Jan 31
Mobile News David
allaboutsymbian, app, application, mobile, nokia, s60, series60, symbian, Twitter
Twitter on Symbian
A while ago I set about doing a survey of all the Twitter applications I knew of for Series60 phones. As I explored them I built up a list of features, 44 in all, across eight, in which I included m.twitter.com, giving me a total of 352 feature checks to perform.
Since I’m still inducting myself into the world of journalism, I took this as an opportunity to introduce myself to some developers. Doing that was a really positive experience, you get to have an exchange of views, and in some cases, contribute to the direction of their plans, albeit in small ways.
Strange as it might sound, the downside was that I got to know about up-coming features. It worked out that three of the eight were close to releasing new versions. So not wanting my article to be outdated within a week, I decided to hold it back while they got their testing done. This was fine, but it was something of a mental weight to bear, knowing that the article was just hanging there waiting to be completed. Fate took a hand when the editor of AllAboutSymbian.com (that’s who I was writing this for) e-mailed me one night last week to ask if the article could be published the following day. Since by then, two out of three apps were already updated, and the developers of the third had said not to wait for them, I replied that I could have it ready go.
The comments posted on the article (see my publications page), were as I expected. A steady stream of you didn’t review X or Y application. To clearly show the features of each application, I’d constructed a table, which formed the core of the article. After publication I spotted it had some errors. Frustrating, but it was still over 98% accurate 
So, there’ll be two publications coming out of this project, as I’ll be posting an updated version of the feature table. I’ve already corrected my errors, and have compiled a list of even more Series60 Twitter applications, bringing the total up from eight to seventeen!
Now, forty-four checks per application, and nine more applications to check, so that means I have to do … 
Edit/Update
I did the follow up article for All About Symbian, where I covered seventeen Twitter applications and services for S60 phones. Read it here.
Jan 25
Mobile News David
allaboutsymbian, free navigation, google, handsets, local area, map, mobile, money, Nav, navigation applications, nokia, ovi, pedestrians, phone, poi, Publications, rewrite, Sat
Mobile Map Applications
Last week, the big news of the mobile tech world was that Nokia released free navigation on all of its handsets. This means that if you buy a Nokia phone from now on, you will automatically have Sat-Nav, for no extra cost, and the maps can be preloaded from your computer, saving you money on data charges.
Where did I come into this? Well, only two months ago, I’d written an article on AllAboutSymbian.com called “Battle of the Maps” where I compared Ovi Maps against Google Mobile Maps. Of course, with this ground-shifting change from Nokia ,that article became outdated, and a rewrite was called for to reflect the news.
Writing it the first time was a tricky proposition because there are too many variables to write such a piece fairly. I looked at what mapping & navigation applications do, and accordingly split my assessment into five areas, which, IMHO, was a reasonable thing to do. The complication comes with that for each potential type of user, none of those areas could be considered with equal importance, e.g. pedestrians vs drivers. So, I had to make a controversial decision, I gave them all equal importance. That way at least I’d equally displease everyone!
Thanks to the comments left on that article, I soon found the situation was even more complicated. It’s reasonable to say that I was limited to testing these areas only in my local area, and I have no need to travel very far, very often. Although we had reports from around the world at how the things I’d tested for were different from place to place.
Ovi Maps in action with the Michelin guide
The result of my original article was that Google Mobile Maps won with 3.5 points against Ovi Maps with 1.5 points, out of the five areas. With the introduction of free navigation in Ovi Maps, the score was swung to a draw in the rewritten article. This still displeased people, and I see why. My own experience has lead me to prefer Google Mobile Maps because it is just faster. Even the new Ovi Maps 3.3 is somewhat of a resource hog and is slow to load, but then perhaps that is just my phone (an E55). So, even now with all the new features, I’ll be reluctant to rely on Ovi Maps when I know that Google Maps will do what I need with much greater speed. I think Ovi Maps has one trick for pedestrian navigation that Google Maps doesn’t, and that is voice guidance. Even then though, if I’m in a noisy area, I’m not going to be able to hear it, and I don’t walk around with earphones or a hands-free kit.
But this is a complicated and fertile area for discussion and research, and I can think of a way to make a more comprehensive assessment of which is the best tool for which job. I’m not disclosing my exact idea though, as it’s not yet developed. Also, I’m not sure I can really do the research on my own.
So there you are, the new rewrite is listed on my publications page, and you can see it by clicking here.
Continue reading …
Jan 13
Mobile News David
3g, app, application, joikusoft, joikuspot, mobile, modem, phone, relay, store, symbian, tethering, wifi, windows
Joikuspot
Quick update to say I’ve had a review of Joikuspot Premium published on CNET UK.
“What on earth is Joiku … what what?” I hear you say? Well it’s a little application which runs on your Symbian or Windows Mobile smart phone, and turns it into a WiFi hotspot. It does this by allowing any WiFi devices in range to open a connection with your phone, and then relays all their internet bound traffic from the WiFi connection to the 3G internet connection of your phone.
Yes, it does have the potential to wind up being expensive if you don’t have a flat rate data plan, but it’s an excellent tool to have in an emergency, e.g. if your home internet goes down.
I’m also pleased to say this is my second publication with CNET UK, and I have a few more in the pipeline too. This one, like all the rest, is now linked to on my publications page.
Jan 12
Mobile News David
3rd edition, 5th edition, app, application, encyclopeadia, j1ck, java, mobile, Review, s60, series 60, series60, symbian, web, widipedia, wiki
Wikipedia Mobile
I’m very happy to be posting again about having a feature published on AllAboutSymbian.com.
This time I wrote about reading Wikipedia on your Symbian device. There’s long been a mobile website, but only now have two applications for reading Wikipedia on your phone appeared. I reviewed them both and compared them to the mobile website.
If you’d like to know what I found out, click here.
Jan 5
Mobile News David
allaboutsymbian, audacity, camera, flash, GIMP, hi-def, LED, mobile, phone, publication, screen-cast, symbian, tutorial, video, youtube
LED Flash
I’m currently writing several features for Allaboutsymbian again, and the first of them was published there last night. Here’s a link.
A while ago, I noticed that photos taken on my Nokia E55, with its LED flash, were casting the people in an unnatural blue tint. One day I couldn’t take it any more and fired up The GIMP to see what I could do to tweak these colours. I was so stunned at the results I obtained with such little effort that I had to write about it.
Originally, I was going to post here, but then it struck me that the only people with this problem are people taking photos on camera phones, so since I was already contributing to AllAboutSymbian it seemed logical to publish there instead.
While writing, I realised it was going to be a super-dry read, and that a screen-cast video would be a much more appropriate choice of medium. So, this was my first experience of capturing and rendering a hi-def screen capture. I had a few hiccups along the way, the most problematic was sound. I don’t have a proper microphone, and so was stuck using the laptop mic, which would have been fine, but my laptop’s fan is super noisy. So, I had to apply some noise reduction in Audacity, which worked, but did leave me sounding kind of tinny and muted, at least to my ears.
It also pushed my four year old laptop to the limits, scrubbing along in Kdenlive made it choke a little, and actually completing a two-pass render took around 90 minutes (for a 6 minute video!). I really lamented having to buy a laptop when I did, because I only missed getting the first dual core CPU’s by three to four months 
Anyway, I’m pleased with the overall result, and it’s another article to add to my publication list!
Click below to see the video …
Continue reading …
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