Adios to my *Desire* and welcome *Simply Stunning*!

The time has come for my old Android phone to retire ... numerous scratches are reminders of the passionate kisses my phone had with the streets of Rome, Amsterdam, Doha, Warsaw, Cologne, Prague, Paris and others. The saved wi-fi networks could make a separate page in my memoirs :) - TOUR_EIFFEL, Den Haag Nieuw Centraal, Starbucks, TEDx2012, The_Bulldog, ViennArt, UEFAEURO2012, MosaicHouseHotel, ictQATAR_iParks, Hilton Gdansk, ING Internet Gate .... scrolling through that list always makes me travel back in memory and smile :)

My HTC Desire served me for whole 2 years.. I flashed it once with a new rom a year ago and it had a little more better battery life then. The worst thing about HTC Desires is the awfully small internal memory.. I couldn't install new apps for months.. had to constantly clear the browser cache and choose between the apps - which ones to keep. It was too annoying and I finally found the substitute :)

My A. bought himself a cool white HTC One X - the latest and one of the most powerful smartphones... I was hesitating between the X and S and eventually chose the latter, for difference. And my geeky self is HAPPY!!!

I installed some 30 apps the first day and of course - started instagraming :D I now enjoy the ICS Android and the dual-core processor performance..The camera is just amazing.. I can take quality pictures while videoing! and it has the Beats Audio™! 

I bought it from VivaCell-MTS, as it added me a "smart-bonus" worth half the price of the phone. I basically now have unlimited viva calls, texts and 3G internet!!!!!!! which is just awesome :) Listening to online radios on the go? no problem! :P

and here are the specs:

Breaking: an Armenian guy found a big security hole on Google

I'm kinda proud and happy to share this while it's trending!

Vahe G. (an Armenian 21yo guy), installed a JS code in his blogspot blog (now closed by Google) and if you visited it while logged into your Gmail (even from an incognito window), you would receive an email from him. Creepy?

He has tried to reach Google for this but got no response. Then a friend suggested to write to Techcrunch, so he did. Now he's making headlines all over the interwebs.

Google has already shut the blog and responded: “We take potential security issues very seriously, and our team is actively investigating this one. We’ll share more information soon."

I don't personally know him, but he's been following and commenting me on buzz and twitter, for which I'm now pretty proud! :D

Seems like Google will have to hire him finally. Or maybe Facebook?

Hey Google, know Armenian guys ! Hovik, your brother is really cool! :)

Kindle, my review of the great e-book reader

i've put my favorite Salome
as a screensaver :)

My Kindle arrived! I wrote about gadgets in a recent post.
Many of my friends have been demanding a blog post about it ASAP, but I could actually start writing after a week of playing with it.

In case you don't know, Kindle is a book reader device from Amazon. It is a thin, lightweight, electronic reading device that you can take anywhere and download your favorite book, newspaper, or magazine right into it.

As for the technical details...

• Display: 6" diagonal E Ink® electronic paper display, 600 x 800 pixel resolution, 16-level gray scale (no color!)
• Size: 203.2mm x 134.6mm x 9.1mm.
• Weight: 289.2 grams.
• Storage: 2GB internal (approx.1.4GB available for user content). It's said it can store approx. 1500 books.
• Battery life: up to 2 weeks with wireless connection off.
• Connectivity: 3G, works in many countries, but not in Armenia ;( check the map.
• USB port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) for connection to the Kindle U.S. power adapter or optionally to connect to a PC or Mac.
• Audio: 3.5mm stereo audio jack, rear-mounted stereo speakers.
• Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

My impressions

iPad and Kindle, why compare?

It's the best e-reader of everything I've considered. It's certainly better than iPads as a book reader.. they are actually not comparable! My thoughts on Apple are here, and actually, i think that having multi-functional devices is not the best solution. To me, cellphone should be mostly for mobile conversations, a photocamera for photographing, e-reader for reading, PC or a good laptop for work, and netbook for browsing, working from home, writing etc... I can't find a good use for a tablet (especially iPad) so far :)

my netbook and Kindle. each of them has its place in my heart :-))

good for eyes
E-ink makes it so easy to read on... I've actually discovered that "weekend reading" thing can be real :) I've read an entire book on Kindle in just 1 weekend! And i was not just reading, but also going out occasionally :)

text-to-speech
you know, you can make Kindle to read for you :)) Just plug the headphones and enjoy a male or female voice reading for you :)))) (you can choose also slower and faster speech)

music
you can put some music into the respective folder in Kindle and it can be played during reading. some instrumental music would be good to focus on reading and isolate from the ambient noise.

easy to transfer
when plugging the USB cable, the computer instantly recognizes a new device as a removable memory. there are folders for documents, audiobooks and music. just drag and drop the files.. no software needed for transfers.

cool features
Kindle has a Built-in Dictionary with Instant Lookup. In text format documents you can put the pointer to a word, and its definition will be instantly shown from the Oxford dictionary. Very useful! Also, it's possible to highlight quotes, make annotations on interesting parts, put bookmarks etc.. (that's what the qwerty keyboard is useful for).
Also, unlike a laptop or smartphone, Kindle never gets warm so you can comfortably read as long as you like.

file formats
while text formats are preferred, PDF files can be easily read on Kindle too. I noticed that it's better to convert PDFs into text format (like .prc) since the fonts will be scalable on Kindle and it will be possible to highlight interesting parts in text and make notes on it.

file converting
turns out the old good Mobipocket reader (the only e-reader app that worked on my symbian phone) has been acquired by Amazon and it converts PDFs to a favorable format.

screen

reading on a beach :)

it's not touch screen. But the coolest is: Read in Sunlight with No Glare. Kindle's screen reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlighting, eliminating the glare associated with other electronic displays. As a result, Kindle can be read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room.
The screen has a sharp display with 16 shades of gray and is very unusual for someone not familiar with electronic ink technology. At first i had to persuade someone that it's not a sticker on the screen i didn't scratch, but the screen itself :D

interface
The device has a 5-way controller (joystick) enables precise on-screen navigation for selecting text to highlight or looking up words. There are buttons for Menu, Home, Back, Next page and Previous page.

Jeff Bezos - the founder of Amazon.com

sleep mode
after 5 minutes of inactivity the device goes to the sleep mode thus saving the energy. the sleep mode is a nice graphic pic usually with some great author depicted or a page from an ancient book. After digging in some forums i found a way to put custom screensavers :)

charging
it fully charges in 4 hours with its USB 2.0 cable, however it has also a power adapter included that can be connected via USB port.

audiobooks
it's possible to download audiobooks from Audible.com (in its format) and listen them on Kindle, bookmarking in some parts, like in text.

books and other content
of course Amazon's benefit in Kindles is not just from selling the devices itself, but the books which are now available widely for the Kindle format and special price. On their website it's announced that The New York Times Bestsellers are only $9.99 in Kindle format. Some content is licensed for credit cards with billing address in the US only. This concerns all magazine and blog subscriptions (it wouldn't work here anyways, due to our non-inclusion in the Kindle global wireless / 'whispernet' service)

how to buy Kindle in Armenia
As you could guess, Kindle is not available in any tech store in Armenia (unlike iPads which are wide spread here now). The only way is to order it online on Amazon.com itself. The website is promising to deliver it here:

However, I'd highly suggest to do the traditional Armenian way of shipping stuff from the US -- finding someone coming from US to Armenia to actually bring it with him. It ships within 5-7 days in US for free.. faster shipping can be available at some cost, however if you haven't yet got the Amazon Prime account, you can get a 1-month trial for free and get things delivered faster, for free :) (if you forget to uncheck a certain button there before the trial expires, it will, however, charge you some $70 for the Prime account).

collections
when i first turned on my Kindle, charged it and put some test files on it, i didn't find a way to sort books by types or other criteria. In the manual it kept saying about some collections and ease of ordering. I dug the internets and found out that the collections and some other features are available in the new software update that was out just couple of weeks ago :)

what's bad?
Ok, i know that you see that I'm quite happy with it, but there must be something that would make it not perfect :D one thing i would state is that the page flipping is a bit slow, however it's not annoying and easy to get used to.
another thing is that it doesn't support unicode... but! you can make PDF files with Russian/Armenian texts, in appropriate format and still read it on Kindle. Still, copying quotes and making annotations won't be possible if it's not a text file.

other Kindles?
Kindle was first launched in Nov. 2007 it was the 1st generation device and had a slightly different design from the current Kindles (launched Feb 2009).
In June 2009 Amazon released a bigger Kindle DX (close to A4 format) and in June 2010 Kindle DX Graphite (roughly black version and with 50% more contrast display).

the Kindle evolution

It's rumored that Amazon will release a new, thinner Kindle in August 2010.

covers

I was recommended by a Kindle owner (privet, Gaspar! ;) to buy a leather case unless i want to have the back of the device worn out.
So i ordered original Kindle's leather cover (orange) which was about $35, and, in reality, was kinda desaturated orange...
But what was most depressing... after few days of my purchase, it turned out that my favorite Moleskine has released a special Kindle cover with a small notebook in it! ;(

my Kindle and its orange cover

Moleskine Kindle cover

why Amazon rules

The next day I bought my Kindle and its cover and it was shipped, i am opening my Google reader just to read that... Amazon has reduced the price for the Kindle (from $259 to $189) to compete with other e-book readers (the day before that, practically, hours after i purchased it). And it's $70 difference!

I'm shocked, devastated.. accepting sympathy notes... writing a status on FB about how ugly Amazon is... and BAM! the power of social media comes for help :) actually it was a good friend of mine - Susan Meschian who gave a hint that Amazon should have some refund policy for these cases... I dug in help and FAQs, but didn't find a relevant info.. then i wrote to their customer service... (their reply could come in 12 hours) but i didn't resist and called them. I didn't have to explain much :) they said i'd be refunded $70 in 2 business days :) and I was!!! I also got the same reply to my email. So i'm just a happy Amazon and Kindle customer :)

Yerevan Street View? Already there!

While some hundreds of us are keeping up with the latest tech news, some of us light candles.. others desperately try to find a good contact in Google (Maps) to finally get it done... turns out some folks have already implemented it quietly.. without much any publicity ! Yerevan Street View is a reality!!!

Very accidentally I stumbled upon it on Yerevan Municipality website and couldn't believe my eyes. An interactive map of Yerevan, showing the bus and marshrutka routes... it even does have a Street View!!!! all the underlined streets are available for viewing in 360° angle. But it's not the full story yet.

http://maps.yerevan.am

It's possible to rotate and go forward thru the streets using the arrow, however it's not very smooth like in Google Maps. It even has a directory (with search) of businesses, addresses and places! 

Seems to me very useful.. if not only that 'nostalgia' for 90's in the design... :/

There might be many other useful features that have to be discovered. Check it out yourselves!

It's far from being perfect (the usage flash is often irritating here), images quality is overall satisfactory and we can note that a huge work has been done. Here in this snapshot we can see the shadow of a car with the camera on top.

here! our office building and the lunch place of some of our photographers :P

From the images I've seen, i concluded that most of the shooting has been done in autumn 2009, and some of it during the Erebuni-Yerevan day celebration in October.

It wasn't hard to find out the authors of the project - it's menq.am aka Aviainfotel systems, the one that has created the airport flight information website.

Wouldn't it be more reasonable if they partnered with Google on this? Seems like they didn't lack resources (including administrative) and could easily organize it. And why almost no one knew about this yet?

In addition, on their website I discovered the multilingual dictionary project. If not the flash, it would be priceless.

Social Media Day Meetup in Yerevan!

On June 30, 2010, the Mashable has announced a Social Media Day — a global celebration of the revolution of media becoming social. We are joining Mashable in celebrating the day and organizing a meetup also in Yerevan!
The place is TBD by tomorrow, but first we need to know how many of us there will be. Roughly 12 ppl confirmed their participation, but hey, i thought we have a bigger community of social media enthusiasts (willing to de-virtualize for a while :D)! So go now and RSVP!

Social media has changed our lives. It has not only changed the way we communicate, but the way we connect with one another, consume our news, conduct our work, organize our lives, and much more. So why not celebrate?
There is a lot of flexibility in what exactly a meetup can consist of. Some groups are organizing social networking hours at their local venues, while others are hosting speakers or panels. We want to give you the flexibility to tailor your meetup to what you think best suits your social community.

• Follow @mashSMday: Follow @mashSMday on Twitter for updates and developments on the celebration.
• Tweet: Use the #smday hashtag on Twitter. With so many participating, we should be a trending topic on Twitter on June 30. Also, we’ll soon be announcing a prize for those that tweet or post FB.

My thoughts on gadgets and Apple

I'm a tech geek, however it doesn't fully apply to gadgets. Maybe it's because i'm a terrible saver and I can't usually afford that many gadgets and I've accepted the fact that I won't always keep up with the new technological developments. And that's one of the reasons why I'm not an iPhone user or Apple fan.
I've been always satisfied with the gadgets I owned and was able to use them to the extent of their capabilities.

Few months ago I started to implement my plan to save some money. Apart from being a terrible saver, I'm also a shopaholic. The plan was to store some amount from each month's salary in a special envelope, in a safe at my workplace. I wouldn't have access to it, unlike a bank account where I tried to put some savings which didn't work out.

The goal was to have enough money for a vacation in summer, somewhere in Italy (of course).

Due to some circumstances and I changed my mind about the purpose of the saving. The geek in me decided to invest the money in some gadgets that were crucially needed :)
Specifically, an Android smartphone and a Kindle. My post about the Kindle will follow next.
And here the story starts. 90% of people I communicate with were asking the same "Why not iPhone, iPad, iEsiminch?"
I'm not an Apple hater, but, obviously, not a fan either.

One of the reasons i didn't buy an iPhone, or a MacBook, or never thought of buying an iPad, is that I know it's addictive. The brand. But it's also a matter of convenience. Apple stuff is known to be not very compatible with other brands and it's in a sense - greedy.

My main arguments are depicted in a hilarious comic by The Oatmeal.

see the rest here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

As to my gadgets, I will show them off here, soon :) Besides, I'm planning on organizing a 'gadget presentation' party for all those who have been asking me to show and give opportunity to touch them or tell about their features. Stay tuned :)

BarCamp EVN '10 impressions and pics

My geekiest weekend of the year is over. It felt like a different reality to me. I was surrounded mainly by like-minded people who were so nice and geeky :)

I was enjoying seeing familiar faces, friends and getting to know new people. Of course, there were some people who were making me to seek the "report spammer" link, but i was trying to be tolerant :D

BarCamp is all about learning and networking (as most of the conferences), but what is good here, it's that there are no strict rules and the atmosphere is relaxed and pleasant.

thanks to photobzik for pics :)

The biggest shortcoming of this format for me is that because of parallel tracks - presentations taking places in different rooms at the same time - you have to make choices on what to hear and what to miss all the time.

Being a curious personality made me find an interesting topic in every half-hour track so in the end i was very exhausted.

While last year I was just a participant, this year I decided to present something myself. It's a great opportunity to train the public speaking and presentation skills. I'm so thankful for all the people that approached me with a feedback. It's invaluable!

photo by Sedrak Mkrtchyan / PanARMENIAN Photo

On the first day me and my friend Yervand made a presentation entitled "Geolocation Fun" that was about geolocation in general and Foursquare in particular. (find the PPT link below)

The room was very crowded and I was excited that some people actually downloaded the app right there and started to use Foursquare :). And also many people, whom i didn't know were approaching and saying that they liked my presentation :))) It felt great!

That night, when i was unable to sleep, I was planning my next presentation on Sunday. Right before the sleep i got the idea that I should present my "thing" on internal communication in companies and newsletters. I had a very few time to prepare, however I was feeling confident still everything was already in my head and i had already written a detailed blog post about it.

Even though I didn't have much time to prepare, it was good too :)

While I did my first presentation as @arpik, the second one was by Arpiné Grigoryan / PanARMENIAN Media (this is how it was written in the schedule). I was pleasantly surprised hearing that people came to hear a presentation because it was PanARMENIAN involved :) some even thought it was just about PanARMENIAN.Net :D

I really encourage all IT-related people to attend BarCamps since there's always lots of learning and networking. Not only you see meaningful faces of promising young people, you can actually watch for potential employees.

I really can't understand how anybody in IT wouldn't go there or thing that it's "useless". First of all it's a great platform to showcase new projects/services. Besides it's a great place to train presentation skills :)

Here are the links to my presentations:

• Geolocation Fun
• Newsletter as an internal communication tool

Presentations will be soon put on the barcamp.am website together with the links to articles and blog posts about BarCamp and photoalbums.

More pics below.

BarCamp EVN '10, for all the geeks out there!

I was just going to write about the upcoming BarCamp EVN, but decided to check my last year's post first :) Turns out I've described it pretty well then, and there's almost nothing new to add :D

This year i actually have my contribution in the organization.

Besides, i'm going to make a presentation this year and hope to see you all in the audience. You know, i'm still in the process for collecting experience for public speaking and I need your support and feedback :)

This year there will be 4 simultaneous tracks and still no breaks :)

There will also be livestreaming from all 4 BarCamp halls (hope the internet will be good enough :)

Don't forget to check the #barcampevn10 hashtag, there will be live-tweeting during the whole event. Hope this year there will be more of us tweeting :))

RSVP to the FB event and don't forget to register on the website.

There will be an afterparty at the Lovers Park and more opportunities for socializing :)) 

Btw, on Saturday Armen Grigoryan is inviting for "Innovative Talks" in Lovers Park which is definitely worth checking out and participating in :))

About my pink netbook and software iRecommend

Buying a computer is always a big event for me. I still remember the excitement around buying my first ever laptop with own money back in February 2008. It wasn't the greatest and most powerful one... in fact it was the cheapest one in Media Markt of Rotterdam; the only one that was being sold with Win XP instead of Vista... it had a very simple design and fitted well to my needs.

I was excited about the idea that I can carry it with me (a cute orange laptop bag was meant for that) write from wherever I want, even from bed ! It won't make noise as my desktop comp., so I can work even when my sister is sleeping, etc etc...
However as time passed, it transformed just to a desktop computer because smth happened to the battery and it stopped working without AC power. Then it was heating too much and even started burning my knees... then the heating caused damage of the Wi-Fi adapter and it also stopped working. I was desperately seeking a laptop cooling pad in Yerevan, but didn't succeed in finding it. Well, despite of these troubles it served quite well for me and I'm happy I had it :)

In this era of lightweight netbooks and mini-notebooks with cool designs I couldn't not to be up-to-date with the technology. After some polls on which brand to choose and researching all the online stores in Moscow (a friend generously agreed to bring it with her) I stopped by ASUS Eee PC 1005HA which has a Seashell-inspired design, 160GB memory, 1GB RAM, 1,66 GHz processor, weighting only 1,4kg. But the best thing is its battery! 10.5 hours of battery work, cool huh? :) Oh yes, and I chose the PINK one :) I'm tired of black stuff around me and I'm for uniqueness :)
I couldn't wait until it arrived. So nice, so portable and smart!!! The only disappointment was that the Windows XP Home edition was already installed... in Russian language version :( I hate Russian language interface and i couldn't stand reading "Пуск" instead of "Start". The language can't be changed and the only option is to install new Windows...Well I got my license for Russian language since it was brought in Moscow :( However, I renamed all the icons and folder names and changed all other options to default English so I'm okay with it now.

pictured: my first computer, back from 1996

Then i started to transfer all my files from the previous laptop via wi-fi (luckily i have my own network at home). After that, I started to customize and personalize my new computer with the software i use, so this is a nice occasion to write down about some applications i'm using in case my recommendations would be useful to any of you. 

• At first, i downloaded the browser. Chrome this time and no FF. Sorry Firefox fans, i don't want to struggle with hanging browser anymore! And I also installed the new Opera 10 as my second browser.
• Then i downloaded my favorite picture editor and viewer Picasa 3.5, that scanned all my pictures for its database.
• Then it came the time for Winamp. It's my preferred music player since 2001.
• After that i downloaded the last.fm scrobbler to continue scrobbling the tracks i listen on this computer too.
• Then it was the time for the video player and my choice is VLC.
• IMs. I downloaded Google talk client. Skype was pre-installed.
• KDWin to be able to switch between keyboard drivers for Russian and Armenian.
• Flashget as a download client.
• uTorrent as a torrent downloader. 
• Activated Office 2007's 60 day trial to be able to use OneNote as my favorite note taking application.
• My favorite twitter client was Twitterfox plugin for FF, but since i don't have FF on my personal comp. anymore, I downloaded Tweetdeck, which I have used also before.

So... this is it! :)

BarCamp EVN '09 -- my impressions

BarCamp is a “non-conference” in the sphere of information technology, new media and Internet. A “non-conference” is the unofficial, informal part of the conference supporting open discussions and a free exchange of ideas and opinions.

“BarCamp Yerevan” brought together bloggers, new media professionals, IT specialists, companies involved in Internet and digital technologies, journalists and journalism students, as well as many other groups interested in using technology and Internet in their work.

barcamp.am

BarCamp is a place where everybody can participate for free and hold a presentation on any topic connected with IT, even partly connected :)


There were about 400 people registered on the website, i don't know how many people actually visited it. I saw many people appearing just for the second day, as it was Sunday (this Saturday was a working day in Armenia).

There were 3 simultaneous tracks of presentations in different rooms.
It was pity since we were physically unable to participate in all the interesting sessions. There were no breaks, and in order to grab a coffee, you should skip some session.

I loved it for several reasons:

1. presentations were 30 mins at maximum, plus no obligation :) you could skip from one room to another if it was boring or uninteresting.
2. there were already some active twitterers on BarCamp and I was refreshing my twitter page on mobile to see what is going on in other rooms. The hashtag #barcampevn09 was helping to search for all barcampers who were on twitter :)
3. it was a great opportunity to meet old friends, colleagues and fellows from online communities, recover contacts, get to know people whom you knew only by nicknames.
4. it was useful for networking, socializing, setting up important business contacts.
5. getting a discount for iCON wimax internet. i don't know if i'm going to use it yet :)
6. i saw and had touched (:D) a nabaztag ! I love these creatures and was dreaming to see one live since i first heard about it years ago.  
7. it was useful for seeing projects and companies in faces, like: 
• presentation of "Prosperous Armenia party"'s online PR tools, 
• presentations of banks.am, itel.am, auto.am and their monetization options
  
• Macadamian company
8. For me, personally, it was also interesting to discover and meet some of my readers (hi folks! :) 
 

I generally like IT people and tech geeks since they are interesting to me :) (and i am one of them), and as they are generally not so communicative in real life, they are more open and active in places where there are more people like them who speak their 'language'. BarCamp did a great job for bringing these people together and uncovering those who were hiding behind their online nicknames and roles.

Some of the presenters badly lacked presentation skills, others were causing heavy debates bringing everything to politics.

Somehow i didn't feel like making a presentation, although i was constantly having lots of ideas of possible topics i could present and i couldn't choose :D Next time - for sure ! Those of you who know me, also know how enthusiastic i am on making a session or presentation, especially on IT topics :)

Presentations i liked:

• Areg Maghakian told us how it was to work for Facebook. He had worked there in the early years of its development
• Grizli aka Grisha was telling about the techniques of picking up girls online, especially on odnoklassniki
• Maksym Savanevsky from Ukraine was making an overview on Obama's online PR campaign.
• Антикризисная реклама by casualmente
  

People whom I have seen online and met thanks to the BarCamp: @netcrash, @ditord, @kornelij, @ahousekeeper, @jesirobendebua, @reporter_arm, blansh :)

BarCamp closed with an afterparty at Armeda club. Finally there was some time to freely socialize without missing any session :)

My friend Tata, who is actually an artist and has nothing to do with IT also enjoyed the atmosphere of the BarCamp and pointed out smth i didn't notice before she said it: people that were there for socializing and meeting each other face-to-face, were still so much busy spending the time buried into their notebooks and smartphones twееting, updating statuses and blogs :D

...and by the way, I went into a little melancholy meeting a lot of nice young IT people who were still studying, and had a lot of things ahead... and felt myself a little more older, hehe :D no, no, i admit that there were people much older than me.. i wonder if they felt the same :D (or is it me looking for something to get depressed about :D)

Here are some photos by me:

BarCamp Yerevan

and at last... 

 

me at the BarCamp (by Gaspar)

More photos by Gaspar: Day 1, Day 2, by konteck, on Facebook by Lusin Paravyan, by 10098, and a video by reporter_arm

and check twitter for #barcampevn09 ;)

and in also you can google "barcampevn09" to find out more on the event.

BarCamp Yerevan

Fighting procrastination or Need of Focus

I started to write this post about a week ago. I needed to focus on writing about focus :)

So! It appeared so that the whole January I was unemployed and had a lot of free time for finishing my unfinished tasks, making new year resolutions, self reflection and everything in general.
Still, i haven't succeeded in completing all of the tasks that i have set for myself, productivity as well as satisfaction of how i spent the day was sadly low.

The saying that the more you have to do, the more you manage to do is sadly true for me.
Some years ago I used to study for Master's, had a full-time job + one part time (classes, teaching) + self-studying Italian. But now, when i don't have any assignment other than doing housework, I feel that i'm not doing anything valuable and i'm not even bringing my tasks to finish.
Since the beginning of January i started several things that i still didn't finalize. I left them undone and it's like a stone hanging from my neck.

Months ago i started to read the famous "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" by David Allen and tried to implement it, but I failed.

The basic concept of GTD is getting all those commitments, bits of information and must-dos out of your head and into a trusted system. I tried different tools for that but it didn't work. I couldn't get all that in one place and couldn't force myself checking that one information repository constantly.
In fact, GTD has got many fans and many people write about it, make applications for it. It's simple, seems easy but in fact, you're spending more time on collecting, organizing, planning than actually doing anything. You need to change a lot of your habits to adapt to GTD. So this method certainly has its weaknesses. The following article gives more opinions: What is wrong with GTD? In any case it's worth reading since personally for me, it helped to realize many things about productivity and planning.

Then i read a lot of posts that came across in my Reader, and learned a lot from them. For example:

• "Top 10 Tools for Sticking to Your New Year's Resolutions" from Lifehacker
  
• "How to find your true priorities?" from Pickthebrain 
  
• "Why You Should Read Books (& How to Find Time)" again from Pickthebrain 
• "Writing in the age of distraction" by Cory Doctrow
• "Simple Productivity: 10 Ways to Do More by Focusing on the Essentials" by Leo Babauta from lifehack.org
  
• "Keeping Focus While Beating Back Distractions" from lifedev.net
• "The Power of Less" and the author's interview to LifeHacker
  

Then i realized the main reason of the failure. The multitasking isn't always favorable. Especially when i have to write something, make something, i'm being badly distracted by gtalk conversations, email notifications, unread items in Google Reader, etc... I have read lots and lots of articles on productivity and getting things done and analyzing all the information i got, i made the most important conclusion: I need to FOCUS.

And here are my follow-up points:

• Do a planning for 5 years (inspired by "What would you do with five years?") 
  
• When writing tasks, write them in S.M.A.R.T. goals format *.
  
• Be online only when it's necessary and there's time and wish to talk (gtalk, odnoklassniki, etc)
• Connect to the internet only when it's necessary
  
• When writing, reading or working on smth, leave only the windows and applications necessary for that. close all others.
• Check the to-do lists in the morning and in the evening,
• Check the email 4 times a day: morning, lunch, after work, before sleep.
  
• Clean-up the Google Reader from time-killing useless feeds and leave only the ones that are necessary and are enough to read daily and setup time for reading feeds, morning for and before sleep, for example
  
• Setup daily and weekly things to do that would include gym, reading, movies, etc...
• When there's need for motivation and good mood, put on nice music on shuffle and sing aloud :)
• Don't leave open tabs in FF or Chrome!
• Define ONE place for writing tasks and plans. Here's a nice list of GTD tools.
  

* From AIESEC, among all other useful things i've learned, is the goal-setting and especially the S.M.A.R.T. goals, what a wonderful invention of humankind :) SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

And now i'm setting a SMART objective to plan the tasks i have written and set smart goals for all of them.

S: Write the goals in SMART format
M: All of the goals have timing and a detailed plan
A: It is achievable :)
R: Sure it is realistic
T: I put a deadline Sunday midnight.

If you would like to read further, i'd recommend following blogs:

• Pick The Brain
• Zen Habits
• Life Learning Today
• Never The Same River Twice

How i fixed my phone and became an experienced Nokia user :)

I'm a happy owner of Nokia 5700 XpressMusic. As i read in some reviews, it is "For those not obsessed with anorexic phones" :D It's a smartphone with advanced music features. It fits my needs since I'm a music person and a geek :) I use it as a music player when I'm out and walking by myself, I use it to check my gmail and browse something on the net, I even have office applications that let me read word, excel, ppt and html files :) I watch videos when I'm in a public transport and bored, and i use the photo camera to take photos of some new clothes and shoes that i try on in boutiques, but hesitate about buying them. So i make their photos to review them later and decide to buy or not.
I use notes to write down thoughts and i use calendar for my schedule. So i use it fully and i can't imagine my life without such gadget :)

That's why i was so desperate when it died 2 days ago. A friend called me home (!) since i wasn't 'picking' the phone. In fact, i didn't receive any calls and when i tried to check it, it suddenly froze. I switched it off (normally, from the menu) and couldn't turn on again. It wasn't going further after the initial white screen with Nokia logo and didn't react at anything. It also refused to turn off normally, i had to take the battery out for that. I took it to the service center on Lusavorich street. The customer service guy was nice, he asked what had happened and i described.
Luckily it's guarantee expires in June so i could have it fixed for free. He told that they'll call within 3 days and also told that they might format it and reinstall the firmware so all the data will be lost. I was lucky to backup it couple of days ago. I wanted to install an audiobook application (Audible) and downloaded the latest Nokia PC Suite (7.1). It installed normally and i did the full backup of my Contacts, Address book, Notes and Calendar memos and the phone settings just in case.

 The backup process with Nokia PC Suite

The next day morning they called and i went to pick it up. It had a new firmware installed and i happily took it home and started to restore my data from the backup. In the middle of restoring the phone suddenly restarted and the same story with the white screen with logo happened. I was so upset! I had to took it back there, and maybe also the backup file asking to reformat it restore it again. The problem was that the customer service guys supposedly wasn't the one fixing it and he was passing it to other technical people, and when i was telling him about PC suite, backup etc, he was looking at me as if i was speaking Chinese. Oh and he called the memory card - "chip". I hate it :D I had to get in touch with technical people and ask to perform the restore themselves and identify the problem.

1. Then i tried googling about it and found other people having the same problem. I found different discussion boards with some solutions offered. Mostly they were recommending to format the phone and reset the factory settings by pressing "* + 3 + call" and switch the phone on.

I tried it, but my phone didn't react. Some hours later, when i was about to take it to the service center again, i tried the  "* + 3 + call" again and it worked !!!!!!!!!!
I got a newly formatted phone with factory settings. It asked to select the country, date and time :)

And i tried to restore my data again - with the PC suite content copier, this time only the contacts. It stuck in the middle again, the phone restarted with white screen with a logo. I did the reset of factory settings again and started to find alternative ways of recovering my address book. I realized that the problem might be in the backup file and not the phone.

2. I downloaded the Nokia software updater and tried to update the firmware of my phone, which turned to be up-to-date.

3. I browsed for the backup file in my comp., and it had ".nbu" extension. I searched for .nbu extracting software and found Noki. It is sharewere and i could extract only limited amount of data. I downloaded the latest version 1.7.

So i tried to extract the backup file but it failed. Noki returned an unknown error :(
4. Then i tried doing another backup of my nearly empty phone and extract that backup with Noki. It returned the same unknown error :) so this time it could be a problem with Noki.

5. I googled again to find other applications that could extract the backup and in one discussion thread in Nokia forums, I read about another client - "NBU parser" made by Russians :)
I looked for it and seemed like all the links were broken and the only place that it might download from - was some vbulletin forum which required registration for downloading files :(
I hate registering for a single-time purpose, but it seemed like the only solution for me. I registered and it turned out that i should wait for the confirmation from administrators :(
then i tried to yandex for that application, since it was mentioned to be russian :) and i found many links!
i downloaded it and it looked strange :D

However i could orientate in the buttons thanks to the help file that contained a normal screenshot :)

6. I exported the contacts in .txt (the first button) and they contained the descriptions in russian :/ So they wouldn't go well in my phone with english interface.
Then i tried exporting them in .csv and the same story with Russian :(
Then i tried the .vcf format, and it turned to be the one i needed :)

 

.csv (comma-separated values) opened with Excel

 

.vcf format in a notepad 

7. Then I imported the files with Nokia PC suite's Communication Center.

Importing .vcf files with Nokia communication center

So the most important part was done, i recovered all my 176 contacts to the phone. The messages from inbox could be recovered with NBU parser, but they were in .txt format and didn't go back to the phone with similar way. The messages tab of Nokia Communication Center didn't had importing messages active for some reason. And they were in .txt so it wouldn't display normally as before (with the correct sender, dates etc). I decided to keep them as an archive in the computer and not to try to put them back, i didn't have any message to be kept in phone.

8. Then i tried to do something for the notes. The Noki application was crashing and i searched for other versions of it. I found and downloaded an older version - 1.6, and it extracted all perfectly :) The messages were in .vmg format, recognized by the PC suite. But still i couldn't put them back (though didn't try hard for that), and there were only 50 of 270 messages. Noki is sharewere and extracts a limited number of messages at the trial period. But i exported the Notes and Calendar entries in .txt. I put back the notes by copying them to the phone. As for the calendar entries, i didn't try to put them back, since there were not important.


So that's it :)


After this, i did a backup of the phone again and started to customize and put the settings. I browsed for themes and found my recent addiction - "House M.D." tv-series theme ;)

I spent the whole day fixing my phone and some hours after midnight - customizing, but i don't regret any bit :)
My phone is working great again! :)


Hopefully my description will be helpful to somebody else.

Conclusions:

1. Always have an up-to-date backup of at least the Address book of the phone
2. I was happy to have bought the phone from the authorized dealer, so that i had the 1-year guarantee and the normal customer service. 
3. Before taking the phone to the customer service for alternative solutions :) some things can be done easily at home, like reverting the factory settings. Google for the similar issues.
   
4. Never stop trying, even if it seems useless.
5. Don't install suspicious applications or at least backup the phone before.
6. There are other search engines :D When google can't get the right page, better to try alternatives, and especially for the Russian content, yandex.ru is the best :)
7. In case of the encoding problem with an application, try to open the help file, it should contain some screenshot :-D