Symbian in Motion

I’ve tried more SoNets/microblogging/life streaming sites than I care to discuss, and until I came across Jaiku I didn’t stick with any of them. I won’t go through the whole list as I don’t want to insult your SoNet of choice, but I was absolutely certain that life streaming wasn’t for me until I came across Jaiku. There are three main reasons for my decision:

1. The people there are friendly and inviting, and they actively participate in interesting conversations.
2. The team behind Jaiku is extremely talented and responsive and they have created a well organized, ever-evolving environment that encourages interaction rather than stunting it (as others do).
3. The S60 app!

Other SoNets might have mobile sites or third-party tools that let you post, but no other SoNet has embraced S60 like Jaiku. As a result you’ll find many, many S60 users on Jaiku but it’s by no means limited to S60. You’ll find people from all walks of life and from all over the world on Jaiku. I highly recommend that you head over to their site and sign up your free account to check it out. Beyond the Jaiku SoNet itself and all of the great contacts you’ll make, you’ll have the upcoming updated Jaiku Beta to look forward to…

The S60 Jaiku app overview is set up just like the web overview, but trimmed a bit to make it more usable on your mobile. On the overview screen you’ll find Jaikus (initial entries) from all of your contacts along with comments (responses to Jaikus) made by your contacts. To clarify; unlike SoNets such as Twitter that provide a waterfall of posts, Jaiku allows you to make an initial post (Jaiku) and then comments to that post will be listed in chronolgical order beneath it. This provides an organized means of conversation that is easy to track and easy to participate in. Jaikus and comments alike stream chronologically in your overview but click on any entry and you will see the initial Jaiku at the top of your screen followed by subsequent comments:

Posting a Jaiku is very simple. You can either select New Post from the Options menu or click on Post a Jaiku at te top of your overview. Once posted, your Jaiku will appear at the top of your overview and as new Jaikus and comments stream in it will move further down the list.

You’ll notice that at the top of the screen there are two main tabs. All of the functionality described above took place on the overview tab. The other is the contacts tab which lists all of you Jaiku contacts along with your phone book contacts. Just like the integrated S60 phonebook you can initiate phone calls and SMS messages from the Jaiku contact screen. I often use it in place of the integrated phonebook because it’s much faster.

Scroll to a contact and select him/her and you will be brought to their individual stream that lists their current status along with all of their recent Jaikus and comments. If they are also listed in your phonebook you can merge the two entries easily as seen below. You can then tab right/left to switch between their Jaiku stream and their contact details.

By accessing your own Jaiku stream you can click on your presence at the top of the screen to view your presence information and location. Location information is stored and automatically updated according to cell tower data, and is shared by the entire Jaiku community. If you enter a location never visited by a Jaiku user before, you can enter a location name yourself.

Jaiku is not just for posts and comments - users can also add any RSS/atom feed they wish and as these items are pulled from the feeds by Jaiku the are added to their stream (you can always unsubscribe to any user’s feeds individually and they will no longer display in your overview). Many users add feeds from their blogs, last.fm feeds, and Flickr feeds (photos from Flickr feeds will be displayed in the overview!). This content would surely clutter the S60 app so most of it is omitted. You will see subscribed Flickr feeds though and by clicking on the RSS icons you will be sent to the Flickr mobile site (S60 browser will launch) and the selected image will be displayed.

I could go on forever about this app and about Jaiku itself but the bottom line is that you have to try it for yourself. I’ve met many interesting people on Jaiku and I enjoy participating as much as I can in their conversations. The Jaiku app gives me an excellent way to do so from anywhere. It’s a huge upgrade from their current public beta and faster/more convenient than their mobile site although it doesn’t include as much content. I’ll post an update as soon as this new beta becomes available - and you can expect that to be very soon!

subscribe to comments made about this post

I’m not a MySpace user but I came across this little java app by VCEL that lets you access your MySpace messages on your S60 3rd device (and most other J2ME devices). Since MySpace is one of the most popular online communities in the world, the odds are good that many readers will enjoy this app. It’s currently in beta but tested and working on several S60 3rd devices.

“Vcel:mail (beta) lets you access your myspace mail messages from your cellphone. The app is a mail browser connected to www.myspace.com. Check out VCEL`s other messaging apps on getjar by searching for “myspace” or “vcel”. You can also go to www.vcellspace.com on your mobile internet browser for the simplest way to access your MySpace messages, bulletins etc on yout phone. All of these apps are made by VCEL, Inc a company committed to enabling superior browsing/user experiences for using social networking online communities on your phone.”

Download vcel:mail

Don’t forget that if the screen size is not right for your resolution, you can always change it quickly and easily with this guide. It should be fine with most screen sizes though.

subscribe to comments made about this post

There has been a great deal of buzz around the s60 community since Six Apart and Nokia announced their cooperative tool that allows users to post photos, videos, and even sounds to their Vox blog from their S60 3rd device. Personally I think this is great and I’m happy that more and more mobile blogging services are popping up. What most blogs that I’ve come across aren’t mentioning however, is that Vox is NOT restricted to the few newer devices listed on the main Nokia page on the Vox website. In fact, users can post to their Vox blog from many Windows Mobile 5, Palm OS, and s60 1st/2nd/3rd devices.

Enter Vox Mobile. Vox Mobile is a signed app that in my opinion is a far superior option compared to enabling and configuring Vox as an open online service. Vox Mobile allows you to view and create photo, video, and audio blog entries from one central app. As you can tell from the name of my blog, I like apps…

Vox Mobile makes posting to your blog much more efficient. From the options menu you can choose either to take a new photo/video/sound and build your post around it, or you can select Add to browse the appropriate gallery and import your photo/video/sound.

Once you’ve selected the multimedia focus of your new post you can enter a title, body, and tags for your post.

From there it’s as simple as simple as choosing Publish and waiting a few short seconds as Vox Mobile connects and publishes your new post.

See the result of the example images above in my Vox blog.

For whatever reason the installers are not terribly easy to find on the Vox site - which is really what prompted me to post about Vox despite the fact that you’ve already read about it 50 times. Now go download this great freeware app and get blogging!

Download Vox Mobile for s60 3rd

And here is the well hidden download page for all platforms

subscribe to comments made about this post