As any sane person would realise, simply slapping code into the Open Source bucket isn't enough to build an eco-system, and it's good to hear from both John Forsyth of Symbian speaking at OSCON, and Janne Jalkannen (via Nokia Conversations, but speaking on a personal level) that this is point appears to be well understood in the respective companies.
Well, at least they didn't give the E71 to Nokia-hater Andrew O.... Writer Dave Oliver gives the new E71 his seal of approval, concluding that it's "a brilliantly efficient piece of technology that does pretty much everything you might want it to do and it does it all extremely well. Like a technological servant of sorts, it serves up its many excellent facilities and a host of other titbits with a minimum of fuss - and no small amount of style."
Lifted from the comments to a previous story, I wanted to highlight an addition to the excellent traintimes.org.uk. When accessed from your phone browser, the site now has the facility to add a UK train journey (via a vCal file, don't worry, it all happens seamlessly) into your phone's Calendar. Very cool, and the site only needs just over 100K of data per lookup, much less than the full Nation Rail equivalent.
If you have an N-Gage-compatible phone (at the moment that means the N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95 or N95 8GB) you may like to take a look at this article over on AAN which details an ultra-simple method for installing the N-Gage application. It works entirely through the phone's browser, and doesn't require a computer at all. We've mentioned this method before in other articles, but it seems a lot of people missed it and Nokia doesn't really publicise it either, so here it is again in greater detail.
Non-programmers look away now. Budding Python wizards might like to note Arkadiusz's scripts here that automate the building of an Open Signed SIS file, saving you having to do everything manually every time you change something in your code and want to build a new SIS for installation on your test device. (via Forum Nokia)
Spec-sheet comparisons are all very well, but how good are the Nokia N95 8GB, the Apple iPhone 3G and the HTC Diamond in real life? The AAS team has come up with a dozen things that we all like to do with our phones and Steve was then set to accomplishing all of them on all three devices. Can the sheer usability and likeability of the iPhone triumph over Nokia's N95 design and S60? Is the HTC Touch Diamond a competitor here? Find out in the full usability feature.
Network operator '3' just held a big launch event, showing off what's coming up on contract, and SMS Text News' Ewan (always entertaining) was there. In the absence of any actual releases on the '3' web site, he's our lifeline to news and video from the event, showing off the Nokia N96 (to be available in September) and white E71 (available now), among others. There's also a well-placed rant about the sheer uselessness of mainstream media and some of the freeloaders in that world - worth a read if only to reinforce why you read AAS and SMST!
Forum Nokia are organising an "Open Source Goes Mobile" workshop at the upcoming LinuxWorld conference being held in San Francisco's Moscone Centre on August 6th. The event is free to all developers, and Forum Nokia are also providing a fee one-day pass to Linux World. Places are limited, so if you are interested the sign-up page is here.
'Cool in the Valley' company Qik who's Qik application allows you to live stream video from your S60 handset, has today moved the service from private (invite only) beta to a full public beta status. In practice this means that anyone can sign up for the site and download the software for their mobile phone. While there are a number of live video services already out there, very few of them have a component that runs on a mobile phone - and Qik is one of the fastest of those providing mobile. More at www.qik.com.
In the second and final part of Rafe's definitive review of the new Nokia E66, he looks at the device's business credentials and multimedia capabilities, before wrapping things up with the AAS verdict. See also part 1 of his E66 review.
It's been a busy week over on All About N-Gage, with videos, polls, sales charts, themes, the big Brothers In Arms review, and other assorted gubbins. For those of you who haven't been following AAN lately, we present a quick round-up.
Nokia Pilots, a new programme to get people like you to give feedback on new prototypes and services (sounds like fun), is going to launch in September - here's the holding page for it. If you like playing on the bleeding edge (heh, OK, so that's all of you), then bookmark Nokia Pilots now.
There have been some great posts from Mark and Al at their Nokia blog in the last couple of days. Worth a look are Going Green while travelling (creating mobile PDFs of your important documents), a video with Nokia product manager Chanse Arrington, and a walkthrough of sending locations from Google Earth to Nokia Maps.
The file-sharing service Share On Ovi is holding a competition for the next couple of weeks to find the best photo uploaded to the service. If you want to take part, just choose what you think is your best photo on Ovi and add the tag "best1" to it. You can view current entries by clicking on this link.
In AAS podcast 84, a.k.a. Insight 32, Rafe, Ewan, Steve and Stefan talk about the new GPS-enabled Nokia Chat, the Nokia 6220 Plastic err.... Classic [just kidding, Nokia, we say lots of nice things about it really], Pro Series Golf and Nokia Download! Held together by wit, chewing gum and a piece of sticky tape, it's compered this week by Ewan, so you probably know what to expect(!)