Just spotted this, released over Christmas. Emil Tchekov has produced OPeLo, a freeware Windows OPL editor, with color syntax highlighting, pop-up command lists and more. Your code can be translated by using the official OPLTRAN tool. Nice idea!
Symbian's David Wood enthuses over free software and the community spirit in the latest of his excellent series of 'Insight' articles. A good introduction to freeware, though don't forget Rafe's and my freeware guides.
Steve Litchfield's discovered that Opera Mini's now alive and working and has been playing with it for a couple of days. Here's his review. Summary: it may change the way you browse on your smartphone - it will certainly chop your GPRS bill down to size...
The url http://m.gmail.com/ shows that even the decision on the namespace is right - Google's Gmail service now has a web based mail interface for small screen devices. While POP3 access has always been available, it has never been 100% reliable. While you'll still need to watch the data charges from your carrier, it should be no problem for any mobile web browser to get your mail.
Mobile Email and how to recieve it is an area which a lot of companies are working on, with mobile data and email being seen as the best area for growth in 2006. Visto are now asserting that "Microsoft has infringed upon multiple patents Visto holds regarding proprietary technology that provides enterprises and consumers with mobile access to their email and other data," and have started legal proceedings against the Redmond based Microsoft, who see email as a central plank to their mobile platform. Three patents are specifically mentioned in the full press release which follows.The issue of mobile email is a very important issue, as can be seen by Visto's other announcement of a licencing deal with NTP.
3-Lib's grid of mobile/smartphone solutions is now fully interactive! You can apply your own weightings for any smartphone functions and the grid will recalculate scores as needed.
Moscow's Pushkin district greets the first Nokia Flagship Store in the world - the first of many from what we can hear. It's clearly a play from the Apple handbook - so is anyone in Moscow able to nip round and take some pictures for us? Especially the 'mobile gaming' dedicated area?(Thanks to Mobileburn for the heads up).
Dan Marlin is looking for Beta testers for The Core Pocket Media Player (the famous TCPMP) on Symbian OS. Beta testers must have 'above average' technical skills to be able to help report problems. If you're a video junkie (like me) and are interested in helping get TCPMP onto Symbian OS, please email [email protected]
Panasonic looks set to focus its effort around the Linux operating system rather than the Symbian OS. In a recent press release Matsushita announced they would be reorganising global R&D. It is accelerating development of the Linux OS, and closing the US R&D office where Panasonic's Symbian development took place. Read on for more and a status check on Symbian and S60.
The Register reports on a Microsoft and Palm rethink about how they get their operating systems, currently running at a far lower market share than Symbian OS, out to a wider market.
Steve Litchfield ponders the significance of reset holes and their absence from Symbian OS-powered devices. How much confidence do you have in your smartphone?
Jamdat, in under 6 years has gone from start-up to selling to Electronic Arts for $680 million US. Along with the Tetris Mobile licence, EA have also picked up the recently completed Doom RPG, Bejewelled and of course all the EA licenced games Jamat have been working on. From a wap version of scissors paper stone, to the number one publisher in the USA with 40% of the market, the boys have done well.
Via the UIQ Developer website comes news of an opporunity for developers to beta test Carbide.c++. Caribide.c++ is the next generation of Symbian OS development tools and is built on Eclipse, the open-source IDE framework. The UIQ Developer site also provides the opportunity to get everything you need to develop for UIQ 3, inlcuding support from experts via its forum.
It being a slowish news day, I've been updating my (now huge) Grid of mobile devices, taking a selection of current hardware and rating them against each other in gory detail. New devices covered include the Nokia N70, the T-Mobile MDA Pro and the Orange SPV C600. Plus there are two new rating categories, for video recording and software stability.
When you hear about multi-million dollar gaming licences and massive global hits, it's hard to forget that there are hundreds of coders out there every day who get picked up by the mobile networks and showcased in their catalogues. It's the new 'mark of excellence' in a sense, and Irish Developer BitRabbit is slowly making a name with their arcade games Yukiko and Atomanix. The later has been picked up by Swisscom, who are following Orange UK's in signing up these titles for OTA distribution.