Samsung wants to get people thinking about the upcoming Olympics, and more than just the highest profile athletes. I’ve met many Olympic athletes due to my work via the Harbrooke Group for the New York Road Runners, some high profile (like Apolo Ono) and some who are not household names.

Without exception, these people are exceptional. They work hard and are committed to a goal with singular purpose. They’ve generally been polite, intelligent and unassuming. This follows with a story that one of the Samsung folks told me – that they had 2 ex-Olympians working in their office in NJ, and no one even knew they had been in Equestrian or Pentathalon events.

It made the team think about all the Olympians and Para-Olympians living among us who we don’t know, and don’t understand how we might have connections to them. At SXSW I saw a sneak preview of the US Olympic Genome project, which will enable you you to find, via your Facebook connections, listed place of residence and birth, and your interests, how you’re connected to various athletes. This is pretty creative marketing and it taps into an opportunity for all of us to learn more about the athletes and para-athletes in our midst, whether in well-known sports or lesser-known ones.

While this project is a closed beta, I was able to see some of the Olympic quizzes, games and data visualizations that will let everyone see their connections to athletes and sports they weren’t aware of. Taking the quizzes and doing games earns you points, and you can use those points to donate money to Team USA via the non-profit USOC, which pays for athletes to train and go to the Olympics.

Glad I can be a part of the soon-to-be-everywhere Olympic spirit in 2012, and kudos to the creative folks who thought this one up.

*Note, this post was created in connection with my appointment as an Ambassador for the Samsung US Olympic Genome Project – this is a compensated position. 

I’ve been asked to participate as a blogger/twitterer in this friendly contest, called #IJustPlantedATree @SXSW 2012. For this participation, they’ve given me one of their slick Nokia Lumia 800s to use.*  From the site:

So, during our time at the Interactive portion of SXSW, we invited 50 of our favorite Twitter friends to help us out in our mission. They will take part in a 48 hour online Twitter challenge using the hashtag #ijustplantedatree. Each time they tweet with that hashtag, 5 trees will be planted locally by our friends at the Arbor Day Foundation. To make sure we keep up the pace, an online leaderboard has been established, and will start to keep track of who is planting the most trees.

There is a sub-contest where the tweeter who plants the most trees gets one of the shiny new Nokia Lumia 900 phones. Great if I win, but I’m not concerned about winning. If you re-tweet me, you’ll also be helping plant trees (not helping me win).

So if you see Tweets regarding “ijustplantedatree” you’ll know what I’m up to.

*Disclosure – it is my option to keep or return the phone – I have not decided yet what I will do. I will update this later.

We have two Arduino Uno boards. Our board seem to transmit and receive each other, and we’ve tested the xbees – they work fine in an “echo” test we found that transmits from one and sends a signal back to the other. (Unwired).

As you can see in this video, we load up the two sketches (listed below) which we’ve simplified to be – one sketch sends an “A” character – the other, upon receiving any character, lights an LED. Very simple.

But even though the receiving board seems to be getting a signal from the transmitting board once a second, it does not trigger the rest of the sketch’s loop to run. If we wire the boards together without the xbees, the sketch runs. We are stumped.

Any advice is welcome.

int ledPin = 13;

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
delay(100);
while(!Serial.available());
}
void loop()
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(100);
}

transmit
//this is a program to see if the Xbees work
int ledPin = 13;

void setup()
{
pinMode (ledPin, OUTPUT);
Serial.begin(9600);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
}

void loop()

{
// delay(1000);
//digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
// delay(9000);
Serial.println(‘a’);
delay(1000);
//digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
//while(1);
}

A truly great summary of the SOPA issue from CopyBlogger.

C|Net’s SOPA FAQ

Inc. Magazine’s Stand on SOPA.

Why is the bill so bad? You can read how the SOPA Bill violates the Constitution by creating blacklists and opposing free speech. Since the bill also allows sites to be shut down without an adversary proceeding (a court or administrative hearing) it effectively allows anything to be shut down first, with questions asked later (if the party can afford it.)

From a small business perspective,  a company could have their site on a server that is a “shared” server. If one of the other tennets has an infringing site, the entire server could be shut down, and you’d be collateral damage. I can’t support that in any case.

By creating this bill, our government would have the power we criticize in the “Great Firewall of China” and other oppressive regimes. Hey, remember when Pakistan blocked Youtube and YouTube became unreachable for almost all of the Internet? (The link documents that happened in 2008. Whoops, we just took down your company. Sorry.) That is the kind of thing we’re talking about here – and new measures are being created so governments and groups can’t do this intentionally or by accident. If this kind of power is legislated, it will leave technical holes in the Internet where all sorts of abuse can happen. Don’t take it from me, read the “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf’s position on SOPA.

I mean, if the right-wing Heritage Foundation can oppose SOPA at the same time the lefty EFF opposes SOPA, there is something seriously wrong with the bill.

Even though GoDaddy allegedly no longer supports SOPA, their support before they chose to change is enough to make me question working with this company going forward. That, and the fact they use women as sex objects to sell their services. As a father of a daughter, I’m voting with my feet and my wallet against this practice. I will be doing more as soon as I make sure I know where all the DNS entries go so I don’t mess up this blog, my email and other business-critical things. There are a bunch of different registrars who will take your business, and Lifehacker has a great piece on ditching GoDaddy.

So, goodbye GoDaddy. I’ve just started to transfer away 17 domains, more are coming.

SOPA and the Senate’s equivalent are bad laws.  I’ll stress again that I’m for businesses being able to protect their intellectual property, as long as they find methods that don’t break the Internet in doing this.

In the rising of the sun and its going down,
We remember them.

In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
We will remember them.

In the opening buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember them.

In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
We remember them.

In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
We remember them.

In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We will remember them.

When we are weary and in need of strength,
We will remember them.

When we are lost and are sick of heart,
We remember them.

When we have Joys we yearn to share,
We remember them.

So long as we live, they too shall live,
For they are now a part of us,
As we remember them.

Initial impression

This is a smallish phone – smaller than an iPhone 3G and tiny compared to my DroidX. It feels pretty solid. The display is very clear, bright and has good color.

Setup was a bit of a challenge, as was almost anything I needed to do in the software – the Nokia Symbian OS feels unnatural to me. I admit I still try to figure out what some things do in Android and where certain settings are. But the Symbian controls are a bit buried in the menus. For someone used to a feature phone and not a Blackberry, IPhone or Android, a lot of this would be irrelevant. I’m a techie user and I like to be able to get at the controls, and that wasn’t as straighforward.

As always, I’ll tell you the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good

As I mentioned, this is a solid phone with good display. The call quality was very good. I tried calls in NYC, in the suburbs, and in areas of Boca Raton, Florida. I never had trouble getting a signal and I didn’t drop any calls which was better than I expected. I also had pretty good data coverage everywhere. I was careful with the data since the pre-paid card only had 30MB (Hey T-Mobile – $30 for 1500 Talk and Text is great, but 30MB of data? Please.)

I was able to connect one Gmail account with it’s contacts and calendar without too much hassle. The calendar and contacts took a while to come in – but once they did, they were pretty up to date. The phone only allows one “Exchange” type account so I couldn’t get other calendars or contacts from multiple accounts like Android allows.

I’m glad that in this phone they seem to have solved the issue that I found when I tried an N95 – specifically that the phone was either on Wifi or the network and you had to switch it. There was no challenge with that. Wifi coverage was solid and easy to set up.

There were several games pre-installed, including Angry Birds. It played well, but one feature that you find on iPhone or Android – the ability to pinch-zoom the screen to see the whole game board – was missing. Fruit Ninja worked just fine. There is the ability to have RSS widgets to see headlines from CNN, for example. There is an App market for the Ovi/Symbian world, but I didn’t try it out.

One of the best features is the camera. Nice LED flash with an 8MP camera. Very close shots are tough, but at usual distance to infinity, the photos are very very good.

The web browser was adequate and handled a lot of sites quite well. The phone has “Flash Lite” which may help with some flash-enabled sites, better than iPhone at least.

The Bad

Let me say, there was nothing really “bad.” Just annoying or “I really wished this worked better.” You get the ability to customize your 3 home screens. I found the icons tough to configure but eventually was able to do what I wanted.

The phone comes with Ovi Social as a main front screen widget – a way to connect to Facebook and Twitter, but no other social networks. It seemed to forget my Twitter password all the time. It did remember my Facebook password, and I would see people’s face icons go by and as well as *very* short portions of their updates. I couldn’t find a way to make the widget go back – so if you miss that person’s update and you want to find it again you have to wait for the phone to cycle it back. I really wanted to make this widget double the size so I could actually read the updates. Not critical, but an annoyance.

The fact I could only connect one calendar and set of contacts and have “push email” from one account was annoying – again, this is more of a consumer phone or a step up from a feature phone so not a problem for people with only one email.

The on-screen keyboard is small – it is for smaller fingers than mine. I suspect a teen or woman with more narrow fingers would be fine with it.

The map and directions feature was no where near as good as the Android/Google Maps navigation. I wanted to go to a place about 9 miles away and avoid a certain road that has traffic during the afternoon. The phone suggested that road, since it was the fastest route. I deliberately chose a parallel street and the phone kept trying to get me back to its original route.

Additionally, when I was driving “with the traffic” the phone was like a nagging nanny telling me I was going over the speed limit. I couldn’t turn that feature off while I was driving and never did find the switch to turn it off in general. I think I would like to make that mandatory when my kids learn to drive, but again, annoying and tough to configure.

The Ugly

Modality. More specifically, having to click multiple items to accomplish things that most other phones do with a button or a more simple interface. My biggest example – email. I open an email to read it. To reply I have to choose “Options” then pick “Reply, Reply All or Forward.” Additionally, the delete, move, mark as unread and some other options are under “Options.” Why aren’t these buttons on the screen? Everyone does one of these things for every email. My Blackberry from 2004 did this. This problem of making people click multiple buttons to get to features or settings is just the way the Symbian OS seems to work. And again, it is not “bad” – it just is not the way I want to work anymore. It almost reminds me of command line interfaces.I have another Nokia I bought on a trip to the UK last year for £4 (About $7) and it has a similar interface – I expect that. For a $299 phone ($49 with contract) the user experience and interface could be better.

Conclusion

I think if you’re a narrow-fingered person looking for a great camera phone with occasional web and email use, this is a good phone to check out. Upgrading from a “feature phone” this is going to feel good and powerful. If you’re used to an iPhone or an Android device, this phone is going to feel like a step backward. The phone calling was solid, and the T-Mobile network was surprisingly better than I thought in areas where I live, work and vacation. Be aware that Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft means that this OS may be the end of it’s line, even though Nokia has spoken about keeping it going.

I’ve seen the hurt, the anger, and the sadness on the faces of these children, up close, for myself. I’ve also seen them laugh, play and have a chance to be normal kids, not “that kid who lost his dad on 9-11.” As a photographer and videographer, I’ve captured moments that show these emotions, and that break through our everyday lives and show what it means to be human.

That’s why I’m proud to share a few quotes today about what quiet dignity looks like. Some can shout “USA” and post about “mission accomplished*,” these children (now adults) are sharing what this terrorist’s death means to them on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere.

I’ve blurred the names and pictures, as I’ve promised never to share family information out of respect when I worked for the Twin Towers Fund. I won’t change that now.

From a graduate camper who lost a parent, now a counselor – see her concern for her bunk campers, a group of younger kids who lost a parent.

From one of the campers who has helped my photo and video team in the past:

From a quiet but strong graduate camper, now a counselor:

And the discussion on his wall:

And finally, another graduate/counselor’s tweet, one that inspired this post:

Thanks to all my America’s Camp friends for responding to this news in your own way. You continue to inspire me and show me why I’ve worked at camp for, as of this summer, 10 years.

*By the way, in my mind, our mission is “accomplished” when our service men and women are building levies in New Orleans with the Army Core of Engineers, building villages in Haiti or providing logistics support in Japan, instead of getting shot in Afghanistan or Iraq. Be safe, service men and women!

But we can’t and shouldn’t ignore the situation abroad and that’s why many people I admire here at the conference started SXSW Cares. Donations at http://www.sxsw4japan.org/ will go directly to the Red Cross, with no transaction fees, meaning 100% of funds raised go to charity.

I encourage my friends to take a moment to make a quick donation, and help our Japanese neighbors in their time of need. Thanks.