Please excuse the original story on this address, I was going by item numbers in Ovi Store URLs - it turns out that there isn't a strict one to-one correspondance between URL numbers and actual content items. The store simply now has over 100,000 allocated item IDs, many of which never materialised into content. Watch this space for some fuller Ovi Store statistics.
Nimbuzz has announced that it is exclusively releasing an ad-free version of its instant messaging client on the Ovi Store. In addition to waiving advertisements in exchange for a one-off fee of £3.00, premium users also get several new aesthetic settings not available in the ad-supported version. These options are viewing instant message conversations in a chat bubble style, custom colours or images for chat screen backgrounds, and custom font colours for the chat screen. Read on for more.
At a Strategy and Financial Briefing, which takes place at 10 am GMT on February 11th Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, is expected to outline his vision for the future strategy of the company. Rafe will be reporting live from Intercontinental Park Lane Hotel, London, where the event is taking place. You can follow our live coverage using this story or via our Twitter accounts (@aas and @allaboutmeego).
Mbuntu is a flash based application launcher available for all flavours of Symbian, aimed squarely at Ubuntu fans. The application simulates the GNOME-based Ubuntu desktop, with the Jaunty Jackalope wallpaper. From the Ubuntu application menu, users can access all of the phone's core applications, such as: contacts, messages, Bluetooth, USB mode, Web, etc. There are also indicators for WiFi and battery level. Read on to find out more.
While the BBC News App in the Ovi Store is little more than a web shortcut to open up the mobile site in your browser, it’s a good decision to make an application like this available. Yes, it doesn’t take much to type in “B B C” in the browser, but providing an icon on the screen and in the Ovi search engine, reinforces the idea of content on the phone. It’s also a potential first step to a dedicated BBC News application to sit alongside the iPlayer integration in the UK.
There have been various widget-making (i.e. Web Runtime shortcuts, in this case) systems tried out, but AppMe is possibly the easiest so far. Find a mobile-friendly web site you want to go to often (for example, something you'd normally set a bookmark in Web for....), paste its address into the AppMe wizard, choose an icon, and you're halfway there already. Read on for links and a walk-through. The end result: web sites on your menu or homescreen, properly labelled (on the menu) and with the icons of your choice.
A couple of links of interest from Mike Macias that I've just stumbled across and thought you'd like. Firstly, a piece from Mike himself in which he reminds us that there's a one-tap way to bypass Nokia Messaging service and thus gain reliable access to your Gmail account. And secondly, a pointer to a super (and comprehensive) Purple theme from the wonderfully named (for a computer guy) Logon Aniket that's available in customised versions for everything from S60 3rd Edition FP1 onwards.
Open up the Ovi Store client on your Symbian^3 smartphone and you should have a mandatory update available, which offers 'full Arabic Support, better installation support for Qt-based apps and numerous fixes', plus a new blue/green startup screen, miscellaneous other small fixes and, significantly, for all phones of all vintages, an upgrade (at Nokia's end) to their Search algorithms.
Nokia Reader, a simple RSS reader, was released today on Nokia Beta Labs as an experimental prototype. The application features push notifications (making use of Nokia's new notification service API), a content directory and homescreen widget integration. It provides a clean and efficient way to consume and be notified of updates to your favourite feeds while on the move. The application is available for most S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 phones.
In late December an updated version, 1.08 (206), of the Ovi Store client for S60 5th Edition phones was made available. This version should now be available in all markets. To encourage users to upgrade Nokia is offering a number of free gifts when you upgrade. These gifts include free copies of Shazam Encore (music recognition) and Doodle Jump (platform game).
Swype, an alternative text entry system based on finger 'swipes', now supports additional languages. A number of language packs have been released for both the S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 versions of Swype and are now available via Nokia Beta Labs. Additionally an updated version of Swype, for Nokia's S60 5th Edition, has been released, which fixes a number of bugs. An updated version for Symbian^3 will appear in the Ovi Store in the near future.
I can’t resist pointing out another fabulous theme by PiZero I’ve just stumbled over. Called Digiflowers, it’s available for S60 3rd Edition, S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 handsets. It works in landscape and portrait mode, looks fantastic and adds an artistic flair to your home screen and desktop. Well worth checking out from pizero.net.
Popping up at the start of the week was a significant alpha version of Gravity. Taking the popular social media client up to version 1.5a, it’s not quite polished and stable yet, so if you want to wait for the hardened version, then check back in January. But if you’re happy with a little bit of peril, then you’ll get a number of new features and improvements, including a portrait qwerty keyboard for touchscreen devices!
Mobbler, Symbian's Last.fm client, has a new beta version for Symbian^3 users. The new beta supports the new Scrobbling API and menu items for the radio stations recently discontinued by Last.fm have been removed. There is a long list of new features too, like Twitter sharing, artist biography pages, and improved lyrics pages. Also added is support for the new mix radio station created by Last.fm to replace discontinued stations. The Mobbler project is also asking people to install an error reporting agent (ErrRd.SIS) which will help the developers capture bugs in the new beta version.
Asri Al Baker from i-symbian.com and friend of All About Symbian has been at it again with his Web Run-Time Widgets! This time, he has broken away from the Google world and treated us to a launcher for Facebook Touch. For those who don't know, http://touch.facebook.com offers a variant of Facebook optmised for finger-driven mobile browsers. As said previously, there's nothing stopping users from just adding a bookmark to their browser, but these WRT Widgets offer the benefit of an identifiable icon in both the application menu and home screen shortcuts.