All About Symbian - Links of Interest News

Ovi Share Gets Geotagging

Mon, 12 May 2008 19:07:18 +0100

Nokia's Ovi Share just acquired geotagging! From now on, any new images that are uploaded will get their EXIF data checked for location information. As you can see if you read below the break, this means that images can be automatically addressed and mapped. This brings Ovi Share into the same ballgame as Flickr and Picasa Web. Comments welcome on what's needed next in Ovi Share.

Established Social Networks Are Ruling the Mobile Networking Space

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:48:08 +0100

Mobile Social networks are not a big hit, according to new Nielsen Resarch (writes MoCoNews). With only 1.7% of UK mobile users using a social network specifically designed for mobile users. While users are moving to social networks via their handsets, the big winners in the connecting people stakes are, not surprisingly, the behemoths that exist on the desktop.Facebook's mobile site m.facebook.com accounts for over half a million hits and 9% of all UK mobile web users.

Ricky Cadden Reviews the Sony Ericsson W960

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:04:09 +0100

Ricky Cadden, over on Mobile Burn, takes a long hard look at the Sony Ericsson W960 Walkman phone, and finds a mixed bag, from a bright screen to a cheap stylus, a poor camera interface and of course a long look at music playback functionality, which gets a strong thumbs up albeit with a wish for a built in 3.5mm headphone socket and the ability to playback by genre. Ultimately the W960 comes up short in Cadden's estimation with a poor user interface, slow USB transfer and clunky camera to blame.

Nokia N96 and N78 hands-on

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:26:18 +0100

Yeah, yeah, more hands-on with prototypes by other sites - you can tell we're a tinsy bit jealous - but then on the other hand devices like the N96 don't seem anywhere near finished yet and we'd rather wait for the real thing. Still, the N78 seems fairly complete, according to this latest hands on by PhoneReport, which provides lots of photos and makes a few new observations. (via Symbian World)

An N95 a day...

Sun, 11 May 2008 07:19:18 +0100

It's always interesting to see what real world uses people find for their smartphones and which software they zero in on. In this post, Mark Guim discusses his use of Mobipocket Reader, Quickoffice and GooSync in his studies at college.

Nokia gets slightly more Mac-friendly

Fri, 09 May 2008 17:11:55 +0100

Not directly Symbian-related, but Nokia have just brought out a Macintosh version of their Internet Tablet Video Converter. Are they getting a bit more used to supporting "alternative" operating systems, and when will we see their first desktop Linux app?

PiZero premium themes direct and at half price...

Fri, 09 May 2008 15:51:40 +0100

Master theme maker PiZero has made all his 'premium' themes available at half price until the end of May. Paying for themes may sound a bit odd when most other themes are free, but having tried some of these, I can testify that they're very high quality, being fast, RAM-efficient and 100% SVG-based, so they'll work on anything. Err.... advert over!

dotMobi Buys Mowser For Mobile Web Integration

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:58:54 +0100

Congrats to Russ Beattie and Mike Rowehl, the guys behind Mowser. It may well have looked dead and buried a few weeks ago, but the service has been bought by the dotMobi consortium. Reporting on Dev.Mobi, James Pearce charts out the use of their new toy, namely to drive Opt-In mobilisation of websites, integrating the Mowser Directory, and of course using the (re)formatting technology.

Promoting Mobile Services to top One Billion Dollars

Thu, 08 May 2008 08:56:46 +0100

Juniper Research reckon that the advertising spend to promote mobile services will be in excess of $1 billion dollars for 2008 (reports IT Pro), which leads me to think that the total income from the mobile services must be at least $8-$10 billion. Those are some impressive numbers. The usual culprits are blamed for the increase, including better handsets and more bandwidth.

Maps 2.0 update

Thu, 08 May 2008 08:32:44 +0100

Well, you certainly can't accuse the Nokia Maps team of rushing things.... Still, the latest (and possibly last) beta of Maps 2.0 is available today for anyone with a S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 device (e.g. the N95), although there's no changelog that I can see. Comments welcome.

S60 to iPhone actually works...

Wed, 07 May 2008 16:42:23 +0100

Thanks to bery95 for spotting this surprisingly attractive/fun iPhone theme for S60 3rd Edition. I know, I know, I usually hate this sort of thing, but this one has iPhone icons in surprising depth and works well on many levels under S60 (240 by 320 pixel screens, at least).

Papyrus hits v1.4, major new version

Wed, 07 May 2008 15:52:55 +0100

Papyrus, everybody's favourite S60 Calendar replacement, has been given a big update after a silence of 8 months. v1.4.01 contains a huge list of changes, so go read. The new version is a free update to registered users, naturally. (via Ricky) Here's our review of Papyrus, although with all the changes it's starting to look a bit outdated!

The Last Location Tagger

Wed, 07 May 2008 11:20:38 +0100

In a move that surprises noone, Nokia's free Location Tagger has just gotten its last ever update. But fret not, because future versions will simply be built into device firmware, which is as it should be, with geotagging working beautifully on the N82, for example. See the Beta Labs report for the news and changelog.

The Nokia N96 in 10 minutes

Tue, 06 May 2008 10:03:16 +0100

OK, so the N96 itself is a late prototype and some bits aren't working yet, but Cellulare Magazine (in Italy) have completed a ten minute video preview, thankfully in English, showing just about everything you need to know about this upcoming S60 flagship. Embedded below and well worth a watch!

MoCoNews Asks Nokia 'What is Ovi and Where is the Money?'

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:00:35 +0100

MoCoNews is running an interview with Serena Glover from Nokia, where she talks on the main points of Ovi, including the rather high level 'what is it?' to the more important 'how are you going to make money?'