Recent News Headlines - Links of Interest
The Life and Death of a Mobile Phone on BBC4 Tonight
One for the UK readers of All About Symbian to set their video recorders for (or download the show afterwards with the iPlayer Mobile Client): BBC 4 tonight at 9pm is showing "The Life and Death of a Mobile Phone," looking at what our humble tool goes through from construction and use, through to the recycling at the end of its useful life.
Qik integrates Facebook Comments and Twitter Sign-on
Streaming video service Qik has added in support for Twitter and Facebook into the mobile phone client. Thanks to Oauth (a process that allows one website to authenticate you to another website), you can sign in with either your existing Qik account or your Twitter login details. Qik already posts a link to your Facebook or Twitter accounts if you have this set up, but you can now read the comments from Facebook under your Qik videos, collating them all in one place.
Ovi Maps adds Good Things (user generated PoIs)
Nokia is continuing to evolve the desktop version of its Ovi Maps service: the latest 'release' sees the ability to add 'Good Things' (user generated Points of Interest - PoIs) to the map. The functionality is aimed at allowing you to share interesting locations with the world, be it the location of your favourite coffee shop of the venue for an upcoming gig. In order to see and to add your own Good Things you will need to upgrade to the latest version of the Ovi Maps browser plug-in (via Symbian-Guru). Read on for more.
Phones Show Chat 6 - N97, Ovi Suite, Battery and Camera rants
Just a quick note that programme 6 of my Phones Show Chat audio podcast is now live, in which Tim Salmon (of this parish) and I natter about N97 hardware issues, Ovi Suite problems, how Android is licensed and then I rant about smartphone batteries. If you're interested, here's the RSS feed. And the iTunes one.
Ovi Mail setup utility debuts
Nokia Beta Labs has today introduced an 'Ovi Mail Setup” application', allowing anyone to sign-up for an Ovi Mail account directly from a S60 device. The same utility is being built into the upcoming E72 and into the new N97 firmware. If you already have an Ovi account then it will provision Ovi Mail and configure the email client already on the device.
A useful set of Nokia N97 homescreen widgets
Kudos to Dave Cozens for coding up a useful set of news-focussed widgets for the Nokia N97. There's 'Nokia and Symbian news', 'UK traffic news' (couple of screenshots below), 'World news' and (ahem) 'Football news'. There's Twitter integration, automatic update checking and you can grab them here, on the All About Symbian forum.
Symbian Wiki 'books'
I was fascinated to read of the continued progress of some of Symbian's 'Wiki books' over on the Symbian Blog today. Essentially, these slightly niche guides and reference texts are being created in collaborative style by a number of authors, all contributing online into a 'wiki', a hypertext shared document. The 'wiki books' can then be electronically massaged into free electronic 'ebooks' or even passed over as needed to an on-demand book printing service. And it goes without saying that content can be kept up to date a lot more easily than with conventional '100% paper' titles.
Your Friday N97 reading...
Just because we've (temporarily) stopped writing about the Nokia N97 (back in its box, awaiting v20 firmware in my case!) doesn't mean that you should be short of reading matter. Clinton Jeff has spent time putting not one but two N97s (one black and white white!) through an exhaustive photoshoot and review, so if you're craving more N97 discussion then head over to his self-proclaimed 'Ye Giant Nokia N97 Review'.
Comes With Music subs extended
Following on from Ewan's musings as to what would happen when the first Comes with Music subscriptions came to an end, pointing out some of the complications and pitfalls, Music Ally is reporting that Nokia is emailing people offering a free extension by up to 3 months, taking them potentially into 2010. This is likely because licensing terms and arrangements (amazingly) haven't been finalised yet - so Nokia seems to be taking the financial hit. Watch this space.
URL change for any Phones Show links
Sorry for the urgent 'stop press' item, but I've noticed that my domain manager company has gone out of business and that my old smartphones-show.com domain had lapsed. Can I ask any (lovely, friendly) AAS readers with web page or blog links to 'The Smartphones Show' or 'The Phones Show' to check where any links point to? The best URL to use is simply 3lib.ukonline.co.uk - Many thanks!
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