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.

1. If there’s a Symbian application that I can talk about for hours, it must be Gravity.

2. It made my friends who use iPhones, Androids and other smartphone platforms jealous and wanting to use E71 just for Gravity.

3. What made Gravity so special? To me, it’s about the unique user experience and the amount of effort by Jan Ole, (the developer) put in to enhance Gravity.

4. I use Gravity mainly for 2 things. Twitter and Google Reader.

5. With usability in mind, Gravity pushed Symbian applications further by giving an intuitive user interface unlike anything else in we’ve seen.

6. Gravity is not a software that sits idle and do nothing. It’s (for lack of better word) ALIVE!

7. Those who have used Gravity would know that it’s not Twitter nor Facebook nor Foursquare nor Google Reader that make Gravity part of their life. It’s the lifestyle.

8. Bringing all these services into Gravity was fun. Using them in Gravity is a luxury.

9. What’s next? I’d say please bring Bloglines support and port it to other devices as well. Android, iPhone, Symbian^3 and beyond and to desktops as well.

10. Happy first anniversary Gravity!

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

Where?

Kelantan Delights
1-5, Level 1, Sooka Sentral
Jalan Stesen Sentral
50470 Kuala Lumpur

When?

February 10th 2010 (Wednesday
5.00 to 7.00 PM

Who should come?
- Symbian users
- Symbian and other developers
- Symbian Enthusiasts
- If you are in KL or near KL
- Just for fun

What is the Agenda?
- Talk
- Eat
- Have fun!

Why I should come?
- Meet cool people
- Talk about Symbian and it’s ecosystem
- Discussing ideas to improve Symbian
- Have fun!

There will be some official SYMBIAN goodies up for grab for early birds. Come!!! Places are limited.

“I think the Kuala Lumpur Stammtisch is a great idea!” – Sebastian Brannstrom, Symbian Foundation.

More information about Symbian Stammtisch at : http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian_Stammtisch

You can also follow the event’s progress on Facebook : First KLSS

If you are on Twitter (who doesnt?), watch out for the hashtag #klss

Note
===

1. KLSS – Kuala Lumpur Symbian Stammtisch is a community effort towards a more vibrant and active Symbian community in Malaysia in conjunction with Symbian Foundation’s continuous effort in getting more feedback from Symbian community all over the world.

2. We hope this first KLSS will be a landmark and history in promoting and bringing more awareness regarding Symbian’s open nature. Whether you are an individual or a company, you are welcomed to contribute and together building a global brand name with Symbian Foundation.

3. Thanks to Symbian Foundation, which fully supports this initiative. Lee Williams, Haydn Shaughnessy, Sebastian Brannstrom, Susana Posada, Lauren Sarno, Ashlee Godwin, Annabelle Cooke in which, this event wont be possible.

4. Should there be anyone who are willing to contribute to this event, please email me asri at i-symbian dot com.

1. If you are in KL you will be in KL in the very near future, something is cooking.

2. After reading a post by Sebastian Brannstrom at the official Symbian Foundation Blog, I thought, why not!!!

3. In the past few months, Symbian Stammtisch was held in London and I feel it would be interesting to answer to Sebastian’s call and I decided to organise one in KL.

4. I am currently getting some stuff together to organise the first KLSS (Kuala Lumpur Symbian Stammtisch), hopefully somewhere in early February.

5. I will post more details soon when things are shaping.

6. More information about Symbian Stammtisch can be found at :

http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Delivery_Team_Stammtisch

http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Stammtisch_Ideas

WATCH THIS SPACE!!!

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.

1. Here is the link to the product page : Vivaz

2. It was known as Kurara when the prototype photos leaked.

3. The specification looks great.

4. Enjoy some videos of Vivaz!

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!