Nokia has launched (via Beta Labs) a new web-based service and Web Runtime widget, entitled Green Explorer, aiming to help you live and travel in more eco-friendly fashion through tie-ins with green organisations and community involvement. See below for some screens, notes and links.
Nice find by Mike Macias here - FreeTimeBox is a Symbian Signed utility that adds the current time to the E71's menu bar, E71x-style. You can also apparently blacklist certain apps where you don't want the time to appear at this location on the screen, thankfully.
A couple of quick links to desk clock utilities that have cropped up in the last few days: DesignClock offers, time, a background, a calendar and message counts, and works on both S60 3rd Edition and 5th. While Desk Flicker Clock is exactly as it sounds, running on S60 5th Edition only.
DChoc Cafe Hold Em Poker is now available in the N-Gage application's showroom section. Just go to the N-Gage application on your device, go to the Showroom tab, select "Options" and then "Update Now" to see it in the latest games list (alternatively you can select "Show All Games"). To find out more about the N-Gage platform including a list of compatible phones, try reading the All About N-Gage FAQ.
The Nokia Beta Labs blog recently announced Nokia's latest beta offering - 'Here and now'. This is a context-aware (location) shortcut to services. Currently 'Here and now' provides local weather and events listings. It currently works only with S60 3.2 devices (N79, N85, 6220c etc.), and is currently still in development, but will be pre-installed on a number of upcoming Nokia devices. Beta Labs is asking for your feedback to help shape the future direction of the application. See below for screens and thoughts.
Reader Andy Cook is another of us wistfully looking back to Agenda on the Psion palmtops. Will it ever be matched? Certainly not so so far. His Nokia 9300 (running Symbian OS and the Series 80 UI) has a slightly stunted version but it's still ahead of all competition, according to this review of the iPhone's Calendar and the third party app Pocket Informant over here on one of my stomping grounds.
In 'Mobile Development - For Everyone', our latest developer feature, Richard Bloor talks to Amer Hasan, Senior Manager, Apps & Developer Programs at Vodafone, about Betavine's £20,000 widget competition. The article explains how Vodafone sees widgets reducing the barriers and costs of development and the importance of open standards in choosing which widget platform to use.
With the advent of Google Latitude, Nokia Chat, Nokia FriendView and other similar services, Steve Litchfield ponders their future, wondering why they haven't taken off as fast as he'd originally predicted. Part of the reason, he suspects, is that the typical demographic for such mo-lo-so applications is fairly restricted, i.e. most of us either know exactly where our main contacts are or don't need to know.
Mobbler, a last.fm client for S60, has been updated to version 0.4.4. The new version supports the new Last.fm Web Services, which is an official API / integration route, and should improve stability. Other new features include improved album art support, the ability to disable scrobbling, a sleep timer (perfect for using music to send you to sleep), and the ability to view you Last.fm data.
Fans of my ad-hoc, freeform encyclopaedia of trivia should note that the 2009 edition, v2.4 of Trivopaedia is now online, in Mobipocket or iSilo versions for all PDAs and smartphone platforms. There's also a raw, 1MB, uncompressed online version, should you feel the need. If you fancy help tidying up the code or adding data, please get in touch!
Nokia Easy Meet is a mobile collaboration tool, which has been put together by NRC (Nokia Research Centre) as a research prototype, and made available to end-users via Nokia BetaLabs. Easy Meet allows you to easily share and view content around a given subject (meeting). For example, it could be used to share a PowerPoint slide slow during a voice conference call. The advantage of Easy Meet, compared to many other solutions, is that mobile users are able to fully participate in the viewing and sharing of content.
Following on from today's review, word reaches us from Mojo's Studio that Twittix has been updated to v0.92. The interesting addition is the "introduce" feature which lets you point two of your Twitter friends to each other. The full change list is here
In All About Symbian Insight 66 (AAS Podcast 124) we talk about the N-Gage platform's newest addition - Worms World Party. Then there's discussion of Google Maps 3.0.1, BBC TV streams, device colours. We finish with a discussion of the joys of older devices. You can listen to AAS Insight 66 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia Photo Browser, a recent beta / preview release from Nokia's Beta Labs for S60 5th Edition, is now available for most S60 3rd Edition (Feature Pack 1 and 2) devices (e.g. N95, E71, N85, 6220). Photo Browser is an alternative way to view the photos stored on your phone. The current beta may, in the future, become part of a future update to Nokia's Gallery application.
I don't know, you wait for a native Twitter client forever and then two come along at once. Last week, Ewan looked at the Gravity client from Mobiways; this week it's the turn of Twittix from Mojo's Studio, with Ewan giving this slightly simpler and more S60 style-compliant client the review treatment - who's this new client aimed at?
