S60 theme master Taieb has posted up his next creation which I've been using since yesterday. Black & Red comes with custom icons and a new look for the folders. The screenshots below look a little grainy and do no justice for the great theme.
Click here to download Black & Red by Taieb.
Thats right. With a flick of the wrists just like in real Foosball you wind up your player and smack the crap out of the ball. If your one of those that can't resist a foosball table then this game is for you. I have a few friends that are Foosball junkies.
Two students from the University of Applied Sciences in Austria are behind this project. Benjamin Gmeiner and Yen-Chia Lin are developing a table soccer game that uses the accelerometer in S60 phones like the N82 and N95 to control the players. This is a watered down version of the popular game which is just two against one, two players and a goalie. Holding the phone in landscape, tilt left and right moves the player across the table and rotating the phone towards you and away will wind up and shoot the ball.
Check out the video demo below and be amazed...
I found this yesterday over at the Forum Nokia Blogs where developers hang out and share what their working on. This application is developed with the Python language and I'm finding that Python is the easiest code to work with for developing applications and games for S60. I have a small application in mind that I think I'm gonna try. Keep in mind however this game is still under development and in beta phase. You can install it on your phone and see what they have so far.
For now head over the the article where you can read more about this game and find the download link. Make sure you have the latest version of Python installed.
Foos your heart out!
Last week I told you guys about the latest version of Google Maps, bringing the ability to create favorites and even import your old ones from Nokia Maps. This newest version is also much smoother and I'm finding a GPS lock even faster. There was a bug however that prevented you from using the center selector key on certain screens. This has now been fixed.
Train & Bus Routing Should Be Coming Soon
Another great find I made is the upcoming feature that will give you bus & train directions instead of normal driving locations. It gives you routes, times, and rates. This is going to be a great feature that I can't wait for, especially with the rising gas prices. Taking the bus somewhere will be that much easier if I can just punch the locations into my phone and get instant results. If this works how it should I'd feel more confident taking the bus places without having to figure out the route and times before I leave the house. I can change up my routes on the fly now since I'll have my phone with me at all times.
Check out the demo video below...
Check out this awesome theme from one of my new favorite theme makers Babi. I have this theme called "Two" installed on my Nokia N82.
These are some of the cleanest icons I've seen and they can be found on most of Babi's free Nokia themes. Almost every application on my phone has a custom icon including the 3rd party icons such as Google Maps, Slick IM, Calcium Calculator, Mr. Lock, Mobitubia, Snakes, Sports Tracker, Shozu, & Symella. Thats the best coverage of 3rd party application custom icons I've seen on any theme. It really helps keeping your phone looking professional and uniform.
Click here to download Two by Babi and check out a handful of other free Nokia themes.
Once in awhile an application comes along thats just so simple but extremely useful. This is exactly what CalSyncS60 is. Now my Google Calendar and Nokia N82's calendar are in sync with eachother, so far without any hiccups.
CalsyncS60 has been around for about 4 months now I believe, but the developer has recently updated the application to fix some bugs and add a few languages. Not to mention you can now have a scheduled sync which happens automatically. I haven't yet tried out the scheduled sync and I can't find out much info on when it synchronizes, I'm guessing once a day. The sync between Google Calendar and S60's built in Calendar application is bi-directional meaning that if you add an entry on your phone it will be added to Google and vice versa. This goes for deletion of entries as well.
Below are a few recent changes made to Calsync.
0.3.1 - 26th of May, 2008- Some people had problems with long event IDs. This is now fixed.
- Added localizations for Polish and Dutch.
0.3.0 - 16th of May, 2008
- Scheduled sync, CalSyncS60 will automatically keep your calendar updated.
- Access point can be selected from the settings
- Some minor bug fixes, although some of the bugs from 0.2.0 are not yet fixed.
- Localizations for English, Russian, Slovak, Finnish, Romanian, German, French, Hebrew, Chinese Traditional (Taiwan), Czech. Languages are not yet tested.
It's been an ongoing battle between Google Maps & Nokia Maps. Some can't use Google Maps because it's all data. Those that have unlimited data plans like myself absolutely love Google Maps.
Google Maps for Symbian S60 has just updated to version 2.01 and adds the ability to create favorites which show up as a star on the map. Within these favorites you can add a buttload of imformation such as address, phone number, website, gps coordinates, etc. This is great for marking locations that you don't visit often and are hard to find. Or maybe if you enjoy hiking or walking and want to mark a tree or stream you find for future reference. You can also add your favorites to specific categories. The possibilities are endless.
Google Maps also automatically imports the favorites that you have stored in Nokia Maps, aka "My Places". This is a great move by Google to keep competition with Nokia Maps.
The application runs slightly faster than previous versions and is definetly a worthy upgrade. It seems to have a bug that maybe only is on the Nokia N82. When searching or on a screen besides the Maps screen I can't select anything. My center button isn't responding. Hopefully it's a bug only on my phone, but maybe others can confirm.
Link: www.google.com/gmm
Thanks to IcyHot from Howard Forums for the "heads up".
Nokia released their newest version of their popular Nokia Maps application today, bringing it to version 2.0. The application has been in beta for a while now working out all the kinks and getting feedback from users at Nokia Beta Labs. Hopefully it's not a premature release and the community is indeed happy with this version.Downloaded over 240,000 times since announced in February, Nokia Maps 2.0 has improved its optional Car Navigation, enhanced its pedestrian navigation, added multimedia city guides, now offers satellite images, and is sporting a redesigned user interface. Nokia's mapping and navigation solutions give people navigation features, local content and world maps directly on their mobile device, in a way that only connected devices can.
A partial list of the updated features in Nokia Maps 2.0 includes:
DRIVE:
- Improved optional Car Navigation equals PND-level car navigation experience with faster routing.
- Easy-to-use, updated User Interface features including a new navigation carousel with pre-defined navigation views - i.e. navigation, arrow, bird-eye.
- Top-of-the-line navigation features: signposts, multi-stop route planner
WALK:
- Optional pedestrian navigation efficiently walks you from A to B with visual guidance. It helps you to locate yourself by giving information about the surrounding buildings, streets and parks and, if the device supports it, notifies the direction you are walking.
- Nokia Maps 2.0 includes public transportation information (station entrances) data in 17 cities with localized icons for stops.
- Advanced multi-sensor positioning using A-GPS, and pedestrian orientation using the compass feature (Nokia 6210 Navigator needed for built-in compass usage)
DISCOVER:
- Satellite images with hybrid rendering overlays for selected cities worldwide provide real aerial views on your mobile.
- Signature "one-box search" allows you to search through places, addresses, restaurants, nightlife, outdoor, accommodation.
- New premium multi-media city guides including features photos, video, audio streams.
Nokia Maps 2.0 uses vector maps provided by Navteq and TeleAtlas, Nokia Maps now has maps covering over 200 countries, with over 70 of them navigable. Maps can be downloaded over the air directly to selected devices or by using the Nokia Map Loader on a PC. A new beta version of the Nokia Map Loader is available on the Nokia Beta labs web site.
It's been a busy morning for Nokia Beta Labs. They've brought a few updates to some of the applications they've already had, and introduced us to the new Nokia Communication Center which I have quickly fell in love with.
Nokia Communication Center
First off I'll start with Nokia Communication Center. If you've already tried out the Nokia Beta Labs program called PC Phone than you might find this redundant. Even I first questioned why they would do this. Well I've never really liked PC Phone I couldn't get it to work properly and the need for a web browser was kind of a downfall. What Nokia Communicator will eventually be is a add on to Nokia PC Suite. Managing contacts and messages has never been easier. Sure I showed you guys a few weeks ago how PC Suite currently allows you to view and reply to text messages, but that was miniature compared to this new program. What I like about Communication Center is it has all your texts and MMS messages folders including the outbox and sent messages. You can reply to, forward and send new messages all from this program.You also have a place to manage your contacts which comes in handy.
Key features:
Lately there has been some buzz about streaming live video applications for S60 powered phones. In my mind the most popular one so far has been Qik, which I've used quite a number of times and have already mentioned in a few articles. Live video streaming is a great way to share your times with friends and family over the internet for other friends and family to see, and I think it's going to slowly become more popular as these technologies become more accessible.
The other day I got to meet a few people from the mobile industry at a Wom World get together in Los Angeles. Wom World is the company that helps promote Nokia Nseries & Eseries products. One of the guys I met was Jeb who runs Brilliant Expos, a company specializing in setting up Mobile events and expos. Awesome dude I wish we had more time to talk. He brought to my attention the Flixwagon application and spoke about how much he enjoys using it to stream live video from his Eseries phone. I had heard about Flixwagon a few times before but never got the chance to try it. If you remember Ricky from Symbian Guru just recently got married and this remarkable event was captured live by four Nokia N82's and Flixwagon. According to Ricky's recap the live streaming was a great success and over 9,000 people watched his wedding live throughout the day over the internet. Congrats again to Ricky and his new bride. This event is exactly what Nokia means by there catch phrase "storytelling rediscovered" which they tagged for the Nokia N82.
Now back to Flixwagon. Right now it's in alpha which means it's still under testing and you have to sign up and be put on a list to try out the service and application. If you check out their website you will be welcomed with a very professional and clean layout where you can start viewing recent live video streams. You will notice that there is already a huge community of Flixwagon users and is growing every day. Once you have your own Flixwagon account you can share, edit, and manage all your videos along with your profile. Adding your Flix's to Youtube or any website where you can embed code such as your myspace, blog, etc is simple with the code that Flixwagon gives you. If you haven't noticed I recently started sharing my videos here at Symbian Addict in the column to the right. You can view my recent videos and any live video that I may be shooting. You can also set privacy preferences to decide who has access to your live and stored videos. Viewers can add comments while you are streaming live so you can see them on your phone and respond back in real time.
The video quality so far has been pretty good for me especially since I'm currently using the Nokia N95-4 which has North American 3g bands. I haven't yet tried out video quality over an Edge connection but Jeb assured me that the quality is reliable and sufficient. So far the Flixwagon S60 application has been a breeze to use and easy to set up. The application seems light and doesn't slow down the phone or lock it up. As soon as you launch the application an internet connection is opened so that you can quickly record the moment and begin the broadcast when your ready. You set up the privacy preferences before you start recording or just do a one click video and start recording a public video stream immediately.
I have attached a few screenshots below so you can see what the application looks like.
This has to be one of the most gory and coolest themes I've ever seen.
My phone is literally bleeding when using this theme. Blood by Taieb brings blood dripping onto your LCD screen, making it feel like Halloween in May. Check out the screenshot below.
I originally posted this article over at The N82 Blog, but this huge news is worthy to be posted here as well since it's such a popular application.
Over the past week or so fans of the popular Youtube applications Emtube and Mobitubia have experienced connection errors. I use Mobitubia and just started noticing this a few days ago, about a day after a commenter here brought it to my attention.
Apparently Youtube has changed up some of their server settings making these applications useless. The developer of Emtube has yet to update his application with the new settings, but fans of Mobitubia should be happy to hear an update is here.
Nokia PC Suite has been updated a few weeks ago and it sure is a dandy. The new version is 6.86.9.0 and brings a few welcome additions.
You can now view text messages and reply to text messages all from your computer. You can also view calendar entries, but you can't add or delete any. Hopefully they implement this in the future.
Just because of these two new features I have found myself using PC Suite more. And you can also connect your phone to PC Suite via bluetooth so you won't need any wires.
I have also found myself using the Photo Transfer tool in PC Suite a lot more. Older versions used to crash my computer, but this one is working a lot more smoothly.
Click here to download the latest version of Nokia PC Suite. That link is for North Americans, you can browse around the site for European versions as well.
Imagine your sitting on the bus, train, or at the DMV and your bored out of your mind. You want to bust out your iTouch or Playstation Portable cuz your Nseries or Eseries just isn't enough for you. But your limited to what you can do because theres no Wifi connection available. Connecting to the internet and browsing the Web is impossible without a hotspot.
Not with JoikuSpot. This amazing and free application for your Nokia S60 phone allows you to share your internet connection and transform it into a Wifi hotspot. So once you have this application running on your phone, another device can find it and see it as a WLAN connection and use it. This great idea just furthers my anger for the lack of 3g support here in the United States. We still have to rely on an Edge connection.
Here is a video of JoikuSpot being used with the iPhone. The internet looks really slow in this video and I can assure it's not that slow. Something must've been wrong with the connection, but either way he got it to work...
I've been using the free Mountains theme on my S60 phones for a few months now and never get sick of it. The icons, list highlights, background, and meter bars all look great and have a clean look.
I'm using it right now on the huge N95-4 screen and its getting a ton of looks from people walking by in the office.
Click here to download this free theme for your S60 phone.
On older S60 handsets a theme icon was placed in the menu folder so that you can easily access your themes and change them up. Right now on your N82 or N95 to change a theme you have to go to Settings > General > Personalisation > Themes.
Thanks to a developer name Sittiphol, the same guy who created one of my favorite applications called Mobitubia, designed the same Theme Launcher that is found on older phones. Now you can have an icon anywhere you want in your menu linked directly to your Themes. I keep mine in the root folder, but you can push options in your menu and put it in just about any folder you want. I have mine sitting in the Tools folder which is perfect.
This is a brand spanking new free instant messaging application called Octro for your Nokia smartphone. It's late here where I live so I don't have much time to test it out or show you screenshots yet. I installed it and managed to login to my Google Talk and AIM screen names just fine and chatted with a few friends. I'll get a chance to test it out more tomorrow and see its effects on the battery life and all that. Usually I use Slick instant messenger, you can read my review here. Keep in mind Octro uses data instead of texts, so make sure you have an unlimited data package.
Here's a list of it's many features Octro can do....
This has to be one of the coolest accelerator applications I've seen come out. Believe me we've seen a handful of useless accelerometer applications. Don't get me wrong, there are some good ones, but I think I'd be using this one the most. Basically with ShakeLock you just shake your phone to lock and unlock your Nokia N82 or N95. It's that simple, which makes it so beautiful. It's not gonna work unless you give it a good shake, so don't worry about it unlocking in your pocket. Keep in mind this is only the first version, so it will only get better with time.
Best thing is this application is freeware, but donations are encouraged. If you donate you get the latest updates to the application, so I think it's worth it to give a few bucks. This application is already signed, however, before installing you have to set your phone's date back one year, install ShakeLock, then you can switch the date back. Has something to do with the certificate being expired, good thing you can get around it.
Click here to download ShakeLock for the N82 or N95.
Also, if you haven't aready, it looks as though you need to have Python installed on your Nokia Nokia. You'll end up needing Python anyways since a lot of developers are using this method to make applications. Click here to install Python.
I first read it at Symbian-Guru's blog.
Steve Litchfield from All About Symbian decided he wanted to make himself "the ultimate theme", through his eyes. Once he got started working on it, he realized he needed an expert so he turned to PiZero.
Here's what he wanted...
Not alot to ask for right? Here is Sunshine by Pizero, available for all to download. It's simple, bright, warm, and clean. No custom icons are included to make sure the phone runs on full speed. Personally I don't have a problem with custom icons, even on my old N73.
Well I got sick of lookin at the old layout and realized that I hate looking at websites with the content on the right, so I have this one now that has the content on the left and sidebar on the right. I know it's simple, but once I get the header logo designed, It'll look much better. Sorry for the lack of articles lately, works been busy. I'll have more up soon.
Anyways, here are a few themes that caught my eye when I was browsing the Mobile-Review Forums. The first one which I really enjoy because of the bright vibrant colors is called Red Harmony. Sorry for the crappy screenshots, something wasn't right when I took them. I assure you these themes are not blurry.
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