At CTIA Dolby Laboratories showed off Dolby Surround support on the Nokia N95 8GB, dubbed Dolby Mobile.
Wait. What?
What is this, China? Are more-than-two speakers on a phone hitting mainstream?
No. It's an app, developed by Dolby Laboratories, that runs in the background and, I have to quote this, "takes plain, old stereo sound and give it a 3D feel and increased depth" (from IntoMobile).
According to the blogosphere (and especially the guys over at IntoMobile, who got some hands-on time with this at the Mobile World Congress in February), it's really useful and all.
I just can't believe this. An app that 'magically' turns stereo into surround, 3D sound? I remember now, I already have such a thing on my N95! And it's 100% useless! So hopefully the Dolby app will be better.
And now let's put this into perspective. Samsung have been constantly pushing dedicated Digital Sound Processors (developed by Bang & Olufsen) in their recent high end phones, including their S60 lineup. And according to Eldar from Mobile Review, one such Samsung smartphone, the i450, produces the best sound on the market right now.
And this... is... Nokia's... answer?! An app?
[Source and Image source: IntoMobile]
Dolby comes to Nokia S60 smartphones
Are the tablets consumer-friendly devices? (Thoughtfix edition)
Don't get me wrong, I love the N810, but I really can not be convinced that the average consumer would. More on my thoughts will follow in a few days, after I decide on what to write that Daniel hasn't already mentioned. Maybe I'll do a post focusing on why I agree with what he wrote, and why I don't, where I don't (there are such parts, but very few).
More posts are coming on the N810, there won't just be one more post.
In the mean time, click here to read Thoughtfix's... thoughts.
Mobilize your site for free with Mowser, FeedM8 or Mippin Maker
So you have your wonderful site or blog and you're proud of it. You're happy with the way it looks on a computer.
But wait. What if your readers want to access it from their mobile phones?
Sure, the S60 Browser for example renders pages more or less exactly like they are seen on a computer. But what if your readers don't own an S60 smartphone? What if they want to view your site on a razr? Or through Internet Explorer mobile?
Luckily, there are many services that help you 'mobilize' content. Few are free, though. Here are my thoughts on what I think are the Top 3 free mobilization services.
Mowser
Mowser mobilizes the web by taking HTML pages normally viewed on a PC and adapting them so they work on a mobile phone. You can use it by going to Mowser.com on your phone and entering the URL of the site you wish to visit. You can even bookmark a certain site you view through Mowser, since the mobilized URLs have permalinks. A service that works in a very similar way is Skweezer.
Nice and useful if you are stuck with a mobile browser that predates the 3rd Millennium.
What if you're a webmaster or blogger?
Well, if you have your own domain you can map the m. subdomain to Mowser. Meaning that your readers can then go to m.yourdomain.com and automatically view the mobilized version of your site. Even better is that any external links in the adapted pages go through Mowser as they normally do, but any links to your own domain stay as m.yourdomain.com. Which means that if a post entitled "Test Post" on your blog normally has the address www.yourdomain.com/something/testpost, its mobile version will be m.yourdomain.com/something/testpost. And again, these are permalinks, they can be bookmarked and the address stays the same.
Click here for instructions on how to map the m. subdomain to point to the mobilized-by-Mowser version of your site. You can also add an additional header to your HTML pages to inform search indexes about your mobile version as described here.
If you have a hosted Wordpress blog there are many mobilization options, I am aware. Mowser also have their own Wordpress plugin, available here.
To get an idea of how a certain web page looks when mobilized by Mowser, just go to the Mowser site on your computer and enter the URL.
FeedM8
FeedM8 has a different approach to mobilization. It grabs your site's RSS feed and creates a mobile site out of it. The mobile site you create using this method will have its own www.feedm8.com/yourchoice URL. You can customize the look and feel of your mobile site and all. I came across one major disadvantage while trying this service: download links simply don't work. As in, they're not shown as links at all. Weird. But this still is a service worth a look, if you don't usually have download links on your blog or site.
A very neat feature of FeedM8 is Text Alerts. For your readers who live in the US or Canada, here is yet another option for staying up-to-date with your content: yes, text messages. Depending on the type of information you're delivering, you can offer your readers all updates, updates for select keywords, or updates based on user specified keywords. If a keyword is selected, the user will only receive an alert if the new content contains the keyword. The deployment of the text messages is free. For you, at least.
Mippin Maker
Mippin Maker is similar to FeedM8, in that it fetches your RSS feed to create the mobile site. The URL of your mobile site will be mippin.com/yourchoice. Customization options are there, and furthermore, if you have an AdMob account, you can tie that to your mobile site, and Mippin Maker will serve ads that you receive the revenue for.
Also noteworthy is that the parent company, Mippin, has a mobile personalized homepage service available at Mippin.com (when accessed on a mobile device) and a mobile site search engine. If you use Mippin Maker to mobilize your site, the mobilized version will show up in Mippin search results. Mippin.com was reviewed by All About Symbian here and here.
Sadly, external links are only available if you choose to view the original (non-mobilized) page. At least you get this option, unlike with FeedM8.
Final thoughts
The fact that I use Mowser for the mobilized version of S60 Info says it all. I tried FeedM8, but its lack of external links was a deal breaker for me. And even if Mippin Maker does give you a "View original page" option at the end of each post, I strongly believe that external links should be shown inside each post, exactly where they are on the 'normal' version of the page.
However. If you haven't yet created a mobile version of your site or blog, I strongly encourage you to. It will make the lives of your readers much easier. And do check out all of these free options, you won't know for sure which best suits you until you try them all (except if, like me, you must have links shown inside your posts).
[UPDATE]
As you can see from the Comments section, Scott from Mippin wrote that they will be enabling external links in a few weeks. Whenever this happens, I will give Mippin Maker another try and will definitely post my experience.
JoikuSpot turns your S60 phone into a WiFi hotspot
Anyway, this is a very interesting idea and it's still under development. Keep in mind that at this time you can only browse on http and https protocols, IMAP and ftp, for example, don't work. Yes there is WEP encryption, but hopefully future versions will also feature WPA (which is a way more advanced encryption standard).
Also with v1.2 came the announcement that in the future there will be two different variations of the software, namely JoikuSpot Light (free) and JoikuSpot Premium (which will not be free and supposedly will have more advanced features).
Click here for more information and to download JoikuSpot Light Beta v1.2
[Source: Symbian Guru]
Two new sections
Two new sections (or categories, whatever you prefer) are set to debut here on S60 Info, Any chance you missed this? and Hot links.
Any chance you missed this? will be the title (and the label) of posts focusing mainly on news that has been reported, mirrored, and then re-reported across the blogosphere. It's the replacement for copy-and-paste posts, which disturbingly are becoming more and more of a trend nowdays. Don't get me wrong, there will still be dedicated news posts, but only when at least one line of such a post will be 100% mine. And this will happen whenever I have a thought, an idea about that piece of news, or when it is something that ranks very high on my interest level.
Other than that, 'news' will probably show up a few times a week in these Any chance you missed this? posts, with several news items covered by each. I myself am getting just a little bit tired of reading the same post, the exact same post, for at least ten times whenever some new app is released (to donators only, of course) or some new firmware version leaks (see? we now have firmware version leaks, I wonder what's next...), so I thought I'd spare you the same ordeal, since you are probably following other related blogs as well.
Hot links will basically be posts containing links to the most interesting original content I come across. Think Google Reader shared items, but without the spam and the useless crap. These posts will definitely be rare, and be warned that the articles they will link to will probably have more than the average length. This label is meant for very well-thought posts, insights, comparisons and so on. They won't be easy reads, but in my opinion they will be worth your time.
N-Gage is finally live!
DOWNLOAD THE N-GAGE APP HERE
Phones supported at this time: N81, N82, N95 and N95 8GB.
Details here, on Symbian Guru.
I have downloaded and installed the new N-Gage app and will update this post later with my thoughts.
