Symbian in Motion

Welcome to ‘Voice 2.0′ as brought to you by TalkPlus…

In support of the first offering in their line of S60 Voice 2.0 Products, TalkPlus has recently updated their offering and revamped their public beta program in the US and Canada. TalkPlus (click this link to register for the free trial and public beta!) allows to to add a fully functioning, fully integrated second line to your S60 device. Actually, it allows you to add up to 10 additional lines! The beta provides only one line for the time being though so let’s stick with that.

How does it work?

Once you’ve signed up for your free beta account on their site and installed the application, you now have a new fully integrated local second line on your device. Calls made to that number will ring on your device (while the app is open in the foreground OR background) just as if it was your main line - with full caller ID support. Calls made from your new TalkPlus number will initiate a quick communication over a data connection, and will then be routed via TalkPlus servers to your destination (over GSM voice, not data!) and the call recipient will see your TalkPlus number on their caller ID display.

The Dashboard seen above is where you can quickly and easily change your device’s current profile (profile = line, either main line or TalkPlus line) by simply scrolling up or down through your available profiles. Each profile is represented by a unique icon that is also visible on your standby screen to indicate the current enabled profile.

By accessing the phonebook beyond the TalkPlus dashboard, you can easily make calls or change the default profile for each individual contact. The default profile indicates which will be the main profile to make calls to a contact. I think that the default profile concept is superb. This allows you to easily separate contact types and manage your calling quite well. In an update I would like to see group support so that if for example I have a group called “business contacts” I can quickly and easily switch the default profile for all included contacts with one simple adjustment.

Voicemail for your TalkPlus account is fully integrated into the app and accessible from the options menu. You can quickly scroll through your voicemails chronologically and listen to them easily. Also, you can change your personal greeting and configure voicemail notifications to be sent via email (with an MP3 attachment of the message), via SMS, or both.

It is also worth mentioning that RAM consumption is quite reasonable making this a great app even on RAM-starved devices like the N95 or N80. In terms of its impact on battery life I haven’t been using it long enough to make any conclusions but I did leave it running on my E61i overnight last night and awoke to find the same number of bars that I went to sleep with.

For someone like me the app is incredibly useful. As the Business Development Manager for a small privately held company I was always hesitant to include my mobile number on my business cards and in my vcard because I pay for my own mobile line. By allowing me to add a completely separate integrated line I can now distribute my new number and easily separate business and personal communications. Beyond that, if I want I can easily bill certain calls back to my company when necessary (at incredibly low rates I might add).

This certainly won’t be the last you will read about TalkPlus here on SiMo. I will be adding periodic features over the coming months as I continue to use the app and as we continue to see updates. It is also worth mentioning that TalkPlus is being quite proactive in embracing the Symbian community so you can expect to see good support and regular updates I would imagine. As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, this app is just the first in the forthcoming line of TalkPlus’ Voice 2.0 products and it makes me incredibly anxious to see what the future holds.

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Other than my posts about ‘official’ themes made for my blog, I have yet to dedicate an entire post to just one theme. Well, that is changing now.

I have to say that Psiloc’s Reflect Theme is most definitely one of the sharpest themes I’ve seen on any device, let alone an S60 3rd device. The style and color combinations are phenomenal and it is incredibly clean. The title of the theme comes from the little reflection effect on the clock that you can see in the screenshot above an many components have nifty fading effects that seem to line up perfectly as seen below.

There are a few tiny items that prevent this theme from being absolutely perfect but I’m sure updates will come in due time. Also some screens may be a bit less than perfectly clear in direct sunlight but hey, it’s a dark theme so what do you expect? ;)

For those of you with landscape devices like me, no worries as it scales quite well.

As someone who dabbles in theme-making myself I really appreciate the quality of this theme. It doesn’t take a designer to recognize how sweet it looks though! It also comes with a neat little Flash clock for your screen saver on FP1 devices. Best $4 I’ve ever spent… ;)

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Carnival of the Mobilists #78 is now up over on Symbian-Guru.com and it’s packed full of links. Big Tex takes us - excuse me - Ricky takes us through the best of the past week’s offerings and there’s plenty of content to keep you busy! So throw on your cowboy boots, tip back your ten-gallon hat, and enjoy the linkstravaganza.

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One of the many reasons that I am anxiously awaiting FP2 is for the RSS capabilities. Since I first heard that Motorola was working on SCREEN3 many years ago, I’ve been very excited about always- available content on my standby screen. Here in the US, SCREEN3 was somewhat of a bust though - in fact, (please correct me if I’m wrong) I don’t think any US devices support SCREEN3 even now. While we all wait to see what FP2 has in store for us, here’s a way for people like me to at least have something to tide us over in the mean time.

To start things off you’ll need a copy of MobliNews by Ian Ratcliffe. MobliNews is a very basic RSS reader with one main function - scroll headlines from one (and only one) RSS feed in a ticker-style bar that is in the foreground on all screens. Now because MobliNews doesn’t ‘really’ support any feed content other than the headlines, the key to making this app useful is finding feeds with useful content IN the headlines. So here are two examples of useful headline content:

Sports Scores

I don’t know about you, but it took me a very long time to find a good site that would deliver ONLY sports scores in the headlines. I did find one though and it’s actually set up very well. Totally Scored (sorry guys, US sports only) is a site that provides free RSS feeds containing sports scores in the headlines and nothing else. They provide feeds by sport or by team, which is great!

Custom Stock Feeds

Even harder than finding a good sports score feed, was finding a free custom stock quote feed. Finally after a great deal of searching I finally came across TC’s Blog where he details his Yahoo stock to RSS converter. TC’s AWESOME solution allows you to create your own URL that will automatically pull a feed containing current quote info on any stocks you desire. You can also add portfolio information to get a quick idea of how your investments are doing. I won’t go into how to create the URLs because TC does a great job of that of course. Above, you can see the basic feed I created to give me quotes for Nokia (NOK) and Apple (AAPL) stock. Here is the feed, if you want it. :)

In terms of my opinion of MobliNews, I think that it’s an ok app that needs A LOT of work. It does what it is intended to do I suppose, but the functionality is extremely limited, the organization is poor, and the options are lacking. Some features I’d like to see added:

• Update and scroll more than one feed at a time
• Browse through feeds in the app - not in the Options menu
• Simplification and better organization of user-entered feeds (this is the most important part of a feed reader - no one uses the included feeds!)
• Support for full-content feeds with a REAL viewer.
• Hotkey shortcut to open the full-content of the current headline that is scrolling.
• Ability to change the location and size (width) of the ticker. Currently you can only change the color, although that’s a nice feature to have.

So what good custom headline content do you guys know of/use?

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Slated for official launch on July 7th 2007, we’re now less than a month away from seeing the release of the WildCharge Wireless Charging system.

WildCharge calls it a “wire-free electric power revolution” and I couldn’t agree more. Granted, the technology is nothing new but we’ve been waiting for years to see it applied to our common gizmos and gadgets. If you don’t know what it is, the WildCharge Wireless Charger is a thin pad that uses electromagnetic induction to charge devices without the need for a cord or cable of any kind connecting them. Simply lay a device fitted with a charging adapter (future devices will be built compatible with this technology) on top of the pad and viola - you’re charging! Laptops, cameras, mobile phones… It’ll charge them all, and at the same time no less.

This is one technology that I am very excited to see grow over the coming years. It has taken a LONG time to finally come to market in this form and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

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