The next version of Pixelpipe's social media sharing agent, Send and Share, has reached its final version, and is awaiting approval on the Ovi Store. For a number of months, the Pixelpipe team have been working hard on developing the Send and Share client, regularly sending test versions out to their beta testing mailing list. In a message to testers from CEO Brett Butterfield, this pre-release pattern will be changing and less frequent updates will be sent to testers.
Nokia Diagnostics is a little suite of on-device tests to help exercise core functionality of your Symbian smartphone and report back. It's a nice idea, driven by Nokia Beta Labs, and has had a big update (to v1.74) today, but only for S60 5th Edition phones (e.g. N97, 5800) - it seems that the S60 3rd Edition version is no longer to be updated. And Symbian^3 phones are also out of luck - so far - a version is promised for these 'soon'.
Recently added to the Ovi Store is a client for TheTrainLine.com - and I was going to review it but Jay Montano has beaten me to it, with a complete walkthrough. Highlights include a built-in portrait QWERTY keyboard, the re-use of saved pages and data, the speed and the full feature set. The application takes you right through to purchasing tickets and is free to download. A couple of screens and links below.
When C7 owners check their Software Update application this week, they will (network branding permitting) find a set of Over-The-Air updates for their device. First of all, there is the update for the Social application, available for all Symbian^3 devices, that we have already reported on. Also there is a 3.3MB update for core applications to "improve stability", and a 3.0MB update adding the "Midnight" theme.
Orange Wednesdays is the first of a series of 'Signature Applications' produced by Orange UK, using Qt to build for Nokia devices, and there's a fascinating interview with Mark Sage and Rafel Uddin of Orange Labs UK, talking about the app's development, about the use of Qt, the differences Symbian^3 brings to the table and the way private APIs are being replaced by the use of official, public Qt APIs.
Well worth bookmarking for late evening reading over a beer or two is Andrew Orlowski's epic two part essay on the history of Symbian from creation in 1998 up to near the present day. Interviewing a number of past employees, admittedly, there's a strong aftertaste of 'these are all the bits that went wrong' and there's little in the way of acknowledgement of success stories, but Orlowski's text is readable and well researched. Here's part one: Dark Star, covering Symbian's creation and here's part two: The battle for Symbian's soul.
Between 9am and 10am GMT tomorrow, November 30th, three designers from Nokia will be answering questions on Twitter about Nokia's design process, with special emphasis on Nokia's C6-01 and C7-00. Questions should have the #NokiaDesign hash-tag to be seen by the guys at Nokia. Searching for that tag (just click the previous link) will allow you to view the conversation. Read on for more details.
Following the news that it would now become a licensing body, the Symbian Foundation has announced that all of its websites will close down on December 17th 2010. After that date, every site under the symbian.org domain, including developer.symbian.org, horizon.symbian.org, ideas.symbian.org and blog.symbian.org, will no longer be online. In addition, it has been said that the Twitter and Facebook accounts for the Symbian Foundation "are also likely to be discontinued". Read on for further details and ramifications.
