This last week has been hellish for some people.  Some people actually do do video chat on their mobile phones.  My sister does because her husband is on the other side of the world working and getting their new house set up.  Her son misses his Dad and so they Skype on her Nokia N78 to my nephew’s Dad as often as possible.  Well this was all possbile until this week when Skype and Fring got into “it” and now their love affair is on hold or over.

Wow, I’m finally fully recovered from my favorite party of the year.  BuzzWorthy was off the hook and you would know if you were there and if you missed it, well YOU MISSED OUT (Will).  We packed the our space, standing room only and had people lining up trying to get in.

Thanks to all who came.  We really appreciate you coming and joining us for our very first (and not last) BuzzWorthy party.

I want to personally thank Tobias from Nimbuzz for pushing to make this happen in such a timely fashion.  He really took the reins and made sure things fell into place.

Christian and Alee of Attack Marketing were both amazing.  Christian had a great vision and Alee made sure his vision was expressed.

Cian along with the rest of the GoMo News team were supporters of this event from the beginning.  Thank you very much for your assistance.

Also a big thanks to our Media Sponsors:

Last but never least thanks to our Production Company:

BrilliantExpos did s superb job with the logistics, invitations, location, web interface and social media.  Thanks to the BrilliantExpos team (for disclosure sake, BrilliantExpos is my company).

Guess what everybody, I’m coming to SF and I’m putting a party together.  Nimbuzz, Attack Marketing, and GoMo News are sponsoring and we have a great lineup of stuff going on.  We have beta apps to give out, product launches and announcements coming.  In less then the 24 hours the event has been public we have more then 50 people coming.  You don’t want to miss out so head over to our Facebook page or if you don’t have FB then out to EventBrite and RSVP.

The details are that it’s this coming Tuesday Nov. 10 at the Thirsty Bear in SF.  The address is 661 Howard St. and we will be there from 6:30pm till at least 9pm.

Thanks to our sponsors above and our media sponsors: GoMo News, Into Mobile, PhoneDog, Brilliant Expos, GuerillaSushi, MobileBeyond and US Mobile Industry

Don’t forget, this is a BrilliantExpos production…. That’s me.

So I used the E75 for a while then went back to my trusty E71 and back and forth and back and forth for weeks now.  I love the format of my E71 but like the menu and speed of the E75.  Plus the E75 has US 3G and my E71 doesn’t.

I keep telling myself be patient the E72 is coming.  SO WHERE IS IT NOKIA?  We haven’t heard a peep in what feels like months about the E72.  I’m actually getting tempted to buy an iPhone to tide me over until the E72 arrives.

I was told that it should be out around CTIA in San Diego next week.  Well next week is almost here.

Import thing is I’ve been told that emoze and Truphone will both work on the E72.  I would imagine that Nimbuzz and JoikuSpot will also because they work on the E75.  So I’m set in terms of my must have apps.

Now I was told that there would not be a North American version but I was then reminded that probably meant that it wouldn’t be picked up by a provider like AT&T or T-Mobile but that Nokia would still launch it.  My only question is how long will we have to wait for the NAM version?  Nokia has a nasty habit (except for 2 handsets recently) of launching NAM versions weeks or even months after the European variant is made available.  So let’s hope they launch at the same time.

A few reasons I’m so excited about this handset is that it will have the same physical format as the E71.  It will have the upgraded firmware including Feature Pack 2 and have the juiced up processor/RAM.  Lastly because of the 5mp camera and 3.5mm headphone jack.

I’m tapping my fingers on my desk as I wait………

So as all of my readers know I’m a hard core Nokia E71 fanboy.  I’ve been infatuated with the E71 since I first heard about it roughly 2 years ago.  Now I’m impatiently waiting for the much anticipated E72 but I decided to whip out the E75 I was graciously lent for review and have been using it for 4 days now.  Hot shit, this phone is great.  I forgot how much I liked it.  It’s not perfect but I’m really digging it.  I forgot how much I liked it when I first used it.

S60 3rd edition feature pack 2 is really a nice upgrade to the E71’s feature pack 1.  There are so many little things I like more about it, but what the E75 is missing is memory/RAM.  The E75 seems to stall out sometimes and needs a reboot but that’s really my only single complaint about the software.  Of course it could be a little faster and of course it could have more of this or smarter that, but in general it’s all around solid software.

As far as the hardware goes it’s a candy bar style with a side slide QWERTY keyboard that’s 90% great and 10% ehh because of the lack of tactile feedback on the QWERTY portion.  I find it to be very useful and descent to type on.  You do need 2 hands to type on it because of the width of the keyboard which is good or bad depending on your preference.  Personally it is not my taste but I know quite a few people that are gaga over this style and particularly the E75.

Software wise the E75 does support the 4 apps I can’t live without and of course many many more apps but in particular
emoze – a push email and content client (my companies client)
Truphone – mobile VOIP offering me cheap international calls around the world and to my home country when I’m traveling
JoikuSpot – an app that turns my phone into a wifi hotspot by rebroadcasting the 3G it pulls in
Nimbuzz – an instant messaging (IM) client that supports GChat, Skype, MSN, AOL, Yahoo and ICQ

All in all the E75 is a solid piece of kit that doubles and triples as multiple devices.  Regular phone, VOIP, email, IM and wifi hotspot one by one or all at once.  This phone won’t disappoint and won’t let you down.  I have high regard for it but it’s not perfect because of the minimal RAM.  Most people would never miss it but I like to run everything all at once so if you’re a power user hold out a little longer for the E72 or something else otherwise I say pick one up and enjoy.

I use messaging a great deal, from sms to email to instant messaging to Twitter to video chat to voice mail (unfortunately), I spend a lot of time communicating.  I was thinking recently when will we see messaging apps evolve again?  I’m hoping Google Wave will help but I don’t think it will take it as far as I’m thinking.  I would really like to see what Googles Gmail does.  Gmail right now just puts your email and IM (it’s an option you have to turn on) in one overall inbox.  Also Google Voice shows you all your voicemail and sms in one inbox.  So when do we get ONE inbox for everything???

I use emoze (a client of mine) and Nokia Messaging for email, Ovi Contacts and Nimbuzz & Fring for IM, the built in text message (sms) app and Dabr for Twitter on my mobile phones and would really like to see an overall inbox that we can see all incoming and outgoing communications.  I would like to see my email, sms, voicemail, IM, and @/direct messages (I use Topify) in one place.  This could be similar to what Nokia has in it’s messaging folder already where it includes email and sms.  I’m sick of going to all different in-boxes.  When can I just have one.  Things should be color coded, easily filtered and have sub folders so it looks more traditional the way some would like to see it.  I for one would really like to have one of these messaging apps include it all.  It may need to be something more like emoze that is heavily embedded in my phones messaging folder so it can access sms and voice messages too.

I’m envisioning something with tiny logos and colors for each different means of communication but a standard view with different lines for each message showing who it’s from and a time/day stamp.  Maybe when I highlight the message the first few words of the message would appear.  I would also like the address book from the phone to include all the contact info from each contact platform but we’ll save that for another blog post.

So basically when will it all come together in one place but include awesome filtering for divided views too.   I hope we get this very soon and on both the desktop and mobile platforms.  It would really be great if it was all done with something like IMAP so it was all in sync to.  I may be asking to much but come on it’s 2009 and if we can’t have flying cars this decade can’t we at least have one inbox?

By: Jeb Brilliant
Jeb is a technology enthusiast and mobile communications junkie.  He works in the industry as a writer, consultant and event producer.  Follow Jeb on Twitter @JebBrilliant

I left on vacation a few days back, as I write this I’m in the passenger seat of a giant 12 passenger Ford F350 van.  This thing is a monster but I like it. I’ve been preparing my electronic gear bag (I like to call it my toy bag) and I never know exactly what I’m going to bring until I leave.  I have also been updating the firmware on some of my phones (N85, N79, and N97) and in the case of my E71 I had to reinstall all my apps and have it ready for this big trip.  So I decided to make a list of all the apps I’m putting on my E71.

• emoze – push email – 1 email or facebook account is free, then it’s a yearly subscription
• Taskman – manage the apps on my phone – 1 time fee
• Nokia Email – mobile email – free for now but will start charging for it
• Ovi Maps 3.0 – map program -free with option to buy voice guidance
• Ovi Contacts – mobile IM – free
• Ovi Store – place to download apps for Nokia phones
• Qik – Video Capture and instant upload to the web – free
• Gmail Java app – mobile email – free
• Google Maps – java map app – free
• Skyfire – web browser – free
• Truphone -mobile VOIP (highly recommend) – free within SIP network and paid for other
• Boingo – agrigated wifi service – paid
• Nimbuzz – IM and VOIP – free
• Fring – IM and VOIP – free

This isn’t a complete list but what I put on for this trip knowing I needed my phone to be my single point of communication at some times.

Update: Truphone is my lifesaver. I had nearly 0 reception in my cousins newly remodeled basement and not very good reception anywhere else in their house and Truphone made it possible for me to conduct a few business calls and conference calls I needed to participate in.  I also loved how easy it was to reroute my Google Voice # to my Truphone # in just a few seconds.  Once again Truphone combined with Google Voice (previously Grand Central) saved the day land kept me working.

In the last week I’ve gotten 2 new handsets and I started thinking what are the apps I always install on every handset I get.

Email: Emoze (client) and Nokia Email Beta for testing, sometimes the Java Gmail app

IM: Nimbuzz, Fring and Ovi Contacts

Maps: Nokia Maps 3.0 Beta and Google Maps

Twitter: Gravity (it’s buggy on the E75) and I use Dabr.co.uk 

Sync: Emoze

Picture upload: Ovi Share and email to TwitPic and Pikchur

Vide: Qik and FlixWagon

VOIP: Truphone and DefiMobile

These are just the apps I can think of right off the bat.  Many of them are in beta but all of them are really great.  What do you put on your phone?  I’ll also try to update my list as I add more to my phone.

So I just got back Friday afternoon from CTIA in Las Vegas. As a whole in terms of announcements, hardware and software it was quite a boring show. I did get to play with the Nokia E71x, N97 and E75 (I got to take one of these home, I have a review coming), those were the only 2 pieces of phone hardware I liked and found interesting.  I did get an earphone/microphone to test, it will turn an iTouch into a VOIP phone using Truphone (one of my favorite apps of all time).

The other interesting application I saw and have been using of late is Emoze (a client of mine).  It’s a 3rd party app you download on your phone to give you a greatly enhanced email experience. I like it because it connects to my Gmail, it also has the ability to connect you to Yahoo, Hotmail, and Facebook.  It also syncs with Outlook and has a good OWA (Outlook Web Access) interface.

I can’t forget that I saw Nimbuzz and really like what they’re doing with all the different communications methods they’re enabling people with now.

All in all it was a pretty boring show as shows go.

My friends over at Nimbuzz announced some exciting news yesterday.  They have finally updated their app and it now includes VOIP.
They are focused on bridging the 3G VoIP gap on the iPhone – anywhere.

Here are some highlight of the new app.

>With free Wi-Fi calls to instant messaging buddies already available, we added a full dial-pad, and the ability to make VoIP calls to landlines and mobile phones with Skype Out, and via our 10 VoIP partners including Gizmo5, Vyke, sipgate and A1.
You can even see the available Skype Out credit you have directly on the dial pad!

>If Wifi is unavailable you can make VoIP calls to Nimbuzz buddies using Nimbuzz Dial-Up VoIP in over 50 countries. Dial-Up VoIP? What this means is that Nimbuzz dials a local access number that connects to anywhere in the world via Nimbuzz VoIP servers. So you can call your Nimbuzz buddies anywhere for the same cost of a domestic call.

>Turn iPod touch into an iPhone! Make calls over Wi-Fi via Skype Out or via VoIP provider.

>Upgraded interface with much improved usability and the awesome landscape-mode chat.

I’m really happy to see this as they were one of the winners in our TopMobile20 competition.