Programme 54 is now live, with walkthroughs of geotagging and photo sharing using a Nokia N95, Location Tagger and Share Online and some promo video of the upcoming Sony Ericsson G900. There's also a spot on Blackberry Internet Service (on a Nokia E90) and a look at getting yourself a new Windows Mobile 6 smartphone for £60(ish).
Ewan's been at Mix08 and took the opportunity to chat to Microsoft's Brad Becker, Group Product Manager (for the User Experience Platform and Tools Marketing Group) about the recent announcement about Silverlight Mobile. He also spent a little time with the developer of WeatherBug, talking about their rapid development under Silverlight Mobile. Watch the interviews here in AAS Video podcast 28.
Showing that you really can't believe every stat you read without knowing the exact context, and remembering the attention some USA mobile browsing stats got when they announced that Apple iPhone browser use trumped that of any other device, I was interested to see stats from respected UK computer magazine/web site PC Pro, showing the top 5 mobile devices that had accessed their servers in 2008 so far. Read on....
With Ewan somewhere in America still, Rafe recording an Insight with me and then taking a well deserved long weekend break himself, it's been an odd 24 hours, centred around the big news from Cupertino and smartphone industry reaction to it. Read on for some analysis on this and other interesting weekend reading links.
We've had applications to sync into Google Calendar for a while, notably GooSync. But Google just released an official set of Contacts APIs (hooks for programmers to use), meaning that full sync into this part of Google may be on the horizon. But, as the Google OS blog notes, the APIs link into a generic contact store and not necessarily a GMail contact set, meaning that there's probably some tweaking at the Google end set to happen in the future, to simplify contact handling.
It's Monday and it's time for our new Insight podcast. In number 15 (aka AAS podcast 63), we look at news, geotagging privacy concerns, recent handset designs from Nokia and Ewan reports on truly mobile software. Give it a listen on the way home from work. Here's the RSS feed if you want to subscribe regularly.
In my de facto role as contact for PDA Essentials magazine, note that issue 72 is out today in the UK (and some other territories), with a feature on the pros and cons of buying SIM-free vs Contract, a review of the Nokia N82 ("Nokia has thrown everything at this phone's internals, but the externals leave a bit to be desired") and, shock horror, a review of an HTC device that lists the Nokia E90 as "cheaper and less featured" - never seen that before!
After the brace of S60 devices announced at MWC, I've done an update to my comprehensive S60 comparison table. Still a few 'Unknown's, so comment if you can help fill any in. Also of note is that Forum Nokia now has the official specs of the new Nokia devices online.
Service after service, app after app, solutions keep appearing to offer media streaming (from our own hard disks or from hosted servers) over the air. But what happens when the masses start doing this and the bandwidth runs out? Is putting all our music online really the best solution? When it comes to media that's truly mobile, you can't beat the old school approach, I reckon....
Ah yes, Valentines Day across the world and Krisse, a true romantic, has been researching the very best free 'love' themes for your S60 3rd Edition smartphone. If these don't get you in the mood for romance then nothing will!
Symbian chose to wait until MWC before releasing their own Q4 results for 2007 and the full press release is quoted below. There's also a video webcast to stream if you want to see Symbian's CEO and CFO go through the numbers in person. Standout highlights include the fact that Symbian OS now powers around 7% of all phones being sold worldwide (up from 5%), with just over 22 million Symbian OS-powered smartphones shipped in Q4/2007.
Seth over at ComputerWorld has been watching the nightly Webkit (the underlying browser that Nokia's S60 3rd Edition Web is based on) builds and has noted some big recent speed improvements. Apple's desktop Safari is an obvious recipient of the new code, and in due course the iPhone. Hopefully S60's Web team can also build in the same code and gain similar (up to three times) speed increases?
What kind of crazy tech industry do we have where companies make work for themselves at the same time as making customers unhappy? And you can bet that the mobile industry is the worst offender of all. Read on for a few experiences, thoughts and links.
Nokia has announced that its 'pioneering' UK Flagship Store on London's Regent Street has opened its doors to the public, today, 8th February 2008. Also mentioned is that another flagship store will open at Heathrow airport in March 2008. The full press release follows...
Fed up with announcements about "leveraging the Web 2.0 growth cycle to grow market share in the YouTube generation"? Ewan's a little sceptical about some of the press releases that get issued at this time of the industry year, and I don't blame him. What are we looking for from the hardware and software companies and what are we dreading seeing?
