Mobile content portal Mippin has unveiled the 'social' part of their service. They're already able to re-purpose thousands of sites for a mobile display (mainly by using their RSS feeds rather than the full blown regular pages), but now your userlogin gives you a personal profile that can be used by others to discover news that they should like, based on the respective profiles.
Ewan decides to 'build a phone' at this year's Smartphone Show, switches his phone into video recording mode and heads for the various stands needed to get its software together... Plus an aerial view of the show, courtesy of a roving airship!
In the second of my video items from The Smartphone Show 2008, I chat to Symbian about their latest FreePlay demo (Wi-Fi to GSM handover) and to VirtualLogix about the possibility of running Linux and Symbian together in the same device...
GMail's Java-based client seemed to have been stuck at v1 for decades - it's just had the big 2.0 upgrade. It's still Java and larger (at 500K), but it's faster and, it's claimed, more reliable, especially when working for short periods offline. There's also now support for multiple GMail accounts and sending email in the background. To download version 2.0, go to m.google.com/mail in your phone browser.
Yup. There's one show photo that we simply couldn't decide on a caption for. So it's down to you. We have Ewan, Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford and Rafe chewing the cud in the press area. But what on earth's going on? You decide! Best one line caption in the comments wins some mystery star goodies..... [Winner chosen... see below]
In the first of our video features from this week's Smartphone Show 2008, I chat in AAS video podcast 31 to Michael Shean from Skyhook and Loughlin Spollen from Tagggit about their Wi-Fi-based location technology and the first S60 native app to use it.
My Phones Show 67 just went live, with a hands-on preview and thoughts on the S60 5th Edition-powered Nokia 5800 XpressMusic ('Tube'), plus a cross-platform feature analysing 'Which phone should you buy?'. Note also the RSS feeds for the standard and hi-res versions of the show, for your feedreader, browser or iTunes. And yes, Rafe's official AAS preview of the 5800 is coming soon, don't worry....
Symbian has released Ruby for Symbian OS to the Open Source software developer community. Ruby is "a powerful dynamic language that reaches the heights of the pure Object Oriented Programming paradigm" and is popular in many developer communities.
'As Live' from the 2008 Symbian Smartphone Show, here's All About Symbian Insight no. 44, hosted by Ewan Spence, with Rafe Blandford and Steve Litchfield; guests include (but not limited to ) Nigel Clifford, Stuart Clark, Andrew Grill and James Whatley. 40 minutes long and plenty of gossip, info and fun...
Lee Williams, currently the head of S60 inside Nokia, will become the Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation in the new year, the ten initial board members of the Foundation have announced on the second day of the Symbian Smartpone Show. His experience in running what till now has been one of the largest components of Symbian OS will be vital to the new organisation and the support from over 50 companies to the principles of the unified platform.
Google just improved the way GMail Contacts worked. Previously, trying to sync a S60 phone with this (usually through GooSync) meant having to put up with hundreds of 'fake' contacts (added 'helpfully' by GMail, the people you've replied to more than 5 times), all of which then made it down the (virtual) wire to your phone's Contacts at sync time. Ugh. Well, check GMail Contacts now and you'll see there's a new 'Suggested' list, acting as a manual pre-filter before any of these extra addresses get added to your GMail Contacts. Good system and it should ease the syncing woes of many. Even better, the suggestions are back dated, so previous unwanted additions are 'undone'. Comments welcome!
As reported round the blogs, Nokia Beta Labs has released Map Loader 1.0 for Mac. Previously, loading your S60 phone with Nokia Maps ata required Windows. You can now load up with country maps using an Apple Mac. More info and links below...
Developer tools are featuring widely at this year's Symbian Smartphone Show, with two tools now available to help you code your Symbian applications. The Symbian Analysis Workbench (SAW) helps developers track down defects in code and help in the optimisation process. Built around a pre-packaged set of tools for Eclipse and is integrated into the Carbide C++ Developer Environment. The ARM Profiler aids the development process, providing clear information to help add enhanced function and, more importantly, reduce power consumption.
Symbian have announced a wide range of companies joining the initial ten board members of the Symbian Foundation. Set up with a view to provide an open source mobile operating system with a strong eco-system, there are now over fifty companies supporting the plans that were revealed in June 2008. From today, ARM, CleNET, Flander, Fujisoft, Huawei, Inmote, Innopath, RedBend, Scalado, Symsource, Trango and Visa are supporting the Foundation.
It's fitting that the Carnival of the Mobilists should come from London this week, as the attention of the mobile world is focussed on Earls Court and Symbian's annual Smartphone Show. Carnival 146 is here and good reading on your travels into London...
