I can check my mail, even while I listen to music or jump to the calendar, while the browser is still doing its job. I have clicked hundreds of pictures and am happy with what I see. I downloaded Google Maps and it works nicely. A friend suggested that I try Opera Mini - the mobile web browser and intend downloading it today.

Yesterday, at a meeting, three of us (out of a total of five people) had a Nokia E51 - it's catching on for sure.

BUT, there is a DUST PROBLEM with the E51, it would seem.

Just a week or so into the purchase, the handset started to accumulate dusk dust inside the display screen. I was advised by 'The Mobile Store' guys to take it to Nokia Care. Now I hate the thought of having to go a service center even otherwise, but for a hand-set that I just bought - that sounds criminal to me. I haven't gone yet!

For some reason, my hand-set shows "the service is not available for this terminal." when I go looking for applications on the Nokia site. Not sure how to resolve this. Similarly not able to find a compatible Flash version...so videos are not playing, yet!

I had heard about the Nokia E-Gurus and was hoping to meet someone, as I saw many of them registered for MoMo Delhi 5, but didn't bump into anyone eventually.

I hope someone from Nokia India is reading this and would help.

My life got taken over by this week...

1. The cook left = me left cooking early mornings.
2. Conducted two client workshops, luckily both in Delhi.
3. Attended the ContentSutra Meet and a Christmas party hosted by a client's company - I get invited to all their office events - great fun, always.
4. Attended a wedding.
5. Managed regular client work, connected with friends on Facebook and otherwise. Miraculously I survived the week quite painlessly - the miracle is called Nokia E 51.

Kishore had advised me to wait for it last month and just his word was enough for me to discard the probe process that I may have otherwise engaged in and last week, a few days after the phone was launched, I picked up one.

That, even though I haven't had the time to read up the user's guide, I have found enough uses and features to know that my life has changed forever, would not be a lie. That I haven't really had a need to boot-up my desktop or notebook in 2 days has been a good hint for me. This morning I was at Kishore's office and he called the phone 'revolutionary' - I know what he means.

We configured my mail account and I find that a Blackberry doesn't really serve any critical purpose, for me, that pull doesn't. I think I am doing quite nicely with my GPRS, at the moment.

Cheers.

PS: The real post I actually got online to write, coming up! :)

I have often wanted to include forms on the site, to gather client briefs, host online surveys and have found myself stuck, as building a form means I need to reach out to my designer/ developer with the brief - spend time, money and the back and forth needed to get the desired results is itself taxing. Often you need to modify the forms - minor changes are more or less ongoing and then needs change with time - repeat the process again.

Wufoo allows all this (and more) from your desktop, do-it-yourself. I created these 2 forms myself, in under 30 minutes:

1. Simple assignment brief.
2. Talk/ workshop/ teaching/ writing requests.

Structured, consistent, easily manageable (I can get individual requests on email; export all the reports directly). I have already started using it and got the first client brief yesterday itself. Today I needed to make a small modification, to make it more useful, and I was able to do so in less than 3 minutes. Hope it continues to work as painlessly.

More on the Wufoo blog.

Cheers.

The programme has some interesting features:

1. An 'integrated browser' opens web pages inside the reader...
2. While 'Auto discovery' ensures that I don't have to click any additional buttons to look for RSS feeds
3. Save a feed as a 'Channel' under the selected 'Channel Group'
4. The reader allows users to view 'Articles' by category; author; published; source; flagged; title; read...
5. When I like something? I simply move it into 'Archives' for future reference - I find this quite useful
6. The feature I love most however is 'Watches' which allows users to track conversations by keyword so all articles from feeds collected that have a certain or a set of keywords get separated under a given watch. I can add as many as I like...

Check it out! You can download i-Fetch here!

More about RSS and other terms here.

It is the age of sharing, providers are trying to help users unleash the power of content, both fresh and archival, by providing friendly platforms...
The first one to do so was Slideshare, of which I have always been a great fan, and joining in is Scribd - an online directory where anyone can upload. Its embeddable PDF player allows users to publish and view documents in your web browser.

I can see people brushing off virtual dust from old documents and sharing them with the world. Not only documents, the site takes Word (.doc), PDF (.pdf), text (.txt), PowerPoint (.ppt), Excel (.xls), Postscript (.ps), or LIT (.lit) files.

Features allow users to add tags, titles, embed content into other web pages & blogs etc. An interesting feature is, Slurping, which allows users to directly import content from other websites.

Oops, but what I do we have here, someone else has uploaded MY presentation (kidding, for now)...

We have a collaborative experiment on at Blogworks...

Together with my colleagues help, I am hoping we can scan and reach out more interesting developments from what I have started to term, the fastest running animal on the planet, Social media:

SpockThis one came via Namita, who first read about this on Googlerz:
- This yet-to-be opened for 'public at large' people search engine is already making waves - thanks also to the fact that they have managed to secure series A funding to the tune of $7M from Clearstone and Opus Capital Ventures.

Driven by the logic that 30% of all internet search is people related (celebrity searches are constantly leading search numbers). We are yet to get our request approved but believe, from what we have read that it works well, for searches for people ranging from very popular to even lesser known who have some web presence...

Post search, Spock sorts out duplication, based on identical or similar names, gives the person a permanent profile page, auto tagged based on information collected from blogs, wikipedia, social networks etc. These can then be claimed by users, who can add/ edit the tags.

Currently, the spock websiteallows users to leave a request for invitation to test the beta version.

And while, you, like us, wait for the invite to get approved, read more here.

What Kishore used was different, but the shop-keeper brought out the Movo Slim and I immediately fell in love.

The credit card sized device - 7 mm thick - neatly fits into my pocket, plays mp 3 music - drag and drop from the PC - as also save pics and data files; let's me not just listen to FM - 32 presets -

You don't need to use the mouse, once started: Press 'Tab' to get a parallel button on the side; press 'Enter' to get one below. You can change text as you go along, add buttons, share online or through e mail or print. Neat I think.

Found it through this post by Jason Clarke of Download Squad.

Many of these trends are led by the youth and as notebook PCs become mainstream, given the falling prices, I think the individual will seek to stand apart again...with youth leading the trend.

As against mobile handsets, where differentiated design has been as much a driver as the features, laptops have all looked the same - until now!

Let's begin with a 'tool': "You Tube for Powerpoint" - for me, the beauty of Slideshare is in its simplicity. After years of struggle to reach across presentations in PPT, Acrobat and whatever formats, this one enabled me to, by allowing me to simply 'upload and share' - simple as that. Once can also embed in your blog or share a link etc. There are that they could do better, of course, but I can see that they are working on them - they are fairly small and therefore reachable - you leave a message on their site, they bring about change.

To me, as an executive, the value of this tool even surpasses that of You Tube (not to be confused with the much larger impact that You Tube indeed has. ). It's amazing to see the different uses it is being put to. Sample this: