Symbian in Motion

Back in July I told you about a great app by Mind-Flip called TextQuick. To refresh your memory, TextQuick provides your contact list in order according to messaging frequency. Your most-texted contact is at the top of the list and then the order descends to your least-texted contact. Beneath that you will find an alphabetical listing of all contacts in your phonebook with whom you have exchanged no messages. The app gives you fast and easy access to your “most popular” contacts and you can initiate an SMS (with the recipient field populated) or a phone call with a few quick clicks. Sweet!

Now I’m happy to announce that this app has just received an update that you’ll all be very interested in. Really the only main barrier when it came to previous versions of this great app was that there was no trial available. Those who took my word for it often emailed me to let me know that they loved it, but it’s still hard to make even a small app purchase without being able to test the waters.

As such, Mind-Flip now provides a trial period. What’s more is that it’s the most generous trial period I’ve seen! You’ll now have one full month from the date of installation to determine if this app is right for you. It took me all of 5 minutes before I knew I couldn’t live without it but hey, better safe than sorry.

Click here to go to the download page and check out the trial or upgrade your existing version. Note that you should contact the developer for an upgrade if you’ve already purchased an earlier version.

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Has the Beta Labs team been busy lately or what? I’m sure you’ve read about the updates that have come out of the Labs lately and we also got some GPS love with Location Tagger. Today brings a whole new app to check out. Actually, “app” is a poor term in this case so we’ll stick to their terminology and go with “extension”.

My Mobile Site Widgets is a collection of desktop widgets that run on the back of Mobile Web Server, also a Beta Labs app. Guest blogger and assumed leader of the development team behind MMSW Marton Szomolanyi covers the essentials over on Tommi’s blog so I won’t go into the nuts and bolts. Essentially this extension provides you with a nice collection of desktop widgets compatible with both Mac and PC. Based on the Yahoo! Widgets engine, MMSW works in conjunction with Jukka Eklund’s baby Mobile Web Server to view various content contained on your mobile. MMSW polls your device regularly to refresh content and uses a secure protocol, obviously. We also see some PC Phone-style functionality implemented as this widget pack includes a few that can initiate operations such as sending SMS and placing calls.

The timing couldn’t be better considering yesterday’s announcement that Nokia will acquire Trolltech. We’ve heard plenty of talk in recent history that Nokia is focused on becoming an “Internet Company” and now we’re seeing the next series of steps that Nokia is taking in order to do so. Mosh is, and sorry to put this bluntly, useless in my eyes and Ovi has yet to surface. The Trolltech acquisition has the potential to light quite a fire for Nokia’s internet development of course, and it will be interesting to see what happens. I would expect to see plenty more offerings in the same vein as My Mobile Site Widgets to come bubbling up from the Beta Labs in the near future. As I’ve said in the past, I love the concept of the Beta Labs. Use Nokia enthusiasts as a think tank; bounce ideas off them mid development and see what sticks. It really is a win / win.

Head on over to the Labs and give My Mobile Site Widgets a go.

My only negative comment is with regards to the name “My Mobile Site Widgets.” It’s already a marcom travesty that Nokia handsets are given Mercedez Benz-like monikers - we can at least do apps and software solutions the pleasure of getting a little creative! Where oh where is the marcom team to support all of this creative development?!? Ugh; I suppose that’s a rant for another day…

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Phoneboy ( Dameon Welch-Abemathy) recently blogged of a new Beta browser coming to handsets soon. Similar to Opera-Mini it claims to be a full on browser giving the user access to full internet browsing with integrated support for Flash playback, that’s Youtube playback in your browser.

The application in question is Skyfire Beta, currently available for Windows Smartphone 5 and 6 users residing in the United States (or with a US mobile number). Currently it is a closed Beta and only available to US residents. Although the website itself promises us:

“The Skyfire private beta will initially support Windows Mobile phones in the U.S. In the coming months, we will introduce a version for Symbian phones. Other phone platforms and geographies are on the roadmap too. This is just the beginning.”

All in all the Flash Demo on the Skyfire Beta site looks pretty cool, but that’s all that it is so far. If you are a US resident, why not try and give it a go? Sign up for the Beta testing and let us know how it is. More details below:

What you need to participate

• A U.S. mobile phone number.
• A mobile phone subscriber data plan with a mobile phone service provider (an unlimited data plan is recommended).
• A mobile phone running Windows Mobile 5 or 6, both touchscreen and non-touchscreen phones are supported.

Phones we support

• Skyfire will initially run on Windows Mobile 5 or 6 mobile phones in the United States. If you do not know what mobile phone platform you have, visit the Microsoft Windows Mobile phone directory to find out if yours is a Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device.
• The initial beta release will support only Windows Mobile phones with full keyboards (QWERTY). If your Windows Mobile phone doesn’t have a full keyboard, please continue to sign up for the beta and we’ll let you know when it’s supported.
• Soon we will support the Symbian platform.
• Other platforms and geographies are on the roadmap, too.

Sign Up Today

• If you have a Windows Mobile phone, sign up today and we will notify you when the Skyfire private beta starts.
• If you do not have a Windows Mobile phone or you live outside the United States, please sign up so we can promptly notify you when Skyfire is available for your type of mobile phone.

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Antony Pranata, the developer of the widely successful and essential Screenshot application revealed the release of Nokia Location Tagger Beta today on the Nokia Beta Labs blog.

Location based tagging, also referred to as Geotagging isn’t anything new, it has been around for a while. Google Earth, Flickr and Panoramio have been using it for a while now. What Nokia Location Tagger Beta does is the same using your S60 3rd Edition handset and the integrated GPS feature (hence why it is available for specific models only). Once you have taken a picture with the camera, you have the option to tag the picture with your location and then upload to you Online Picture Album (providing they support the feature).

The Application has been tested with Nokia N95, N95 8GB, N82, and E90 using the integrated GPS. Should work but not fully tested with all S60 3rd edition devices using an external Bluetooth GPS receiver. Sharing your location-tagged pictures online requires Share Online 3.0.

To download and leave feedback you can visit the Location Tagger homepage.

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Want to stream live video from any place quickly and efficiently? Then you have got to get QIK. It is a fabulous application which does exactly that. It has been available and in Alpha for a little while now and has been recently updated to include some great features. The update gives users of the N95, N82 and N93i the ability to stream in high quality resolution of 640 x 480 which is an improvement from the previous 320×240, which is still the standard for most other models supported.

The other great features include the ability to stream to your Twitter or Seesmic accounts too!

Qik is ideal if you are thinking of starting your own video blog, or have one I’d recommend giving Qik a go. It’s currently in Alpha stage but for more information and to sign up visit their homepage. This looks pretty promising and I’m hoping it will be a great addition

You can visit my profile for comparison clips between the previous and latest versions. As you may notice there is a few seconds delay between the actual stream being shot and displayed. Still I think this is pretty awesome.

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