Over the summer I’ve had a chance to test-ride N80, one of the high-end Nokia smartphones. You know, the one that is listening while you’re talking. At first all the functionality got me really excited and I was really looking forward to using it for all kinds of practical things on the go. N80 looked promising on paper, but failed to deliver on many accounts. It sure can do practically all the things I have expected, but it is a pain to use. Here’s a list of nine things that have annoyed me from day one.

It takes longer to boot than my G4 PowerBook (heck, it takes almost as long as any Windows PC). I used to keep my Windows computer running around the clock so that I didn’t have to spend Windows minutes when I wanted to use it. That probably saved me several days every year. N80 reminded me of those days, because it takes almost a minute from turning it on to when I can start using it. Only that it cannot stay up all night, because …

Battery does not have a life. This phone is a real power hog. Seriously, I need to charge it every other day even though I hardly ever used it. Has anyone at Nokia tested this device before sending it to production? Try using Wi-Fi and N80 drains the battery in a couple of hours. In other words, it’s better to use it with the phone plugged right into the grid. Goodbye to everything wireless. Oh, my.

Proprietary connectors and expensive cables. N80 leaves an impression that Nokia lives in a bubble where widely adopted standards do not exist. Even though this is a high-end phone it has no USB and no regular earphone jack. It uses proprietary cables, connectors and adapters that cost more than they are worth. It’s like buying a book for which you need special glasses to see the vowels. No thank you.

Wi-Fi reception is incredibly poor. When I first started using this phone I thought, great now I can check for available Wi-Fi spots without firing up the computer and walking around town like a dork before I find one. Boy was I wrong. This phone does not find nowhere near as many as that old PowerBook of mine does.

Performance like we’re in 1995 again. It takes literally a couple of seconds from sliding the phone open until the background light goes on and you can start using the phone. Add a few more when opening and  SMS you’ve just received. Even something as simple as opening N80’s phone book takes long enough to want me memorize all the numbers stored there. Image gallery? Don’t. Even. Think. About. Opening.

An odd bunch of useless software. Nokia had to come up with their very own browser, but are unable to develop even a decent text editor. Both suck. Does Visual Radio sound revolutionary? It is, just check the cool Web site at visualradio.com and you’ll known instantly why you’ve never heard about it (and never will). The audio recording software that comes with the phone can miraculously record only one minute of sound. 60 seconds. Useful for what?

Let there be buttons, many of them. Product functionality does not seem to be a coordinated activity at Nokia. Seriously, the phone has 27 buttons and it does not even have a full keyboard. What a waste. Multimedia button? I’ve pressed it only once to see where it leads. After that I’ve used it only to show people how useless it is. Yes, the keypad might present an incredible design accomplishment to Nokia, but is difficult and clumsy to use at best.

Phone is ridden with usability stupidity. The phone interface feels like it has been designed by programmers during lunch breaks when the interface design team was away. Let’s add weird icons and surprise our users with what those buttons do. How about making it impossible to view the date and time anywhere else but on the home screen? Check. Has anyone ever heard of copy-pasting? Switching between applications? Switch what? Switch the phone, I say.

Let’s make it short-lived. In the age of hyper-consumerism, the shorter the lifespan of a product, the better off is the company making it. You’ve guessed right, the N80 I’ve used is dead. Although the reason is not really low-tech, it is just as stupefying. The phone expired when the cable connecting the sliding part of the phone cracked. At Nokia they surely knew people will be sliding their phones open and shut (I mean, they designed it so) but they still installed a 2-cent cable that effectively obliterated a 400 Euro phone. Not that the cable looks like it could take the strain it ought to.

The verdict? N80 sucks and obviously I am not the only one to complain. But the real problem is that things are not getting better. I’ve talked about most of these issues at Ars Electronica in Linz back in the fall of 2006 with Matt Jones, who was participating at a panel as Nokia’s user-experience design director. Back then I complained about disappointing experience with Nokia’s Internet tablet N800. I was hoping to hear a reaffirming reply that, yes, we are aware, working on it, please give us a couple of years to polish things out. But was surprised when the gentleman carefully listened, took a deep breath, acknowledged that these really are important issues and apologized for delivering a disappointing experience. Not exactly what I have expected, but at least he had not tried to comfort me, since things really have not changed. And I’m sure he knew what I was talking about as he was working then on the N-series phones, the mothership of N80.

Most other phone manufacturers are not much better (which is probably why Nokia doesn’t bother changing anything). I’m glad I had a chance to try out the N80. However, I’m switching from smart and useless to brick and handy before I get a pop-up notification saying that I have unused icons on my phonetop. Downgrading to good ol’ 1100.

Mladen

I had an “Aha!” moment the other day when I was reading the Word of the day where brilliant folks at Merriam-Webster daily deliver an explanation of one delicious English word after another. Reading that one particular explanation literally made me stare into the distance for the next fifteen minutes. Everything around me came to a standstill. It was exceptional in that it helped me uncover part of a riddle that had me puzzled for a long time.

For quite some time now I have been scratching my head about the origin of the word joulupukki, the Finnish word for Father Christmas. The literal meaning of the word is rather straightforward, albeit rather peculiar. Joulupukki is a compound word consisting words joulu (Christmas) and pukki (goat). Christmas goat? But why Christmas goat?

As Wikipedia these days provides an answer to almost any question, they had that covered too. The article explains the origin of goat (pukki) in the word joulupukki by referring to a “tradition of men dressed in goat’s clothes called nuuttipukki [who] used to go around from house to house after Christmas eating leftover food.” I have also checked the Finnish etymological dictionary which traces the origin of word pukki to bock, Swedish for billy goat.

Although Father Christmas is incomparably more popular, the nuuttipukki tradition is supposedly still alive in the Finnish regions of Satakunta and Pohjanmaa, according to another Wikipedia entry. Never mind that nuuttipukki does the opposite of what joulupukki does: kids today dress up and go singing from house to house hoping to receive candy and pocket money in exchange. A Halloween of sorts, only two months later.

Back to Merriam-Webster and their Word of the day that started it all. Folks at Merriam-Webster reveal that an English adjective puckish originates in medieval England from word puke (also pouke) meaning a nasty hobgoblin, an evil spirit, a demon. However, both puke and pouke are related to the Old Norse word puki, meaning devil. Since Finnish did loan words from Old Norse, I wouldn’t be surprised if Old Norse puki was Finnishized into pukki and  Christmas goat afterall isn’t really a Christmas goat, but rather a Christmas goblin, elf, sprite, fairy, puck, demon, or imp. Something that the makers of Rare Exports Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 understood very well.

Mladen

I am an omnivore. An omnivore who is always prepared to taste pretty much any kind of food. An attitude that practically always returns positive experiences. And then I encountered the Swedish fermented herring.

I’ve first heard about this rather peculiar local culinary specialty soon after I moved to the Nordic area. And I thought why not. I’d be the first one to point out all the wonderful results of fermenting foodstuffs. Although I wasn’t really sure if fermenting fish could yield anything good. Fish have a very strong smell to start with and start stinking in no time. Since the olfactory organs play an important role in every eating experience, stinky doesn’t make you think tasty. Which means that fermented fish and a delicious meal might be as far apart as can be. Still I thought it is unfair to bring any conclusions without actually trying it out myself. I was on a mission.

Experiences of those who have tried fermented herring range from culinary exaltation to downright disgust. But whomever I talked to couldn’t avoid mentioning the diabolically strong smell.

In its motherland Sweden surströmming (as they call it there) is taken seriously. Not only is it considered a delicacy of highest grade, but has solemn and devout followers who in 1999 established nothing less than a fermented herring academy. As irreverent as it may seem, I cannot avoid wondering if Alaskans or Norwegians have salmon academies, or Japanese tuna and whale academies.

Surströmming gurus might see this as oversimplification, but the whole thing is very simple. Fisherman catch Baltic herring each spring right before it spawns. They add salt and water and let the fish ferment in barrels for a couple of months. They then pack the fish into cans where anaerobic bacteria continue the process until consumed. It’s there that herring gets its tang.

Fermentation produces gases (in case of surströmming also a multitude of other smelly compounds) and the tins containing ripening fish bulge as a result. Bulged cans usually contain spoiled food, but when it comes to fermented herring, the logic is upside down: you don’t want to pick it off the shelf unless the can has bulged enough. Which makes for a tricky can opening procedure. (Think punctured beer can.) If not careful, a spray of reeking juices will make you wary the next time (if there happens to be a next time).

It was exactly the combination of the foul smell and the unavoidable gushing of its brine that made British Airways and Air France deny herring from boarding their planes. Swedes were outraged, but as far as I know the ban is still in place. Just imagine the hubbub at the academy. They must have hired an extra secretary to help them calm down the nation.

Herring’s foul smells reached me before I even smelled it. A Swedish colleague told me a couple of facetious anecdotes that became dead serious snigger once I dug into surströmming myself.

Some years ago a few Italian friends visited him in Sweden. Before they boarded the train to head back home, he hands them a can of surströmming, not telling them what it is. Somewhere in France the group runs out of snacks and without further hesitation they decide to munch on the food their Swedish friend gave them. They open up the mysterious can. They got kicked off the train on the next stop.

The stars of the other anecdote is a Swedish couple who should have known better, since they knew what they were dealing with. Anyway, they open up the can of fermented herring in their flat in Berlin and get evicted from the apartment.

Cans should wear a warning label “Do not open unless outdoors.” But they don’t. Which is why I am quite happy I knew all of these details even before I found fermented herring in the store. I could plan the whole ordeal: wear shabby clothes, get the bulgiest of cans, find a quiet spot in the woods, puncture the can underwater, if possible, eat it out there and don’t show up at home until the stench subsides. In spite of all the preparations I still have the feeling I was caught with my pants down.

I grabbed a large bulged can of Röda Ulven from the store and headed for a lonely spot in the woods on the coast. I checked that no one was around besides the people I was about to eat it with. Knowing the facts, bans and anecdotes, we didn’t want to get in trouble.

As I punched the can, a spray of putrid drops spread around us and literally made everyone take two steps aback. Whoa! Even though we had hoped for a tasty meal, a single whiff made some draw the line right there. I slowly started doubting this meal will be appetizing. No offense intended, but I begun wondering who could consider a combined miasma of rotten fish, dried urine, unwashed genitalia and barf mouthwatering. But since I got this far, I simply could not quit now.

The first bite tasted, well, like putrid fish. Although I have no idea why I was even surprised about this anymore. Even though I ate bread and onion along with it (only the potatoes were missing), the taste of rotten fish dominated through and through. Nothing could cover the noxious smell and putrid taste. Nothing. Quite the contrary. Whatever I’ve put in my mouth for the next hour or so, tasted plain bad. And since fish happily continued its fermentation, my body dispatched aplenty of unpleasant gases, front and back, before the damn fish was finally discharged from my system later that night.

Later that day I recalled reading about an American food guru Jeffrey Steingarten who travels the world and has supposedly tasted everything. What I remembered particularly well was how Mr. Steingarten thought that lutefisk, a Norwegian fish specialty, was the most disgusting food (translated excerpt provided by Wikipedia, although I have no idea why they have placed it under “humor”). I’d say that in comparison to surströmming, lutefisk is chocolate. To prove my point, I’d take Mr. Steingarten to as large meal of ripe Swedish surströmming as he chooses to ingest. If he accepts the challenge, I’d be delighted to eat twice as much of lutefisk.

Speaking of fermented herring and restaurants, I find it difficult to imagine seeing it on a menu in a restaurant. I’ve never spotted it myself, but can already imagine a waiter approaching the neighboring tables telling his other guests that the gentleman over there just ordered a can of surströmming and that he is giving them about quarter of an hour to finish their meals, pay and leave.

Even though I had perhaps naively expected that fermented herring would help expand my palate, that certainly did not happen. As hard as it might be to believe, it took only a few days before I have decided to give the herring a second chance.

Bon appétit.

Mladen

If you’re at least a little bit of a technophile, you’ve probably wondered how many people use this technology or that. I have, but have also been hardly ever satisfied with the numbers I received in return, since I’m aware that great majority of market share information isn’t much more than a guess based on someone’s speculation. Anyway, not something I’d call trustworthy.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to read about the research carried out by Antero Kivi of the Helsinki University of Technology in which he reveals what kind of mobile phones Finns use. What made me follow through the text is that he did not base his research on merely interviewing a representative sample of consumers (which is how the popular vote researches are usually done). Antero got the data straight from the horse’s mouth: the mobile operators.

He asked three largest Finnish mobile operators Sonera, Elisa and DNA about the usage of mobile phones on their networks. Naturally, the operators know exactly who is using their networks. Besides plethora of information an operator collects about each call they carry, operators also get to know the maker and model of the phone for every single phone call made on their network. This information is revealed by a unique IMEI code which the phone uses to introduces itself to the network. In other words, Antero got access to a treasure trove of information.

And the results? If you know at least a little bit about Finland, the results won’t come as a surprise. Finnish manufacturer of mobile phones Nokia leads the pack. Although merely saying that Nokia leads the pack is really glossing over the nation’s loyalty to Nokia. Of all the mobile phone makers, Nokia’s phones aren’t only taking all the top ten or top twenty spots. The first non-Nokia mobile phone maker got no higher than 57th place. Which translates Nokia’s position in terms of market share percentage into unbelievable 86%. In this incredibly competitive branch of consumer electronics industry such a market share is truly enviable in any single market. (Which makes me wonder what is Ericsson’s true market share in Sweden.)

Another interesting piece of information this research reveals is that of all the smart phones Nokia makes, the first four most commonly used (which adds up to 16,4% of all phones in Finland) are the cheapest and consequently the least smart (if you believe that being able to surf the Web already makes anything smart). The four most used phones are thus models 3310, 1100, 1600 and 3510i. On these phones you can’t do much more than make a phone call or send a text message. So a tad bit more than what your landline can do, although from a device you carry in your pocket.

Taking a step back, Nokia’s popularity in Finland is not even that surprising. The company importantly contributed to the ongoing Finnish economic uplift since the mid-1990s, to say the least. And Finns are openly proud of both. Putting this statement to a test is a real no-brainer; all you have to do is mention to a Finn Japan and Nokia in the same sentence. You won’t be able to stop them going on at length about everything from linguistic to cultural similarities between the two, which contribute to this terrible misunderstanding, not to mention the litanies you’ll hear about the injustice and desperate helplessness of trying to tell the world that Nokia is, for goodness sake, a Finnish brand. Oh my.

Mladen

Currently super popular pop duo The Ting Tings played in Helsinki a couple of days ago. I’m not a fan of pop, but it was nevertheless interesting to see a relatively freshly baked band live on stage.

They definitely put together a very energetic stage act. I mean, even their roadie probably had to go through an audition. He was constantly burning rubber as he erratically darted around the Tings untangling cables and setting the mic stands with great haste. He had put together a mini show of his own. It seemed they were all on speed or something. Impressive, man.

All that was just fine, but boy do I hate it when bands run out of tracks and then start repeating what they had already played that very same night. The last time that happened was some 15 years ago when for reasons unknown to me I ended up on the Spin Doctors concert (must have been paid to see it or something). Same here, The Ting Tings miss even shrugged her shoulders as she admitted they had run out of tracks after only 35 minutes and had to replay a number.

But check out their support act, the retro-electro nerd Moby Dictator. Seriously, when was the last time you’ve seen an electro artist perform on stage without a laptop, or two?

Mladen