Nokia has announced that Real Time Traffic Information is coming to Nokia Maps, courtesy of ARC Transistance, the European network of automobile clubs. RTTI in Maps 2.0 (already in beta) should enable proper, dynamic routing that takes into account real world conditions. The full press release is below.
It's All About Symbian Insight 22, a.k.a. audio podcast 71, in which we cover Skype Mobile, the new Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, new announcements in the world of Web Runtime and widgets, plus a discussion on whether touchscreen devices that require two hands to use will take off in the mainstream. Listen here.
With the announcement of LG's Secret, with 5mp cam, auto screen rotation, DivX VGA video playback, TV out, Office viewers, etc, I've been musing on what makes a smartphone 'smart'. How does my Nokia N95, for example, compare? I've been playing with the Secret's older brother, the Viewty and have been able to draw some conclusions.
The Nokia Music Store is now available in France, with a pricing of 1 euro per song, 10 euros per album, or 10 euros a month to listen to all the store's tracks through a PC. As with the other Nokia Music Stores, tracks can be bought onto a PC and sideloaded onto a phone, or bought and downloaded directly onto certain phone models.
NTT DoCoMo has announced it will develop an Operator Pack for FOMA handsets. This will result in the adoption of a global software platform across the FOMA range of devices. The Operator Pack will reduce development costs and speed time to market, it should also make it easier for the manufacturers to offer phones (variants based on Japanese FOMA models) to overseas markets. Operator Packs will be developed for both the Linux (LiMo compatible) and Symbian OSs.
In which I rant a little about the glaring lack of common sense in today's navigation applications, end up rather late and stressed for a wedding I should have been half an hour early for... and I explain what's happened to the sat-nav group test that we promised six months ago...
Nokia's PC Suite just got a biggish update, with Calendar viewing on your PC screen, plus full Text message handling. And there are cosmetic improvements too. Here's the PC Suite download page. Comments welcome. (via S-F)
A second video link for this morning, this time to 'Gadget Show WEB TV', who reviewed Fring, the free VoIP and chat utility over the weekend. Great to see the coverage but the ultimate negative verdict was undoubtedly flavoured by the data speeds and coverage in the single demo area. What about Wi-Fi? What about 3.5G? Comments welcome - how well does Fring work for you?
You'll have heard of Mippin, the RSS-based web portal for your feeds and interests, we've featured it before. The same developers have just announced Mippin Maker, a "free service that creates a perfectly rendered mobile edition of the publisher’s web site and allows them to generate revenue". So you use Mippin's mobile rendering system for your RSS-compatible mobile site and you share the ad revenue. The link and full press release are below, if you're interested in following this up.
More Convenient! More Productive! More Fun! Announced at CTIA in Las Vegas, the new version of Opera Mini, v 4.1, certainly sounds like it's at home with the lingo of the city of flashy lights. This is a beta release, but nevertheless with a speed increase of up to 50% and the ability to save pages and content without invoking any other application on your device, Opera Mini continues to provide strong competition to on-device browsers. Screenshots and more details below.
It's.... AAS Insight 19 (aka AAS audio podcast 68), mainly concentrating on the news of UIQ 3.3 and what it will mean, but also chatting about the split of Motorola, the v21 update for the Nokia N95 Classic and the usual software spots. Here's the Insight 19 listening link, here's the RSS feed for you to subscribe for the future.
Trippo popped its head above the software parapet a few days ago when it got added to Nokia's Download! service for the N95 8GB. But it's available to all and is in the AAS software shop. The big question is, can it live up to its claims? Ewan's been reviewing Trippo and both he and I were gobsmacked at how good the service is - and also at how expensive it might work out.
Launched in October 2007, Mippin has managed to not only get over the initial ‘what is this service?’ that every Web 2.0 property has to deal with, but has continued to gain users and presence in its first six months. I caught up with VP of Product Management Prashant Agarwal at the recent SXSW Interactive festival, where he demoed two of Mippin’s latest features to me – Mippin Video and Mippin Today.
Ewan's been the perfect use-case for ShoZu, the media uploader, while he's been away on his 'Seesmarch' - lots of photos and video, flat rate data and a desire to share stuff with the world. Here's his report/review of the new ShoZu version 4. Suffice it to say that the application scores very highly indeed, with only a few small caveats.
In Insight #17 (AAS Podcast 66) Rafe, Steve and Stefan talk around Apple's recently announced SDK and Application Store and what Nokia and Sony Ericsson do in this area. We also talk about our favourite form factors where we recognise that device robustness is the most important factor.
