Now this is what I call proper Web 2.0 on mobile. Nokia’s Serena Glover has been talking to MocoNews about the company’s plans for its Ovi services, and this nugget leapt out at me:
“With Ajax on the Web, there’s so much functionality - you can drag and drop and do more all the time. The same thing will happen on the device.”
This is part of a discussion about the way multimedia stuff happens through applications downloaded to your phone right now, rather than directly in the mobile web browser, as they do for PC based users.Glover says Nokia is working to change this, for example by hooking up your handset’s camera directly to the browser “so you don’t have dual experiences”. It’s intriguing stuff, although it also ties into the debate I just posted about, where including Ajax and other Web 2.0 technologies swells the size of websites, which isn’t always good for mobile browsing.
What’s the connection between Kylie Minogue and Nokia?
No, the Finnish mobile giant hasn’t started wearing hotpants and banging out G.A.Y.-friendly floor fillers, nor has the diminutive diva started transmitting in the 3G spectrum.
No, the real answer is- despite repeated attempts, neither of them can seem to ‘break’ America.
Although the earlier S40 phones do fairly well, US carriers seem wary of the open nature of S60 smartphones, and these have never really taken off, stateside.
Nokia currently has around 40% of global mobile sales, but accounts for only 10% of the US market. In part this is due to the company’s lack of CDMA handsets, a situation that looks likely to improve.
In an interview with Helsinki newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, Nokia designer Alastair Curtis said that the company had been cooperating with several US operators and that “a lot of new products” were in the works, including CDMA handsets and existing models tailored to US carriers.
If you use the Internet from your phone but are unlucky enough to pay for your 3G usage you probably like the idea of using a wifi-enabled mobile like the Nokia N95. This works great, but it can be a hassle having to reconnect every time you want to go online in a different place and it is easy to forget and use your 3G instead. If you are in a foreign country this can be a VERY expensive mistake.
Psiloc Connect offers a simple solution with the kind of conection management that you would think your phone would do by default. Certainly, if I were a Nokia developer I would be kicking myself for not thinking of this first.
The app does all the hard work for you - just give it a list of wifi access points (or tell it to discover some) and it will try each in order of strength, only falling back on your 3G connection if the wifi fails. If you are really worried about your phone bill, it can be set to ignore the 3G option and just use wifi.
Psiloc Connect is available here for around 10 euros, with a free 10 day trial.
Over at (of all places) Lastminute.com, there is a team of obviously bored-yet-talented programmers who own a couple of Nokia N95 phones.
At the recent Over The Air 48-hour codeathon at Imperial College, they came up with Phone Fight - possibly the world’s first and only Bluetooth/Accelerometer-powered virtual swordfighting app.
Armed with your Nokia blade, Python for S60 and the Phone Fight app you can challenge your frineds to duels, complete with clanging sound effects.
All very silly, and could perhaps use a lightsaber mode, but fun nonetheless.
Here is a quick YouTube vid of an epic phone battle:
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.
Nokia Beta Labs has released an update to the Nokia Maps app for S60 3rd Edition phones that adds realtime traffic updates to the device.
Using data gathered from collaborators ARC Transistance (they only sound like a form of radiation, they are in fact a Europe-wide body of automotive clubs like the AA) the Maps app will show traffic troublespots near your vehicle updated in as near to real time as your connection and their servers will allow which will let you steer your way trhough any roadworks, jams or other hazards.
Not that you should be gazing at your mobile while driving, of course. Hmm. Maybe you should get a passenger to check it for you.
There seems to be a slight bug in the current release that causes the app to download too much trafifc data at once, so it might be worth holding off on this one for a couple of days.
Nokia’ chief designer has dropped some hints about the kind of user interfaces the company are investigating.
You might assume that Alastair Curtis would be gleaning ideas from iPhone, Android, the OLPC wiior any number of communications or computing devices but no, he was spending a lot of his time playing with his Nintendo Wii and checking out the emotional feedback from his nunchucks.
“I bought the Wii almost the day it came out. The emotional feedback is three or four times more emotionally engaging than PS3 or Xbox 360,” says Curtis, “We’re starting to do that in the 6600 Fold. We have to do that more and more.”
Curtis uses the example of turning a phone upside down to put it into silent mode as an example of ‘meaningful insight’ into the kind of emotional feedback people can get from their handsets.
Interestingly, much of what he is talking about is already being implemented by the homebrew programming community. FlipSilent does exactly what he describes and there is even a project out there that lets your control your N95 using an actual Wii remote.
With many environmentalists concerned with the amount of energy that is wasted by devices that remain plugged in on standby it is worth bearing in mind that most phone chargers spend more time plugged in and not charging anything at all. Even if you unplug it when not in use, if you charge your phone overnight, the phone will be fully charged after a few hours and you are wasting energy.
Nokia has come up with one solution in the form of the ‘Zero Waste’ charger. This clever little device works a little bit like one of those power-surge protectors you might use with a lawnmower or a drill. A big green button on the back of the charger turns on the power. When your phone is charged, the button pops out and the power is cut off.
Nokia news blog NokNok.tv got their hands on a prototype model and put together this video for your viewing pleasure:
Whisher is a wifi sharing service that asks its members to share their home wireless connection in return for free access to its network - by sharing you effectively become part of that network, allowing Whisher members in your area to use your link.
The service has a substantial number of hotspots worldwide. including hundreds in the UK but the network only supported connections from a Windows or Mac machine running Whisher’s software.
Until now, anyway. Whisher has just launched a client app that will give access to any wifi-enabled Symbian S60 3rd edition Nokia phone.
The app is free to download for Whisher members and installs as a plugin to the Nokia wifi app. Selecting “1Click Whisher” from the connections menu will bring up a list of local connections with icons indicating if they are Free, Commercial or part of the Wisher network.
If any of you have any experience of using Whisher, please let us know in the comments. Is it any good? Just how common are their hotspots in your area?
By all accounts, the Nokia 3600 slide appears to be a budget version of the Nokia 6600 slide, also announced today. Though it still sports some nice metallic design details, it doesn’t seem to house quite so much steel as the 6600 slide, though it does share much of it’s feature set including a 3.2 megapixel camera and pre-installed Nokia Maps application (also sans GPS sadly).
Gone is the double tap feature of the 6600 fold and 6600 slide but extras include a TV-out feature, and a background noise cancellation gizmo, a first for any Nokia handset apparently. Music is also much more on the agenda here with a 4GB micro SD slot tying the feature set into a cohesive whole.
This one’s a little lighter on the wallet too at just 175 Euros (about £140) which by all accounts isn’t too steep. Hit the jump for more pictures.
Continue reading ‘Nokia 3600 slide completes the trio of new releases’
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