I’m not going to rail iPhone too much. First, it’s too easy to hammer the business model of Apple for what they do to their customers, it’s too easy to compare the iPhone to phones that feature things like 3G without having to brag about it because other companies actually understand the market they’re in and don’t have to get all excited when they conform to a standard…

What I will do is mention the new Nokia N96 campaign. A sleek martial arts marketing platform, great brand projection, and though its creative, it’s still mature enough to make it feel like, if you do buy the N96, you’re not buying into the teenager fad-campaigns such as those presented by Apple for their bricks.

The N96, which I may actually upgrade to, features:

• 16GB internal storage space
• MicroSDHC Slot for expanding the memory up to 32GB total*
• 5MP Carl Zeiss Optics camera
• Near-DVD quality video recording
• LiveTV with DVB-H technology
• Integrated A-GPS and Nokia Maps
• The usuals (unless you own an iPhone)
  • Removable LiIon Battery
  • Multi-media Messaging
  • Front facing 1.3MP camera (yes, 2 cameras)
  • A flash (5MP camera only)
  • Tactile number pad
  • 3D stereo speakers … on the handset
  • A plethora of awesome gadgets (That are largely compatible with Nokia products in general *cough*)
• Nokia PC Suite
  • Send SMS, MMS, Email via the handset from your bluetooth or STANDARD USB cable connection
  • Manage photos, videos, files from the Media Manager, File Manager
  • blah blah blah tons of awesome stuff etc etc

Needless to say, the king of cell phone innovation has been Nokia since the early 2000’s and what they’re doing today is still no exception. Pretend for a moment the iPhone didn’t have MultiTouch, what do you have? A PDA phone, lacking in features, with an extra large footprint, an Apple OS, clever marketing campaign that turns Apple fanboys into herded cattle when an upgrade or update comes out, and about as much awesome as the Air, which is really an overpriced Eee PC with lots of pretty.

Shiny appliances with great (young feeling) marketing ideas, lacking sophistication, maturity, and business sense. Go Apple, go!

*32GB total is dependent on ScanDisk actually releasing their 16GB microSD card already. I’m waiting patiently, but have the option to upgrade from my 8GB to a 16GB card w/o buying a new phone. Neat, huh?

So, you want to be a Wi-Fi hotspot, huh? Think, just because you have a good wireless carrier that offers up HSDPA/3G you can just… abuse that, and serve up Internet to those around you?

Well?

You can, obviously. Joiku is an application for your mobile device. I installed it on the the Nokia N95-3, fired it up, and with a few minor configurations? I had connection available to those around me for the “yays!”.

I’m pretty sure you don’t absolutely need HSDPA/3G, but if you don’t, you’re just begging to be victim to 9600 baud-rate speeds, and you’ll end up gouging out your eyes with your bluetooth headset before even the simplest of pages load on whatever your serving your FreeWeeFee to.

I’ve only had to use this a couple of times, because I typically just connect to my N95 as a modem via bluetooth or USB to enjoy blazing hot speeds w/o sharing! GREEDY ME! But in the event that I’m around iPhone users that don’t really have that luxery? I feed my connection to their devices to be a nice guy… and rub in the fact that Steve Jobs is a lame.

FriendFeed, an awesome application with a simplified interface, is growing… FAST. Before I get into what’s what with FriendFeed, here’s some skinny on features and how it relates to other sites, offering similar services…

Commenting/threaded conversations for every post: This feature is strikingly similar to Pownce’s idea of allowing threaded conversations to posts… making these sites a little more like message boards than microblogs.

Aggregation of services: MyBlogLog aggregates services, and spews them out via a nice time line (check my Lifestream). This feeding a feed other feeds to feed the feed is a very common thing these days, SocialThing does it, Pownce kind of does it, Jaiku as well… MyBlogLog, a Yahoo! service, is the closest to FriendFeed.

Subscribing to Feeds of others: MyBlogLog… and pretty much every other site with members + RSS, but MyBlogLog specifically, as… it’s an aggregator.

Liking a post: Twitter, Pownce, Digg… shoot, everywhere’s got this.

What makes FriendFeed different?

Imaginary friends, taking stuff from wherever, compiling a single feed or a few feeds from it, and organizing what you read by creating “friends” for them. This is much like Google Reader, you know… adding stuff to your RSS feed reader? But you can have more than one… so this makes it a little more like FilterMyRSS, which actually I think it a slightly better way to handle this, because it’s just merely managing a custom URL/Feed that you can alter and add to whatever, and it can be de-noised at the same time.

So… What makes FriendFeed different?

Recommended friends (like Facebook)… Best of X (day/month/etc … like Redit). Well, what makes FriendFeed really different is the fact that I rattled off a sevens site names, and where I found features similar to FriendFeed’s… but obvioulsy these features are all on FriendFeed.

To make FriendFeed “King of the Mountain”, and just anihalate the competition, indirectly as it may be since they’re peace loving happy campers of the Internet, would be to add the following:

1. SMS/MMS Support
   That’s right, eliminate the need to use Twitter all together. They’re up only 80% of “The Time” anyway, so to hell with it. Bring on photo sharing support via cell as well, and you’ve got yourself an end-to-end elimination of Twitter, Twitxr, Twitpic, etc.
2. Related to #1: Allow for direct messages, and scheduled activity summaries to be sent via SMS and/or Email
3. Support geotagging
4. Create a FireFox plug-in for “Share this on FF”
   This will alleviate the need to use sites like Tumblr, Digg, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia.com, Reddit… etc… etc
5. Related to #3, add a Stumble feature to the toolbar to show me random items that related to things I like.
6. Allow tagging of things I share
7. Start to grab the excerpt from blog-posts, via the RSS input
8. Give the option for some sort of customization through a dashboard similar to Tumblr.

That’ll about cover it… I mean, FriendFeed doesn’t really need AJAX awesome, or any other major infrastructure pieces, they have the best features from a good number of sites, and, interact with an even bigger number of them… so, to wipe Twitter off the map, and a few other sites that aren’t really needed… That’s the path of awesome. Unless I’m forgetting something…

As luck would have it, I was recently given the opportunity to test out a Nokia N95 8GB (link) and pit it against my Nokia N95-3 (link), the 3G US release of the N95. At first look, you can see the obvious. The 8GB has a larger screen, comes in a sleek black housing, and is a little bulkier than the 3G.

The very first thing that I noticed about the 8GB is the screen slider. Compared to the 3G, it’s flimsy feeling, lacking that stable, sturdy feel I like so much about the 3G. Why would Nokia do such a thing?

Otherwise, the phone is awesome. It’s fast, it’s filled with great features, strong hardware, and 8 GIGS of storage! Granted, I have an 8GB micro-SD card in my N95-3, so that point is a little moot, but, it is handy to have space on a phone, no matter what. The 8GB also shipped with the updated firmware software that I’ve since downloaded and installed on my 3G.

I’ve raved about the N95 in comparison to the iPhone for months. The camera, the ability to do real video, the interface, software and features, the fact you can take out the batter and SIM card at will, use standard USB and headphone plugs to interface with the handset, and the Nokia PC Suite sofftware that comes in the box for the the phone… all awesome, and both the 8GB and the 3G boast the same awesome.

Nokia N95 8GB price: $595.00 (Froogle, average)

Nokia N95-3 w/ an 8GB microSD Card:$565.00 (Froogle, average)

The benefit of the N95 8GB is obviously the larger screen, which is very pretty, but the fact that it’s very flimsy, compared to the N95-3, and mixed with the inability to add more memory to it? I’m going to be happy with the N95-3 with the smaller screen, and a 16GB microSDHC card when it becomes reasonably available.