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I’ve become increasingly troubled by my old GPS navigator, an ancient Magellan I bought years ago at a clearance sale. It’s from a time when navigators weren’t that easy to update, so all maps are terrifyingly out of date by now. As I started looking for a replacement a while ago, Nokia announced they would be providing free turn-by-turn navigation to all their GPS-enabled smartphones. Would my old 5800 Xpress music-phone suffice? I tried updating, but it seemed it didn’t have enough memory. Using Google’s free Google Maps-application I was able to get simple turn-by-turn directions, but without voice navigation or a user interface optimized for viewing from slightly afar (with the phone mounted on the windscreen).

I carried on using my old navigator, looking at TomToms to get the next time I would have a bit of extra cash. But then came a OS update for my phone, and hokus pokus, Bob’s Your Uncle, I suddenly had a functioning Nokia Ovi Maps application in my phone. I downloaded maps for Scandinavia and voices in swedish and finnish and set off. I’ve been using it for about two weeks now, and I’ve been very pleased with it. It finds even very small off-the-track roads and the UI is very clear viewed from about a meter away. It also has a walking turn-by-turn mode, which I haven’t tried yet.

The maps (and voices) can be downloaded and updated via the Nokia Ovi Suite (free PC-software) so it’s easy to keep updated. Points of Interest (hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions etc.) are always queried and provided online, so they’re up-to-date, and as far as my limited experience goes, very good. Granted, I’ve only used it here in Finland – or Nokialand as it’s sometimes referred to as.

The only problem I’ve had was that driving through a really long tunnel, when it lost it’s GPS signal for too long a time, it “gave up” the route, so I had to punch it in again as the phone reacquired the satellite signals. There is an update to Ovi Maps available, but my poor old phone is totally out of memory now, so I haven’t been able to update yet. Lucky for me there aren’t that many long tunnels in this country.

Sure I could get an iPhone for about 800 bucks (if you manage to get it unlocked) and another hundred or so for the navigation app, or just a good Nokia (the one I have retails for about 250 euros) and get the navigation for free. No, I don’t care what the techonrati says – I’m sticking with Nokia. And that Nokia N8 looks just like my next phone!

The way the internet works never ceases to amaze me. A while ago I posted an innocent tweet to my humble 140-follower Twitter stream. A day or so later, I received a Facebook-message from a representative of a British website called WOMWorld. He had spotted the tweet, hyperlinked onward to my blog, an onto my Facebook-account. Even though my tweet was concerning the up and coming Nokia N8 (man, it looks to be a great phone!), he wanted to know if there was another Nokia-machine I would be interested in trying out for a few weeks. I mentioned that I had been ogling at a Nokia Booklet 3G for a while, being of the opinion that it’s the only “netbook” which doesn’t feel like a Fisher-Price play-thing. When he offered to send me one for a trial I was initially very sceptical – E-mails offering free stuff are rarely kosher. I used my unprecedented Google-fu powers to find “The List”, an official list of sites that Nokia have “approved“, and finding WOMWorld on it gave me the confidence to go ahead.

On monday I received the call that the courier service was standing outside my door in the deep woods, which means I have now had the pleasure of using this handy gadget for a few days. And it’s a dangerous little device. Dangerous in the sense that I might actually begin to want one. Netbooks have always been an awkward segment in the computer business. I’ve had some problems in thinking of reasons why I would want one. Reasons other than the fact that they are gadgets and I’m a geek, that is.

First thing I noticed was the build quality. It feels really solid, as opposed to other plastic netbooks. It’s got that MacBook Air-high end quality aura about it. It’s got three USB-ports, a HDMI-port, headphone jack, SD-card reader and a SIM-card slot, which should satisfy most users. The keyboard, although smaller than standard (as is custom with netbooks) feels really good, and adjusting to type on it was easier than I had expected. Alright, it was a bit more difficult for me, as it had a British layout of the keys, so all of the special characters were in the “wrong” place.

The machine sports Windows 7 Starter. And I have to say I’m not a big fan of that product. Probably because I’m used to the full versions, but it’s the small things that irritate me. Why can’t I change the desktop picture? (or can I, from some separate h4xx0r-menus I haven’t found yet?) What is the advantage of not changing the desktop picture? Although it behaves like the Windows 7 I have learned to enjoy greatly, it feels like a beta-version of Windows 7 – a bit slower and without the bling-bling. But if using Windows 7 starter is a way of conserving energy to get advantage of the sick battery life I’m all for it. Nokia.com states 12 hours of battery life, and from my experience (keep in mind this particular unit isn’t probably brand new, and has been put through more rigorous use than your everyday netbook!) that’s not completely marketing-bs.

As long as you turn of the features that you’re not using you’ll get those 12 hours, I think with normal usage. For example, as I haven’t yet had the time to get a mobile data card, and use only Wifi for the time being, I shut off the 3G-connectivity. When I get the SIM-card, I’ll turn off Wifi – and as long as I’m not using Bluetooth apparel I’ve turned off BT. Watching movies will probably drain the battery a bit faster, but I bet you’ll get through even the extended version of Das Boot on a single charge, and that’s saying a lot.

The loudspeakers aren’t very crisp or clear, but I hadn’t expected them to be either. The webcam isn’t as good  in low-light situations as the one on my Acer laptop, but seems completely usable in proper light. I know, I enjoy sitting in the dark…

Overall, after the first few days I am pleased with the product. Would I buy it? Or more importantly – will I buy it? As I said to my girlfriend, if it were a few hundred euros cheaper (let’s say 400€-ish) and I didn’t already have three computers in active duty I’d definitely concider this one. And of all the netbooks out there, this is the only one I’d consider. I look forward to the next couple of weeks – and I’ll get back to you.

Full disclosure: I have not paid for this device, I received it from WOMWorld as a two-week free trial. I am not obligated to write (either positive or negative) feedback and get no payment from either WOMWorld or Nokia.

I consider myself somewhat tech-savvy. I know I should know better. It’s like that really, really bad movie that you secretly (or not so secretly) enjoy watching over and over again (Spaceballs!). A discussion on This Week in Tech, as well as the latest Jasons-list (a web newsletter by Jason Calacanis) made me think about it again. I am naturally speaking of the beast that rules them all – Facebook, for which the proverbial sh*t has hit the fan over and over again, but its’ users (including me) haven’t seemed to mind. Yet.

Facebook started out promising to keep all your information private, if you did not specifically open it up to the greater public. Only users you had accepted as your friends could see your drunken photos and pictures of your cats from every conceivable angle. And we’ve gladly published these photos, embarrassing status updates and FarmVille-purchases, thinking only a selected few (a group we thought we had control of) could get a hold of. This control however, and indeed privacy has at most been an illusion.

FB has had some privacy SNAFU:s (“Situation Normal: All F***ed Up”) recently. For those not in “the loop“, they did a revamp of their privacy settings, seemingly to give the users more control over their privacy. The big whoopsie they made, was that they changed the default setting from private to public, meaning every user who had left their setting on “default“, thinking (rightly so) that it was “private“, suddenly had a fully “public” profile. Another big no-no was the loophole found a while ago which allowed users – through the “see your profile as another user would see your profile” – to access other peoples private messages and chat-history. In their defence, they did shut this down immediately upon discovery in order to fix it.

But let’s say you’ve done the right thing and tweaked the privacy settings to your liking, so that everything is private – only visible to a select few, namely your accepted friends on FB… You think you’re safe, you’ve done what you’re supposed to do, and protected your information. But is it enough? Have you added any applications? At all? Have you read what it says when you’re prompted to accept the application? I use FB in Swedish, so I’ll translate it for you into English – if my translation is not what it says in English, please correct me in the comments! The prompt says: “By accepting the application [INSERT NAME HERE] you allow it to access your profile information, your friends’ information, and other information it needs to function.”

This means that even if you yourself have never used any application on Facebook, it is enough that one of the people you have added as your friend has, and that application, which you have not accepted, can now poke and pry freely within your profiles’ personal (and possibly private) information. Do you still think you’ve not been reached by FarmVille? To quote Jason Calacanis in the newsletter dated May 19th 2010: “Simply put, I no longer trust Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder and CEO of Facebook) with my information.”

Calacanis proclaims in his newsletter that he will be leaving Facebook, deleting his profile. All who have tried to do this know FB don’t make it easy. When you think you’ve deleted your material, in actuality you’ve probably only deactivated it, making it dormant. To be perfectly honest – I can understand this. Materials added to a social site shouldn’t be easily deletable – as it can render discussions you’ve partaken in hard to follow for others, if your entries aren’t suddenly there.

Calacanis’ statements made me consider, however… Should I leave FB as well? Ever since I took my first wary steps on the internet, I’ve made it a personal rule to always consider everything I post to be public, even if it’s set to private. I don’t let anybody see my profile on FB, for example – but I would never post a status update or publish a photo that I wouldn’t be comfortable being seen publicly. I consider this to be a sane approach, and I recommend this mental setting to each and everybody on the internet – not only on Facebook.

Having said that – leaving FB would be more than just leaving an unstable and untrustworthy website – it would be a statement (well, not my leaving – but if thousands would leave in protest) that this kind of bad behavior and lying to the customers just isn’t acceptable. Some have pointed out the fact that FB is a free service and therefore we don’t really have the right to complain. If we don’t like the service we simply shouldn’t use it. Well, true and false. True in the sense that we could vote with our feet (or browser) and leave, but false in the sense that it’s not the service in itself that is bad and rotten, but the lies about how FB and its’ partners handle our information.

A big problem is that there really isn’t much of an alternative to FB. Calacanis suggests using Twitter for status updates, Flickr for photos and Geni.com for family ties. I don’t really see why these would be passable as FB alternatives… Twitter and Flickr are both public (sure, Twitter has a way to protect your updates, but it’s hardly smooth), and using three separate web apps to substitute one is not a winning concept. We need a new Facebook, that isn’t the same as the old Facebook!

Will people migrate to that new service? Sure they will, people online are always willing to move over to the next best thing – and have always done so in the past. So which is the best social website today? The one where your friends are. Period. Nothing else matters. I don’t think I’ll leave FB just yet. I use it to keep in touch with the people I care about, and share pictures of my cat from every conceivable angle with family and friends, post mundane status updates, set up times when me and my brothers can hook up for some online gaming, and chat with my girlfriend on occasion.

I do however, understand Calacanis’ decision to leave. He uses (used) FB as a marketing tool for his personal brand – and I don’t see FB as that. I understand that FB would want to be seen as that, but it’s not. It’s about cat pictures, and FB:s downfall began when they thought they were something else.

My kid brother is away doing his civil duty (what those who choose not to do military duty perform) but this week-end he was home, and aching for some gaming. So I packed a cooler with beer and meat (what else do you need really?)  and went over to visit my bro and his fiance Linda. It turned out to be an evening of intense gaming, slam-packed with games I had never tried before.

First up was one of the it-games of the moment, The Adventurers. As Indiana Jones-ish dudes and dudettes you are running through; collapsing walls, rolling boulders, unstable pillars over molten lava, high-speed rivers ending in waterfalls and old hanging bridges falling apart, all the while attempting to collect as many treasures as possible. The more treasures you carry the slower you move. Out of all players who make it out, the one with the most loot wins. Sounds fun – and it is! It’s fast, in-your-face, dripping in theme, and sports lavish bits and pieces.

Short and fun games are really great in between “larger” games – or just to have something to do while bullsh*tting and drinking brews, but the problem with this game is that setting it up for play takes almost as long as the game itself. Cards need to be shuffled in a dozen or so different piles, tiles shuffled and placed in three locations the bridge assembled etc. I fear this game won’t see the light of day too often, because when you’re in the mood to play something fast and furious, you don’t really want to get playing fast too. The game itself was really fun though.

Next up; Hamburgum – the second in the series of Mac Gerdts’ rondel-games. This time we are producing sugar, cloth and beer (how fitting) to sell for money with which to buy materials to donate to the building of seven churches. If the last game was lightning fast, this on the other hand was a bit too long for what it delivered. The other game in the series I’ve played – Antike – suffered from this same problem, which we’ve fixed by playing to one less victory point every game. Sure, you could play Hamburgum to one less church too, but that isn’t as smooth as the Antike-solution.

After a quick game of Adios Amigos (one of the best drinking games out there) my next new acquaintance of the evening was the next variant in the endless row of Carcassonne-games – Carcassone: Wheel of Fortune. The tiles in this one are very much similar to the original game, but comes with a 4×4 starting piece containing a… Yup. A wheel of fortune, with a pig running around the sectors. Every time you could place a meeple on the board, you can also place it/him/her on a sector in the wheel of fortune, and if the pig ever comes to your sector you get your meeple back along with some points. Some of the tiles have a small wheel-symbol leading to the pig moving one, two or three sectors on the wheel of fortune. The sectors all have different attributes, leading either to points being awarded or meeples being sent home without points.

I actually thought the wheel of fortune added some to the game. The past expansions have, in my opinion only made the game longer, not better. But it’s kind of fun having an alternative to place your meeples. I didn’t like it as a starting piece though, and would have preferred to have it on the side, next to the scoring board. Starting from a single tile leads to more confrontation and interaction, whereas here you have sixteen spots to place even the very first tile.

More tile-laying in another new game – Infinite City. In this game players are placing buildings in a city, and then placing a pawn on it to mark control. All buildings have special powers which are played out immediately. Some provide points to the player in control, or it causes tiles and/or control markers to be switched, removed or moved around. Infinite City actually feels more like a card-game than a tile-laying game (although placement of the tiles in relation to other is very important!), mostly because you are holding “a hand” of five or more tiles from which you play, but also because the effects of the card… tiles are very powerful. And as there aren’t that many different kinds it tends to melt down to: I screw you over, you set things back – repeat repeat repeat –  until somebody doesn’t draw the right tiles and can’t screw/fix things.

The graphics on the tiles are also very card-like, which means the “city” itself, as it grows, looks nothing like a city. It’s a grid of pictures and text, nothing more. Which also means it’s next to impossible to get a good overview of the city as a whole – you’re just looking over it reading card… tiles over and over again. With cards (easier to hold a hand of cards than a hand of tiles) and better graphics this could be better.

On with the show, and after a quick game of Ingenious, we had a game of Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. In the Ticket to Ride-series of games I’ve previously played the original, Europe, Märklin and the Card Game. So far, I’ve been of the opinion that the original is still the best. Having now played Switzerland, I still think the original is best. So what makes Switzerland different (besides cheese and cockoo-clocks) from the others? A sh*tload of tunnels and one-length links. The fact that the map borders in other countries means the tickets which makes you connect countries (and have three different possible solutions) means this is a game of tickets. They’re just way too simple to complete. I have never collected this many tickets in any other Ticket to Ride game, but I had them all completed, with the highest possible value.

I only have the original game in my collection, and I still feel no need to add any of the others. All later iterations (less the card game, which is a different game altogether) follow the recipe; more, not better. Next up, another game in a long series of game, Alhambra: the Dice Game. This feels a bit like Can’t Stop, as you push your luck to get good results in six different colors, using dice. The two best results in each color get points in that particular color, and three times during the game the colors are scored for victory points. This is really fun, if you like these kinds of game, which I do. The only problem here is it’s again, too long for what it delivers. Five rounds is just too much – games like this should be over within about half an hour. I would not want to play this game with a lot of players, and it must be a real drag with the full six players.

Last up before going nite-nite was another new game for me – the set collecting card-game Space Beans. Like in Bohnanza, you’re growing beans in two “fields” in front of you. In order to “harvest” the field for points you have to have a card in that field with the number equal to the amount of cards in the field. On your turn you can choose to pick up two cards from the draw pile, then you can harvest a field if you can, then you must “plant” at least one card – throwing away a field if they’re full and not compatible with the card you want to plant, after which you give your remaining cards on your hand to the player to your right. That last part is the only thing I liked about this game. It’s a really smart mechanic that stops players from collecting a huge hand of cards. On the other hand, with the rest of the game mechanics, it also means that you have very low amounts of cards on your hand, so it’s all about what cards you draw. On the whole, this game played itself, and it wasn’t very interesting to be part of the ride.

As I look at the text above here, there’s a lot of complaints and issues. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed myself immensly during the day! Playing games with good people is always fun, and the fact that I complain about certain issues is just a result of playing a lot of games. Boardgames are by default fun.

A while ago, I had a little accident at work. One of my many phones rang, and as I reached for it I tipped over a glass of juice. Some significant amounts of this sugary drink positioned itself over the keyboard to my PC-laptop (Acer Aspire 5536). Now, sweet liquids and computers don’t match… I have been trying to remedy this problem by drying it out (not placing it in the sauna, however…), blowing it out with compressed air and just plain attempting to wear it out – but the problem remains, some of the keys are quite literally sticky.

As these keys are among the more frequently used (worst case is the spacebar) I just can’t leave it. Years ago, as my old Apple iBook had gathered enough cat-hair to rebuild four cats beneath the keys I did what most computer geeks probably have done a dozen times. I removed all keys, cleaned them separately, and then removed any unnecessary residue from the keyboard itself, using mostly compressed air and tweezers. This was a piece of cake, and work-wise took a bit over an hour.

So I thought, what the hay, and figured I could fix this little issue too, by plucking the keys away and then getting rid of the icky goo stuck on the keyboard. But it seems Acer in all their wisdom have decided keyboards of olde were way to simple and functional – and have complicated the process a bit. Holding every single key up are a minimum of two metal spring-plates which are interlocked. It’s not as easy as pick-them-up and push-them-back. Having consulted a video online I managed to remove one key by pressing it down on the lower edge, and then carefully wagging the top edge sideways until a click is heard. Thereafter, using tweezers I succeeded to pop the lower edge from its clamps.

I cleaned it up and removed some odd cat-hairs and icky residue. Since then I have spent about three hours trying to get the key to snap back to position. Without success, if you hadn’t figured that part out.

Screw this! Come monday I’ll call the dealers’ and ask how much (a) a replacement keyboard or (b) a total cleanup of the keyboard is going to set me back. Right now I don’t have the patience for this.