One of the cornerstones of modern social networks is the status message, “what are you doing right now,” and other similar examples. Once you join your second network, keeping these updates current is usually a mess of API accesses, or using third party services such as Ping.FM (the recommended approach). Now you can forget about typing your updates, as voice to text purveyors SpinVox announce a new service with Ping.FM to let up to 30 networks know what you're up to.
Marble Maze, from Cahoona Games, has been updated. The infuriatingly simple ball rolling game (reviewed previously here) now allows you to create your own levels in addition to the 40 that come built in to the game. This game is always one I use when demo'ing my N95 to people – the principle of tilting the phone to roll the marble is disarming, coupled with the highly addictive nature makes it an almost 'must install as soon as possible' application.
Some interesting noises from the music industry over the weekend, and this morning's Guardian ties it in with Nokia's Comes With Music (Discord Over The Phone). In short, musical artists are worried that the labels will not pass on enough of the proceeds from online music back to them. To that end, they have launched the Featured Artists Coalition. But what does this mean to the digital music landscape? Read on for my thoughts...
In the latest part in my phone camera series, I put the five top camera-equipped smartphones to the test, evaluating their still photo results under a variety of scenarios (landscape, night, dim, macro, etc). Which really is the best? And will the winning phone be made in Finland? I look at the Nokia N82, N95 and N93, plus the Samsung G810 and i8510... [WARNING: Broadband essential, the article includes a fair number of example images]
In an extended edition of the All About Symbian Podcast (Insight #42) we reflect on the announcements out of last week's Nokia Remix Event in London. There's some a general discussion of the tone of the event, but the meat of the podcast focuses on Nokia's first S60 touch handset, the Nokia 5800 MusicXpress, before moving on to Nokia's new Comes with Music service.
...In the UK Mobile Choice Consumer Awards, apparently. It won best phone and best smartphone, although best camera phone was also Symbian OS-powered, the awesome Samsung i8510 - of which more in an editorial tomorrow. 'Reader's choice' went to the iPhone - of course(!) Here's the full list of winners.
It seems that Russian Mobile Review impressario Eldar was also at Thursday evening's launch of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (running S60 5th Edition, etc) and he's put together an amazingly detailed set of photos and well arranged thoughts on the device (in English, thankfully), based solely on his hour or so's hands-on. Kudos. It's certainly the best 5800 preview at the moment, though doubtless Rafe is beavering away, marshalling his own impressions...
There's a new version of the N-Gage app available for all compatible phones which (amongst other things) fixes the infamous 10,000 points bug. You can download the new version straight onto your device by opening the app, selecting "Options" and then "Check For Updates". Alternatively you can download the new version onto your PC and then install it manually, which you can do from the official website's "Get N-Gage" section. You can read more about the new version over on the official forums. (via the Official N-Gage Blog)
Only two and a half weeks until the Symbian Smartphone Show in London, then. Which promises to be the most interesting one for years, what with the Symbian Foundation and competition from RIM, Apple, Google, etc. Anyway, there's a new Flickr group set up for you to share photos taken at the show, you might want to bookmark it and contribute your own photo-finds. There will also be an official AAS photo stream from the event, as usual, of course. More details to come...
Mobile magazine is reporting that Sony Ericsson intends to close its flagship London store, quoting 'market conditions don't make it appropriate'. A shame, but you may remember my sorry experience there a while ago. It's not really surprising that the store failed to make a profit, in all honesty.
You can't help thinking that some people are going to be disappointed by the Nokia N96. First they hear it's got built-in digital TV. "Oh, no, that's not available in most countries yet". Then they latch onto the prominent marketing blurb about it 'coming with BBC iPlayer'. "Oh, no, that doesn't work with 'normal' data, you have to use 'Wi-Fi'. And so on. If I may say so, a bit of a product pitching mess all round...
Google has soft-launched Picasa Web Albums for S60, making available an optimised version of the service via their usual m.google.com starting page. There are some screenshots below. You can play slideshows, comment on other peoples' media and, of course, organise your photos into albums. Note that not all the functions seemed to work as I wrote this - maybe some switches have yet to be thrown!
All you can listen to, including Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell! Comes With Music is here and it's time to bring out the Cassandras and explain why it's such a bad idea. We don't have any Cassandra's to hand though, so Ewan will have to suffice.
Today sees the formal unveiling on S60 5th Edition. The new version of S60, built on Symbian OS 9.4, adds touch enablers to the platform, which means it is possible for licensees to create devices that use finger touch and/or stylus interaction. Other additions and improvements include the new sensor framework (adds easy integration of sensors, such as accelerometers into the platform) updated web technologies (WebKit version updated, Flash Lite 3 as standard) and enhanced multimedia functionality (support for widescreen displays, image and video editors as standard). Read on for more details.
