provide a citation of the item which is also in a dc.identifier as well. (as an aside: EPrints 3.0.3-rc-1, as used by Birkbeck and Royal Holloway, seems to act differently, missing out any reference to the fulltext).

Dspace: I’ll use Leicester’s repository, see the HTML and OAI-PMH for the record used. (I was going to use Bath’s but looks like they have just moved to Eprints!)

<dc:identifier>http://hdl.handle.net/2381/12</dc:identifier>
<dc:format>350229 bytes</dc:format>
<dc:format>application/pdf</dc:format>

This is very different to Eprints. DC.identifier is used for a link to the html page for this item (like eprints2 but unlike eprints3 which uses dc.relation for this). However it does not mention either the fulltext item or the official/publisher url at all (this record has both). The only clue that this has a full text item is the dc.format (‘application/pdf’), and so my hacked up little script looks out for this as well.

I looked at a few other Dspace based repositories (Brunel HTML / OAI ; MIT HTML / OAI) and they seemed to produce the same sort of output, though not being familiar with Dspace I don’t know if this is because they were all the same version or if the OAI-PMH interface has stayed consistent between versions.

I haven’t even checked out Fedora, bepress Digital Commons or DigiTool yet (all this is actually quite time consuming).

Commentary

I’m reluctant to come up with any conclusions because I know the people who developed all this are so damn smart. When I read the articles and posts produced by those (who were) on the OAI-PMH working group, or were in some way involved, it is clear they have a vast understanding of standards, protocols, metadata, and more. Much of what I have read is clear and well written and yet I still struggle to understand it due to my own metal shortcomings!

Yet what I have found above seems to suggest we still have a way to go in getting this right.

Imagine a service which will use data from repositories: ‘Geography papers archive’, ‘UK Working papers online’, ‘Open Academic Books search’ (all fictional web sites/services which could be created which harvest data from repositories, based on a subject/type subset).

Repositories are all about open access to the full text of research, and it seems to me that harvesters need to be able to presume that the fulltext item, and other key elements, will be in a particular field. And perhaps it isn’t too wild to suggest that one field should be used for one purpose, for example, both Dspace and Eprints provide a full citation of the item in the DC metadata, which an external system may find useful in some way, however it is in the dc.identifier field, yet various other bits of information are also in the very same field, so anyone wishing to extract citations would need to run some sort of messy test to try and ascertain which identifier field, if any, contains the citation they wish to use.

To some extent things can be improved by getting repository developers, harvester developers and OAI/DC experts round a table to agree a common way of using the format. Hmm, but ring any bells? I’ve always thought that the existence of the Bath profile was probably a sign of underlying problems with Z39.50 (though am almost totally ignorant on z39.50). even this will only solve some problems, the issue of multiple ‘real world’ elements being put in to the same field (both identifier and relation are used for a multiple of purposes), as mentioned above, is still a problem.

I know nothing about metadata nor web protocols (left with me, we would all revert to tab delimited files!), so am reluctant to suggest or declare what should happen. But there must be a better fit for our needs than Simple DC. Qualified DC being a candidate (I think, again, I know nuffing). see this page highlighting some of the issues with simple dc.

I guess one problem is that it is easy to fall in to the trap of presuming repository item = article/paper. When of course if could be almost anything, the former would be easy to narrowly define, but the latter – which is the reality – is much harder to give a clear schema for. Perhaps we need ‘profiles’ for the common different item types (articles/theses/images). I think this is the point that people will point out that (a) this has been discussed a thousand times already (b) has probably already been done!. So I’ll shut up and move on (here’s one example of what has already been said).

Other notes:

  • I wish OAI-PMH had a machine readable way of telling clients if they can harvest items, reuse the data, or even access it at all (apologies if it does allow this already). The human text of an IR policy may forbid me sucking up the data and making it searchable elsewhere, but how will I know this?
  • Peter Millington of RSP/SHERPA recently floated the idea of a OAI-PMH verb/command to report the total number of items. His point is that it should be simple for OAI servers to report such a number with ease (probably a simple SQL COUNT(*)) but at the moment OAI-PMH clients – like mine – have to manually count each item, parsing thousands of lines of data, which can take minutes, creating processing requirements for both server and client, to answer a simple question of how many items are there? I echo and support Peter’s idea of creating a count verb to resolve this.
  • Would be very handy if OAI-PMH servers could give an application name and version number as part of the response to the ‘Identify’ verb. Would be very useful when trying to work around the differences between applications and software versions.

Back to the script

Finally. I’m trying to judge how good the little script is, does it report an accurate number of full text items. If you run an IR and would be happy for me to run the script against your repository (I don’t think it creates a high load on the server), then please reply to this post. Ideally with your OAI-PMH URL and how many full text items you think you have, though neither are essential. I’ll attach the results to a comment to this post.

Food for thought, I’m pondering the need to check the dc.type of an item, and only count items of certain types, e.g. should we include images? one image of a piece of research sounds fine, 10,000 images suddenly distorts the numbers. Should it include all items, or just those that are of certain types (article, thesis etc)?

Posted on by chriskeene 4

ircount : new location, new functionality

A while a go, I released a simple website which reported on the number of items in UK repositories over time. It collected its data from ROAR but by collecting it on a weekly basis could provide a table showing growth week by week.

First it has a new home: http://www.nostuff.org/ircount/

Secondly, it now collects data for every institutional (and departmental) repository registered in ROAR across the world. Not just the UK. It has been collecting the data since July.

The country integration isn’t perfect, you have to select a country, and then you are more or less restricted to that country (though you can hack it, see the ‘info&help’), and there is a lot of potential with improving this. There are also a couple of bugs, for example when comparing four repositories it seems to (a) forget which country you were dealing with, and (b) it stops showing the graph/chart.

I’m currently looking at trying to make an educated guess at how many fulltext items are in a given repository. This is proving to be a steep learning curve in the joys of OAI-PMH, and how the different repository systems (and the different versions on these systems) have allocated information about the fulltext in to different Dublin Core (DC) elements. But this is for another post.

In the mean time, I hope the worldwide coverage is of some use, and feel free to leave any comments.

Posted on by chriskeene 1

Radio Pop

Radio Pop is an interesting experimental site from the fantastic BBC radio labs.

It is a sort of soical network site for radio listening. It only records your listening through the ‘radio pop’ live streams. I (like many) mainly listen to listen again and the radio iplayer, and they are working on intergrating with both. You can see my profile here.

Screenshot of radio pop
Screenshot of radio pop - click for a larger version

You can ‘pop’ what you are currently listening to (basically a ‘i like this’ button). I’ve added my ‘pop’ rss feed to my dipity timeline.

Posted on by chriskeene

WordPress themes and plugins

Of interest to those who use WordPress (and those who have an opinion on web design).

Had a few hours off this afternoon so have been playing around with WordPress a bit.

New plugins:

  • Google sitemap XML : does what it says, and easy to use
  • Theme Test Drive : allows you to preview other themes (on your site) without having to make the switch first. Good plugin, seems to work well, config settings are under the theme menu of WP.
  • ‘Twitter for WordPress‘ : you guessed it, shows one (or more) twitter feeds either as a widget or by calling a function. Works well as a widget (and all config is carried out in the widget area).
  • OpenID for WordPress : allows those leaving comments, and myself as blog author to sign in via OpenID. While it’s been noted that OpenID does have usability issues, it still seems like a good option to have. I’m leaving this active, it does work, though can’t see it being used. You don’t it near the ‘comment’ box on a post, though it is there on the signin page (which people probably would never go to), once signed in to openid (which, if you are like me, requires trying to remember what your URL is) you are actually taken to the WP admin dashboard (which scared me to start with, anyone can do this on my blog!), but the dashboard itself doesn’t reveal anything important and all other areas are locked down. In theory the user could then set up a profile, though comeone this is nostuff, why would you want a profile here? So kudos for a good plugin, though can’t see it being used on this backwater of a blog.
  • links to the above can be found here.

Themes

The first browser I used was Netscape 1, possibly 2. By default it would display black text on a grey background. This was good, far easier to read than black on white.

Since then I’ve always had a thing against plain white backgrounds, and have avoided using them for my personal sites: from the mid/late 90s (but then didn’t we all have coloured backgrounds back then!), to static web pages today, and also this very blog.

The theme is Greening, I like it as the shades of green is quite unusual, and yet – for me – quite nice to read.

However, the font is quite small [update: I’ve increased the default font size in the theme] and I couldn’t help thinking that other themes seem to be easier to read.

I mentioned above that one of the plugins allows you to try out themes without full swapping to a new one. This allows me to do cool things like show you this blog post in three different themes, try these links:

The latter two are those I’ve come across that I like the look of. The test is I can read a large post without it being a strain. By coincidence they are both by Chris Pearson.

As you can see above, some of the new plugins I’ve installed work best as widgets. Widgets are blocks in the left/right menu (categories, pages, links, etc) you can add, and order as you wish, independent of theme. This ability to easily configure and customise you’re blog’s sidebar is a powerful feature. So I was keen to move to a theme which supports widgets, there are surprisingly few. To my shame, it was only by accident that it was just now I realised that Greening has supported widgets all along.

For the time being, I’ve increased the font size on my current theme, I think it looks better. Meanwhile I’m pondering moving to one of the themes above. Ironically for all my raving about widgets above, the one which looks better to me is Pressrow, the only one of the three that does not support widgets.

Would be interested in any one’s preferences regarding the three themes above?

Update Oct 2008: Have also added the ‘Subscribe to Comments‘ extension, allows those who comment to tick a box and have any further comments emailed to them.

Posted on by chriskeene 2

BBC News: BT broadband and Tiscali

BT seem to play on ‘the safe default choice for the nation’ image while charging high prices and miking it for all they can. For years they had ‘technical problems’ in letting anyone else put equipment in to the exhanges that got handed to them after privatisation. There were in the strange situation of being the only organisation broadband suppliers could use to provide the connection to user’s homes (due to the previously mentioned reason), setting the price to their monopoly service and also being one of the consumer broadband suppliers itself. Conflict of interest?

And don’t get me started on when they forced everyone on the landline (telephone) rental to move to their ‘line rental plus inclusive calls package’. They did this, they claimed, because most customers would be better off. Great, write to them and tell them so, don’t force everyone to move to a more expensive package. At the time (this was 2002 or there abouts) many third party companies were offering cheap call packages (pay a few quid a month and most calls were cheaper), BT doing this meant people were now paying for one of these packages automatically and without choice, BT’s one, and therefore kill the competetion overnight.

Where was I? Oh yes, BBC News are reporting that BT have written to all of Tiscali’s customers about speculation that Tiscali may be sold in the near future. Now Tiscali are crap, we all know this. And BT and incredibly expensive, we know this too (they play on the fact many people automatically go to them for broadband because they get their phone via BT already). But where did BT get the Tiscali’s customer list from. They claim through a external source. Of course, not through their BT Openreach/wholesale Units who Tiscali have to use for the physcial wires to their customer’s homes.

What is the point of a blog if not to rant (badly)?

Posted on by chriskeene

SQL grouping mulitple values in to one SELECT field

SQL is one of those things I always need to understand more than I do. Sometimes odd little problems can seem impossible with my limited understanding of the language.

One such hit this me this morning. We wanted a report from our Institutional Repository (a online archive of the University’s research publications). The report was to include title, journal title, type (journal article, book, etc), author(s) and departments for each item in the report.

Anyone with a basic understanding of relational databases will be able to picture the main table of publications, with another table for publication authors – one record for each author of each publication, with the publication’s id number to link them to the item in question. The same set up for the departments associated with a particular item.

With basic SQL, it would be easy to return a list which included multiple entries for items with multi authors, i.e. an item with three authors would be repeated three times in the list, each showing a different author. An item with three authors and two departments would be repeated six times to cover all combinations of authors and departments. Not very desirable. We could also provide a list which only shows each item once (as required) but only show one author and department (ie by using GROUP BY and perhaps a function to select the first author). Again would be less than ideal.

A bit of googling showed creating an agregate function in postgress (we are using mysql), and this solution which seems to use a tempory table.

The solution in the end was much more simpler, and involves using a function called group_concat.

The final SQL looked like this:

SELECT a.eprintid, a.type, a.title, a.publication,
GROUP_CONCAT(c.creators_given, " ", c.creators_family) as Authors,
GROUP_CONCAT(d.depts) as Departments
FROM `archive` a, `archive_creators` c, `archive_depts` d
WHERE a.eprintid = c.eprintid
AND a.eprintid = d.eprintid
GROUP BY c.eprintid, d.eprintid

The two group_concats will produce a list of authors (and a list of departments) both comma separated. The author’s is a little more complex as the name is within two separate fields, though this isn’t a problem, we just need to specify both with a space in between to make them readable.

Posted on by chriskeene 3

Tesco broadband : doesn’t like Sussex

UPDATE: December 2008, at last, I can now access these pages from the Sussex campus.

I’ll keep this short. For several years now, trying to access any information about Tesco broadband from the University of Sussex network have resulted in Tesco’s servers showing ‘Permission denied’ messages. (click image to see larger version, shows Tesco’s Broadband page in Opera and Lynx, the latter from a server across campus).

Tesco Broadband shows 'Forbidden' while on Sussex Campus

Before you ask, I’ve tried different computers, different browsers, and accessing it in different ways, and no, I don’t do anything fancy with my browser setup. I’ve tried it on several computers but all within the same building, but as our web requests go via a central proxy I do not think it should be any different across campus. The message is coming from the Tesco servers, a message from our central proxy servers would appear differently.

I contacted Tesco back in April 2006 but came to a dead end: email one explained problem clearly saying when it happened, reply one said “If you go to http://www.tesco.net and then click on the ‘Internet Access@ tab you will be able to obtain information regarding all of our internet access packages. “. Email two thanks them for their helpful reponse (!) and explained that I followed their instructions and the same thing was happening, I also told them that I had tried different computers and cleared my cache (both trying to show I wasn’t stupid and predict their next move). Reply two asked me to ensure my cookies were on. Email three from me said my cookies were, and then it went quiet and no more were heard from them. I guess passing it on to their web team was just somethnig they did not have an option to do, support centres often seem powerless to handle unusal things or pass things on to the anyone in the rest of the company, which always seems bad business sense to me, my query after all was basically a pre-sales query, this is the time you are meant to at least try to look like you are compentent and value your customers.

I mentioned this briefly in another post a while back, and the only thing I could come up with is that we are www.suSEX.ac.uk (i.e. they block access from sites with suposed ‘naughty’ words in them), but just can’t believe this could be the case. Plus, our IP addresses resovle to susx.ac.uk (the orignal Sussex domain) so it looks even less likely.

So, is anyone else blocked from https://register.tesco.net/online (you can try going to http://www.tesco.com/telecoms/ and clicking on ‘Internet Access’ instead)? Or can everyone else access this fine?

Any one have any ideas?

Posted on by chriskeene 2

mobile phones, desires, frustrations and musings

I mentioned in my last post that my current phone is a Motorola RAZR2 V8. I got this because of its shape (nice to hold), large screen and large keys. These may not sound like funky features but are actually what are important to me.

I look at the iphone and nokia n95 with envy, the answer to all my problems is in these phones. Why? Which one? Why do I crave these when I do not use the features on my current phone.

What would I use?

  • I like the idea of pain free web on my phone, checking train times, check cd prices on play.com while walking around HMV, reading rss feeds on the train.
  • I like the idea of pain free web without constantly worrying about usage costs, i.e. wireless where available.
  • I liked my old palm pilot. I remember getting a train to Plymouth in December a few years a go (for my sister’s graduation) and wrote all my christmas season’s-greetings cards, palm pilot sat there on the little table as the reliable source of addresses.
  • I’m passionate about everything syncing with everything (another blog post me thinks). I remember in 2001 being frustrated at not being able to sync phone/palm/yahoo/PC (I got close with truesync, just missing the phone). In 2008 I still can’t get this all to work.
  • That includes syncing calendar
  • shopping lists, reminders and e-post-it notes are useful to keep in your pocket, and therefore phone.
  • Cameras and video/sound recorders are great, I was cynical of these until I realised the potential of taking pictures when you least expect it (and don’t have a phone) AND have a cable to move the files off the phone.
  • Media (pictures, videos, audio) would be much more useful if it just sync’d with something else when it had a wireless connection. Something else = PC, or decent online app (a la Google/Yahoo/flickr, NOT some rubbish in-house done-on-the-cheap company app.
  • GPS on a phone sounds cool. I don’t have a car but i see loads of potential (what IS the quickest way to walk from town, where am i, what’s that building/thing i can see, I’m late and need to get to a conference/meeting from this tube stop pronto..)
  • Music/video on a phone is good if it just works, as in Apple works. Putting music on the phone needs to be easy and pleasant, playing it by album, artist, random, not just per song, when phone rings/txt phone reacts in a thought out way, I don’t want to be deafened or forced to answer, or loss where i am in an album, or have to quit a music player.
  • I’m not a gaming person but a few games to while away the odd minute would be nice (god I miss worms), I always thought finding cool games to download would be easy but it has always eluded me.
  • I would use my phone as a read/write device if it has: a large screen, a touch screen for the web and a qwerty keyboard (for note taking, docs, etc).
  • Itemised voicemail messages (iphone) seem like such a brilliant and obvious idea, seeing the dreaded ‘5 voicemail messages waiting’ txt makes me put of listening to them!
  • It needs to act like a mobile thingy gadget, not phone with bits added on.

So what are the current contenders…

iphone

First, the iphone, like the ipod isn’t just a trendy fashion accessory, once the fuss died down a close look shows that is set a new standard.

What’s good about it?

  • Design
  • View voice mail and select which one you want to listen to (this is a brilliant idea, I have a very strange dislike of dialling my voicemail to find out which frustrated soul has been trying to ring me, especially when there are a lot of messages).
  • User interface
  • Internet connectivity.
  • good sync’ing (i think?)

Perhaps the most important aspect was the user interface. Phones have played music for a long time, but always had a bolted on feel. Often stuck away in a sub-menu, and requiring a 3rd party application, and often wasn’t easy to listen to music while doing other things (especially when you just wanted to skip a track, or swap between a phone call and music). I think some techies didn’t get this, especially the slashdot group-think type, by comparing lists of features and specification numbers they would argue that the iphone is nothing special, but they didn’t seem to appreciate that for most of us it can be the small things such as how they are implemented which makes all the difference.

It also got the web right. While Opera Mini Browser is fantastic, and copes with websites well, nothing beats seeing a webpage how you would expect to see it on a PC. The fact that many sites should work better on a phone is not the point (though a good point, a well crafted stylesheet for the small screen size would ensure a design heavy 100px wide page can be rendered nicely on a mobile and just include the essentials).

Iphone cons:

  • no GPS
  • Camera has bad reviews
  • Limited extra apps, and games
  • no proper keboard, all reviews suggest the screen keyboard is fine but ‘takes getting used to’

Nokia n95 / n96 / n82

OK confused. Until recently the N95 was seen as the must have Nokia smartphone, they recently released the N95 8Gb which fixed a lot of the problems with the N95 (eg stability), but now I’m seeing people refer to the N82 as the N95 Successor, and meanwhile seeing that the N96 is on the horizon as well.

The Nokia’s have all you could need feature-wise: loads of apps, good camera, multimedia, GPS and an accelerometer, plus every connection method you could want. However, no touch screen and no Querty keyboard (and small numeric keys) make input a pain. Plus The Nokia’s interface/stability has been critised. It just don’t have a look or brilliant user experience of the iphone, or any phone with a large touch screen. I would be worried after spending money on such a good phone that the limited input options would mena I would not use it as much as I would want (small numeric keys = difficult to take notes / add to-dos, no touch screen mean less than ideal web browsing experience).

Palm

The Nokia N95 and Apple’s iPhone have been compared endlessly, but in my mind another contender is the Palm 750 (and similar models). I like the large touch screen and the keyboard. Running Windows Mobile is good and bad. Good in that it will sync with standard PC software and use familar apps that have wide support (windows media player), bad in that all these apps aren’t as good as the Apple alternatives that of course the iPhone will sync with. At the end of the day, Windows Mobile doesn’t give me the warm fuzzy feeling or feel good factor, but better than crappy phone manufacturer’s software, and does work. Other downsides include the 1.3 megapixel camera (the same as my first camera, not good) and no GPS.

Others

Blackberry have some interesting phones, similar to the Palm above.

T-mobile have a T-mobile branded phone which has a slide out querty keyboard and touch screen.

Conclusion #1

I’m not getting a new phone in the near future so this is all irrelevant.

Conclusion #2

GPS is cool, so is the iphone. What’s key is not just a feature but that is is usable: easy to enter information and view, easy to sync with other systems, automated sync and it needs to feel like part of the device, not just an awkward add on. A cool document editor is no use if you have to use some tiny numeric keys to enter text and the files require manually moving to another device. Wireless seems like another must, paying by the kb to browser the web or download a file when you in sitting next to your wireless broadband is silly.

I’ll watch the Nokia N96 with interest, and reckon a Nokia model with a touch screen (web browsing) or qwerty keyboard (note taking, email) would be a serious contender.

The iphone is another obvious choice, and I like the fact it is Apple and not a MS Mobile based. It’s on screen keyboard, lack of GPS and limited applications at present are my main concerns (again, I’m not a gaming person but a few simple-but-fun games would be nice).

Be interesting to watch how these models are updated, and which new models come out in the next few years.

[this is one of three posts about mobiles (in my head it was going to be one but released I had too much to rant about), see mobiles (naming) and the self obsessed mobiles (and me)]

Posted on by chriskeene 3

mobile phones (and me)

I want to talk more about mobile phones. Earlier I talked about why I think they have the wrong name, now I want to talk about ‘the phones in my life’, I can’t promise this will be captivating reading but I know as if I don’t write this now it will come up in later postings as the mother of all tangents, so better to do it now as its own entry. Apologies for such a blatant me me me post.

My first mobile looked like this . It was near the end of my second year of uni (bday pressie). When I started Uni only a few had them, mainly the posh ones, by the end most did. The phone took a credit card size sim card! (the photo was scanned in during my last year of University and put on the webserver running in my halls based room – the contents of that webserver can be found here. If you think it can’t get any worse, it can. I scanned in a pair of my socks and stuck in online, and showing a firm understanding of privacy issues put scanned in copies of my student id cards there too. I need help)

After a year that contract ran out, I was mobile-less for a few months until I got a BT Cellnet contract from the link. The phone was a blue panasonic g250. I loved it.

Now the the deal I got from the Link at the time was fairly common but unheard of now. Pay up front for a year for about 80 quid, and you were considered to be on the same contract as those paying £18 a month, bargain.

Each year they would phone you up to see if you wanted to renew it, you’re mutter something about the handset not being very good, and it all being quite expensive, and they would normally offer you a free handset (well, every other year).

So a couple of years later I joined the masses and got a Nokia (3310), again excellent phone, and I jumped up and down like an excited thing when I got it through the post (I can still remember exactly where it – and its box – were on my desk when it was charging just after opening it). In hindsight it wasn’t that different to the Panasonic, but of course when camera phones and colour screens don’t exist and ‘big memory’ means you can hold 20 texts the little things impress. It did have an important feature: snakes! It should be the law that all phones have this. Every phone since has had crap games.

A year later (~2002) or so I got upgraded again, this time it was a Nokia 8210. This was at a time that smaller always meant better, as big had meant really big. In hindsight, many years later when I found the 3310 at the bottom of a draw, I released this wasn’t true. It was fiddly to hold to your ear (imagine trying to hold a pen next to your face, you have to use a two finger pinch, not comfortable for long periods), and the buttons were too small for my fingers when it came to txt’ing. This model was famous for going wrong but I had better luck than most.

Around 2004 I really needed a new phone. The 8210 was getting temperamental and things had moved on. This was the first time I looked round on the web for reviews before going for one. I got the Sony Ericson t610. Just like all my other phones, I was excited like a little child. Oddly I wasn’t that fussed by the camera and hardly tried it. Probably because there was no easy way of downloading the photos which made them a little pointless. I finally had a colour screen, real music for ringtones (which I instantly set as a ringing sound) and generally a more sophisticated phone all round, a different world to the Nokia.

A couple of years later, the joystick on the Sony Ericson started to play up (which meant lots of txts sent accidentally). I wanted a Motorola RAZR. Why? I liked big screen, I liked big keyboard, and I liked the idea of the closed phone being less easily damaged when I constantly sat on it while it was in my pocket (which had been the story of every phone I owned). It was free (on my still stupidly good value pay once a year contract). The shop assistant confused  me by asking if I wanted the V3i or the V3X, I went the the Motorola RAZR V3X, and it was a good choice. I found the large rectangular clam shell (which opens so that the two halves are at a slight angle to each other) was very natural as an actual phone and was very comfortable to hold. I haven’t had a landline for years so as it is the only way to make calls this is fairly important. I also liked that it used a USB connection for recharging and connecting to a PC (same type as a camera), though it was annoying that you had to install the CD-ROM based software before it would recharge or let you access the files, a real pain when you were low on battery and near a PC but didn’t have the software installed.

That was another thing, the software was crap. The phone, like most, had a calendar, contacts, to do lists, notes, etc. These could have been useful, but only if they sync’d with other web/pc applications. The other really annoying thing was that you couldn’t set a recurring alarm clock. As someone who had used his phones as alarm clocks for years this was annoying, it was something I just presumed come as standard. I was also impressed that it came with various accessories such as headphones/headset, and a memory card.

About 8 months in the phone started to play up. First just switching itself off, then doing odd things and then it just stopped. It took it in to 02 who sent it away for repair. Then they phoned me, it needed a software update and it would cost £30. I was pissed off, 30 pounds for a software update, while in warranty. I could have understood it if it was a hardware thing, which needed replacing and could have been due to my own misuse, but a software update. I decided to think about it but in no time it had been sent back to the local 02 shop and was too late.

So Autumn 2008, having had to revert to the Sony Ericson for a while I finally got a new phone, the Motorola RAZR2 V8. Yes I know, why get another Motorola based on my last experience. To be honest it was the shape. I really like the design, other clam shells are smaller and have a pebble shape, quite small. This was comfortable to hold, and had a good sized screen and keys. It was clearly a step on from the last model. Better camera (though only one, the V3X had two), most importantly vastly improved alarm setting options! Slightly annoyingly due to the smaller size it had a thin USB port, just means it needs a different cable to other gadgets. The V3X has a flash, which I never used as a flash, but you could set it to stay on and it was an excellent touch when leaving the office in the dark :) . It was amazing how I miss this feature, even if they didn’t design it as such. The software had clearly been updated but perhaps not as much as I would have liked in parts, and the PC software was still lame.

It has two screens, the one on the outside is a touch screen. Oddly, this is only used when displaying music controls, and in a limited way. They could have made much more use of this, a real shame. I don’t use it as a much player. Why? First it is the software, its a pain moving files on to there, secondly the interface on the phone. Thirdly you need to use the headset which fits the small usb port on the phone. As I find this very useful for long conversations I’m reluctant to carry it around with me where i will almost certainly loose it.

Odd thing was the jumping up and down like a happy thing was gone. I used to find getting a new phone and equivalent to being told world peace and and end to hunger had been found. No. it was better than that. But somehow the excitement had more or less gone. Have a funny feeling it would soon come back if I got an iphone or Nokia N95 though.

Soon after getting my original RAZR (V3x) I ended up moving off the yearly contract and on to a monthly plan. Basically because I forgot to phone up and renew it. When I wanted to get the V8 they explained that on my contract it was £80, but on the next contract up it was free. The ‘next contract up’ worked out as a bit more than £80 extra a year, but of course I was getting the phone AND better talktime/txts. Oddly the new contact meant any off peak calls I paid for would be 20p a min not 5p (or 2p, i forget), quite a lot more. But here is the funny thing. I went for the new deal, watched the staff member fill out the online form, and put it through the till. She must have done it right as I got a letter thanking me for moving to the new contract and txts regarding the special offers related to the new deal. All that, but they never actually moved me to the new contract! I still pay the same amount and the bill shows me on my old contract. What sort of system do the have where I get the letters and confirmations and the new phone but never actually move to the new contract.

Anyway, I want to talk about why I don’t make more use of the features of the current phone and my musings about the current top-of-the-range offerings. But that’s another post.

Posted on by chriskeene 2

Mobile Phones (naming)

First up… The name is wrong. I hear people rant I don’t want a camera on my phone. That’s reasonable. I don’t want my TV to make coffee. You say phone and people think thingy with numbers, a little speaker on one end and a little microphone on the other. It should also go ring ring when someone is calling your number (unless you are in the US, in which case is should just go riiiiing, but enough conversation on the transatlantic differences in ring style already). Only an idiot would want a camera on said device.

A camera on the other hand very much needs the ability to take photos. In fact many would argue that it was failing in one of its core functions should its feature list not contain ‘taking photos’.

Same for your PDA, you want your PDA to have all that contacts, diary, notes stuff (in such a way that it never ever syncs with all the applications you need it to, grr).

Of course, we all know (because all readers of this site are smart, attractive people, god we are great) that  what has happened is that the small box thing most of us carry around has just merged most of these functions. This is sensible, it means we can carry less gadgets in our pockets, and we have things like a camera or mp3 player available to use when we least expected we needed it. Plus these things share a lot of things in common: battery, storage, software, screen, input. To make a phone a camera just requires adding the actual camera bit (note my highly technical term there).

So the ‘talking on phone’ bit is really just one small part of it all. But somehow the name has stuck. It’s not so much a mobile phone as a mobile thingy gadget. Some would say thingy gadget doesn’t sound so good as a name.

You can see this most in kids. You can stand in your local 02 shop (and why wouldn’t you stand around in a crushed shop full of annoying people for fun) and hear comments like:

  • [stressed mother] “well if you must have one then it will be from that range” (points to el cheapo mobiles)
  • [kid] “god, no way, can’t be seen dead with that, its like got nothing” (you’re impressed by my realistic kid street talk no?)
  • [mother] “but it is better than the one I’ve got” (waves nokia 3310 in front of kid’s face)
  • “as if i would ever have a phone as bad as yours”

The thing is that kid is not thinking ‘as soon as i get this i can occasionally make the odd call to alert mother that my bus is running late’. No, you will be shocked to hear they are not thinking this. Instead they are running through a mental checkist in their head when reviewing a phone:

  • can i play loads of dire music to an entire train carriage? [tick]
  • can i  bluetooth loads of dire songs from my mates in a legally questionable manner? [tick]
  • can i download loads of funny (i.e. lots of swearing) videos, sound clips and pictures and impress all my mates? [tick]
  • can i swap all of the above with anyone i meet? [tick]
  • can i take endless pictures and videos of everything ? [tick] (oh and as an aside, I am always disappointed at the average child’s inability to develop a coherent archiving and storage plan for the  photos and stuff which are often only left on the camera until the inevitable day it is lost/broken, the kids today… what are they like)
  • can i sign up to loads of premium txt services which send ring tones plus all of the above, then deny all knowledge of ever doing so when parental-unit sees the bill? [tick]

Notice something? only the last one actually requires them to have any credit/phone-functionality. Kids say they want a phone, but actually want a multimedia device for music, video, pictures and sharing. If it so happens to allow them to talk to others further than shouting distance, then thats just an added bonus.

Old gits moan about why phones have all these none phone like features. but it isn’t a phone, it is a multi functional gadget which so happens to include phone like functionality. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’, ‘ah my new camera… which also comes with built in mp3 player, contacts list and can act like a phone too!’, ‘pah in my day a camera was a camera why would you want a phone in your camera for’.

Still, wouldn’t mind a phone (sorry, mobile thingy gadget) that makes a good coffee.

Posted on by chriskeene 3