The coolest things for the coolest phones
Wifi connection management can be a bit fiddly on Windows Mobile, but WeFi looks like it might be a step in the right direction.
When activated, the app searches for nearby wifi hotspots and grade the quality of their connection before connecting you to the best. You can specify an app to launch as soon as a connecton is made and WeFi will also alert you if your IM contacts are online.
Here is a quick YouTube clip showing the app in action:
With such a small amount of storage available on most smart phones, and such a wealth of interesting software, DivX movies and MP3s to fill them up with, it can be tricky to avoid running out of space.
On Windows Mobile/Pocket PC handhelds, a useful way of checking on your memory usage is the freeware app DirMap, now in versionn 1.7.
After analysing your files and prorgams, DirMap displays a graphical map of what it finds.
The App divides your storage up into coloured boxes, the size and shasde of which are based on the size of the files therien. The effect is like an ever-changing lo-res Mondrian painting.
Tapping on a box will display information about its contents, allowing you to drill down and find out the properties of individual files and see exactly where your memory card is going.
Social music site Last.FM uses a process called ‘Audioscrobbling’ to automatically grab data about music you are listening to and upload it to a central database.
Data from ’scrobbled’ tracks is used to build up a profile of your musical taste. Last.FM uses this profile to assemble a personalised streaming music station of similar artists and musical styles.
Asplayer is a Python app that brings this functionality to S60 3rd Edition phones for the first time. It only supports the scrobbling side of the equation at the moment - artist and title data from tracks played on your phone’s media player are uploaded to Last.FM using your internet connection - you will still need to go to the Last.FM website in order to listen to your customised playlist.
Asplayer is available here and requires a copy of Python for S60 and an account with Last.Fm, all available for free.
Pocket Picks takes no responsibility for readers whose musical taste generates streams of 80s hair metal or progressive jazz. You have only yourselves to blame.
Hmm. We can’t see this one lasting very long
At first glance, Google2Go seems like a Googlized version of Yahoo! Go - Yahoo’s Symbian and Windows Mobile portal app. And it kind of is. Kind of.
Google2Go is in no way an official Google product, and seems to have been knocked together by a fan of the big G who liked the idea of Yahoo! Go, but who prefers the mobile web to be a bit more, y’know, Googly.
The app is fairly well put together, allowing access to many Google services including Gmail, Reader, Google Docs, Picasa and Google Calender. It runs on Windows Mobile 6 ( there are reports of some WinMo 5 phones working too).
We can’t really imagine that Google will suffer this to live - maintaining the brand identity and all that - but it is a reasonable effort and is available as freeware (thank goodness - I hate to think what would happen to the guy if he tried charging for it).
It’s testament to how deeply the iPhone has got under people’s skins that there are so many ‘tribute’ skins, mods and hacks out there, designed to make your humble handset look like Apple’s finest. Windows Mobile seems to be particularly afflicted/blessed - most likely due to the proliferation of touchscreens, although expect that to change if Nokia ever roll out their Touch UI.
iFonz is a pretty decent stab at the form - it’s a well-written bit of freeware for Windows Mobile that smoothly animates an iPhone-esque interface that looks pretty convincing -until you actually open an app and return to uglytown with a bump.
Here is a short video of iFonz in action (caution, video may cause neck strain) and full marks to me for finishing this post without any reference to Happy Days.
Time was when using a mobile to help you with your stock portfolio consisted mainly of yelling “Sell, sell, SELL!” into a handset the size of a small family car while ignoring the disparaging looks from fellow train passengers.
Today, keeping track of share prices is a far more sedate affair, thanks to the combo of an S60 phone, My Portfolio and Google Finance.
Google Finance is yet another of Google’s online services - this time focused on tracking stock market indexes and share performance. It’s a free signup (if you use GMail, etc you already have a login) and you can use it to create and monitor a personal portfolio of share prices.
My Portfolio is a freeware app for Symbian S60 3rd Edition from SymbianGuru that connects to a Google Finance account and downloads regular updates on how well the listed companies are performing.
The app also lists the share history and an overview about each company.
There is no guarantee that this will stop you losing a fortune, but at least the app itself is free.
PocketToolman is a system tray utility for Windows Mobile 6 that gives instant access to all your mobile’s settings.
Frankly, most users will find the level of control to be overkill - I mean, how many people regularly enable & disable their menu animations or increase the number of TCP retransmissions? How many people even know what that means?
If however you are one of those users who likes to fiddle with your phone to squeeze out every last drop of performance, this is ideal. All your phone’s settings can be accessed with just a few taps - rather than via a hunt through the control panel icons - and you can perform soft resets and manipulate running programs through a built-in taskmanager.
PocketToolman is freeware and is written with the HTC line of phones in mind, but most of its features apply to other Windows Mobile 6 phones too.
Basels Reply v2.0 for Windows Mobile works a bit like Anfy Call Filter for S60.
It’s an ‘answering machine’ for your mobile but, rather than playing callers an amusing message in a funny voice and then recording their voicemail, Basels Reply uses SMS.
In ‘reply mode’, Basels will simply text a short message to any incoming caller. Nice, but not that interesting.
In ’server mode’ however - things take a turn for the weird-yet-possibly-useful.
You can configure Basels Reply to respond to a list of SMS commands prefixed with the letters ‘br’. e.g. if someone texts you with the command ‘br status’ Basels can reply with a bit of user-supplied text explaining what you are up to.
It’s like an on-demand Twitter. A bit.
Basels Reply is freeware, available here.
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