Mobile World Congress is going to call for a significant refinement of my ultra mobile reporting kit (see below for previous versions) which means leaving the netbook in the hotel safe and traveling as light as possible. I aim to be roaming with only a man-bag and with about 1KG/2.2lb of equipment which is quite a challenge. Quality and speed of reporting during the day may suffer but I’m prepared to take the hit in order to be mobile and quick. Here’s a detailed look at my MWC setup as it stands just a few days from travelling.

The initial kit list looks something like this:

Hardware (825gm / 1.8lb)

• UMID BZ as PC and USB power source. Including mains charger cable.
• Nokia N82 as camera and backup 3G tether.  Including spare battery.
• Mifi 2352 as primary 3G hotspot
• USB cables for charging and connecting

Optional (about 500gm due to heavy aluminum mic.)

• Samson USB mic for interview recording
• Digutus auto-focus USB snake cam
• Headphones (small)
• UMID VGA adaptor

The bag

Oh the stress of choosing a bag. Right now I’m leaning towards the Jack Wolfskin one because it can be worn in on the back or front of the body and it looks, well, less man-baggy!

Capabilities

• Text blogging
• Photo Blogging to blog, twitter etc.
• Video Blogging
• Live video streaming (as per V6 of the reporting kit – See sample video at base of article)
• Normal PC activities.

Live one-take Video demonstration (15 mins)

Here’s how I would use the kit to post images and videos with text.

Yup, problems occur but in previous and recent tests it  looks like it will take about 5 minutes to do a 2-paragraph blog post around a photo. Video really depends on Internet bandwidth but with the mobile reporting kit I can close the lid of the UMID and leave it to continue posting to YouTube. You have to be careful of time-outs in this case because re-starting the uploads usually requires a full upload again.  Here’s the image I took during the video. As you can see, quality is excellent (click to enlarge.)

Other notes

Weight including adapter cables: 829gm (1.8lb)

Cost

• UMID BZ: $549
• Photo camera: Around $300 but get one with BT and Xenon flash.
• Mifi: $250

Improvements and optimisations.

Could a Motorola Droid/Milestone do all this? Yes. Photo’s to Flickr and editing and re-posting from Flickr is easily possible. Video also possible. Live video using QIK also possible. Text entry with Droid keyboard also possible. Cost: Around $500 including an extra battery (or two!) It’s a great single-device option and way, way lighter than what I’ll be carrying.

The issue with using a Droid is that you don’t have a PC with you for ‘everything else.’ That includes basic video editing, 100% full web access, USB accessories support (printing, usb sticks, usb cam for example) high quality audio recording using USB mic/audacity, audio/video streaming using UStream, connectivity to LCD screen and full size keyboard and use of all the normal desktop client software such as Firefox, Tweetdeck, Paint Shop, LiveWriter, Skype and anything else that a PC would be flexible for. It’s basically a trade-off. Using the UMID is way more expensive but it gives that flexibility to use to a full desktop tool-set if required and that, to me, is worth it’s weight in gold. If either the N82 or UMID die, I’m left with one working device which is a nice backup strategy.

The N82 video quality (test video here) could be improved a lot. I’d love to see a photo camera with high-compression, 720p video recording and checking across the range of smartphones available today, the Omnia i8910 would make a better choice for video with it’s 720p capability. File sizes could be a problem though so HQ VGA at about 2mbps H.264 would be perfect. Anyone out there done extensive phone-cam testing?

Battery life is an issue and will require careful management. Fortunately the UMID BZ is proving excellent in that respect and just by closing the lid I can make it go into standby or hibernation. Returning for these standby modes is 5 and 20 seconds respectively. The UMID is returngin a regular 4.5-5hr in-use battery life. Despite that, I’ll carry a mains charger with me because I may have to charge the Mifi or the N82. Both can be charged via USB which is a huge bonus. The Mifi can even be used while it charges.

Update: In a 34 minute test I saw 17% battery drain indicating 200 minutes of battery life. About 3 hours! (Device closed with screen/touchscreen off)

Embedded 3G in the UMID. Yes, this would be great. No question. There’s no need for a Mifi if you’re only using one 3G-capable device but even in that scenario, i’d probably have the Mifi with me as a backup. The antenna on it is superb and it comes in really handy for a table of five net-less bloggers!

Your suggestions welcome.

Please feed-back in the comment section below. I love to hear how people are using their mobile kit. Are you mobile blogging at MWC? If so, lets meet and have a chat about the kit on video.

I’ll post a follow-up after MWC.

Previous versions of the ultra mobile reporting kit.

V6 (Jun 2009) is here.

V5 (March 2009) is here.

V4 (Sept 2009) is here.

V3 (Feb 2008) is here.

V2 (Sept 2007) is here

V1 (March 2007) is here.

Hat-tip to Jenn at Pocketables who successfully used the flickr-to-blog method at CES 2008.

Thanks to UMID for the loan of the BZ. If I didn’t have the UMID here, I would have replaced it with the Fujitsu U820 as a second choice. The BZ really is the best choice out there right now.

Update:

Live test recording: Video/Audio stream recorded by Ustream

As the Smart Q7 doesn’t look like its going to turn up today, (expected tomorrow) I thought i’d relocate for a few hours.

I’ve taken the Fujitsu Loox on a little tour and right now I’m sitting in the park.. More details in my scrapbook website.

Gone Mobile Blogging… Watch and Communicate | Chippy’s HiBlue Lab.

I’m very tempted to do this myself but I’m not sure that a ‘pro’ that should be doing it. I think it would be better if someone from the ultra mobile community did it so here I am putting the challenge out to you.

Fly the Ultra Mobile computing flag. Pull all your Web2.0 skills together with your mobile computer and passion for travel and sign-up for the competition. Think GPS, Google Maps, Geotagging, Live tracking, great photography, audio voxpops and creativity. My initial idea was to take a micro scooter and get rolling with a MID or UMPC and do another live dot-to-dot. Jog and Blog is another.

Read all about it here and of course, if you’re successful, tell them we sent you

I’m very tempted to do this myself but I’m not sure that a ‘pro’ that should be doing it. I think it would be better if someone from the ultra mobile community did it so here I am putting the challenge out to you.

Fly the Ultra Mobile computing flag. Pull all your Web2.0 skills together with your mobile computer and passion for travel and sign-up for the competition. Think GPS, Google Maps, Geotagging, Live tracking, great photography, audio voxpops and creativity. My initial idea was to take a micro scooter and get rolling with a MID or UMPC and do another live dot-to-dot. Jog and Blog is another.

Read all about it here and of course, if you’re successful, tell them we sent you

Life has been so busy over the last month that I’ve hardly had a chance to think about CeBIT and yet it starts in just 5 days. On Monday, I’ll be meeting JKK and Sacha in Hannover and we’re going to hit CeBIT as hard as we can.

Fortunately the accommodation, tickets (I have a press pass again this year) and transport have all been arranged so all that remains to do is fix up the schedule, write up a hit-list and organise the kit.

I’ll write about the ‘hit list’ in the next few days as we’ll probably use it for the basis of a warm-up podcast tentatively planned for Friday but let me quickly talk about the kit I’m going to use at CeBIT.

Due to three ’smoked’ UMPCs, a couple of no-show UMPCs and a general need to keep spending down this year, I’m having to really cobble together the best I can from the devices I have left here. I’m not exactly struggling to find a PC to take but I had planned a different set of devices and was planning to have a bit more of a ’showcase’ setup.

I will go with the three-device strategy (phone, mid, notebook) because of flexibility, fall-back and battery life. I’ll take my Nokia N82 for the important tasks of voice, SMS and email and it will also come in handy for some direct-to-flickr photo shooting due to it’s superb camera optics and flash. I might use it for a bit of Google Latitude fun and the occasional 3G Bluetooth modem but the idea is really to preserve it for essential comms. At the top end of the range i’ll be taking my laptop. Actually it’s a Medion Akoya Mini netbook but I don’t have anything else so it’s going to serve as my main keyboard and screen during the event. It’s far from the perfect mobile netbook though and I’ll have to deal with a lack of built-in 3G, no Bluetooth and a poor 2hr battery life. On the positive side, I’ve used it a lot and it’s got a stable build with all my applications running well.

As the third device, I want to take a MID. The original plan was to use an Aigo P8888 but the standard 2hr battery life and lack of standard XP build has put me off buying one. I’m not a JKK and so hacking XPe and piggyback batteries was never on the cards. The Viliv S5 didn’t hit the market on time. The Wibrain i1 prototype doesn’t standby or hibernate due to an incomplete BIOS setup and I’ve killed the Raon Everun Note I was preparing. As I look across my devices for a MID, the only one I can see is the Nokia N810, a device that I had ignored for the best part of a year but started using again recently when I upgraded the OS and installed a bunch of community applications on it. As an RSS, mobile website, IM and twitter tool, it’s working out quite well. Web browsing is frustratingly slow but certainly better than my S60 device and with 4 hours wifi-on battery life, it can sit and pick up feeds and tweets for a long time before the battery needs changing so today I bought a second battery and a USB charger cable for it, fished out an old Nokia 3G phone with a broken backlight and will tether the two up on a 2.50-Euro per day pay-as-you-go UMTS contract, drop the phone in my bag or on my belt and put the N810 in my pocket as and use it as as always-on ‘informer’ and twitter tool. I’ll also be able to put comments on photo’s at Flickr and post to the blog using the Flickr blog posting tools as Jenn did at CES. The N810 needs a lot more power to turn it into a real MID but the size, battery life, screen and keyboard should help to keep me updated on the go and certainly won’t need much space.

One thing I’m really happy about is that I’ll only need one power brick for all the kit and the reason for that is a nice little U2o power pack I’ve got from Ultimate-Netbook.co.uk. I did some field testing for them last year and we’ve been happy with the results so they now sell it. Fortunately they let me keep it after the testing so I’m now armed with a 55wh power pack that takes a 19v input (the power brick from the Medion Akoya plugs straight in) and provides 5V (via USB), 9v, 16v and 19v outputs. There’s a selection of adaptors with the device so both my phone, the N810 and the Medion Akoya will run or charge from it. If I treat the Akoya well, I’ll get about 6hrs working time out of it which should be fine for a day’s work on the floor.

For photo and video work I’ll be taking my trust Canon S2IS and tripod. The long lens, VGA video capability and great stereo mics are perfect for recording conferences or device overviews and although a DSLR with 720P video recording would be my preference, it won’t be hard to get some good results out of the S2. Besides, JKK has a new Canon HD cam so we’ll be using that for most of our videos.

Finally, I’ll take the Samson USB mic which is great for mobile podcasting and interviews. Audacity is installed on the netbook and it’s an easy process to upload an MP3 to UMPCPortal.

I’m a little sad there’s no UMPC in there but it’s a proven set of kit that I’m very familiar with and that should help to keep the stress levels down. The whole kit comes in at 4kg which is very good considering I’ve got the tripod, cam and a 400gm microphone included in that. Total cost of the complete kit is around 1400 Euros (new)

Of course, if I have any issues, I won’t need to look too far for help. Sascha the ‘netbook king’ is joining us in the accommodation and on the floor and he’ll be bringing a stack of netbooks so I’ll probably get some good hands-on opportunities with some of the netbooks I haven’t had a chance to use yet. JKK is with us too and he has a good set of kit too so between us, well have no excuses.

As JKK, Sascha and I prepare over the next few days you’ll probably here a few more warm-up stories. We’ve tentatively planned a podcast for Friday evening so expect a CeBIT warm-up post over the weekend.

I took a walk to the horses this afternoon; a live media-walk for MIDMoves to test out some geographically-tagged capabilities on the big Web thing. Tracking is nothing new. Location-based tweets and near-live video posts are nothing new. Putting it all together in a media-rich way and being able to show it live is something different though. It highlights the difference between a smartphone and a PC-based MID or UMPC. There’s just no way you can tie all the components together and post-process it into a presentation like this with a smartphone. Having access to full-screen Web2.0 applications and smooth multi-tasking was the key here. There’s lots of improvements that can be made but this is a great step forward for live, media-rich tracking.

Move and zoom the map below and click on the icons for videos, audio recordings, tweets and images.

View Larger Map

Source: MIDMoves.com
Thanks to Mobilxfor the i1. Ipokifor the live tracking app.

Source: MIDMoves.com Thanks to Mobilx for the i1. Ipoki for the live tracking app.

Watch out next week for a very special live geo-media tour on MIDMoves.

One advantage of running an Intel-sponsored MID event is that I get some nice kit to play with. In fact, the whole team gets some nice kit to play with on the tour. Between Jenn, Nicole, Ewan and myself we’ve got 4 different MIDs to test out. The Compal MID (not sure which ‘brand’ this will be yet) the Benq S6, the ClarionMiND and the OQO 2+. There’ll be 2 of each to be shared out and I’m getting an OQO 2+ and a Clarion Mind. The devices have been shipped by Intel from the US and we’re expecting them very soon. Jenn is also getting an OQO 2+ and I guess, as she’s in the US, she’ll be getting it first so watch closely over at Pocketables.net

The MIDMoves tour starts next Monday, the 19th and MIDMoves will be the place that we’ll all be reporting about the devices first. If I have time before the tour I’ll fire up the studio (still warm from CES coverage!) and do some live work with you. If I don’t have time during the tour, expect lots of coverage after it.

If you’ve been following MIDMoves, you’ll see that I’ve been getting into final planning. Roaming 3G costs have meant that I’m having to change my tour itinerary but there are some exciting things happening. In my latest post, I’ve been talking about geographically aware applications and services.

In the previous post I talked about my requirements and the three pieces of hardware that I would use to help me. To recap, here they are again.

Requirements:

• Location. Where am I now? Exactly?
• Turn-by-turn, step by step. Where do I need to go. How long will it take?
• Public transport. Where is it? When does it depart and arrive?
• Phototagging. Ensuring that my images are tagged with their location
• Live location tracking and networking. Allowing other people to view my location and to enable notifications when friends are near.
• What’s near me? How do I find the nearest hotel? Wifi? etc.
• Location tracking. How to I archive my locations and route?
• Map mashup. How do I create a map that shows my tracks along with all the ‘e-things’ I did along it. Photos, blogs, podcasts, twitter updates etc.

Devices:

• A GPS-enabled smartphone
• A mobile internet device
• A GPS Tracker

Now we have to tie those devices to software services in order to achieve the requirements. Lets take each requirements one-by-one.

Location. Where am I now? Exactly?

This is a simple one for me as my smartphone, a Nokia N82 is GPS-enabled and comes with an excellent mapping system built-in. Nokia Maps 2 offers detailed maps along with a local or internet-based search facility that links with the built-in GPS. Similar solutions are available on other phones and more and more phones are appearing with maps and GPS built in. Google also have a mobile application for many phones now which links into GPS, local search, 3D building representations and street-level photography.

The ‘desktop’ is way behind in this area and it will be a challenge for MID manufacturers to get service and software providers to move this geo=enabled functionality onto Windows and Linux. It’s starting to happen though. Intel have some good partners in their ecosystem (Gypsii is one very interesting one)  and with the W3C geolocation API and services like Mozilla’s Geode and Yahoo’s FireEagle (check out 60 geo-enabled web services on their application gallery), it’s becoming easier to provide these services through the browser.

Turn-by-turn, step by step?

Finding a route from A to B is freely available to everyone with a PC connected to the internet. Most of the main search engine portals offer the service and getting an efficient route printed-out is common practice but what if I need directions as I travel. Printouts are dangerous and if you’re on your own, the only solution is a dedicated unit with voice instructions. If you want to find your way around by foot, there are even fewer solutions. My mobile phone has these features built-in although they’re not free and having used them before, not easy to use in the car. A months license is €8.99 with traffic info on top for an additional fee and the solution works well but the screen size makes it extremely difficult. Instead of using the mobile phone for in-car turn-by-turn navigation, i’ll be using the Clarion MiND device. It’s a handheld PC designed specifically for the car and should be very interesting to use. The only problem i’m worried about is that it’s coming from the U.S. I hope it has EU maps on it!! If it doesn’t, i’ll use the Wibrain i1 with the PC Navigator software that i’ve used in the past.

Public transport.

Google are moving forward quickly with integrating public transport details into their mapping pplications. Unfortunately, only small areas are covered and not all transport methods are included. In Germany, i’m a big fan of what Deutsche Bahn have done with integrating bus and train timetables in a very reliable and efficient way. In my local area, I can even check on local bus delays as they’ve fitted GPS tracking and feedback into the busses. Impressive! My tour itinerary has changed a little since my first plan and wil probably be pre-booked so getting live public transport info won’t be such a big deal but i’m sure that there will still be a requirement for the info. Fast, full-screen google searches and access to interactive web sites is just the ticket for the ticket and this is where MIDs shine with their full web experience.

Phototagging / Geo Tagging.

Presenting my photo’s on a map at the end of the tour and to put them in some sort of order, tagging them with location co-ordinates is a must. In order to do this from my main digital camera I need to use a 3rd-party tagging  service as this isn’t something built into the camera itself. I suspect that i’ll use the flickr map to position my photo’s, a third party tagging solution. See below for an interesting online alternative to photo tagging.  Alternatively, i’ll just use the Nokia N82 as my camera. GPS tagging is built-in so for snapshots, it will be the easiest method.

Live location tracking and networking.

A fun part of the tour for the reader will be to watch my current location and to read the latest microblogs that go with it. If  i’m able to add audio, photo and text in a timely manner it will tie it together as a great near-live journal. I’ve been testing ipoki.com for that last few weeks and am pleased with the results here.  Ipoki provide a client for the PC and smartphone which allows you to update their server in real-time. They then update a live map which you can export and embedd in a website. The map updates as my location updates.  This is fantastic stuff but I want more! It hasn’t been easy to find a GPS service and set it up and there are a few things missing from ipoki but for the time being, i’m happy with the results and will probably use this on the tour. You can track me on my page here.

Oh, I almost forgot. ipoki allows people to be friends onthe system and will alert you when they are near! Feel free to join up and ‘friend’ me. When I’m in your area you’ll get an alert and can take suitable evasive action

What’s near me?

Obviously this requires a huge points-of-interest database. Most dedicated navigation units have POI databases included and you can find hotels, garages and cash machines quite easily but when it gets down to details like ‘food at 10pm’ or ‘next postbox collection’ you need more than just a static database. Google’s map search feature is one of the best ‘what’s near me’ services i’ve found yet but the big problem is that their browser-based service has no idea where you are. It’s not even integrated with Geode (the Mozilla services that enables the browser to retrieve you location) so there’s some work to do here.  You can use the Google Earth application but that’s too fat for occasional lookups. The same goes for the Microsoft Streets and Trips application.  The best Google geo-enabled lookup services are only on phones at the moment and I guess that makes sense. PC’s were’nt ever mobile devices before now so why would people have developed quick, easy-to-use, internet connected mobile software for them? As we know though, firefox is getting more and more mobile by the day.  Devices like the Aigo MID prove that and as these devices get more popular, browsers will need to be geo-enabled to keep up. Alternatively, someone like ipoki could just add the Google maps search feature into their desktop applet. If you have any tips in this area, let me know but for the time being, i’ll be using the Google Maps application on my phone for location-related search.

Location tracking and logging.

Take it from me, someone that tracked their 500km solar-powered computing tour, that tracking and logging your location is a CPU and battery-intensive application that neither a phone or a PC can do very well. In the past, i’ve used a cheap, dedicated unit from Garmin which can handle  a days work on a two AA batteries but downloading the track and integrating it with other data can be a pain. Applications like Nokia’s Sports Tracker have done a good job in making it easy to add photos and upload to a server but there’s still a battery life problem. Using the Intel Atom-powered Wibrain UMPC, i’m able to do about 8hrs GPS logging but again, getting that data out and integrated into other sources is a pain.

One of the best services i’ve found so far though is the ipoki lifestream application. I mentioned ipoki above but one of the features I didnt mention was the tracking feature. As you submit your location to ipoki, it stores it in a log. Then, if you enable it, it will add your comments to the log and even fetch flickr photos and match the timestamps to the log and add links on the timeline. This means you can submit images to flickr from any source, through any method and they don’t need to be geo-tagged. Remember also that you can submit your location to ipoki through  thebrowser (not geode-capable yet though) a dedicated Windows app (which includes messaging client that links through to twitter and sends messages from people or friends in your area), a Symbian app (no messaging on this one) and a Windows mobile app (messaging included) so given the battery-life problem, this is a great way to keep a log.  There’s much more that can be done to ipoki but it’s a great start and I expect to see many more services like this pop up. Indeed, ther may already be services existing so let me know if you’ve found anything.

I’ll be taking the Garmin tracker as a backup because there will definately be times when I won’t be internet connected.

Map Mashup.

Blogs present informatiojn on a reverse cronological timeline and map mashups can present exactly the same media on a map overlay. Here’s a simple example from some testing I did in 2007.

Click to see the map.

If you click through you can see a moveable, zoomable map with a track and my points of interest. Each POI is clickable and pops up either text or an image.

The problem is that getting that data together is quite difficult.Geo-tagged images help but to get the rest of the media together can be quite a task. Ideally I would be able to geo-tag all my media and present it so that the user can switch between time and map views but I haven’t seen anypublication platform that enables that yet.  The closest i’ve got so far is one of the features from ipoki. Here’s the third reason that i’ve chosen it for long-term testing.

I mentioned above that ipoki can create a log on it’s servers and pull in flickr and comment data well, the icing on the cake is that ipoki then allows you to export the data as a KML file which can easily be imported into most mapping software. Using this data with ‘My Maps’ on Google Maps makes it easy and fun to create media rich maps. Using Googles My Maps feature, I could easily create a media-rich tour using the ipoki data and some link in all my posts and embedd it in a webpage. This is exactly what i’m planning to do on the tour.

So there’s my take on Geo-enabled services. Its a new but fast-growing area for many in the web world and there’s a lot of money behind the development too. Google and others understand that location-based search enables location-based advertising which clearly would increase the value of advertising for everyone. Expect that list of 60 services to grow quickly in the next few years.

With well over 50 geo-enabled web-based services available, plenty of dedicated PC and phone client software and a mountain of methods that will track and update your location, it has been very difficult for me to define a simple process that will help me to achieve want I want. Yes, i’m testing the limits here but that’s what MIDMoves is about. We want to get our hands dirty and find the limits.

Here’s the list of what i’m trying to achieve.

• Location. Where am I now? Exactly?
• Turn-by-turn, step by step. Where do I need to go. How long will it take?
• Public transport. Where is it? When does it depart and arrive?
• Phototagging. Ensuring that my images are tagged with their location
• Live location tracking and networking. Allowing other people to view my location and to enable notifications when friends are near.
• What’s near me? How do I find the nearest hotel? Wifi? etc.
• Location tracking. How to I archive my locations and route?
• Map mashup. How do I create a map that shows my tracks along with all the ‘e-things’ I did along it. Photos, blogs, podcasts, twitter updates etc.

Tying that lot together in one application, on one platform right nw is impossible. Even if there was an application out there that could do all this, there isn’t a device that would last more than 5 hours doing it before the battery was flat and that’s a major problem because the starting point for web-based activities is the device that is always with you.

You might expect me to say ‘MID’ at this point but the fact is that the gps-enabled phone is the epicenter of most developements in the geo-enabled web world and as it’s the only electronic device that stays with people all the time AND it’s internet connected, it makes sense. Unfortunately, there’s a way to go until the smartphone can do everything above which is why it’s not possible just to use a phone. I’ve had to combine three devices together to give me the capabilities I need.

• A GPS-enabled smartphone
• A mobile Internet device
• A GPS Tracker

In part 2 of this article i’ll talk about each of my requirements and how i’ll use these devices and a bunch of web-based services to achieve my targets.

I think I’ve said this before and maybe I shouldn’t say it again; I’m a sucker for a kit-list. I always enjoy reading what about other people are taking on their tech travels and I can never resist showing off my own kit either. It’s definitely the boy scout in me. Here’s a selection of kit lists from people getting their bags ready for CES 2009 this week.

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