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.
There's an interesting piece today by the people who put together the Java runtime on S60, talking about how they want to streamline Internet connections by Java applets to involve less user prompts[link updated]. The plan is to put the new system in place in new devices and also in new firmwares for existing devices. About time, too, methinks.
'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.
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...
The card game DChoc Cafe Solitaire 12 Pack is now available on the N-Gage platform. You can download it by going to the application's showroom section, then selecting "Options" and "Update Now". Alternatively you may want to try out the unofficial games Astraware Solitaire or some of the other card and board games available for N-Gage-compatible devices.
Australian developer DreamSpring have two announcements at today's Symbian Smartphone Show. The popular UIQ application DreamLife - an integrated activity manager providing additional integration between the core PIM databases in one single application – will be available on S60 early in 2009. They are also launching Riyala, a fully integrated suite of PIM services designed to sit alongside DreamLife.
Symbian Press and Wiley have announced two new books for the developer community at today's Smartphone Show. Multimedia on Symbian OS and Common Design Patterns for Symbian OS. As you would expect, the titles are densely packed with information, examples and practical knowledge for the mobile developer. They are both available to purchase on the Exhibition Floor (stand #97) or via the Symbian Developer Network.
Dashwire, a service which syncs the contents (media, contacts, phone settings) of your phone to the cloud and allows you to view and share the content on the web, will shortly be available for S60 phones. The service, currently available for Windows Mobile, is being demonstrated at the Symbian Smartphone Show and will enter Beta in November. Read on for more.
The N79 seems to be now making its way to shops across Europe, as Nokia's official site in Italy lists it as available now, and Expansys UK also has it in stock. You can find out more about the N79 from All About Symbian's extensive hands-on preview article.
The cross-platfom application framework, QT, is now available for S60 devices. It's still early days, thus being called a Technology Preview, but anyone with an S60 v3 feature pack 1 device can install the framework – just follow this video after downloading the code. And let us know how you get on with the wealth of Qt powered applications out there already.
Thanks to ares for the heads-up that Opera Software have been busy, releasing its Opera 9.5 web browser for UIQ 3 with widget support today. For technical reasons (lack of RAM?), it's only compatible with the SonyEricsson P1, W960, G700 and G900. Opera has also updated people on progress towards v9.5 for S60 - more on this in the weeks to come.
Announced first for Russia and then the rest of the world, Samsung have launched the I7110, with an OLED screen, similar to that in the Nokia N85, but is in a candy bar form factor and with familiar 5mp/GPS/Wi-Fi specs. More details below.
It's always interesting seeing long term tests of phones, i.e. from people who have lived with a device intensively for a while. In this case, Symbian Smashpop has lived with the Nokia N96 for a month (and no, I still haven't even seen one - go figure) and here presents a list of loves and hates. In other news, Vaibhav has been trying out the DVB-H TV in the N96 and comes away very impressed.
Dr Jukka recently put 50 S60 WRT widgets on to his site for free download. There's a whole range of mini-puzzles and games that have, for the most part, been ported across from existing, freely available, Javascript versions. There are versions of old favourites, such as Same Game and Tetris, as well some less well known puzzles, such as Cohan Circle.