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Your Symbian Issue 01********************************************* /yoursymbian CONTENTS ============================================= Hello and welcome to the very first issue of Your Symbian. We will be bringing you the very best of the Symbian to your Inbox. Each issue will be packed with information, analysis and comment about Symbian related matters. We’ll be covering the Nokia 7650, 3650 and other Series 60 devices, as well as UIQ (Sony Ericsson P800) and the now venerable Nokia 92x0. Normally the introduction will be a comment on a news item or event from the previous two weeks, but in this first issue I will be introducing you to Your Symbian and its format. Your Symbian is a fortnightly e-mail magazine for Symbian. As well as a round up of recent software it will be offering limited reviews, comment and analysis on happenings across the Symbian family. Regular section every issue will be the software round up where we will summarise the best of the software announced or updated in the time since the last issue. Similarly the web round up will point you to the best discussion from Symbian forums and other web things of interests. We’ll try not to simply rehash old news, but show you it in a different light. If we turn out to be like news readers – complain! The backstop is regular comment section where various authors will sound off about one issue or another, this week Ewan talks about warez. The format isn't fixed yet - we'd like your feedback on what you like and don't like please! Some issues will have extra features, perhaps an extra comment or a mini review or a feature on a particularly interested piece of news or software. In the first few issues we will also be introducing you to the staff, this week it is my turn. Here you can learn about me and how Your Symbian got set up. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We don’t claim to be neutral or even particularly balanced, this is about opinions and most importantly about having fun! Till next time – Sophie… Rafe say’s: On a final note I’d just like to clear up some confusion caused by our initial message. Your Symbian is now the newsletter for All About Symbian. However its more than this in a way – YS is intended as an magazine independent of AAS, we’ll be using AAS news gathering, and writing team, but the intention is to have them as separate entities, but in reality for the most part they share a common group of writers. All AAS newsletters are now defunct and have become YS. I and AAS have not and would never pass your e-mail addresses on to a third party much less sell them to anyone. Sorry for any confusion caused by the first message. Hope this clears things up if not please feel free to e-mail me: [email protected] ============================================= The smell of spring is beginning to permeate the air in South Wales and I'm thinking that maybe I should get on my bike and take advantage of the relatively good (if somewhat chilly) weather in order to try and reduce the mass of my voluminous belly. I have no excuse. Any hard-core gamers out there are also without excuse since now you have your funky Symbian smartphone, you can do your geekifying and get your exercise at the same time! First up, all you budding warriors have been hacking away (not the kind that will get the FBI around your house at 3am) at the undead now that Digital Red have released Nightmare for the 7650/3650. With a price tag (that suggests you should be glad at not being overcharged (as opposed to 92x0 powers)) of $12.95, you could be Buffy for a day (though, if I were Buffy for a day, looking to fight dead people would be way down my list, after looking at myself in the mirror..... Ok, I'll stop there). (http://www.worldup.com). Of course, the last thing you're going to want is to be half way on a 20 mile bike ride only to remember that you should be in the local community centre giving lectures on prune boiling. So OneDayAndMore (you can tell it was NamedByADeveloper ;-) will give you a synopsis of what you should be doing instead of killing dead people. It is very configurable with the usual backdrops and stuff and looks very nice for $19.95 (http://www.perfectmobileandmore.com). As far as AvantGo is concerned, all I can say is 'about blimmin time!'. At last, you can get daily digests on the things that are important to you for reading at a time that's convenient to you without the need to connect over your GPRS link. It's been out on that PocketPC thingie for ages and it's about time it came out on a proper mobile device ;-) Unfortunately, if you go to their web site (http://www.avantgo.com), you'll find that there's little-to-no mention of Symbian, so you'll have to download the client from Handango for free (http://www.handango.com). My eye was also caught by Little Red Ridin' in tha Hood (http://www.kustomize.com), Tennis Addict (http://www.handango.com) and GT Racing for 7650/3650 (http://www.beyondw.com). All of them definitely worth a gander! My 9210 is far from retired and will most probably be my travelling companion for most trips. Now, if I was going to be tripping over to Poland, I'm sure I'd be looking to get my grubby little Celtic mittens on the Polish - English, English Polish Dictionary. Good grief! How many dictionaries have Paragon released now!? Still no Welsh dictionary though, but good work for a range of software that often gets overlooked in the headlines (http://www.epocware.com). Something that some of you may find useful either for yourselves or, as in my case, for friends, is the Blood Glucose Converter for Nokia 9200 Series. The Nokia Communicator seems to attract lots of sensible, practical and (for want of a better word), 'responsible' software and this certainly fits into at least the last of those. If having to convert your readings from one unit to another is a chore, then this could be $4.95 well spent (http://www.jbonin.com). You guys take care now y'hear!? Bubbye! ============================================= No matter what Michael Ironside says, in this game there are points for second place. Which game? Well, whatever games come out for Nokia’s “I Can’t Believe it’s not Japanese” N-Gage Device. Obviously Nokia want to have the best titles that are around, so they’re going to plunder franchises, kiddie marketing, breasts, the works. Look at the images released of the N-Gage already. Glorious shots of Lara Croft, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega Rally and TrickySSX to name a few. Court those big names, and you have a nice little batch of MMC games at launch. But here’s the thing that’s especially evil. Anyone can sign up to become a Registered N-Gage Developer. Submit a demo application, and away you go. You can be sure the top 1% of games are going to be bundled (even in demo form) on the supplied CD. And while Nokia cream of the top 1%, the other 99% are going to be chock full of high class, exciting and addictive games. Throw them onto Handango, the Internet, Carphone Warehouse’s Gaming Corner (you sure on that last one? – Sophie) and the amount of games and apps visible to the normal user is going to be immense. I’m sure the knock on effect of all the developers who are merely ‘above average’ will have occurred to the suits inside Nokia. And let’s not forget the fact that the majority of these apps are going to be compatible with the 7650 and 3650 – devices that are already here in the market. Yep, the next six months is going to see people developing for the N-Gage, and all the existing Series 60 users are going to be reaping the quality, the increased number of applications, greater visibility… and one more emotional benefit. Pencil in mid May for Series 60 to outnumber Pocket PC. ============================================= Recently things have been hotting up in the P800 forums on AAS and My-Symbian. With little software at this point to keep users amused we’re all exploiting the ins and outs of the OS and ways to modify it. A thread in My-Symbian.com forums describes how to change the start-up Sony Ericsson logo to an Mpeg4 movie clip of your choice, so this now means I can wake up in the morning to ‘The Sound Of Music’ every time I turn my phone on or off if I feel that way inclined. Which lets face it, is something we all want out of our handsets. Also after what seems like an eternity of misguidance from various Service providers and Sony Ericsson UK it seems the P800 has finally landed in the UK. This has been one of the fastest growing and if your waiting for the P800 one of the most painful topics of the past few weeks with over 13,000 views I’m sure I’m not alone with those feelings. Now all we need is the damn large capacity Memory Stick Duos. With the world wide release of the Nokia 3650 imminent and the target audience in mind, things are set to get very busy in the next few months with a whole host of new software and questions being asked, the Series 60 forums are set to get even more hectic than ever (At this point writer looks at Webmaster and sighs). Rumours have also been spreading regarding a possible camera upgrade for the Sony Ericsson P800, which are said to include a Digital Zoom and a ‘Night Mode’ much like the feature on the Nokia 7650. An email said to be from the Manager of the Sony Eshop UK states that they should be getting the new and improved units in any day now, but another email from a Customer Service person tell differently. Smells a bit like vapourware to me, although it would be a brilliant add on, but there is always that question in the back of my mind…Another world exclusive in an everyday email to a customer, I doubt it. Other fabrications for the P800 have included a Bread maker/toaster, 256mb memory stick duos and video recorder which is a different story entirely Sorry I have focused on the P800 so much this issue, I’ll try to be less biased in future issues, and include some 9210/series 60 forum gossip. URLs:
It always surprises me when a new magazine is launched and it has a letters page. I mean, who are these people who can divine when the first issue of "Allegedly - the Stalkers Guide to Angus Deayton" is going to launch? And why do they have such strong views on how the magazine should look? Or how Angus should wear his kipper ties? I might be just as worried about the 13 people who found the YS homepage when we hadn't announced it anywhere. So [email protected] and [email protected], we're watching you. Anyway, Sophie has handed me control of the letters page - which seems a rough deal because we don't have any letters for issue 1. Issue 2 is another matter... ...actually there aren't any letters for issue 2 either. I guess that’s where you lot come in. There's always been a singular honour in getting a letter printed in your favourite magazine, so why not let us know what you think about YS, Symbian in general, your favourite cup of tea, anything you like? As with any letters page, the best letter gets a prize. Blimey O'Reiley! (...cough - Ed, waving a sign) What's that? I need to get some prizes? Right... okay... Got it. If you're reading this, you might be part of Software Company with some great software. If you are, how would you like a free mention in the magazine? All you need to do is offer a registration for the Star Letter in Issue 2. Send an email to [email protected] and watch as we light up your company name in ASCII! I think that covers it. Oh and if you're wondering, I did consider making up a letter. It sounds like "gar-achhh" and was like a Z turned on it's side. I was dead proud (until I pointed out you'd re-invented the 'n' - Ed). Indeed. ============================================= Well this is my chance to introduce myself to you. Some of you may be wondering who earth this Sophie is who’s been sending you emails. Well I’m the editor of Your Symbian. But what does this actually mean? It means I write most of the editorials, do lots of proof reading and generally take credit while other people do all the work! I wrote to Rafe, the webmaster of All About Symbian, suggesting that maybe he should do a general newsletter for Symbian as some of us don’t have easy internet access. I got a quick reply saying that there was, possibly, something in the works, and would I like to help? Of course I didn’t expect to be editor, but hey it’s a good job to do by email! So here I am now editing YS - excellent! So you want to know a bit about me then? Well what can I say… probably the most interesting thing is what I do. I am currently undertaking a study on the social habits of wildlife on the East Island of the Falkland Islands. Actually this mainly involves counting penguins, some of you may have heard of the population ‘crashes’ that have occurred there. My Nokia 9210 and Psion 5 come in very handy for recording observations, and staying in touch with home. Unfortunately, depending on where I am my connection to the outside world is a bit limited. At the moment all I have is a 9,600 connection! So I apologise in advance if I’m a bit slow to respond to things sometimes. If you need instant help with something you probably better e-mailing Rafe or another YS team person as they’re running the back end and handling most of the work (I get the glory ;). Rest assured where possible I’ll tell you a bit about my work if I can sneak it in (what do you mean sneak it in, you’re the editor – Rafe) and how I use my 9210 and hopefully soon a P800 for my research. ============================================= It takes a lot of dedication to be able to program your Symbian phone - let alone get to the point where you feel you can release it into the public domain. It takes even more bottle to decide that it's good enough to charge for. The Symbian OS has been blessed with a lot of small independent software houses doing C++ application, first for the 9210 ad then for the 7650. And while there are a healthy number of apps for your phone, it's become more and more obvious that illegal software (warez) is having a detrimental effect on the fledgling market. The problem here is that the smartphone market is bigger than any other PDA machine or range out there. It took Psion close to 5 years to sell one millions Series 3a's. The Nokia 7650 did that many in 5 months. But the majority of users never go onto the net to find new software, and when they do, they don't realise the precarious nature of the Software Market, go along to a warez site and download the latest and greatest. And every warez download made is another tiny cut to the Developers. Soon, there might be nothing left to cut... But warez doesn't hurt anyone! I just use it to test the software before buying it! I can’t find it anywhere else! I can't afford it because I'm poor! All typical 'arguments' you might hear trying to justify warez. And all of them are cop-outs, the biggest being it doesn't hurt anyone. Would you like Lemmings on your Symbian phone? Yes? Then email anyone that uses warez and say thank you. Some months ago, Symbianware released Astronix, which I really enjoyed. Okay part of me was upset that it wasn't a perfect clone of Asteroids - but being a classy version of Qix was enough for me. What was exciting was the fact that they let everyone know that their next release would be the classic puzzle game Lemmings! Unfortunately it's never going to be released. Because within 24 hours of Astronix being released, it was cracked, warezed, and across all the dodgy web sites, forums and Yahoo Groups that have sprung up in the murky depths of Symbian OS. Sales for Astronix never materialised, and the loss of confidence in the games market meant that Symbianware have vowed never to release another game. Thanks guyz. One final point - have a look at the installed applications on your phone and see if you can see an app that (a) you use and (b) isn’t registered yet. It won’t cost much, but if even a tenth of you do so, that’s another £6,000 injected into the Developer Community. It’s small numbers on the scale of Symbian Devices that will make the difference to a platform with lots of apps, and one consigned to the same fate as the Neo Geo Pocket…
Well, that about wraps it up for Issue 1. Whether we have more
of the Let me know what you think! A short email to In the meantime, I'm away out into the cold and rain of the South
-- Sophie ============================================= Your Symbian was brought to you by the letters "Y" and
"S" and the Copyright (c) Your Symbian 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be coped in any form without written permission. Some which trademarks are referred to in this publication, these are for information purposes only. All trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. The views expressed within are not necessarily the view of Your Symbian, but rather the individual authors. The accuracy of the contained information is not guaranteed. -- /yoursymbian/cgi-bin/mojo.cgi?f=u&l=ys&[email protected]&p=6183 Click this link, or copy and paste the address into your browser.
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