Who is Gary Vaynerchuk and why am I writing this?

Gary is the owner of Wine Library a large wine store in Jersey, US. So how have I heard of him, when I’m a guy who drinks a bottle of Pinot Grigio with his girlfriend every few weeks and up until a couple of years ago thought all wine tasted like vinegar.

Once you see Gary on video, you wont forget him. To me, he is refreshing, which is more than I can say about my early dabbles with wine. The first time I saw him, was a few weeks ago in the video below, talking about “Personal Branding”.

The things he was talking about hit home, “What do you want to do every day for the rest of your life, do that”. I have since watched a few videos and followed him on Twitter, I like him and I do find him an Inspirational breath of fresh air. Here’s a guy who does things differently and it works.

Some people find him annoying, probably because of his “in the face” style. Its gotta be better than watching Jilly whatever her name is when she was on Food & Drink on the BBC years ago. No wonder wine is seen as something for the posh, the normal guy is frightened of looking an idiot. Gary has made me want to try more wine. In a similar way Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht from Diggnation got me to try different beers, rather than just the big commercial ones.

The video above is about “Personal Branding” which clearly works for Gary. He and a couple of others, have shown me that anything is possible, if you work hard enough and do things a bit differently. We will see what transpires…

Check Gary’s website for more info on him.

I have owned an N95 for 18 months, which was bought on an Orange 18 month contract. Over the last 18 months it has been an adventure, with many highs and lows.

Back in March/April 2007 it was the hottest phone around, this was pre-iPhone. It offered everything imaginable and just about delivered. What with Wi-Fi, 3G, 5MP camera, GPS, A2DP and plenty more. This was and still is fairly impressive compared to some newer phones like the iPhone 3G which still doesn’t have a decent camera or A2dP. Oh yeah the N95 has Copy and Paste which everyone seems to complain about on the iPhone, which I have probably used less than 6 times in 18 months.

When I said it has been an adventure it certainly has. The phone promises so much but often failed, 90% of the time it was because the battery had just gone flat. I saw quite a few figures mentioned about battery life lasting a few days without heavy use. I would of been over the moon if that had been the case.

The N95 I have now, IS the phone I wished I had 18 months ago. No I haven’t bought a new one, it’s the same phone just looking a bit battered. BUT, the battery now lasts for a couple of days and it rarely crashes. I will come back to what’s happened shortly…

Going back in time…for the first few months I had an annoying problem with the N95. Often when I made or received a call the person on the other end could not hear me, yet I could hear them perfectly. This seemed a fairly common problem at the time and what I noticed happened was the phone would crash, restart and when it came back on the microphone didn’t work. This could be fixed by switching it off and back on, that was presuming you saw it crash. Of course when it was in your pocket and crashed, you receive an important call and then find out it wasn’t working. After weeks and weeks of this there was eventually an update available for the N95 on Orange which fixed the issue.

The delay in receiving this fix isn’t really Nokias fault, although they shouldn’t ship a phone with such a huge fault. I lay the blame at Orange, Nokia had fixed this problem weeks before Orange enabled it for their customers. Orange adds various junk into the firmware to “brand” it, resulting in a long delay when fixes are available.

This has been an ongoing problem while owning the phone. I would read of various updates and extras but would either take months to appear or more likely never. The last update I received from Orange was version 13 a few months ago, which is annoying because at the time Nokia were up to v20+. Version 13 made my phone almost unusable, with the battery lasting less than 12 hours with everything turned off and a couple of texts a day. I was longing for my contract to expire so I could get a new phone, possibly an iPhone. I couldn’t decide what phone I wanted and kept jumping between an Xperia X1, an iPhone 3G or maybe even an Innov 8.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I would “debrand” my N95, which allowed me to download the latest Firmware from Nokia rather than the crippled version Orange pushed out. I had read about this over a year ago but had decided not to do, with only a couple of weeks left on my contract I didn’t care.

1. I downloaded the Nemesis Service Suite from here (downloads).
2. Installed it
3. Opened the program
4. Connected the N95 with the USB cable in “PC Suite” mode.
5. Clicked the magnifying glass (Scan for new device)
6. Clicked Phone info icon
7. Clicked the Read button
8. Made a note of the Product Code
9. Enabled Product Code
10. Entered “0536062″ and pressed Write. (that code is a generic EURO plum model)
11. Exited the program.
12. Then ran the Nokia Software Updater

After doing this the Updater downloaded version 30 of the firmware, remember Orange were only on version 13.

I couldn’t believe how much better the phone has been running since. Not once since have I heard the phone “bipping” and telling me the battery is low. It has also enabled sweet features like the accelerometer which lets you turn the phone to landscape or portrait just by turning the phone like the iPhone.

The best thing about the update is obviously the battery life, finally the phone allows me to do the things it has promised for so long. I use Shozu which has to be the best app available for the N95. It allows me to take photos, geotag them and upload them to Flickr, Evernote (via email) and loads more places. I previously used the app last year while on holiday in Canada but the phone battery would die very quickly, no problems any more.

My contract expired a week ago and I am now in no rush to buy a new phone. I can’t see anything that makes me want to upgrade and be stuck in another 18 month contract. I will wait for something that warrants an upgrade. Finally the Nokia N95 is the phone I should of had 18 months ago, who needs an N96?