Welcome to today’s 5-country map-based, near-live media tour. As I travel through Germany, Luxemborg, France, Belgium and Holland. In the map you’ll see the main part of this tour – a map that i’ll be updating with media and route info as I go. You should see images, audio, tweets and video if everything goes well. I expect the tour to last about 10-12 hours.
Update: Podcasts and images below!
With me I have two Intel based MIDs. The Wibrain i1 and the OQO 2+. I’ve got spare batteries for both and haven’t got any charger with me so it will be interesting to see how much battery I get through. I’ve also got a GPS puck (bluetooth) a USB snake cam and my headset. I’ve also got a stack of podcasts loaded up on my phone!
For information on the roaming 3G services i’m using today, see this post.
Update: Treating myself to a burger and thinking about all the things Ive learnt today. The experiment worked but it was mostly a hand-finished exercise only possible because i had a full browser and a PC. So much more could be automated in software to make this easier. 3G worked well although getting out of the cities highlighted that even European 3G doesnt cover you at all times. Battery life on Wibrain was amazing. I have switched to the 3rd battery to write this but the Wibrain has been on from 0930 until 1900 and still had 1hr left.
Using a MID to take high quality images in the future should really help because software can automated the tagging, resizing, editing and uploading along with local creation of the mashup file although its arguable that a camera would always be better positioned on a phone if its the one device you always have with you.
After realising that I couldn’t use the navigation software on the Wibrain due to the GPS already being used by the tracking software, I had to resort to the smartphone. Man that’s a dangerous experience! I could hardly see the screen. Smartphone navigation is great for pedestrian applications but it canr replace a well designed 4″ experience.
It was a shame that I couldn’t test the ClarionMiND today as the car mount and tailored UI would have really helped. I’ll have a chance to test it next week though so maybe ill re-do a smaller version of the tourr.
Today has been fun and challenging but now its ime for me to clear my table and head out into the car park and back home. Ill try and update this post with thoughts as I have them so check back soon.
Images created with a NokiaN82
Roaming must be a big problem for those crossing the border regularly. Can’t imagine what it’s like for the people at CERN for example. I, for one, would welcome some cooperation between European service providers at least !
Taking a trip to our neighbours (or even near the border) and staying online right now involves a risk of hideous roaming costs or taking care to either stay offline – or manually setting your one and only preferred network/APN.
New article: The 5-country Media Mashup http://bit.ly/arWkZT