Good news from Furtiv, the makers of plug-ins for Nokia's Share Online application. According to their blog, they have passed the 250,000 downloads mark through the Ovi Store, and are now beta testing plug-ins for MySpace, LinkedIn and TwitPic, due to popular demand. More below.
Around 36 hours ago, Apple unveiled its latest iPhone 4 to the world - excellent build materials on it, but I believe that they - and Nokia - and others - are missing an important trick: what happens when you take your oh-so-portable smartphone out into the world. A world where the birds are singing, the people are smiling and the sun is shining. And you can't see a blessed thing on your smartphone's display. Returning to a theme from exactly a year ago, I compare some recent device displays to prove a very, very important point.
In All About Symbian Insight 121 we share the best of the previous week's news: SEE 2010 dates, Nokia E73 Mode, Nokia Bike Charger and more. The team then briefly discuss the marketing messages around the Nokia N8, before moving on to some commentary on data rates and the data crunch. Finally Rafe reports back on some of the NRC demos he saw as part of Nokia's recent 'Open for Ideas' event. You can listen to AAS Insight 121 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Spanning all platforms and all usage types, at the start of 2010 I compiled recommendations for seven types of smartphone user (i.e. for seven use cases) for The Phones Show, in video form. Six months later, I revisit the same stereotypes in textual form, with updated choices, recommendations and predictions. Do you agree with my assessments? Whether yes or no, your comments are welcome!
David Gilson tackles that age old problem of how to manage web passwords using your desktop and smartphone - and he ends up at a solution that most readers won't even have heard of. It's also a solution that doesn't actually store your passwords anywhere at all, making it device-independent and utterly secure from hacking, in the case of theft or loss.
In All About Symbian Insight 120 Rafe reports back on the first part of his trip in Finland to find out about Nokia's approach to innovation. Rafe and Steve then discuss the Nokia-Yahoo partnership announced this week, the release of Nokia Messaging for IM for Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, the game Creebies and an interview with Symbain's Lee Williams that suggested the first Symbian^3 phone will arrive from an Asian manufacturer (rather than Nokia in the form of the N8). You can listen to AAS Insight 120 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
You may remember that, 18 months ago, Christmas 2008, I wrote a feature: Robustness, the Forgotten Factor, in which I gave my estimates of the most (and least) robust of the (then) current crop of smartphones. As we head into summer in the Northern hemisphere, I thought an update to the 'chart' might be in order, just looking within our Symbian-powered world this time. See below for my illustrated listing and then leave your comments!
Earlier this week, as part of Nokia's 'Open for Ideas' event, I spent some time at Nokia's Espoo offices in Finland. At one end of the building there's a Nokia Experience lounge where you can see all of the latest products and get demos of the latest services. Here's a quick visual look at some of the products and services being showcased. We've got much more to come from the 'Open for Ideas' event, which was about understanding Nokia's approach to innovation.
Another in All About Symbian's tutorial series for absolute beginners to Symbian-powered smartphones, here are the things a newcomer to the Nokia X6 really needs to know. If this is you, then read on. If you have a friend with an X6 then do them a favour and print off this article on their behalf! Note that 80% of the content is common to our other tutorials, for the 5530 and 5230 - each article is customised to suit each device's quirks.
Following on from his 'clean sheet of paper' ideas for Symbian's Calendar, Ewan looks at the first steps of what's needed to take such thoughts through to inclusion in official Symbian Foundation code. Essentially, the Ideas board at the Earls Court show is now a fully functioning social network, dedicated to bringing the best ideas through to implementation.
Yesterday saw a major strategic agreement between Nokia and Yahoo!, detailed in our news feature, with Nokia essentially providing Ovi Maps to Yahoo! users and Yahoo! taking on the burden of providing Mail and IM to Nokia users, both in the medium term. Initial reaction to this has been generally positive, though not everyone thinks the alliance is a good idea. I thought I'd round up a selection of quotes, reproduced below... For more AAS analysis of the agreement, we'll be tackling the subject in the next Insight podcast.
One of the side effects of being part of an ecosystem of an 'open' operating system is that, at some point, you'll be roped in to help out. One such thing is happening with the Symbian Foundation's Bug Squad, which convenes regularly for bug-squashing days (e.g. today), here's how you can get involved.
Fired up by the discussions in the Phones Show Chat podcast, one of my listeners, Andy Weekes, took the time to write in a veritable essay on his experiences (ok, mainly frustrations) with Nokia, Symbian and the current competition. Some of his points are very valid, others more arguable, but you'll hopefully enjoy his essay and my (inline) responses below. Comments welcome, some of these topics could run and run!
In the first of a two part feature, Ewan looks at what's really needed for Personal Information Management in general, and Calendaring in particular, on a Symbian smartphone. He outlines the modules and functions that he'd like to see, ahead of jumping into Symbian^3's roadmap and user contributions mechanics in part 2, coming soon.
I was asked a very good question last week: "Why do you stay with Symbian when there's a world of wonder with iPhone and Android?" I have to admit to finding a number of positives in these other platforms, sometimes accompanied by positives in their hardware, but it's true that I do keep coming back to Symbian as the OS powering my smartphone-of-choice. Investigating my own leanings and trying to justify them, here are the top 10 reasons why I stay with Symbian.
