If you're anything like Ewan and myself, you'll enjoy a good brain-stretching, language-challenging word game - and these have been few and far between on smartphones. However, the appearance of Scratchy, reviewed here by Ewan, has helped a lot, keeping him entertained on his American travels. It's Java-based and basically works on anything, by the way.
The SXSW interactive festival (happening right now in the USA) is a busy conference, but Ewan caught a taxi ride with James Pearce, Vice President of Technology for the dotmobi consortium, and asked him about the controversial top level domain for mobile devices, here in AAS podcast 65. Are you convinced about his arguments for .mobi? Comments welcome.
The makers of the free Xmas game Snowed In have come up with a similar Easter-themed free game called Eggstreme: Sizzler Supremacy. It's available for every Symbian platform (S60 3rd, S60 1st/2nd, UIQ3, UIQ2, Series 80 and Series 90). The S60 3rd version supports all screen resolutions including the N80 and E90. You can download the relevant game file by going here, and you can get the free unlock code by going here.
BBC's mobile web site, much loved by all, has had a big facelift, with plusher micro-graphics by default and a more modern design, driven by the fact that the Beeb recognised that data costs had come down a lot and that they didn't have to be quite so minimalist anymore. Screenshots and the link below.
I've been taking a look back and forward at four of the competitors to the Nokia E90. What's it up against in the market for qwerty-keyboarded clamshells? And how does it compare, spec for spec, blow for blow? It's certainly an interesting form factor and one which is apparently increasing in popularity.
Only Rafe and I this time round, here's AAS podcast 64, a.k.a. Insight 16, in which we talk about the new Nokia S60 devices for Vodafone and T-Mobile, the recent announcement of Silverlight Mobile for S60 and the issues surrounding the changes at Symbian Signed - how can the current debacle be resolved?
Always good for a read over coffee, Carnival of the Mobilists 114 is here, at AORTA. Always something to analyse, something to make you think.....
Programme 54 is now live, with walkthroughs of geotagging and photo sharing using a Nokia N95, Location Tagger and Share Online and some promo video of the upcoming Sony Ericsson G900. There's also a spot on Blackberry Internet Service (on a Nokia E90) and a look at getting yourself a new Windows Mobile 6 smartphone for £60(ish).
Ewan's been at Mix08 and took the opportunity to chat to Microsoft's Brad Becker, Group Product Manager (for the User Experience Platform and Tools Marketing Group) about the recent announcement about Silverlight Mobile. He also spent a little time with the developer of WeatherBug, talking about their rapid development under Silverlight Mobile. Watch the interviews here in AAS Video podcast 28.
Showing that you really can't believe every stat you read without knowing the exact context, and remembering the attention some USA mobile browsing stats got when they announced that Apple iPhone browser use trumped that of any other device, I was interested to see stats from respected UK computer magazine/web site PC Pro, showing the top 5 mobile devices that had accessed their servers in 2008 so far. Read on....
With Ewan somewhere in America still, Rafe recording an Insight with me and then taking a well deserved long weekend break himself, it's been an odd 24 hours, centred around the big news from Cupertino and smartphone industry reaction to it. Read on for some analysis on this and other interesting weekend reading links.
Coolgorilla, a favourite of ours since they keep insisting on giving away everything for free, has launched the London Travel Guide, a 400 page mobile-optimised online 'book', with illustrations, maps and apparently even video. The content's kept updated and there are phone and web hyperlinks throughout. Guides are planned for other major cities in the near future. Press release below the break.
We've had applications to sync into Google Calendar for a while, notably GooSync. But Google just released an official set of Contacts APIs (hooks for programmers to use), meaning that full sync into this part of Google may be on the horizon. But, as the Google OS blog notes, the APIs link into a generic contact store and not necessarily a GMail contact set, meaning that there's probably some tweaking at the Google end set to happen in the future, to simplify contact handling.
No, we haven't gone raving mad - it's just that Ewan (currently on walkabout in the USA) has been tweeting from Twibble. Err... that's sending Twitter updates by SMS, in plain English. It's a useful Java application, that's for sure, saving time and bandwidth. Here's Ewan's review of Twibble.
James Cracknell, a double Olympic gold medalist, is rowing, cycling and swimming the 1,431 miles between the UK and Africa in a 'Cross-Continent Challenge' as part of the Sports Relief fundraising efforts. He's being guided by a Nokia N82 which he's also using to listen to music and send picture messages to his website.
