Eseries

I have been a big fan of WorldMate for quite some time. It is one of my favourite applications from even before I switched to Nokia E61. For the last couple of days I’ve been trying out WorldMate 2007.

(more…)

I receive a fair amount of questions with regards to all Eseries devices. The second most commonly asked question is “How do I sort or search my contacts by company name?” Since the built in address book doesn’t let me do that I have invested in a great contact application from Alon Software. Their Alon Contact Guide For S60 3rd Edition is a Godsend!

(more…)

A few months back I wrote about the free CNN application available through Handmark. An application that gives you a quick overview of today’s top news. There is a similar application available from Reuters.

(more…)

In a previous post I was lamenting over the “weak” calculator included on the Nokia E61. That was before I knew about Welic’s free and amazingly powerful advanced calculator.

(more…)

Microsoft has released a beta version of its Windows Live Search For Mobile.

(more…)

For the past week or so I have been fortunate enough to been part of the beta program for the next version of Salling Clicker. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with this A*M*A*Z*I*N*G piece of software you can read an earlier post about SC or go to Salling Clicker)

I can't disclose any details of the new version except that it is a native S60 3rd edition software and it is even better than previous versions.

Keep up the excellent work Jonas! 

First, here is something for the locals.

For all of you trekking up and down the Bay Area using CalTrain here is an electronic CalTrain timetable. It's very simple and is by no means "feature rich" but hey - it's free and it does tell you when the next train to San Jose leaves.

Through a number of drop down menus you select direction, time of travel, start and end point. The application will then present the list of trains available.

The same developer, Grassroot Innovation (what a great name) who created the above CalTrain timetable has also put together a number of trivia/quiz applications.

I tried out two, (they are available as limited demos) World History Trivia and Football Trivia (In hope that it was "soccer" instead of "American Football" - when will I ever learn…)

They are inexpensive, $7.50 each, and will provide some distraction when you are stuck in a meeting

However, applications feel a bit rough around the edges (ex. see below) and could have done with another polish. Try before you buy.

It's not like the multitalented Simon Judge needs an introduction. Many thousands of us regularly read his amazing blog about mobility and mobile application development. His free, SExplorer, file explorer is a must have application and used by many more thousands.

What amazes me is how productive Simon is. I read in Tommi's application blog that Simon has started a new software directory dedicated to S60 3rd edition called Symtopia. That is great for all us users of the E-series devices which runs on S60 3rd edition.  

I know that there are other software directories out there. However, Simon always deliver quality so I have high hopes for Symtopia. Already, it is a very good directory and I expect it to only improve over time.

Another great example of Simon's productivity and stellar quality is the free Dictionary 2.0. A great application if you like me have a hard time speling ;-) 

The application is fast! installs on a memory card or the main phone memory (it takes up about 6 MB). Highly recommended software! 

Thanks Simon! 

In preparation for my upcoming vacation to Europe next week I decided to try to find some relevant applications for the Nokia E61. I came across three applications by Handmark. A company I know very well from my Treo carrying days.

I found three applications I will bring to my vacation in Europe: The Michelin Guide, The Green Guide and CNN Mobile News.

The Michelin Guide and the Green Guide are fourteen day trials but the CNN application is an advertising (very unobtrusive) subsidised free application.

It's a side note but I really don't mind when free applications or services are paid for by advertising. A great deal for everyone involved in my opinion. Of course I would prefer everything to be free but until that happens I prefer "free" because of advertising.

All three applications rely on data connections so if you worried about your data usage these applications might not be for you.

The applications are all available as over-the-air downloads. Just go to eu.handmark.com on your Nokia E61. Click on "downloads" and that will take you to the page with all three applications.

The Michelin Guide application let's you search for hotels and restaurants by categories, rating, location etc. Search results can be saved to a favourite list.

The Green Guide looks and works like the Michelin Guide application. It let's you search for tourist attractions by categories, locations and type of attraction etc.

I am not terribly impressed with the Michelin and the Green Guides but perhaps some real life usage of the applications will change my mind.

However, I did find the CNN Mobile News application well worth downloading and keeping. I don't think I will rely on the application as my primary source of news but if you have a minute or two to spare and want to see what is going on, then this is a great application. 

The application is easy to use, includes images and the text is quite large. The news selection doesn't feel terribly important but as a quick update it is great - and free ;-) 

Now head over to eu.handmark.com on your Nokia E61 to download these applications. 

There is nothing wrong with a good one trick pony. S60SpotOn does one thing and it does it well. The application will turn your Nokia E61 into a flash light. It is a free application that will disable the time out function for the backlight screen.

By activating S60SpotOn your device the backlight screen will stay on until you turn off the backlight screen function using S60SpotOn.

You might wonder why you ever would need this but I once used a device as a flash light to find my keys in a dark movie theater. I constantly had to press a key to activate the backlight screen. If I had an application like S60SpotOn on my device I wouldn't have had to continually press a key to keep the light on.

It's no secret that I use and like Google Maps for Mobile on my Nokia E61. I have praised the application before and consider it a must have application for the Nokia E61.

However, the application just got better. A whole lot better. The application now provides a new level of interactivity. The application is capable of displaying up to date traffic conditions in about 30 major cities in the US. I hope that number will expand and that support for other countries will follow shortly. But at the present time this is limited to those 30 cities in the US.

The traffic conditions are indicated by color ranging from green (ideal), to yellow (some congestion) and red (heavy traffic). 

Another useful feature is the ability to save addresses and routes (direction between two destinations) as favorites. Very handy if you like me are direction impaired. By pressing "*" the application launches the "Favorites" list and addresses can be assigned to the different slots by looking up a location, looking up a business or setting the location manually.

But the best feature in my opinion is that the application will calculate the expected driving time based on current traffic conditions when using the "Directions" feature. 

The application is available as an over the air download from google.com/gmm. Select Google Maps for a "high-end phone" and the installation will start.

I first came across the Salling Clicker back in 2003 when I was using a SE T68 and was dying to find any additional usage of Bluetooth in addition to BT headsets.

I was amazed back then by the ingenuity of the application. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of using the Salling Clicker - it is an application for your mobile device by which you can control applications on your computer. In short, it extends the capabilities of a very powerful remote control of your computer to your Nokia E61, and other devices.

*A great deal* has happened since 2003 and the Salling Clicker is well worth a closer examination. There are a number of alternatives to the Salling Clicker - Control Freak - being one of them but for this blog entry I will focus on Salling Clicker.

Although the native client for Symbian S60 3rd edition is not yet available you can still use the Salling Clicker on your Nokia E61 and other E-Series devices. Being impatient by nature and not being able to wait for the native application I used the Java version for Salling Clicker on Nokia E61 and it worked great.

There are two components to install. An application on your PC or Mac and the Java application for your Nokia E61. The Java application is available as an over the air download from http://wap.salling.com
The set up was easy. I Installed the jave application on my Nokia E61 and the necessary application on both my PC and my Mac. I could connect to both computers and control them without a glitch.

Depending on your computing platform the applications you can control from your Nokia E61 using Salling Clicker will differ slightly. On my PowerBook I could control applications such as iTunes, iPhoto, Mail, PowerPoint Presentations, DVD and QuickTime player etc.

Salling Clicker lets you launch applications and control them from within. But to call the application a "remote control" doesn't give it justice.

The real benefit comes from the information flowing from the application on your Nokia E61 to your computer and back. For an example, after I start playing a CD or playlist on my computer Salling Clicker will display the current track on my Nokia E61.

Another example of this two way communication is the ability to edit playlist from the device or instantly edit track ratings while listening to the songs.

Salling Clicker is also very expendable so if you are interested in writing scripts - the sky is the limit for this application. The application is well worth its price of $23.95.

In an earlier post I wrote about using BlackBerry on the Nokia E61. This time the turn has come to ActiveSync on the Nokia E61, or as it is called - Mail for Exchange.

Just as with BlackBerry the installation of Mail for Exchange is a true cakewalk. However, since there is no equivalent of the BlackBerry Connect Desktop Application the set up felt a tad bit quicker and easier.

As soon as the application is installed on the device you create a synchronization profile that controls what and when you synchronize.  

You are asked to set-up your preferred network connection, password, user name, servers, synchronized content and the synchronization schedule and that is it. The whole set-up including installing the application took less than 10 minutes.

As soon as my profile was set-up I could immediately initialize the first synchronization of contacts, calendar and email. A few minutes later my device was up to date and Mail for Exchange running in the background.

 
Because both BlackBerry Connect and Mail for Exchange (ActiveSync) use the native Nokia E61 email client as the foundation the look and feel of the two email solutions are more or less identical.

My major reason for getting the Nokia E61 was to use it with corporate email. Since the device supports so many different "corporate" email applications, Visto, Seven, Good, BlackBerry, Mail For Exchange (Microsoft ActiveSync) etc. it seemed like the ultimate email device.

But as I started using it I discovered more and more ways of using the device outside the realm of corporate email. So far I have written about anything *but* email.

However, it is time to focus on corporate email and share some screenshots of one corporate email client - BlackBerry Connect on Nokia E61. This posting is not a review of BlackBerry Connect on Nokia E61 nor a set-up guide. Look at it as a 30,000 feet overview with some screenshots.

The set up can vary from company to company but normally includes getting the BlackBerry software which is installed on the device and a BlackBerry Connect Desktop application that is installed on your PC. Don't forget that you also need to have PC Suite installed.

For me the whole set-up, from when I started installing the BlackBerry on the Nokia E61 until I was completely up and running took less than 15 minutes. That includes the time I spent reading the instructions. Needless to say it was a smooth, flawless transaction.  However, do make sure that your SIM card is enabled for BlackBerry with your carrier. 

The preferences were also easy to set up with options for scheduling of email delivery, automatic retrieval of parts or the whole message etc.

After the installation was complete I turned on my device and I could immediately see my email trickle in. 

I am not sure how it all works but that for me is the beauty of BlackBerry on Nokia E61 - it just worked. I don't want to know the details. I just want to get my email so I can work and not spend energy and time on the logistics of corporate email.

To be continued - Mail for Exchange (Microsoft ActiveSync) on the Nokia E61

More about BlackBerry Connect on Nokia E61 in this post about browsing the web and having the BlackBerry connection active. 

Many readers have asked me what application I use to take the screenshots of my Nokia E61. Since this tool - "Screenshot for Symbian OS" is such an *essential* part of E-Series I am embarrassed that I haven't written about it sooner.

Screenshot for Symbian OS was actually the first application I downloaded to my Nokia E61. It was one of the first applications available for S60 3rd edition and the very first I came across. The application is one of those very rare applications that manage to combine reliability, getting the job done with a clean and amazingly simple user interface. What is even more amazing is that it is free. The multitalented developer - Antony Pranata - is giving this application away.

Antony, my appreciation is much overdue. Thank you!

I am a messaging/communication junkie.  If I am not talking on the phone I am constantly checking and sending email. I am currently using BlackBerry Connect but more about that in a later post. but I also use SMS and IM quite a lot.

If you buy your Nokia E61 (or any other E-series devices) directly from the carrier you will most likely get the device preloaded with the necessary settings to use the native IM applications that comes with the device. However, if you like me, didn't get your Nokia E61 from the carrier you don't have the necessary settings to use the proloaded IM application.

Luckily, there are plenty of IM software alternatives to use instead. One is Agile Messenger from Agile Mobile. They recently announced a free pre-release version of Agile Mobile for the E-series.

Agile Mobile has been around for years and their product Agile Mobile gives you much of the same feature and functionality you would expect from a multi-IM application on the PC. It lets you simultaneously connect to ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and Google Talk. The application keeps a separate tab for each conversation, supports the use of emoticons, conversation history and lets you edit your contacts from the device. In short. it is a solid IM application with a loyal following. 

It is important to take note that this is a "pre-release" version (read: alpha or beta). There are quite a few anomalies with the software on the E61 but as I said - it's just a pre-release version.

The oddities are more in the areas of UI/cosmetics than functionality so it is still quite useful. One peculiarity is that the two soft buttons on the screen are not mapped correctly to the device buttons as you can see from picture below. Here is a hint - the left selection key is "connect". Press the right selection key and the application will exit.

Another IM application for the Nokia E61 is IM+ by Shape Services. They have a comparable feature set to Agile Mobile and have a five day trial of the application wich includes support for the E-series devices. There are also a number of dedicated Java IM applications that works fairly well on the Nokia E61. One of them is the application by the name of - Mig33!

I have purposely  left this post "open ended" and probably also left out many other good IM applications. But here is where you, the reader comes in. Share with us your "favourite" IM application.

A few readers have asked me what theme I was using in the previous posting. I decided to focus this posting on how to personalize (read: "pimp") your Nokia E61 with themes.

Themes are downloaded and managed similarly to applications. They come in .sis files that you will need to install on your Nokia E61.

Just accept and install the themes. To enable and manage your themes go to Tools > Themes. 

From left to right, below are four example of themes 1) Standard Nokia 2) S60 Color 3) S60, and the last my favourite - 4) Aqua.

 
"Aqua" is the theme I used in my previous post. Auqa was created by the talented Roman Keller and is available for download. Thanks Roman for creating Aqua and sharing it with the rest of us.

Once again, below are the menu screens of the following themes from left to right 1) Standard Nokia 2) S60 Color 3) S60 4) Aqua.

As a "bonus" theme here is Dark Sky made by Toaster. Perhaps not the most practical theme but still quite nice in my book. There are many more Themes for the Nokia E61 here.

For those of you interested in learning more about themes and possibly create your own themes there is a free tool available. The S60 Theme Studio for Symbian OS  is available for download here. If you do create some unique themes and would like me to post them here please drop me a note. 

Mobile Search is a a dedicated search application created by Nokia. Although there is no official client out for the Nokia E61 yet I decided to try out another S60 3rd edition client and see if it worked. It did. I did come across some minor anomalies but nothing big. I downloaded the Nokia N71 client.

Prepare yourself to click "continue" repeatedly as there are many plugins to be installed and each new plugin requires you to acknowledge the installation through pressing "continue"

The application has a robust, general search function and a specific search for images. You can add the search result to your bookmarks and also go to the relevant URL through the broswer.

Where the application really excels is in the area of local search and the many non US search partners. There are a number of local search partners available and I expect that many more will be added in the future.

Searches can be refined by adding a postcode, name of a city, village etc. Another cool feature is that you can choose to call the search results right away, add them to the address book or view the locations on a map.

The software is free and although it is not yet certified for the Nokia E61 the version I tried, Nokia N71, worked fine for me. 

There is a new version of Widsets out that works great with the Nokia E61.

Widsets, which I first wrote about here, is probably one of my top three software picks for the Nokia E61. This new version brings additional features and functionality to the already useful and nifty Widsets. If you haven't already installed Widsets on your Nokia E61 I encourage you to do so right away.

If you have Widsets installed on your device the update is a breeze. Just launch the application and download the update. If you don't have Widsets installed you can sign up for the free service and download the software here.

One of the new features is Audio Alarms, notifying when there is something new in the channels you subscribe to. You can set Widsets to vibrate or alert you with an Alarm. 

 
There were a lot of new, good Widsets available since I last took a look at the Widset library. I was happy to see a Technorati Widset available which I set up for the tag of "Nokia E61".

There are also an easier and better way to design your own Widsets. Although it is not representative of the new features of the skin editor I throw together a Widsets called E-Series.org so that you can access E-series on the go through Widsets. 

Another feature is the ability to more control and edit your Widsets from your Nokia E61. You can also see a list of new and available Widsets directly from your device. There are also other functionality that I didn't try out such as a commenting feature that lets you collaborate and send comments back to a service.

A feature that has been available since the start but that I didn't include in my original post about Widsets is the "bookmark feature". If you come across an article that you want to read more about later or save you can add it to your bookmarks.

The URL will be saved so that you can access the information from your Widsets control panel the next time you log in. All your saved links are in your bookmarks area.

Apart from Widsets which I wrote about here, I highly recommend Google's Map application for the Nokia E61.

Google's Map application works on a broad set of handsets but with the large and vibrant screen of the Nokia E61 it is a must have software for your E61.

Google Maps lets you find an address, find a business and provides you with turn-by-turn driving directions.

The user interface is very intuitive and the application is fast. Naturally, the speed by which the application returns the information you requested is also going to depend on your data speed I tried it on Cingular's Media Net, which is not by any means lightning fast, but was satisfied with the result.

You simply type the address and the application will center on the specified address. 

You can search for a business by name, keyword or a description. 

I normally don't go to Starbucks but what the heck. 

There are several levels of details. You zoom in by using the joystick and zoom out with the right selection key.

My favourite feature is the turn-by-turn driving directions. You enter start and end points and the application will calculate driving directions. By using the number keys you can go back and forth between the different turn points. Just press "3" to go to the next turn on the map and "1" to go back to the previous turn.

You can choose to use the application in satellite or map mode.

The level of detail and clarity is truly impressive. Look at the below image of Market Street. You can clearly view cars, street signs etc.

To install the application just open the browser and access Google's Maps using the following URL: www.google.com/gmm
Ignore the initial message saying that Google Maps might not work on your phone. It does work on the Nokia E61. Select Google Maps for a "high-end phone" and the installation will start.