Steffen Geraner, despite English not being his main language, has put up a lovely little walk through and real world assessment of some of Ovi Maps 3.0's 'extra' features, including speed cam warnings, tunnel handling and 3D buildings. Worth a read. Maps 3.0 is turning into a pretty huge product - look out for more features on it here on AAS over the summer.
In All About Symbian Insight 79 (AAS Podcast 141), we share news of Symbian^2's release and the first Symbian package to move from SFL to EPL. Then there's a mention of Nokia Android rumours, leading into a discussion about Maemo positioning and Qt. Finally we talk about a recent post from Robert Scoble. You can listen to AAS Insight 79 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
For all those with phones running S60 3rd Edition or 3rd Edition FP1, you might want to grab Birdstep's SmartConnect utility, which is now free. This removes the "access complexity" and combines all your Wifi and 3G access points into one access point, effectively mimicking the Destinations feature of S60 3rd Edition FP2 and beyond. The supported phones are listed below, along with a download link.
Ewan takes a brief look at Tommi Laukkanen's new, free Mobile Task Manager, a no-frills to-do-list/project manager that still manages to knock spots off the built in S60 function. It's Java-based, but don't let that put you off, this is one lean and efficient concept app - let's hope it continues to evolve.
Nick Anstee wanted to add a load of RSS news feeds into a single widget slot on his new (and seemingly much loved) Nokia N97. In this tutorial he shares how he did it, with the aid of a rather useful third party service from, somewhat surprisingly, Yahoo. See also his PS for an even quicker way of achieving the same.
Samsung Italy have released a fairly major (I8910XXIG2) firmware update for the i8910 HD (Omnia HD, as it's branded in Italy). The biggest change is to re-enable AAC (8bit 16KHz. mono) as the audio codec for HD video recording. A video example, taken on the new firmware, is posted below.
At last, at long last, the popular Twitter client Gravity has gained large fonts, for use by those like me who (ahem) have less than 20:20 vision in our advancing years. You'll need to go online in Gravity, move to the start page and click on the 'alpha' (and 'experimental') version 1.20 build 5570, but don't worry, it works just fine. You also gain, as shown below, the ability to have a different (e.g. a white) theme/backdrop, again greatly aiding visibility. v1.20 works fine on all S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition phones.
We've teamed up with Nokia N-Gage to give away a Nokia N96, a license for the N-Gage game Million Dollar Poker and a few Nokia goodies. All you need to do is answer a simple question and give us your name and contact details. Million Dollar Poker is the most recently released N-Gage game.
Telexy Networks has launched Network Commander, a collection of useful network utilities for Symbian OS. A while back Telexy released a piece of software called SymSMB - basically it allowed Symbian devices to connect to network shares via Wi-Fi. Very clever, but they encountered a small legal issue with a large Finnish phone maker. To cut a long story short, they shouldn't have been doing two jobs at once. Naughty. So SymSMB was pulled from sale, sadly. But there's now Network Commander and I've looked at it briefly below.
Launched today in Nokia's Ovi Store is a free Bing widget:- you'll recall that this is Microsoft's next-gen answer to Google's main search site. Offering Web, Mobile web, News, Images and Videos, the tabbed interface gives you results almost instantly, since content is cached for each tab/data type. Some screens and comments below.
On Monday Vodafone launched its Summer of Widgets competition. Every week through out July and August Vodafone will be giving away three prize bundles (consisting of Samsung NC20 netbook and a Nokia N96) to the developers submitting the best widgets. Widgets must be developed using the Opera widget runtime for S60 and be uploaded to the Vodafone Widget Developer Platform. Read on for more.
Are you a panorama sort of person and do you feel left in the lurch by Nokia buying up the makers of Panoman? Not worry, for Scalado and RAVITEQ have teamed up to produce Autorama, a quick way to produce auto-stitched panoramic photos with next to no Photoshop elbow grease required. Here's my review of Autorama, one of the new arrivals in the Ovi Store on your Nokia 5800 or N97.
With Twitter the latest buzzword that doesn't want to go away, how can you get started using Twitter on your mobile? Ewan explains in great detail for anyone who doesn't 'get' Twitter or know where to start. Tweeting can be fast, fun and (yes) it's free too.
After releasing their first S60 app Speedy Go!, Cellphonesoft hasn't stopped making apps for UIQ 3 - they just announced Swiss Manager Elite, which enhances UIQ 3 even more. Looking at its features (listed below), it's an impressive application. And I can't help wishing for something like it for S60. What say you guys? Swiss Manager Elite for S60 3rd and 5th Edition please...
Nokia just added a Nokia N86 iSync plug-in to its download area for Mac owners looking to sync PIM data to their smartphone. iSync is free and works seamlessly to transfer Contacts and Calendar information to Address book and iCal on the Mac, even between multiple devices. Here's the iSync download page. PS. Note that the N97 is still not supported.
