Lifeblog vs. Nokia Photos

It had been circulating in the back of my mind for quite some time - the thought of "who's the winner?" kind - between the Nokia Photos and the Nokia Lifeblog, to both which I gave my kudos in a previous post.
But time passed, and newer versions of both products appeared, each striving (quite independently, it seemed so) to "grow wings" and become PC-man's definitive iPhoto replacement...
So... in the blue corner (and on your Nokia phone!)... the Nokia LifeBlog!



Blue ribbon, silver scroller... toolbox buttons in the upper part.
It can sync to your device, get all the juice out on to a PC, and then you have the full digital life cycle - Backup, Restore, Upload to Web (blog), display, use geo-tags etc. On a side note - the uploader stopped working with this blog.

In the red corner - the Nokia Photos!



Grey ribbon, blue scroller... toolbox buttons in the lower part.
It can ... sync to your device (using the same on-device lifeblog support), get all your content (SMS, MMS, Text Notes - but strangely enough - not from the "Notes" phone application, photos, videos, audio clips - again, not yet from the Recorder phone app, web posts) and then again - you have all the same "Rip/Burn/Mix/Upload" features found in the Lifeblog.

So what's different?
Well, apparently those two programs keep their data separate. I mean it.
Unless you're not careful enough, you may end up with two separate incomplete sets of your phone-produced media-content. Did I say "phone-produced"? Not quite so. You do not have to have a Nokia phone to use those programs. Each one of them allows you to import media from PC and use all the niceties for free! Try it, if you haven't.

Also of some interest are the filtering capabilities in both programs:

I looked pretty hard last time to find it, but I finally managed - inconveniently hidden inside the Tag Manager button are the filters:



With nPhoto (as somebody quite properly dubbed it) - life is easier and the filters are found in a pull-down menu in the right upper end of window:




As you can see from my filters, my usage pattern tend to be more text-biased for LifeBlog and nPhoto for photos. Simply because nPhoto has the button for slideshow, in LifeBlog I have to dig inside menus.

Unfortunately, you cannot control which type of media goes to which program.
From my findings, LifeBlog seems more tolerant and resilient to sync failures. Once I had a notebook battery go down when syncing with lifeblog. And after that the nPhoto began to report failures on some "stuck items" during each sync.
One sync with lifeblog - and the "missing" items came through, and voila - no more errors in nPhoto.

Finally, as much as I would love the LifeBlog moniker, Nokia decided otherwise.
And the winner is.... Nokia Photos.

They seem to have silently given LifeBlog a boot.

Now, if you go to www.nokia.com/lifeblog you will be redirected to the nPhoto site.
(probably, some links from my old post won't work right, but what can I do)

What issues do I see with such decision?
Just one. The brand awareness.

Yes, I can readily believe that nPhoto will have all the LifeBlog features and a nice UI to boast, but what about LifeBlog brand, dear Nokia Product Management???




The LifeBlog name is imprinted in devices and printed manuals, Nokia device owners will surely be looking to get it working.



It is so convenient to use Lifeblog in the phone because you simply see EVERYTHING - all you text/graphic/video/mms media is there on the timeline!

This is a unique offering in the mobile world, even iPhone cannot do that - mix everything in a simple cleanly-navigated time-based line.

Why this offering is so badly under-presented to potential customers is beyond me!
It's usability is also overwhelmingly undervalued.

A simple excersize for Nokia to do:

1) assign LifeBlog to the right soft key by default on the N-series
2) see LifeBlog usage grow and grow, along with a mindshare for good UI from Nokia

The word "Lifeblog" more accurately describes the multi-media capabilities of this media jukebox.

"Photos" just don't go well with what the program does.
It's not a Photoshop.
And what about "Videos", "Messages" and "Weblogs"?

"Photos" just sounds bland.

A wiser solution would be to announce "Lifeblog 3.0", and say it's based on "the best of the two programs" and have it based, in fact, on nPhoto, if you chose so...

Please remember, some [printed, firmware] names just can't be changed.

Please set the customer free of the confusion.

It also would have been a great achievement if Notes and Sound Recordings could have finally been flawlessly synced to a PC.

Classic PC Suite has issues with Notes sync; fumbling with Device Browser for Sound Recordings is so indignifying...