The N97 Mini

Meet the Nokia N97 Mini, the N97's younger brother. Like the Nokia N97, it features a touch tilting screen and slide out slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The screen is only marginally smaller at 3.2". As the name suggest, the N97 mini is smaller at 113x52.5x14.2 mm and weighs only 138g with the battery.

I love the fact that it also has a 5 mp camera (2584 x 1938 pixels), Carl Zeiss lenses, autofocus and 14x digital zoom with LED flash. It also has a secondary camera for video calls (VGA, 640 x 480 pixels). If you like taking a lot of videos and pictures using your camera phone, don't worry as the mini comes with 8GB internal memory, expandable to up to 24 GB with microSD card. Downloading the files is quite easy via the high-speed USB 2.0 connectivity.

Running on the Symbian OS version 9.4, the phone has built-in Assisted-GPS receiver, Wifi, 3.5mm audio connector, etc.

I like the "Green" cred of this phone - Nokia mentions that the mini is up to 80% recyclable.

It is now available unlocked on the Nokia store for £429.00 including VAT.

Another interesting news is that Nokia has now made the Ovi Maps available for download for ten Nokia smartphones, including the N97 Mini. This FREE turn by turn GPS Navigation application offers serious competition to TomTom and other SatNav providers.

Visit the Nokia N97 Mini site for more info.

Everything you wanted to know about the Nexus One

A lot of people are talking about Google's mobile phone - Nexus One. Though manufactured by Taiwan-based HTC, Google was apparently involved in every step on the design process.

The Nexus one is the latest in a series of so called "iPhone Killers" which have fallen by the way while the iPhone goes from strength-to-strength.
Reportedly only 20,500 handsets have been sold in the first week since it's launch.

The sim free set costs $529.00 on the Google site. That translates to roughly £324/ which is not exactly what you call cheap.

Anyway, check out all the technical specs of the Nexus One. They seem to have thought of everything.

How to choose a web development agency

I recently got back in touch with a long lost friend who happens to be doing an MBA in Scotland. Chatting over Skype, we discussed our research and he was quite surprised to learn that my research was on blogging. Apparently, he's quite interested in setting up his own website and we talked about web designer Edinburgh. There are a few companies there but he was unsure what he should look for when choosing a web development agency.

This gave me the idea for this post. Some points to consider while choosing a company to design your website.

1. Track Record of the agency
See their previous projects and designs. A good agency will list a few examples on their site. Nothing worse than a web development company that goes bankrupt and suddenly you find your website has disappeared overnight.

2. Rates
I have also learnt from experience that costly doesn't necessarily mean good designs. Check the various packages.

Many web designers want to show off their skills (and also increase their rates) by filling up the pages with amazing graphics and fantastic Flash animations. Keep in mind that they design using the latest computers (usually Macs) with massive screens and enhanced graphics. I always have to remind people that not everybody has superfast broadband connections or even the latest fastest machines.

3. Flexibility
The Company should be willing to listen to your ideas and concepts. Don’t let them push their ready-made templates unless of course you are on a tight budget. I strongly believe that each website should be customised.

4. SEO
You might have the best looking website but that doesn’t mean that you will have visitors flooding your site. Make sure the company is able to implement some basic SEO techniques for your site and help get your site listed on major search engines. For example, if you are a web development company based in Edinburgh, your site should be at least in the first page of Google  for the keywords “web design Edinburgh”.

5. Extra features
See whether they can help with ability to accept payments (in case you are selling something on the site) – not just using credit cards but also using other payment options, especially Paypal. And also look at the possibility of integrating with a blog to make the site more interactive.

Advanced features include enhancing each user's experience by customizing Web pages to individual customers preferences. This is possible by using interactive web sites requiring customers to log in resulting in personalised web pages once they log in.

These are a few points to consider before choosing a web development company.

Survey Closed and preliminary findings

My online survey collection is now officially closed and right now I am in the process of cleaning and arranging the data.

Here are some preliminary findings:

A total of 491 respondents started the survey. However, only 427 actually completed it. My target was 500 respondents but I guess it will have to do. I am sure the number will go down further as I go through the data to clean it up. For example, one respondent put eBay as his favourite blog.

It is kind of interesting because out of all the respondents, 306 of the respondents or 71.3% were actually ladies. I have to find out why this was the case, though I have some theories why.

Watch this space for more results and also the announcement of the various prize winners.