Jonathan Jensen - My Mobile Day
Jonathan Jensen’s mobile day
—
It’s tricky to describe my mobile day in about 500 words but here’s a quick run through on the mobile tools that I find invaluable each day. My Nokia E51 never leaves my side during the day. I’ve written before about why I love the E51 but that was all about standard handset functionality. The great thing about the E51 is that being a S60 device I can customise it so it gives me the functionality I need. So, what have I done to my E51 to maximise its usefulness and how does it get me through the day? The key application I use to access everything else on the handset is Handy Taskman. This is a task switcher and short cut enabler that replaces the built in task switcher. It’s much more powerful and allows applications to be accessed by typing the initial one or two letters of the name. It also allows short cuts for calls, SMS or applications to be set up. Saves a lot of time and is a must for every S60 handset.
A lot of my day is spent within reach of WiFi, either home broadband or BT Openzone. I use Truphone for a lot of calls as I still get free calls to landlines in 40 countries on the launch offer. Devicescape is a great tool to manage WiFi connections and avoids the need to log in to each router or service and enter security details. It’s one of those applications you don’t really see – it’s just there!
I ditched regular mobile voice mail a while back in favour of Spinvox. Receiving voice mails as SMS is much easier to manage although it’s not yet possible to divert Truphone calls to Spinvox. I spend a bit of time on the phone to people in other countries and have found WorldMate invaluable for checking the time in other cities. Plus when I travel it’s got an excellent currency converter. WorldMate also reads me a daily weather forecast twice a day so I don’t even need to check the handset! When I need to navigate round unknown parts of London I use Google Maps. Although the E51 doesn’t have GPS, the Google Maps cell site triangulation is good enough to work out a starting position in an urban area and find my destination.
I listen to music when I’m travelling and have recently started using Nokia Internet Radio. I’ve found some great radio stations including Virgin Classic Rock and Riviera Radio. Nokia WOM World has loaned me the Nokia BH-604 Stereo Headset and the sound combination is fantastic.
For checking email during the day I use IMAP4 email to receive the headers for my emails. I download anything that looks interesting and if important reply, although I generally wait until I’m back at my PC. Twitter and Jaiku are also key communication tools for me. I keep an eye on Twitter and post the odd update via Twitter’s mobile web site and for Jaiku I use the S60 native client which makes using Jaiku on a mobile easier.
So during a typical day my handset does so much more than just make calls – and I haven’t even mentioned SMS which I use the whole time for keeping in touch with friends, family and business colleagues! There’s still a long way to go with mobile technology but so much has happened since Ernie Wise made the first call on Vodafone on 1st January 1985!
—
Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.
