The N96 camera and Nick!
For those following AAS's Nick Anstee and his Nokia N96, you might like to note that he has his own Ovi channel for uploading his N96-shot photos (and screenshots). You can contact him via AAS or here.
Recent News - Links of Interest - Page 87
eBuddy adds Facebook Chat
Possibly the first of several mobile chat clients to support Facebook chat, eBuddy has taken the wraps off its new Facebook support. It's Java, although Mobile Royale (who tipped me off about eBuddy) coincidentally has a challenge open for someone to write a S60 Facebook Chat client. And has anyone here tried weaving Nokia Chat in with Facebook - can it be done yet?
Carnival 142
There's some especially good reading this week in the Carnival of the Mobilists, over at Next Generation Mobile, recommended. And it's my turn (gulp) to amass posts for next week's Carnival - if you've penned something interesting, do please email in to mobilists{at}gmail.com. Thanks!
Nokia Photos 1.5 now available through Beta Labs
A new version of Nokia Photos, a media (images and video) sync and management application for your PC, is now available through Nokia Beta Labs. The new version, 1.5, has a new look to fit in with the Ovi branding, improved support for importing images from non-Nokia devices, tools for adding and visualising geo-tagged images, and improved integration with Share on Ovi and other Nokia services. Read on for further details.
For 2008, the AAS Pub Meet makes way for 'Evening with S60'
Nokia will be holding an Evening with S60 in London the night before the Symbian Smartphone Show. It is a chance to see the newest S60 devices, get one-one-one demos and meet other S60 enthusiasts. The event will be held at Nokia's Flagship Store in Regent Street on October 20th between 7:30 and 10:00 pm. You need to register here if you want to attend the event.
The Darkness... has come
[Cue spooky music] "The Darkness is coming...." In fact, the Darkness arrived today, in the form of PiZero's latest work, available in super-polished custom, default and Flahorn icon versions. It works very well on black S60 devices, but I wouldn't recommend it on the silver N82 and N95 classic!
Nokia ViNe - Practical or Pointless?
Nokia's LifeviNe project has been renamed, it seems, to just Nokia ViNe: Jeff Clinton provides a detailed walkthrough of the application and service, for automatically logging your photos, videos and listened music, for sharing with the world, while Ricky Cadden asks whether the application makes sense, pointing out that it doesn't give much that's new and worrying about possible battery drain implications. I'd echo some of his worries, preferring to simply geotag my photos and upload them to Ovi or Flickr or similar. What do you think of Sports Tracker's evolution?
Nokia N79 video review in The Phones Show 65
The Phones Show 65 is out now (used to be The Smartphones Show), with a surprisingly positive (I didn't think I'd like it from the initial photos) video review of the Nokia N79, more generic musings on the advisability of Xenon flash and a review of iPhone-wannabe, the Samsung Tocco.
Arrrrrr! It be Talk Like A Pirate Day, and we be bringing you some links of interest me hearties...
Yes, it's Talk Like A Pirate Day again, and in celebration you might want to steal software see our guide to ScummVM for S60 3rd Edition devices (which lets you play Monkey Island on your phone and is available for all Symbian versions), check out Astraware's Pirate Day half-price discount on Hidden Expedition Titanic (which is available on UIQ3 and S60 3rd), read our review of Return To Mysterious Island for S60 3rd Edition, or get nostalgic with the original gen N-Gage's High Seize review.
Nokia's Maemo platform gets phone network data compatibility, could it become a rival for touchscreen S60?
Maemo, the Linux-based software platform which runs on Nokia's touchscreen-based internet tablets, has had its latest version unveiled under the brand "Maemo 5", which introduces built-in compatibility with mobile phone networks including HSPA (i.e. HSDPA and HSUPA). There's apparently no telephone voice support (yet), though there is VOIP, and it should be interesting to see how upcoming Maemo 5 devices compare to the upcoming S60 touchscreen devices. Will they be totally different products aimed at totally different markets, or will there be potentially damaging overlap? If there is significant overlap, will Nokia really want to keep two parallel product lines going?
The N96 available for ordering, in stock next Wednesday
For any UK readers champing at the bit over the Nokia N96, it's now officially available on the Nokia UK shop, for £535 inc VAT, in stock on the 24th Sept, plus "3-5 days delivery". If you're in a hurry, this seems a good way to go?
Share on Ovi upgrades
Nokia's Share on Ovi team has been busy and there's a whole new Share home page ("simpler, less cluttered, easier to navigate"), plus an upgrade to the back end to deliver higher quality mobile video, for when viewing Share-hosted videos out and about. See below for the Share team's announcement.
Google Maps for Mobile updated?
Well... actually no. At least, it IS if you have a Blackberry or Java-only phone. Apparently a S60 version is also 'coming'. The Nokia E65 blog reports the news on a whole new version of Google Maps, complete with Street View and walking directions. Looks good. I just wish licensing agreements weren't holding the big G back from putting in real time tracking and turn by turn instructions as well....
Screensavers and hidden media files
A couple of great little articles over on the N82 blog, covering ways of manually hiding your media files so that others don't stumble on your goodies (although there's also always the fairly new Media Safe 2, in our software store, which does everything automatically) and a how-to on setting a GIF or Flash animation as your S60 phone screensaver.
A question of Class
Did you know that 8GB microSD cards can be a lot slower than 6GB ones? No, neither did, I, so I was very interested to read Ricky Cadden's detailed investigation into the issue.
