Nokia and Skype have announced plans to fully integrate Skype into selected Nokia devices. Kicking off with the Nokia N97, Skype will be part of Contacts, enabling users to easily see when their Skype contacts are online, to call and to chat using a data connection. Other selected Nseries devices are also likely to come with integrated Skype functionality, through initial inclusion and through firmware upgrades.
Slightly different format for the podcast this week as Rafe is in Barcelona. Steve and Ewan pick up the reins to talk about the announcements and products on show at the Mobile World Congress in the AAS Podcast #113. In Monday's recap, they set the scene, talk about the annoncements from Sony Ericsson, and discuss Nokia's Monday morning press conference.
A heads-up for two interesting pieces over here at Ricky Cadden's guru site: firstly, Rita el-Khoury provides a great roundup of the resources and software that help keep her S60 phone fully up to speed in the medical world; and secondly the guru himself breaks news of JBak Pencil, a utility to give 5800 XpressMusic owners a virtual 'pencil' key for selecting multiple items - it's unsigned, but in this rare case the pain of signing something for your specific phone is definitely worth it.
The BBC have just released a full, standalone (i.e. not Web-hosted) version of their hugely popular iPlayer for S60 5th Edition, specifically for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This runs slickly and includes the 'Download' feature first seen on the likes of the N96, where you can grab DRM-ed programmes for watching in the next month or so, offline. To get the new version of iPlayer you need to go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/iplayer.wgz in Web on your phone. Read on for screenshots and extra comment.
In All About Symbian Insight 59 (AAS Podcast 112) we talk about the recent release of Google Maps 3.0 and its inclusion of the Latitude location service. We follow up with a general discussion of 'people location services' and discuss their implementation, utility and surrounding privacy issues. In the last third of the podcast we preview the forthcoming Mobile World Congress event.
Google today launched the beta of its new Google Sync service for mobile phones. The service, which is free, allows you to synchronise data between your phone and Google's web services. This, for example, allows you to synchronise the contacts on your phone with the contacts data used by Google's GMail. All recent S60 and UIQ phones are supported through the use of SyncML. However currently only the synching of contacts is supported. Read on for more details.
The first major firmware update for the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music, version 20.0.0.12, is now available, adding camera photo geotagging, full device search and (slightly) faster operation. You can update either using PC Suite or over-the-air (OTA). The 5800 does have user data preservation, which means your data should be retained during the update, but it is still advisable to do a back up before carrying out the update. Read on for more, including a special reset code that you might need...
Although described as not yet 'optimised' for S60 5th Edition/Touch, the popular file utility Y-Browser at least works at 90% capacity on the Nokia 5800 and N97 now, see version 0.89 at the venerable Dr Jukka's web site, along with new versions of the companion plug-ins. Just thought you'd like to know that. Especially if you're trying to get some S60 miscellany files out of your 5800's Inbox like me...
PhotoFlow, from Scalado, is a piece of software that can be used to view, and zoom-in on, images stored on the phone. While Gallery ties in with the rest of the phone (e.g. send as MMS) PhotoFlow is a better performer if you are simply interested in viewing images; as our video demonstrates, you are able to browse through images and zoom in much faster than the standard Gallery application. Read on for more and to view the video.
Yup, Google Maps for Mobile, the native S60 version, just hit v3.00 an hour ago. The main change is the addition of Google Latitude, a way of finding your friends on the map. More details, screenshots and the high-res version of the Latitude launch video below. To grab your own copy of v3.00, go to m.google.com and click on 'More' and then 'Maps'.
Kudos to SymbianpOp and getting there first with a detailed and illustrated look at the new version of Buddycloud. This free software (for Java, S60, etc. and with special emphasis here on touch and S60 5th Edition) lets you interact with friends, with full status and (favourite) location updates, derived from GPS, cell towers and Wi-Fi, plus there's interoperability with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. An interesting read!
Yup, BBC iPlayer just appeared in Download! for UK users of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Some screens below the break. Technically it's only a streaming solution, though. Despite prompts from the widget to 'Save' a file after watching, you're not saving the video stream itself. A little messy. Comments welcome!
