Traveling With The Guru - Share Online FAIL
One of the tools I’d hoped to use the most on my trip is Share Online, on my trusty Nokia N95-3. I made sure to have the latest version loaded up on my phone, and I have my Calitrip2008 channel set as the default - to make things super-easy. Unfortunately, Share Online sucks, plain and simple. Don’t get me wrong - it does its job of uploading your photos with geotagging info intact to the correct Share on Ovi channel. However, it’s *how* it does this, and the followup and overall experience that makes Share Online completely and utterly worthless. Let me break it down for you.
Speed - When I’m on vacation, and snapping photos, I want to do just that - snap photos, and lots of them. I also, obviously, want to share those with others as quickly as possible, which is one reason I like to use my N95-3 and Share Online. Unfortunately, the experience is anything but snappy, and it’s not the phone’s fault. First off, and this is something I’ve griped about before, there’s no option to just upload everything. ShoZu does this, though, and I’m honestly wishing I’d set that up before coming on the trip.
So, since there’s no auto-upload, you have to click the ‘Share’ icon, which isn’t a real big deal. It’s right there, after you take a photo you just click it and off the photo goes, destined for the interwebs. However, for some stupid reason, Share Online thinks I need to see all the steps involved in that. I get switched temporarily to show that it’s opening the service, then I get a confirmation that it’s STARTED uploading, and then a few minutes later, I get a confirmation that it is finished uploading. I don’t care. I want to click the button and be off snapping my next photo. Showing me the behind-the-scenes process is an instant FAIL.
Even worse, pertaining to the overall speed, is that I can’t upload more than one thing at a time - ULTRA FAIL. Basically, I have to wait for each photo to finish uploading, if I want to use the handy-dandy Share icon from the camera application. If I want to upload in batches, I first of all have to open the gallery, and select up to 6 photos. Yes, that’s right, there’s a completely arbitrary limit of 6 items at a time. Thus, when I had over 50 photos from my trip to Alcratraz on Friday, I was stuck uploading those 6 at a time (which I did NOT have time for). I gave up, after uploading a few batches, as my day didn’t have time to wait for me to upload photos. That leads to the next issue….
History - There’s zero indication of what I have and haven’t uploaded to Share on Ovi using Share Online. None, zilch, nada. So……..if I stopped uploading in the middle of the day (which I did), then I have to open the channel on either my phone (not going to happen) or my computer, and compare, one-by-one, the photos that I already uploaded, to see which ones I’d missed.
Basically, after the first 2-3 hours of our first day of tourism in San Francisco, I completely gave up on Share Online. Technology should enrich and enable your real life - NOT get in the way and slow you down when you’re on vacation. For this trip, Share Online is a complete and utter fail. Next trip, I’ll be using ShoZu, without a doubt.
Note: Share on Ovi has been BRILLIANT. I was able to use the web-based mass uploader to upload 100+ photos each night, without a problem. The ones that are geotagged (vs the photos taken with Mrs. Guru’s digicam) are even available on a map - WIN.
Far from ideal though, a better way would be to have an icon next to the image in the gallery, much like the N82 has with geotagged images.
However, it would be good to have the option of it not doing so, or just have e.g. small icon on the top of the screen telling the user that something is being sent.
As for it sending everything automatically - that would be a nice option to have for the power users for sure. I am not sure if I'd use it though - there a lot of crap pics I take..
"Thankfully most of these issues are fixed in the next release. I've been playing with it on the 5800 and not only is their an outbox (see what you've uploaded) you can also start uploading the next thing before the last one finishes."
What *really* got me, and triggered a fail in my book, is that, for instance, the first several photos I took on the boat out to Alcatraz, I uploaded right after I took them. Then, I stopped uploading, cause there's hardly any signal inside the prison anyways. At that point, when I went back to uploading, I didn't have any idea as to which photos I'd uploaded already, and which I hadn't. Frustrating, as when I'm out sightseeing and taking photos, I don't want to have to stop to figure out where I left off.
Technology should enrich and enable real life, not get in the way and slow things down.
Share Online 4, (now on beta labs for certain models), greatly improves performance by enabling multithreaded upload, (uploads don't lock up the phone). The multithreading also resolve the 'six images per post' limitation, since you can now stack up as many posts as your phone memory will allow.
Unfortunately it will require S60 3.2, so will never run on your n95, (or n82 for that matter), since these phones will never see s60 3.2. You'll need a N78, N79, N85, N96, 6220 classic or other 3.2 phone.