Symbian in Motion

The relatively “underground” Chinese developer known as the3sky seems to be shifting gears lately and we are seeing some really smart freeware S60 3rd apps coming our way. The latest release from this rising star is the update of a very simple yet well made and useful app called TimeBar. TimeBar serves two main functions: First, it displays the current time as a digital clock that is visible on all screens (and in all apps) in the foreground. Secondly, it will automatically plays an alarm sound each hour (either a tone with adjustable length and frequency, or from a series of audio files in MP3 format) when the alarm function is enabled. MP3 files can be custom made or from one of the included sound packs that have been delivered with the app (English and Chinese).

Please note that this app is unsigned. You must sign it yourself before you can install it (please don’t post here asking me to sign it) using this guide or similar.

As simple as the functionality of this app is, it is also highly configurable! You can easily change the location of the displayed time, the color, the font, the size, and more. For example, in the images above you can see that I’ve centered the time display at the bottom of my screen. Here, I’ve moved it to the upper area of he screen just to the right of my operator display:

To start things off, the main configuration menu gives you access to all of the app settings and you can easily apply changes as you make them to instantly see your adjustments. The first set of options gives you the ability to enable/disable the time display and configure the hourly alarm. The default directory for the MP3 files is displayed in the app but you can change it to any directory you wish. Remember if you use your own MP3 files they should be named exactly the same as the included files.

As we continue through the settings, the Transparency entry toggles a white rectangular background behind the clock digits on and off. Next is the Font Type setting which allows you to easily apply a new font to the clock and Font High, which adjusts the font size.

At the bottom of the settings menu we find adjustable entries for the color of the clock digits (in RGB code) and the position of the clock on your screen. Your desired color can be achieved by tuning the Red, Green and Blue entries that combine to create the color you want. For some assistance there, it’s a good idea to use an RGB color code chart. For the X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) positions, you’ll have to play with these a bit to get the clock exactly where you want it.

Remember that each time you adjust a setting you’ll have to refresh the app before the changes will be applied. This is done by simply going to Options -> Refresh. From within the options menu you can also play the most recent hourly alarm and kill the console server, which will turn the clock display off.

In the past it has occurred to me that it would be nice to have a time display on my device that would be visible on all screens rather than just standby, and this app does a wonderful job of achieving that and more. I just love the customization options as well - giving you the ability to move, shape and color your clock to match whatever theme you’re using at the time. Great job on this one the3sky!

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UPDATE July 17: The download link above has been replaced with a link to the ‘latest version’ post.

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Maybe I missed something in the box that my E61i came in but until I started playing around the other day I had no idea that Nokia bought me a nice present to thank me for purchasing my E61i recently. What is that present, you might ask? Well it’s a complimentary subscription for WorldMate service! Do you own an E61i? Well then Nokia probably bought you the same present but you might not even know it…

MobiMate touts their WorldMate app and service as being “the Swiss Army Knife of Travel”. While the odds are fairly good that their slogan infringes on a copyright or two, they do make a hell of an app. WorldMate for S60 3rd provides subscribers with:

• Weathercaster - Automatically updates to provide you with up to three daily weather updates; visually and vocally (if you enable it) with WorldMate’s virtual weather lady.
• Weather Forecasts - Five-day forecasts that update four times each day and are available for over 400 locations world wide.
• Currency Converter - View and convert between three currencies at a time with over 200 currencies available. Currency exchange rates are updated as you convert to ensure the most up-to-the-minute data is used.
• World Clocks - View the current local time for five different locations around the globe simultaneously.
• World Day/Night Map - See exactly where day ends and night begins.

Granted, I already use Handy Clock and Handy Weather to accomplish most of these tasks but it’s a nice gesture I must admit. It is my understanding that Nokia has accommodated E61i owners with three years of complimentary WorldMate service and by my math that’s a $75 value! Now I’m sure that Nokia’s cost is nowhere near $25/year, but hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s the thought that counts?!?

To start taking advantage of your free WorldMate service simply access your Download! app and download WorldMate, which you will see listed there. Once installed, just register from within the app and you’re good to go!

Does Nokia offer free WorldMate subscriptions to E61i owners in all regions? Does this offer apply to more phone models than just the E61i? I have no idea, but I suggest that you check your Download! app to find out. Also, please post a comment here and let me know if you get free WorldMate on your device (and how you found out about it). I’ve noticed a few new things within Download! recently such as an entry on my N80IE for Orb, although it’s little more than a shortcut to Orb’s mobile site (very weird).

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Palringo calls it “Vocal Instant Messaging” - I call it pretty damn cool! Palringo is a free app (currently in beta) for your mobile that provides you with presence, chat, and PTT functionality for S60 devices. Afraid that you don’t know enough S60 3rd users to make this app useful? Well there are also Win Mobile/Win2K/WinXP/Vista versions available and a java version in the works!

Palringo loads quite quickly and occupies a reasonable amount of RAM on your S60 3rd device. Once you open the app and enter your credentials (first time only) you may log in using a GPRS, EDGE, 3G, or WiFi connection. Your presence is immediately broadcast to your contacts once you log in and you are brought to your home screen where things like status and messages are displayed.

Moving over to the contacts tab, you will see a list of all of your contacts with their current availability status (and conveniently the customer service contact is listed there as well). Contacts are listed and added using a full email address. You can however, create a nickname that your contacts will see in place of your email.

To start a new chat session simply scroll to one of your contacts and click options to access chat. Chat works just as it should and it updates new messages VERY quickly.

At the top of the screen above, you will see three tabs. The current screen is the text chat tab but my favorite is the second tab - the “vocal instant messaging” tab. This is essentially PTT (walkie-talkie) that is delivered in near-real time. Simply hold down the joystick fire key and speak, then release the key when you’re done and your vocal instant message will be played for your contact almost instantly!

The third tab is for picture messaging where the app allows you to take a pic (from within the UI!) and instantly deliver it to your contact. Your contact can reply with chat, image, or vocal instant messages in the exact same way. There currently is no support for group chatting/PTT but perhaps we might see some group support in the future. UPDATE: Please see Etienne’s comment below regarding groups. I was in a bit of a rush as I posted this - lol My bad ;)

To be honest, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen this app before. Granted it’s in beta but it’s very stable and I LOVE that it works across so many platforms (Symbian, Win Mobile, Win2k/XP/Vista). Once a java app is released this is going to be one of the most accessible and versatile communications apps around! Definitely worth checking out… :)

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Welcome to the 77th edition of Carnival of the Mobilists! This is the first time that the Carnival has been hosted here on SiMo so welcome to all of the new visitors. Just like its predecessors, this week’s Carnival is packed full of the best writing from around our ever-growing blogosphere. So sit back, take a sip of that coffee, make sure that your calls are forwarded - and enjoy!

We’ll start things off this week on the C. Enrique Ortiz Mobility Weblog where Enrique applies the offline mentality of offerings such as Dojo Offline and Google Gears to the mobile environment. In his post The Future of Web Applications is “Local”, Enrique touches upon the technical aspects of applying interactive offline concepts to mobile devices and details some reasons that offline content will be so important.

We’re already seeing some instances of offline mobile content as Dennis of WAP Review points out in Offline Browing with Opera Mini, Bloglines, And Gmail. Dennis details how he uses the combination of Opera Mini and Bloglines to satisfy his need for offline RSS content, and that Google’s Gmail java app can perform a similar function with his email.

On the other side of the coin, Mobicious is a new mobile content discovery and delivery service discussed in detail in Xen Mendelsohn’s post Mobicious: One Part iTunes, One Part Google on Xellular Identity. As new devices, better data plans and integrated WiFi continue to make the mobile web more accessible, services like Mobicious make the PC and mobile browsing experiences more and more analogous.

Speaking of digital content, the Nokia Media Transfer tool for Mac is now available and noted all across our blogosphere. Jonathan Greene of the atmaspheric endeavors blog posted the first screen caps and brief walk through that I came across in his post Nokia Media Transfer is Very Cool. Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org is equally impressed and gives us some quick thoughts in his post Playing with Nokia Media Transfer.

In his first contribution to the Carnival, Paul Ruppert of Mobile Point of View discusses mobile remittance technology and the new regions that must be targeted for expansion. His post Next Big Thing in Mobile: Bottom of the Pyramid Plays considers the technology that will facilitate the future of mobile remittances and the current and potential financial benefits surrounding mobile transactions.

Digital books are another example of an emerging mobile industry that is gaining increased popularity in several regions. In Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow in Mass Media part X - Books Tomi Ahonen of Communities Dominate Brands discusses the potential of the digital book market and highlights Japan as an example of the success that mobile novel offerings have already had.

Is there any social networking service gaining heat faster than Twitter right now? I would wager that most of the people reading this have visited twitter.com at some point and many have even registered. Gerrit Visser of Smart Mobs linked to a great article this past week in his post Twitter for Business: Toy or Tool? As you’ll read, Twitter can be used for much more than just tweeting with your pals.

Looking back at the history of mobile and electronic technology, Tarek El Ghazali of the Symbiano-TeK blog compares Nokia phones of old to the newer Nseries devices in his post When SMS was a Feature. I can remember the first time I saw a mobile phone send an SMS - and indeed I thought it was amazing!

Moving from the past to the present and future of mobile technology, Barbara Ballard covers a topic that really interests me on the Little Springs Design blog. Her post Paper Computing discusses the “digital pen” technology offered by companies like Livescribe and Nokia. I haven’t yet had the chance to try one of these products but thinking ahead to a future where even school children are using this technology, I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief for forests around the globe.

Ricky Cadden of Symbian-Guru.com ponders why cross-platform gaming isn’t truly interconnected yet in his Thoughts on Mobile Gaming post. These days popular stationary and portable gaming consoles can all connect to the internet in one way or another, as can mobile phones that support gaming. So why can’t gamers save and load data across platforms?

Considering a different aspect of mobile gaming, ad-supported games are becoming much more common these days. Ted Wugofski posted a very good article entitled Datacasting and Mobile Advertisements on his OJO Mobile blog that discusses a better way to advertise to the mobile community. Ted talks about how datacasting can result in a more efficient, versatile and cost-effective campaign for advertisers as opposed to the 1:1 approach.

Last but not least - my favorite post of the week! This past Friday Krisse posted an excellent article over on All About Symbian. The Big Fight 2007: Series 40 vs S60 pits two of the latest devices from Nokia against each other in an OS fight to the finish. Krisse’s article is an outstanding feature that is packed with insights and images to help you follow along. Is the gap between standard-platform devices and smart-platform devices narrowing? Click through and find out!

That wraps up this week’s Carnival and I hope that you found the linked articles as interesting and informative as I did. Be sure to check out Carnival #78 next week when it will be hosted by my buddy and everyone’s favorite guru of all that is Symbian - Ricky of Symbian-Guru.com. That’s two Symbian- themed blogs in a row… I like it! :)

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Following my short post yesterday about the iPhone commercials, I received a good comment from Jonny Bruha and a couple of emails that prompted a response. Rather than respond to everyone individually I thought I would do it here in a public forum, so that I could make my feelings about the iPhone known. I think that I’m probably in the majority here but there are many people who seem to automatically dislike the iPhone - perhaps because it threatens their manufacturer of choice. Now of course I’m not saying that my last statement applies to Jonny or even anyone who emailed me, but read through the forums that are popular hang-outs for Nokia fanboys and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Apple: What it is, and what it ain’t…

Simply put, Apple has some of the best programmers, designers, and think-men in the game. We know this. Their products and services are incredibly well designed, well executed, well advertised and marketed, and revolutionary. Do they make THE BEST products and offer THE BEST services? No. What they do however, is change the way that a consumer looks at a certain type of product. Let me elaborate…

Is the iPod the best PMP on the market? In my opinion no, it is not. What is the iPod though? It is an incredible device that changed the way that the consumer listens to music. It wasn’t the first MP3 player - that title belongs to Saehan’s MPMan which was first released in Asian markets in the spring of 1998. The iPod wasn’t the first hard drive-based MP3 Player either - Remote Solutions’ Portable Jukebox PJB-100 was released in 1999. In 2001 however, Apple released the iPod. They designed it right, they built it right, they marketed it right, they advertised it right; and the rest is history. Now PMPs are a multi-billion dollar per year market that will only continue to grow. This is thanks to Apple.

And what about iTunes - is it the best music downloading service available? That’s a big “no” as well. But just like the iPod revolutionized PMPs, iTunes has popularized the concept of purchasing and downloading digital media and changed the way that companies deliver content to the consumer.

iPhone: What it is, and what it ain’t…

So what about the iPhone? While is certainly isn’t as revolutionary as the iPod or iTunes, it is still a revolutionary device in many ways. Most importantly, the iPhone will change the mobile market - and you can bank on that - in a major way.

The iPhone will put a “smart” device into the hands of a consumer who wouldn’t have purchased a smartphone otherwise. The “RAZR demographic” will be purchasing iPhones in droves. This means that they will come to love the versatility and functionality that a smart device facilitates and more importantly, they will come to “expect” these features in any future device that they consider purchasing. P2k just won’t cut it anymore…

In terms of technology the iPhone is nothing overly spectacular and in terms of functionality the iPhone is no where near many smart devices currently on the market (although I’m confident that we will see the dev kit Jonny mentioned available to developers in the very near future). The design and implementation on the iPhone are simply phenomenal though and the UI is a work of art. Just as with the other industries that Apple has tackled, mobile phone manufacturers are now forced to play catch up if they hope to maintain a decent market share amongst the most coveted of demographics. They will catch up and even pass Apple’s current and future offerings in terms of design, implementation, and even UI - but the iPhone will have been the flame under their proverbial asses that forced them to do so.

We will see fascinating things in the future of mobile phones with or without the release of the iPhone, that’s for sure. What Apple has done with the iPhone though - just as they did with the iPod and iTunes - is turn a linear curve into an exponential curve. I’m excited and you should be too!

I’m a Symbian guy (and an apps guy!) and the iPhone isn’t going to do anything to change that. In two or three years however when I’m unboxing my new Symbian-based Nokia with an amazing new UI and a feature-set that drops my jaw, in large part I’ll have Apple and the iPhone to thank.

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