Talk (MobileMag.com - 19 April 2005):

"At the Voice On the Net (VON) conference in Toronto, Skype Technologies co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom reported that a mobile version of Skype will be available this year."

...and more talk (Digitoday.fi, in Finnish - 28 November 2005):

my translation: "Skype's Nordic Manager Jonas Kjellberg said in Helsinki on Friday that Symbian phones will get Skype client during the next two quarters."

Skype is already available for Pocket PC. Please don't keep us S60 users waiting any longer...

ps. those not willing to wait can try Useful Skype.

Tero Lehto wrote yesterday (in Finnish) about how the combination of Tivo and iPod is challenging Nokia's "TV phones". Good observation, although I agree with the commenters that real-time TV and offline video content do not necessarily compete against each other.

I think the buzz started from TiVo's press release "TiVo To Bring TV Programming To Apple Video iPod and PSP". Even though this feature will obviously be limited to very few people, I find the concept truly interesting.

So TiVo will start to bring TV content to iPod and PlayStation Portable. And apparently they didn't even bother to ask the permission from Apple and Sony. This makes me wonder: why won't they bring TV content to Nokia’s S60 devices? After all, Nokia’s S60 devices are selling at least as much as iPod, and three times as much as PSP (sources: Canalys, Steve Jobs). Sure, there are a couple of technical and business barriers I can think of. But think about the concept – and I'm not talking just to Nokia or TiVo - why not indeed. I would say, let's do it. Let’s remove the barriers.

Oh, did I get caught up in too vague future visioning? Sorry... Let’s roll up our sleeves now, and think what we can currently do with our own S60 devices.

In Oct 2004, my colleague Tero showed me an episode of the TV series “Friends” running on his Nokia 6630. It was a real eye-opener for me. I was stunned by the quality, and got convinced of the feasibility of real-time TV and offline video for S60 devices. Tero was using a 3rd party app called SmartMovie, and the video was in DivX format. Other similar apps include DVDPlayer by Viking Informatics and Mobile Media Maker by Makayama Software, but I haven't tested these fully. Anyway, you can rip a DVD movie to ~128 MBytes and watch it in full screen landscape mode.

Feel absolutely free to continue the list, and comment the apps.

Even though my first impression was a pure WOW, I have to confess that I don't regularly watch offline videos with my Nokia 6680. It just requires too much effort. Would my little brother do it? Maybe. Would my mother do it? No way. If we want to make people raving fans of offline video, we must make the whole process much more user-friendly.

Anyway, I believe watching offline video is not so far away:
- devices are getting better
- memory is getting cheaper
- content (commercial and user-generated content) is getting more easily available

Let's get to work and remove the final barriers.

During the last two days, I have seen this headline everywhere (via Yahoo):

"Dilbert Fans Can Now Get Their Daily Dose of the Popular Cartoon Strip on Their Verizon Wireless Mobile Web 2.0-Enabled Phones"

As a DIY man, I couldn't help thinking whether I could do it myself, without operator as the middle-man.

Here is an example what you could do:
1. Install your favorite RSS Reader (My-Symbian search for "rss")
2. Search Dilbert RSS feeds from Google (Google Search for "dilbert rss")

Voila!

Ok, the truth is that you cannot get the same user experience in this case if you bypass the operator services. At least not yet. But DIY people tend to find their ways...

Ps. don't subscribe to unofficial feeds. It's evil, you know. Support the creators.

Did you know that you may not need to configure the basic settings (Internet Access Points, MMS, streaming, ...) ever again?

To try it yourself:
1. Unpack your brand-new Nokia S60 device.
2. Insert your SIM card and power up.
3. Try browsing, sending MMS, or streaming video. You know, it might just work...

Ok, I have to admit that this will not work with every service provider in the world. And you need to have an active subscription with your service provider. But for most of us, it will work like a charm. However, Nokia can't officially promote this functionality, and therefore you can't find this from your manual or from official nokia.com web pages.

Anyway, I find it quite interesting that most product reviewers have not found this functionality. Instead, they typically give credit to our Setting Wizard application (more about this later). The only exception we are aware of, is Steve Litchfield's Nokia 6680 review in Allaboutsymbian:

"Series 60 mobile telephony has certainly moved on apace since I and others wasted hours scrabbling around trying to get the right settings for Internet Access Points for each GPRS network. The 6680 already knows about the major networks across the world, you simply put your SIM card in and.. err... that's it. Access points created and useable. A 'Settings wizard' even claims to put in all the right POP3 or IMAP4 mailbox details as well, but there are only details for a dozen or so ISPs and mine (UK Online) wasn't listed. Still, this ease of use is certainly a major step forward."

Congrats, Steve, for being the first one noticing this functionality!

Before getting down to business, thanks for everybody who has sent me feedback - both private and public. As you know, I am taking my first baby steps into blogosphere, and I will greatly appreciate any feedback that helps me to the right track.

I was contacted yesterday by Simon Judge (check out his blog), and he raised a valid point about S60 freeware:

"Freeware doesn't tend to get much press as there's no incentive for the 'Handango' affiliates to promote them. Hopefully, your site will be more independent."

As I told Simon, I am a big fan of freeware and other interesting stuff that for some reason won't get official press visibility from Handango, operators, Nokia etc. So I am glad if I can help increasing the visibility of freeware in my blog. Now that Nokia has announced last month the Symbian Signed Freeware Route to Market, I hope the S60 freeware ecosystem will stay alive, live long, and prosper.

But I would need a little help from you here. Let's try to list the best freeware applications, and the best freeware sites where to find them. I know a few, but I'm sure you know the freeware scene much better than I do.

My personal top-3 favorite freeware applications are: FExplorer, Oggplay, and Symella (don't try this at home unless you have a flat-fee plan, or a generous employer paying your data bills...) Which ones are your favorites?

Here are a couple of good places to start looking:
- http://www.simonjudge.com/s60freeware.html
- http://www.symbianwiki.com/Series60Freeware
- http://gadget17.symbiandiaries.com/site/modules/weblinks/viewcat.php?cid=1
- http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Series_60_Freeware.php
Update 14 Nov: (thanks Steve!)
- http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/nonagss60.htm
- (please continue the list)

As some of you have probably already heard, Google introduced yesterday its first downloadable mobile application, J2ME based Google Local for mobile. If you are reading this from USA and you are a Cingular, Sprint, or T-Mobile customer, you can try this by downloading it from http://www.google.com/glm.

More info from USA Today, PC World, and Engadget.

Now, as I'm writing this from rainy Finland, I couldn't test this Google app myself. Darn. Instead, I have been using Nokia's own Mobile Search application (download from http://www.nokia.com/mobilesearch) for a couple of months and I have grown very fond of it. It has also received pretty good feedback from the market - see e.g. Allaboutsymbian's comments.

Has anyone had an opportunity to try both of these apps? I would be most interested to hear some comparisons of the user experience, no matter how "comparing apples and oranges" this would be.
---
Update 9 Nov 2005: I just got this Google Local for mobile working with my Nokia 6680. What did the trick was that I simply took the battery off and restarted my device (this ensures a "clean" boot). After playing around for a couple of minutes, I think the app works quite nicely, especially considering that it is a Java application. I strongly recommend trying it yourself, but be warned - the application is quite data-hungry.

Anyway, I think it will be really, really interesting to see to what heights we (Google, Nokia, Yahoo, some enthusiastic guy in a garage - you name it) can lift the mobile search experience. But more about this in the future...

Good afternoon.

Let me to introduce myself. My name is Tommi Vilkamo, and I work as an analyst in a Nokia unit that develops applications for Nokia’s S60 based devices. So if you are reading this, the chances are that you have already used some of the apps we have developed. In addition to my daily work, I try to follow closely what is happening in the S60 ecosystem.

Why I am writing this blog

Six months ago, I started a Nokia internal blog called "Symbian Applications Blog". I blogged about 3rd party S60 applications worth interest, and about the feedback that our own apps received from various websites and blogosphere. As my surprise, the blog became quickly quite popular - one of the most popular blogs inside Nokia. One day a colleague of mine, Calin T, asked me do we have public S60 blogs somewhere. We didn't. And I couldn't figure out any reason why we didn't. So here we are - better late than never.

Why you should be reading and commenting this blog

Do you want to know how to get the most out of your brand-new Nokia S60 device?

Well, I don’t know everything, but I know pretty much about the stuff I do for living – and I’m willing to help you in your endeavors. I will talk about Nokia apps, especially the ones we have developed, but also about interesting 3rd party stuff you can find out there. I will listen about what you have to say, and I promise to do everything humanely possible to ensure that our products get improved based on your feedback.

Although I write about the stuff I do for living, this blog is my personal blog. There are no evil corporate trolls or secret master plans behind this. The thoughts in this blog are mine, and most probably people inside and outside Nokia don't always agree with me. But I guess this is just fine - how else could we have an interesting conversation, and maybe learn something from it?

Ok, enough talk.

Thanks for reading this short intro. Now, let's get down to business...