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

The S60 app, "Pro Session Golf", which was originally only available on the N93 Golf Edition, is now available for download for 65 euros or $90 US. I interviewed Pro Session Golf's Product Manager, Larri Vermola, last year for the Voice of S60. Nice to see this in downloadable format, now what I'd like to see is this technology used elsewhere. (My tennis swing could use some improvement)

HELSINKI, Finland, September 18, 2007 – Pro Session Golf video analysis application is now available worldwide for several Nokia Nseries devices as downloadable version. Pro Session Golf enables you to capture your golf swing, analyze and improve your game by split screen swing comparison and other advanced analysis methods. The tool was originally developed for tour players and teaching professionals and it was launched in 2006 as European only limited Nokia N93 Golf Edition. Now the success story continues globally on expanded device range. The application is compatible with Nokia’s latest flagship Nokia N95 and it also supports Nokia N73, Nokia N93, and Nokia N93i.

After solving several puzzles, I do not find the Sudoku application on my mobile as interesting as some six months ago. This fall, no doubt my favorite add-on application has been the Omat Lähdöt –timetable service offered by Helsinki City Transport.

Helsinki City Transport, together with the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council (YTV), offers a comprehensive timetable and journey planning service on their web sites. There’s also a mobile optimized version of the web site, offering a great way to plan routes and check timetables on the move.

However, people typically commute between few places only. For me, these places are home, the office and a gym. The Omat Lähdöt –timetable service, launched in May, is a superior tool for checking the timetables for these connections. With the application installed on my mobile, I can check the timetable for any bus stop in Helsinki. But what’s more, I can store my most frequently used bus stops (home, office, gym) in the system, and even nickname them. When opening the application, it shows me the timetable of next five buses arriving at these stops. It’s possible to use the service with a PC, too, but I have found the mobile version very handy: less running behind buses, less waiting at bus stops, no printed timetables in the pocket.

There are some things I’d like to improve in the service though. When opening the application, it always asks whether it is ok ”to use network and send or receive data.” An extra click is needed to confirm this is ok. Also, I always need to select the access point for the application manually. A bit irritating, and again an extra click is needed. Finally, when exiting the application, a confirming click to exit the application is required, too. I hope there would be a way to avoid these extra clicks, especially when using the phone outdoors in an awful November weather like this morning.

Oval Racer from Great Ape Software really pushes the graphical boundaries of S60 3rd Edition to a whole new level. The premise is simple, it's a stock car-style race game, but Oval Racer takes the mobile race genre much further.

The first thing you'll notice when begin a race is the fantastic 3D rendering. When selecting a course to race on, you're shown a rotating 3D model of each course. When you select your car (nine cars in total I believe, three for each difficulty), it's presented to you in rotating 3D, you can also change the colors of the car and add different racing stripes.

There's graphic options galore for those who like to tweak their settings - you can change the detail, car texture, sky texture, track texture, car shadows, dashboard, lighting, as well as adding a working rear-view mirror. All of these of course will alter your frames-per-second rate. With details all maxed out, my Nokia E70 was too slow (although I heard it's great on the Nokia N93) but it looked nice with detail on high, however I prefer an ultra high smoothness so I turned details to low but kept the sky texture on. If you're not much for tweaking settings, the built-in "Calibrate graphics" feature will set the optimal settings for your device. And the game is compatible with all the S60 3rd Edition resolutions (and I can play in either landscape or portrait mode on my E70)

You can choose from a race, practice, and championship. Race allows you to go a few laps against opponents, practice us just you on the course, and championship gives you a lot of races of different courses at different levels. Up to 16 AI opponents can join you in a race. It's amazing how well the game simulates stock car driving, when you're sandwiched in between four cars and the wall you really feel like you're behind the wheel.

The real key to Oval Racer are the physics and gameplay. This is not just some mindless thumb twitcher, there's a very comprehensive driving system built-in that you need to learn and practice. Courses have three different types of surfacing (dirt, mud, tarmac) that change the physics. Once you've mastered a course in practice, all your teachings go to waste when 9 other highly-skilled AI opponents challenge you. Not only do you need to learn to race, you need to deal with your opponents.

Once you're done with a race you can watch the replay. Just like on TV the reply shows the cars at different angles, you need to see it to believe it. These are not only fun to watch, but watching the reply will show you what you did wrong and how to improve your technique.

At the writing of this post, the app is in the process of getting Symbian Signed. It's hands down takes the awards for Best Racer, Best Graphics, and Best Gameplay for S60 3rd Edition. It's not another mobile game you'll get bored of after 10 minutes. And the in-game help/manual is the most extensive I've ever seen. The crew at Great Ape really put some heart and soul into this. Visit their website to get more info and purchase it.

When people think of the term "BitTorrent" they often think of piracy and illegal filesharing...but they shouldn't. BitTorrent is simply a protocol just like HTTP, FTP, and POP3. So obviously "banning" a protocol would be ridiculous, but this hasn't stopped some ISP's and web hosts from doing this.

I've tested out some S60 BitTorrent clients in the past with mixed results but I think finally found one that takes the cake. The freeware app SymTorrent has been developed by three authors inside the mobile laboratory of BUTE's Department of Automation and Applied Informatics in Budapest. I'm not going to go into the basics of BitTorrent filesharing, I'll assume you know how it works. The functionality off this app is rather limited compared to the clients you'll find on your desktop, but the essentials are there.

When you load up the app you're shown your active torrents which tells you how much each torrent is completed, how many other clients you're connected to, and your current download speed. If you move to the other tab, you'll find your overall upload/download speeds and total incoming connections.

Finding torrents to download is easy, finding legal torrents can be a bit more difficult. I fired up the Web Browser for S60 and found a torrent called "Photos of horses", sounds innocent enough. I clicked on the file, saved it to my memory card, then went back into SymTorrent clicked "Options" then "Add Torrent File" and navigated to my memory card to select the file. I chose my connection - use WLAN if you have it, otherwise you better have a high-speed, flat-rate connection or else it'll be slow and expensive. After a few seconds the transfer began.

The torrent then loads up in the main window, when you click on it you're offered three tabs. One gives you a progress bar and more details about the torrent, the second shows you a list of files within the torrent, and third displays the torrent's properties. I was unable to select which files within the torrent I wanted to download and which ones I didn't, this is the only request I'd have to future versions.

In the options, you can tell it where you want it to save the files. After a few minutes I check the folder and there they were, photos of horses. So all-in-all another nice piece of freeware for S60!

I am a tech lover who hates messing about with the innards of tech. If I buy a phone with a browser and email, all I want to do is press a cute little icon that says "Browser" or "Email" respectively. If absolutely necessary, it can then prompt me for a password. Any arcane questions like, "what is your SMTP pop pqrst server setting...blah...bhah..." gets me fantasizing about pulling out the finger nails of whoever made such a nasty and unintuitive application.

Some might call it sacrilege. I don't think so. I love cars but would never raise the hood to get grease under my fingernails. For me, the pleasure is in the driving, the thrill of taking the corner hard, feeling the vibrations in your spine, enjoying the responsiveness of the chassis. For all this to happen, all I need to know about how a car works is, - where to put the key, or on a Honda S2000, how to push the starter button. In other words, being an enthusiastic driver and an enthusiastic mechanic are two different things. You can be passionate about either one or both. My hands are clean and I intend to keep them that way.

This brings my nicely to the subject of widgets, which are basically a tiny self-contained applications that typically runs in an environment called the widget dashboard. A widget dashboard is able to handle multiple applications at the same time. For those you who use a Mac know exactly what I am talking about, for those who don't, check www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard or http://widgets.yahoo.com. Or better still, get a Mac.

With its light application environment and low resource needs, widgets are perfect for the mobile world. And the good news is that now you can get them for your phone and it's developed by a Nokia Venture called “Widsets” (www.widsets.com). The solution consists of two parts, a webpage where you log in (with your PC) and search, make and subscribe (free) to widgets. And a client application that can pushed to your phone from the website.

To get started you need to visit www.widsets.com and get yourself an account. Once in, you have to choose from an every increasing choice of widgets. All you need to do is the "pick" a widget, and it gets added to your "MySet". Once you have selected all the widgets you want on the blue space (Screenshot 2), a simple click on "Mobilize Set" send link via sms to your phone. Click on the link and enjoy the show.

As the screenshot 1 above shows, what you get for your trouble is a nice beautiful spatial environment with nice icons each of which does what it says. E.g. the BBC news icon gives me news, the Flickr icon, lets me get specialized feeds from Flickr and Engadget allows me draw up my Xmas Wish List. And if the present set of widgets does not contain any kind of application or news service you want, you have a great (easy to use...believe me) tool that allows you to make a new widget. I was able create a Motor sport news widget in about 2 minutes that gave me RSS feeds from the BBC website.

The application works in background and uses pretty small amount of data to update applications. You can also check your data download rates using the "System Widget" that comes pre-installed.

Drive on!