Excitingnews – I was a guest on this week’s Phones Show Chatpodcast!
David recording with the Phones Show Chat team
Quite a while ago, I posted about some of my favourite podcasts, and Steve Litchfield’s Phones Show was one of my video choices. Since then, along with Tim Salmon, Steve launched a companion audio-only weekly podcast where they discuss mobile phones and applications.
I recently wrote an article in which I compared Nokia’s Ovi Maps application to Google’s mobile Google Maps application, for Series 60 phones. I’m pleased to say it’s just been published on Allaboutsymbian.com.
When it comes to S60, we are fortunate to have a choice of which mapping application we use, but which is best? Is it Ovi Maps (née Nokia Maps), with its worldwide pre-loaded maps, voice navigation and PC integration, or is it Google Maps with the power of Google search, high-res satellite imagery and the perfect price? David Gilson has been testing both, and here reports on his findings.
Click here to read it. Comments are welcome here and at AAS.
Nokia Share Online with Furtiv's added social media gateways for Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube
Furtiv, a new internet start up in Helsinki, is creating a service to be a social media gateway, making it easier to send content from your phone to all of the various social media websites.
Their first beta project is an addition to Nokia’s Share Online application. Most new Nokia handsets come with the Share Online application allowing you to upload photos to Flickr, Ovi and Vox. Furtiv uses the API from this application to create gateways to more websites, like Facebook, Picassa, Twitter (via Twitpic.com and Vid.ly for video) and Youtube.
They are using the open Atom standard to achieve this, and they implement it in such a way that you don’t even need to have an account with them. Furtiv’s presence is completely transparent, once you get everything set up by visiting http://furtiv.mobi on your Nokia browser. Further instructions on getting set up can be found here.
I’ve tested this service out and it works perfectly. To qualify this, I tried it along with other readers from AllAboutSymbian.com who read about it there. Possibly coincidence, or possibly with us all flooding the service, but there were some early teething troubles. This is to be expected with any new system, although the Furtiv team had it fixed again surprisingly quickly, so kudos for that.
The benefits of this service are clear to see. Being able to plug-in to existing services on your handset saves having to install any extra phone applications. It also saves you having to figure out how to use e-mail portals and mobile site uploads. Every site you could want to upload to is there in your phone’s own services. This has the potential to remove more inertia in the way of the proliferation of social media, especially for non-technically inclined users, which can only be a good thing. Not withstanding Facebook becoming littered with as much mindless content as can be found on Youtube!
You can find Furtiv on Twitter, @furtiv, and read their blog and FAQ. Thanks to @rafeblandford from AllAboutSymbian for posting a heads up article about this.
Okay, time for my first favourite video podcast. This is “The Phones Show“ (formally known as “The Smartphones Show”). This is a one man phone review show by the gentlemanly Steve Litchfield. You may be forgiven for not knowing who Steve is. Although, for anyone (like myself) who was into handheld computing back in the late 90′s (just before the web went mainstream), Steve was there running his 3Lib site supplying useful articles and software reviews for Psion (and later Palm) handheld computers. In fact, Steve reviewed my only ever shareware software release, “Analyser” for Psion Series 3a/c/mx palmtop computers.
The Phones Show
Considering that handheld computing has shifted into smartphones, with new and old handheld platforms, Steve Litchfield was just the man to step up and tell us what’s what!
With the phones show, you get honest and down to Earth reviews of the latest and greatest smart (and not so smart) phones. The show has been sponsored by Nokia in the past, and currently by their mobile Symbian based operating system “Series 60“, which may account for the greater supply of Nokia review models. This is no bad thing, as Nokia are still dominant in the mobile market, and Steve will let you know which Nokias to go after and which ones to avoid. Having said that, just about every other smartphone brand and operating system is amply catered for too.
Steve reviewing the latest Nokia smartphone
I can say all of this knowing I have put my money where my mouth is. Steve’s review of the Nokia E51 was instrumental in me ending my year long search for my ideal smartphone. A fantastic handset which I have since reviewed too.
Well, if all of that has interested you enough, here are the links you’ll need:
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google
Flickr
YouTube
RSS
