Nokia's LifeviNe project has been renamed, it seems, to just Nokia ViNe: Jeff Clinton provides a detailed walkthrough of the application and service, for automatically logging your photos, videos and listened music, for sharing with the world, while Ricky Cadden asks whether the application makes sense, pointing out that it doesn't give much that's new and worrying about possible battery drain implications. I'd echo some of his worries, preferring to simply geotag my photos and upload them to Ovi or Flickr or similar. What do you think of Sports Tracker's evolution?
I can't really believe I'm writing a news post about a new version of Calculator - but hey, it's a Friday - and fair play to Nokia Beta Labs - at least it's still improving and there seems to be an intention to put it in future firmwares - so get on over, grab it and give Nokia some beta feedback. New for this release is a redesigned front panel.
"If music be the glue that holds nations together (c.f. the Eurovision Song Contest), then a Social Music Player should be the stuff of Peace Treaties". Or so writes Ewan Spence, wondering if Strands can pull everything from your music experience together? He slips on some lightweight headphones to find out... How good a music player is it, and how integrated is it with the online world?
Following on from Ewan's thoughts yesterday on the freedom in the Symbian/S60 developer world, I have to say that I take a slightly different view. Over and over, I'm finding that applications I download (from developer sites, from AAS, from Handango, etc) can't easily be installed, each coming up with 'Expired certificate'. Read on for a Steve rant....
Another trip away, another opportunity to really test out Nokia Maps, here in its latest v2.0 version with updated maps. And it all went horribly wrong, with navigation completely unusable. Read on for more and to comment if you've experienced similar problems. [update] From the comments so far, it seems that map data for some countries is simply broken.
I'm sure some of you will be wondering about the software supplied by Samsung for the i8510 CD - it turns out it's a tweaked version of Nokia PC Suite. There are several things worth noting though, so I sat down to grab screenshots and give you a quick walkthrough of PC Studio - Samsung's way.
Just another quick note from Nick Anstee that the N96 has now been added to Nokia's Mac support site, meaning that Multimedia Transfer and iSync are now a reality for Mac-owning N96 purchasers.
Every S60 3rd edition handset will now be able to run the Mail for Exchange application, Nokia have announced. That's a total of 43 handsets,across the Nseries, Eseries and regular S60 range. With MS-Exchange a popular corporate mail and syncing solution, removing the software barriers to any S60 device being able to run this application is a sensible move, and should help in a number of markets, including the USA. Read the full story for a video discussing the news.
Today, in an online event, Nokia summarised and demonstrated its recent additions to the Ovi.com service offering: Ovi Suite - a PC software offering media management and phone sync, Files on Ovi - an online file storage and remote access to PC files, and Ovi Sync - a service which syncs contacts, calendar events and notes to Ovi.com. Read on for more details.
Our daughter site, All About N-Gage (AAN), has launched a new section: Unofficial Games. It is a listing of some of the best stand alone S60 games. Each entry has a brief description, download link, and, in most cases, link to an in depth review. Don't forget, you can also find all sorts of in-depth N-Gage focused content in the other sections of AAN.
Hotelzon, a corporate hotel online booking company, has launched a native S60 search and booking tool, Hotelzon Mobile, with GPS integration. All very swish, and well implemented, if a little over the top for something with less than 300 UK hotels in its portfolio. Still, a good effort, and a pointer, for others, as to the way things should be done in the future. Screenshots and links below.
Theme supremo PiZero just launched what he calls his 'Premium' theme pack. All gorgeously understated and 100% SVG, so as to scale onto any device, I set Ewan to try them all out and deliver a verdict as to whether they're worth paying for. Although he sits on the fence slightly, he's sorely tempted and ends up recommending them. And at only ten Euros, for many of us is it not also a good way of saying thanks to PiZero for all the free themes over the last 2 years?
Salling software has announced the release of Salling Media Sync. The software allows you to sync playlists, songs and podcasts from iTunes to Nokia and Sony Ericsson mobile phones. Salling Media Sync is available for both Mac OS X and Windows PC. The basic version is free, the premium version, which costs 15 EUR, adds sequential intelligent sync (only new or changed files after first sync).
