Making Music With the N80

Darla Mack has just posted an interview with Omri Levy, a musician who has created a an album titled "about:blank". It is a collection of demos he made using his N80 and Alon MP3 Dictafone. In the interview, she asks him why he decided to record his EP this way. He says:-

"It happened to me when i first got my first Symbian phone and found a great recording app called "Alon mp3 Dictaphone'. I recorded the first songs on Nokia 6680 and a few weeks ago i've upgraded to N80 and recorded the whole thing again in a few hours."

More power to the N80.

Upgrade For Nokia PC Suite 6.82

A little late I know, but I just spotted this piece of news from Symbian Watch. Nokia has released the latest version of the PC Suite 6.82. Changes include:-
- Stability fixes for backup and restore
- Improved mobile music experience with Nokia Music Manager
- Update your phone software with Nokia Software Updater
- Added fluency in information exchange between Nokia phones and Microsoft applications (such as Windows Media Player 11) with Windows Portable Device (WPD) driver support

I'm quite keen to see what new improvements have taken place in the Nokia Music Manager. While the current build is alright, improvements could be made on exporting of playlists and conversions to the M4A format. Download it here.

More Rumours and Sincere Apologies

Darla Mack has posted about another possible Nokia Multimedia Device, the N97. Her scoop comes courtesy of Mobile Whack. The N97 is rumoured to be equipped with a "3-inch display, might have a 5 megapixel camera with 20x digital zoom and include a miniSD card and 20GB of internal memory." Next year is going to be an exciting year for Symbian, with a plethora of new devices coming out!

I would now like to extend my sincerest apologies to everyone who has been reading this blog. I know I have not updated it for the last two weeks. It almost the year end so I have been caught up working on my company's reports and 2007 plans, so I am quite worn out. I'm going to try to post at least twice a week from now onwards, so that I don't get too lazy.

New WLAN Wizard Now Available For N80

Nokia has released the new version of their WLAN Wizard available for download at the N80 Internet Edition support page. With htis application, you can now quickly and easily search for available Wifi networks, store the confiqurations and launch the Web browser quickly from your idle screen. As Nokia says -

"Is there a WLAN network out there? The WLAN Wizard will tell you, store it and launch it for you! WLAN Wizard shows the available WLANs in the range of N80 Internet Edition directly on the idle screen and it is possible to start web browsing immediately. WLAN Wizard also automatically creates the needed WLAN settings making WLAN usage extremely easy."

Thanks to AAS for the heads up.

Poscasting Application Formally Released!

All About Symbian and Darla Mack have put up posts announcing that the Nokia Podcasting application is finally out from Beta and is now ready as a final release. Get the application from the Nokia Podcasting Blog.

AAS goes so far as to put some pointers as to how to install the application and preserve your current podcasts and settings. Enjoy!




"Before upgrading your Podcasting app:
1.If you don't want to preserve your subscribed podcasts and episodes:
a. Uninstall Podcast app from App manager before installing ver 1.00.0.
b. Find the Podcasting icon on your device. (For example, in the MY OWN folder on the N91).
c. Click "Options" and choose "Remove"
d. Install the 1.00.0 version of Nokia Podcasting

2. If you would like to preserve your subscribed podcasts and episodes:
a. Simply install ver 1.00.0 on top of the Beta version, you will see a warning message that ver 0.93.(6) will be replaced by ver 1.00.(0).
b. Select OK to proceed with the installation and use the same location where Beta version is installed when asked where do you want to install ver 1.00.0.
If you are not sure where Beta version was installed, open App Manager and check whether there is a memory icon shown besides Podcast. If yes, your Podcast Beta version is installed on memory card (or hard drive); otherwise, it is installed on phone memory.

3.After upgrading your Podcasting app:If you did not remove (uninstall) Podcast Beta version before upgrading to ver 1.00.0, your default directories will not be updated to the one comes with ver 1.00.0.
In order to show the new default directories, open "Directory" view, select "Options" then select "Restore Default." The new Directories should now show."

Search And Download Google Video For Your N80

I noticed over at the s60 Multimedia blog, an article regarding how to watch Google Video directly over your NSeries device without the need to download to the file a PC first and do a video conversion.

Scott Robbin has developed an application which allows users to search and download videos to your mobile device. It works for both AVI and MP4 devices, so should be playable over Realplayer.

If you have a non-Symbian devices but are interested in trying out the application, the general requirements are that:
-Your phone has an XHTML-compliant browser
-You have enough storage on your phone to hold large files
-Your phone’s connection is fast
-You have an application on your phone capable of playing AVI or MP4 files

Point your Web browser over to Srobbin Mobile website and let the application do the rest. Do note that due to large file sizes, all search results are limited to videos less than 4 minutes long. Thanks for the effort Scott!

The Next Communicator?

Darla Mack has posted an interesting update from Softpedia regarding what is rumoured to be a possible successor to Nokia's Communicator range of devices. Softpedia has provided sketches of what is possible the next generation device the E90, a slide based QWERTY keyboard based device. I was a big Psion and Communicator user back in the old days, so the possibility of a cutting edge keyboard based Symbian device is really exciting for me.

The rumours go so far as to say that this device will provide connectivity via HSPDA, UMTS, EDGE and Wi-Fi capabilities.... and may include a 2 megapixel digital camera and the miniUSB connectivity support.

As these are still unconfirmed, please take the information with a pinch of salt.