Rita El Khoury often seems to come up with discoveries that the rest of us overlook - in this case, it turns out that freeware star cCalc (a scientific calculator) has a big brother, cCalcPro, designed for the landscape screens of the Nokia E61 and E71. Here's Rita's write-up, with screenshots.
Geography enthusiasts rejoice! The long awaited quiz game from Herocraft - the makers of such great titles as Robo, Revival and Stolen in 60 Seconds - has finally arrived to keep the smart player happy for hours to come. Read on for the details.
For those happy to 'open sign' their utilities, note that Swim, the background sync tool for S60, has been updated to v0.41 and, notably, the scheduling problems of earlier versions are gone. In case you hadn't heard of Swim, it syncs your phone to Google or Ovi or GooSync, etc. automatically. And no, we still don't know why this functionality isn't part of S60 itself...
In AAS Insight 48, we talk about the launch of the new 'Facebook phone', the INQ1, we chat about the Nokia N96 and the new E63, plus we cover Qt, the cross-platform environment that Nokia bought recently. If you want to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia's Beta development teams do seem to be working in parallel to a degree. With the launch of FriendView, their Chat extension to Contacts has now been updated to BETA 4, adding friend profile pictures on its maps, plus you can also now make calls from that view. There's also comprehensive access point selection (favourite Wi-Fi, preferred GPRS, etc) Which of the two chat/presence systems do you prefer?
Over on All About N-Gage, an editorial ponders whether Nokia's obsession with online rankings is ruining their Arena online gaming service by alienating both hardcore and casual users. Reports of cheating in a recent ONE high score tournament haven't helped matters either.
In which I muse on how far we've gone backwards in many ways, in the last 15 years... and introduce a device with 5.3" wide screen, instant response, comprehensive office suite and staggering battery life.... Am I the only one to get misty eyed over this sort of thing?
In a statement issued on Friday Nokia updated it outlook (view of the mobile market) for Q4 2008 and 2009. Nokia expects Q4 sales of all mobile phones to be lower than initially expected at around 330 million. It expects its own market share to be the same or slightly up. For 2009 Nokia is expecting volumes to be down compared to 2008 (i.e. less mobile phones will be sold in 2009 than in 2008). Both these changes are attributed to 'continuing overal economic slow down'.
On Tuesday and Wednesday this week (19th-20th) Forum Nokia goes to Budapest for two events: a Developer Day and Code Camps on S60 5th Edition Touch UI and Web Runtime widgets. At the beginning of December it is the turn of Barcelona which has S60 5th Edition Touch UI and Mobile Web Code Camps. Both events are free to attend; all you need do is register on the Forum Nokia web site. I'll be in Budapest for both days of the Forum Nokia event, please do look out for me, introduce yourself, chat about the Symbian ecosystem and show me any applications or services you may be working on.
Ahem. Yes, another link over to Ricky Cadden's blog, but he and Rita do keep on producing interesting reads.... Here he goes over the key changes that AT&T made Nokia do in order to get the 6650 to market in the USA - an extra row? And you thought operator customisations were limited to themes, icons and home screens?
A lot of news over on All About N-Gage, with updates to the N-Gage app and new phones added to the platform, sales charts released, a new games announcement, and a couple of very interesting videos published. See below for the relevant links.
Following on from cell tower positioning, GPS and Wi-Fi-based positioning (see previous news item), we now have 'indoor positioning', using dedicated transmitters in shopping malls, airports, etc. Here's a video demo of indoor positioning, courtesy of Nokia's Way We live Next project (nb. link is to file in MP4 format)
You'll remember Tagggit from my AAS video interview with SkyHook? It's a geospatial social networking tool for S60, i.e. it uses SkyHook's databases of urban Wi-Fi hotspots to find your location without GPS and annotate places and activities for others. Tagggit is now available in open beta, so anyone can try it out. See below for lots of screenshots of Tagggit and the official launch press release. Comments welcome after you've given this a try over the weekend?
Nokia Beta Labs today made available a preview of the next version of Share Online, Nokia's media sharing application. Share Online version 4 has an improved upload/download experience which allows asynchronous usage, adds an outbox to make it easier to manage uploads and has improved active standby indicators (including the ability to remove them). The new version is currently only available for the N96, 6210, 6220 and 5320. Read on for screenshots and more details.
Ewan gets all financial and peers into his strategic crystal ball, reckoning that the Symbian OS ecosystem will weather the current financial crisis, even it parts of it will get a little 'battered'... He looks at the manufacturers, the big software houses and smaller developers - the challenges and opportunities are slightly different for each.
