Symbian in Motion

As I’m sure most of your read and know, I went to the Symbian Smartphone Show last week and covered it live using an excellent blog bot created by Palringo. I had a great time and met several very interesting people. I also stopped by some very impressive stands and learned plenty about some upcoming developments in the industry. Yes, we all saw the S60 Touch demo - but I wanted to highlight a few quick things for you guys that you might have missed if you weren’t following my coverage blog.

Firstly, S60 had a great stand at the show in a prime location next to the entrance. It was packed full of S60 team members showcasing a wide variety of newer developments from widgets to forum Nokia to Mosh and just about everything in between. They also had all of the newer high end devices laid out for all to play with.

Red Five Labs was there showcasing their upcoming solution - .NET Compact Framework for S60. The demo I was shown was quite impressive and consisted of a WM device and a Symbian device side by side running the EXACT same apps - literally the same exactuable files. This solution will certainly open quite a few doors for developers and facilitates the simplest possible means of porting WM apps to Symbian. “Porting” is actually a very poor choice of words as their framework allows WM apps to run unchanged on S60 devices!

Emoze was at the show highlighting their recent addition of Gmail push support and to announce their brand new addition of Google Apps support to their S60 client. For those who don’t remember or haven’t yet checked it out, I wrote an extensive comparison between several S60 push email options that was posted on All About Symbian. You can check it out here if you like. I was pleased to find that Emoze was a big fan of the article as they quoted it on both their marketing handouts and their display graphics! Emoze has some big plans for future updates of their push email solution so be sure to watch this space.

Probably the one app showcased at the show that I’m most excited about getting my hands on is Apadtxt by KeyPoint Technologies. To say that I NEED this app is a gross understatement. Since I received my N95-3 from Nokia I’ve been using it as my daily carrier. I’m having a tough time going back to my beloved E61i for one reason and one reason alone - RAM. If it wasn’t for the RAM I’m sure this device would be sitting in a drawer right now, only to come out once in a blue moon. Why, you might ask? Forget the terrible battery life and forget the crappy build quality and humdrum appearance - what I dislike most about the N95-3 is the 1-9 keyboard. I hate T9 with a passion and miss my full keyboard more than I can possibly express. If Adaptxt is as impressive as it looked while it was being demoed to me at the show, it really could be the methadone for my qwerty addiction.

Adaptxt is not simply a predictive input engine; it is an intuitive prediction engine that learns your patterns (both through usage and through the ability to import and analyze word patterns from an email or file) and can predict words before you even type them. Too great! Rest assured I’ll have my hands on this one the instant it emerges from the dreary depths of the Symbian Signing process and a full review will be posted shortly thereafter.

Dear Nokia, observe this app. Play with it, test it and notice how much it improves the text input process. Ok good… Now license it. T9 is outdated and and counter intuitive; a true blemish on the S60 OS. Ditch it, it’s almost 2008 for God’s sake!

The name “Simon Judge” is essentially synonymous with “Symbian Development”. Of course his knowledge is by no means limited to Symbian but if you were asked to name the first Symbian developer that comes to mind, Simon would be your answer. His personal work and consulting work speaks for itself and I was very happy to learn at the show that he has recently taken on a new endeavor - with Palringo! Simon will be bringing his years of experience to the table in continuing Palringo’s development of their multi-platform IM/vocal IM/photo IM app for S60. Personally, I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

In the end it definitely turned out to be a great show. I also had a great time at the AAS pub meet and the Evening with S60 events that were held that week. I learned a lot, put some faces to a bunch of names, had a great time and even tried Marmite for the first time! If you weren’t able to make it to London last week I highly recommend you try your best to make it to the 2008 event next year which will surely be outstanding.

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When I first read about the Active Notes feature on the Nokia E90 I was jealous. There are so many times that I would have liked to make a note that included an audio file or picture but for some reason Nokia only provides that functionality on the Communicator - until now that is! Active Notes is now available for all S60 3rd devices so now there are only 999 reasons to envy the E90 instead of 1,000. ;)

In the screenshot above you can see that there are a variety of objects that can be inserted inline into your notes. You can also choose Insert new to engage the camera, video recorder or audio recorder and create new media on the fly.

The Link note to call feature shown highlight above is awesome! It lets you create a note and then assign it to one or several of your contacts. If enabled in your settings, Active Notes will automatically pop up the note whenever a call with the relevant contact(s) is engaged. This is a very useful feature for me as it gives me an easy way to collect key points and ideas several days before a call, and then access them easily and automatically when the call is made.

Below you can get an idea of just one of a million other scenarios where this app is useful:

Here I’ve inserted an image of an apartment I like, recorded a memo with some notes, inserted the Contact entry of my Realtor (which I can click on to call him) and entered some text. Now everything I need to see, hear and do is in one place that is nice and organized.

There is some functionality that the app is missing of course; for example I would love to be able to set a reminder alarm that would call specific notes to my attention (just like tasks in the built-in organizer). I would also like to see it interface with the calendar and Active Standby but we non-E90 owners can’t have it all I suppose. All the same, this app has been helping me out a lot lately and I highly recommend you give it a try. Download it here.

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I just wanted to post a quick note to remind all of my readers that my coverage has already started so definitely head over to the coverage blog and tune in!

Feel free to IM me on Palringo with any questions you have and I’ll do my best to cover all requests.

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It’s about time! Ricky the Symbian-Guru just posted some awesome news that is really going to help me out on my trip to London tomorrow. I can’t tell you how happy I am that Google Maps has been updated to version 1.70.2. This latest version is no longer java-based (woo hoo!) but instead has been built as a native Symbian app. Beyond that, this new version supports the internal GPS on the N95 and other relevant devices I would assume.

Unfortunately with my upcoming trip I really don’t have time to walk through a full review but luckily Ricky will be posting a much more in-depth look at this app and doing a much-anticipated comparison with Nokia Maps. If you want to check it out for yourself, just hit http://www.google.com/gmm from your S60 browser to download this awesome app.

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The Contest is now over! Thanks to everyone who participated and we had a great time checking out your photos and having some great conversations. The winner will be announced on November 12th so stay tuned!

A picture is worth 1,000 words and here at Palringo we believe you should be able to chose how you get your message across. Type your words, speak your words or express your message with a photo; using Palringo the choice is yours!

More and more people each day are learning that Palringo is one of the most flexible and feature-rich Instant Messaging products available. Palringo allows you to instantly exchange text, photos and vocal IMs with an individual contact or even a group. Multiple platform support enables you to stay in touch with your contacts whether you are working at your PC or on the go with your mobile phone. Just in case some of your contacts have not quite caught on yet, Palringo also lets you send photos, vocal messages and exchange text IMs with other IM systems such as AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, MSN, and more.

I know that you don’t need any more reasons to use Palringo but they are going to give you one anyway! To celebrate the 2007 Symbian Smartphone Show and to thank Palringo users for their continued support, one lucky Palringo user will receive a free Symbian smartphone! That’s right, the winner of Palringo’s “1,000 Words” contest will be awarded a Nokia E90 Communicator absolutely free!

The Contest

Palringo is a revolutionary IM solution that works anywhere you work and keeps working everywhere you go. Utilize the mobile client to show us a photo of the most interesting and unique place that you use Palringo and you could be the winner! You can also use text or vocal IMs to describe your photo or discuss entries with other contest participants in the group.

How to Participate

• If you’re not already a member, register a free account at www.palringo.com and follow the simple installation instructions to install the application
• Join my Palringo group: “symbian in motion” (no quotes) by going to Groups -> Join Group in the Palringo application
• Use Palringo to send your contest entries right to my group via photo IM and have fun viewing entries from other Palringo users (limit of three entries per person)
• All entries must be submitted by 23:59 on October 31, 2007
• Tune in to Symbian in Motion on November 12, 2007 as I announce the contest winner and display the winning entry!

To help Palringo showcase their application’s versatility, I will also be providing live real-time coverage of the 2007 Symbian Smartphone Show on October 16-17 using only Palringo and my Nokia smartphone! Photos, audio messages and my own written observations will all be delivered instantly by Palringo from my Nokia smartphone directly to a special blog that has been created for me. Follow along from your PC or smartphone as I make my way through one of the year’s biggest Symbian events and bring the sights and sounds straight to you live in a way that has never been seen before! Join the Palringo group “symbian smartphone show” (no quotes) to chat with me and other group members during the show. Check out all of the live coverage here:

Zach’s Symbian Smartphone Show Coverage

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Palringo’s “1,000 Words” contest is sponsored by Palringo and brought to you by Palringo, Mobile9.com and Symbian in Motion. A single contest winner will be selected by a panel including myself and several Palringo employees and will be contacted via email in order to arrange for prize delivery. By participating in this contest, participants grant permission to Palringo, Mobile9.com and Symbian in Motion to use any and all submitted content on www.palringo.com, www.mobile9.com or any affiliated site.

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UPDATE: Please note that there is no longer a limit to the number of entries that you can make! Submit one photo IM, or 1,000 - It’s up to you!

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