Apologies to those who already know this, but it was news to me and perhaps to other people too: if you run an internet radio station you can add it to Nokia's online directory of stations for free by visiting this link. The directory is used by Nokia's Internet Radio application currently available on Symbian S60 3rd Edition phones and Maemo internet tablets, and allows people to browse and listen to listed stations on their devices through wi-fi or the phone network. The directory accepts both internet-only stations and internet streams of conventional broadcast radio stations.
Thanks to CJ for reminding me that there's an official Nokia messaging YouTube channel, worth subscribing to. New on this channel is a four minute guide to the keypad shortcuts for Nokia Messaging, and it's also embedded in HQ form below.
Whiling away a slow news Sunday, I thought I'd take a moment to round up the Twitter addresses of the AAS team, should you want to follow our ad-hoc notices and thoughts in almost-real-time. I'm @stevelitchfield, there's also @rafeblandford, @ewanspence, @Richard_Bloor and (now that he's started to write here occasionally) @whatleydude. Plus, of course, @AAS, an official AAS account and @allaboutngage for All About N-Gage.
Sony Ericsson today posted its Q1 2009 results and they make for grim reading. Sony Ericsson lost EUR 358 million in the first 3 months of 2009 and shipped 14.5 million devices, a 35% year on year decline, and gross margin dropped from 29% to 8%. The numbers were not unexpected and Sony Ericsson is moving to restructure the business, but it will take time.
Continuing a long run of success, Nokia has scored again with the N86 8MP at the annual TIPA (Technical Image Press Association) awards. The N86 won in the 'Mobile imaging device' category - perhaps a little premature given that the device hasn't hit the streets in production form, maybe Nokia has been handing prototypes to the 'right' people? Previous winners in the category were the Nokia N82 (2008) and N95 (2007), so at least it does seem as if the judges have got their heads screwed on straight.
Lee Williams, writing on the Symbian Foundation blog, shares a few photos on Symbian ^1 (effectively the current version of S60 5th Edition) running on an 'off the shelf Intel Atom based motherboard'. The Intel Atom is one of the processors regularly used in netbook computers. The concept highlights the flexibility and maturity of Symbian platform and demonstrates that there could be potential areas for it to be used beyond mobile phones. Read on for further thoughts.
Mobbler, a last.fm client for S60, has been updated to version 0.4.4. The new version supports the new Last.fm Web Services, which is an official API / integration route, and should improve stability. Other new features include improved album art support, the ability to disable scrobbling, a sleep timer (perfect for using music to send you to sleep), and the ability to view you Last.fm data.
MobileTinyURL has launched, a way of creating mobile-friendly (i.e. avoiding too much character multi-touch) URLs for phones. The service is free and works for all content types, not just for HTML pages. Will it catch on - comments welcome!
Fans of my ad-hoc, freeform encyclopaedia of trivia should note that the 2009 edition, v2.4 of Trivopaedia is now online, in Mobipocket or iSilo versions for all PDAs and smartphone platforms. There's also a raw, 1MB, uncompressed online version, should you feel the need. If you fancy help tidying up the code or adding data, please get in touch!
Well, the dates for this year's Symbian Smartphone Show have been set, as has the venue. 27-28 October, at Earls Court 2, in central London (the same venue as the 2008 event). Mark it in your diary NOW. But, curiously, the name itself hasn't been finalised yet. With the new status of the Symbian Foundation, David Wood muses on the official SF blog and asks for suggestions for the name and indeed the general themes for the event. Why not chip in?
The Phones Show 79 went live just now, with some extended news, thoughts on the T-Mobile G1 and a demo of Slingplayer Mobile on the N95 8GB. Comments welcome as usual.
Nokia Easy Meet is a mobile collaboration tool, which has been put together by NRC (Nokia Research Centre) as a research prototype, and made available to end-users via Nokia BetaLabs. Easy Meet allows you to easily share and view content around a given subject (meeting). For example, it could be used to share a PowerPoint slide slow during a voice conference call. The advantage of Easy Meet, compared to many other solutions, is that mobile users are able to fully participate in the viewing and sharing of content.
Nokia Photo Browser, a recent beta / preview release from Nokia's Beta Labs for S60 5th Edition, is now available for most S60 3rd Edition (Feature Pack 1 and 2) devices (e.g. N95, E71, N85, 6220). Photo Browser is an alternative way to view the photos stored on your phone. The current beta may, in the future, become part of a future update to Nokia's Gallery application.
