Published a few minutes ago (MP4s will be up shortly) was The Phones Show 112, including a spot on The Great Outdoors (starring the black Nokia N82) and my tips on taking better video with your Nokia N96 (or other camera-smartphone). It's embedded below, for watching convenience.
In a couple of Google-related Friday links of interest, we thought you might like to know that there's now a (fairly) slick mobile version of Google Buzz, proclaimed by the Google Mobile blog as compatible with 'Nokia S60'. A screenshot and a few notes below. Also, Google's planned world domination buy out of AdMob has now been formally completed, so ads within mobile web pages and mobile apps from these two sources will effectively start merging in the near future.
There's an open invite out for Symbian fans in London from 5pm onwards on June 14th - Tahir Mahmood and others from the Foundation are welcoming people with ideas and suggestions, with a particular focus, I imagine, on a new 'Kudos' system that Tahir is setting up. There's also free beer, apparently. Full details over on the official Symbian Foundation blog.
Following on from his 'clean sheet of paper' ideas for Symbian's Calendar, Ewan looks at the first steps of what's needed to take such thoughts through to inclusion in official Symbian Foundation code. Essentially, the Ideas board at the Earls Court show is now a fully functioning social network, dedicated to bringing the best ideas through to implementation.
Yesterday saw a major strategic agreement between Nokia and Yahoo!, detailed in our news feature, with Nokia essentially providing Ovi Maps to Yahoo! users and Yahoo! taking on the burden of providing Mail and IM to Nokia users, both in the medium term. Initial reaction to this has been generally positive, though not everyone thinks the alliance is a good idea. I thought I'd round up a selection of quotes, reproduced below... For more AAS analysis of the agreement, we'll be tackling the subject in the next Insight podcast.
The new hardware may still be sitting on the launch pad, but the upgrade to the GPS system is under way (reports the LA Times). Now firmly entrenched in the smartphone world, the new target for GPS accuracy is not 20 feet but "an arm’s length" of about one foot, and it’s going to happen through a replacement program of 24 satellites over the next few years.
Nokia and Yahoo have announced a global strategic partnership which looks to enhance the companies' respective services across both the PC and mobile devices. Nokia will become the global, exclusive provider of mapping and navigation services across Yahoo service (powered by Ovi) while Yahoo will become the global, exclusive provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services. Nokia and Yahoo plan to work on ID federation, the first stage of which will be the ability to use Ovi ID to log into select Yahoo services.
One of the side effects of being part of an ecosystem of an 'open' operating system is that, at some point, you'll be roped in to help out. One such thing is happening with the Symbian Foundation's Bug Squad, which convenes regularly for bug-squashing days (e.g. today), here's how you can get involved.
Fired up by the discussions in the Phones Show Chat podcast, one of my listeners, Andy Weekes, took the time to write in a veritable essay on his experiences (ok, mainly frustrations) with Nokia, Symbian and the current competition. Some of his points are very valid, others more arguable, but you'll hopefully enjoy his essay and my (inline) responses below. Comments welcome, some of these topics could run and run!
Noted security technologist Bruce Schneier has pointed to a Microsoft research paper on the design of software applications that ask for user authority to access certain functions. While primarily looking at web based apps, this is a relevant area for mobile design, and ties in with the security model employed by Symbian.
One of the big changes that Comes with Music has on the average user is that any musical track is just a few clicks away, and Nokia want to see how this treasure trove of music changes user habits by recruiting “20 heavyweight music lovers” who’d like to try out Comes with Music.
With location based services the latest “next big thing” it’s interesting watching the major and minor players slowly set out their stall to end users and developers. Today it’s the turn of Google, as they announce the public API for their Latitude service.
On Monday NTT DOCOMO announced its summer 2010 collection of mobile phones; of the 20 phones announced, 7 are running MOAP-S (based on Symbian). These include the F06-B, F-07B, and F-08B from Fujitsu and the SH-08B, SH-02B Marimekko, SH-08B and SH-09B from Sharp. The F-06B can shoot full HD (1920×1080) video on its 13.2 megapixel camera, is fully waterproof to 1.5 metres (so you can shoot video underwater), can act as a WiFi hotspot and has a WVGA touchscreen.
Facebook have announced 0.facebook.com, a specially adapted version of the Facebook Mobile site (m.facebook.com) geared towards an even faster mobile experience, by reducing images on display, and reduced cost to the browsing mobile user. 0.facebook.com is only accessible through certain mobile phone networks (everyone else is pointed to the normal mobile site), but those networks will provide access to Facebook for free.
It’s a subtle tweak, but the addition of live streaming to the mobile web pages for the BBC’s UK National Stations is an important addition. Exec producer JamesSimcock goes into some of the thinking behind the decision on the BBC Internet Blog, but the main reason is user expectation – with more flat rate devices and wi-fi connections, bill shock is no longer the over-riding issue.
