Ewan has put his thinking kilt on and ponders whether the problem of the illegal software scene can be solved by a white knight - Symbian Signed. It is a controversial area and amongst the AAS team there are a range of opinions.
You may know John Holloway as the guy behind ZingMagic (and before that Purple Software), but he actually goes back to the very beginning of the Symbian story, working at Psion. Ewan caught up with him at the Smartphone Show and covered a huge range of issues and anecdotes. Great stuff, catch it all in AAS podcast number 3.
The huge photo-sharing site Flickr is now properly mobile again. http://m.flickr.com/ now works from any smartphone, letting you browse photo streams without incurring huge bandwidth penalties. Well worth bookmarking from your smartphone browser. (Via SymbianOne)
OK, I said I was going to shut up about over-hyped security software, and judging from comments by one security developer on-camera at the Smartphone Show, it seemed that they'd learned their lesson. But here we go again... and again....
Symbian has released an official (video) webcast, in both RealPlayer and Windows Media format, with CEO Nigel Clifford talking about the significant '100 million smartphones' milestone. Here's the link.
Eagle-eyed observers may have noted the changed toolbar on the site, with 'Media' added. The new Media section houses regular and semi-regular audio and video content, all of which you can listen to or watch online, in your browser, or (if you prefer) use the provided RSS feeds to subscribe in iTunes or S60 Podcasting or similar, to make sure you never miss new content.
3, the 3G mobile operator, has announced the launch of X-Series. X-Series brings 'flat fee broadband access to mobile'. 3 is partnering with other companies to create X-Series services and applications, these include Sling Player, Google, Orb, eBay, Skype, MSN and Yahoo. X-Series will launch in the UK in December with other 3 countries to follow in the new year. The handsets that will feature X-Series include the Sony Ericsson W950 (UIQ 3) and the Nokia N73 (S60).
Symbian today announced, in their Q3 figures, that more than 100 million Symbian OS phones have shipped. There are over 100 different Symbian OS phones in the market from 10 different licensees and a further 49 are currently in development. In Q3 13 million Symbian phones were shipped, brining the total thus far to 37 million in 2006. Read on for more.
This week's Carnival of the Mobilists, number 53, is hosted at C. Enrique Ortiz's Mobility Weblog. As usual the carnival rounds up writing from around the web on mobile issues. This weeks entries include comments on Nokia warranties, analysis of UIQ's acquisition by Sony Ericsson and news of W3C's Widgets working draft.
Sun has open sourced various parts of Java under a GPL 2 license. Included within this is a build-able version of Sun's Java ME implementation. Also open sourced is the Java ME testing and compatibility framework. Sun are hoping to speed up the development and evolution of the Java platform and say that open sourcing the language will help drive down development costs and reduce fragmentation.
Nordic Wireless Watch have rolled up their sleeves and produced an interesting set of graphics benchmarks, mainly of Symbian OS smartphones. Almost inevitably the Nokia N93 wins by a country mile, but there are plenty of other interesting numbers here. Via WOM World.
