Not exactly current news, but perhaps this might cheer someone up who's having a bad day: digging through AAS's archives reveals a series of predictions made in June 2002 by a venture capitalist giving a speech at a mobile developers conference. You can read some of these gems below, and I think you'll agree it's pretty amazing how "on the money" his forecasts have been...
To promote the N-Gage game Resident Evil: Degeneration, Nokia and Capcom have set up a dating site for the undead called Zombie Singles, which invites people to upload a photo and then "zombify" it with the site's online zombification tool. All Zombie Singles profiles are automatically entered into a contest to win a trip for two to the Tokyo Game Show in Japan, along with two Nokia N96s and a visit to Capcom.
Carnival of the Mobilists 159 is now out over at the Mobile Broadband Blog, but of course my eagerness to link to it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that two of my articles are featured.....(!) As always, a good source of general reading, especially if you're snowed in, like most in the UK today...
Nokia's Podcasting application for S60 phones has some default podcast directories included, but these aren't very comprehensive and only include a tiny number of BBC feeds. However, if you add the BBC's online podcast directory to the app you can browse all current podcasts and subscribe to any of them with a single click. Adding the directory is very VERY easy to do, almost the same as adding a bookmark in a browser. See below for more details on how to do it (this should work on all current Nokia S60 phones including the 5800 and N95) ...
If you own (or have been eyeing up) a Nokia N95 or N82 (or similar, e.g. the 6220 Classic) but also hanker for iPhone multi-touch and App Store goodness, then you might be interested in an editorial of mine over at All About iPhone (still no relation!) in which I muse on the possibility of letting both a camera-centric Nokia smartphone and Apple iPod Touch play to their strengths in order to complement each other nicely. Please use the comment thread over on AAI etc. if you violently disagree(!)
Guess these are official now, seeing as they're up on Nokia's web site. The E71 page now includes a Flash gallery showcasing the new red/silver and black colour choices. The online shop still limits purchase options to silver or white, though that will change once stock is received. (via BGR)
More stats out recently, this time from ABI Research, showing worldwide phone market share for 2008, just about the grandest metric of all, even if it does include devices right down to bargain basement level. Nokia tops the list again, with a world share of 38.6%, while Samsung reached 16.2%. Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG are hovering at around 8%, with newbies RIM and Apple getting to 1.9% and 1.1% respectively. I wonder where we'll be at the end of 2009? Predictions on a postcard....
The CEO of Research in Motion, Jim Balsillie, has admitted to the Washington Post that the recent release of the Blackberry Storm was buggy, and they knew it. Pushed out to make sure it was in the shops for Black Friday – one of America's biggest day for consumer electronics sales – after the planned shipping date in October was missed. And he ominously warned that shipping with imperfect software was the future of electronics. He's right – and let me explain why.
Symbian OS office stalwart Quickoffice has just gone live with its long awaited version 6.0, incorporating password protected documents, ZIP file support, word count in Quickword (finally!), Quicksheet improvements that include Excel 2007 chart viewing and a 'Go to cell' function, plus a much improved file manager interface. There's also a new version of the Quickoffice-written Adobe Reader. Details, screenshots and link below. [updated for upgrade pricing]
Fring, the all-in-one instant messaging and VoIP messaging application, has added Last.fm streaming to its list of functions. It allows you to stream music, based on a key word search, from the Last.fm service. Last.fm makes a note of what you listen to (and your likes and dislikes) and customises the stream to your personal tastes.
Nokia Experts, which is authored by AAS friend Matt Miller, is a new site which will focus on Nokia's high-end mobile device offerings. There's a review of the 5800 on the site and I'm told a launch competition is coming shortly. Matt also blogs for ZDNet on their Smartphone and Cellphone blog, which we've linked to regularly over the last few years.
More Nokia N82 photo madness from the fiends on Flickr, courtesy of the six monthly award from Nokia Creative. I suspect that the images have each had something of a loving touch-up in Photoshop as well, but it still props the N82 up well as a capture device for good source photos.
Nokia today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire bit-side GmbH. Bit-side is a small (39 employees) software and service development company that is privately owned. Nokia say the acquisition will help speed up its mobile development for Nokia Maps. Bit-side is known for its imaging (Panoman) and entertainment applications (Marble Revolution). It is also the development house behind a number of well received mobile applications including Plazes for the iPhone and Pixelpipe for Android.
Kudos to W Seto from Forum Nokia for rolling up his sleeves and knocking up a WRT (Web RunTime) widget for our phones that links into Google's excellent Translate service. Although the latter is quite useable on S60 Web, this widget adds copy and paste support, as well as source language auto-detection.
There's a surprisingly crammed full Carnival of the Mobilists up here, number 158, at VoIP Survivor. Lots of interesting bits and pieces on the wider mobile world...
