Well as many of you will know, I have possibly lost a few twitter following due to the countless amount of tests I have been performing trying to get my remote publishing issued fixed, but today I have finally fixed the issue, and will document it here incase any other bloggers out there ever come up against the same problems.

WomWorldNokia are running a Friday Fun Competition where you can bag some Nokia, and Ovi goodies, to win, all you have to do, is tell them what you think the Nokia device in a decade’s time will look like. Tweet your answer, or link to your images, or Blogposts to @WOMWorldNokia and use the hashtag #FutureNokia, Good luck.!

Here is my entry….

The Nokia Helix

Tens years time, The Nokia device will be worn in ear, with microphone in a neckchain, taking voice from your throat . It’s called Nokia Helix.Basically, it will look like a ball-bearing(un-illuminated) in your ear, coming in a choice of chromed finished colours, with a multi-coloured single OLED behind the convex shaped exterior, which when illuminated certain colours, indicates not only that the wearer is taking a call, but also displaying the wearers mood too.

The microphone for this OLED Ball ear-piece will be worn around the neck in a snug, but very nice looking neck-chain, again coming in various colours, and boasting a small OLED flexible narrow screen looking/sender on the same side as your ear piece (whichever preference).This screen looking surface actually transmits your voice and interacts with ATM’s, electronic ticket sales, and computers that the wearer wishes to use, there would be no need for actual contact with any other machine.

The combination of the ear-piece, and neck controller basically is your EDPID (Electronic Data Personal IDentification), but not only this, the neck sender, which looks ike a flexible OLED Display will also transmit an image via lazer to any surface, displaying the old-fashioned qwerty should a user prefer this method of input for various activities. It will also transmit your phones content, and menu infrastructure, which you control, and browse through using motion, and gestures. The neck control also reads these gestures you make with your hands in front of you, (Minority Report Style) too.

Basically, in 10 years from now, this is what The Nokia Helix will look like. Helix is part of our DNA structure (under a microscope of course), and Helix will be the first Nokia that repels against the Selfish Gene in all our human bodies..

Images Thanks to Google public Images, altered slightly via PS.

When Mobilefun.co.uk contacted me recently asking if I would be happy to review their newly designed mobile phone holder, I was delighted, and excited at the same time, because for quite a long time now, there has not been a really ideal solution for mounting a mobile phone on a tripod since the Nokia DT-22 Clamp and Tripod combination, which was discontinued quite a while ago.

It was the DT-22′s Clamp in particular which was the main attraction, and it was this Kestrel Clamp what made the DT-22 very popular. The Kestrel clamp is available on eBay from the USA, however, as you can see, is quite pricey, which makes the Mobilefun Mobile Phone Holder, and Tripod combination the perfect, and affordable solution.

I have no idea why Nokia decided to discontinue the DT-22, the adjustable clamp it had was the perfect solution for mounting your Nokia device not only on a tripod, but also for using together with the every-so-popular Qikpod, which basically extends your reach/arm, so you can grab great photos of yourself, and your friends singlehanded.

Back to the Mobilefun Mobile Phone Holder, and as you can see from the photos, its design is quite unique in the respect of form-factor. It not only extends horizontally, to accommodate various sizes of devices width, but also has a spring loaded height clamp too, which securely holds your Nokia device in place.

There are padded non-slip cushion pads fitted to the lower base where the bottom of your Nokia device fits, with enough room to position your device at the perfect secure position without havig to worry about it wobbling, or moving when setting up for your photos.

On the underside of the phone holder you will find the standard tripod screw mount, which consists of a metal threaded insert rather than plastic, so securing to any tripod, Qikpod, or Time-lapse positioning method, you don’t have to worry about anything giving.

The Mobilefun Mobile Holder also comes with its very own mini-tripod too, in fact, is exactly the same one Nokia used to sell with the DT-22, which is not too bad actually, nice, and strong construction, with metal hinges, and with a nice and tight ball head which you can adjust the strength of grip. The legs of the tripod are also telescopic, stainless steel, extending to reveal an additional four inches height.

I have tried a few devices in this holder, and all fitted very well, with no movement found with any of them. An X6 fitted nice and tight, so too did my N86, and even my N97 fitted very well, and that’s with a Capdase protector fitted, also from Mobilefun, Reviewed here.

So if your looking for the perfect Nokia phone holder, I highly recommend this mobile phone holder from Mobilefun.co.uk, which is available here for just £14.97GBP. Checkout their product pages for more photos, and information, where you will find this Mobile Phone holder, can also be used with an N900 too. Head over, and checkout more great Nokia Accessories that MobileFun has available.

Thanks to Mobilefun.co.uk for sending me this product to Review.

Hi guys, I thought the best way to try and get help on this unusual issue I’m experiencing would be to document it in an actual blogpost, with enough detail, so I don’t get people confused on twitter by repeating myself, or having the same questions asked over, and over.

Ok, here goes..

I have a MacBook Pro, with a few desktop publishing clients, and these are called Blogo, Qumana, and MarsEdit, which are all basically editors, which allows me to write offline, and upload whenever I wish, however I have run into a few issues.

I can add images to my posts within the Blogo editor from flickr, and Picasa, using html, but these errors only show up when I try to insert an image from my Mac desktop (images stored on my computer).

When the error occurs, Blogo reports the following..

MarsEdit reports the following….

And finally, Qumana, which also fails, gives the following error….

I can write, and successfully post this post, as the above images are from flickr html, I can also publish a post from all clients if only text is inserted, and no images.

The really strange thing is, all my permissions on my server side of things are correct, so too are my wordpress settings allowing atom, and remote publishing.

Now, this is where it gets even more strange. When I write a blogpost using any of these three clients, and add an image from my Mac desktop, each client fails with the above errors, HOWEVER, the images are showing up in my server folder wp-content/uploads/2010/04, but post fails completely, no post is published at all when the above errors are shown.

I can successfully upload images from my Windows laptop using Windows Liver Writer, from Symbian via my N97 WordPress App, and Maemo5 via N900, just not from Mac.

Can anyone help me, as I have almost exhausted all avenues trying to fix this problem. Its my 40th Birthday today too, so would love to get to the bottom of this, and then I can finally celebrate.!

Also, unsure if its related or not, but thought I would add it here.  Whilst uploading this post, Blogo published the post, however, it continued to show the uploading screen, as see highlighted in yellow below.

Update, I cannot upload a desktop image from my Mac using the WordPress browser editor either. Here is a screenshot of what happens when I try.

The above was with Flash enabled, so when I tried with the simple, non flashed based uploader, it just hangs after showing me the upload worked. It hangs, and shows a white window after hitting “save all changes”.

Here are my Mac desktop folder permissions in case this helps narrow it down. All images in this post were used via adding url from flickr.

This is the first of a few trials I will be putting Blogo to test, and this will be testing the Bookmarklet that comes with the desktop Blogging Client for Mac.

First up, and couple of images from flickr, added by browsing the individual images in my browser, then clicking on the Bookmarket to add into my Blogo desktop client post.

I have no idea what size the above image will render in my blog with Blogo, but hopefully it’s optimized for my blog’s particular column size. The above photo in flickr is my own, and features the Nokia X6 (above, and N86 below), being held in a new Tripod Phone holder which I will be reviewing soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the coming days.

Ok, that’s two photos inserted into Blogo straight from flickr, but lets see if Blogo supports Picasa too. I will attempt to insert a photo below from my Picasa Albums using the Boomarklet.

That appeared to go well, as you can see in the screenshot below, you can differentiate each image’s source, which I really like. Below the text window you also get a list of each embedded photos RAW information to, which in the above images cases, the flickr photos are showing as .jpg, and the Picasa as a .swf file. I will now attempt to publish this post to my blog, so if all goes will, you will see not only this post, but fingers crossed, correctly rendered embedded flickr, and Picasa images above. My next test with Blogo will be using the advanced feature, that specifically allows you to simply drag, and drop images from your desktop files into the Drop Bin in the Blogo Editor.

First of all, I wish to say a very big sorry to all my fellow twitter followers for yesterday’s flood of twitter updates, I simply forgot to disable my post to twitter plug-in whilst importing my WordPress posts to my NokiaDNA.com Blog. Lesson learned there, so sorry about that, and I hope I didn’t lose too many followers.

Reason I was importing my free WordPress blog posts into NokiaDNA.com was because the last few days have been quite a learning curve for me with regards to Blogging, and how important it is to make sure you back up your Blog completely, correctly, and securely.

Whilst experimenting with several Mac desktop clients which work with WordPress, enabling Offline functionality, I was experiencing some issues with attached images to my blog posts, so I thought, ok, it has to be something to do with permissions in my host, and CPanel. I set about changing permissions on certain folders I assumed would fix the issue (you know what they say about assumption lol), but sadly, in doing so, I really made a fatal error, and in changing the permissions to my htaccess file, it completely crashed my Blogs database.

So I posted out an update on twitter asking for advice, and help in resolving the problem I had caused, and the response I got back was quite overwhelming. The true power of twitter, and social networking really showed it’s true power, with many people offering to help.

One of these helpful guys, was David Gilson from Hull, in the United Kingdom, who offered to investigate the issue I had caused in my database. David has his own Blog here.

I gave him access to my blog backend, and he spent quite a while looking through my site, checking each, and every file, but sadly couldn’t resolve the issue, and was really sorry that he could not offer me a solution. I wish to thank David for trying at least, it was really appreciated that you took the time to try and resolve the problem I had caused, and it has not gone un-noticed my friend, thank you.!

So, back to square one, I contacted my Host supplier, and his name is Steven Smith, also from the UK, and also on twitter, @stevensmith1990. He agreed to take a look at my site, and see what I had possibly done wrong, and it was Steve’s investigation, which lead to the finding of that htaccess file I had changed its permissions in error.

Once Ste had changed the permissions back, my site was back.! No massive data loss as I had feared, and all was good.

Wrong.

Like a fool, I had also changed many other permissions in my CPanel, which later lead to even more problems. Steve looked again for me, and after giving him FTP access to my site, it turned out that every file in my database was in a sorry state, and he recommended a fresh install, and then restore my backup. (This is the part you really need to ensure you get right, as I didn’t).

Steven proceeded to wipe my database, and restore my Blog from my backup, all went well, and then the keys to my Blog were handed back to me for full control.(surely I can’t break it again?).

Wrong

In an effort to clean up my blog, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to remove the FTP access account Ste had set up in order to work on my site’s backend, so I proceeded to remove this remote account, and then try and establish an FTP access connection for myself(something I was having issues with, as well as that earlier problem I mentioned about uploading images in remote written blog posts).

Oh dear.!

I deleted the FTP account that Steven had setup, and low, and behold, it also deleted every single folder, file, and backup I ever had of my Blog.!

Yes, you guessed it, I contacted Steven Smith once again, and told him what I had done(add sheepish look here), and he was fine about it, and set about fixing the problem, however, there was no easy fix, of course, with everything gone forever, the only thing he could do now for me, was to set me up with a clean slate, and I would have to start my blog all over again.

I wish to take this opportunity to say a massive thanks to Steven for all his efforts, and hard work he put into my site on Easter Sunday, I will certainly be sending you some beer tokens for your efforts, because without you, this blog would not exist today.!

As you can see from looking at the links on NokiaDNA to the right of the page, I spent several hours straight yesterday, re-writting them all again, and that includes added those small favicons you see next to the links, one by one.

Now onto Blogo, I had been previously using a free limited trial version of this great app for Mac’s, and yesterday I entered a competition on twitter to win a full license, and I won.! So happy, as I had planned to purchased the full version, which is just $25USD.

Blogo is to me, the Mac alternative to the ever so popular Windows Live Writer from Microsoft, which is currently the best blogging desktop solution for the Windows Environment. I’m using Blogo to write this post, and with its clean UI, and simple, less cluttered, but rich in functionality layout, its a joy to use, and adding images is as simple as drag-and-drop from desktop files into Blogo.  There is also a Bookmark-let, which you add to your browser toolbar, and when you see the image in Flickr you wish to add in your post, you simple hit “Send to Blogo” and your done, its then a simple case of aligning it where you wish for it to be placed, and your good to go.

I will be carrying out further tests with Blogo today, as you can see, there are no images in this post.  this was intentional.

Hi guys, this is just a simple test using the latest available public Beta of the Official WordPress Client for Symbian. Warning- The following is only worth reading if you wish to have a laugh at my expense.;) I’m writing this test post on my N97, and other N97 owners will know, that phone memory is indeed in short supply, so what I was happy to see today on the WordPress Developers website, was an experimental "Smart Installer".

I thought, great, finally we will be able to install everything to Mass Memory, rather that the large qt libraries being forced installed to phone memory. So this in mind, I set about uninstalling the qt libraries, installer file, and WordPress client from phone memory. I checked my free phone memory afterwards, and I was delighted to see way over 30MB of free phone memory. Downloaded the "Smart Installer" from the WordPress pages, and set about installing it.

I soon began to realise that this installer was not that smart after all, (or rather, I’m not that smart), as it proceeded to self install to phone memory. I thought ok, fine, the file was less than 1MB, so I thought I can cope with losing 1MB of phone Memory(don’t ask). Wrong.! The Smart Installer than connected to the web and continued to download all those files I had recently removed from my phone memory, then to add salt to my fresh wounds, each and every file forced installed to phone memory, leaving me back to square one, with just 22MB of free phone memory.

It should be noted, that I must of completely misunderstood the meaning of "Smart Installer", but nevertheless, this has been a good test of the latest build. Also worth noting, the complete lack of internal hardware of the N97 is not the WordPress Symbian Developer teams fault, nor is it their concern really to achieve a lower sized WordPress Installation package. Roll on for the N97 successor. I love the form-factor of my N97, and adore its qwerty, but each time I see the memory, it reminds me of a comment I read a while ago about the N97 looking like a Ferrari on the outside, but with a Mini Clubman 950cc engine on the inside. If you have read this post, and now reading this, thanks for your time, I will keep you, my readers up to speed on the latest developments of the Official Symbian client of WordPress.

Update from the WordPress Development for Nokia Blog, and its not good news for all us N97 owners.  It’s not possible to install the Qt libraries to Mass memory.  Read here for more.

The many of you who know me from twitter, Nokiausers.net, or here will know full well that I have had my fair share of problems with my Nokia N97, resulting in countless hard resets, formats blah blah blah, but today, my N97 has let me down once again, and this time, its the final straw.

 I have given my N97 its fair share of chances too.  Why have I given it so many chances?  I wanted to love it, I really did, I do love its form factor, but its now let me down once too often, and frankly, I’ve had enough now, and thought I would share a spooky experience i had earlier when my N97 started acting up.

Earlier today, I was connected to my White N97-1 with my Nokia BH-604 Bluetooth stereo headset, listening to my favorite tunes, when my N97 started becoming so slow, and laggy through the menu’s, it eventually froze on me, although it had continued to play my music, and this is where it gets real spooky,

Music player set to randomly choose songs as my default setting choice, after the freeze, music play stopped for around 30 seconds, I still kept my headset on, monitoring how long this freeze would take, my N97 decided to play Depeche Mode, "Tainted Love".  If you actually listen to the lyrics of this song, they can pretty well cover my feelings for my once loved N97, so much so, its uncanny.

Then the next song came started to play, a sign maybe? No kidding, the next song was "Forgiven, but not Forgotten" by the Cores. When my own Nokia shows me signs like this, what does one do?  I have already had to remove the battery twice today due freezes, and not wanting to go down the resetting, and formatting route again.  I have lost count at the times I have done this before, and its really once too often for me now.  I have given my N97 a damn good fair share of my patients, but with those running thin over the last few days, today was the final straw, and I have decided to sell it.  What will I get next I hear you ask?  We shall see.

It’s such a crying shame, it really is.  The form-factor of the N97 is amazing, with it’s hinge mechanism being one of beauty, and superb design, but a combination of stretching S60 5th Edition to Touch, an under powered CPU, tied with insufficient Phone Memory, and RAM, the N97 is like a Ferrari on the outside, but with an Austin Mini 950cc engine inside.

I have Forgiven Nokia for the sheer oversight of this flawed Flagship Nokia handset, the N97, but hell, I have not forgotten.  The sad thing is, I’m not alone in this thinking either, as I read almost daily on twitter from N97 owners who feel outdone, robbed, lead down the garden path, being sold something that clearly does not do as promised. (Take the Transitions of the widgets in the Original N97 Promotional video below for example).

Nokia have lost a lot of loyal followers during the N97 transition, with new firmware updates being released for the flagship, trying to fix something that cannot be fixed with no amount of firmware fixes, its flogging a dead horse.! 

This leads me to something that I would love Nokia to implement, and at least show the end uers, consumers, and Nokia fans that they do care about us, and offer some kind of discount on the next Nokia Flagship device, be it a Symbian^4, or MeeGo device, how difficult could it be to offer people a discount?  Not that difficult really in my opinion, all they would have to do, is ask for proof of purchase, which would be simple if purchased from Nokia directly.

Do you own/have owned an N97?  If you do/have, please share your experiences with it, and please let us know if you are/were a normal user, or a power user. 

Tell me what problems you have had with your N97, what lets you down the most with the device, what you love about it too would be useful to know. Please also share your experiences with any hardware related issues you have experienced too, camera lens scratches, poor GPS etc, and if you successfully got these repaired under warranty. 

I’m sure I’m not alone in this respect, having had many Nokia devices in my time, and of course what goes with them, chargers of course, and mobile device chargers, and what comes with these Chargers, and Mobile Charging solutions.? Bloody Adapters! Lots of them!  Don’t throw them away just yet.

So glad Nokia has already started to move to only using the MicroUSB on all their new devices now, and its also great news other manufactures following suit, bar a couple. So what will happen to all these redundant tips, connectors, and adapters I hear you ask? Well, don’t throw them away just yet, keep hold of them, as I’m pretty sure that soon there will be some kind of recycle option open for everyone, somewhere we can forward our redundant masses of connectors, and adapters, which will then possibly go onto third world, developing countries, where they will be using older devices for quite some time to come.

The X6 however I was very surprised to see a 2mm Charging socket though, but alas the N97 does have a Charge, and Sync MicroUSB port which was Announced, and in the market place before the X6, so what gives?  The E72, although that also comes with a 2mm Charging port, the E72 can charge via its MicroUSB port, so why the 2mm port too?

What is your opinion on the rollout of MicroUSB ports across all devices, no matter what brand.? Do you have any uses for these masses of adapters that will soon be rendered useless in your household?, will you be happy to recycle them to developing countries? Look forward to hearing from you.

Welcome to the Review on the Trust Laptop Stand from GearZap.com. I’m sure many of you out there that have also reviewed items from various sources, you occasionally find yourself with an item to review, and you don’t really have much in the way of positive things to say about it.  This is one of those moments. First, this is what GearZap.com tells us about this Stand.

The Trust Laptop Stand Xstream is ideal for people who use a laptop at their desk. It has a 5 step height-adjustable aluminum chasis to bring your notebook screen to a ergonomic viewing height and distance. This is essential for long periods of laptop use and will allow you to organize your desk for enhanced productivity.

Key Features
- 5 step height-adjustable notebook stand with sturdy reinforced aluminum inlay to bring your notebook screen to a ergonomic viewing height and distance
- X shape for better airflow which improves the cooling efficiency of your notebook
- Protective rubber pads prevents your notebook from sliding and scratching
- Lightweight, flat and foldable design that easily fits your notebook bag
- Suitable for any notebook with screen size up to 17.4″

Ok, first things first, as getting my initial findings with the Trust Laptop Stand out the way first, it will save you time from having to read my post here to find out that, this Laptop Stand is unsuitable for either a 15.4″, or 17″ laptop, and I can only recommend the Trust Laptop Stand for 13″ or smaller laptops, and netbooks.

Having said this though, if your looking for a cheap laptop stand to simply angle your laptop on a desk while you use an external keyboard, and mouse, then it may just suffice for that use. I would not recommend you try and use your laptop whilst in this stand due to reasons show below in my video demo.

Placing either my 17″ MacBook Pro, or Acer Aspire 5110 onto the stand, they both do not sit firm enough onto the stand with the screen opened, no matter what angle I set it, and in fact are both are very unusable, and would only recommend the Trust Xtream stand for smaller netbooks as mentioned.  Check out my video below for my demo on the instability of this stand with larger Laptops.

The construction of the Trust Laptop Stand is completely hard plastic, with a very thin layer of aluminum on the top surface, and the addition of four non-slip feet, and anchor cushions.. It’s shaped in an X shape, and the two lower parts of this X form house flip out anchor points to hold your laptop in place. See my video above to see how to open and close these.

The tilting, rising of the Trust laptop Stand elevates to five different positions, and as mentioned earlier, is find for smaller laptops, and if you are looking for a cheap desk tidy stand to keep your closed MacBook whilst you use a Magic Mouse, and Wireless keyboard, it should be fine.

I would like to thank Mobilefun.co.uk, and GearZap.com for sending me this review item, and I’m sad that i could not write a more positive review about it.