It's my pleasure to link over to one of the most interesting Carnivals for a long time - and not just because AAS friend Matt Radford is hosting it this week. There's plenty here to mull over, including one article that's actually hosted on the author's phone (if you can reach it - subject to time of day and signal, I suspect), courtesy of Nokia's Mobile Web Server. Good stuff - Carnival of the Mobilists 186 is recommended reading.
Now live is The Phones Show 87, also embedded below, featuring (since I've been away on holiday) 24 testimonies from my audience, sharing their current choice of phone/smartphone and why. Plenty of Symbian representation in the choices, with the all-conquering Nokia E71 being most 'picked'.
The Ovi Store application is available on quite a number of Nokia phones, including the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. We've done a brief video (embedded below) which shows how to find and install Ovi Store on the Nokia 5800, either through the "Download!" icon or by visiting the Ovi Store website on the phone's browser. You may also be interested in our videos on how to install Ovi Store on the Nokia N95, and how to use the Ovi Store application.
HanDBase, the database system for S60 and other mobile platforms, just got itself a 4.1.5 'development' upgrade. This is significant because it's the first version to support devices likes the N96, N97 and N86 which have a mass memory disk as well as a memory card. See here for the full details. Also of note is that there's a special offer on whereby you can get 20% off the purchase price before 20th September by using the coupon code 'backtoschool09'. See also our 2006 review of the first release of HanDBase for S60 3rd Edition.
Over on All About Symbian's sister-site Ovi Gaming we've been reviewing some big-name titles recently, and also added our usual gameplay videos and screenshots alongside the reviews. See below for the complete list of links...
The Ovi Macintosh Files Connector, writes Tam Huynh on the Ovi Blog today, is now available. It will allow OS X 10.5 users to remotely access files on their Mac from a Nokia handset, or the Ovi Files web interface , send the files directly to friends and colleagues and build up a mirror of your useful files on the Anytime Files archive that comes attached to your Ovi account. And don't forget that Ovi Files recent dropped the subscription charge and is now available as a free web service.
Nokia are looking to find out what you think about the Share on Ovi service, and are offering five people who take their survey a share of 1000 euros (that's 200 Euros each). You can take the survey here. It should take around ten minutes. And even if you don't win, you will have helped the service.
The Symbian Foundation have asked for input from Developers and interested parties on the newly drafted Test Criteria for Symbian Signed. The new criteria, v4.0.8, are still in draft (and developers should continue to follow the existing v3.0.3 criteria until told otherwise), but the Foundation "...believe that it's important to get as many eyes on this as possible as soon as we can."
Chris Messina has posted an interesting argument that the rise of popularity in applications on mobile phones has stunted the growth of the true 'next big thing', the web based applet that runs in the browser. It's worth a read over a cup of coffee, including his (perhaps not quite) tongue in cheek thinking that Steve Jobs is deliberately crippling the app store. Of course in all this heat, I'm sure many US commentators will forget about one of the leading on device web app platforms... Nokia's Web Runtime.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've just done mini-reviews, screenshots and gameplay videos of six lower-price games (in descending order of quality): excellent accelerometer-based tilting maze game Labyrinth Touch, noughts and crosses on a larger grid with Tic Tac Toe Touch, chess-inspired puzzle game Knight's Puzzle, Mr Pringle avoiding a soaking in Log Jam, testing whether you've got dementia with Viitrio Memory Match, and a rather more boring noughts and crosses with Viitrio Tic Tac Toe.
The head to head that all Nokia camera phone fans wanted to see - Damian Dinning, the guy behind both the N82 and N86 8MP, has been doing controlled tests at Nokia's Southwood test centre, and the results are his presentation, embedded below. See also the original Nokia Conversations accompanying article, helping explain what you're seeing. Make sure you click to go full-screen, by the way, if you want to see everything!
What if your phone could destroy an entire network base station with just a single command? Would you rework the OS so safeguards would be in place, or would you prefer to hold back every third party application, Canute style, hoping nothing gets through? The attitude of Apple and Symbian to this issue reflects the benefits of the open platform that Symbian and the upcoming Foundation promote, in my opinion. Read on.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've got lots of new vids: How to install the Ovi Store application on the Nokia N95, a more general look at how to use the Ovi Store application, a gameplay video of old-style arcade shoot-em-up My Little Tank, and a gameplay video of plasticine-based scrolling shooter Platypus (think Wallace & Gromit crossed with R-Type).
Give two very articulate and S60-experienced phone reviewers the same device and they'll come to roughly the same conclusions, right? Wrong. Showing yet again that the Nokia N97 seems to polarise opinion, we have Karri Ojanen, concluding that the N97 is well worth perserving with and who seems enamoured of most aspects of the device, and Johnny Bruha, who found the N97 lacking in so many areas during his extended test period that the device ended up in the bin. Both reviews are well worth reading over a glass of wine this evening and I guarantee you'll nod your head in agreement with both, somewhat paradoxically!
The Carnival of the Mobilists has reached number 184 and 'idlemode', and represents your reading material over your Tuesday morning coffee break. Always good, generic mobile material.
