There's a nice piece by Chris Meadows here talking about the future for Mobipocket and its previously ubiquitous ebook reader software, now that Amazon have not only bought Mobipocket but are competing against it vigorously with its own Kindle hardware and software. In fact, it's looking increasingly as if Amazon bought Mobipocket simply to put paid to a competitor. Yet there's nothing else decent to fill the vacuum on S60 and Symbian. Read on for some thoughts and links.
Ewan muses on Nokia Messaging and the lack of category support in Nokia's PIM software in the third part of his video diary with the qwerty-side-sliding Nokia E75 - remember that he's been using the device for a month straight now. Video below. Oh, and watch out for the sci-fi ending.
Apologies to those who already know this, but it was news to me and perhaps to other people too: if you run an internet radio station you can add it to Nokia's online directory of stations for free by visiting this link. The directory is used by Nokia's Internet Radio application currently available on Symbian S60 3rd Edition phones and Maemo internet tablets, and allows people to browse and listen to listed stations on their devices through wi-fi or the phone network. The directory accepts both internet-only stations and internet streams of conventional broadcast radio stations.
With the advent of Google Latitude, Nokia Chat, Nokia FriendView and other similar services, Steve Litchfield ponders their future, wondering why they haven't taken off as fast as he'd originally predicted. Part of the reason, he suspects, is that the typical demographic for such mo-lo-so applications is fairly restricted, i.e. most of us either know exactly where our main contacts are or don't need to know.
Nokia's Download! system, integrated into every S60 device, has finally had one of my long-standing bugbears fixed. Never mind that the whole thing is now seemingly administered by Jamster (explaining all the '1 of 3' 'costs' listed throughout some of the app pages), the core 'Applications' section now has freeware marked as '0' (i.e. costs nothing), while trialware and demos now appear, less misleadingly (they used to say '0' too), as 'Try for free'. There's also the new 'Payment in application', in readiness for Ovi. See below.
It may not have Xenon flash, but the Nokia N86 8MP does have a camera with the next level of performance: a bigger, better sensor, variable (and wider) aperture, wide angle optics and faster shutter speeds. In theory, this means, among other things, that it will cope much better in low light situations without needing to use flash at all. Using photos from the latest N86 8MP prototype and comparing them to those from the current imaging king, the N82, I explore the theory below. [Text amended 11.30am]
Tucked away in my office for days on end, exploring the frontiers of technology, at least in the smartphone world, it's exciting to tinker with the latest touchscreen smartphones and generally live on the bleeding edge. But heading out into the 'real world', as I've been doing for the past week, a world inhabited by parents and cousins and grandchildren, it's best to fall back on hardware and software that's going to be 100% reliable. And, in this case, with the classic Nokia N82, to do some things that no other smartphone could have matched anyway.
Manikantan is a keen (Python and) Flash developer and has produced a prototype app, Translator, for S60 3rd Edition phones that leverages Google's recently updated language translation engine. A nice Web 2.0 example, even if it's not very polished yet. See below for screenshot and download link.
In a follow up to my popular series, from August 2008, investigating the practicalities of a S60 smartphone owner switching to an Apple Mac as the desktop counterpart, I report back after a couple of months of living the Mac life for real. What improvements have their been to the software available and does using a Mac and OS X now offer a more seamless smartphone experience than a PC and Windows?
After almost eighteen months of silence, a Nokia forum moderator has finally made an official statement about the status of N-Gage on the N73, N93 and N93i. In short, N-Gage will NOT be coming to those phones. As many predicted, the relatively older OS versions and less powerful hardware on those models apparently weren't up to the job of handling next gen N-Gage games. The low sales of the N93/N93i wouldn't have helped either. Our editorial thoughts on this issue are below. (Click here to see which phones ARE getting N-Gage.)
For an All About Symbian podcast with a difference, join Ewan, Ricky Cadden, Charlie Schnick and Molly Schonthal (the latter two from Nokia) on the show floor at SXSW in the States this week. The discussion's a little more chaotic than usual, but they cover devices, UIs and apps, before moving on to the organisational miracle that is Ewan's Filofax.... Presenting Podcast 119.
YouTube has finally, finally, done something about their low-grade 176 by 144 pixel mobile video interface. For Flash Lite 3-compatible phones (which means most S60 phones made in the last couple of years, provided firmware is kept recent), videos are now served up from the mobile YouTube interface in Flash format. Once the video starts playing, you tap to bring it up full screen in Flash Lite's video player. Most significantly, the quality's miles better than the original QCIF version - 480 by 320 pixels for many videos. Screenshots and links below.
A while ago we asked the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation if they had an online OPML directory of their podcasts. They replied they didn't but would make one, and true to their word it has just gone live. You can now browse and subscribe to all CBC podcasts on your S60 device by adding the directory address http://www.cbc.ca/podcasts.opml to your Podcasting application. We will be publishing a more detailed article about this later, but for the moment see our previous article on how to add directories to the S60 Podcasting application (the link also has the URLs for the BBC and NPR podcast directories). Also see our guide to podcasting on the Nokia 5800.
