Symbian's David Wood enthuses over free software and the community spirit in the latest of his excellent series of 'Insight' articles. A good introduction to freeware, though don't forget Rafe's and my freeware guides.
Who remembers Nebulus, a game rightly hailed as brilliant when first released in 1987? Well it's back, thanks to Telcogames. Coded in C++ for S60 and Symbian OS, the original gameplay, animation and bonuses are all present. And congrats also to Telcogmaes for releasing this into the retail channel as well as to the networks. We don't all want to wait for our portal to decide if Nebulus is for us. Hardcore Gamers already know...
Nokia recently gathered their leading N-Gage developers in a workshop session on S60 v3 and Symbian OS 9.1 - the next generation platform, as they describe it. In attendence were Backbone, Digital Legends, Bonus.com, Barking Lizards, Ideaworks, Jadestone, Razorback, Torus, and Two Tribes. Full Press Release Follows...
Steve Litchfield's discovered that Opera Mini's now alive and working and has been playing with it for a couple of days. Here's his review. Summary: it may change the way you browse on your smartphone - it will certainly chop your GPRS bill down to size...
Ewan goes in search of an Internet Relay Chat client that will work on all his Symbian smartphones and finds it in the free JmIRC. Here's the full review.
The url http://m.gmail.com/ shows that even the decision on the namespace is right - Google's Gmail service now has a web based mail interface for small screen devices. While POP3 access has always been available, it has never been 100% reliable. While you'll still need to watch the data charges from your carrier, it should be no problem for any mobile web browser to get your mail.
Mobile Email and how to recieve it is an area which a lot of companies are working on, with mobile data and email being seen as the best area for growth in 2006. Visto are now asserting that "Microsoft has infringed upon multiple patents Visto holds regarding proprietary technology that provides enterprises and consumers with mobile access to their email and other data," and have started legal proceedings against the Redmond based Microsoft, who see email as a central plank to their mobile platform. Three patents are specifically mentioned in the full press release which follows.The issue of mobile email is a very important issue, as can be seen by Visto's other announcement of a licencing deal with NTP.
Ewan gets back to his arcade gaming roots in his review of Atari Legends Volume 1, for the Nokia N-Gage platform. Great conversions, but it's not quite the same as standing in front of a large-screened coin-op, is it?
Jamdat, in under 6 years has gone from start-up to selling to Electronic Arts for $680 million US. Along with the Tetris Mobile licence, EA have also picked up the recently completed Doom RPG, Bejewelled and of course all the EA licenced games Jamat have been working on. From a wap version of scissors paper stone, to the number one publisher in the USA with 40% of the market, the boys have done well.
Now this could get interesting. These guys are working on S60 games in which the camera is used to track physical gestures made with the handset. Fight sequences in RPGs could take on a whole new meaning!
Thomas Boys investigates controlling his desktop with his Symbian smartphone and finds Salling Clicker just the job. Great for parties and presentations! Read his glowing review here.
You have to admire the feature list from what looks to be a traditional 2d shooter that has "3 difficult mode from normal to hell" and an "extremely high quality graphic." I'm talking about Miss Siam from Chiang Mai Digital Works. It's available in the All About Symbian store, as are all the new releases!
When you hear about multi-million dollar gaming licences and massive global hits, it's hard to forget that there are hundreds of coders out there every day who get picked up by the mobile networks and showcased in their catalogues. It's the new 'mark of excellence' in a sense, and Irish Developer BitRabbit is slowly making a name with their arcade games Yukiko and Atomanix. The later has been picked up by Swisscom, who are following Orange UK's in signing up these titles for OTA distribution.
Rifts: The Promise of Power is huge. It's a long sought title for RPG fans, and its debut on silicon is on the N-Gage. Is it everything we expected? Yes. And then some. Ewan's review of Rifts goes into the world of Rifts to find out what all the fuss is about.
Ooh! Finally catching up on news from the October Press Briefing is Slashdot's rather negative coverage of Nokia's re-targeting of the N-Gage from a single handset to a brand covering the entire Series 60 portfolio. Worth a read to see just what Nokia's marketing department was up against before they had even launched. And also worth it for the comment that Nokia's so called failure has sold more units than all the Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone devices put together.
