Symbian has joined the Adobe-led Open Screen Project, the industry initiative to bring Flash to mobile screens. Or to put it more precisely: to enable the delivery of rich multiscreen experiences built on a consistent runtime environment for open web browsing and standalone applications.
The Flash platform has a community of more than one million developers and delivers over 80% of web video, and of course Adobe have a great track record of providing excellent cross-platform authoring tools. What I find particularly exciting about the Open Screen project is that it is not just about the mobile web but about creating a seamless experience across all anticipated devices including desktop, mobile and consumer electronics and the potential for innovation in content. The Open Screen Fund…. Read more »
Sony Ericsson launched the Vivaz Pro this evening at Mobile World Congress, one of the first big launches of this year’s event. The phone, due to go on sale later this year (Q2 seems likely), packs the same 8.1 Megapixel camera and HD video recording as the Vivaz, announced in January. Naturally it is powered by Symbian. The Pro version comes with a Qwerty keyboard. But that’s not all that marks it out as a great device.
One image doesn’t do it justice. Go to the Sony Ericsson MWC blog for a little bit of detail but come with me through some of the past information releases, recent blog posts and videos for a lot more. Read more »
It is the beautiful game. And it is subject to some serious speculation and hype, or as some would say, we take it very seriously. It is football, and football and mobile are the subject of a conference taking place tomorrow in London at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal’s ground.
M-Football’s short-term mission is to explore ways that content providers, network operators, apps developers, anyone involved in mobile can hook up with the beautiful game in time to do great things for this summer’s world cup.
Speakers from Real Madrid (sorry Victor), Layar, Vodafone O2 and of course many more. I’m a firm believer in sport being a catalyst for a good deal more than fun and happily attribute some of the growing understanding and tolerance between people in Europe to the Champions League (though I don’t want to overplay that claim).
M-Football also welcomes the folks from Join1goal, a global movement promoting education for all as well as its many commercial attendees and the NHS where Maitland Waters is evangelising the use of mobile as a syndication and innovation strategy.
Looks like a phenomenal get together. Anyone working on real life games and Symbian please tell us your story.
Nokia’s Betalabs announced Friday the beta version of Gig Finder. Gig Finder lets you search for concerts/ live music entertainment, purchase tickets directly from your mobile, and get relevant recommendations based on your music tastes and location (Location relevance currently available for USA, Canada, UK & Ireland).
Gig Finder also brings you smart recommendations and helps you find the best tickets for music events from your phone. Key features include:
Easy Search. Quickly find where to find the best concerts & other music events near you. Search by artist, genre, city, venue, specific date, date range or a combination of any.
Buy Tickets. Direct links connect your mobile to various ticket vendors to conveniently find the best seats & prices
Smart Recommendations. Get recommendations for live events and venues based on your music tastes (profile & on device music library) and location
Get Directions. See where the event is and how to get there with a direct link from Maps.
Start the Buzz. Share information about the gig to Facebook, SMS, or Email.
Download Music. Events link directly to the artist pages in Nokia Music Store / Ovi Music (when available in your country) so you can preview or download music before or after seeing your favourite artists live.
As per Sebastian’s request I’ve added the link to download from the betalabs site here.
A sneak preview of the Ovi Maps Racing game (coming soon to the Ovi Store) was unveiled at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by Nokia earlier Thursday.
In a truly unique experience, you use the GPS in your device to find your location (or use Ovi Maps to choose any location in the world), then customize a track around your neighborhood, and finally fire up those engines! --Nokia Conversations
As the name suggests, it is basically a racing game that uses Maps from Ovi Maps and allows you to customize a racing track anywhere in your neighborhood.
As pictures are better than a thousand words, check it out below! Enjoy! Retweet, and/or send me a comment if you liked the post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6V-iCSFcnw
Ashton Kutcher, star of The Butterfly Effect and Just Married, is also something of a social media star and I think he is pointing the way to how people will interact with celebrity in future, not least via mobile.
Kutcher is adept at Twitter, Facebook and Qik. The last of these is the most interesting.
First of all Kutcher, though, is blazing a trail in all social media for celebrities. No longer need they be at the mercy of their publicists and an “event”. Events like movie launches can keep them out of the headlines for two years – between movies.
The power of social media means they can stay in the public eye on their terms, without selling gossip to hello and OK! They can build relationships with fans. And they can use this to negotiate their sponsor contracts.
An underused benefit of Qik is that it provides the most appropriate medium within which a movie star, or actor, comedian or other visual artist, can connect with audience continuously. It isn’t exactly a harbinger of OK!’s demise but it is a sign that celebrity is about to change once more – this time driven by mobile. Ashton has about 150 Qik movies up there along with wife Demi.
I was trying to embed an Ashton Qik video in to the post to demonstrate…. but strange to report Ashton has disabled embedding.
Here in its place is a video from Katalyst HQ, an online web serial that “parodies” life in Ashton’s media firm Katalyst Media. It has according to Fast Company magazine had millions of reposts on Katalyst’s Facebook page at an average of 65 views per fan page – more evidence of Ashton the sharp social media cookie.
A bit more depressing is Kutcher and wife Demi Moore’s twitter flirting! All very public.
As I’m sure a lot of you are aware the popular and truly excellent music service Spotify is now available on Symbian.
For all of those not in the know, Spotify grants you instant access to a vast array of music that you can store on your device and listen to whenever you want even if you haven’t got decent reception, i.e. in offline mode. The service is currently only available in Europe and does require a monthly fee to use which no doubt helps keep the music flowing, but considering that you won’t ever need to buy another MP3 it seems like a pretty good deal to us!
The beautifully designed UI was constructed by the much hyped The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) who have truly exceeded expectations with this effort.
Have you got any thoughts on the app or found any weird and random songs that might be of interest to other readers?
Thanks a lot and enjoy the music with the Spotify App!
Mobile phones have been part of many people’s daily life for more than 10 years. Enabling us to get closer to people in a mobile manner, via calls, sms, internet and lately social media services.
These devices are now allowing us to develop new experiences. In the next series of blog posts, we’ll be trying to capture how Symbian, as a platform, enables people to experience life to the most and push their own boundaries.
I will be starting with an exciting experiment and will share that with you live. Read more »
I have been using the 5800 Express Music for some time, and though I am biased about Symbian and S60 in particular, I do find myself going back to the device time and again for every day use, despite the other options available to me. This is always a sign of a strong product, and for my tastes, a sign of even more capable software. I am fortunate enough to have a small collection around at any one point in time. Right now this includes an iPhone, a G1, prerelease Omnia HD, e75, and n97, and the already popular n96, and n85.
Steve Litchfield over at All About Symbian recently wrote an article about the top ten things Nokia did right with the 5800. I would add a few more things that have me attached to the product, namely :
- Size. This is an overlooked feature. Fits in my jeans pockets on the weekend, and you do not have to treat it like a piece of jewelry when you set it on a table or take it to the park, ala the ever so chrome and wide iPhone.
- Video capture. Good quality and video worth keeping. The wide screen format and decent optics help a great deal.
- Widgets. Real web widgets, no kidding. As more and more developers learn the ease of creating *.wgz apps the value of this product will continue to get extended.
- Input options. Not simply content to provide a full screen qwerty with haptic feedback, you can one hand with a mini qwerty and use two other methods including character recognition or script.
- Touch games. Bounce and others, like the sensor specific racing games are perfect entertainment for the kids while out on the road, and the build quality of the device is such that you don’t worry about your 5 year old playing with it. In fact, I have let mine take one in to school for show and tell. The kids pics and videos were great, almost like being there.
I can go on, but I will stop. This is one that if you manage to put it in the gadget arsenal, it will prove to be a go to weapon of choice.
