Two years ago, Jaiku and Twitter were neck and neck in the "What are you doing?" micro-blogging services race. Twitter carried on its own road, while Finnish service Jaiku was bought by Google. The feeling then was that Google had a winner in their hands as long as they followed through with their intentions. History records that Jaiku hit a brick wall while Twitter became the poster child of the 'Real Time Web' situation. But now Jyri Engestrom, the Jaiku founder who became a Google Product manager, has served his time and has left the employ of the Big G.
Two scheduled items of interest. There's more generic mobile Tuesday reading over at AORTA today, as Chetan Sharma brings us Carnival of the Mobilists 195. Incidentally, if you'd like to submit an article or blog entry of your own (or to nominate an AAS article for inclusion), the address to email is mobilists@gmail.com. The Phones Show 92 is also now out, with my hands-on video review of the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic and part 2 of my beginners guide to phone security.
You've got to hope that today marks the point at which Nokia started to leave the whole sorry mess of its PC connectivity experiments behind it and moved forward with confidence. Ovi Suite 2.0 is now 'graduated' (from Beta Labs) and will start to be included in phone retail boxes. Here's the full report on Nokia's plans, and don't forget to grab your own copy (.exe link). Does Ovi Suite 2.0 now complete replace what you had before? Comments welcome.
The two big hardware issues which have plagued owners of the first N97 devices off the production line are, of course, the easily-scratched camera glass cover and the very poor GPS reception. Having ordered fixes for both from my local service centre a while ago, I finally had them attend to each and managed to get quite a bit more information for the rest of us in the process. Read on...
Following the success of its UIQ version, DreamSpring has launched DreamConnect, its all-in Contact Manager, for S60 5th Edition. There are quotes from the press release below, but essentially you get hierarchical sub-categories, business card display and 'KeyMatch', which replaces the virtual keyboard on 5th edition smartphones with a finger friendly, compact quick-matching keypad.
You'll remember my original (somewhat lengthy) video tour around Nokia's test centre in Farnborough last year? Well, Engadget Mobile's Chris Ziegler had a similar tour of a similar facility in San Diego this week and his musical four minute summary is embedded below. The tests are the same, the respect is the same, but the fun here is in spotting the different variety of handsets being tortured. Video below.
Just live on the interwebs is Phones Show Chat 7 (the companion audio chat based around my video podcast), in which Tim Salmon and I talk about the Nokia 5730's keypad, the HTC HD2 and the Nokia N900 (and other large screen devices), comments on Symbian's place in world marketshare, plus we specify and design our own ultimate smartphone. Available also as a RSS feed and iTunes podcast.
Nokia's UK Flagship store on Oxford Street has announced on Twitter that they'll be selling the Nokia N97 mini in store from Friday October 23rd... just in time for everyone arriving in the capital for the Symbian Exchange and Exposition on the 27th and 28th! [Update: Not necessarily....]
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.
