We recently reported about a new beta version for Mobbler, having been updated for Symbian^3 and support for Last.fm's Scrobbling 2.0 API. Today the Mobbler team announced via Twitter that the very latest version of Mobbler is available for free download in the Ovi Store. This news means that the features listed for this new version at Mobbler's Wiki for the beta version we already reported on, have now graduated to Mobbler's official release.
There's an interesting editorial over at The Telegraph, quoted below, in which the author questions, as I have done several times, the prevailing wisdom over whether the current craze for 'apps' (for accessing information and services) is a good thing. The editorial starts and ends in the pub, which is a good start to some decent left-field thinking. Why use 'apps' when we have the Web itself? Surely what we need is a better and more intelligent Web?
Please excuse the original story on this address, I was going by item numbers in Ovi Store URLs - it turns out that there isn't a strict one to-one correspondance between URL numbers and actual content items. The store simply now has over 100,000 allocated item IDs, many of which never materialised into content. Watch this space for some fuller Ovi Store statistics.
Nimbuzz has announced that it is exclusively releasing an ad-free version of its instant messaging client on the Ovi Store. In addition to waiving advertisements in exchange for a one-off fee of £3.00, premium users also get several new aesthetic settings not available in the ad-supported version. These options are viewing instant message conversations in a chat bubble style, custom colours or images for chat screen backgrounds, and custom font colours for the chat screen. Read on for more.
After three months in beta test, Ovi Maps 3.6 has been formally released for many (but not all) Symbian touchscreen phones. You'll find it as the lead item in Ovi Store and when installed will show as "v3.06 10wk50b12" (i.e. two weeks later than the most recent December beta). It's possible that the new version will also show up in Sw_update and Ovi Suite at some point too. The big improvements, you may recall, over the previous Ovi Maps v3.4 are multitouch zooming (on Symbian^3 devices), on-device map downloading, fuzzy searching for places and items, a new Drive assistance mode with live traffic flow, the addition of public transport lines and a generally streamlined and optimised interface all round. Screenshots and a change log below.
At a Strategy and Financial Briefing, which takes place at 10 am GMT on February 11th Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, is expected to outline his vision for the future strategy of the company. Rafe will be reporting live from Intercontinental Park Lane Hotel, London, where the event is taking place. You can follow our live coverage using this story or via our Twitter accounts (@aas and @allaboutmeego).
News reaches us from Norway that Opera, the mobile browser that many people turn to on a variety of mobile platforms, now has 105 million active mobile users every month. Made up of 90.4 million on the (mostly) java-based Opera Mini and another 15 million on Opera Mobile. That’s a huge achievement, so congratulations to everyone in Oslo that worked towards this. In addition, a new bespoke version of each for Symbian^3 smartphones is to be shown off at MWC next week.
The Angry Birds “expansion” application, Angry Birds Seasons, has received an update in time for Valentines Day. Joining the Halloween and Christmas levels are another 18 collections of hiding pigs, flying cupids, smashable blocks and bonus cakes all wrapped up in some fiendish physics.
Mbuntu is a flash based application launcher available for all flavours of Symbian, aimed squarely at Ubuntu fans. The application simulates the GNOME-based Ubuntu desktop, with the Jaunty Jackalope wallpaper. From the Ubuntu application menu, users can access all of the phone's core applications, such as: contacts, messages, Bluetooth, USB mode, Web, etc. There are also indicators for WiFi and battery level. Read on to find out more.
Finishing the triumvirate, All About Symbian’s Nokia C6-01 received the PR 1.1 firmware update this morning. Clocking in at the expected 7MB, this is v13.016 for the smallest Symbian^3 device. Updates include changes to the web browser, email client, music player and a number of miscellaneous issues around the handset.
While the BBC News App in the Ovi Store is little more than a web shortcut to open up the mobile site in your browser, it’s a good decision to make an application like this available. Yes, it doesn’t take much to type in “B B C” in the browser, but providing an icon on the screen and in the Ovi search engine, reinforces the idea of content on the phone. It’s also a potential first step to a dedicated BBC News application to sit alongside the iPlayer integration in the UK.
There have been various widget-making (i.e. Web Runtime shortcuts, in this case) systems tried out, but AppMe is possibly the easiest so far. Find a mobile-friendly web site you want to go to often (for example, something you'd normally set a bookmark in Web for....), paste its address into the AppMe wizard, choose an icon, and you're halfway there already. Read on for links and a walk-through. The end result: web sites on your menu or homescreen, properly labelled (on the menu) and with the icons of your choice.
The first firmware update (version 13.0.16) , also known as PR 1.1, is now available for the Nokia C7. The update, which is 6.8MB in size, is available OTA (over the air) and can be downloaded using the 'SW update' application. Updates include a noticeable improvement in overall performance (e.g. smoother scrolling and transitions), support for landscape in the dialler (call) application and a number of bug fixes.
A couple of links of interest from Mike Macias that I've just stumbled across and thought you'd like. Firstly, a piece from Mike himself in which he reminds us that there's a one-tap way to bypass Nokia Messaging service and thus gain reliable access to your Gmail account. And secondly, a pointer to a super (and comprehensive) Purple theme from the wonderfully named (for a computer guy) Logon Aniket that's available in customised versions for everything from S60 3rd Edition FP1 onwards.
Users of the third party Mail for Exchange service, NuevaSync, may be interested to know that they have added a new feature allowing for read-only synchronisation to mobile phones. Currently, the feature is only available via the NuevaSync Labs page, as it is still in development. This feature will be useful to anyone using NuevaSync and finding that their device is duplicating or modifying data in other undesirable ways. Users have fine control over read-only access, being able to set it on a per-data-type basis, for each device they are synchronising with NuevaSync.
