Carnival 134
Stop. Press. Carnival of the Mobilists 134. Out. Now. Over at the newly revamped Mopocket.
Recent News - General - Page 103
Top Applications for the Mobile Journalist
As we bid Ewan farewell as he girds his loins and heads off into the thick of the Edinburgh Fringe for another year, he explains some of his must-have phone apps and services to help get him through 25 days of mobile journalism. Good thing he's got a meaty data tariff, I say...
Ah yes, now I remember why I like going 'pay-as-you-go'
SMS Text News is always good for an interesting set of tea time rants, this time recounting a billing nightmare with Vodafone. Yet another reason for only using prepay SIMs and unlocked phones? Or an isolated occurrence? Care to comment with your own preferred payment method?
Insight 33: N-Gage, Samsung, comparisons and open source
In AAS podcast 86, a.ka. AAS Insight 33, Rafe and Ewan talk about N-Gage's Brothers in Arms and Reset Generation, Samsung's 8 megapixel Innov8 device, the challenges behind device comparisons and open source in relation to Symbian.
Samsung partner with GyPSii
You may remember GyPSii, a GPS-aware photo and text social utility, from a few months ago? It has now been partnered with Samsung worldwide, according to Unwired, for use in their smartphones, meaning that we should see GyPSii preloaded on several forthcoming Samsung S60 phones, including the Innov8.
BBC Trust Looking To Resume 3G Mobile TV 'Broadcasting'
How successful is 'Mobile TV?' Will in the UK, it seems fair to label it as a 'statistical error.' The BBC are looking to resume trials of 'casting TV and radio to handsets, after their previous 12 month trial finished in April. The viewership peaked at 580 viewers in June last year, with an average usage of 13 minutes a month. They are now looking to syndicate their channels to the UK 3G networks, and are asking for the public's opinion.
Conclusions from the back of beyond
Living near a big city, it's all too easy to think of my phone/smartphone experience as being typical of the norm. During the course of a week away in the country, I made several observations which show that we should never take 'our' mobile environment for granted or assume any level of capability in other mobile users. And, along the way, I managed to crash an 'iPhone' and get a couple of people to go all dizzy while explaining what I was doing with the N95 8GB...
Palm OS compatibility now so close we can smell it
StyleTap have now confirmed that their Palm OS emulation system is now in private beta for Symbian OS - I didn't get an invite into this stage, but by applying to be a beta tester, you might be lucky. After a short while, it will be opened up to all beta testers, etc. The significance of StyleTap is that there are still many people in the world who are hanging onto ancient Palm handhelds and Treos because they depend on one or more specific Palm OS-only apps - StyleTap will help them move fairly seamlessly onto S60 and Symbian.
Real World Tests - take two - the chocolate and cool version
Ewan wasn't at all happy with my choice of test 'Real World Tasks' earlier in the week, and has come up with his own - and I have to say - much more interesting list. Here find another, more Scottish, comparison between the Nokia N95 8GB, the Apple iPhone 3G and the HTC Kaiser (AT & T Tilt)...
UK rail times to Calendar
Lifted from the comments to a previous story, I wanted to highlight an addition to the excellent traintimes.org.uk. When accessed from your phone browser, the site now has the facility to add a UK train journey (via a vCal file, don't worry, it all happens seamlessly) into your phone's Calendar. Very cool, and the site only needs just over 100K of data per lookup, much less than the full Nation Rail equivalent.
A dozen Real World Tasks - the Nokia N95 8GB takes on all-comers
Spec-sheet comparisons are all very well, but how good are the Nokia N95 8GB, the Apple iPhone 3G and the HTC Diamond in real life? The AAS team has come up with a dozen things that we all like to do with our phones and Steve was then set to accomplishing all of them on all three devices. Can the sheer usability and likeability of the iPhone triumph over Nokia's N95 design and S60? Is the HTC Touch Diamond a competitor here? Find out in the full usability feature.
AAS Podcast - Interview with Alfie Dennen from Moblog.net
It's another interview podcast, this time with Ewan speaking to Alfie Dennen from Moblog.net, which launched a new version of the popular platform late last week. We cover the history of the Moblog company, how to deal with upstart services such as Ovi(!) and what makes a service like this 'sticky' in podcast #85.
Sony Ericsson "to axe 2000 jobs"
The BBC News website is reporting that Sony Ericsson is to cut two thousand jobs over the next year, in order to cut operating costs. The company was making a profit this time last year, but in the last quarter it reported a small loss.
Share On Ovi looking for your best photo
The file-sharing service Share On Ovi is holding a competition for the next couple of weeks to find the best photo uploaded to the service. If you want to take part, just choose what you think is your best photo on Ovi and add the tag "best1" to it. You can view current entries by clicking on this link.
Insight 32: Chat, Golf, 6220 and Download!
In AAS podcast 84, a.k.a. Insight 32, Rafe, Ewan, Steve and Stefan talk about the new GPS-enabled Nokia Chat, the Nokia 6220 Plastic err.... Classic [just kidding, Nokia, we say lots of nice things about it really], Pro Series Golf and Nokia Download! Held together by wit, chewing gum and a piece of sticky tape, it's compered this week by Ewan, so you probably know what to expect(!)
