Symbian in Motion

I’ve only got a few for you today but rest assured, they’re good ones. There’s a lot in the works so next week should be a bit more bountiful. In the meantime, enjoy!

Ancient (QVGA portrait) by LucaP

This is another must-have for brown/sand N95 owners. LucaP has been around for a while but his themes are still top-notch!

Chameleon (SVG) by niimai

I typically stay away from themes with light backgrounds but this one really caught my eye. Making use of the chameleon theme in Carbide.ui 3.2, this theme is very clear and visible with a great combination of colors.

Oil Series (QVGA portrait) by Taieb

Last but certainly not least we have the latest offering from my favorite themer Taieb. The Oil Series comes in five distinct colors, each containing a version with new icons and a version that makes use of your default icons. My personal favorite has to be the red one - the intense color really leaps out at you!

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Ok, we’ve now established the fact that Samir simply doesn’t sleep. With five innovative apps already under development you would think that would be enough for emerging superstar of the Symbian world Samir Oueldi. Apparently that just wouldn’t cut it though…

Recently Samir posted a preview of one of his latest projects on his site By Samir. It was a simple Flash file called FLVPlayer that makes use of the developer edition of Flash Lite 3 Player to let you watch a few of his YouTube videos on your S60 3rd device. Well a few minutes ago he updated the download page with the renamed Flash beta of YTPlayer.

YTPlayer comes complete with a search box that lets you search for and then stream any YouTube video right to your device! That’s right, the highly anticipated wait for YouTube content is over. There are a few other services that provide access to partial content such as YouTube’s mobile site and m.vtap.com, but none that provide access to the complete library. It is a beta so it’s still a bit buggy but the functionality is there as is the performance in most cases.

YTPlayer is a small Flash file that provides the interface for searching and streaming YouTube videos. That’s literally all it does! Access the file through Flash Lite 3 as seen above (or launch it in a file browser) and enter your search term in the box. Searching will yield screen shots and titles of various videos matching your search criteria as seen below.

Click the center d-pad key once you’ve reached the video of your choosing and wait briefly as it begins streaming.

I have to say that I was quite surprised at the FLV video quality facilitated by the latest flash player. It’s good! I was expecting a pixelated mess but nothing could be further from the truth. Playback over WiFi and 3G is continuous, clear and smooth.

Kudos to Samir once again for leading the pack. Other YouTube player are under development as I’m sure you’ve all been reading but once YTPlayer is refined a bit it will do the job, and do it well. Click through to download YTPlayer and if you like it, feel free to show Samir some love with a donation if you can afford it.

NOTE: For the time being, YTPlayer can not search multiple words. To circumvent this simply separate words with a * - ie search “Nokia*N95″ instead of “Nokia N95″. Thanks to DrogerT for the tip posted in the comments below!

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I’m having some phone issues this morning otherwise you’d be getting a full-on app review. Instead, we’ll just call this a first look. Looks like having over 50 apps installed on my N95-3 is finally taking its tole!

Released this morning by the increasingly-active Nokia Beta Labs, PC Phone lets you make calls, send SMS messages and manage your contacts from your PC browser! This looks to me like the groundwork for a more interesting solution down the road but for the time being PC Phone gives you some nice core functionality.

All interfacing is done right in your supported browser and the app is currently compatible with FF 2.x and IE < 7. IE 7 support is in the works but seriously - who uses IE these days? I have to say that I'm really enjoying sitting here with my N95-3 docked and connected to my PC with my Jawbone connected as well. My hands never have to lift from my keyboard and I can initiate all the calls/SMS I want. Sweet!

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This holiday season MOBIVOX is the gift that keeps on giving. GiftVOX is a very cool concept that allows you to enroll friends and family with MOBIVOX for free. I reviewed MOBIVOX back in October but in case you missed it, it’s a service that allows you to make free or cheap calls to and from anywhere in the world. There are no apps to install and MOBIVOX users can always call each other for free. Sweet!

GiftVOX allows you to do all of the legwork in terms of opening your gift recipient’s account, adding contacts (up to 15 initially) and even adding credit to their account if you choose! You can add any whole-dollar amount to their account between $1 and your total balance. GiftVOX is perfect for friends and family who aren’t - shall we say - technically inclined. I know that my grandparents could never open a MOBIVOX account on their own but using GiftVOX I can have them up and running in minutes.

Read the full press release

I just gave GiftVOX to my dad so let’s see if he uses it - and how he uses it. Maybe I can even coerce him into writing a few words about his experience with the service for an update post. :)

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I was pretty excited when I woke up this morning and read that an updated firmware version is now available for the US variant of the N95. On the heels of the Euro N95’s recent major firmware update I had BIG expectation for this release! Demand paging for one, speedier camera and gallery applications, and so on. Of course Nokia doesn’t make their change logs available so someone had to be the guinea pig…

Poor PseudoFinn (of Nokiausers.net)! As you can see in his thread on Jaiku, the new UPDATE doesn’t seem to UPDATE much at all. So far the standout changes include… A menu entry for the music store (which isn’t live yet) and DRM support.

Had Nokia complied and released a simple change log PseudoFinn might have found something a bit more productive to do in the early hours of the morning. Instead he gets to spend a good portion of his day reinstalling and reconfiguring his N95. And for what?

Sure there are likely several ‘behind the scenes’ updates but we have no idea. The bottom line is that a simple change log would have helped PseudoFinn (and thousands of others) make an educated decision as to whether or not the update was worth the time it takes to reconfiguring the device. Clearly this is an update he would have skipped. Click through to read his post and feel free to leave a comment to try to console him - right now a bottle of 16-year old scotch is his only comfort. :(

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