Location based information service WHERE has launched a client for Nokia smartphones.
WHERE uses the inbuilt GPS receiver to pinpoint your location and offers over 60 widgets that identify local services and ’stuff’ like restaurants, petrol stations, landmarks and even local weather and earthquakes.
WHERE also includes the mobile friend finding widget BuddyBeacon. BuddyBeacon shows the location of any friends nearby and lets you share your location via social networking sites like Facebook.
The app is a free download for Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N95 and Nokia N82 phones.
It’s taken longer to get here than most N82 users would have liked, but the much anticipated firmware upgrade v20.0.062 has finally arrived. The reason it is such an anticipated update is chiefly because it adds Flash Lite 3 support including Flash Video which is a bit of a must for a high end handset (except of course the contrary iPhone).
Other additions contained in the update include a new integrated GPS Location tagging feature, camera exposure improvements, improvements to Bluetooth headset interoperability, the addition of Web runtime widgets and various bug fixes.
The software is available now on Nokia Software Updater which you can also get by visiting the Nokia Device Software Update page. If there are any N82 users out there reading this then do let us know in the comments of any other improvements or changes you notice in the update.
Web 2.0 celebrities are ten a penny these days, which is why it is all the more impressive that Nokia has managed to create one of its own convincing counter-culture characters, all in the name of promoting the N82. Enter Stavros, the (presumably Greek) genius of what he has termed ‘position art’.
The idea is that Stavros is a pretentious artist who has managed to stumble upon an idea for a new kind of art that, though a little tongue in cheek, looks like lots of fun. Basically he uses the GPS in his N82 to plot a routes through cities that make pictures. In his own words, the world is his canvass, and the N82 is his brush.
It’s an interesting publicity stunt, not least because in spite of the fact that Stavros and his ‘position art’ is a bare faced attempt to tap into web 2.0 subculture to promote a product (a path that many have failed at before), Stavros is genuinely quite funny. With his polo neck, horn rimmed glasses and broken Borat-esq English, Stavros is hardly an original character, but he is certainly an amusing accompaniment to Nokia’s aggressive push into the GPS market. How long before some less than web savvy artists miss the joke here and have a go at carving their own niche in ‘position art’? Actually, that probably won’t happen but it would be great if it did (especially for Nokia).
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Nokia has finally made good with an official announcement about the long rumored black Nokia N82. Besides the colour change, the device remains exactly the same in every other respect with a 5 megapixel camera, A-GPS, HSDPA connectivity and wi-fi.
So not that exciting really then but it does bring Nokia’s Nseries into alignment aesthetically. With the N81, N96 and N78 all sharing a similar piano black finish and other echoing accents, the N82 will now appear much more like part of the family. Could it be that Nokia is set to take a much stronger approach to creating brand identity for its handsets in the wake of the iconic iPhone?
That might be a bit of a leap of faith on our part but it certainly seems that way. Hit the jump for more shots of the N82 in its shiny new clothes.
Continue reading ‘Nokia announces black N82′
K-NFB, a company affiliated to the US National Association for the Blind, make a product called the “knfb Reader” - this is basically a digital camera attached to a PDA running OCR and text-to-speech software.
The idea is that blind and partially sighted people can point the device at some text (e.g. a sign or a printed page) and let the PDA analyse it and read it out to them. The system works well, but the reader is bulky and costs just under $4000.
If you think “a digital camera attached to a PDA” sounds a bit like a mobile phone, perhaps you should consider applying for a job with K-NFB’s R&D team.
knfb Mobile Reader uses a Nokia N82 to do the ‘camera & PDA’ bits, but otherwise operates just like it’s predecessor.
The reader is still expensive at around $1500 plus the cost of the handset, but is a lot easier and more discrete to carry around and, of course, can be used as a mobile phone to boot.
Momail, the mobile email service that aggregates all your email accounts into one inbox on your phone, has passed the 1,000 mark in terms of the handsets it supports.
Examples of the latest Momail-compatible phones are Apple’s iPhone, the LG Viewty, Motorola RAZR V9 and Q9h, Nokia N82 and 8800 Arte, Samsung P520 Armani and Sony Ericsson’s K660i, W380i and W890i.
Currently Momail is available in five Nordic countries, the UK and soon, Germany and Poland. More countries will follow in 2008.
While Momail is certainly a useful and easy to use service, letting you view attachments and featuring its own built-in Spam filter, there is a catch. It is free to download to your phone, but of course you do have to pay for the data downloads of emails delivered to your phone. If you get a lot of emails, you’ll get a lot of data charges.
Not much to say about this except the N82 is already one of the best cameraphones around and it seems to have been given a lick of paint. Web speculation seems to be focused on a black version a la the N95, but we have to admit this ‘milk white’ version - if real - is something really rather special. Enjoy!
[Via Symbian Freak]
This year it seems like the Nokia NSeries devices have been breeding like rabbits. We have the N81, N82, N95, N95 8GB and N73, and now the daddy of them all has emerged – the N96.
Pics have appeared on Flickr, originating from a Chinese source of a real-life, actual N96 handset – apparently not a mock-up or render, but actual pictures.
Jusding by the pictures, the N95 is a dual-slider with a button-less top screen (presumably for touch-screen controls?). It also has a navigation wheel like the N81’s with media controls. The OS is apparently the S60 3rd edition FP2 (i.e. Symbian OS 9.5).
Camera-wise it has a five-megapixel camera with the now ubiquitous (on NSeries at least) Carl Zeiss optics. Interestingly, there’s a stand on the back of the N96 for easier media viewing
There’s no official news on this device yet, but judging by the success of the N95 (and its 8GB incarnation), this could be the big handset of next year.
[Via Intomobile]
Nokia’s released an exclusive ‘adventure pack’ for its brand spanking new N82, just in time for Christmas.
Available only from Nokia’s online store, the ‘adventure pack’ includes a Sim-free N82 (naturally), but also a pre-installed copy of Nokia’s Sports Tracker app and a Salomon backpack, as well as the 2GB microSD card and music headset which come as standard. And all this for only £399.
The phone itself is quite a nifty piece of kit with a five-megapixel camera, built-in GPS and Nokia Maps (in case you get lost while jogging), mobile internet (on 3G and Wi-Fi), plus a music player and FM radio.
The handset, currently available on O2 with a range of mobile retailers is already a pretty hot device, and presumably the ‘adventure pack’ is going to prove pretty attractive for sports enthusiasts.
The official N-Gage blog has announced that the new N-Gage service launches next week (Yay!) Unfortunately it’s only on the N81 for the time being (Boo!).
While Nokia’s keeping to its promise of a pre-Christmas launch, the restriction to N81 and N81 8GB will surely disappoint N82 and N95 8GB owners hoping for some gaming action this Crimbo.
There’ll only be a few games available at launch and won’t be the full version of the service, but it’s a start. Those who want to leave feedback (i.e. complain) about the lack of support can do so on the First Access forums, which will also be opened for business.
Looks like we’ll all have to wait until 2008 for a full service on the rest of Nokia’s Nseries handsets.
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