Got an S60 tip or an application experience you'd like to share? We would like to hear about your S60 tips and stories of your favorite apps. By submitting your video to our Show your S60 smarts video contest group on YouTube, you'll have a chance to win a brand new S60 device or a Bluetooth headset and Handango gift vouchers. It doesn’t matter if someone has already posted a video on the same topic – creativity is what counts! The contest is open until 20th May.

Our team created two "example" videos. One is featuring Dan Shugrue, the man behind the S60 Ambassadors program, and his favorite app, the Nokia Sports Tracker and the other Mikko Röntynen from S60 technology marketing telling his S60 browser tips.

The competition has two categories:
1. Share your S60 insight! Show your favorite S60 tip and tell us why it is so handy that all of us should learn to use our S60 devices in this way. Tag: myfavoritetrick

2. Show your favorite S60 application! Share your favorite S60 application or an internet service you can use with your S60 device and tell us how and why it makes your life so good that we should all go and download the application now! Tag: myfavoriteapp

How it works?

1. Check out more information and official rules.
2. Create your S60 tip or favorite app video. The video should show an S60 device. A list of all S60 devices from www.s60.com/phones.
3. Become a member of YouTube, if your are not yet.
4. Upload your video to your YouTube account and tag it with either “myfavoriteapp” or “myfavoritetrick” depending on the category you want to enter your video to. Allow the possibility to comment, rate, embed and syndicate your video. The spoken words of the video should be in English.
5. Go to www.youtube.com/group/showyours60smarts, and click Join group.
6. Click Add video link & select your video to enter it.

Again it is time to celebrate the spring and have Wappu. On 1st of May we, Finns, gather into the streets and parks to have some champagne and have fun together with friends and family. You might have heard about our party style; it is what it is so it includes lot of booze… But we also want to share the moments and views with others who are not with us (or if they are it is not a problem either :-)) and we send tens of text messages and multimedia messages during the day. Usually this is done by sending the same message to all of the friends at the same time. We take fuzzy party pictures and send bad jokes or then just wish the best day for someone special. And some of us receives as many messages…There is only one problem when doing all this. When you choose the names from your contacts list you need to remember and concentrate who was the last added person so that you don’t add him/her twice into the group message. The contacts list could have indication telling what name is already inserted or the list could be filtered to include only names that are not yet added. Very challenging situation if you have tasted some champagne….Anyway, have fun and take care!

PS. added this pic of our wappu champagne & strawberry cake at work.

I promised Saara that I would write more about our RC truck demo. As she wrote earlier, we used a Nokia N95 to drive a radio-controlled truck around the expo floor at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. This was a great way to attract visitors to our booth, and also an excellent demonstration of the sort of creative things that are possible with S60, when you combine software development tools like Python for S60 with smart programmers.

In this case, the smart programmers are a team from the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria, who developed the software and Bluetooth hardware that made this truck go. After we saw the video of their ShakerRacer demo (and showed it in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress), we got in touch with Andreas Jakl and Stephan Selinger from Hagenberg to see if they could help us build some vehicles of our own. They were willing to help, and worked with Juha Komulainen and others in our Nokia Demolab team to modify a truck in time for the Web 2.0 event. We built the truck, and they provided the Bluetooth control module and mobile Python program that turned the N95 into an RC controller.

We're now planning to build at least two more trucks for use in future events, including the upcoming S60 Summit in May. In the meantime, we shipped the truck from last week's demo to our office in Boston, so we can show it off the Nokians here (and play a bit more on our own).

if you're inspired by this to work on your own remote control projects, you can find the ShakerRacer source code (open source) and hardware instructions online for your experimentation and enjoyment. if you build something cool, please let us know!

--Oren

I believe the majority of you readers of See into S60 are quite familiar with what you can do with the S60 browser. Nevertheless, I shot this short video of Charles, who has recently joined the See into S60 blog crew, because I thought you might want to know more about us behind the See into S60 blog too. Charles is talking about what features that make the S60 browser handy to use. He also shows the latest addition, Flash Lite 3 support, which allows you to experience the full desktop-like web Video.

One of the greatest eye-catchers of the S60 stand at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco definitely has been the S60 RC truck. This little vehicle is controlled with a Python-based application, the Shaker Racer, on a Nokia N95. The application uses the accelometer of the Nokia N95 to communicate with the truck over Bluetooth. Check out the video below where Oren explains how it works.

This is a great example of the open source innovation that Python for S60 enables. As you see, it is a useful tool for prototyping applications and experimenting with new development ideas. Oren has kindly promised to blog more about this. If you have any questions about the car, please feel free to ask by leaving your comments here!

Early this morning in the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco S60 announced extended capabilities of our Web Run-Time offering allowing creation of personal and context aware widgets. Widgets will be able to access S60's numerous applications and services securely, including the calendar, contacts, messaging, audio, video, images, GPS, and camera, via JavaScript APIs.

This enables, for example, a weather widget can access the user’s current location via the phone's built-in GPS to provide immediate local weather data. Or a flight tracker widget can easily fetch a travel itinerary from an airline’s website, save it to the phone's calendar application, and set a reminder. A few hours prior to departure, the widget will automatically check the flight's status by retrieving the flight details from the calendar.

Read the more from the press release.

Yesterday Nokia launched yet another new S60 device, the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic. The device is S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 device and comes with features such as dedicated XpressMusic keys, a 3.5mm audio jack, up to 24 hours of playback time, an audio chip for hi-fi sound quality, extendable memory up to 8GB, HS-USB for fast music transfer and HSDPA for fast access to data. In addition the innovative new voice-controlled Say and Play feature will allow you to merely say the name of a favorite artist or song to automatically play it. We’ll see the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic shipping in the third quarter of 2008 with an estimated retail price of 220 EUR before taxes and subsidies. Find out more from www.s60.com .

I made a day trip from Helsinki to Tampere yesterday.
Again, I preferred taking the train instead of driving my Skoda Fabia. But this was the first time I bought the train tickets from the internet and had them sent to my N95 over SMS. That's not so unusual; the service has been there for some time.

The funny thing was to see how the conductors behaved when checking the tickets.
I had the text message with the reservation details readily open on my phone.

On the way to Tampere, the conductor took my phone and without any hesitation entered the reservation code into his ticket machine and handed a receipt and my phone back to me. All done in 20 seconds!

On the way back to Helsinki, the same episode took five times longer. First, the conductor seemed to be afraid even taking my phone. Next, he needed to grab his reading glasses from the pocket - not that easy task when holding a phone and ticket machine. Then the display backlight went off (I have it on for 40 sec), and again he could not read the text. He did not know how to turn it on again, so he gave the phone back to me. Finally, slowly, he keyed in the reservation code into the ticket machine and I got the phone and a receipt – and a safe trip back home.

Some notes: SMS is a handy way to deliver tickets; the staff at Finnish State Railways has varying attitudes to new technologies; a quick way to zoom in and out text in the phone would be beneficial; the e-ticket layout could be easier to read; and taking a train is a comfortable way to travel. And I wonder how the reservation codes are actually generated and whether it sometimes could be possible to skip the phase of manually keying in complex numbers from a device to another.

Hi there,

Charles here, from the S60 marketing team, based out of Irving, Texas (in the heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex). Been here 10 years - love the summers - don't have the hat.

Have you all (y'all) seen this yet? (wait til I bust an "all y'all" out - it's the present imperfect plural of y'all) ;-)

In a survey conducted by Jupiter Research, it says that two-thirds of US adults don't care about listening to music on their mobiles. The overview says that evidently the cost per download and the difficulties in getting the music onto the device were to blame for this sorry state of affairs. Also causally mentioned was the proliferation of existing mp3 players.

One (surprising?) stat that was in the report was that only 5% of U.S. mobile subscribers sideload tunes from their computer.

Wow.
again, for effect,

...WOW!

Maybe I'm the oddball here, but I am an inveterate sideloader. Always have been, probably always will be. Not sure I trust people who don't (kidding - they're ok, for non-sideloaders anyway)

So the point is, what is it about the whole experience that's to blame? Is it because they are "adults"? Is it that they've never used S60 for music?

What's the good, the bad and the ugly about the S60 experience for music? How do you think it is different from WM or UIQ, Apple, etc.? Is the experience different in your eyes...and ears...and wallets?

Talk amongst yourselves...

You just gotta love this! Snakes & breakout must be the two most addictive games ever. Can't wait to get to play.

A couple of years ago, I wrote in the S60 Multimedia blog about my initial experiments to build some sort of S60 client for last.fm, that would at least collect information about what you and your friends are listening to. The comments to that post quickly moved on to what was really needed - an S60 client to scrobble (i.e. upload) info about what you're playing to your last.fm account.

As you can see at the end of the comments, the developer community has responded with at least two scrobbler clients for S60. Aspyplayer is a Python scrobbler client that includes its own music player, and uploads your listening history to last.fm as you listen. If you're looking for a non-Python option, there's Mobbler, a native S60 application that stores your history for batch uploading to last.fm.

Thanks to Symbian-guru and larryni.me.uk for alerting me to these latest developments.

--Oren

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco in April 22-25, 2008 at Moscone West will feature a 30,000 square foot tradeshow filled with exhibitors showcasing all things Web 2.0 - tools, technologies, services and infrastructures. S60 will be there with a nice selection of demos and speakers too. S60 demos (stand #729, level 1) include: the latest S60 devices, demos of Internet innovation with web run-time and widgets, S60 & Internet community services, demos the technologies such as Open C, Java, Python that are used to create innovative experiences and applications on S60 among others. S60 will also take part to the Booth Crawl on Thursday 24th from 4:30 to 6PM. Please leave your comment to this entry or drop me an email if you’re planning to come! I (and the rest of the S60 team) would be happy to meet you!

As mentioned, there will be speakers from Nokia at the conference. Below are short descriptions of the people and topics.

David Rivas, current Vice President of Technology Management for S60 Software in Nokia’s Device business, will be talking about Internet services on mobile.

From Access to Interaction and Integrated Experiences: Unleashing the Power of Mobility to the Internet -- The future of mobility and the Internet will be about the complete integration of the user, the mobile device, and the Internet, providing seamless connectivity to the Web and use of mobile context for more exciting experiences and essential services. S60, the world-leading mobile software platform, offers the best Internet experience and brings development on mobile to mainstream.

Bill Plummer, Vice President, Sales and Go to Market, Americas for Nokia. Bill’s primary responsibilities include strategic portfolio management and go-to-market integration of the full range of Nokia devices and services, as well as subsequent solution launch, product marketing and life-cycle management.

Innovation in an Age of Mobility and Openness -- Mobile devices are developing greater capabilities to sense and make sense of the world around us. Nokia CTO Bob Iannucci will discuss how the compelling synergy of these devices with new innovative technologies and development tools have opened up opportunities for creative minds everywhere to build new applications, services, and experiences that fuse our physical and digital worlds.

Ganesh Sivaraman heads the global marketing of Web Technologies & Applications for S60 and has been instrumental in creating the excitement & awareness of the highly-acclaimed Web Browser & Web Runtime for S60. Ganesh will be taking part in a panel that explores the future of widgets as it relates to distribution, economics, and additional opportunities. Ganesh has been a guest on the Voice of S60 Podcast several times during the years.

Widgets Growing Up -- Widgets are portable bits of code that are used for consumption of content and expression of your identity across the Web, desktop, and increasingly mobile. Widgets include games, stock tickers, slideshows, utilities, music players, and more. If 2007 was the year of the widget, 2008 is the year of the widget growing up.

Hi all,

Some time ago I posted an entry about new firmware for N95 8GB which includes support for Flash video and Widgets. There were quite a few questions wether those will be made available also for other S60 3rd Edition FP1 based devices. So, I'm really happy to be able to tell that N95 and N82 now also have a firmware update that includes those functions. You can find the lates fimware update news always here

br Mikko

To encourage unique concepts in mobile gaming, Nokia is in the search of the brightest, most creative and groundbreaking ideas for game concepts in Mobile Games Innovation Challenge. The competition is open to game designer and developer companies of all backgrounds and all levels worldwide.

Mobile Games Innovation Challenge seeks to drive mobile gaming worldwide to the next level of excitement and innovation, relying on the features and functionalities of N-Gage compatible devices and Symbian-based S60 devices as well as Series 40 devices from Nokia.

More information can be found from www.developer.n-gage.com/innovation

The folks over at Kuneri have made a very impressive hand drawn animation of a Nokia N95 using only MS Paint and mouse. The clip was made to advertise KuneriLite, which is a Rapid Application Development toolkit to extend Flash Lite capabilities and create S60 apps without any Symbian knowledge. If you want to know more, check out http://bloggy.kuneri.net.

When ordering a taxi, the operator gives me a number (usually three digits) so that know which taxi is for me. It's essential information but needed only for max 10-15 minutes. As I have a bad memory, I make a call to that number and immediately hang-up. This way, the number is available in my made calls should I need it. No need for pen and paper. Works also for storing hotel room numbers etc. Any other tips for doing this?

As you all have read by now, Nokia has officially launched the Nokia N-Gage mobile games service. Of course us mobile game enthusiasts were urged to Get out and play already on Thursday last week. Anyways, the Electric Playground guys have managed to get a sneak peak at the new 2008 Nokia N-Gage. It's all for the love of gaming! ;-P

Greetings from Las Vegas, Nevada! I'm spending a few days here for the annual CTIA Wireless conference, the biggest mobile technology show in the US. There's no official S60 presence here, but I did give a presentation about the S60 runtime and developer offering at the Smartphone Summit that preceded the main event. I also had a chance to meet some of the companies in the Nokia stand that have interesting and innovative S60 applications and services.

One application that's particularly interesting is the KNFB Mobile Reader. This application helps blind and visually impaired people read printed text, and recognize printed documents, by converting the printed text into audio. The program also recognizes US currency, which is particularly useful since all US bills are the same shape and size(!)

It takes advantage of S60 3rd Edition FP 1 and the 5MP camera and Xenon flash available in the Nokia N82.

If you want to see more, I have been uploading photos from the event to Share on Ovi:

-Oren

Hi all folks! I'm Minna and I'm working in S60 marketing team in the area of user experience. Here, in this blog I will share my views and experiences about business and freetime mobile phone usage.

That in mind: Have you ever thought of what keeps you happy as user after you have used your mobile or any device for a while? I just faced this recently when I was planning to change my mobile into newer. I have N95 and I was thinking if I could have new one because it does not look so shiny anymore but is more like washed out in rough conditions (like at my summer cottage renovation project). But, then again…so what. It has been a good tool for me, also in business and it has all the things I need. I'm familiar with it so why to change working relationship even thought the glamorous times are over and I'm not anymore surprised of cool details….. What's your opinion? Should the device be designed so that it keeps changing somehow or is the idea more like "the less it takes focus from other things, the better it is"?