If you are bored with the S60 interface of your Nokia there is a simple solution - get an iPhone! No, not really (although this can work) what you could do instead is swap it out in favour of RealVista Desktop Mobile.
For all the carping and pained grimaces usually associated with using Windows Vista, one thing that most users agree on is that the interface is rather pretty - slick, shiny and impressive to watch. While RealVista
can’t offer 3D task switching and transparent windows it does make a reasonable fist of an ‘Aero-like’ set of icons.
Applications and phone functions are split into categories and displayed with four large icons per ‘page. The developer is aware of some Nokia N95 and N81 devices that can’t manage to run all apps via these icons, but reckons this is a firmware issue that should be fixable via an upgrade.
RealVista requires Flash Lite 2.1 and is available for free here.
Nokia’s Sports Tracker is fine if you are into jogging about all over the place and want to build up to a marathon or something, but what if you prefer your exercise to a bit less high-impact? A pleasant walk in the country, for example.
Nokia Step Counter is fresh out of the Beta Labs and uses the same accelerometer technology as Sports Tracker. Rather than pushing you onwards and upwards like a digital, pocket-sized Nike advert, Step Counter just works like a pedometer and eschews GPS tomfoolery in favour of a bevy of stats about how far and fast you have been walking.
Using that data, plus info about your height and weight, Step Counter can tell you how many calories you have burnt off during your last promenade. Quite wht this isn’t just another version of Sports Tracker is unclear, but it could be that Nokia just want feedback on certain aspects of this kind of app.
Beta Labs have gone to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of the accelerometer reeadings and reckon that the app should be able to accurately report your pace regardless of how you carry your ophone. Nevertheless they would still appreciate feedback from users, particularly women.
Nokia Beta Labs isn’t just there for the Symbian things in life. As well as pumping out bleeding edge S60 apps at what seems like a rate of twenty or so a day, Nokia have also released experimental PC software - usually novel takes on their synching apps or ways of controlling you phone from the desktop.
Nokias Music is at first glance a bit of a departure, given that it is an iTunes-like music player and organiser that lets you manage your digital music collection and hook up to a wide range of MP3 players. You can knock together playlists and rip CDs directly to connected devices.
Obviously, this primarily intended to e used with Nokia phones like the N81 and N95 but perhaps leaving things open will convince a few people to give a music-oriented smartphone a try - particularly when Nokia rolls out more phone-oriented features like Nokia Music Store integration.
Nokia Music PC Client is a 63MB download for Windows Vista and XP with service pack 2, available here.
Opera have released version 4.51 4.1 of their slimline Opera Mini web browser.
Among a few new features and bug fixes, the big news on the new version is a promised speed increase of up to 50%.
Yes, we know, ‘Up to’. Still, it does *seem* a bit faster. The code itself feels like it has been tightened up a bit and is more responsive and the autocompleting URLs are a definite improvement on slowly tapping out addresses.
Most importantly, Opera have increased the speed of the proxy servers that cache webpages to improve access times. This make a huge difference compared to the native browser on most phones.
Other new features include the ability to upload and download files from within Opera Mini itself (previous versions have had to launch the native browser to achieve this), inline searching of web pages and the ability to save pages for offline reading.
The latter is a great addition to the app and makes it possible to take reading material with you to mobile deadspots (e.g. on a plane) without having to faff about with ebook formats and the like.
Opera Mini is a free Java app, available here.
A new mobile application called Nimbuzz has just launched, and it’s ambitious to say the least. It aims to provide free VoIP calls, conference calls, instant messaging, chat and group chat, and photo and file sharing features, all from one application. Oh, and it works with Skype, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber and ICQ instant messaging services, and 23 social networks (including Facebook and MySpace). In other words, it aims to aggregate all your IM clients and social networks in one place on your phone, consolidating your friends into a single list. It works on more than 500 handsets, while the VoIP features work on over 90 handsets (these are Nokia Symbian Series 60 devices, although Windows Mobile phones will support it in June). Other handsets can still make VoIP-style calls, but over the mobile network. Nimbuzz has actually been available in beta for a while, and has already signed up more than 500,000 users, of whom a quarter are active every month. The company says it’s generating more than a million logins a week, with users from 176 countries having signed up. Nimbuzz is also promising some deals with operators and social networks this summer to help its growth.
We haven’t heard of Momail before, but now that it has added support for Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and just about every other major ISP mail service, it has officially made a blip on our radar.
Basically Momail is a catch all mobile service for your existing email accounts, filtering them all into one ‘Superinbox’ on your mobile while filtering out any spam and customizing them to your phone’s screen. It doesn’t sound like much but essentially it means that data costs are reduced drastically, making media messages less of a drain on your data allowance. Naturally the service also allows you to reply from your phone too, always ensuring that reply mails are sent from the address that received the original mail.
Momail is not a client that you have to download to your phone but rather a service that you set-up online which then configures your existing email client in your handset. Basically that means no bothersome fingers and thumbs optimization headaches. It’s such a simple idea it almost seems strange that we haven’t come across something like this before. Oh, and it’s free too.
MIT is known for being at the forefront of computing and communications, so perhaps its not too surprising to hear that a class entitled “Building Mobile Applications with Android” a) exists and b) has come up with a load of working Android apps before the first android phone hits the shelves.
The apps on show lean heavily towards the social networking end of things, with quite a lot of geolocation going on too. Although these are undeniably cool features, I do sometimes think it would be nice if every once in a while someone would just write a version of ‘Snake’ or something.
Anyway, here is a quick sample of what the latest generation of IT geniuses came up with.
Loco is a mobile social network that links to your phone contacts and lets you view their locations using google maps.
Flare is an employee tracking system for small businesses (e.g. pizza deliveries).
KEI is an intriguing BlueTooth ‘key’ app that can be used with a special receiver to (for example) unlock your car. Quite whether I would want to trust my car to the 128-bit security the app uses is another question.
GeoLife is a nice mashup of a ToDo list with Google Maps - effectively assigning ‘to dos’ to physical locations and reminding you to do them when you reach those locations.
It’s great to see that there are already some bright developers working on Android apps - and the thing hasn’t even come out yet. Imagine the kind of stuff we will start to see once people use an Android phone and find that there are some itches that need to be scratched..
Apple’s doing it for iPhone, and Google’s doing it for Android, so why shouldn’t Research In Motion do it for Blackberry? What’s ‘it’? Why, starting a venture fund for developers creating innovative new applications and services, of course. According to reports, RIM has got together with Canadian VC firm JLA Ventures, bank RBC Venture Partners, and Thomson Reuters to pump $150 million into the Blackberry Partners Fund, with an announcement due later today. It’ll focus mainly on developers creating Blackberry apps (obviously), but may have the freedom to invest elsewhere too. It’s certainly a good time to be a mobile application developer. Especially if you can find enough time and manpower to create (and seek funding for) apps for iPhone, Android AND Blackberry…
The Mobile Entertainment Forum has presented one of it’s annual industry awards - a ‘Meffy’ - to the founders of mobile social networking pioneer UPOC.
The Meffys Special Recognition award was given to Greg Clayman, Gordon Gould and Alex LeVine, the founders of ‘Upoc’ for their part in creating the first mobile social community. Founded in 1999, Upoc was the first corss-carrier SMS community that enabled both two-way chat and ‘broadcast’ information messages that let users receive updates on music and movies.
Global MEF Chair Andrew Bud stressed the importance of social networking apps in today’s mobile world.
“MEF believes that the biggest development in mobile entertainment this year – perhaps the biggest since the ringtone – has been the meteoric rise of mobile social networking,” said Bud, “MEF is proud to present its influential Meffys Special Recognition Award for 2008 to the UPOC Founders for the invention of mobile social networking.”
Actually, I’ve just noticed something about the Upoc logo. Is it really still in beta, or is that just a blatant attempt to get some Web 2.0 cred for this well established service? Hmm.
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