Opera have announced their acquisition of Californian based AdMarvel this morning. Founded in 2006, AdMarvel brings together advertisers, publishers and networks to deliver contextual advertising while browsing. While the value of the deal was not announced (although Techcrunch are reporting it as being in the region of $8 million), the usefulness of the deal for Opera should be apparent.
When launched in early 2009, the Samsung i8910 HD (a.k.a. Omnia HD in some markets) had eye-watering specifications, certainly ahead of anything else in the Symbian world and, arguably, ahead of anything in the world in general. Bit by bit the wider market is embracing the same technology though, with Google's new Nexus One offering an almost identical specification and form factor. Which can only mean one thing: - time to get them both in-house, photographed and tested, head to head.
Time to play 'spot that phone' in another Nokia factory/test centre video, this time from Nokia Conversations, embedded below, intended to show Nokia's state of the art design, manufacturing and testing centre in Beijing. There's a section with a load of white N86s, but what else can you spot? Was anything confidential filmed by mistake? Somehow I doubt it, but it does make for a good game!
Two cracking posts on the Symbian blog today about application development and the story behind the applications. Mobbler, the music tracking web service; and Mobilyze, and in-development app to help patients undergoing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Escarpod, the third party Open Source podcast gatherer and player, originally written for UIQ and available for S60 in beta form for a while, is now the source of a Contribution Proposal to the main Symbian Foundation code base. Effectively, this means that future Symbian devices should have a podcast client, in the wake of Nokia choosing not to contribute their own proprietary Podcasting application. Read on for links and more information.
Proporta have been touting their Gadget Bag for a while now and I decided it was high time to give this accessory the ultimate test - give it to road warrior Ewan to fill/destroy. Here's his write-up, highlighting just how much stuff can be packed into the bag but also bemoaning the lack of internal loops and ties to stop your bits from rattling around. It's a positive review overall though and a road warrior won't argue with the price.
In All About Symbian Insight 101 (AAS Podcast 165), we round up the weeks news including updates to Ovi Suite, Samsung's 32 GB microSD card announcement, firmware updates for the 5800, N86, E72 and E75 and the release of Betalab's Gig Finder. We also discuss the UI concept proposal from Nokia for Symbian^4, before Ewan gives us some concluding thoughts on the X6. You can listen to AAS Insight 101 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
I just thought I'd announce that The Phones Show (born The Smartphones Show) has just reached programme 100, which just went live. This latest show contains my attempt to bust some 'Mobile Myths', along with a Blackberry Top 10 and some heavily-Symbian-centric (it seems) user stories.
Continuing the ping pong legal battle between Apple and Nokia over patents and IP, Apple have filed with the International Trade Commission asking for a US import ban on Nokia products... mirroring the complaint Nokia made to ITC about Apple. While escalating quickly, this progression of claim and counter-claim is to be expected as both companies legal departments engage in brinkmanship before negotiation.
Today Symbian made available, via its developer website, a number of documents relating to the Orbit and Direct UI proposals that make up a major part of the changes in Symbian^4. These proposals offer a glimpse of what the Symbian^4 UI may look like and explain some of the key UI layout and design changes. Symbian are looking for the community's feedback, comments and questions about the proposals. Read on for more details and illustrations.
As with the Evernote widget yesterday, I think the time has come to start recommending that you consider removing Nokia PC Suite and consider installing Ovi Suite, provided you have a reasonably recent PC. The latter has just been updated to v2.0.2.42 (according to NokNok) and its resource requirements have been steadily coming down from the stratospherics of the early betas. Comments welcome if you're feeling brave - has Ovi Suite come of age now?
A couple of interesting links of interest from the last 24 hours: Samsung has announced the world's first 32GB microSD card, based on 30nm technology (i.e. 0.00000003 metres!), to be in production from next month. Staggering miniaturisation, if you ask me. In other news, Nokia has released a Windows 7-compatible (beta) version of its Nokia Software Update tool, eliminating the need to mess around running the tool in a 'compatibility' mode. About time.
I had reason to glance down at my task bar last night - normally I'm an alt-tab man, but sometimes that little strip of app names is useful. But not this time, because I was running a bundle of applications while testing the X6 and my task bar had just one word. Nokia. Lots of apps on display, with just some tiny icons to attempt to guide me to my goal. Anyone want to fix this rather poor bit of UI in the next releases?
In another of my periodic hardware head-to-heads, I pitch a variety of full-screen, full-qwerty hybrid smartphones against each other, ranging from the 3 year old Nokia E90, still supported but hard to find for sale now, through to the N97 mini, the HTC Touch Pro 2 and the spanking new Motorola Milestone. Which devices punch the heaviest when the rubber really hits the road?
I want to take a little break away from the major Nokia X6 review I'm doing just now to directly address one of the issues that I'm seeing in the comments both of the X6 review and in other products that are reviewed both here on AAS and on other tech sites: the use of third party software to compensate for a manufacturer's omissions.
