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?

Last month we uploaded three S60 hints & tips videos on multitasking, downloading apps, and browsing the web with S60 devices. Here's three new videos on our YouTube channel! What do you think?

Copy paste

Changing the look & feel

Organizing shortcuts & applications

We just added three new S60 hint & tip videos to our YouTube channel, and we'll have more coming next month. What do you think of them? Would novices find these easy to understand and useful?

Multiasking

Browsing the web

Downloading apps

Wow, a busy day for news! Probably not good marketing to launch all this new cool stuff at once, but I'm too anxious to keep this stuff on ice for another week. :-)

Introducing the latest blog to the S60 Blog family, "Smartphonin': The non-tech guide to doing stuff with S60 phones" hosted by Johanna MacDonald of Satama Interactive in Helsinki, Finland. Here's the plan with this blog...

I'm a S60 geek. And most likely if you're reading this, you're a S60 geek too. :-) Out of the 100+ million S60 users out there, we geeks represent a small fraction of the S60 ownership out there. Most of these 100 million would like to learn more about their device, and they might look for a blog to teach them more. Imagine if you're kinda new to S60 and went to Tommi's S60 Application Blog, you'd probably be like WTF!? His blog, and most other S60 blogs assume you already know alot about S60.

In steps Smartphonin' - It's the S60 blog for the non-techies. It'll have hints, tips, tricks, app reviews, phone reviews and other cool ways for you to learn more about your phone. So since it's a non-techie blog, I wanted to hunt down a non-techie person who knows how to write techie stuff to non-techie people. Johanna is an excellent writer in her free time and I know she'll be perfect for this. She'll be writing at least three times per week, so be sure to visit often and leave your comments!

Visit Smartphonin' at: blogs.s60.com/smartphonin

I will be moving within the next couple of months. Among the many things I have to concern myself with is what kind of connectivity I will have at my new place. While wired connectivity is also an issue, on this blog post I will focus on mobile connectivity.

This is not an S60-specific issue. Every mobile phone is expected to be connected to a mobile phone network of some sort in order to be useful. It is, however, worth pointing out that all of our S60 3rd Edition devices can be used without a connection to the mobile phone network. Many of the WiFi-enabled S60 devices can also be used to make phone calls using VoIP--no mobile phone provider needed!

The move away from conventional landlines and towards mobile devices makes moving just a little easier easier. If you have cut the cord (i.e. you don't have a landline), it's one less thing you have to concern yourself with. You move and your phone automatically number moves with you. I know a number of people who have moved out of one area and kept their old number in their new area. Very easy to do with mobile phones. (Note for non-North Americans: most phone numbers here, even mobile numbers, are geographic in nature)

Phone numbers are only one part of the equation. The other is service. For the non-North Americans among you, mobile phone service is far from universally available here. Depending on where you move to, you may not be able to even use your service in the new location. You might have to switch carriers and possibly handsets to get usable mobile phone service.

Fortunately, I am moving a mere 20 minutes away. I was easily able to verify with my own handsets that yes, in fact, my service works in and around the new location. Both T-Mobile and AT&T have good coverage, even inside my new house! On AT&T, even 3G service is available, though I don't have a US 3G handset to personally verify that. If someone wants to send me a Nokia N75, I'd be happy to verify it. ;)

For those who are moving a bit farther away, it may not be feasible to check with your own eyes and equipment. Though it has taken them far too long to make this information available, all of the major carriers in the US now offer street-level maps on their respective web sites. This is helpful, but it doesn't take into account other factors such as the device you are using, which often plays a critical role in how usable the service is. To give an example, T-Mobile shows non-existent coverage for my current house. However, due to the both the conservative nature of T-Mobile's maps and the awesome RF prowess of Nokia devices, I get a bar or two of signal, even inside my house!

Even with the maps and if you're able to do a cursory check of service at your future domicile, you also have to check at the places you will be at most often, e.g. the local shops and other businesses you frequent. Unfortunately, it's hard to know where those places are until you live there and are settled into a normal routine. Even with the street-level coverage maps, it's going to be difficult to know exactly how well service will work in these specific areas.

Have you moved you and your mobile service recently? What are some of the challenges you faced? What tools did you use to assist you in your planning? For those outside of North America, do you even face any of these issues? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

I'm sure that the dark side of computing was not in marketing's mind when they came up with the slogan "It's what computers have become." Phones are becoming more and more like computers every day, so it's not surprising the underbelly of the computing world is also going mobile!

Thru Engadget Mobile, I found out that there is a trojan horse program out there that sends messages to a premium SMS number in the background, thus costing you a ton of money. According to the Unwired View article, this is the first time that a particular trojan horse was written specifically for S60 devices.

In S60 3rd Edition, which is used by all of the Eseries and most of the Nseries devices, it became a requirement for all applications to be signed else the apps could not be installed. Furthermore, depending on how the application is signed, the application will be restricted to specific functions only. Details are explained in the S60 Platform Security FAQ, if you're interested.

For certain capabilities, applications need to be signed by Symbian or a trusted third party. This ensures that applications perform to specific requirements. However, it is also possible to release a piece of software self-signed, which is primarily designed for limited testing purposes. However, self-signed software is widely available from a number of sources.

What can a self-signed application do? According to the Capability Descriptions on Forum Nokia, quite a lot, actually. Capabilities include: reading/writing user data (e.g. contacts/calendar), Bluetooth/Infrared, user environment items like the microphone and camera, location information (from the mobile network), and network services, such as the ability to make a call or send an SMS.

If this trojan program was designed for S60 3rd Edition, it could easily be a self-signed application since self-signed applications are permitted to use SMS. What I am having an issue remembering at the moment is whether or not the user is prompted before SMS is used--someone more familiar with this aspect of S60 security should contact me or post corrections in the comments. I also know that some of the details about what self-signed applications may be allowed to do and what they are prompted to do is controlled through operator firmware variants as well, so the details of enforcement may differ somewhat from version to version.

I do know that with some unsigned applications, it is possible to go into the Application Manager (Tools > App Mgr) and explicitly disable access to unneeded services or change the prompting levels for services that are allowed. In Application Manager, scroll down to find the application in question. Hit the Options soft key and select, if available, Suite Settings. From here, you can adjust the permissions levels.

You should always be warned when you install a self-signed application that the application is untrusted and may be harmful to your phone. Given what a self-signed application has access to, if you're at all unsure about the origin of the application. by all means don't install it! Furthermore, you can prevent the installation of self-signed applications by going into the Application Manager, hitting the Options soft key and select Settings. From there, change the Software installation option to Signed only.

The only other piece of advice I can offer is to be observant and verify what the phone does by checking your call logs and sent message logs in the phone to ensure that no unauthorized calls or messages. Read any messages you get while running an application carefully. If you don't understand what it's asking, the safest thing to do is to not allow the action.

Is there any other hints you can give people to ensure their device doesn't get pwned by nefarious elements? Post your thoughts in the comments.

Jouni Juntunen AKA MRKTNGman shows you how to get to the S60 Party on Tuesday night.. :-)

I use my S60 device to playback music through my car, it's quite simple to do, I thought I'd share my setup with you...

There are some really nice car kits out there, but they're not cheap, and I don't like the idea of people drilling holes in my new car to install them. I wanted an inexpensive and easy way to play mp3s on my S60 through my car stereo.

Below is my Blaupunkt headunit which has AUX IN inputs n the rear of the device (nowadays the headunits often have them in the front, which is much more convenient). I had to order a Blaupunkt cable that would go from the AUX IN to a 3.5mm stereo jack. The stereo jack then plugs in to a Nokia AD-46 audio adapter (the AD-15 would work as well). The audio adapter then plugs into my Nokia E70's pop-port.

So when I get in my car, all I need to do is plug the cable into the pop-port and play some songs using the music player of my choice. When using the built-in Music Player, the music will pause if someone calls, I push the button on the AD-46 and it works quite well as a hands free device. Not a bad setup that cost me about 20 euros.

It's been such a long time I last wrote here that I thought it's finally time to do something about it.

This time, I'd like to share a simple trick I came across last week when trying to help my colleque, who had managed to get an application onto his memory card that couldn't be installed properly, but which also could not be removed by the Application Manager. In his case, the annoying thing was that whenever he restarted the phone, installation of this application was started automatically (but then failed).

So what to do? Simple, I thought, install one of the file browser applications and delete the .sis file. So I installed Y-browser and started browsing the content of the E: drive. But the installation file happens to be in one of the protected directories, and therefore can't be accessed with these tools.

What next? Luckily I had a memory card reader attached to my PC, so it didn't take long to figure out a solution. Put the memory card to reader, use Windows file manager to locate the .sis file (the name of the file you can see in the S60 Application Manager) and delete it. Problem solved.

Another mechanism, in case you don't have a memory card reader or your phone comes with harddisk rather than a memory card, is to connect the phone to your PC with the USB cable. Then select "data transfer" mode (not "PC Suite" mode). This allows you to browse again the full memory card/ harddisk content with your Windows file manager

When installing an application onto your S60 device via a computer, it first copies the installation file from your computer to the device, extracts it and installs. However, it doesn't necessarily remove that installation file from your device, and worse yet, it often places it on the native C: memory even if you're installing the application to your memory card.

Here's how to remove those installation files and free up some important memory - First off you'll need a file browser such as the free SExplorer or Y-Browser. Or, connect your device to your computer via bluetooth/USB. If you want to do it via Windows...

1. Load up Windows Explorer
2. Look for "Nokia Phone Browser" and select your phone (you must have PC Suite installed)
3. Browse to C:\ -> \Data\ -> \Installs\
4. You may now delete all those files.

...however, there are some reasons why you may not want to remove those installation files. Maybe you want to pass the application onto a friend via the device? Maybe you want to reinstall it later without using the PC?

One important thing to removed though, do NOT remove anything E:\ Data - These are important files your applications have placed there, removing them might cause some applications to stop functioning.

UPDATE: Many thanks to everyone who e-mailed/commented. First off, this is supposedly a bug, the device is supposed to automatically remove these files. The support team is currently looking into this. Secondly, some might notice I changed the instructions above - I originally used an app that's only found on pre-release firmware versions so you probably won't find it on your phone. :-)