1. I own and maintain 3 self-hosted WordPress blogs. This blog, SymbianKu.Com and MeeGoKu.Com. I choose WordPress for it’s simplicity, elegant and flexibility.

2. On my MacBook, I use an offline blogging client called Ecto. A superb and easy to use software that fulfills my blogging needs.

3. For Symbian S60 3rd Edition, there are some solutions available namely Telewaving’s Wavelog (not free), WordMobi (free, based on Python) and the official WordPress for Nokia client (free, based on Qt).

4. I’ve talked about how WordMobi helps me blogging on the move (HERE and HERE) and personally, it’s the most useful and feature complete WordPress client for S60 3rd Edition at the moment.

5. WordMobi is very stable, doesnt eat RAM like crazy and works brilliant. And I prefer using it for blogging anytime.

6. Another solution for WordPress blogging on Symbian is using an official application developed by the WordPress team. It’s using Qt technology and currently being developed heavily for Nokia Symbian smartphones and Maemo.

7. In order to use it on Symbian smartphones, you have to install Qt runtime or it will not work. You can get the necessary files from :

Qt runtime : Version 4.6.2
WP Client : Version 0.54a Self-signed

8. Although it is designed for touch-screen smartphones, it works on E90 but there’s some usability and stability issues. It crashes randomly, and sometimes it doesnt respond to keypresses. It also freezes when it cant cope with user’s action and to run it smoothly, you need to have plenty of RAM.

9. The design looks familiar. Any WordPress user will feel at home because it looks like the WordPress Admin Panel.

10. You can view and edit posts, comments and pages. But I think, it’s not ready yet to be used to write long and complete posts. It’s useful if you want to view and manage comments or write a short and simple posts.

11. On Nokia E90 Communicator, it works on both screen. But on the external screen, navigation is slower compared to the internal screen.

12. Other than the slowness and non touchsreen related issues, in my opinion, it also needs an offline mode.

13. Everytime I launch it, it will ask me to select Access Point to connect to the internet and I have to reject it by pressing cancel 15 times before can use it offline!

14. An offline function without the annoying prompts will enhance it’s usability even more. There should be an option for users to choose to connect to server for fetching and updating contents or stay offline.

15. The connectivity issue also happens when I toggle from one blog view to another. It will try to establish a connection.

16. Like I said, there are many user scenario where it fits perfectly okay for offline usage. One of them is to write short post or to draft an idea in an area without WiFi or internet coverage.

17. I believe the development team is working very hard to make sure this WordPress for Nokia application easy to use, stable, relevant and functional. And they are almost there.

18. Until it becomes really useful on E90, and optimised for non-touch operations, I am sticking to WordMobi at the moment.

19. But for you who own one of Nokia’s Symbian^1 touchscreen smartphones or N900 (Maemo 5), this is the most elegant solution for your WordPress blogging needs.

20. Visit http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org to follow it’s development. It’s a free open source project and you can also contribute to it’s progress.

- Asri al-Baker

2. Out of the box, Symbian supports multitasking since the glorious days of Psion.

3. The built in method in S60 to see the running applications in the background is to press and hold the Menu key aka the Applications key which will list opened applications.

4. If you want to close an application, press the delete or the cancel key while highighting an application in the built-in taskmanager.

5. There’s also some 3rd party applications for those who want more power in managing multitasking. Applications like Handy Taskman, Best Taskman and JBak Taskman are the most commonly known.

6. I prefer to use Best Taskman. Which, in my opinion, has better features for my needs.

7. Compared to Handy Taskman which looks more polished and better designed, Best Taskman doesnt score in the design department.

8. However, Best Taskman wins with regards to ease of use and quick access to most commonly used functions such as the task-switcher whic is unique. With a click of a button, Best Taskman displays a task-switcher which pops-up in the centre of the screen and allows user to toggle between opened applications quickly. It looks and functions just like the Alt-Tab shortcut on Windows PC.

9. Other than that, Best Taskman also offers quick-access shortcuts to applications. This can be configured in the setting.

10. Another important Best Taskman function for me is the ability to show hidden processes and if you want, you can kill any rogue process. It is one feature that is not available in Handy Taskman.

11. A quick way to close all running applications is also available from the menu. Very useful to quickly release RAM.

12. Best Taskman is also useful to view available RAM, internal storage as well as memory card space.

13. And if you fancy looking into applicaton details such as app uid and keep track of how many applications are installed, it’s just a few clicks away.

14. All in all, I’m comfortable using Best Taskman on my E90 because although it looks kinda ugly compared to Handy Taskman, it has unique features that are not available on other applications.

15. So, what’s your preferred multitasking tool? Care to share with us?

16. Get Best Taskman from Smartphoneware’s official website for only $7.95. A 15 days fully functioning demo is available for you to test to help you decide your purchase.

2. Basically, all Symbian smartphones have this feature built-in. No 3rd party application required to manage your personal information.

3. However, the built-in software is too basic. Take the calendar for example, there’s no way to link calendar entry to a contact. This is really a downer for advanced users.

4. This is where DreamLife came into the picture. It was developed and produced by DreamSpring, an old-timer in the Symbian application space. They have announced the availability of DreamLife for Symbian^1 smartphones.

5. DreamLife combines contacts and calendar management into a smart and cool-looking application and more powerful compared to the built in apps.

6. Before this, DreamLife was a must-have for UIQ3 owners who want more control over their personal information.

7. It was designed to incorporate modern features of a smart PIM application such as focussing on the information display and usability.

8. It was developed for months before released to the end users.

9. However, the pricetag is quite high. Make sure you really test it before buying it.

10. More information about DreamLife for Symbian^1 at : http://www.dreamspring.com/products/dreamlife-for-s60/dreamlife-for-s60.html

1. LonelyCatGames is one of the most prolific Symbian developers who have some powerful applications in their catalogue such as Slick, SmartMovie, X-Plore and ProfiMail.

2. One of their strength and uniqueness is they developed their own interface on top of the standard Symbian UI. This is their trademark which has been practised over the years.

3. Recently, they launched a new application called PhotoBook which is basically a photo viewer application. As with other applications produced by LonelyCatGames, it also uses LCG’s own UI.

4. PhotoBook is an alternative to the built-in image viewer on Symbian and IMHO, it gives Resco PhotoViewer a challenge.

5. It has it’s own file browser which is neatly designed and you can view photos from your device’s folders with ease.

6. It also supports zooming and slideshow. Pretty standard stuff.

7. At the current version 1.00, PhotoBook does what it says. Nothing more, nothing less.

8. Hopefully they can integrate more advanced photo related functions in the future such as photo editing.

More information about PhotoBook at LCG

1. One of the oldest Symbian applications which has survived till this day since the old EPOC days. Opera internet browser.

2. For modern Symbian smartphones, users have the opition to install the native version of this excellent internet browser, also known as Opera Mobile. Or install the J2ME version called Opera Mini.

3. Opera Mobile 10 and Opera Mini 5 have been developed for months. Users are invited to experience the beta since late 2009 and last week, Opera Software announced the availability of both applications it their final versions.

4. The final version of Opera Mobile 10 comes with the following features (among others) :-
- Visual speed-dial
- Multiple tabs with number indicator
- Opera Turbo
- Opera Link
- Presto rendering engine
- Download manager
- Cool user interface for easy navigation to contents
- Kinetic scrolling

5. The final version is also more capable and stable than previous Beta test version.

6. I noticed faster loading of pages and faster kinetic scrolling, as well as supporting full Opera Link which makes it in a class of it’s own.

7. As a fan of Opera products (Opera Desktop, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Opera Link & Opera Turbo), I am satisfied with what Opera Mobile is capable of.

8. For some people, they will compare Opera Mobile with the built-in S60 Web browser which comes by default in all current Symbian smartphones.

9. And one of the most requested feature in Opera Mobile is the Flash support. For me, Flash sucks! And Opera Mobile is miles ahead of S60 Web.

10. Get the latest version of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini for FREE from the official website :

http://www.opera.com/mobile

2. Version 1.5 is available for S60 3rd Edition and a new public beta for Symbian^1 touchscreen is released.

3. According to them, many features are added and improved. Including :-
- Symbian S60 3rd edition
– Smooth Scrolling: Scroll operations are more fluid.
– Updated user interface for 3rd edition devices.
– Performance tweaks: Many small enhancements for a more robust and faster browsing experience.

- Beta for Symbian S60 5th edition (Symbian^1)
– Finger friendly UI: A new, intuitive, and finger friendly UI for high resolution touchscreen devices provides an easier browsing experience.
– Smooth Scrolling: Kinetic scrolling has been enabled to Skyfire. Pan or flick the screen to move in any direction smoothly on touchscreen.
– Full screen mode: For touchscreen, browse in full screen mode for maximum screen real estate. Bring the controls back by clicking on the corner icon at any time.
– Auto-Rotate: Browse in portrait or landscape mode with a simple change of the device orientation.

4. Sad to say, it’s not entirely true. There are some things that worked out of the box and some other things are still the same sluggish overhyped application.

5. For touch devices, Skyfire 1.5 is hard to use. Doing the most basic stuff such as reading text is a pain using Skyfire. Text is not rendered correctly to fit on the screen. You have to scroll left and right. How can they claim Skyfire is “THE BEST MOBILE BROWSING EXPPERIENCE” if it cant even display text properly? This is too much!

6. It gets more frustrating as you see the checkerboard is displayed all the time. It seems that Skyfire is re-rendering all the elements when you scroll.

7. The kinetic scrolling is a nice addition but you have to do it very carefully because if you flicked your finger wrongly, you will be presented with the checkerboard (again!). Not the content that you want to read.

8. The menu has been redesigned. They are using finger friendly icons now.

9. Overall experience is not so good. Watching multimedia such as Youtube is like watching slideshow.

10. I tested Skyfire using Satio and connected to my 2Mbps WiFi connection. And Skyfire is not performing well.

11. Please Skyfire. Improve your rendering technology. You have a great product but you scored zero in terms of usability. I understand why you include supports for the latest web technology (Flash, Silverlight, AJAX, etc) but please get the basic stuff improved (e.g. text rendering, usability).

12. Get it from http://get.skyfire.com

13. Watch the video below, where they compared Skyfire with S60 Web and Opera Mobile 10.

2. Frankly, it’s a very cool application and I never ued the built-in Menu / Launcher anymore.

3. A new version, 1.51 has been released and adds the following enhancements :-
- You can add / remove applications
- There’s a new status-bar on top of the screen displaying network signal, date, clock, battery etc
- The taskmanager is improved.
- it is sleeker and faster

4. In the help screen, they mentioned http://www.getvapp.com as the official website but when I visited it, nothing.

5. Overall, I’m very impressed with it.

6. Enjoy these screenshots! (click on them for bigger screenshots)

vMenu Launcher

vMenu Taskmanager

Add and delete applications

Landscape mode

Get it from our DOWNLOAD session.

2. There are 4 options, namely :
- alphanumeric keypad. for one hand usage but it requires a tap on the green tick icon on the top left after typing text… why cant it be placed on other places? such as the bottom of the screen?
- mini qwerty (portrait)
- big qwerty (landscape)
- handwriting recognition

3. The problem for all these text input options (except for the mini QWERTY and HWR) is they are not direct text input. You cant type and see the text entry box at the same time because the text entry window is separated from the text entry box. Why do the typed text box have to be included?

4. And the mini QWERTY is too small to use for someone with big thumb.

5. Using the alphanumeric keypad is even non-productive because there are too many “procedures” to do something as simple as typing a text message, for example.

6. You need to select write new message, the message editor will pop out. Click on the empty area, the alphanumeric text entry window will appear. Then you need to type the text, after that you need to tap the green tick icon on the top left, after that, send SMS. Phew…

7. I hate it and I feel it’s too much… Hence, I need to get an alternative.

8. And I found Dayhand text entry which solves almost all my text entry problems.

9. It gives me a bigger QWERTY keyboard, with many options including an alphanumeric keypad (that doesn’t eat all the screen’s space), smiley keypad (yesss!!!), an editing keypad and more.

10. It even has a predictive mode which can be activated easily.

11. However, the most interesting in terms of usability and it’s excellent design is the tap and drag to select the alternative alphabet / mode. For example, tap on the letter “d” and drag it up, it will print “+“. Very convenient

12. Thumb-typing is easy using Dayhand keyboard. I haven’t found any problem using it. Ah… and the landscape qwerty is a joy to use! HUGE alphabet keys!

13. I can type faster and more convenient using this alternative method.

14. Please Symbian… Make a better text entry method in future Symbian releases…

15. If you are interested to use Dayhand keyboard, the files are available in our download section. They need to be signed or you need to hack your phone to install them.

* This is a modified version done by Mr. Milk. His words “This is the result of a personal effort to bring something good and free for the community. I’m not the application developer and have no way to change its core functionalities”

Cheers!

2. it looks ok on a non touchscreen phones on the old s60 up to s60 3rd edition.

3. on touch screen phones, the softkeys took too many spaces and it becomes uglier on landscape mode because only 2/3rd of the screen’s real estate is used for icons.

4. for s60 5th edition (symbian^1) there are some alternative launchers like handy shell. but i dont like it as well.

5. luckily, some chaps developed a neat applicatoin called vMenu. the developers are the same people who brought vHome Desktop for s60 3rd edition.

6. to make it short, vMenu allows you to experience “iphone-like” menu where you can flick your finger to move from one launcher page to the other. complete with kinetic scrolling effect.

7. depending on the amount of applications you installed on your symbian^1 smartphones, by default, you will be presented with 4 pages of application icons.

8. the icons are organised. 3 x 5 icons per page. that’s 15 icons per page. organising icons is also supported. you need to tap and hoid, and drag the icon accross the screen or to move to different pages.

9. it also has a neat taskmanager which allows you to see what applications running in the background and switch to them if necessary. you can also close any background applications by tapping and dragging the application icon into the huge red icon presented in the center of the screen.

10. unluckily, i cant find the official website of the developers yet. you can download the SIS file from our download section.

11. Have you tried it? what’s your opinion?

Note : this application was tested on a Sony Ericsson Satio and Nokia 5800.

- Asri al-Baker

1. Well, life is beautiful when you have options? Am I right?

2. We are seeing more anda more Symbian applications from the Far East. Which is very good.

3. Go Browser, is another internet browser from comes from China.

4. The user interface is beautiful, with kinetic scrolling, special effects and very nice font used. And it also uses server-side rendering like UC Browser.

5. However, it renders all pages as small screen. There is no page overview and I dont know how to change the views.

6. The biggest let-down, is the language. All the menus, the interface and everything about it are displayed in Chinese. I dont read Chinese so I cant change any settings.

7. However, Go Browser comes with a beautiful visual Menu which will assist users in navigating around the menu as well as browsing the internet.

8. Maybe the target market is the Chinese speaking people. But please, make an English version

9. Go Browser is available for Symbian S60, as well as for Java phones. You can visit http://go.3g.cn/index.html to download the proper version for your phone.

10. What do you think? You want to test another internet browser?

- Asri al-Baker