James Burland joins MyNokiaBlog.com! (And mynokiablog hits 100k views)

James Burland at Hollywood walk of fame

Known from thecreativelife.com, thecreativelifeblog.com, samsungcreative.com, pocketcreative.com, allaboutiphone.net and of course NokiaCreative.com, James Burland joins another project… here at mynokiablog.com!

James has been blogging about gadgets and the tech world way before a lot of the new tech/Nokia related blogs even existed, certainly way before I joined the blogosphere when I was only on mobileburn forums.

In the Nokia scene, James Burland is known for pushing the creative boundaries of Nokia devices, showcasing the capabilities of mobile phones either in his meticulous real world tests or inspiring others to see what they can do with their Nokia devices, such as the Nokia Creative N95 photo awards. I still remember James for his N93 posts – comparisons with dedicated camera counterparts, displaying the excellent imaging and audio how far Nokia had come – the glory days when no other manufacturer could match what Nokia could do. I think it was actually James’ posts that led me onto getting the N93 myself.

From the April/May 08 Nokia Creative N95 Photo Awards

I met James way back in Sept 2007(woah, 07?) for the LA Unlock event, (courtesy of WOMWorld), and he’s one seriously cool guy, and extremely insightful into all things Nokia, Mobile, Imaging and most interestingly, Apple products. Along with Christian Haslam, James and I had already collaborated on a podcast (which though hilarious to record probably didn’t come out right at all).

Since my return to blogging in Mid April 09 after a rather long drought of post, James and I have chatting frequently either discussing each others blog posts or whatever random topic on twitter.

As James is understandably busy juggling his offline life along with his other online blogs, James will be posting on mynokiablog.com just whenever he feels like. I’ll still be posting as I usually do as I’ve been bitten by a blogging bug.

In other related news,

mynokiablog.com passes 100,000 monthly views.

It may be a drop in the ocean compared to other Nokia blogs, but I’m really surprised there are people out there willing to read my random posts, rants, news and reviews as they’re just so informal and unprofessional! I’m especially surprised with the traffic since as aforementioned, I only just came back to the blogosphere properly in a few months ago (and my blog even back then was unknown), I’m surprised I can even get a tiny slice of traffic pie in this really crowded cafeteria of Nokia Blogs. Thank you so much for sticking around!

A bit about the Nokia side of me:

I’ve been a Nokia fan since the days when texting was new and Nokias had antennas. Nokia wasn’t that popular then in Britain but it was the only phone I’d ever see when I went back to the Philippines for holidays, as it was the best phone to have – best UI, best looking phones and great price.

To feed my mobilegeekness, I frequented the mobileburn forums where I eventually became Admin. During that time (Sept 06 I think) I was approached by some random people who apparently wanted to invite me to New York and even test out an N93. I didn’t believe them and thought they were just some spam con artists.

These guys turned out to be WOMWorld.

As well as lending me handsets/accessories to test, they’ve also brought me along to some great events like  CES 2007, Nokia Go Play, LA Unlock, Nokia World 07, Nseries Urbanista, Search For N, and a couple of weeks ago, OneDotZero. Travelling around the world was obviously great (running over Nokia phones a hummer and the awesome parties!), checking out and testing unreleased phones even better.

The best experience was meeting people in the industry – the WOMCrew, Donna, Frank, Mike, Robbie, Adam and Katie (I don’t think I got to meet Siobhan) – Nokia Peeps like Jussi and Anssi and some other Nokia execs and product managers , but most of all the bloggers/writers out there.

Either several hours on a plane together, few days of a trip, a day out or a brief meet/greet, these were some of the Nokia Bloggers/writers/forum members that I got to meet in person. Although I was probably unknown to them, it was surreal and fantastic for me to meet the people behind the blogs I’d been reading and the forum users I’d been chatting to. Some I met more than once, and that was amazing seeing them again! Thanks again WOMWorld ^_^.

My first event ever at CES.

Rafe Blandford, Steve Litchfield, Ricky Cadden, Stefan Constantinescu, Michael Oryl, Darla Mack, James Burland, Ewan Spence, Jenifer Hanen (MsJen), Devin Balentina, Christian Haslam (Chaslam), Michael Hell, Valerio Valerio, Gerrymoth, Neil Bird, Roger Sperberg, Mike Evans, Gary Birkett, Andrew Flegg, Reggie Suplido, Teo, Daniel Carter, Steve Garfield, Mark Guim, Eldar, Dan Gentleman (Thoughtfix), angel_wing0, Ben Smith, Richard Siddle, Travis Boss, Matt Jones (munkimatt), pseudofinn, Ravi Jain, kloves2fly, Robbi, Al Pavangkanan (mewtosama), Scott Emsen (emo185), Tarek Abu-Esber, Martyn Britton (marty3), Bica Mihai Gabriel (Bytales),Vineeth M Kumar (Vinumsv) Murray Winiata (NZtechfreak), Mohannad Hammadeh (zalameh1), Michael Onyeyiri  (MikeUK), Carlo Longino, Noel Kennedy (kontraband), (there’s a few more I’ve missed out but I can’t remember their names)

A bit about the mynokiablog

I started mynokiablog in Sept 07, so I could have a place to post my Nokia related stories, rants and suggestions without over crowding mobileburn with simply Nokia posts.

I wanted to call it MyNokia – that was taken. The domain provider suggested I stick blog at the end so I did. When I registered the domain, I honestly forgot that there was already “TheNokiaBlog”. I had been making occasional posts but went from posting a few a week to hardly any in a few months – for one reason or another – lack of interesting Nokia devices and uni perhaps, I stopped checking anything mobile related. Forums and other mobile communities got do difficult to keep up.

News of the N97 in December sparked my interest again. However, I didn’t start to post regularly until mid April.

After an April fools post (about Nokia buying Palm) got picked up by Palm, I got bitten by the blogging bug.

Why I blog?

Starting that U-turn to reclaim high end with N900

From the Blogging and WOMWorld experience, it was simply great to realise that Nokia are really receptive to bloggers and the community’s thoughts and suggestions on their products, whether they be my own odd ideas or from what the community has been asking for a long time. They don’t always listen (Xenon..hello!), but it’s still nice to know that they do, especially in things like firmware updates.

I have loved Nokia when they were just the best you can get for a phone, and still now when it’s frustrating to see them somewhat play catchup to other manufacturers. That’s because I still see much potential in Nokia to reclaim a DESERVING title as number 1. Not simply on sales and profit, but for producing the best devices and services possible.

I want to have a part, however small that maybe in letting other people know what’s great about these Nokia devices, and perhaps get through to the Nokia people who matter; getting them aware of some of the crap that needs scraping off the bottom of that shoe and together with other blogs and forums direct Nokia back to walking that road (of success? :p) they should be on.

Future for mynokiablog

Uni work is starting to pile back on, especially with final year being that extra bit more hectic but I will try my damned hardest to post regularly. I do have plans to move to wordpress.org as I know mynokiablog.com (via wordpress.com) is hopelessly difficult to navigate – perhaps get a more user friendly theme/layout? I’m going to do this when I’ve gotten some help on exactly how to do this smoothly without doing something like deleting my blog posts or my entire blog.

But otherwise, things will continue as they are (hopefully) but now with James dropping by now and again 🙂

Thanks again for reading mynokiablog.com, and welcome James Burland!

Tags: James Burland, MyNokiaBlog, Nokia, Nokia Creative

Category: Nokia