Writing about Symbian

I’ve been busy on a few writing assignments lately, so I thought I’d do a quick round up!

I’ve had a couple of reviews published on All About Symbian. The first was a co-authored piece about a new cloud service called “Rseven“. This is a sort of lifecasting service, where everything that passes through your phone can be saved onto the Rseven servers. Even if you delete something from your phone, it remains in their servers, but is just excluded from PIM sync. You can even record and upload phone calls, which are then displayed as part of your Rseven calendar. It’s an interesting concept, although I found the website needed a lot of usability work, and my sensitivities for privacy were particularly stinging from the idea of this service.

The second review I had published was for a nice little application called “SMS Chat“. This is a useful application which presents your text messages in the form of a two-way conversation, and has a rather fun interface. Has a bunch of other features too, like scheduling outgoing messages. Also, when I mentioned to the makers about a feature I thought was missing from the app, they went into rapid development mode to get it added in. The only downside, as the comments on my review rightly pointed out, it’s expensive for what it is.

I also have also written a follow up to my Twitter apps for Symbian feature. The comments on my original feature mentioned so many apps and web services I hadn’t heard of, it was clear that I should write a follow up piece. It turned out there are seventeen options for using Twitter on Symbian phones, with a range of 46 individual features. So that meant I had to do a an eye-watering 782 feature checks. I did it though and it’ll be published on All About Symbian on today, read it here.

The nice guys at AllAboutSymbian have also loaned me a Nokia 5530 touch screen phone. This is useful for me in two ways. First it’s a 5th edition S60 phone, I only had 3rd edition phones, so there’s more apps I can review now. Also, I’ve been a touch screen sceptic, so now I can actually get hands-on with one. I have to say, it feels horrible to be spreading finger prints all over its lovely screen all the time

I’ve also written a review of the best Twitter application for Symbian, Gravity, for CNET UK, which if not published today, I’m hoping it’ll go out soon. You can read it -here- (place-holder for link).

Nate Lanxon interviewing Dr Pamela Gay of Astronomy cast for episode 117 of the CNET UK Podcast (Copyright 2008, Nate Lanxon. Used with permission)

Before getting into the content, I’ll give kudos to the guys who produce this for being one of the most ever-evolving shows I’ve listened to. The format of the show often reinvents itself, so the following run down is subject to vary. All that said, every week you can at least expect to hear discussions about a selection of news stories from the tech world, followed by reviews of new gadgets and products from each host, followed up by answers to listener submitted questions from the CNET UK Forum. The podcast has its own dedicated forum section, called the CNET UK Podcast Lounge. Time for full disclosure, I have been a listener of the podcast for so long that they made me a moderator on the Podcast Lounge, so please take my bias into account when I say I think you really ought to come and join the Podcast Lounge where you can discuss and rant about tech to your heart’s content!

The show is currently running a three presenter set up, with Ian Morris (@ian9outof10) and Nate Lanxon (@natelanxon) as permanent hosts. The third host usually varying between Rich Trenholm, Nick Hide, Andrew Lim, Rory Reid, and occaisionally Jason Jenkins.

One last thing to throw in, another reason I enjoy the CNET UK Podcast is that it is one of the very few UK tech podcasts. Most of the podcasts I listen to are American, which is fine, I like Americans, although nothing beats a topic you enjoy being covered with people from your own culture.

At the time of writing, episode 123 was the latest episode, which you can listen to here:

[audio:http://cdn.cnet.co.uk/cnetcouk/podcasts/crave/cnetuk_podcast_123.mp3|titles=CNET UK Podcast Episode 123|artists=Ian Morris - Nate Lanxon - Rich Trenholm]

Now, if you’ve liked what you’ve seen and heard so far, you’ll be needing the following links.

• CNET UK Podcast page
• CNET UK Podcast RSS Feed

Nokia E55

Nokia E75

• Best of the forums this week: Steve Jobs to retire?
• Kohjinsha SX: Netbook in integrated DVD drive shocker
• Best of the forums this week: Why Earth hasn’t imploded

Well, on their latest podcast, episode 117, reviewing 2008, I am proud to say I was given an honourable mention by Nick Hide for one my longest running forum threads, “Tip of the day“. After which Nate Lanxon gave this website a plug and Kate Macefield said I was a nice guy too.

So thanks to everyone at CNET UK, it’s been fun doing my bit on the forum and here’s to 2009!

Now, without further ado, you can listen to an except of the podcast via this snazzy player I’ve just installed (if you want to go download the full podcast, this is from about 27:28 into the audio).

[audio:http://ia310833.us.archive.org/0/items/ClipFromEpisode117OfTheCnetUkPodcastFeaturingAShoutOutToDavid/cnetuk_podcast_117_drg_clip_64kb.mp3]
(Download)

I am pretty much settled that I know what I’m doing with this thing, I even worked how how to pull the database in and out via phpMyadmin, so that’s good.

I’ve been thinking about content, as I know I won’t have a constant flow of content from my own mind (which is where miniblog helps). I have a few tech articles written on my LiveJournal from long ago. I’ve heard that duplicating content won’t do me any favours in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO). However, I plan to replace the original entries with a link saying “This entry has been moved here”, pointing to this blog. Another thing I’m thinking about is some content I produced for the Crave Podcast Lounge. I made a thread there called “Tip of the Day”. So I’m wondering about copy-pasting all my old tips from there to here. Again, it’s repetition though, although it is all material I spent time creating, and I’m under no sort of agreement with CNET that anything I write there is theirs exclusively. Actually their site’s ToS states:

You are solely responsible for all materials, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, that you upload, post, e-mail, transmit, or otherwise make available on our sites (“Your Content”). You certify that you own all intellectual property rights in Your Content. You hereby grant us, our affiliates, and our partners a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, nonexclusive, sublicensable license to use, reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, transfer, transmit, distribute, and publish Your Content and subsequent versions of Your Content for the purposes of (i) displaying Your Content on our sites, (ii) distributing Your Content, either electronically or via other media, to users seeking to download or otherwise acquire it, and/or (iii) storing Your Content in a remote database accessible by end users, for a charge. This license shall apply to the distribution and the storage of Your Content in any form, medium, or technology now known or later developed.

Non-exclusive is the key word here. They don’t have exclusive rights on anything I publish on their site. So I think it’s reasonable to think I have, at least some, rights on content I put up there. Anyway, it’s just something I’m thinking about doing, as I wrote a lot of good stuff there.

The blog won’t be moving across to www.davidgilson.co.uk for a week or so yet, as the very nice chap who runs this server is getting married this weekend. Speaking of which …

I’d like to wish Ryan and Vicky the most fantastic day ever, and I’m sorry I’m not there!