The latest in Nokia's collaboration with third party content sources (in this case the England and Wales Cricket Board - the ECB), all implemented by digital agency Marvellous (you'll remember their infamous X-Factor app?) in the Symbian development system du jour, Qt, ECB Cricket is a competent window onto a busy news web site (especially so, with The Ashes currently winding up). It's more than a simple Web-based RSS scraper, thankfully, and it's good to see Qt being used more and more as each week goes by...
January, the time of year when we all hope for a better life and do our best to make it happen by promising to do things about it – yes it’s the time to make a resolution for the New Year. But how to keep that spark of change alive throughout the year? How about New Year’s Resolution, an application from Marvellous that’s being heavily trailed in the Ovi Store - could this be the key to keeping you motivated and on top of the promises to yourself for 2011?
There’s rather a lot of online radio out there, but a simple solution could be in front of you. Aupeo offers a number of free genre channels via the Ovi Store to listen to streams on your smartphone. Is this the answer to making internet radio accessible on your mobile? Almost.
A year or so ago I had an epiphany. What i needed was an app to take all the updates and news that I'm interested in, and read it out to me, i.e. using voice, while I got on with chores/gardening/driving/shopping. I toyed with trying to write it myself and then trying to find someone else to write it, but got sidetracked. Interestingly, BlogRadio has now appeared, claiming to largely (though not totally) fill the need. How does it work and is it any good? Read on to find out!
Air Hockey might not be the first thing you think of when someone suggests a fast paced physics-based video game running on your phone. However, that's just what you get with Air Hockey Touch. Available for S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 on the Ovi Store, either for £3 or in an ad-supported free version. I review this game to see how well it reproduces the real world experience of playing air hockey, all apart from the whoosh of air, of course!
The Symbian Calendar is lacking a good old agenda view; something that Psion and Google Calendar users alike will be all too well aware of. However, help is at hand by means of a highly configurable application called "Coming Next". Coming Next works on S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3, and is available in the Ovi Store for free. If you've been waiting for an agenda view on your Symbian phone, then read on and find out why you should take a look at Coming Next.
Sometimes you need something that just works - no bells, no whistles, no fancy graphics. You just want to move a file from your phone to a computer. What options have you got? Well now there's one more for Symbian smartphones. Dukto is a Wi-fi based file transfer system that not only is fast, but also multiplatform. Symbian to Mac, PC, Linux, or another Symbian device? No problem at all. Looks like I've one less need for the Nokia Ovi Suite. Here's why.
Offscreen are a company who have a veritable armada of applications in the Ovi Store, and here's one of their latest, Currencies Touch, available for free. Drawing information from the European Bank about exchange rates between thirty four currencies, this provides a user friendly interface for getting quick currency conversions on your phone.
Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage solutions out there, and applications for Android and iPhone are much touted features. However, there are various forms of support for Symbian too. Options include Dropbox's mobile website; the upload agents, Pixelpipe and Furtiv, and other miscellaneous workarounds. However, there is also an unofficial Dropbox application, called NDrop, available on the Ovi Store. Read on for an overview of how to access your Dropbox account on Symbian phones and a mini-review of NDrop in particular.
Offscreen are developers with a certain reputation for their single screen applications with very narrow functionality, but while that may have been the case at the start of their run of releases, they do deserve a second look. And while looking for some nice card games for the latest Symbian powered devices, I came across their version of Freecell. It’s still as close to a single screen application as it could be, but now there’s a menu screen and a game screen. And a lot of gameplay.