Symbian in Motion

SHAPE Services S60 3rd Applications, part 2 - AllFinder

AllFinder is another great app by SHAPE Services - allowing you to search keywords in your messages (SMS, MMS, and emails), contacts, and calendar entries. For business users and personal users alike, AllFinder provides a quick and simple way to locate items.

The app itself is wonderfully simple with very few options. The main screen is home to your search history and an entry box. You can either scroll through and select an item that you have previously searched for, or you can type in a new keyword(s) to search. Then simply hit the center key on the joystick to begin your search or press the left soft key to open access the few available options.

Searches are completed quite quickly compared to similar apps. Once the search is finished your results are displayed along with text clips showing your keywords and their immediate surroundings.

AllFinder is an app that serves a very specific purpose and does so quite well. When you’re searching for one or a few items among countless SMS messages and emails, this app really comes in handy. I’m actually surprised at how often I use it. When I vaguely recall a friend having sent me a phone number that I need in an SMS, I have the SMS on my screen in 10 seconds. When I wonder what date it was back in 2005 when I had a meeting with a certain company, AllFinder can tell me in a fraction of the time it would take to look through my calendar. If you find yourself with a smartphone full of data then there is no question that AllFinder will make your life much easier.

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For those of you who use Widsets on your S60 3rd device, I just used the widsets dev kit to put together an official widget for this blog. You can download it here. There’s also a link in the sidebar. There was already a widget collecting the feed from this blog created by mrcreativity (thanks mrcreativity) but I wanted to have a play with the dev kit anyway…

If you haven’t heard of Widsets, check out the site. It’s pretty neat actually, but very slow on my N80IE. Esentially it’s a [FREE] visual management tool and delivery system for RSS feeds. There are tons of widgets on the site so have a play.

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Wirefree - an independent Symbian developer - is currently looking for beta testers with s60 2nd and s60 3rd devices. He has posted on various forums including mobile9, HoFo and SF, but it’s hard for people to distinguish between a genuine request and spam. Well I’ve had a few conversations with this developer and everything seems in order.

A bit about the app: WrU? - which is short for ‘Where Are You?’ - is an app that utilizes cell ID location and SMS to allow users to automatically deliver location reports to desired recipients. Pretty cool! Location data is extracted from ‘behind the scenes’ CBMs (cell broadcast messages) that are automatically received by mobile devices each time a user enters a new cell, and periodically thereafter. A quote from the developer:

“Sample Scenario: You are heading for a date (or a bizness meeting) & would like keep him/her updated of your movement thru town as you make your way towards hir. Simply initiate application’s tracking engine to send automatic location updates at regular, user-defined intervals.”

Wirefree is looking for both s60 2nd and s60 3rd beta testers, but there is currently more of a need for s60 2nd. If you have an s60 2nd device lying around or if you know someone who does, please do sign up.

The betas should be released soon and I’ll update this post with approximate dates once they’re available. All beta participants will be eligible for a free license once the release version is made available.

To register, click here.

Remember, the real value of s60 lies in third party apps and their developers. It’s not often that a developer interacts on this level with their potential customers - it’s actually refreshing. Supporting developers results in more (and better) apps, plain and simple. Plus, you’ll get a free app! Nothing wrong with that…

;)

Here is some additional info (note that all screenshots are pre-graphics):

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I’ve been waiting for a long time for Emblaze to release an S60 3rd version of emoze. For those who don’t know, emoze is a free system that allows you to sync emails, contacts and calendar events between Outlook/Lotus Notes and your mobile device. That’s right, it syncs with your PC app rather than a server so security issues with Exchange go out the window!

As anyone who has ever spoken to me knows, the one thing I hate most about my precious N80IE is the absurdly awful battery life. Because of that I can pretty much forget about running any decent java app on my device. Up until now, emoze was one of the few apps that I honestly missed having on my phone. Well my ‘prayers’ (complaints actually, I suppose) have finally been answered and emoze is now available - for free - as an s60 3rd app. Rejoice!

emoze is fast, easy to use, and very configurable. I use it exclusively for my Exchange email so I have not tested any PIM functionality but from what I’ve read PIM syncing works just as well.

First things first. Go to the emoze site and download the appropriate PC Connector software and Symbian app (the Symbian installer is included in the PC Connector download package). Installation on your PC is a breeze and once the installation is complete you are even pointed to the folder on your hard drive containing the Symbian installer files. Pick the appropriate one and send it to your phone with the Application Installer in PC Suite.

I won’t go through the entire setup but once you’ve logged into your account (that you created using the PC Connector software) it will sync by itself in accordance with the setting you’ve configured in Options -> Account -> [Your Account]. Adjust these settings and Options -> Settings -> Rules before you login and sync for the first time.

Now that you know how much I hate the pitiful battery life of my N80, you can probably tell that one of my favorite features is pictured in the second image above. You guessed it - Power saving mode! Here in Options -> Account -> [Your Account] -> Power saving mode, you can choose to either stay in true ‘Push’ mode and receive your emails/PIM instantly or sync at intervals ranging from once every minute to once every 24 hours. I use push mode only when I need to, otherwise I let emoze sync every 15-30 minutes and the drain on my battery isn’t as bad as I expected.

I should note that in push mode, emoze receives emails on my N80 before they even show up in Outlook on my PC! No wonder they beat Blackberry in their push email showdown!

Some more items that I’ll note is the way that emoze gives you access to your email. Inbox items are stored in your Messaging Inbox rather than in an email account within Messaging as they are with the integrated email app, but they are wisely separated from SMS and MMS in a special “emoze Inbox” folder. There is an emoze email entry in the Messaging menu (as you can see below on the left) but this is used exclusively for outgoing emails.

There are a few areas that can be improved in emoze, as there are with all apps. The one main complaint I have is with new email notifications. Your default notification sound is played (or vibration) but because messages are stored in a subfolder in your inbox, there is no visual notification. If you miss the initial sound then you won’t catch your new email until another one comes that you notice, or until you check the app (which displays a new email notification) or your inbox. This should be an easy fix so I look forward to the next version.

I’ve been through Mail for Exchange, Always-On Mail, and some other options and for me personally, emoze trumps them all - and it’s FREE! I should also note that unlike some apps that keep your GPRS/EDGE data connection live, other apps on my device have no problem connecting and utilizing GPRS/EDGE while emoze is running. Using emoze for my corporate email and ProfiMail for my personal POP/IMAP accounts, I feel that all of the gaps on my phone with regards to email have finally been filled.

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There have probably been about a million various rants about this in the past, but now there will be a million and one. Why can mobile devices come with normal ringtones? You know - ringtones that actually ring.

S60 3rd devices are popular amongst many different kinds of people but when a phone manufacturer creates a “smartphone”, presumably in the back of someone’s mind should be the possibility that some potential buyers want normal ringtones. After all, a large percentage of smartphone buyers use their phones for business. Now I don’t know about you, but when I’m sitting in a meeting I don’t want my phone to suddenly burst into some pseudo-techno track. I want my phone to ring.

Many people have spent a fair amount of time scouring the internet for normal ringtones and it’s a lot harder than it should be to find good ones. The easiest type to find are recordings of old rotary phone rings but to be honest, that doesn’t cut it for me.

A few years ago I happened to stumble upon a great site that has some professionally recorded, crystal clear ringtones available to the masses for free. My savior - Recording Productions. Since I found this site, the first thing I do every time I get a new phone is transfer these ringtones. To be honest, my phone wouldn’t leave the vibrate-only setting without them.

There are about 10 downloads on the site linked above have become a staple for me to be used as ringers and sms tones. I’ve gathered others over the years but these are still my favorites. On the Recpro site you’ll also find many experimental tones created in a studio with various gear. There’s some other cool stuff on the site as well - take a look around.

I know that there are others out there who, like me, refuse to use songs as ringtones. What are some of your favorite sources?

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