Symbian in Motion

Carnival of the Mobilists #78 is now up over on Symbian-Guru.com and it’s packed full of links. Big Tex takes us - excuse me - Ricky takes us through the best of the past week’s offerings and there’s plenty of content to keep you busy! So throw on your cowboy boots, tip back your ten-gallon hat, and enjoy the linkstravaganza.

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One of the many reasons that I am anxiously awaiting FP2 is for the RSS capabilities. Since I first heard that Motorola was working on SCREEN3 many years ago, I’ve been very excited about always- available content on my standby screen. Here in the US, SCREEN3 was somewhat of a bust though - in fact, (please correct me if I’m wrong) I don’t think any US devices support SCREEN3 even now. While we all wait to see what FP2 has in store for us, here’s a way for people like me to at least have something to tide us over in the mean time.

To start things off you’ll need a copy of MobliNews by Ian Ratcliffe. MobliNews is a very basic RSS reader with one main function - scroll headlines from one (and only one) RSS feed in a ticker-style bar that is in the foreground on all screens. Now because MobliNews doesn’t ‘really’ support any feed content other than the headlines, the key to making this app useful is finding feeds with useful content IN the headlines. So here are two examples of useful headline content:

Sports Scores

I don’t know about you, but it took me a very long time to find a good site that would deliver ONLY sports scores in the headlines. I did find one though and it’s actually set up very well. Totally Scored (sorry guys, US sports only) is a site that provides free RSS feeds containing sports scores in the headlines and nothing else. They provide feeds by sport or by team, which is great!

Custom Stock Feeds

Even harder than finding a good sports score feed, was finding a free custom stock quote feed. Finally after a great deal of searching I finally came across TC’s Blog where he details his Yahoo stock to RSS converter. TC’s AWESOME solution allows you to create your own URL that will automatically pull a feed containing current quote info on any stocks you desire. You can also add portfolio information to get a quick idea of how your investments are doing. I won’t go into how to create the URLs because TC does a great job of that of course. Above, you can see the basic feed I created to give me quotes for Nokia (NOK) and Apple (AAPL) stock. Here is the feed, if you want it. :)

In terms of my opinion of MobliNews, I think that it’s an ok app that needs A LOT of work. It does what it is intended to do I suppose, but the functionality is extremely limited, the organization is poor, and the options are lacking. Some features I’d like to see added:

• Update and scroll more than one feed at a time
• Browse through feeds in the app - not in the Options menu
• Simplification and better organization of user-entered feeds (this is the most important part of a feed reader - no one uses the included feeds!)
• Support for full-content feeds with a REAL viewer.
• Hotkey shortcut to open the full-content of the current headline that is scrolling.
• Ability to change the location and size (width) of the ticker. Currently you can only change the color, although that’s a nice feature to have.

So what good custom headline content do you guys know of/use?

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Welcome to the 77th edition of Carnival of the Mobilists! This is the first time that the Carnival has been hosted here on SiMo so welcome to all of the new visitors. Just like its predecessors, this week’s Carnival is packed full of the best writing from around our ever-growing blogosphere. So sit back, take a sip of that coffee, make sure that your calls are forwarded - and enjoy!

We’ll start things off this week on the C. Enrique Ortiz Mobility Weblog where Enrique applies the offline mentality of offerings such as Dojo Offline and Google Gears to the mobile environment. In his post The Future of Web Applications is “Local”, Enrique touches upon the technical aspects of applying interactive offline concepts to mobile devices and details some reasons that offline content will be so important.

We’re already seeing some instances of offline mobile content as Dennis of WAP Review points out in Offline Browing with Opera Mini, Bloglines, And Gmail. Dennis details how he uses the combination of Opera Mini and Bloglines to satisfy his need for offline RSS content, and that Google’s Gmail java app can perform a similar function with his email.

On the other side of the coin, Mobicious is a new mobile content discovery and delivery service discussed in detail in Xen Mendelsohn’s post Mobicious: One Part iTunes, One Part Google on Xellular Identity. As new devices, better data plans and integrated WiFi continue to make the mobile web more accessible, services like Mobicious make the PC and mobile browsing experiences more and more analogous.

Speaking of digital content, the Nokia Media Transfer tool for Mac is now available and noted all across our blogosphere. Jonathan Greene of the atmaspheric endeavors blog posted the first screen caps and brief walk through that I came across in his post Nokia Media Transfer is Very Cool. Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org is equally impressed and gives us some quick thoughts in his post Playing with Nokia Media Transfer.

In his first contribution to the Carnival, Paul Ruppert of Mobile Point of View discusses mobile remittance technology and the new regions that must be targeted for expansion. His post Next Big Thing in Mobile: Bottom of the Pyramid Plays considers the technology that will facilitate the future of mobile remittances and the current and potential financial benefits surrounding mobile transactions.

Digital books are another example of an emerging mobile industry that is gaining increased popularity in several regions. In Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow in Mass Media part X - Books Tomi Ahonen of Communities Dominate Brands discusses the potential of the digital book market and highlights Japan as an example of the success that mobile novel offerings have already had.

Is there any social networking service gaining heat faster than Twitter right now? I would wager that most of the people reading this have visited twitter.com at some point and many have even registered. Gerrit Visser of Smart Mobs linked to a great article this past week in his post Twitter for Business: Toy or Tool? As you’ll read, Twitter can be used for much more than just tweeting with your pals.

Looking back at the history of mobile and electronic technology, Tarek El Ghazali of the Symbiano-TeK blog compares Nokia phones of old to the newer Nseries devices in his post When SMS was a Feature. I can remember the first time I saw a mobile phone send an SMS - and indeed I thought it was amazing!

Moving from the past to the present and future of mobile technology, Barbara Ballard covers a topic that really interests me on the Little Springs Design blog. Her post Paper Computing discusses the “digital pen” technology offered by companies like Livescribe and Nokia. I haven’t yet had the chance to try one of these products but thinking ahead to a future where even school children are using this technology, I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief for forests around the globe.

Ricky Cadden of Symbian-Guru.com ponders why cross-platform gaming isn’t truly interconnected yet in his Thoughts on Mobile Gaming post. These days popular stationary and portable gaming consoles can all connect to the internet in one way or another, as can mobile phones that support gaming. So why can’t gamers save and load data across platforms?

Considering a different aspect of mobile gaming, ad-supported games are becoming much more common these days. Ted Wugofski posted a very good article entitled Datacasting and Mobile Advertisements on his OJO Mobile blog that discusses a better way to advertise to the mobile community. Ted talks about how datacasting can result in a more efficient, versatile and cost-effective campaign for advertisers as opposed to the 1:1 approach.

Last but not least - my favorite post of the week! This past Friday Krisse posted an excellent article over on All About Symbian. The Big Fight 2007: Series 40 vs S60 pits two of the latest devices from Nokia against each other in an OS fight to the finish. Krisse’s article is an outstanding feature that is packed with insights and images to help you follow along. Is the gap between standard-platform devices and smart-platform devices narrowing? Click through and find out!

That wraps up this week’s Carnival and I hope that you found the linked articles as interesting and informative as I did. Be sure to check out Carnival #78 next week when it will be hosted by my buddy and everyone’s favorite guru of all that is Symbian - Ricky of Symbian-Guru.com. That’s two Symbian- themed blogs in a row… I like it! :)

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This week’s Carnival is up on Greg Clayman’s twofones blog. There are quite a few great posts linked this week, including a couple focused on the Foleo. I’m still not a believer in the usefulness of mobile companions but a conversation yesterday with Ricky yesterday has at least shown me a few instances where such a device could be useful. Only time and marketing will tell how successful these devices will be in the future but the Foleo certainly (in my opinion) will not be the catalyst for any widespread popularity…

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Nokia USA is now offering the N75 and N76 via their flagship stores and distributors. Someone in Nokia’s marketing department must have really paid attention the various rants about Nokia’s marketing tactics in the US (such as mine from last week) because Nokia finally brings their RAZR copy to the “land of the RAZR” and all we hear about it is a blurb on engadget. Where the hell is a ‘rolleyes’ emoticon when you need one?

Why is the 5300 still featured on the Nokia USA homepage? Why isn’t the N76 even on the site yet? Why does the Nseries site still say that the N76 is “not currently available in my area”? Despite the fact that the price point is too high at $500, the N76 could have some great success in the US over time if anyone ever finds out about it…
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Olly posted part three of his N800 in Day to Day Use series and this installment focuses on the GUI. I’ve never laid hands on the N800 and I know precious little about it, or about the Hildon UI that the N800 uses. One very intuitive feature that I learned about from olly’s post though is the fact that the GUI components like menu lists, virtual keyboards, etc automatically adjust in size according to what you use to physically access them (stylus or fingers). I love it!

A stylus has a fine point that can touch smaller items that are close together:

Fingers are larger and blunt so users will have an easier time touching larger items that have more space between them:

I generally stay away from touch screen devices so I don’t know how common this feature might be. What I do know is that it most definitely should be standard feature of all touch screen UIs.
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The Palm Foleo was announced recently and to be perfectly blunt, I don’t care. Great - so now I can converge my two devices (smartphone and laptop) into… two devices.

I already have three laptops and they are each about 3,000 times more versatile than the Foleo. My Sony Vaio is smaller and thinner than the Foleo and it has a sleep mode that takes about 30 seconds to wake up from. I’m busy just like everyone else but I would rather wait the 30 seconds - and be able to do anything I want with a PC rather than just web, email, image viewing and a few other functions.
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Jott is an awesome service that I wrote about a while ago that allows you to call into the service and speak a message that is automatically transcribed and delivered via email or SMS to yourself or to a contact. Another similar service that I’ve been toying with recently is Pinger.

Pinger is a free service that allows you to dial into a number and send a voice message to yourself or a contact. A notifications is then delivered to the recipient via SMS with a link to a phone number that he or she can call to hear your message, and then forward it or reply to it. Hmm… I like Jott better.
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I received an email this morning from Twitter containing a few announcements. Here is an excerpt from that email:

We noticed a whole bunch of Twitter-ers adopting a new way to
communicate specifically to individuals in a public way by adding
an @ symbol before a username like this: “@biz thinking I’ll get a
soy latte too!” To make this experience a bit better, we added a
few features to support this behavior.

- The Replies Tab will display an archive of @replies
- @Replies are followed by an ‘in reply to’ link for context
- @username automatically links the username to the profile

Although using the “@” symbol to represent a reply is by no means a “new way to
communicate specifically to individuals in a public way”, I love a company that watches what their customers are doing and shapes new features around their usage patterns. Bravo Twitter! It’s only a matter of time before Google buys you…
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Last month Grand Central released a mobile site that allows users to listen to voicemails, view contacts and logs, change calls and settings, and more!

Definitely check it out at http://m.grandcentral.com.
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Something possibly worth checking out is the new (poorly named) app by SPlus called Best XP Theme 3rd. This app requires Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 to run, and basically gives you an XP-Style interface to replace your active standby screen. The Dpad controls the mouse which is used to click around and make selections. Like Smart Settings, it is fully configurable in terms of accessible apps - you can add any apps you like to the standby screen (represented with icons) or the menu as seen below.

The wallpaper and ‘theme’ of the app can be changed. A few wallpapers are included but I’m pretty sure you can add your own. Settings are accessed from the “control panel” and the app is exited by clicking on “turn off”. To quote SPlus’ feature list:

-View and launch all programs in your phone.
-Manage category and programs on start menu&Desktop. (Desktop programs change available for full version only)
-Desktop icon change able.(full version only)
-Wallpaper skins change able
-analog/digital clock,Battery,Signal level.
-View&Launch with Favourite list of latest programs usage.( full version only)
-Automatic generate all programs list.
-Easy to defined&launch with programs categories.
-User name&Picture id.
-Support s60 3rd 176×208,352×416,240×320,320×240 screen size.

It’s a very cool concept (great use of Flash Lite) and a good start but the reason I’m not giving a full review is that this app is quite buggy on my N80. I get an error each time I access the menu and when the app is in standby the clock and signal/battery icons fall out of place and sit clumped in the bottom right-hand corner. Those are just a few of the bugs I’ve found. If you’re interested I would definitely download the demo version (demo is QVGA only, full purchase provides versions for all resolutions) before buying.

UPDATE: It appears as though you cannot dial a number to make an outgoing call while this app is running. This means that calls can only be completed to your contacts. Yikes!

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