OK. So sometimes we shouldn’t make things too easy. But other times, we make things too goddamned hard when the process should be simple.
I was telling you about the 20-year old with the Nokia N93i I lent her. She loved making videos and was keen on posting them onto YouTube.
Making the videos was easy. Uploading them was not.
First, it was a challenge to get them onto our Mac – cable, browsing folders, dragging things over, managing it all.
Ugh.
Next, she was having the darnedest time getting them onto YouTube. There were constant failures. The FAQ told her mpeg4 wasn’t supported (it is).
Nokia recently cut a deal with YouTube, but it’s only for browsing, as far as I can tell. We couldn’t figure out how to upload via the Nokia.YouTube mobile pages.
She tried uploading from her phone. We searched a bit and saw ShoZu could do it. Well, not really, since it wouldn’t upload anything over 4MB, which is a really really short video on the N93i. We tried making the video smaller, but no luck.
Not to be dissuaded, she tried and tried until the videos started to properly upload onto YouTube.
To me, the story illustrates a few key things.
1) Unless the person is determined to do something, it can be really easy to lose a potential user if any part of the process is not smooth.
2) With all these moving parts, someone can make a killing by making this work smoothly and intelligently. YouTube tried, but 60MB files can’t be uploaded via email. Also, the apparently have poor error feedback during their upload process. ShoZu tried, but failed for me (though I bet 4MB is sufficient for most folk).
Has Nokia tried. I\m not sure. I need to walk over to the video guys and see what we can do to make this easier.
It’s the least I could do.
What do you think?
Charlie – I always use Bluetooth to get video from my N70 to my Mac – it is quick and painless!
By the way I absolutely detest CAPTCHAs
Bluetooth or Card Reader…
Here’s a thought – Why doesn’t Nokia do some actual Mac Support so the cable works?
iSync with the latest devices requires a third party plug-in and you can’t update the phone without a PC either … sorry Mac rant – but seems related given your home config.
the USB cable works for me but yeah even that is too slow and only Google Video (and 1 or 2 other startups) takes over 100MB video
yes much too difficult and painful
I’ve using an N93 at the moment, so I understand your woes with ShoZu’s 4meg upload limit.
The next version of ShoZu will have a much higher upload limit, so it should work much better for N93 video.
Cheers
Russell
ShoZu Senior Product Manager
hi russell: how about NO upload limit when uploading over WiFi? pretty please 🙂 ?
Charlie: you can upload up to 50MB videos from the Nokia Gallery app of the N93 directly to Vox (vox.com). that’s another option
oh and Mac os X 10.4.9 finally support the N93! yay! c’mon apple you need to release iSync support for Nokia phones faster!
Yeah Roland but 10.4.9 breaks iSync support for my N70!
@ Tom
Only thing is that the N70 videos are much smaller than the N93i videos. 🙂
Is there a good mobile life caching service in Asia?
Maybe there is a good one that I’m not aware of…But I’m wondering if there is a good “mobile life caching service” currently provided by an Asian wireless carrier. What I want is actually very simple. I just want my phone to cache my life’s memories (..
Do you know if nokia’s lifeblog is available for the mac???\
you are the only reference to it I can find online!!!
thanks
Ben
Ben,
Alas, no. But there is Nokia Mutlimedia Transfer which makes it easy for you to transfer photos and videos to iPhoto and put your music and podcasts from iTunes (not purchased stuf, tho) onto your nSeries device.
More at: http://europe.nokia.com/mac
Hope that helps.
Tchau,
Charlie