Symbian in Motion

Last night I had the pleasure of joining WOM World at the Nseries-sponsored Crown Point Festival in NYC. Crown Point is a month-long festival spanning a variety of arts and benefiting the Lower East Side. After battling traffic, cold weather and a bum on Grand Street I finally managed to find my way to the Abrons Arts Center and I’m glad I did because we had a great time.

I was joined at the Center by Donna and Molly of WOM World along with Mark Guim of The Nokia Blog and his girlfriend. Apart from Donna whom I met during my time in London at the Symbian Smartphone Show it was actually my first time meeting everyone in person! It was a matter of minutes before they starting jabbing at me for not being able to make the Nseries Launch Event next week in Finland but after I shed a few tears we were all friends again and the night went on.

(click images to enlarge)

Nseries had a great booth set up in the lower lobby - that you can barely see behind Mark and Donna above. Hey, I never said that I was a good photographer. On display were a few N95s along with an N800 tablet and an N810 tablet. I must admit that the N810 is MUCH cooler than I thought.

Above from left to right: Mark and his girlfriend, me, Molly and Donna. Stella Artois was another sponsor of the event - yes, free Stella for all!

During the intermission we stopped in the upper lobby to try to figure out exactly what it was that this girl was wearing on her head. Mark made the mistake of asking and she quickly put this odd N95 head-holster on him. My N95-3 cam was a bit slow so he had already taken it off when the pic snapped.

I wish I could remember this guy’s name - and that the pic was a bit lighter - but he was one of the performers. He was pumping some interesting techno that had been sequenced in advance but all of the sounds were pulled LIVE, ENTIRELY from the sound chip of a Gameboy! Intense… EDIT: Thanks Donna! His name is Jeremiah Johnson aka Nullsleep of 8bitpeoples

After the performances which consisted of a one-act play entitled “The Girl Detective”, a short film entitled “Puerto Rican Squirrels”, a second one-act play that I missed and the Gameboy techno dude mentioned above; they cleared the stage and set up a nice little Nseries afterparty. The massive white Nseries-esque structure to the right was a cool photo booth that you had to pass through on your way onto the stage. Above you can see people start to gather and enjoy some Nseries/Stella Artois love.

A great time was had by all at Crown Point. Really the only negative is the fact that thanks to Donna I am SERIOUSLY considering ditching my N95-3 and N95-1 and picking up an N95 8GB. I really had no interest in the device at all - seeing as my N95-3 is packing a 6GB mSD and US 3G - but after playing with Donna’s I really don’t see how I’m going to avoid picking one up. It’s unbelievably sleek and the huge screen/new MM menu are calling to me. I’m not sure whether or not Donna was really nervous that I was going to run away with hers, but if she wasn’t she should have been! A few more beers and that sucker would have been mine… ;)

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The odds are pretty good that your S60 device came with a light version of Quickoffice preinstalled and you may or may not use it. Quickoffice is great for viewing email attachments and provides S60 3rd devices with functionality that is an absolute necessity for any smartphone. But what happens when you want to actually create or edit a document, spreadsheet or presentation?

Quickoffice Premier is the best-selling solution for an Office-like experience on your S60 3rd smartphone. I would say that I use my phone about 80% of the time for pleasure and 20% of the time for business but during those times that I am using my device for business I couldn’t live without the full functionality of this app. Let’s get right to it:

Word Documents

This is probably the functionality that I use the most with Quickoffice Premier. The document editing (DOC, TXT, etc) in the latest version of this app is simply wonderful! It provides you with just about all of the important functionality that you would find in MS Word. Of course it is limited in some respects due to the nature of S60 but you have more than enough options to edit and even create a very respectable document.

Formatting options, image and table insertions, and editing options - it’s all there. The latest version of Quickoffice Premier even includes a very good spell check function that makes use of a dictionary that can be downloaded for free!

Excel Spreadsheets

For the business user, spreadsheet functionality is absolutely essential and Quickoffice delivers the goods. It’s as close to a PC Excel experience as I’ve seen on a mobile device to date. You can change colors and format cells quite easily and even add advanced formulas. Of course the app also allows you to zoom in and out as needed to compensate for the relatively small screens on mobile devices.

My boss seems to be a bit slow when it comes to spreadsheets so every now and then he sends me things to edit and distribute for him. I can’t tell you how nice it is to know that when I receive urgent items from him I don’t have to race to a PC anymore to take care of his requests. I can just open the spreadsheet in Quickoffice, quickly and easily make any required changes and then shoot it right back to him for review or to the customer/partner who needs it. It really couldn’t be easier!

Powerpoint Presentations

Just as with spreadsheets, my boss really doesn’t know the first thing about Powerpoint presentations either. It’s amazing that someone can get so far in life in a tech-based industry and have zero skills when it comes to what is now basic PC functionality. Well these days when he emails PPT presentations to me in a panic, I don’t even break a sweat or get out of my seat at the bar. I can view his presentation and edit it to my liking in no time flat before delivering it back to him or anywhere else for that matter.

Quickoffice Premier offers plenty of additional benefits as well. Advanced integration with Mail for Exchange 2.x for example allows for a much more streamlined email attachment experience. The app provides integrated attachment viewing as well as the ability to reply and attach the current document/spreadsheet/presentation to an email right from the Quickoffice Premier options menu. There is also quick and easy access to recent files right from within the main app window. As a business user you really can’t afford to be without this app. Beyond that, iIf you want to get your hands on an app that will take your S60 3rd device a tremendous distance closer to providing a near-PC experience then look no further.

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For those of you who are somehow still doubting the cool-factor, I shot a quick video of the rotateMe 2.0 beta app in action. Please excuse the quality - I had to record it with my tiny digicam because I can’t find the charger for my camcorder.

WATCH THE VIDEO (embedding isn’t working on my site for some reason)

One of the things that hasn’t been mentioned on other blogs that I really like is the fact that once the keypad is locked the screen will not rotate. This might seem like common sense but I’ve seen developers miss even more obvious functionality. I will say though that in real usage it is a bit annoying that when I slide my phone closed and put it in my pocket, the app rotates the screen in the short window of time before the keypad locks. This isn’t really a huge deal though because when you hold the phone upright and slide it open again the screen quickly rotates back to portrait.

As mentioned above, this is a beta version available to donors. My wishlist: The right softkey should be Hide as opposed to exit. Right now to use rotateMe you have to enable it and then use the menu key (or another key) to force the app to the background. My only other comment is that the app has a noticeable affect on my battery life. I don’t know that there is anything that can be done to decrease the drain on the battery but I sure hope that Samir tries his best! I’m using it with the new battery in an N95-3 and the battery consumption is bad! I haven’t had a chance to try it yet on my N95-1 but I’ll be sure to report once I do.

If you didn’t catch my last post, the rotateMe 2.0 beta is now available as donationware. The release version will still be freeware so if you can wait until the end of the month you can still get it for free.

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Breaking news! Apparently Samir has had a change of heart and decided to make development versions of rotateMe 2.0 available to the general public. All donors who contribute to Samir (as much or as little as you like) via a paypal link on his site will receive beta versions as they become available!

The release version will still be available towards the end of the month in unsigned form as freeware. I was more than happy to donate some $$ - if for no other reason, Samir brought it to everyone’s attention that the N95 has an accelerometer and I’m happy to make a donation as a thank you. Just think of how many great apps will be released in the coming months as a result of Samir’s demo video…

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The fun begins! It looks like everyone is getting excited about the recent news surge brought about by Samir, developer of rotateMe. Yes, the N95 packs an accelerometer - a small chip that can provide device orientation readings to apps. Out of the box, the only app on the device that appears to make use of the accelerometer is the camera. Basically the camera uses the accelerometer to determine the device orientation at the time a picture is taken. This allows the N95 to auto-rotate the image so that it is upright in the gallery.

Mark Guim showed us a video last week of the recently uncovered ball demo that helps show us the accuracy of the accelerometer - in three dimensions. Now it looks like one of our favorite freeware developers has created his own little app that displays another use for the accelerometer.

Y-Inclinometer by Dr. Jukka is a simple app that displays vehicle angle while off-roading. Operation is simple; fix your phone in a secure cradle and adjust it so that it is perfectly upright in your vehicle. Then launch the app!

Jukka wants to make sure that N95 owners don’t get too crazy and flip their vehicles while enjoying some off-road fun and this app can be a nice tool. Please don’t do anything stupid like seeing how far you can go to test Y-Inclinometer’s readings - Enjoy this great creative app safely!

By the way, I should note that the graphics and icon for this app were made by the one and only p@sco. :)

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