NOTE: I probably shouldn’t even be posting this. As I say later all images/specs of the N9 online are the result of unconfirmed rumors that are pretty widely contested for technical and logical reasons.

The current phone I would like to swaddle and carry around like a baby is the Nokia N9 (picture from SlashGear).

Nothing has been officially confirmed by Nokia yet. We’re not even sure the device pictured above is what the phone will look like (there are some pictures online of a black phone claiming to be the N9). EDIT: It sounds like the phone will be available in silver and black (the keyboard will be black on both versions).

Rumored specs: (found here, originally obtained here I think)

I am. Really. I know it’s hard to believe, but bear with me.

I’m a pretty self-important consumer.

Let’s look at gaming. I own a PS3. I want to purchase an Xbox 360 soon, I wouldn’t mind owning a Wii, but I like PC gaming best. I can play PC games anywhere I have a computer. I can use nearly any input I want–Xbox controller, PS3 controller, keyboard and mouse, classic gamepad, joystick, etc.

For a while it was enough for me to say that if a game wasn’t coming out for PC, I wouldn’t buy it. In truth, there are enough good games out on PC to keep me occupied for years. Eventually games like Uncharted 2 came along to make me finally buy a console (the PS3 being a Blu-Ray player I could stream files to from my PC helped make that decision, too).

I still have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I was considering not buying Red Dead Redemption because it came out for 360 and PS3 but not PC. I probably will buy it soon, but why isn’t it out for PC? I’m sure it will be in a few months, just like GTA4 was, but it’s still a letdown.

It’s nice to hear about some new online scam or phishing method, worry slightly because it’s really clever, but then realize that I’m actually not exposed to it. Well, not as exposed as I could be.

Here’s an explanation of a new type of phishing attack. Basically a tabbed malicious page can tell when it’s not in focus, and when you’re not looking it will change itself to look like a familiar login screen, Gmail for example.

I have very specific visions of how I want to use my gadgets. They should be easy to take with me and easy to keep track of. That’s not often easy with a bag.

I’ve thought about finding a jacket and sewing a pocket into it large enough to store a netbook. I’ve thought about cutting into old jackets so I could run headphones from a breast pocket up to the collar through the inside of the jacket, so I didn’t have to mess with the cord getting in my way, or not being able to find the inside of my ear buds.

So I just saw this article on The Consumerist. About a vest with a pocket inside that the iPad could fit inside. That alone piqued my interest.

So I wandered over to SeV, aka SCOTTEVEST’s website. They don’t just have vests, they have full line of clothes–jackets, shirts, pants, etc. The vests and jackets I looked at have big, (iPad-sized) pockets and lost of smaller pockets for other things.

Wow, ever since I heard about the T101MT, I sure have been blogging about it a lot. Well that’ll change soon because…well…I got a T91MT. In a round-about fashion I won one. I should have it in my grubby little hands leaving disgusting fingerprints all over it’s glossy finish as you’re reading this, even though I don’t have it yet. You see, I wrote this bit Friday night, to be posted over the weekend while I’m on a little trip in recognition of Easter (I take the Easter Bunny’s crucifixion and subsequent rise very seriously).

I had my choice of a few netbooks, and I could have waited a bit for the for T101MT, but I didn’t. Why not? Let’s compare:

I posted an article about the T101MT earlier today. I forgot a few things:

-Interestingly, the T91MT got crap publicity and the T101MT is getting quite a lot. Can you guess why? Most articles mentioning it are speculatively comparing it to the iPad. Tech bloggers love talking about the iPad.

-Lots of these people are confused as to whether or not the T101MT has a resistive (pressure-sensitive) or a capacitive (detects human touch) touch screen. One site even said it has a “capacitive resistive” touch screen. I’m pretty sure this confusion comes out of the T101MT being multi-touch. You can have resistive multi-touch, people!!! It’s not even that uncommon. The more recent Toshiba Gigabytes, the Viliv S10 Blade, and the Asus T91MT all have resistive multi-touch screens.

Capacitive screens tend to be more responsive and take a much lighter touch than resistive screens. On the other hand, capacitive styluses aren’t that great, and if you want to do any “inking” you’d want an active digitizer first (like a Wacom pad built into the screen), but after that the next (and far cheaper) choice would probably be a resistive touch screen.

Just wanted to tack on those additional observations,

Lark

I’m a fairly new user of Google Alerts, the service that sends you a notice when they come across a word of phrase you’ve specified.

Right now my alerts are all for gadgets. I have an alert for the Notion Ink Adam hoping to hear a solid US release date and price. I had an alert on the Viliv S10 Blade until it’s pricing and features were finally released. I also have an alert on the Asus T101MT, the 10″ version of the Asus T91MT netvertible.

I had an alert set up before the T101MT was released in some European country (can’t remember, and it doesn’t really matter which), and that press release certainly triggered a flood of alerts being sent to me. The release said that the T101MT would be released in the US in April. The first big tech blogs to remark on the upcoming April release have stated that the European version is selling for 499 euro, about $675 USD, but they’re speculating that the price in the US, when it’s released, will actually be about 500 USD.

Anyone who has set up a Google Alert to follow a new gadget or device has probably realized there are two (probably more) different kinds of posts. You know what, I’ll say three kinds of posts:

So let’s retrace my old steps.

I bought an eeePC 701. Loved it. Don’t mind the tiny keyboard. Prefer it, actually, because my fingers are now used to moving and pressing down less than on any of my other full-size keyboards.

Upgraded to an eeePC 901. Bigger screen. Better battery life. Loved the flat finish of the 701 and the beveled edges. By contrast the 901 is just a glossy, rounded fingerprint magnet. With crappy speakers. I don’t regret buying it. It does everything I bought it for, and I have watched many a season of TV shows on it during long car trips.

Can’t really use either outdoors, in bright sunlight. I’ve tried.

Got my eye out for a netvertible now. Use it like a netbook, or fold the touch-screen back and use it like a tablet. Hopefully could write on it with a stylus and stop using so much paper. Looking at:

A couple of interesting things have been announced recently. Two separate announcements, both pretty cool. Steam is coming out for the Mac, and Crysis 2 is coming out in Q4 2010.

These things in and of themselves aren’t big deals, and in fact have been known or at least suspected for some time. The news riding along is what holds the greatness.

I’m a simple man with simple needs. The Nokia N900 is awesome. There is a huge body of people developing cool applications for Maemo 5, the N900′s operating system. In fact, I only have a few problems, none of them very large problems.

For instance, there’s no Shazam app for the N900. I used that program all the time on my old phone to identify music in restaurants and on the radio.

You can’t have multiple ringtones on the N900, for instance giving each contact a custom ringtone. Not a big deal, but still odd that the N900 doesn’t allow it. In fact, that feature is so common in all phones now, it’s not even anything I thought to investigate when researching the N900.

The biggest problem for me was reading RSS feeds in Google Reader. I love Google Reader. On my pc. The interface is a little hard to use on the tiny N900 screen, and using the iPhone’s mobile Google Reader interrface doesn’t sort feeds by web site, nor does it act at all like I want it to.

This was a problem, and I have even been evaluating other web-based feed readers for a better mobile interface, when I read about Grr.