Symbian in Motion

Late in the evening this past Friday, Bit-side announced the latest upgrade to their innovative application Panoman. In case you missed my review way back in January Panoman is an app that allows you to capture full 360° panoramic images with your S60 3rd camera. Pretty cool actually!

Panoman 3.0 provides a host of new and unique features that really take this innovative app to the next level. Unfortunately upgrades aren’t free but the company does report that discounts are available for returning customers. Here’s a quick rundown of the highlights:

• Improved Panoramic Capturing/Stitching - Panoman can now capture and stitch up to 12 frames at full resolution. This means that images can consist of up to 32 combined megapixels!
• Exposure Correction - Automatic exposure repair for a more seamless image.
• Perspective Correction - Panoman 3.0 employs an updated stitching mechanism that corrects seams between frames when active. The result is a much more fluid image.
• Color Correction - Changes in light orientation can affect each frame of a panoramic image as you capture it. Panoman’s new color correction feature helps blend the frames better resulting in a more constant color from one frame to the next.

Without Color Correction:

With Color Correction:

Click through to read the full announcement.

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Starting today and running through December 31st, each and every app in Psiloc’s online shop can be purchased with a 20% discount! If you’ve been putting off getting a certain app then now is the time because I have a feeling it will be a while before we see a sale like this from them again.

A quick overview of a few apps that you might consider treating yourself to this holiday season:

irRemote

MiniGPS

Font Magnifier

GSync

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Skyestream is at it again and this time they’ve come up with a very unique app that transforms your S60 device into a remote audio detection and alarm notification device. SkyeSpy is quite innovative in fact and really pushes S60 into new realms! Essentially the app is a remote audio monitoring solution that ‘listens’ to the sound in any environment you leave your device in and sends an alarm notification via a variety of different methods. The app is a versatile as it is innovative and I’m sure Skyestream couldn’t even anticipate all of the different scenarios where this app can be useful. Here’s a quote from their pre-launch notice:

SkyeSpy monitors all surrounding audio. On detection of audio above a determined threshold e.g. level 12 out of 15 – such as a car alarm, a breaking window or a baby crying, SkyeSpy will start recording the incoming audio for 60 seconds, then automatically send the user the audio recording as an MMS sound clip.

Click through to view the complete announcement and watch this space for a complete review to coincide with the launch announcement.

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If you are on the go and do a lot of traveling it’s likely you are growing tired of the posed hassle booking flights, hotels and car hire. ShopQwik can do all this and more, so what’s the big deal? It can also do it all right from your mobile handset or PDA! ShopQwik lets you book your flights, hotels, car and if you’re in London you can even pay the manditory Congestion charge - all using using nothing more than the ShopQwik app on your mobile handset.

Starting up, the application asks for a connection to use for downloading information. A 3G connection or Wifi is desirable. Once loaded, the application itself has a familiar looking grid menu with nice big icons and descriptions below them. Scrolling down the menu reveals 16 items and a scrolling information bar at the top which shows information about the icon you have currently navigated to. The menu contains the following options; Flights, City Hotels, Resorts, Car Hire, Itinerary, Flt Track (Flight Track), Weather, Times, Dialling, Currency, City Cam, Notes, Register, Send to a Friend, Settings and Help.

Most of the items are self explanatory, so I’ll be going through some of the more interesting, important and cool ones.

Booking a Flight

Booking a flight using the application is easy although there are a few issues with navigation and user input methods. The “c” button on the handset is not used to delete incorrect entries, rather the back direction on the navi-button, but after using the application a few times you’ll get used to the configuration.

Selecting the “Flights” will take you to an initial screen where you enter the information required to search for a flight. Your criteria, flight dates, number of adults and class can be specified along with your desired destination and departure locations. Clicking next will prompt the application to search and display the available flights based on your search. The list contains information on which airline, times, price and airports the flight will be using. You can scroll down the list to one that meets your requirements and select.

The next screen will give you a a list of the available departure and arrival times available for both the outbound and return flights. Clicking on the desired times will turn them green and you can then proceed to the next screen where you will find your travel itinerary and useful information about baggage, airport taxes etc. If you are satisfied you can click continue to either call ShopQwik to book or pay using your ShopQwik login details. Once you have booked, the information can be found in your ShopQwik Itinerary menu.

Booking a Hotel and Car Hire can be achieved using their respective menus and are very similar to booking a flight.

Cool And Useful Items

ShopQwik has a few cool and useful additions to help you on your journey including your own Itinerary which can be accessed using your PIN registered with ShopQwik. Unfortunately as I haven’t actually booked a flight or registered with them I can’t really tell you what’s included.

The other useful items are the currency converter that looks up the latest exchange rates for you to convert your currency to whichever desired. There is also world clock to help you adjust to the time at your destination and a dialling codes option that shows you the different dialling codes from countries around the world. This will be helpful if for example you are meeting someone at the airport, if you’re running late or just if you need to contact someone when you arrive. A weather menu which shows you a four day weather forecast from many of the major cities around the world is also provided to help you to adjust to the weather before you arrive.

The coolest addition is the City Cam. Currently only available for London (mainly due to the unique way the Congestion Charge is monitored) it allows you to see snaps taken at 10 minute intervals from CCTV cameras located at main junctions in the city. So if you happen to be driving into Oxford Circus you can check the CCTV camera which will show you a snapshot taken a maximum of 10 mins ago of how the area is looking. City Cam lets you also pay the Congestion Charge on the spot using your handset. There is also a Camera Wall that shows all the locations you have visited and displays the camera shots taken from the various CCTV cameras. Cool feature you have to agree!

Conclusion

ShopQwik does a very good job and will be a key feature perhaps initially as an added option using the ShopQwik website itself. It does have many cool and unique features which start to influence the way you travel as the information you require is in the palm of your hand at all times. I do have my reservations about the fact it is based in Adobe’s Flash Lite. I would like to see a native S60 application which utilizes the power of S60 and can incorporate data such as syncing your Itinerary with your calender, paying the congestion charge automatically when you enter the zones and so on. Primarily an S60 client would make it more stable as I’ve experienced a few crashes during my testing time. Also, I would like to see the app display useful information at the top like the time, net connection activity etc.

The ShopQwik application is available for a wide variety of handsets including Symbian, Windows Mobile and PDA. Your handset must have Adobe’s Flash Lite 2.1 installed as the software itself is built in flash so it is merely a User Interface requiring the Flash Lite backbone to operate.

You can get your hands on this great FREE application at the ShopQwik website.

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A lot has been going on lately and I wanted to take a few minutes just to bring everyone up to speed on a few things. First and foremost, SiMo will be welcoming a new contributing editor!! Abul is a fellow senior moderator on Mobile9.com (he runs all operations relating to Mobile9) and also maintains a great blog that you may have seen if you’ve ever browsed my blogroll. Living with a Nokia N95 is Abul’s personal blog that covers Symbian, S60 3rd apps and more. Although I cover a variety of content, SiMo has always been known for application reviews. While Abul’s content will vary as well, anyone who caught his recent review of Social.fm certainly knows that he can cover the ins and outs of an application with the best of them.

Abul will be authoring content here on SiMo starting immediately. In terms of frequency we haven’t quite figured that part out yet. He is a busy man just as I am - running a site that sees over 5 million visitors each month is no easy task. He has agreed to post when he can and I certainly look forward to reading what he has to say!

On another note, if you’re not reading this announcement in a feed reader right now then the odds are you’ve noticed a new banner in the sidebar. No, it’s not an advertisement - as you know SiMo doesn’t allow any advertising. As of this past weekend I am now blogging daily tech and mobile news on a hugely popular blog that I’m sure you’ve heard of and seen: The Boy Genius Report. BGR, the brainchild of popular Engadget blogger Boy Genius, is a blog that I’ve been a fan of for quite a while so it’s great to be able to contribute. The Boy Genius of course is known for getting his hands on prototypes and unreleased mobile phones LONG before anyone else. As his popularity increased it became apparent that he needed to launch his own site. BGR is getting more popular each day and now sees over 1 million visitors each month. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to!

So that’s what’s going on with SiMo! I wanted to make sure that I let all of my readers know why activity has been a bit light lately. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all of your comments, emails and support. I maintain this blog because I enjoy it but it’s always great to hear about it when people enjoy their time here and find the content useful. My posts on BGR will vary greatly in terms of content but Symbian is still my biggest interest when it comes to blogging so SiMo will always be my main outlet. I can only hope that you continue to come back to the site and find useful information that helps guide you through your journey with Symbian. So thanks again and look out for Abul’s first post tomorrow!

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