Google Video (100’s of clips for your E61)

As it’s the weekend let’s have some fun with videos. I finally discovered Google Video last night and noticed that you could download the videos in PSP format. This comes out as MP4 format and works well on most PDAs I have tried using TCPMP and also the E61 (after a bit of hassle finding the best way to convert them- see the comments). Ones I can recommend are:-

Johnny Cash, Hurt. Very moving and a wonderful song. Time Trumpet, Tescos Invades Denmark. British humour at it’s best. Gay Referee, the title says it all and finally Beatboxen Bush.

E61 firmware update (2.0) released

According to Symbian Freak Nokia have released a new firmware update for the E61. The list of improvements is very long and some do stand out-

• Audio quality improvements
• RAM consumption reduced (JAVA)
• Recurring events improvements
• Performance and reliability improvements

Interview with Andrey Scherbakov (EpocWare)

Today we have an interview with Andrey Scherbakov from EpocWare. I remember this company well from my early Psion days and it’s good to know that they are still pumping out quality products to this day.

1) Andrey, tell us a bit about EpocWare.

We (Epocware) do end-user productivity software for all Symbian based phones from old Psion’s days until now. We have no plans to change this.

2) How many products do you currently sell and which has been the most successful in terms of sales?

Never count them. I think about 20 active. The most successful ones are at the top list on Handango.com. They are Handy Safe, Handy Weather, Handy Clock.

3) What product are you the most proud of and why?

The one we just stared to develop, but I cannot tell you what it is Seriously, it is Handy Safe. It is the app that people really need on their phones and it really does what they are expecting from it.

4) What mobile device do you use daily and how many have you owned?

We have about 30 phones in our department. I personally use Nokia E70 now, but am thinking about switching to the E61. I have owned almost all of the significant Symbian-based phones: 9200, 7650, SE P800/900/910, 6630, N70.

5) What’s the best book you have ever read?

I cannot answer. But I can say what I am reading now. It’s Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.

6) EpocWare produced Symbian S60 3rd Edition software before most of the other developers. Why was that?

For many reasons. First, we were looking for a new market after UIQ 2 market has died with the last SE P910 phone. Secondly, we had an early access to S60 3rd Ed SDK as Forum Nokia PRO member.

7) Are you able to give us a hint of any of your future plans?

Just a hint. We are very committed to the S60 platform. What is the most anticipated app for E-series? I think there the answer is evident.

Where do you think the mobile industry will be in 2 years time?

I cannot see the whole picture. Just some parts: S60 will become touch screen and more PDA like. So there won’t be market sharing like now: S60 - low,mid-range and UIQ - hi-end. I also expect a big wave of Linux smartphones from Motorola side.

9) What’s your opinion of the mobile web community? Are there any sites that you feel stand out?

Until recently there were only a couple of Symbian-related English-speaking sites (My-Symbian and AllAboutSymbian). But now there are lots of new sites, especially blogs. Your’s is my favorite.

10) Anything you wish to add?

I just want to wish to everyone that the market of software for Symbian phones will reach the levels of Palm and Pocket PC software markets. We will try to help with this from our side.

Park WiFi / Two functions I miss / Zedge

E-Series are reporting that Palk WiFi works on the E61 (full article here). At e61life ‘Two Functions I Miss’ discusses two aspects of the E61 that we need to find a fix for.

If you have somehow missed Zedge it’s about time you popped over and had a look. Some VERY good themes available…

200 applications…

Patrick just posetd this- “More than 200 applications for S60 3rd edition? Hmmm… I wonder where they may be hidden.I just browsed all of SymbianGear’s categories after restricting the search to the Nokia E61 device, and I’ve counted 195 applications so far, but this count includes themes & ringtones (there are only 20 of them though, so it’s not as if it would change the result completely), but also various editions of the same program (Light, Family and Professional versions are counted as three separate products, for instance, in some cases), or various languages are counted separately for a dictionary product.

And for complete acuracy, this list does also include applications which are incorrectly listed as compatible with the E61 when then actually are not, like MobiForms which doesn’t run on S60 3rd edition despite the compatibility list!

I know that for sure, I discovered this the hard way after purchasing the application - no trial available. The developer is nice, though, since it did accept a full refund, and this application seems promising, but it is definitely not compatible with S60 3rd Edition, and certainly won’t be in the future due to Nokia’s choices about Java virtual machines included in S60 3rd Ed.

Yes, I know, a lot of those 200 apps are probably either professional applications, not targetting the average end user and as such not advertized on SymbianGear, but I’d say that the number of actualy usable apps for S60 3rd Edition is closer to 100.

When compared to PalmOS apps, this is really nothing. Even when compared to Windows Mobile 5.0 applications (remember, WM5 was released not too long ago, and earlier this year I had a hard time finding apps that were compatible with this OS version) this is rather poor, and I think that the main culprit here is Nokia’s security policy (application signing, functions restrictions…) preventing the porting of quite a lot of existing freeware applications.

I had a quick look at the S60 3rd Ed. SDK, and from what I could understand, displaying the battery status, for instance, can easily be done by a self-signed application (i.e. without having to pay anything to Nokia) while displaying the carrier’s name or the cellular signal strength would require the application to have additional privilieges that must be, basically, purchased at a cost from Nokia… So no, I don’t think that developers are rushing to port their applications to S60 3rd Ed in a permanent state of utter happiness! :-(”