ShoZu Going The Way of The Buffalo?
ShoZu has recently updated their app to 3.2
, supposedly officially supporting the Nokia N95. Given that I was formerly a ShoZu addict,
I gave it a shot, even though it nearly killed my N95 the first time around (to the point I almost sent it back, and I got it for free!). It’s already gone from my phone again.
ShoZu is going the way of the buffalo. They’ve had so many chances, and they’ve let this one phone kill them….
To their credit, it was improved in most areas. I didn’t experience the
incessant crashing and freezes and reboots that I did with the first
attempt, so that’s good. However, the biggest problem was HUGE - I was
unable to record video. Seriously. And I tried everything. The only app
I had running in the background was Mail4Exchange. And ShoZu. I tried
numerous reboots, popping the battery out and letting the phone sit for
a little while, nothing helped. I had recorded a video shortly before
installing ShoZu, as well.
So I uninstalled the last app I installed - ShoZu - and what do you
know? Video Recording is back again! Hmmm, what’s that tell me? Yep,
probably the same thing it tells you. ShoZu is going the way of the
buffalo. They’ve had so many chances, and they’ve let this one phone
kill them.
Personally, I think they’ve strayed from their core. They now sync contacts, and offer ZuCasts. Why? I don’t know. Has nothing to do with uploading media. Nothing. I wonder what percentage of users actually use those 2 features?
It’s sad, really. ShoZu works so great on my N73 and N75, and they have
about the same amount of RAM leftover as the N95. It’s still useless
for videos, since they refuse to allow anything over 10MB (yeah, they
raised that from the paltry 4MB previously, but it still doesn’t solve
my problem). But it’s nice to not have to do anything for my pics to
show up on Flickr. Alas, the Symbianworld blog has a great little tutorial on
how to upload directly to Flickr from your Nseries device, without
installing anything. It’s built-in. A bit cumbersome (I’m not using it,
I’ll just use my PC, sadly. Too many clicks for me), but still works.
Will I try ShoZu again? Sure. It’s such a compelling feature, zero-click uploading of my media. Am I optimistic that they can fix things? Not really. But they’ve done so well with other phones, I’ll surely give them another shot, and probably another, but I’m quickly learning to adapt without them.
What about you? How do you get pics off your phone? Are you using your
S60’s built-in web upload feature, ShoZu, or some other option? I know
there’s Vox, but I don’t want another blog, I just want a photo
repository, that’s all.
Hey Ricky… I have had no problems with the video recording so far ..even though i have shozu running in the background. Do you think it was tyhe one click uploading feature that was causing the problem ?? Coz i have mine set to off and it seems to be working fine.
Ray - it could very well be, but that’s one of their key features. If I have to turn it off to use the app, then it’s useless.
I have NO problems at all Ricky. N95 is working just fine, even when recording large video clips.
Hey Ricky,
my N95 also threw a wobbly when I installed ShoZu on it, and I actually found the automatic popup asking you if you want to upload the picture you’ve just taken really rather intrusive.
I uninstalled it and have been using the Flickr upload ever since, which is brilliant (and easy to use as photo repository and can be used to auto-post them to your blog while you’re away from your computer)
As an aside, for the Mac users, I find Skitch amazing to annotate pics, whether for useful purposes or just for a giggle. It’s quick and couldnt be simpler to use.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thatcanadiangirl/896421164/
This morning, I ran through a few of Loic Le Meur’s videos, taken w the N95 and uploaded using ShoZu and I’m tempted to give it another chance purely for video.
Maybe, maybe not!
Vero