Top 10 Must Have Mobile Applications for Symbian S60 to Kick off 2009
Written by Glenn Letham (@gletham)
Monday, 12 January 2009
With so many cool, new Symbian S60 devices hitting the market - N95 8GB, N85, N82, N71, 6210 Navigator etc... (many now in use in North America too) chances are that you've got an S60 device or are planning on getting one. So what applications should you load on the device once in your hand? Here's some suggestions from my "best of" list... enjoy!
Qik / Flixwagon / Kyte - take your pick!
Each of these apps has benefits and shortfalls, however, there's no arguing that given that you have an S60 mobile with a sweet video camera it follows you need to be able to stream live video! All of these online services provide live streaming as well as sharing with your social bookmarks... pick one! Qik is fast, simple, but lower quality; Flixwagon offers better quality video storage, nice social bookmarking, but the UI is a little clunkier than Qik; Kyte is much more robust and offers much more than simple streaming.
See http://qik.com/
http://www.flixwagon.com
http://www.kyte.tv/
Slandr / Dabr /Twibble - Ok, it's 2009 and that means you have to stay in touch with your social bookmarks, in particular, you likely want to Tweet to your Twitter account. There's a number of apps available to accomplish this but there's 3 that I depend on... Slandr is a simple mobile website with a great UI as is Dabr (UK); Twibble you need to install and its not as sexy, but you can do more including GPS tagging. If all else fails a simple txt message to your Twitter works just fine too! Realizing that not everyone uses Twitter) particularly in Europe, you'll likely rather grab the Jaiku mobile client. This is a great app that enables you to Jaiku whenever and wherever you are and stay in touch with your Jaiku friends and colleagues.
http://twitter.com/slandr
http://dabr.co.uk/
http://www.twibble.de/
http://www.jaiku.com/mobile
Sports Tracker & ViNe - Once again Sports Tracker ranks right up there with being simply fantastic for sharing your GPS tracks, photos and videos. The app has an excellent PC client and integrates very nicely with all the GPS enabled S60 devices that I've had the pleasure of using/testing. Sports Tracker is even more useful now that the N-Series widget has been made available... simply put, this means you can embed your sports tracks onto your webpage or blog... SWEET! Sport Tracker has been extended and rolled out as a more generic consumer application in ViNe where users can share tracks, photos, videos, and even details of music they listened to along the way. A Big issue with ViNe though is the online service. Myself and many Beta testers were left flat-out confused with ViNe. I've uploaded many tracks and can locate them from my Sports Tracker account yet cannot find them in the online version of ViNe... a great app but not ready for prime time!
http://sportstracker.nokia.com
http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/SportsTracker/index.html
WHERE - If you love location-aware widgets then stop right here and grab WHERE. The development environment from uLocate enables developers to easily create location-aware widgets and make them available to WHERE users. The app is supported by many mobile devices (Blackberry, iPhone, and S60) and provides widgets for locating cheap gas, events, local shops and info, and the closest Starbucks store.
http://www.where.com/ & see also http://www.twitter.com/whereitsat
mobbler - My S60 device (Nokia N95 8GB) has a great music player. It follows then that I always pack with me a stereo headset so I can enjoy some of the tunes I have stored on the 8GB MicroSD card. Taking this one step further, Mobbler enables me to access and listen to music from my Last.FM account... free music, anytime, anywhere... awesome!!
http://code.google.com/p/mobbler/
Nokia Maps - Nokia maps is one of those indispensible tools, particularly if you have integrated GPS. Nokia Maps, unlike Google maps, uses Navteq data. This feature rich data has a wealth of POI and additional data available and offers up a fine service via the add-on navigation service. Recently updated to Maps 3.0, the latest Nokia Maps is not available for many devices yet.
http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps
Google Maps - for fast, simple mapping, local search, directions etc... you can't go wrong with Google maps mobile. The latest release (from Dec 2008) even provides Street View imagery on the mobile! Oh, best of all, it's free!
http://www.google.com/mobile/default/maps.html
Shozu - initially Shozu was the must-have application to enable fast, cost effective uploads of photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube. Shozu is much more than that now as the application supports many social networking applications and data sharing resources. With one click, users can upload a photo to flickr, then cc it to yourself via email, post to a blog, Twitter it, send it to TwitterPic, etc... in this era of social media this is a must-have!
http://www.shozu.com
Screenshot - why this doesn't come bundled with the device is beyond me! Screenshot for S60 is one of many screen capture utilities available for free use. This clever app created by Antony Pronatta enables quick screen grabs that can then be used in application reviews, articles, of even for sharing with others to help them accomplish something on the mobile. I've used this app for years and still can't figure out WHY Nokia hasn';t licensed this or a similar app and bundled it onto devices... hello... anyone there??
http://www.antonypranata.com/screenshot
Bonus (I can never just stop at 10!) 2 Productivity apps that are a must on your S60 handset - QuickOffice & WorldMate - QuickOffice apps may come bundled on may devices or as a trial and once you use them you'll be hooked. This app is a must-have for any business user who needs access to Microsoft Office-like functionality on the mobile - you'll get a word processor, spreadsheet, expense manager and more! Finally, for the frequent traveler, WorldMate is a handy app that gives you instant access to multiple clocks (so you don't call home at 3 AM again!), weather, a daylight map, and you'll even get access to airline information. Other apps to check out include GPS Twitter, Earthcomber, Nokia's FriendView and Location Tagger; mywaves, traffic.com mobile, and Yahoo! Mobile for S60!
http://www.quickoffice.com/
http://www.mobimate.com/
With tens of thousands of S60 supported applications out there I have no doubt you may be overwhelmed. Hopefully the next time you get yourself a shiny new S60 mobile (maybe even a cool Nokia N97 later this year) you'll refer back to this list and some of the apps I've mentioned will likely be the first ones you load up... enjoy!
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