'Magic' photo retouchers aren't unknown, even on Symbian, but this is a fairly slick new implementation. The idea is to fade your photo to greyscale (or, in this case, innovatively, sketch format or a total blur) and then manually bring out the original colour/detail in just the subject highlights, for special effect. MagicPhotos has a very workable interface and produces good results at Facebook resolution, but is ultimately limited and in need of further development.
Another month, another photographic application from the hardware whizz kid, Harald Meyer, this time offering ShaderFX Photo, which "can be extended with your own OpenGL ES 2 shaders with multi-texturing, time and mouse input". I'm not entirely convinced that the general cameraphone-owning public might want to use, or know how to program "OpenGL ES 2 shaders", but the application does seem to work, despite a few serious resource caveats.
Now here's a category of application which shouldn't really exist. Downloading (for offline use) rather than streaming YouTube content is, I'm sure, somewhat frowned upon in Google/YouTube circles, yet we've all done it using one tool or another. And here we have another Symbian application to offer the raw MP4 video streams - very handy for squirrelling away videos for watching on a journey, for example, when data connectivity is likely to be scarce or expensive.
Sometimes it helps to go back to basics. There are a lot of streaming radio applications out there, websites with audio to pass to your devices, and brand new ways to listen to media. While the ultimate back to basics would be to rely on the built-in FM Radio on your handset, let's move up one notch and look at Internet radio. It's fertile ground for developers (including Nokia itself), but today I want to listen to the effort from Intersect World.
I'm a sucker for a good webcam portal. Partly it's because I hate travelling and, this way, I get to see loads of places round the world without leaving my desk, partly it's because I'm as nosey as the rest of the human race when it comes to seeing what other people are doing, especially when they're doing it on the other side of the world, often without knowing they're being watched! Which is why I made a beeline for Live Cams, available for Qt-compatible touchscreen devices in the Ovi Store.
Time for another social media client in the shape of 4squick. Focused on Foursquare, and making sure you can get into the app, check-in and get on with your life as quickly as possible, this Qt-based application has a small but growing cadre of supporters. Will AAS join the troops? Read on...
With pervasive Internet something that we've all become accustomed to, i.e. every device having access to the Internet, it's not surprising that Wi-fi tethering has seen a resurgence in interest. One of the first solutions to allow laptops (etc.) access to your phone's mobile Internet over wi-fi was that from Joiku (see our review in early 2008, and as covered in my interview) and, four years later, the solution is still as relevant as ever - in fact, it's had a major facelift, making it a clear candidate for a full review here.
Google Reader is a blogger’s best friend. However, there is a distinct lack of Symbian applications for this most useful of web-based RSS readers. This has left most of us using a browser to consume content on the move. However, that might be set to change with a new Qt application, which brings the Google Reader experience up to date in the Symbian Belle style. Read on to find out more.
As a maths scholar myself, I do love it when some of it ripples through into the real world. In this case it's Cam Measure, written in Qt for Symbian touch devices, based around one of the simplest mathematical constructs of all - the right angled triangle. Armed with a camera and accelerometer-equipped smartphone, you've then got the basis of a system for measuring distances and heights - all without actually moving from your current position. That's the theory, anyway!
Given that smartphones have supplanted PDAs, they need to be up to every sort of PIM duty, including note taking. While Symbian has the venerable Notes application, it’s something of a data silo. That is, unless you are fortunate enough to use and understand SyncML services. For those who don’t even know what those are, then perhaps SymNote by Talv Bansal will be of interest. It’s a note taking application which synchronises to the SimpleNote cloud service. Read on for our review.
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