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"Enter Nokia's clumsily named 'Maps and Photography' widget. As the title suggests, this takes the idea of showing others your tracks and photos and provides the functionality in a handy widget that anyone can embed in any web page, or a social media page or blog (only Facebook and Blogger are 'officially' supported now, but take that with a pinch of salt - the Blogger code is standard HTML and will work in just about anything). See the bottom of this page for a real world example!"

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If you look carefully on the official "Get N-Gage" page, you'll see a mobile N-Gage installation site mentioned using teeny tiny letters, so tiny that this writer missed it until recently.

In fact the mobile site provides probably the easiest method for installing N-Gage on your phone, much easier than the PC-based way that the official site recommends.

Here's how to do it the mobile way:

    1. Open your phone's web browser and go to this adddress:   http://n-gage.mobi/d

    2. You'll now see a special mobile site that lets you install the N-Gage app directly onto your phone. Follow the instructions and press "OK", "Yes" and "Continue" to all the questions.

    3. After the app has installed, close the phone's web browser.

And that's it, the N-Gage app should now be installed and ready to go! If it's not on the front page of the menu system, try looking in the Applications folder.

Need to update the phone's firmware?

If the installation process tells you to update the phone's firmware (referred to as "software" by Nokia for some weird reason), this is something you'll have to do before you can install N-Gage.

For a firmware update, you'll need access to a Windows PC if you want to do it yourself. The actual updating process is fairly easy, just download and install the Nokia Software Updater on your PC, launch it and follow its instructions.

If you don't have a Windows PC, you can get your phone's firmware updated at a Nokia-approved service centre (you can find one of these by clicking on the "Support" link of your region's Nokia website).

Members of the Open Screen Project include all five leading handset manufacturers and several large operators as well as other technology, service and content providers.

Adobe is seeking to create a consistent run time environment (Flash intially, and later, Air) that will ease cross device and cross platform development and address technology fragmentation by allowing dynamic over the air updates.

In the short term this will not mean much for the average user. Flash Lite is already available on every S60 handset. The removal of license fees is likely to ensure that things stay this way, but more importantly is likely to increase the number of Flash enabled handsets making for a more compelling cross platform / cross device development platform. Adobe Air is also part of this announcement, but there are no specific guarantees about its inclusion on handsets.

More significant in the longer term is that this indicates the strategy than Adobe is looking to pursue for its web application platform. The concept of rich Internet applications powered by cross platform run time technologies (Silverlight, Air, JavaFX) is generally accepted as being a very important part of the future. In making the Open Screen Project and related announcement Adobe is firing one of the first shots in a battle that is  likely to become increasingly important over the next few years.

Here's the relevant extract from the Adobe website:

The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich Web and video experiences, live and on-demand across a variety of devices.

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ -- that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

Specifically, this work will include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

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