You should now have the latest Ovi Store client. How can you check it? If you open the Store on your Nokia smartphone and check the version under the Account Tab > Help > About, you should have a version number of at least 2.12.xxx.

However, some of you with new Symbian phones (e.g. Nokia N8) were unable to complete the installation of the latest Store client. If this happened to you, the Ovi Store team has released a stand-alone installation package which contains an updated version of the Ovi Store client. It also updates some middleware used by the Store and many other apps.

You can download it from http://lr.ovi.mobi/store/client-symbian-3/ directly to your new Symbian device. When prompted for the installation destination, please choose the C: drive. Confirm all prompts during the installation. Note that additional middleware components may be downloaded to your device if they require updates.

Finally, the total download size can be larger than 10 MB, so you may want to be connected via WLAN while performing this update over the air.

In the not too distant future robot overlords rule the Earth. The only surviving race, aside of from some monstrous creatures, are rabbits living deep beneath the Earth’s crust. This is the premise of Breakdesign’s addictive adventure and puzzle game known as World of Rabbit.

Customize your own rabbit, I chose an uneven eyed one with a bow in her ears, and venture above ground to a world that looks as if it came out of a Tim Burton movie. With three parts to each level, your rabbit will be a very busy animal with all the running, dancing and puzzles it will be doing.

The first part of each level consists of a trail three bunnies wide. It’s your job to guide your rabbit through the trail by tapping the up or down arrows while picking up the many carrots strewn about. Tap just the screen and your rabbit will leap over obstacles, such as mounds and spiders, in the way. If you do happen to hit one your rabbit will not only lose momentum, but it will take some damage as well.

Upon reaching the end of the trail fairly unscathed you rabbit will be pitted against a slew of baddies, spiders being the first, and must dance excessively to beat them. Tap each baddie, the bigger they are the more taps they need, which will cause your rabbit to dance and slay each monster. But be quick, more will come at you as the timer continues to tick away. If you’re lucky you may even have some missiles to help you out of a pinch.

Finally, after making it so far, possibly even avoiding a death by spider, it’s time to solve a puzzle portraying the level you’ve just finished. This is definitely the easiest portion of the game, and a great reprieve from constantly tapping away at your screen.

As odd as I thought this game was, I kept finding myself wanting to go back to it. Even when I continued to die by massive spiders I couldn’t help but keep playing, determined to reach the next stage of the game.

The best part though? You don’t have to play alone! By playing online you can make other rabbit friends and sync up your scores to see how well you are doing in the rabbit revolution.

This short video from the developers at Breakdesign show the game in action:

World of Rabbit is available in the Ovi Store  for free, so bunny hop on over to download it. The game is available for Nokia Symbian OS S60 5.0 phones, as well as new Symbian smartphones like the Nokia N8.

And, there is a free World of Rabbit theme for Nokia Series 40 phones.

There is more information on the World of Rabbit microsite, and on their Facebook page.

Xchanger can help. It is a free mobile app, a currency calculator for Nokia advanced Symbian smartphones. According to publisher Titus Soft, Xchanger can calculate the latest exchange rates for more than 150 currencies, including nearly every country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

At its most basic, Xchanger supplies straightforward, up-to-the-minute exchange rates: 1 euro equals how many U.S. dollars as of right now? But Xchanger can also convert any value you select. That lovely dress in a Tokyo boutique costs 58,000 Japanese yen — now how much is that in Australian dollars?

Xchanger also provides exchange rates for three precious metals: gold, silver, and platinum. Are you a big-time investor? Then just set the number of ounces you wish to purchase, select the currency you wish to use, and let Xchanger do the rest.

Xchanger doesn’t have a formal start screen. Launch the app, and you are presented with a list of exchange rates:

You may have noticed that all the currencies have been converted into U.S. dollars. That’s because I have set U.S. dollars as my default currency. But you can set any currency as your default. To do this, select Options from the lower left corner. Up pops the Options menu:

Next, select Settings > Conversion > Default currency. A scrolling list of currencies appears, in alphabetic order. Select your currency and press OK. That is done!

Once you are in a foreign country and shopping, you will probably want to enter specific prices in the local currency, then see how much that is in your own currency. For example, you come across a jacket in a Paris department store that costs 350 euros. Is that très cher or bon marché? To find out, fire up Xchanger, then tap on the euros entry.

Next, you need to change that 1 euro setting to 350. So tap Options > Conversion > Edit. That brings up the ‘enter amount’ form shown here:

As you can see, I have entered 350. Next, I tap OK. When I return to the main list, the exchange rate is automatically updated. At the current exchange rate, that 350 euros comes to $497.70 (USD):

Xchanger also has a series of icons. Double-tap and entry, and the icons will appear along the left edge of the screen. But the icons are nonstandard. That made them confusing, at least the first time I saw them:

But the icons are useful. For example, the single red X icon deletes an entry. The blue and green arrows pointing left and right interchange the currencies in a single entry. And the red and green triangles pointing up and down give you the history of a particular two-currency exchange rate. For example, over the last few days, has the dollar gained on the euro, or lost? Here’s a look at a sample history screen; the green triangles indicate days when the U.S. dollar gained on the euro:

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to figure out how the icons work, mainly because Xchanger lacks a Help screen. So you will have to experiment a bit, then remember what you discovered. But I did find this video, courtesy of NokiaN8Blog.info, which shows some of Xchanger’s icons in action:

Xchanger is available now on Ovi Store. The current release, v1.24, runs on Nokia advanced Symbian touchscreen smartphones. While Xchanger is free, it requires an open Internet connection, so local data charges could apply. Then again, you could use Xchanger to convert those charges into another currency…preferably one with fewer zeroes!

JetEx is available as a free (ad-sponsored) or paid (ad-free) experience for Nokia smartphones with touch interfaces. I tested the paid version on my N8.

The gameplay is conceptually simple. Start the game and your JetEx delivery truck begins rolling along road segments suspended in the sky. Soon your road segment ends and another one appears a short distance ahead. Touch anywhere on the screen to fire your flight rocket, gain altitude, and come to rest on the next road segment, which will also end. Repeat until you deliver the box or run out of fuel.

Use your jet engine to reach the next road segment.

There’s a good physics engine behind this Qt-based game, which allows for some deceptively subtle tactics once you get the hang of it. For example, after the first level or two you realize you need to conserve fuel by flying as little as possible. That makes it tempting to just “run off” the end of the roadway and fly later. If you do, though, you’ll tilt forward because the front of your truck starts falling while your rear wheels are still on the road. To stay level, apply a little “puff” of thrust just before take-off.

A little puff before the cliff keeps your truck level.

Sometimes, though, you might actually want to use that tilt in your favor. The direction of thrust of your engine depends on how your truck is oriented.

Tilt your truck to use jet thrust to fly forward.

Before you get too crazy, though, remember the point is to deliver the package. And like many a delivery driver, it seems like you forgot to secure your load. Bounce the truck too much and you’ll lose your cargo.

Out of fuel is the least of your worries when you're upside down with lost cargo!

JetEx is a fun diversion for your children during those long summer drives or for you as you wait in airport lines. It’s easy to learn, offers enough realism to allow you some strategic alternatives, and each level takes only a minute or two to play. And with a free (ad-sponsored) or paid ($0.99 USD ad-free) experience it’s hard to resist.

I loaded this free app onto my Nokia N8 and took it for a spin at my local grocery store. When I got to the cereal isle, I started scanning. First, though, I created a list called Cereals so that I had a good place to store my scans for that type of item. On the bottom row of the screen below, the middle icon is My Lists. I clicked on that, and then on the plus sign to add a list, and typed in “Cereals”.

Now I was ready to scan. I clicked on the Scan icon in the lower left of the screen, and it fired up my camera function. As you can see in the screen below, the app asks you to align the bar code into the white rectangle that it displays, so that it can start its bar code reading.

Once the bar code is within the white rectangle, the app recognizes it so quickly that I barely had time to capture a screen snap.

Once it recognizes the bar code, it fills in the icon, tells you the price range at other retailers, and lets you add it to a list of your choice using the Add to List button. In this case, the higher prices at $17 were there because Amazon.com and others sell 5-box units rather than ship single boxes, so it actually represented a lower per-box price. I added the item to my Cereals list, and also checked on what other stores might be carrying it.

As the screen below shows, the comparative prices are from stores listed in the Mirasense database, and your locality might have different vendors than the ones listed below.

For example, I was shopping in San Francisco, California, at a major grocery chain called Safeway, which was not listed in the Mirasense comparison. Safeway is large enough to have its own store-branded cereals in an organic line called Eating Right, and when I scanned one of those cereal boxes, I got the screen below indicating that the product was unknown to the Scandit database. As the Scandit database expands, more and more of these items will be incorporated, but it is a good thing to keep in mind while comparing local prices.

For  a product that Scandit does recognize, it can carry the process through all the way to an online purchase. Below, for example, I had scanned an Irish oatmeal box in one store, and could buy it at a totally different online store even while I was still standing in the first store.

The Scandit app also is designed to have links to Facebook and Twitter that allow you to share a particular bargain that you may have found with friends. However, at this writing in early July, the app says that the addition of that function is still a few weeks away.

Overall, I found this app to be handy for comparison shopping of nationally-known brands. When its database is built out farther and when the Share function is fully implemented, I think it could be a truly impressive app.

Scandit is available for free in Nokia’s Ovi Store.  It works with the Nokia N8, Nokia E7, the Nokia C7, and the Nokia C7 Astound.

Like any other Instant Message application, it requires connecting to the Internet. It is easy to sign into your account and you do not have to repeatedly type in your login information.

With the IM+ you can have multiple conversations at the same time, hide offline contacts, view online buddies and you are alerted with a ringtone when a buddy comes online. You have the option to set your status as “available” or “away”. Alternatively, you can customize your status message, sort your contacts by groups or nicknames and enable or disable the group(s) of your choice.

There are aspects of the application that are worth mentioning such as the avatar option which allows you to disable avatars for a better view of all your contacts, while the zoom enables you to choose from three options (small, medium and large) of how you want your contacts displayed. Another nice touch of this app is the search selection which allows for direct search of your friends instead of having to scroll through your contact list.

Your chat session can also be saved and you can add or delete contacts at your will.

During your conversation, your response from that of your counterpart is differentiated by color, so you never get confused during the process. In the event of a lost connection or a phone lock, you will get a missed message notification once reconnected.

It’s also worthy to note that you are able to view links from this application; although once clicked, you will be directed away from the app.

Despite the cool attractions that this application offers, it lags in a few areas. There is a short delay in real time responses in comparison to when chatting using a PC. On rare occasions, the screen freezes then boots you off. Additionally, it saps out the battery life when left on for long and I could really do without the Ads that are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Another issue that I noticed with this app is that it doesn’t automatically log you off even when you have logged on elsewhere.

To sum up, IM+ is a handy app that truly mimics your typical chat client and offers a lot of decent features just like a regular chat messenger. Although there are few glitches, it is a good mobile app that saves RAM, helps you stay connected on several chat platforms especially on the go and it is not too shabby since it is free. So, if chatting is of great importance to you then IM+ is a useful and user-friendly application to use.

IM+ All-in-One Messenger is free to download from Nokia’s Store. A Pro version of the app is also available.

Bjong is a motion-activated game for selected Nokia S60 phones published by Team Action Zone of Finland. The player controls the motion of the game by moving their body around – that is, by walking and running, preferably in a large and open outdoor space.

Bjong represents a new way of interacting with your phone that some have called ‘mobile exergaming’. ‘Mobile’, because you play on your mobile phone. ‘Exer-’ because you get a good workout while playing. And ‘gaming’ because, well, you are playing a game.

In Bjong’s case, the game involves moving a cartoon snail across the bottom of your phone’s screen in order to hit one or more foot/soccer balls and eat ‘yummies’. You get points for hitting the ball, eating yummies, and even moving. But if you miss three balls, allowing them to get past your snail, the game ends.

In the screenshot below, you can see that I am playing with two balls, one of which my snail is about to hit. The game has just begun, so I still have all three footballs, as shown in the upper left corner. I have so far accumulated 404 points. And my snail has 20 per cent of his energy (more on this later). The little pink berries are ‘yummies’ in various stages of descent. And the purple cluster just to the left of the higher ball are poison berries, something I want my snail to avoid.

You move the snail by walking or running. Walk to your right, and the snail slowly moves right. Run, and your snail moves faster. Stand still, and so does your snail.

To make this happen, Bjong uses your phone’s GPS. When you launch the game, you are first asked to wait a moment while the game and your phone GPS synchronize. Then you are asked to walk to your right – a kind of sample movement that Bjong uses to further synchronize itself. Then the game can translate your personal movement on the ground into the snail’s movement on the screen.

The real fun comes from Bjong’s many options. These greatly affect the game’s level of difficulty – and your level of physical exertion. Here are the highlights:

- Number of footballs: You can set this from 1 to 3, giving yourself 1, 2 or 3 balls to watch. The balls interact, too. They bounce off each other, changing course just when you least expect it.

- Area: This determines how far you need to run to move your snail. There are five options: XS (extra small), S (small), M (medium), L (large), XL (extra large). The XS setting lets you play in a line as short as 5 metres (or 16.4 feet), while XL extends to an exhausting 500 metres (1,640 feet). How energetic are you feeling today?

- Difficulty Level: There are three settings — Easy, Normal, Hard. These seem to control the speed of the balls.

Next, here’s a look at the Settings screen. You can see I have set the game at Normal difficulty, in a small area, and with two footballs:

Because Bjong tracks your points, you can play against yourself for the highest possible score. Points are awarded each time you hit a football or eat a yummie. You also get points for simply moving — 1 point for every metre you move.

As I mentioned, your snail can gain energy levels, which are expressed as percentages. These are gained or lost by eating either yummies or poison berries. If your snail gets to 100 per cent, you gain what’s known as ‘smash bonus’. When this happens, you get 5x the normal points. For example, instead of getting 1 point for moving one metre, you would get 5.

Keep a game going long enough, and you gain an extra football. Apparently, up to three of these bonus balls are possible. I say ‘apparently’ because I was never able to keep a game going long enough to find out!

As I mentioned, a game ends when you miss the football three times. As I discovered, if you have more than one ball in play at once, missing three of them is quite easy:

Once a game has ended, you can view your scorecard. It show your points, distance moved, number of hits, time elapsed, even the estimated number of calories you burned:

Now what if you are a true couch potato, someone who is practically allergic to sunlight and fresh air? No problem. Bjong can also be played indoors in what is known as ‘joystick mode’. To activate this, fire up the game, and instead of walking right, enter the following commands: for touchscreen phones, tap the top of the screen, then the bottom, then the top again, and the bottom again. For non-touchscreen phones, enter this combination on your keypad: 5-8-5-8. Either way, you should see this screen, and then you can play Bjong while sitting down:

Overall, I found Bjong a lot of fun. When the game is cranked up to its most difficult settings, it is also very, very challenging. You will also get some exercise. Without really noticing it, I managed to work up a good sweat while playing Bjong.

To see Bjong in action, check out the videos on Bjong’s YouTube channel. Here is one of the videos – it shows the game being played alongside a lake, while waiting for a bus, on snowshoes, even while riding on Segways. Also, the music in the video is the same music you will hear while playing Bjong:

Bjong is available on Ovi Store, and it costs $1.99 (USD). So get off your snail, and give Bjong a try!

I took the app for a spin on my Nokia N8. As a long time Berkeley and San Francisco slam poet I had seen a number of MC battles on stage, but this was the first time that I had stepped into the MC ring myself. In the back of my mind was the question of how I would find an E-rated battle rap, but the bottom line is that raps are as varied as the people doing the rapping so I plunged ahead.

The first step was establishing my ID and password on the Straight Spittin site, which can be done directly from the Nokia N8. When I actually went to rap battle for the first time, I had to answer at least five questions to become battle-ready. These are questions that ask for your favorite team, favorite food, biggest fear, what kind of car you have, your current job, favorite movie, and others. I will note here that, while you must supply answers to at least five of these questions, remember that your answers are for your battle persona, not necessarily yourself personally. My battle persona, for example, is a hedge fund manager who drives a Porsche. When opponents do battle, they can see each other’s handles, locations, and the answers to the five questions.

The Main screen of the app looks like the screen below, and has major sections for Battle, What’s Good, Pics, Rehearsal, Replay and Voting.

That last one, Voting, is what makes the battle rap world go around. After you listen to someone else’s battles, the app gives you the opportunity to vote on the winner and loser of the battle. Other people also vote on your battles, and out of these votes come the gold and platinum rappers, with everyone else sorted into the category of “Unsigned Hype”.

The What’s Good section is a forum for rappers. In that section you can see comments that others have made about rappers, including yourself, and post comments that add to their comments.

In the lower bar on  the screen is the Menu button (triangle).

In the screen above, the Menu button has been clicked, revealing the Audio Settings function. This is extremely important, as it lets you adjust your playback volume.

When you are below the main screen, the Back button (always in the upper left) brings you back up one level from any plunge into the section and detail screens.

Clicking on the Rehearse section, I went in to practice my rap. No rap is complete without a beat, and it is in that section that I selected the beat. The app gives you such beats as Backwoodz Break, Backwoodz Grimez, Keep It Coming, and Bury the Bastards.

Once I selected a beat, the app wanted to know how many bars (8, 16, or 24) should be in the battle rap.

The convention is that the first 4 bars are left without words so as to establish the beat, so an 8-bar rap would really only contain 4 bars of words, and a 16-bar rap would only contain 12 bars of words. Not everyone out there adheres to this convention, however. The rehearsal section lets you listen to your recording of the rehearsal, but when I clicked the button to Save to SD card, I got a message about the soon-to-be-available paid app, MC Pro, which will implement this function.

Actually, you don’t have to have your own battles at all. If you want, you can just listen to other people’s battles. Touching the Replay section you get the screen below, which lets you listen to battles by location, artist name, the most popular battles, or your own battles. If you click on the voting section, you can also cast your vote on the winners and losers of the battles you hear.

I, however, wanted to battle. I clicked on the Battle button, chose the Freestyle format over Written, and saw the screen below.

Realizing my place as a novice in the MC world, I clicked on Unsigned Hype to find an opponent. I selected my beat, the number of bars, and chose between the one- or two-rebuttal format. The next thing I knew, the screen below came up and I had been challenged by a rapper out of Omaha, Nebraska. I accepted the challenge, and the rest is history.

How did the battle come out? Well, like I said, this is an E-rated blog, so I’ll have to let you dig into the Replay database to listen to the details yourself.

I can see why this app won the AT&T Open Call contest at CTIA 2011. Appalachian Apps has put out an excellent first effort in establishing a mobile platform for would-be battle rappers across the world. The developers are hard at work on a couple of updates to this Qt-based application, including an ability to buy Premium beats to customize one’s rap ($3.49 each) and a paid version, MC Pro version, which would enable the storing of rehearsals to the device’s SD card.

Rah Digga’s Straight Spittin can be downloaded for free in Ovi Store.

And that ShutterPro does quite well, in fact, though mainly in the way of a newly-engineered user interface. There’s only so much that software can do to improve the actual images that a digital camera captures, especially when that camera is as good as the N8’s is to begin with.

To cut to the chase, if you like shooting pictures with your N8 – and who doesn’t? – do yourself a favor and download ShutterPro from Ovi Store. You can’t go wrong. After all, a price of $0.00 is hard to beat. (For now, at least, the software is being offered as a “Preview Edition.” We’re not sure what this means, but the name seems to imply that another, perhaps more-functional version of the app is in the offing, quite possibly slated to carry a price somewhere north of zero. Also, note that this app relies on the QT software framework which, if you don’t already have it installed, is a necessary and significant download from Nokia that’s probably best done via a Wi-Fi Internet connection, not your strictly-rationed cellular data plan.)

Here’s what the app does, both in the way of its GUI and the photographs it produces. (Scattered throughout this review are, just for fun, a number of photos we made using ShutterPro.) The interface seems to have been  designed to take full advantage of the N8’s large touchscreen. When you’re holding the camera in landscape orientation and pointing its lens at a subject, the app will, as usual, show you the image that it “sees.” But on either side of the screen – along the short edges, that is – you’ll see blank, or all-black areas. A touch of the finger in either of these blank strips will trigger a set of graphical function buttons appear.

On the left, you’ll see an ‘X’ button to shut down the app and another button that, when touched, brings forth an extensive main menu of additional buttons with which to change the usual photographic parameters: ISO speed, white balance, color palette, and so forth. (More on this later.)

On the right side, a touch of the finger will bring up buttons for some of those same parameters. And here’s the nifty part: You can choose which of those parameters to be made available in this right-hand set of shortcuts. You get to toggle them on and off within that main menu.

Now, let’s pause to take stock of what we’ve seen so far. (And we do apologize for not being able to show you these buttons as they appear when using this app. For some technical reason that’s beyond us, we’re unable to get the phone to snap screenshots of ShutterPro’s own screens. Evidently, as a camera-based app, it prevents the phone from “seeing” itself – a self-referential logic conundrum worthy, no doubt, of some budding Wittgenstein in the audience.) The fact that these buttons appear along the sides of the screen makes them quite accessible to your fingers when holding the phone in landscape orientation. Especially if you’re right-handed, it’s a quite natural movement to reach with the right index finger and touch one of the buttons, all while holding the phone with left thumb and index finger and with right thumb and middle finger.

Now, a second touch of the left index finger will bring a slider will come into view, and this enables you to adjust the camera’s digital zoom factor. You can zoom from 0, or full wide-angle, up to a maximum factor of 11.64. Why 11.64? We can’t say. But this range is much greater than that provided by the N8’s native software, which maxes out at just 2X – but remember, extreme digital zoom shots will be extra-pixelated. As with most things in life, in photography, too, there is no such thing as a free lunch; everything is a trade-off.

Now, let’s look at that main menu, which is down a level below the main screen. No big surprises here, but there are a few goodies that may find are fun to play with. The usual parameters are available for adjustment: Exposure, Flash, Program (close-ups, night shots, landscapes, etc.) White Balance, ISO “film” speed, Face Detection, Image Quality, and Color palette.

As for the goodies, try these: You can toggle a button to have the camera display either of two histograms. They are marked RGB (for red, green, blue) and Medium RGB. The former displays three small histograms on the main screen, one for each color; the latter combines these into a single histrogram. (In digital cameras, histograms are a sort of bar chart that shows the distribution of pixels according to the brightness of light falling on them, and this can be used to fine-tune an image’s exposure to capture the maximum amount of detail in a given scene.)

Another clever feature is an anti-shake function, which includes sliders for setting its sensibility, samples, and timeout. How all this work, we’re not quite sure, but the controls certainly look impressive.

Also, there’s a function title Cannon, which enables the camera to take multiple shots separated by a pre-set period of time – from 0 to 3,600 seconds. There’s also a setting title Rounds, whose slider can be adjusted anywhere from 2 to 9, it appears. Another slider under Cannon adjusts “EV change,” with EV standing for exposure value. This can be set at either 0 or 0.33, but what this function actually accomplishes, we’re not quite sure.

Yet another surprise: Tilt Shift, which digitally simulates the kind of tilting that’s possible in an old-fashioned view camera – the kind on a tripod with a black cloth at the back under which the photographer stands while setting up the shot. Tilting the lens relative to the film, so that they are no longer parallel, was used in those cameras to selectively focus and defocus different parts of the scene. Here, a somewhat similar effect is possible through a digital blurring process. The Tilt Shift menu includes sliders for Size, Position, Saturation, Strength, and Speed. Honestly, we didn’t have sufficient time to test all of those parameters or even find out what each one does, but here is a sample of what even a first-timer can do with TiltShift; notice the blurring at top and bottom:

If anything’s missing from ShutterPro, it’s a good set of instructions – indeed, any instructions. The app comes with no help screens that we could find and there doesn’t appear to be anything available on the Web. An email address for support is included in the app’s About screen, but that’s not going to be of much use when you’re out in the field and can’t understand, say, how much Saturation to use in your next TiltShift shot. Some basic guidance about how to make use of ShutterPro’s rich menu of functions would be extremely helpful.

Still, we look forward to exploring N8-style photography with help from ShutterPro’s well-menued software extensions – and to seeing what additional functionality Gameline will pull from its sleeve for future versions of this intriguing app. (And finally, if you’re taking N8 photography at all seriously, do check out this extensive set of well-crafted tutorials at the N8 Camera School.)

ShutterPro Premium is available for $2.99 (USD) in Nokia’s Store.

Prism 3D is available for Nokia Smartphones for $1.99 or as an ad-supported free version. I tested the paid version on my N8.

The designers take their 3D title seriously; great 3D effects begin even before your first game. Even the transitions between menus are executed with a 3D flair. Press play and you realize the menus are affixed to a cube, and you move among menus by spinning the cube.

Even the direction of spin carries subtle meaning. The right-left spin you see above means you’re moving forward (from set-up to play). If you chose instead to customize your game before playing, the spin would be top-bottom.

Different spin directions mean different things.

Now on to game play, which is conceptually simple: bounce the ball along a path to a goal.

Bounce the ball along a path to a goal.

Your vantage point is from above the bouncing ball, and you control the ball by tilting the phone. There are only two subtleties to understand:

• “Above” is calibrated when you begin a game. The direction of game-gravity is always perpendicular to the screen of the phone as held during calibration. If you lay the phone screen-side up on a table during calibration, game-gravity and earth-gravity point in the same direction. If you lay the phone screen-side down during calibration, you can play laying on your back. Any orientation during calibration works.
• Tilt controls gravity, not just rebound angle. When I first played Prism 3D, I thought in terms of “hitting” the ball with the play field. If I wanted the ball to bounce right, I tilted the phone to the right. It took me a few lost balls before I realized that I could influence the ball in flight by changing the orientation of the phone.

Special tiles add interest

Once you get the basic idea of staying on the path, you can start targeting special tiles along the way to pick up points or make your job easier. Specialty tiles include:

• Bonus and penalty tiles increase (or decrease) your score.
• Point multipliers increase the value of bonuses and penalties.
• Inflators and deflators change the size and “bounciness” of the ball.
• Side shots force your ball to bounce in the direction of the arrow.

There are also exploders, moving tiles, tiles that disappear when you bounce on them, tiles that move, and others that you’ll learn as you play.

Special tiles add interest.

For a game that’s such a 3D experience, I’ve written more than enough words. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and this video is worth even more.

For some great 3D fun, check out Prism 3D in a free (ad-supported) version or as a paid (ad-free) experience.

Or maybe you’re on your own and you find yourself thinking about that special someone and they remind you of a certain song and …

And for some reason, nobody, and certainly not you, can remember the lyrics to the song in question, the words that are … aghh, they’re right there, on the tip of your tongue! What was it that Tom Tom Club sang in “Genius of Love”? What cities was David Byrne of Talking Heads thinking of escaping to in “Life During Wartime”? How did that Beatles song go, “Drive My Car”?

OK, we’ll admit, with pre-Jurassic titles like those, we’re seriously dating ourselves. (The Beatles, we should point out to younger readers, were a band, somewhat famous, in which Paul McCartney played, before Wings.) But you get the idea: At certain moments in life, song lyrics are simply the most important thing there is, absotively and posilutely necessary to get right, right now.

Which is why, evidently, a company called musiXmatch, based in Bologna, Italy, has produced an app for Nokia smartphones called, simply, Lyrics. With this app on your phone – it’s available on Ovi Store at no charge – you can gain more or less instant access to a searchable database of some 5 million – 5,000,000! – popular song lyrics, all in a variety of European languages.

Five million is a big number, and we haven’t had time to count, much less explore, so many sets of lyrics, but so far, our pseudo-scientific testing shows the musiXmatch database to be quite comprehensive. Not only does it show the lyrics for The Beatles, The Beastie Boys, and The English Beat – all big names in the musical pantheon of our long-ago youth – it has the words to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and even “Forget You,” by Cee-Lo Green, complete with this gem of rhyming brand names:

Yeah, I’m sorry, I can’t afford a Ferrari

But that don’t mean I can’t get you there.

I guess he’s an Xbox and I’m more Atari,

But the way you play your game ain’t fair.

According to musiXmatch, quoting Google, since 2004, “lyrics” has been the most searched-for term on the Web, more popular than even “sex,” “dating,“ or “love.” And that’s the case not only in the U.S., the firm says, but in the U.K., Germany, Japan, and France, too, though we suspect some different spellings may be involved.

As for the Lyrics app itself, we can say this: It has a slick design, it works well, it does what it’s supposed to, we recommend it.

Looks: The app has a quite sexy feel, its menus – there are but three: Charts, My Music, and Search – sliding silky smooth across our N8’s touchscreen in response to a swipe of our finger. Clearly, some thought has gone into this app’s look and feel. Also, many songs’ lyrics are illustrated with cover art – a pleasing touch, we found, even if the art is mini-thumbnail size. Likewise, the app provides short biographies of many musical artists, often with photographs.

Lyrics: There’s a whole lot of them, though we can’t be sure there’s a full 5 million. In any case, we’re impressed with the fact that for songs released in more than one version – say, one for adults and another for children – Lyrics lists both sets of words. What’s slightly annoying is that if you look up an old standard, such as “Autumn Leaves,” the app shows a list of 20, 30, who knows how many recordings, each by a different artist and each, we suspect, with exactly the same words. One would suffice, of course, though would disrupt this app’s ability to send customers to the Ovi music store.

You can search for lyrics by the title of songs or the name of a band. You can enter a partial title, but beware, too unspecific a search and you’ll be presented  with a long, long list of song titles to scan through. Unfortunately, you cannot search the lyrics themselves for specific words, which means that if you don’t remember the name of that song still echoing in your brain years after it left the airwaves, you won’t find it here. (On the other hand, a good search engine like Google or Bing will no doubt help you in this regard.)

MusiXmatch states that the lyrics in its database are fully licensed. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that every lyric it lists is perfectly correct. For some reason, online collections of lyrics are notoriously rife with mistakes. And this one is no different. When we used this app to look up that long-ago Tom Tom Club hit “Genius of Love,” we found the word dimension misspelled as “dimention.”

Sometimes, of course, the words in lyrics are anybody’s guess. Nobody – perhaps not even the singer herself – knows what the correct words are. And seriously, what would be the fun of a perfect listing of every song’s words? Think how many devoted listening sessions and great barroom discussions that would obviate. (“Judy in the skies,” or “Judy in disguise”?) Entire Web sites are devoted to this topic.

To its credit, the Lyrics app takes itself seriously enough to solicit comments about its database. Upon searching for a song, music fans can use a set of buttons to tell musiXmatch that the lyrics shown are not by the selected artist, that the lyrics seem to contain “strange characters” or scrambled words, or that its verses are contain too many lines of text.

When you’ve finally found the lyrics you’re seeking, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to buy a recording of the song at the Ovi music store. And Lyrics makes it easy to go do that, as for many songs it offers one-button access to the appropriate page within Ovi. (To make a purchase, of course, you’ll need to have signed up for the right Ovi account.)

There’s more: Lyrics automatically scans the music files you may have stored in your Nokia phone, listing them in a separate menu. It also shows a menu of songs currently enjoying popularity, though specifically which chart it’s tuned to, we can’t tell.

MusiXmatch – a witty outfit, in every way; check out its home page graphics and its jobs page – has done the Nokia community well with this Lyrics app. Clearly, the price is right, and the content it provides such easy, comprehensive access to is absolutely vital, no matter how old a teenager you happen to be.

Lyrics is free to download from Nokia’s Store.

If not, then it might help to know that ‘Desi’ refers to anyone from the India region, including Bangladesh and Pakistan, who typically lives abroad. Bollywood refers to the India-based producers of outrageously gaudy and delightful musical movies. And Bhangra is a kind of pop music based on folk music and dances from the Punjabi region.

Now Desi Hits Inc., the New York-based company behind the Desi Hits! website, has added a mobile app to its offerings for Nokia phones. The new app, simply called Desi Hits!, runs on selected Nokia advanced touchscreen phones. The app lets you view news, photos, and videos, and listen to radio programs, all centered on Bollywood, Bhangra, and what the app calls Urban Desi.

Using the app is a breeze. First, you select a main category: videos, photos, radio, or news. This brings you to a category screen. For example, here’s the Videos screen:

Each category screen, in turn, has four buttons across the top: All, Bollywood, Bhangra, and Urban Desi. ‘All’ is the default, so if that’s what you want, simply select an item from the thumbnail list. Or, to select a subcategory, tap one, and the list is adjusted.

Select an item from the list, and it appears. For example, here’s the sequence for Photos. First you see the master list:

Tap on a thumbnail to see the larger version of any photo. For example, here is a recent photo of Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan:

Tap Home, and you return to the main menu. Tap Back, and you return to the preceding screen.

Next, the News category delivers a list of light news stories about actors, singers and the like. Here’s a look at the main News menu:

And here’s an individual news story:

Any screen can also be viewed in landscape mode:

The Videos and Radio sections of the app deliver the multimedia fun. The Videos are mostly interviews with celebrities, both from the Desi world and without. For instance, here’s a screen capture from a video interview with Lady Gaga, who is not a Desi last time I looked:

The Radio section mainly features two programs: the Arun and P Show, which features music tracks and interviews with musicians, singers and actors, and the Bhangra Vibes show. Here’s a look at the Radio menu and then the screen that appears after I selected an individual radio program:

Overall, the Desi Hits! app is easy to use, and navigation is intuitive. That is thanks in part to a User Experience (UX) consultation recently provided by Nokia experts. Desi Hits Inc. wanted to ensure that the app would be as intuitive and easy to use as possible. So the company submitted a prototype of its mobile app to Nokia UX consultants. They, in turn, applied a series of mobile-usability heuristics to identify the prototype app’s strengths and weaknesses. To learn more about Desi Hits! and its Nokia UX consultation, see this Nokia Developer case study.

In my own tests on a Nokia N8 phone, I too found Desi Hits! easy to use. But I had a few quibbles of my own. For one, on the category pages, the subcategory buttons (All, Bollywood, Bhangra, and Urban Desi) were sometimes unresponsive. I often had to tap those buttons several times before they would ‘take’.

Another small issue: one can exit only from the Home screen. So if you want to exit from, say, a radio program, you have to first stop the program, then tap the Home once or the Back button twice, and finally tap Exit. An easy fix would be to add an Exit button to all the ‘inside’ screens.

Also, during my tests, the Desi Hits! video and radio broadcasts were sometimes unresponsive. One day, I could barely get either videos or radio programs to load or play. But the very next day, I found both the radio programs and the videos loaded within mere seconds and then played flawlessly. On a third day of testing, about half the videos I tried hung, while the other half played smoothly. So was the problem with Desi Hits!, my Internet provider, or something else? As they say, your mileage may vary.

Desi Hits! is available in Ovi Store, and it is free to download.

Each archipelago has five different islands where you must use your four tribesmen to move a rather large totem from point A to point B. Simply tap in the direction you want to go near the totem and the tribesmen should push it. Move the totem to a vertical or horizontal standing point as you roll it across each island. Be prepared to get stuck on a patch of island for a while as you roll the totem over and over again to place it just right.

Along the way collect diamonds that are spread out amongst each island. If you’re lucky you’ll collect them all. I was on a pretty sweet track record until archipelago 3 opened up. Suddenly collecting them all wasn’t such an easy task.

Use rafts, that you MUST get onto in a specific way with the totem, to travel to another island within the board. Use switches to raise and lower bridges to collect diamonds and allow the rafts to move forward. But be careful, you may get trapped on an island and have to restart from scratch. And watch out for mud that will cause your totem to slide.

Tired of playing the main storyline of Diamond Island 2? Why not try the Challenges part of the game. Each island is covered with a specific amount of diamonds and it is your job to gather them all in a certain amount of moves.

A few levels in and your head may be spinning even more than during the storyline’s game play. I dare you to try and reach 1st place in every challenge. But beware, you can only play a certain amount of challenges before having to play the storyline again to unlock more boards in challenge mode.

Diamond Islands 2 is an addictive and fun puzzle game that will give you quite a challenge. I’ve been stuck on a level for two days now, but I will prevail!

The game is available in Ovi store for $1.99 (USD).

You could just let the phone ring – silently, of course – until your caller was offered a chance to leave a message. Or, you could turn to Quietalk, an app that’s designed to help out in exactly this situation. Developed by Telekonnectors Ltd., an Indian firm, it’s available in Ovi Store at no charge.

In a nutshell, Quietalk would not only enable you to answer the call silently, it would enable you to communicate with your caller silently, as well – and not via standard SMS-based texting but over the regular phone call that your caller placed to you. You could choose either to send them one of several dozen previously prepared messages – “I’m in a meeting right now, will call you as soon as possible,” for instance – or, you could (discreetly, of course) type in a new message. Either way, though, your caller would actually hear your message on his or her phone, not simply view it as text on their phone’s screen.

Here’s how it works:

Quietalk is able to record, as audio files, anything you’d like to store as a message for later use: “I’ll be home for dinner at 6pm,” or “I’m working late tonight,” or “I love you, darling, more than there are stars in the universe.” You get the idea. And then, when someone calls and you’d like them to hear one of these pre-recorded messages, you just select one on your touchscreen and Quietalk will play it over the current phone connection – in sparkling, high-fidelity audio, no less.

And if you need to type out a new message? In that case, Quietalk takes your text, entered the usual way, via the touchscreen keyboard, and uses Nokia’s built-in text-to-speech technology to speak your message in a synthesized voice.

We tried it, and it works. You can launch Quietalk and keep it hidden from view until a call comes in. When you want to activate the app, you need only touch the small red icon that it keeps up at the top of your screen. You’ll be shown a list of pre-recorded audio messages, any of which can be played by touching its triangular “play” button.

It’s easy to record messages by speaking into the phone. It’s not clear exactly how many audio messages Quietalk can keep on hand, but more than a handful, with each one having a unique name to identify it.

To have text messages read to your caller, you just tap on the TypeTalk button at the bottom of the Quietalk home screen. That makes visible a red field into which you can type your text. Once you’re done entering text, it gets stored in a list of messages, with maximum capacity of 40 entries. Any of them can be called into action by selecting it and touching the “Say” button.

In case you’re wondering, when Quietalk is delivering either kind of message to a caller, your phone remains muted. That way, there’s less chance of any audio interference.

The version of Quietalk we tried out came with U.S. and Canadian versions of its text-to-speech function, but it’s possible to download additional languages from Nokia’s Web site. For the two English-language selections, there are default male and female voices to choose from plus another one called Jane. Evidently, different language packages include different voices.

Finally, you can configure Quietalk to load automatically when you switch on your phone. That could be helpful, we imagine, for those who often find themselves in meetings, for example, and wouldn’t want to have to find Quietalk at the moment it’s needed. As mentioned, when loaded and hidden, the app is unobtrusive yet easily pulled into action via its small red icon, which remains visible no matter which screen you’re looking at (see screensnap above).

And that’s about all there is to say about Quietalk, a simple app that does what it’s designed to do quite efficiently. Unfortunately – or quite fortunately, depending on how you look at it – we don’t have a lot of meetings to attend, so we’re not sure how the app works in the heat of battle. But we invite you to try it out and tell us how it has helped you communicate on the QT, as it were.

(Speaking of which, before installing this app, you do need to load Nokia’s Qt software framework into your phone, an easy if somewhat sizeable – and entirely free – download. You’ve probably got that code on your phone already, but if not, you’ll want to download it via a fast WiFi Internet connection, not over your slower, metered cellular network.)

Quietalk is free to download from Store.

Blaving runs on Nokia S60 phones, both the newer touchscreen models and several older phones. I tested the app on a Nokia N8, an advanced touchscreen phone. So if you are using a non-touchscreen phone, where I say ‘tap’, you will instead need to press one of your phone’s keys.

Launch Blaving, and you view the app’s main screen:

The six icons across the top of the screen are your main navigators. The first icon, earphones, brings you to the latest posts. That’s the view shown above.

The second, a microphone, is where you record. Select the icon, and the main record screen appears:

Now it is the icons along the bottom that you use. To record a short message (in Blavspeak, a ‘blav’), select Record, which is the red dot, the first icon on the left. Then begin speaking. The screen counts down the seconds; above, you can see that I am 4 seconds into a recording.

To stop recording before Blaving’s 2-minute limit, select the Stop (middle) button. To hear your message before posting, select Play, the second icon from the right.

To post your blav, select Publish; it is the white arrow on a green background, all the way to the right. You will be prompted to give your post a title. You will also have the option to add tags, separated by commas. In the next shot, I am naming my test post ‘test’. Very creative, no?

It is easiest to post your blav within Blaving itself. But you can also share your audio posts on the web, via email, or on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Also, when you return to the latest posts screen, you will see your post listed on top (as mine is below):

You can also check out the Blaving voice posts of others by returning to the main screen and tapping the Popular button (little speaker, third from the right). You will come to a page that lists recent posts and shows the speakers’ thumbnails:

Options galore are available from Blaving’s popup menu, which you activate by tapping the Menu command at the bottom-right corner. As you can see below, some of the commands are similar to those in Twitter and other social networking apps: reply, like/dislike, etc.

You also have a few other options, including a way to set the app’s language; Blaving’s publisher, PMovil, is based in South America, so the options are English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In fact, most of the posts on Blaving I found were in Spanish.

Blaving also operates an accompanying website. I found using the site easier for certain changes. For example, adding a headshot photograph to your Blaving profile via the phone can be slow and tedious. But using the Blaving site, I was able to add my headshot easily and quickly.

Overall, Blaving works well and is easy to use. One exception is Favourites (indicated by the star icon); I was unable to make this work. Also, most of the commands are far too small for a touchscreen. That is especially true on the pop-up menu; because its 12 commands are so small and so close to one another, tapping the wrong command is quite easy, and I did so often. In this case, bigger would definitely be better.

To see Blaving in action, check out the app’s YouTube Channel page. Dozens of videos are on tap, mostly in either Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese. But there is one video in English showing Blaving on an older, non-touchscreen Nokia phone:

Blaving is available on Ovi Store, and it is free. The app requires an open Internet connection, so additional data charges may apply. Talk to you soon — on Blaving!

Slice-It! is compatible with Nokia smartphones with a touch interface, and costs $0.99 (USD) or equivalent in Ovi Store. The game I downloaded in the U.S. came pre-loaded with four language packs: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. I play with it on my Nokia N8.

The game offers 100 challenges of increasingly difficult, and addicting, ways to slice geometric shapes.

I liked the graphic design (by Boyun “ADHD” Cho and Sangho “Anim” Bae ) and sound design by YoungJun “DrNoiz” Seo. Both brought me into the game. Inconsistent placement of the “back” button was a bit distracting, but the consistent look of the button compensated.

Possibly because of the multiple languages and multimedia content, the app takes up a lot of memory. Once I got past the opening screens and into a game level, screen capture utilities installed on my N8 failed because of low memory. That’s why the rest of the pics you see in this review were taken with an external camera. Power users who take advantage of Symbian’s multitasking may have trouble playing Slice-It! with several apps running in the background.

The concept of the puzzle/game is simple: draw straight lines to slice shapes into pieces. The developer did a great job of creating a technique for precise placement of lines using a touch interface:

• Drag your finger from the beginning to the end of the segment you want to draw.
• This creates a working slice line with adjustment handles on each end.
• Slide the end points around until you like where the line is drawn.
• When you stop adjusting the line, the game begins a count-down. If it gets to zero without a movement, you have Sliced It!

Draw lines to slice shapes. Sounds simple, right?

If you look closely at the screen above you see just about everything else you need to know about the game. The numbers in the top center tell you how many pieces you have and how many pieces you need to solve the current challenge. The number next to the pencil in the upper left tells you how many more lines you need to draw. The bottom of the screen tells you how many tips are available, and what you “pay” to get a tip.

If you can consistently slice treats into equal portions so your friends or children don’t argue about who gets which piece, you’ll do great with Slice-It!. Your score is based on your ability to make each slice the same area as every other slice. You’re shown the results after each puzzle.

Make each slice the same area and score big.

That’s all there is to the basic puzzle concept: draw a given number of lines to cut a given shape into the appropriate number of equal slices. The fun and the increasing challenge comes from different shapes that require different slicing strategies. Sometimes I found myself remembering old geometry formulas about intersects areas; sometimes I counted squares in the “graph paper” background, and sometimes I just winged it.

Slice-It! spices up the fun puzzle challenges with little goodies you win for scoring well, including  free tips.

Score well and win free tips to use when you get stuck.

This short video from theblogjack shows the game in action on the Nokia N8 – it goes out of focus once in a while, but you’ll get the idea:

There’s one flaw in the UI that I hope the developer cures in an upcoming release: there is no way to exit the game from within the game; you have to kill it from the task manager. You can Exit from a game, but that just takes you back to the main menu. There’s no final exit from there.

Slice-It! is a fun way to play with geometry, even if you don’t consider geometry fun. At $0.99, it would make a great gift for a child, just don’t let them know it’s educational!

Scores Now! is a powerful application created by infMobile that provides instant results from various teams in the:

• NBA (National Basketball Association)
• MLB (Major League Baseball)
• NFL (National Football League)
• NHL (National Hockey League)
• MLS (Major Leagues Soccer)

What's going on in the MLB today?

All scores are in real time and are updated every minute to ensure the most accurate data. You can even setup alarm/vibrate alerts when the score of your favorite games change. There is even the functionality to setup a calendar function to remind you of the time and date of when each game starts. If that’s not enough, you can also send your friends a text message with instant results from the games. So now you can rub it in all your friends faces’ when your team beats up on theirs!

My Favorites

Another cool feature in ScoresNow!, is the ability to see a condensed post-game wrap up. You can find out what the scoring plays were during that game as well as highscorers from the game.

Yankees Boxscore

Oh yeah, there’s also a homescreen widget too!

I am really loving ScoresNow! on my Nokia N8. I only have a few suggestions for future updates:

1. More detail in post-game wrap ups and boxscores
2. There should be more pre-game information
3. Modify homescreen widget cycle speed
4. More global content such as soccer outside of the U.S.

I think if the above modifications can be made, this would truly be the elite sports application on Ovi Store.

_______________________

SportsFeed is another sports score updater application created by Amnesia Games that provides information on:

• Soccer
• Tennis
• Basketball
• Hockey
• Baseball
• American Football

Main Menu

SportsFeed is more of a global application than SportsNow! For instance, when you choose soccer as your sport, rather than just getting results for the MLS, you have a list of all soccer matches globally in nearly every division and league. Same goes for baseball too:

Global Baseball Scores

So the selection of games is much broader in that sense. However, SportsFeed lacks a little in other areas. For instance, there is no feature to select a list of favorite teams, there is no additional pre-game or post-game information, and no homescreen widget either. Not deal breakers, but they would really add much more value to the game.

Then again both of these apps are free, so you really have nothing to lose.

Try them out if you are a true sports fan and it is an absolute must to stay up to date with your team!

ScoresNow! is available for FREE in Ovi Store, and can be downloaded here: http://store.ovi.com/content/102423

SportsFeed is also available for FREE in Ovi Store, and can be downloaded here: http://store.ovi.com/content/113865

Game on.

All of that being said, Chinese Chess Pro V by ZingMagic brings this extremely popular eastern game to western eyes on the Nokia N8 as well as Symbian OS, S60 5.0 devices. ZingMagic has put the user interface in English (and 16 other languages), and even giving the option of viewing westernized pieces instead of Chinese characters.

Like ZingMagic’s western chess products, the app gives you the option of playing against the computer, or against another human. This is determined at the beginning of the game under Options. It brings up the screen below, where I have chosen for the second player to be another human instead of a computer. Note that I could have also chosen to play the opposite color (black moves first in Chinese Chess, the opposite of western chess.)

You may wish to build up some confidence in your play by running off a number of human-vs-computer games. Again the Options button allows you to choose the computer’s level of play, from Beginner to Expert, and the time controls, which can range from one second per move to games of 180 minutes.

The beginning position of the game is shown on the screen below. Notice that there are pieces that look like the rooks, knights, bishops  and kings found in western chess sets. Instead of a queen, each king is surrounded by two ministers whose icons vaguely resemble an elephant’s head. The pieces shown on the top row are, from the left, a rook, knight, counselor, minister, and king (general).  Two rows down from them are the cannons, a new type of piece, and in front of them the pawns (or foot soldiers).

The large X on each side of the board is the Imperial palace, and both the movements of both the king and his counselors are restricted to be within the palace. The rooks move just like western rooks, but the knights are not allowed to jump over pieces like their western counterparts. The counselors and ministers move diagonally like western bishops, with the restriction that a counselor may only move one point diagonally and the minister can move exactly two points diagonally.

The cannon moves horizontally and vertically like a rook, but it may only capture a piece by first jumping over an intervening piece of either color.

Whereas western pawns move only vertically, yet capture diagonally, the Chinese pawns have different rules. The Chinese pawn may only move a single point forward, and captures forward, not diagonally. Also, once a pawn has crossed the Yellow River in the middle of the board, it may then also move horizontally.

If you have any questions about the piece movement during a game, just click on the question mark icon after you have selected a piece. As the screen below shows, the app then gives you hints (the grey squares) as to where the selected piece can move on the board.

As with western chess, there are millions of strategy combinations in the game. One of the basic elements, king protection, is shown in the screen below. Notice in the screen below that a red minister and counselor have moved out in front of the king to protect him from the invading cannon.

YouTube also has a few good videos on how to play the game. Danny Burbol offers lessons that are split into two parts:

There is also a video showing sample gameplay with English subtitles at:

Chinese Chess Pro V is available in Ovi Store for $2.99 (USD). This version is available for Symbian OS, S60 5.0 devices such as the Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, with a version for the Nokia’s new Symbian phones, like the Nokia N8 available soon at that same link. A free version (with advertising) for all of these devices is availablem, too.

Guide the biker through several different islands, each one getting harder as the game progresses. Step on the gas, the brake, lean forward and lean back to manipulate the biker through the trails on each island. One false move and the biker may flip the bike or even fall off completely, resulting in bone breaking falls. But no worries, this is a game so his bones heal automatically and he’s back on the bike in two seconds!

There are three ways to play. First through touch and tilt. The left side of the screen can be tapped for the brakes while the right side of the screen can be touched for gas. Tilt the device right to lean forward and tilt left to lean back. The next way to play is analog. All touch, slide your finger up for gas and down for brake on the left side of the screen. Slide your finger up for a forward lean and down for a backwards lean on the right side of screen. And finally, you can use the digital option. Tap or hold the upper left part of the screen for gas and the lower left for the brakes, while tapping the upper right part of the screen to lean forward or the lower left of the screen to lean back.

Each way to play is similar to each other but after playing with all three I opted for the digital aspect. It was the easiest to control whereas the analog aspect was the hardest for me.

If you aren’t hooked yet then we have one more proposition for you, but why don’t we let this video from the publishers at Occamy Games do the talking for us:

If you feel lucky, and like some good competition, then snatch this game up fast. Starting today through 22 July, Moto X Mayhem is having a competition to see who can score the highest on each island! You can even get the chance to win twice by scoring the highest on two islands! Depending on which island you win, you can get a prize up to $5,000!

Please note: The Moto X Mayhem High-Score Challenge is for those playing the game on Nokia’s new Symbian phones, and is specifically for player in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, USA, and Canada. Players can register for the contest and submit highscores from within the game and compete for a chance to win cash prizes in each of the five islands it features. To enter, players must download the new versions from Ovi Store that have the contest registration and contest high-score entry  built-in. For more info, take a look at the Moto X Mayhem page on Facebook.

Moto X Mayhem is available for $0.99 (USD) in the Ovi Store. Moto X Mayhem Lite is available in the Ovi Store for free but only includes the first island of the game.

The widget works in collaboration with WildEarth, a broadcaster of live wildlife video channels, and ZooVision, a mobile video streaming content aggregator. Together, they have delivered a simple yet effective widget that lets you watch live videos of lions, sharks and other wildlife in their native environment — and while you are in your native environment, whether that is the office, a street in a foreign city, or even the comfort of your own home:

Your setup may vary, but at launch, I was presented with a choice of five live channels, of which four actually worked (more on the outlier below). These options were: African Safari, Waterhole Cam, Penguin Points, Pennsylvania Woods, and Swim With the Sharks. Here’s a look at how the channels are presented.

To scroll through the channels, you drag a finger across the screen to the left or right, depending on which way you want to scroll. To watch a video, simply tap on the Play icon. This launches your device’s web browser and automatically connects you to the live video feed, which begins playing.

In my tests on a Nokia N8, establishing the connection took about 10 to 20 seconds. But once I was connected, video play was clear, unbroken and smooth. The audio component – sometimes just ambient sounds, other times a person speaking in the background – was also loud and clear.

Here’s a look at the Swim With the Sharks channel, in which a camera records a group of sharks swimming hungrily around some bait that has been lowered from a boat:

During any of the live videos, tapping the screen causes familiar commands to appear on the screen. These let you pause and restart the video, adjust the audio volume, and return to the main menu:

Unfortunately, not all the channels were as exciting. The Penguin Point, for example, was decidedly dull whenever I tuned in. As the screenshot below illustrates, it is a view of some artificial rocks and a pool in an aquarium somewhere. If you squint, you can see two penguins on the left side of the image. They are standing around, doing pretty much nothing:

I will guess that the penguins get more exciting at feeding time, but I was never able to catch that moment. The African Safari was more rewarding; there, I watched a female lion sniffing around for dinner. But the Waterhole Cam, sadly, was not much more than a view of a pond somewhere in Africa, at least whenever I tuned in. And the Pennsylvania Woods was simply missing in action:

Those quirks aside, WildEarth TV is a reliable and easy-to-use widget for live video feeds of wildlife around the world.

WildEarth TV is available on Ovi Store for $4.99 (USD). It runs on Nokia advanced touchscreen devices. And it requires an open Internet connection, so local data charges may apply. I tested WildEarth TV over a wireless LAN, and I recommend that option for lower costs and higher speeds. Try WildEarth TV – it’s wild.

Azkend has a back story of sorts, something about an explorer returning to the Far East in search of relics and talismans. Whatever. The game’s the thing here.

Azkend presents you with a series of boards (called levels) that are populated with little icons. Your objective is to touch and slide the screen to link three or more adjacent icons of the same pattern – Buddhas, boats, etc. In this first screenshot, note the blue arrow near the bottom of the board pointing at a water pitcher…and also note that there are three other water pitchers that could be connected to this one:

Each time you connect three or more icons on the board, they disappear. All the other icons plop down one level, and new icons appear at the top. Also, the cells of the matched icons turn from yellow to blue. Here’s a look at a game in progress:

Turn the entire board blue by matching enough icons, and a piece of a talisman appears on your board. Lower the talisman to the bottom of the board by making matches, and you win the level. In this next screenshot, you can see the talisman in the lower left corner, with one piece in place:

When you complete a talisman, it is added to your arsenal. The talisman appears on the board of your next level. And when you match up four or more talismans, they have the power to clear large areas of the board.

Also, as you move into higher levels, the game gets more difficult. In part, that is due to the addition of special icons with unique qualities. This rules screen illustrates:

If all that were not enough, you also have to worry about your Thunder Meter. You have a small bank of lightning bolts at the bottom of the screen. When you connect icons in the yellow cells, you add a lightning bolt. But connect icons only in blue cells, and you lose a bolt. In the screenshot below, you can see that I have accumulated four out of a possible five lightning bolts – pretty good!

Between levels, Azkend shows you your progress on a long journey. Even after five levels, I still have a l-o-n-g way to go:

Testing Azkend on a Nokia N8, I did encounter one fairly serious technical glitch. In several sessions, the game first lost its sound, then froze and became totally unresponsive. In fact, I could unfreeze the game only by rebooting my Nokia device. Fortunately, the game was smart enough to save my progress. Once I restarted the device and relaunched the game, I could continue playing where I had left off. Here’s hoping publisher 10tons Ltd. will address this technical issue in v.2 of what is otherwise a fun and engaging puzzle game.

To get an idea of Azkend’s look and feel, check out this YouTube video, courtesy of publisher 10tons Ltd.

The Azkend puzzle game is available on Ovi Store for $2.99 (USD). The installation file for this Qt-based application is rather large at more than 15 MB, so it is best to install this game in your mass, rather than phone, memory. Then get ready for the minutes — and hours — to fly.

Happy Lines is compatible with Nokia Symbian smartphones (touch, keyboard, and new). It’s available as a free trial or as a full version for $1.99 (USD). I tested the paid version on my Nokia N8.

From the opening screen you see all the elements you expect of a casual game like Happy Lines: high score, language options, help, more games, and most importantly quick access to the game itself.

Opening screen introduces fun graphic design: happy without being sappy.

The object of the game is simple: line up five or more of the same colored faces to eliminate the line from the game surface. You can line them up horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The more faces you eliminate at once the more you score: so for example line up three reds, leave a space, line up three more reds, then drop a red one in the center to score big.

Line up five or more like colors to eliminate them from the game surface.

You can move faces horizontally or vertically, but accomplishing the move stumped me at first. On my touch interface I expected to drag the faces around. Instead, you touch the face you want to move, then touch the space to which you want to move it. This technique seems inherited from the keyboard versions of Happy Lines, but once I figured it out the interface became second nature and I could lose myself in  the game.

Each time you move a face, Happy Lines adds three new faces to the game surface. If you’re not careful you end up with a hopelessly clogged game like you see in the previous screen shot. To prevent that problem, think ahead. Happy Lines shows you where the new faces will be added.

In the next screen shot notice the left corner of the “title bar” above the game surface shows one blue and two green faces will be added after my next move. If you look carefully at the game surface you see where they will be added.

Happy Lines shows where the new faces will be added.

Here you see the game surface after I move a blue face to the right edge.

One move later. Next move will add two blues and a red.

That’s about as complicated as Happy Lines gets, which suits me fine as we approach the lazy days of summer here in the southwest US. Each game has a time limit (notice the snail progress bar below the game surface) but I never felt rushed. Higher levels add various ways of blocking you from moving faces around, which makes you think a few moves in advance.

Happy Lines is a fun hybrid game — part puzzle, part arcade. Maybe it’s the heat outside (my home town of Tucson, Arizona is running daytime highs of 100 deg F (38C)) but I find Happy Lines a great combination of engaging and lazy. If that sounds good to you, check out the full version for $1.99 (USD), or test drive the free version.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for another glass of cold lemonade.

If you have the iron will to do that later processing, then good for you. If you want to get it done on the spot, including relaying the info to others in real time, then you should look at MDScan from Stoik Imaging. As the name implies, this is an app that turns your Nokia N8 into a scanner. It also does much more, letting you color correct  images, crop images, correct for slanted original image captures, clean up a lot of background artifacts, turn it to grey scale, and send it off. It even lets you do this processing on previous images in your gallery, and those you import from other sources. When business cards and brochures get artsy with lighter text on darker backgrounds, MDScan can reverse it out and present dark text on a light background.

I fired up MDScan on my Nokia N8 and tried it out. The first screen that I saw was the main screen pictured below. The button for shooting (scanning) a new image in the upper left, but I first wanted to check the settings for the image I was about to process, so I clicked on the settings button.

The image resolutions can be selected from 4000 x 3000 down to 640×480, with 2592 x 1944 being the default resolution. The tradeoffs are image storage size, and the default 5 megapixels was plenty for me. You can also select the document size between A4, letter, and legal, as shown in the screen below.

Happy with my settings, I went back to the “Shot photo” option to grab an image. If I were designing it I would have labeled the button “Shoot photo”, but I think the meaning gets across anyway. In the screen below I wanted to stretch the limits, so I shot a game score sheet at a chess tournament. The lighting was not the best, sometimes the original score sheets themselves are barely legible, and I didn’t always capture the document head-on, so this was a real challenge to MDScan.

Using the scissor icon shown above, I first cropped the image down to the score sheet by adjusting the four corners icons shown. For head-on shots, it would have been faster to just have an upper-left and lower-right adjustment icon such as one sees in Adobe PhotoShop, but this 4-corner mechanism will do fine. It has the added advantage that if the original shot was taken at a skewed angle, one can unskew the image by pinching two of the corner icons and using the second icon from the top to flatten the image.  Once it was cropped, the controls shown in the right column below showed up.  The Mona Lisa-like icon leads to some great image enhancement options.

These options include adjustments for brightness/contrast, conversion to grey scale, inversion of colors, cleaning of background, and flattening of the brightness when you have used a flash.

Applying a few of these, I got the clean, highly-readable score sheet shown below, and used the envelope icon to send it to my chess-playing friends and to my own PC. I will also note that I could easily magnify a portion of the document just by spreading two fingers on the part of the page that I wanted to magnify.

I then went to the Import function and pulled in a photo that I had taken months ago of a scrabble board game that I had played. MDScan let me import the image, sharpen it up a bit using the Mona Lisa tool, and append the new image as a new page to the document.

Overall, I was very happy with how MDScan let me process and send documents. The only function that I wish would have been added was some sort of optical character recognition (OCR) to turn the scanned images into text. The great added bonus was that I could use MDScan like a miniature PhotoShop to go back and automatically color-correct, and contrast/brightness correct old photos, as well as to crop them. That bonus was not what I originally bought MDScan for, but it was worth the price of the product all by itself.

MDScan is available in Ovi Store, priced at $2.99 (USD).

More information about the app is available from the developer’s website.

As the name states already, this app is very quick. When starting it, you will be directed to your contact list. It will show your most recent and most popular contacts. This point should not be overlooked, as it is the reason the app works as well as it does. As the developers at Mind-Flip note on their website: “TextQuick presents you with a list of your contacts sorted in popularity order. TextQuick sorts your contacts based on the number of text messages you have sent and received between each other. With one click you can start a text message or a call.”

In the lower corners of the app, you will see the options and exit buttons.

Once you select the options, a sub menu will open from where you can choose whether you want to make a call or send a text message. Or you can just open the contact to see the details. To my own surprise, this app is very quick. It opened my contact list a lot faster than my phone usually does.

By tapping on a contact, it will be selected and you can choose from the options if you want to call, send a message or see details.  By long pressing on any name, it will directly open a message to the contact you tapped on.

There is also a search function which is displayed right above the options and exit buttons. It’s marked with a little magnifying glass. By tapping in the white line you can enter a name and it will search for the contact.

This app is really nice for people who call and text a lot. It saves a lot of time and is very easy to use. All in all I can only recommend this app – it’s really worth a try.

TextQuick is available for $0.99 (USD) in Ovi Store.

More information about the app is available on the Mind-Flip website as well as a user guide for download.

Two of my favorite types of games are puzzle and building games. Combined correctly, you can get a game of epic proportions! Heroes of Kalevala, created by 10tons Ltd, is just that. And, I must begin by stating that it is seriously my new favorite game.

Before we get too far into it, let’s take a quick look at the video trailer produced by the developers at 10tons, Ltd.:

The main point of this Qt-based game is to create towns to their fullest. Every house you place will bring a person, or maybe more to your town. Trees, flowers, huge houses, wells, and much more can be added to each town too. Not to mention giving  jobs to townsfolk to create a better society.

By playing match 3 games new items will be added to your town’s shop. Some things won’t even be able to be placed until a new town is discovered. Match 3 games played in the new towns will unlock even more items for the new and  old towns.

The match games will gain you money as well, which is what you will need to buy any items. Low on cash? Simply sell it back to the shop.

As the game progresses the match 3 games become harder. First and foremost, a raven will start eating your gems that are placed around your match 3 board. It’s up to you to finish quickly in order to save as many gems as you can. Whatever gems are left over after the board is cleared will be turned into extra coins. If the raven makes a full round of the board you will lose and must start again. This will continue for the rest of the game.

Other obstacles will start to take over the board too. To beat any match 3 board you must turn every square blue. Some tiles have locks, ice, stone, or even tar that will bar you from doing this easily. Create bombs by matching four or five tiles or use the help or your heroes.

You must win a certain amount of money before any hero can help you. Each hero has a special skill. My personal favorite is Tapio. He takes out massive amounts of tiles with growing branches. Before each round you choose which hero you will use per board. Then you must match three tiles with the hero on it in order for them to help.

I practically ate this game up! The further I got, the more addicted I became. I’m determined to have the best towns that I can possibly create. From three level homes to cherry blossom trees, my towns will eventually only have the best.

Can you become the ultimate hero of Kalevala and build your way to legend?

Heroes of Kalevala is available in Ovi Store for $2.99 (USD).

What I like about Art Spot is that you can play it with a young kid as a learning exercise, a 25-year old whiz kid can enjoy the timing aspect of it to pile up the point scores, and an 80-year-old can use it to keep his or her brain sharp. Art Spot contains five sets of sixteen puzzles each, and the sets are accessed in increasing order of difficulty. So, whatever level you are capable of handling, that is the level that you get.  If you clear them all, then it is a matter of how long it took you to run the course, as indicated by the number of stars that you received for each puzzle.  I have to say that I also like abstract art watercolors, so I found Art Spot to be like a quick trip to the modern art museum without the travel expenses.

I fired up Art Spot on my Nokia N8 touch screen device, and after the splash screen was immediately greeted by the first set of puzzles. Notice on the screen below that only the first four puzzles are unlocked. You have to complete a couple of them before the rest of the puzzles in the set become unlocked. I clicked on the first one to get a feel for it.

That brings up the basic playing screen like the one below. The picture on the right is the reference drawing and the one on the left is the flawed forgery.  When you see a difference between the two, you touch the screen on the left at the point where you see the difference.

If you are correct, then the app puts a small circle around the difference, and colors in one of the five bubbles between the two drawings. Below is a screen capture of the first puzzle with four of the five differences filled in.  Note that if you touch a part of the screen that is not a difference, an ‘X’ appears to indicate your error.

I found it worthwhile to take a couple of seconds at the very start of each puzzle to just identify the major parts of the drawing, like the red wagon wheel or orange buffalo (at least that’s how I saw them) in the drawing above. This then forms the reference list for a section-by-section spotting analysis; which may be overkill for the simpler ones but is quite useful for the later puzzles.

A couple of things of note on the playing screen are the pause button, the question mark, and the hourglass.  The pause button does just that, and is used when you are interrupted on the go, like when stepping into a taxi or crossing the street.

The question mark button is not a help screen in the traditional sense. In fact, the operation of the app is so simple that People Pilot did not feel it necessary to put in a traditional help section.  Instead, the question mark button is a sneak peek at the answers to the puzzle. They appear for only one second, and they cost you a star each time, so my recommendation is to only use the question mark function when you are really stumped on that final difference.  The hourglass, of course, is a timer. If you let things go on too long, then you can lose stars through the hourglass as well.  When you spot the final difference, then the app throws you a quick party like the one below and takes you back to the puzzle set screen.

Back at the puzzle set presentation, if you click on the Menu button, you get a screen like the one below.

If you are deeply into the app and want to start over again to reset the levels (such as for a different user), then there is a Reset Levels button for that. Mainly though, this screen gives you a button that accesses Art Spot’s Facebook page. This enables you to read posts about Art Spot and to share your experiences with it on Art Spot’s Facebook page, as shown in the screen below.

Overall, I felt that I got my 99 cents worth after just the first couple of drawings, and that the rest was just free fun. There are other games such as Spot The Difference and FindDiff that are along similar lines, but I don’t see these as either/or options so much as yes-and options. When I review those, I hope that I’ll have as much fun as I did with Art Spot.

Art Spot is available on Ovi Store for $0.99 (USD).

Let us take a quick look at the application in action in this short video created by the developers.

Once you fire up the application, you can see the paint tool bar at the top, the main canvas area at the center, the file menu tool bar hidden at the bottom and the color bar at the bottom left side of the screen. The paint tool bar contains a large set of drawing tools such as pencil (default), paint bucket, line, curve, and rectangle. If you are not sure what a tool does, press and hold on the icon to see a short description of the functionality of the tool. Furthermore, for some drawing tools there are additional menu options that appear when you press and hold the icon. For e.g: If you press and hold the ‘Pentagram Outline’ tool, the below menu pops down.

The file menu tool bar lets you create, save and share your canvas. You can create your painting on a clean canvas or on an existing image (from your camera or a screen shot!).

Here is what I came up with some finger swipes on my N8. I found most of the tools to be very responsive. The curves I created with the pencil seemed very smooth. I also exploited the undo/redo feature to perfect my sweet little piece of art.

I used a picture from my N8 as the canvas for my second experiment. I enjoyed playing with the zoom feature and the text feature. Adding text is relatively easy and you can move the text box around the canvas by holding down the side bar of the text box. You can also modify font styles to ‘Italic’, ‘Bold’, ‘Underline’ and ‘Strike Out’.

After you have completed your editing, you can save your work into several common file formats such as .bmp, .jpg, .gif and .png. Furthermore, HandyPaint also provides an additional file format – the .hpf file format. With this file format, you can perform undo/redo operations even after closing the image!

HandyPaint works well in the portrait mode too. As you see below, all the tool bars adjust automatically so that the editing experience remains simple and consistent.

However, there are areas of improvement for this application. A feature to select and edit previously added shapes will greatly improve the usability of this app. Furthermore, the text-editing feature could be improved. I found it difficult to change the font size of the text by resizing the text box.

Overall, many features position HandyPaint as a likely competitor to some basic PC-based drawing tools. If you want to give this application a test ride, check out the free version – HandyPaint Lite.

HandyPaint is available for $4.99 (USD) in the Ovi store.

I tried it out on my Nokia N8 touch screen. I checked out the live program first, and saw a screen like the one below. This one had cliff diving.

Basically, picture an event similar to the Olympic 10 meter diving competition with the same kind of judging, except that it is held in an exotic location and the height is more than 100 meters. Take a look at the shot below to get an idea of how the heights that they are talking about translate into the real world.

I did manage to catch some of the dive in a still snap, but it doesn’t convey the richness of the motion that a complete video of the dive can present.

After viewing a video, you are also given the opportunity to rate the video from one to five stars. Clicking the star icon in the lower right brings up the screen below. The collective ratings of the viewers then helps to guide others toward the better videos.

Back to the main section of the app, when you click on the Videos tab, you see the screen below. Notice that Red Bull has put the Latest Additions, Best Rated and Most Popular videos as options on the top. Below that, there is an astounding array of categories, with an entry for ‘ball sports’ leading to the more conventional sports topics like European football, American football, baseball, and basketball.

One of the key features of Red Bull TV is that when you find a great action video, you can share it with friends via e-mail. In the screen below, for example, the envelope icon in the lower right portion of the screen let me send the link to both my own email address and to some of my friends who still cannot believe that the San Francisco Giants actually won the World Series last year. The video clip analyzes the pitching delivery of two-time Cy Young award winner Tim Linececum, popularly known by his baseball nickname, “The Freak”.

Clicking on the More tab, one can also access m.redbull.tv, which leads to a magazine-like presentation of videos arranged as the Pick of the Day, Sports, Culture, Events, Teams & Athletes, and a category called Holy S*** that features some unbelievable events.

On this particular day, for example, the latter category led to Ron Fischer’s  achievement of the first-ever night-time navigation of the Rheinfall waterfall in Switzerland. He painted a flourescent arrow on his kayak so that it could be traced easily by a helicopter camera at night, and he also wore a helmet-cam to record the experience.  You really have to see the video in order to get the full experience, and you can view it at the link below:

http://d.m.redbull.com/media/525862_amr_qcif.3gp

The video not only shows the sports action, but also Red Bull TV’s realization that the audience for MTV-like coverage of happening music is nearly the same demographic as that for extreme sports. Accordingly, Red Bull TV features interviews with rap stars, head-banging music stars, and a number of other upcoming music mavens. The Ron Fischer kayaking video, for example, plays over a sound track of a song about collateral damage, an appropriate theme for the feat.

Red Bull TV is a great celebration of youth, energy, athleticism and passion in the form of captured videos. It is quite possible that these factors, rather than concentrated caffeine, taurine or glucuronolactone, are the real enablers of these amazing sporting feats.

Red Bull TV is available for free in Ovi Store.

Did I say blackboard? Well, actually, it’s the greenboard look from the 70s and 80s, rather than the actual blackboard look from the 60s and before. I tried the Qt-based NockIt on my Nokia N8 and the first thing I did was scrawl up a grocery list, as shown below.

Now, I have full-sized man fingers and no patience for caligraphy, so I found that about four or five items was about as much as I could get onto one screen. Fortunately a long grocery list could be put on as many screens as I needed just by clicking on the new page icon in the upper right of the screen. I should note that had I been using a stylus as I would have with my Nokia N97 or Nokia XPressMusic 5800 devices, then I would have gotten a much finer line and greater control, and could have put more information on one screen. One scrolls among the screens using the left and right arrows at the bottom of the screen.

The nice thing about making out the grocery list on NockIt was that I didn’t actually have to go to the store to get the items. My wife was already at the store, and I just sent her the list by clicking on the icon in the upper left of the screen.  Below is a screen showing the dropdown choices  that one gets by clicking on the icon in the upper left. This screen was not actually the transmission of the grocery list, but of a notification to my friends of a foosball tournament that I was organizing for next Wednesday night.

As you can see from the drop-down list, there is also the option to delete the entire page as well. If I had just wanted to erase part of my scribbling, then I would use the top middle icon, the eraser icon. It actually is a toggle switch between eraser and pencil functions as you need to draw more or erase more.

When I clicked on the Share option, the screen below appeared, offering me the options of sending the screen via message, e-mail, or Bluetooth. If you have Pixelpipe set up on your device, that option will also appear in the list of choices.  I sent the grocery list via SMS, and the foosball tourney notification via e-mail to a listserv of foosball fanatics that I know.

When you are in close proximity to someone with a Bluetooth-enabled device, you can also pass critical information, such as your phone number, to them in a discreet manner.

Just to show you that people with more drawing skills than myself actually can create drawings on a NockIt screen, I include the screen below.

One other usage that my wife and I found for NockIt was in a crowded room social situation. We used NockIt as a messaging scratch pad, passing notes back and forth to each other like a couple of school kids. Some people just never grow up.

NockIt is available for free in Ovi Store.

More information about the app is available from the LineFarmer website.

Grovr Folder Sizes is compatible with Nokia touch smartphones and is available as a fully functional 10-day trial or as a lifetime install for $0.99 (USD). I tested the paid version on my Nokia N8.

The interface on the Qt-based Folder Sizes app is clean, intuitive, and appropriately interactive. As you open the app, it scans all your storage locations to generate the management views.

The clean interface opens with a scan of your data storage locations.

Once the scan is complete (it takes about 12 seconds on my N8) Grovr Folder Sizes presents you with a collapsed directory tree showing the amount of data stored on each of your drives.  It would be nice to also provide the user with an indication of the total or available capacity on each drive.

Top-level view shows were you store the most data.

From here the interaction is exactly as you’d expect. Touch anywhere in a row with a preceding  + square icon to expand the tree to see details. Touch any expanded row (it will then have a “-” square icon) and the tree collapses back to summary form.

Expand or collapse a directory tree with a single touch.

Because the entire directory tree view is occupied by touch panels to control the directory view, you cannot scroll through the view using the “touch-drag” gesture that you may expect to work. However, the developer provided an ample scroll bar on the right hand side of the display.

The primary purpose of a utility app like Grovr Folder Sizes is to manage your memory, which means deleting files you don’t need.  The app makes this incredibly easy. In fact, in my opinion a previous release of the the app made deleting files entirely too easy. Now, when you ask the app to delete a file or an entire directory you get an “are your sure” screen to make sure you don’t accidentally hurt yourself.

If you are the type of user who fills digital devices to capacity, Grovr Folder Sizes provides an easy way for you to manage your memory.

Before you start on your mission, you can choose from two types of planes – the plasma fighter plane or the laser fighter plane. The plasma fighter plane fires out multiple bursts of plasma radiation and the laser fighter plane creates a lethal laser beam right in front of the plane. I prefer the plasma fighter plane as it gives me options to destroy enemies from a longer distance. To enable this weapon, you need to tap on the ‘F’ icon (for Fire) in the right side of the screen.

The IronPlane can be steered in four directions using the virtual pad on the bottom part of the screen. The red dot at the center of the virtual pad parks the plane in space. One of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal is the nuclear missile (represented by the N icon on the right side of the screen). This weapon destroys everything on the screen but you just have a limited supply of them to start with. The other controls and status indicators available to you are shown below.

The game has simple graphics, which include impressive background images. The background music adds to the ‘Star Wars-esque’ atmosphere of the game.  You can enable and disable special effects in the Options menu. If you enable the accelerometer control in this menu, you can steer your plane by moving your phone! The accelerometer based control may take time to get used to. Once you master it, you will definitely enjoy it better than the virtual pad based control.

Each game level has a unique theme with new challenges and more powerful enemy spacecrafts. Each level has a boss battle format with the climax being the most challenging and engaging part of the level. Some of the controls such as the ‘Boost’ bomb (‘B’ icon on the weapon controls on the right side of the screen) are enabled in specific levels. There are two modes of game play – ‘Normal’ and ‘Hard’. After you finish all the levels in ‘Normal’ mode, you can proceed to the ‘Hard’ mode.

There are some areas where the game can be improved. I noted that sometimes the menu controls were unresponsive. Furthermore, the size of weapon/bomb control icons could be increased. Overall, IronPlane HD scores well for a basic Java game.

IronPlane HD is available for $0.99 (USD) in Ovi Store. If you have a Nokia Symbian OS, S60 3.x device, you can try the free version to get an idea of the game play -  IronPlane Demo.

What are you waiting for? The world needs you to fight the wicked aliens – NOW!

Underneath all the talk of exploring maps, trying to find your beloved robot partner, lasers, bombs and mirrors, there is a classic game that has been brought to Nokia’s new Symbian devices. That game is Sokobahn.

Before we get too far, let’s pause to take a look at a quick video demo showing Robo in action, care of my All About Symbian colleague, Rafe Blandford who tested it out on the Nokia C7:

Back in the original Sokobahn, your goal was to push boxes around to specific spaces in the top down game grid. Push all the boxes into place and you win the level. Robo takes this a step further, both in simplicity and complexity.

First up is the simplicity. All you need to do is get your robot to the exit door in each level. You can leave chaos behind, a mess of lasers and debris, or a level clear of every nasty element. The choice is yours, and that makes for a much nicer gaming experience.

Then there is the complexity. Standing in your way is a mix of bombs, lasers and mirrors, criss-crossing the grid. Stand next to an exploding bomb, and you’ll need to start the level again. Have a laser touch you, and you need to start the level again. Stand next to a mirror, and you can push it!

Here’s where the planning and thinking comes in, because mirrors can’t be destroyed by lasers (only bombs). Like a good mirror with light, the laser will be bounced round a 90 degree corner. With smart placement, you can have a laser shine on a bomb to explode it (which also means it explodes any bombs next to it, in a chain reaction), or to shine on another laser generator, exploding that and removing one of the many beams of death from the grid.

Just like Sokobahn, you can only push the mirrors, there’s no pulling back, so you will need to move around the mirrors to be able to push them in the required direction. That’s pushing with care, mind you, as you don’t want to walk into another laser (or indeed have a laser reflected back on you as the mirror pattern changes around you.

This constantly changing terrain is what makes Robo a great mental challenge, because the majority of changes will only happen as a direct consequence of your actions. When it is yourself killing yourself, there’s a frustration that you can only clear by clearing the level. Which makes you want to see the next level, and the cycle continues. That’s good game design at the macro level.

At the micro level, the interaction between the various elements leads to a changing environment almost each time you make a step, and, while it is all predictable, the longer you play the game the more steps ahead you need to plan. A good learning curve is on show here, as is a certain restraint in the level design to stop it becoming too complicated too soon.

The only weak area in Robo is the control system. The idea is simple, you press above, below, or to the side of your robot and you’ll take one step in that direction. The key thing to remember here is that this is always relative to the position on the screen. There are times when touching the screen in the same location can lead to a different action. Having to focus on controls which can shift and change means no muscle control, and I feel like I’m always fighting the game.

Because of the nature of the game, you do need to look around the game grid to see what is going on and to plan a strategy to get to the exit door. HeroCraft have gone with an on-screen toggle button that lets you move the map around – I think I’d have preferred some sort of zoom function, but that may have required a lot of changes in the display code for the title, so this is a compromise that makes sense.

What’s here is a great puzzle game. It has roots in the classics of yesteryear but adds in enough new material, with cute but clear graphics, to give it a fresh feel. It’s never going to be an A-list title, but it’s one that’s worth a week or two of your time, because it is slick, presented well, and is challenging while remaining fun. Recommended.

Robo is available for $1.99 (USD) in Ovi Store. There is also a Lite version available for free trial.

About the guest blogger:

Ewan Spence sits in the space between podcasting, blogging, writing and reporting. You might recognise him from All About Symbian, but you can follow his online adventures through Twitter (@Ewan), as he bounces around the world, covering technology, culture, and even the lives of love-sick robots!

Speedball 2 Evolution is run like a tournament. By making your way through each quarter final, semi final, and final, the team of your choice will be one step closer to having a great career!

Choose between tilting your phone or using a touch D-pad, and you are ready to guide your Speedball team to stardom and possibly even greatness. I opted for the D-pad myself because I tend to over extend everything if I’m tilting the device.

If you’re looking for a simple game Speedball 2 Evolution may not be the game for you. There is a whole lot of things to do that can bank your team points. Beware, it may be overwhelming if you are a first timer to Speedball like I was.

Points are accumulated by throwing the ball into the respective goals, throwing the ball at five stars on the opposing team’s wall, or throwing the ball at three little knobs that lie in a line down the center of the Speedball field. The goals will gather you ten points, whereas the knobs in the middle of field only gain you two, so definitely don’t get too caught up with gaining the small points. If, however, your stars get hit by the opposing team you can throw the ball at your own stars to take away points from the other team.

Whichever character of yours has the ball will be the one that you control. Run like mad, by tilting or the D-pad, while trying to avoid the opposing team’s tackles. Tap the screen to throw the ball into the goal, at another team member, as well as anything else previously mentioned to gain your points. But be aware that the ball will only go in the direction you are facing. Hold down on the screen for a few seconds and the ball will get tossed up into the air.

If you are without the speedball the character that  is closest to the opposing teammate holding the ball will be in your control. Tackle by tapping the screen or hold down on the screen for a few seconds for a harder tackle in order to take possession of the ball. And defend your goal using your goalie anytime the ball comes near.

If you like quick moving sports games then this game is definitely for you. Guide your helmeted and padded team to the championship they deserve.

Speedball 2 Evolution is available in Ovi Store for $2.99 (USD). Are you speedy enough?

Gmail Apps Browser is a Qt-based application that brings the HTML5 enhanced UI for popular Gmail services to Nokia’s new Symbian devices with our custom QtWebkit browser for Gmail services. You can access your Gmail & Google Calendar, Tasks & Buzz from a convenient dashboard. How cool is that? The screen shots speak for themselves:

Default Inbox View

Individual Message View

As you can see, the e-mail renders flawlessly in comparison to what you would see on your laptop/desktop. In addition, you get full access to all your folders and filters:

Folders and Filters

Pretty cool, eh? I really love the integration to other features of Gmail such as the Calendar, Tasks, and Buzz. Although I don’t really use those other three services personally, however it is nice to know that they are there.

Application: Main Menu

The only thing that I feel is missing from this application would be integration with Gmail’s instant messaging service GTalk. If this was included, then for me this application would be 100% flawless. Nonetheless, great stuff as always from the folks at Pixelpipe.

Gmail Apps Browser can be downloaded for Free in Nokia’s Ovi Store!

Voicelator is a kind of meta-app, that is, an app based on another app. In this case, the other app is Google’s Translate service. Voicelator is essentially a mobile graphical user interface (GUI) for Google Translate.

To use that Google service, you make three entries: the language you want to translate from, the language you want to translate to, and the word or phrase you want translated. For example, if you select from French, to English, and the word ‘bonjour’ — Google Translate will tell you it means ‘hello’. Voicelator brings this service to your Nokia smartphone in a simple user interface.

Of course, you could just use Google Translate from your phone’s web browser. But in my tests, Voicelator is much, much faster. You don’t have to open a web page or wait for the response from a remote server. In fact, once you’ve entered your options, Voicelator can translate a word in less than a second.

Conveniently, both Google Translate and Voicelator offer many languages to choose from. In the case of Voicelator, you can select any of nearly 40 languages — not only the usual Spanish, English, French, but also Albanian, Filipino, Maltese, Vietnamese, and much more.

Voicelator has only one screen, so there’s almost no learning curve. You simply fill in the three blanks – language from, language to, and the word or phrase you want translated. Then tap the Translate button, and voila! Here’s how the screen looks before you’ve filled anything in:

Again, you simply select the ‘from’ and ‘to’ languages from two pull-down menus. Here’s the menu for the ‘from’ languages:

And here’s how the main screen looks after I’ve asked Voicelator to translate the French word ‘bonjour’ to English:

As you can see, the app has correctly translated ‘bonjour’ to the English ‘hello’.

You can also translate phrases and sentences. But beware: phrases are translated word-for-word, and thus may be literally correct, but not idiomatic. For example, Voicelator translates the English phrase ‘How are you?’ into the French ‘Comment êtes-vous?’ While that is a correct literal word-for-word translation, it is not French. The correct translation would be ‘Comment allez-vous?’ — literally, ‘how do you go?’ or less literally, ‘how goes it with you?’ For this reason, you should be careful when using Voicelator to translate phrases and sentences.

Like Google Translate, the Voicelator app can also speak the translated word or phrase aloud. To hear your translated word, tap the Play Translated Word button. The slider control on the right side of the screen controls the volume; sliding up makes it louder.

The Mute button disables the Play Translated Word function. I’m not sure why this button is needed. Perhaps it is meant as extra insurance for situations where you absolutely must have silence – for example, in a opera concert hall.

The Clear button erases the word from Text To Translate box, so you can enter another word to be defined.

One issue with this app is how it handles unusual alphabets or writing systems. Sometimes, it works fine; sometimes not. Here, for example, is the English word ‘hello’ translated correctly into the Hebrew ‘shalom’ and shown correctly in Hebrew letters:

But for some languages, Voicelator can’t find the characters, and the result is less than useful. Here, for example, is the Chinese greeting ‘ni hao’…note the garble:

Also, not all languages can be spoken aloud. It seems that if a language uses non-ASCII characters, Voicelator cannot speak it. In those cases, the Play Translated Word button will usually not appear, removing the option. In other cases, however, I got a short error message, telling me the word could not be spoken aloud. I tested Voicelator 1.0, so perhaps these issues will be addressed in a later version.

Overall, this is one quick and handy app. Voicelator is available in Ovi Store for $0.99 (USD).

For anyone that craves the latest news and information, this new Qt-based app is an easy choice. It covers a broad range of categories and regions of the world, and includes both written stories, like you would see on their website, as well as short video segments that load quickly and are visually quite impressive on the Nokia E7 when viewed in landscape mode.

When you first start the app, you are presented with headlines for “Top Stories” – the 10 most recent are displayed. Click on any of the headlines to view the full story on your device.(Note, I have re-sized the screenshots a bit smaller here, so they will display easily on this page – but expect news in full-color glory on your Nokia E7.)

Across the top of the app you will see the category options for news you can view, which is based first on geography/region, and then also by topic, including: Business, Sports, Entertainment, Tech and Travel. Of course, my fingers went right for the Tech news. The headline below certainly caught my eye …

If you want to share a news story with friends, there are several options, which were just a click away. You can share stories you see via SMS, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter – the latter two choices launch your web browser to activate, but that only takes a moment or two.

As you read through news stories, you can toggle back and forth between portrait and landscape mode, as you prefer. And, when you are reading a story, you scroll down to view all of the text. If you pan to the left or right while reading a story, the next item available within that section will be displayed. Across the bottom of the app, you will notice a small blue dot highlighted to show you where you are within the current list of stories for that section.

When you want to see video of recent news – click the Video link along the bottom row of navigation within the app to see recent items that have been on the air. And, even better – if there is the word “Live” on top of the Video icon, you will have the chance to watch live, streaming video of news as it happens – this app does require an active internet connection for use, but in the case of certain events, seeing the news as it happens, might be worthwhile. For instance, this morning, I was able to watch live reporting of the Queen’s historic visit to Ireland. Yesterday, I watched recorded video of the space shuttle Endeavour taking off on its final mission.

Another interesting feature of this app – and now a regular part of what CNN is doing – is the iReport feature, where you can see work submitted by your average news consumer – folks like you and me, and not from professional journalists. This is user-generated content, and it provides a platform for anyone to contribute. According to CNN, in their announcement about the app: “Users can also browse iReport’s latest ‘international assignments,’ asking the community to weigh in on various news stories.”

If you happen to see something newsworthy – and have photo or video from that moment recorded on your mobile device, you are just a few clicks away from sharing it with CNN, and the app takes you through the simple steps to submit your own iReports.

Overall, this app is right in line with what I would expect from CNN – it is comprehensive, easy to use and understand, and chock full of details.

The CNN App for Nokia is currently exclusive for use on the Nokia E7, and is free to download from Ovi Store (excluding Japan). According to the announcement made by CNN today, the app will be available in the coming weeks for the Nokia N8, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6-01, with wider availability to be announced later. We’ll let you know as soon as find out more about availability on other Nokia devices.

For starters, have a look at this quick video by Rafe Blandford from All About Symbian, where he  shows the new LinkedIn app on the Nokia C7:

As you will see, this new Qt-based app is very smooth, and responsive – and the options are laid out clearly, so you will not have any trouble diving right in and getting started. I would say the app assumes some familiarity with the LinkedIn service – if you are not already a member, you can sign up/register online, for free (paid versions of the service are also available, but that choice is up to you).

When you first start the mobile app, you will see a log-in screen, which should be a one-time thing.

I would point out, however, that the Updates function in the app did seem to require – not everytime – that I log-out and then log back in to refresh the display.

Once you do log-in, you will see a clearly labeled home screen, with several options, including: Updates, Inbox, Invitations, Connections, Reconnect and Search.

Most of these choices are really quite self-explanatory. You will also see a link to your personal LinkedIn profile across the bottom of the screen (in case you’ve forgotten what you wrote about yourself!).

This profile page has a quick link to your Connections, as well as links within your profile to any website you may have listed, and of course displays your most recent status update, too.

To see what others are doing, click the Updates icon to see the most recent posts from your connections. When you do, you will notice a little drop-down arrow to the right of each update – click on that arrow, and you will have the option commenting on that update, “liking” it with a virtual thumbs up, sending a message to the person who posted the update, or sharing that update with other connections of yours in a message.

Now, one small nit to point out about the status updates – often times we will include links, or short bit.ly style links with our posts to one another – makes sense, right? You can’t click on any of these links when using the app – they come up as just text. I would think this could be fixed relatively easily, and will keep my fingers crossed that it is coming soon.

When you browse your Connections – like you can begin to see below – the list is clearly labeled, in alphabetical order. This is good, and makes sense – but if you have a lot of connections – and expect that you will before too long! – this can be a cumbersome means to view contact information. (Below we have a small portion of my contacts in the “B” part of the alphabet – by last name.)

You can search within the app, but this is also an alphabetical-only process – it covers everything, so make sure you have some idea of what you are looking for to try to narrow down the results. This is one of those items that I would love to see enhanced so it more closely mimics the search function of the LinkedIn website – there you can search by people, jobs, companies, groups (which are like communities of interest), status updates, answers (people help each other by answering questions posted online), and even your LinkedIn inbox.

One of the things you will come to appreciate within the app is the ability to share personal updates, which is a breeze, especially when using the built-in keyboard on a device like the Nokia E7. (I should also point out that the app toggles easily between portrait and landscape mode, as you need it.) You have up to 700 characters in LinkedIn but also have the option to post that update to your personal Twitter account, if you have the two services connected to one another. You can set the “visibility” of your updates so either only your personal connections can see them, or anyone on LinkedIn can view them – I usually pick the latter (I don’t have anything to hide).

So, yes, above you can see one of my small gripes with this app – there is no access to the Groups functionality within the app, which is too bad. I am actively participating in and contributing to a few different groups these days on LinkedIn, and being able to see the latest updates to those Groups from my Nokia device would be a huge help.

The new LinkedIn app is free to download from Ovi Store.

How do you conduct your professional social networking activities? Are you on LinkedIn, or using a different service? And, do you update by app? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

Brix was developed by Ladislav Týč, a developer from Czech Republic. Apart from the amazing BriX game, Ladislav has developed several other interesting apps for Nokia devices. As an introduction to our review, here is a video of BriX in action:

BriX can be played in two modes – ‘Free’ and ‘Career’. In the ‘Free’ mode you play randomly generated levels without any implications of failures. The ‘Free’ game mode has six game options namely ‘Classical’, ‘PCC’, ‘TimeAttack’, ‘Tetris’, ‘Single Color’ and ‘All’.  You start to experience the 3D effects of the application right from the application menu. The menu options appear to pop up creating a 3D experience.

If you are in a mood for a challenge, you should try the ‘Career’ mode. In the ‘Career’ mode, you can unlock newer levels by successfully completing basic levels.

The basic goal of the game is to destroy as many bricks as possible using the bouncing ball and the moving pad. You also have to ensure that the ball remains in the bounds of the game. Now, the similarity with other brick breaking games ends there. In BriX, you have to deal with 3-dimensional bricks and if you destroy a brick, all it’s adjoining bricks of the same color get destroyed. If you don’t destroy these bricks fast enough, they pile on top of each other and you lose!  Also, you can pause and go back and forth in time. So, if you lose your ball, you get one chance to go back in time and correct your error. Most important, the entire game area can move in three dimensions!

You can perform time navigation by clicking the rewind icon on the bottom left corner of the screen. You can also add additional balls to the game play by clicking the plus icon on the right top corner of the screen. You can stop time by clicking on the icon on the top left corner of the screen.

As I played this game, I discovered many interesting game variations such as several different types of bonuses. Bonuses come to you in the form of different colored balls. You can catch a bonus by aligning your pad to meet the approaching ball.  There are three types of bonuses – Positive (Green ball – worth 100 points), Neutral (Amber ball – worth 250 points) and Negative (Red ball – worth 500 points).In the image below, you can see multiple bonus balls.

Some examples of bonuses are: Freeze – A negative bonus that will disable your pad control. Rainbow – A positive bonus that will randomly change colors of the bricks. Fast Ball – A neutral bonus that will accelerate all the balls in the game. The bonus is valid for a short time and it’s active state is indicated by a status ball of the appropriate color at the bottom portion of the screen.Sometimes, the visual effects in the game may slow down the game. You can customize and disable specific kinds of visual effects (such as glare, background, and reflections) by going to the ‘Options’ menu on the home screen.

Overall, BriX is a very interesting and intricate game filled with challenges. If you love brick-breaking games, you will enjoy the unlimited possibilities of game play in this application. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s go and destroy some bricks!

BriX is available for free in Ovi store. If you need help with mastering some challenges, make sure you check out some how-to videos here.

Speed X is a fast-paced tunnel-racing game from Gamelion Studios that should keep all but the most jaded gamers engrossed for a good long time – many hours, at least. It’s just 99 cents in Ovi Store – a bargain, we must say, given how much fun it is to play. Watch this video for a good taste of the gaming action, or read on for more details:

Tunnel racing? That’s right. At first, at least, Speed X sets you zooming through long, twisting circular tunnels, trying all the while to rack up bonus points and avoid increasingly treacherous obstacles by careening up and down the tunnel’s curved sides, and sometimes right up and across the “ceiling.” Think bobsled on steroids. Later, as you prove your mettle, the tunnel gives way to a long, ribbon-like surface, and then it turns into the surface of a cone. And who knows – we didn’t get there yet! – at higher stages of the game, you may find still more types of playing surface to conquer.

Did we say zooming? We did, indeed.  You’ll have the illusion of moving really really fast in this game, and that makes it quite thrilling and all the more challenging. The graphics are superb and the oncoming rush of obstacles and bonuses is relentless. As the great Slydini, master close-up magician, used to say, you blink, you miss it.

Fortunately, controlling your journey down this game’s seemingly endless tunnels and its vast extended surfaces is as easy as twisting your Nokia smartphone back and forth in your hands. Better than any app we’ve seen, Speed X harnesses the handset’s internal accelerometer to transform your entire device into a full-on game controller. Before you start playing, the game requires you to hold the handset perfectly still so it can calibrate the accelerometer. It’s probably best, too, to shut down any other apps you’ve got running, as Speed X looks like it can use all the computer cycles you can give it.

The game lets you choose from four different levels of difficult: casual, easy, standard, and extreme. The latter, we can attest, is no exaggeration. But even the lower levels are challenging – and great fun, we must emphasize. Once again, we’re confirmed in our belief that the best games are often the simplest games.

Oh, Speed X has the usual variety of bonuses and shields to collect and use wisely, all explained in a well-done Help screen. But there’s not a ton of rules to remember or options to set. (The music is surprisingly engaging – a space-disco kind of feel.) Just boot up and go for it.

Finally, there’s one last way-cool option in Speed X that we can’t fail to mention. The game can be played with standard 3D glasses – you know the ones, with left and right eye filtered red and green (or cyan, as Speedx calls it.) Playing Speed X in 3D certainly adds something to the illusion of moving through space with great rapidity, but frankly, it’s not enough that you should run out to buy a pair of 3D glasses just to play this game. (Where would you find them, anyway?)

If we had to sum up the Speed X experience in a single word, it would be addictive. You will want to play this one over and over. Oh yes, you will.

Speed X is available for $0.99 (USD) in Ovi Store.

(Editor’s Note: Before we get into the details of the game, a quick note about how it came to be in Ovi Store. The game was first available for Xbox and iPhone, and the developer at FlukeDude sought out developers via online forums to recreate the game for other platforms. Enter Mark Wilcox, a former Forum Nokia Champion, who is now at SteelyEye Digital Media, who developed this Qt-based version of the game for Nokia’s new Symbian devices from scratch in his spare time!)

So, what makes this game seemingly impossible? First of all the game has only one control feature which is jumping (by tapping the screen). Simply, you tap the screen to jump or risk being punctured by sharp triangles. Add the fact that once you die (trust me you will) you restart all the way at the beginning of the level and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a dangerous addiction.

Personally I think of myself as a decent gamer, be it mobile, PC, console or otherwise but within the past few days that I spent on this game I had my shattered ego handed to me constantly. The Impossible Game proves just how impossible it is by running a nifty counter at the top of the screen that counts your attempts to reach the end of the level (just to make sure you don’t forget who’s really in charge).

The Impossible game does a great job of combining both strategy and plain old arcade together to give you an intriguing mix that can only be described as amazingly addictive. Simply waiting for obstacles to appear and then jumping won’t cut it in this game because depending on the level layout you may have to either jump over obstacles or climb from one floor to another to avoid dying or however it is cube ceases to exist.

The Impossible Game can be played in two modes, “No flag” mode as well as a “Practice Mode”. In No Flag mode players respawn at the start of the level after every death making it all the more difficult. However in Practice Mode players can choose to leave behind a checkpoint flag at any point throughout the level from where they’ll respawn from after death, Practice mode also comes with a handy button that deletes your latest checkpoint in case you make a bad save point.

However keep in mind that under the stats menu both play modes are displayed with separate progress bars so any progress in practice mode will not count in No flag mode. The Impossible Game also comes with a set of achievements & medals to be earned, the greatest of which is of course unlocking level 2.

Of course I have to die 1% away from the finish line just to add insult to injury.

The Impossible Game has a lot of amazing features that you’re going to have to experience for yourself, but one feature that deserves an honorable mention is the soundtrack. Never before have I played a mobile game in which the soundtrack is in such great sync with the gameplay, the beat starts off slow then rapidly quickens with the pace of the game to a point that the only thing keeping me going after my continuous and multiple losses (so far I’ve reached 1,200 failed attempts in one go) was simply that I wanted to hear the track finish (which I finally did).

All in all, The Impossible Game may not be impossible but it is extremely improbable that you’ll be able to finish, but don’t take my word for it go ahead and give it a spin.

The Impossible Game is available for Nokia’s new Symbian devices in the Ovi Store for only $0.99 (USD), which is a bargain considering the number of hours you’re going to be spending trying to guide the nameless orange cube to safety.

About the Guest Blogger:

Ali Al-Qudsi is a fulltime dental student, long-time Nokia user, and first-time blogger, who’ll never say no to a great gadget alongside a nice plate of cookies. Robot cookies, if at all possible. You can follow him @aliqudsi on Twitter.

The home screen gives you four options – to create a shopping list, to browse and shop from a shopping list, to view your shopping statistics and to manage products on your shopping lists.

Firstly, you can give your shopping list a name and then you can go about adding products to your shopping list.

There are over 15 default product categories, which cover more than 150 products. I noticed that the default categories cover most of my weekly supply needs. The in-built search and sort functions help you get to your item as quickly as possible.

Once you choose a product, you can edit the price, measurement unit and currency information.

Then, you can select the date of shopping and a reminder will be added to your calendar.

When you are in your favorite local super market, you can open up your list and strike out items as you pop them into your shopping cart. This leaves absolutely no chance of missing an item on your list. After you complete your shopping, you can use this shopping list as a template for your subsequent shopping lists (To enable this option go to: Create > Select your shopping list > click ‘Use’ from the bottom menu bar)

What if you want your spouse to do the shopping for you? (Easier said, than done?) You can create the shopping list on your phone and send the list through a text message or email message to your spouse. At the end of the month, you can look at your spending across different categories of items by using the ‘Finance – Shopping Statistics’ section.

You can easily add your product category and your products using the ‘Tools – Data Management’ section. You would need to click ‘New’ under product categories, and add a caption to the new category (say Stationery). After you create a category, you can add as many products as you wish to that product category. Below, I added ‘paper clips’ to my newly created ‘Stationery’ product category.

Furthermore, the app provides features to export the item catalog to a file, which can then be shared with other users of the application. There are several other advanced features, which might overwhelm an average shopper. However, as I said earlier, this app is great for serious bulk shoppers!

You can try the free version of the app – Shopper Lite – Shopping Lists to find out if this utility is the right for you.

Shopper – Shopping Lists is available for $4.99 (USD) in Ovi store.

Available in Nokia’s Ovi Store for $2.99 (USD), Tomb Treasure by Auer was easy to find via search, downloaded quickly, and installed without a hitch to my Nokia N8. I’d rate the game’s learning curve as moderate; it took me a few minutes and moves to understand how touch gestures impact the gameplay. Once I got the hang of it, though, the game hooked me completely.

It’s easiest to explain how to win by showing some images from the game. You will play through a series of levels that present you with a grid of shiny icons in an array of colors and shapes – this is the treasure to which the game’s title refers.

You need to create three or more of the same treasure type in a row vertically or horizontally. You do this by tapping the screen. Here’s an example. In the far right column and about half way down, you’ll see two red circles stacked upon one another. In the column immediately to the left is another red circle, right next to the purple diamond below the two red circles. You just need to tap where you want this lone red circle to go – you want it to replace the purple diamond below the two red ones – and then tap the lone red circle to have it join the other two. The result is that you’ll get three in a row, which then will explode with some light fanfare and allow more treasure to cascade into the screen.

Here’s how the game reacts when you get three in a row.

Some of the treasure has what appears to be a blue comet orbiting it. These are the most important treasures to get in a row or column of three in a row or more because only by “collecting” a target number of these orbited treasures before your time runs out can you pass the level. As the levels progress, your target will increase.

The game limits your movements. For example, you can only move one space up, down, left or right, and only if completing that move will result in a three or more in a row of the same treasure type. You also can’t create three or more in a row diagonally. Some levels feature treasure overlain by an “X” icon, which means you cannot move it. However, as I became comfortable with the game I began to see how strategy comes into play. Getting the right set of three or more in a row can open up bigger and better three-in-a-row opportunities.

As with other fun games, this one contains content capable of giving you a big scoring boost. In this case, the treasure in the left most column, fifth row from the top is a treasure that can wipe out an entire column or row of treasure, giving you new patterns of treasure to explore and engage. This can be helpful if you are otherwise out of options and need some disruption.

I’ll freely admit I’m not good at this game – yet. Though the game could use some enhancements, such as allowing diagonal moves and a refreshed sound track as levels progress, and the word “Tomb” doesn’t really describe the game in any way, I don’t really care. These are small things, relative to the overall pleasure this game brings.

So eat well. Take care of any personal business you might need to attend to … Only then start playing, because you’re going to be preoccupied for a while.

Tomb Treasure is available in Ovi Store for $2.99 (USD).

SugarSync for Symbian OS, S60 5.0 devices first launched in August 2010 and came to the S60 3.X devices and Nokia’s new Symbian devices in February 2011. I have tried out many different cloud syncing and backup solutions, including Dropbox, Zumodrive, and SkyDrive, and it was clear to me that SugarSync was the best because of its cross-platform functionality, generous free 5GB accounts, and more (check out other compelling reasons on this comparison page). You can find SugarSync in Ovi Store for free as a 452 kb download.

Installation and Setup

After downloading the application from the Ovi Store and installing it on your Nokia smartphone, select the SugarSync icon and launch the app. The first screen you will see is the login/sign up screen. If you do not yet have a free 5GB SugarSync account, then select the Sign Up Free button. You will be taken to a sign up screen where you will need to enter your e-mail address and password twice and then choose the Sign Up Free button.

If you already have a SugarSync account then you can simply enter your e-mail address and password to login.

You will then see the main SugarSync interface with three main tabbed screens for Files, Photos, and Shared. SugarSync folders appear at the top with your devices listed in a section below. If you just installed the app on your Nokia device and haven’t connected via a PC or Mac then you likely will only see your phone in the devices section.

If you haven’t already, install the free SugarSync desktop client on your PC or Mac and choose files and folders that you wish to backup or sync to the cloud for access later. You can also choose to share folders with other people and a fun thing to do is to share a photo album with family or friends that you upload as you travel around so they can see your photos soon after you capture them.

Usage experiences

SugarSync is available on other platforms and some of those apps are a bit more advanced with support for streaming music from the cloud to your smartphone. All files accessed remotely from your Nokia smartphone are downloaded to your phone rather than streamed or opened up in a viewer remotely. When you download files that are in a supported format, such as Word or MP3, then the applicable application opens when the download is complete.

You can also upload files to your SugarSync cloud storage directory, they appear in the Web Archive folder in SugarSync and then you can share them out from that folder. The Web Archive directory is a backup only drive where you place files to access later.

It is easy to select from the different devices you have synced to SugarSync and then browse through the synced folders to get the files, photos, and music that you wish to enjoy.

You can upload photos you have taken with the “Upload Local File” option, but there is also an option to take a picture within the SugarSync app to upload that to the Mobile Uploads folder rather than the Web Archive. This is a good idea if you share your Mobile Uploads folder with family because as soon as you upload the photo and they sync their device with the directory they will see your new photo. The problem is the include photo capture functionality requires you to use an on-screen button to capture the photo while the device’s physical button is not used. After taking the photo you can choose to upload the photo. I don’t know if they can ever get it working where you can use the native photo capture utility, but if they did get it working then I would use it even more. I like the way you can now have photos taken with an Android device uploaded automatically after you take them and hope this feature eventually comes to Symbian as well.

I find it comforting to know I can always get access to my synced files or post a file to the cloud for safe keeping with my Nokia N8 and SugarSync. You can actually access SugarSync from within your preferred web browser too and control your SugarSync account from within the browser. IMHO, the dedicated application offers a faster and more optimal experience and since it is free there is no reason not to load it up on all of your Nokia devices.

Overall final thoughts

As a person who uses many devices, having the ability to be able to access and upload files to a central repository is refreshing and comforting. I no longer have to worry about where I placed an important file as long as it is synced to SugarSync I know I can access it from anywhere, including right from my phone. With 5GB of storage available for free there is no reason everyone shouldn’t at least give this a try. If you need more storage, then you can check out their pricing options that I am sure you will agree are also very reasonable.

SugarSync is free to download from Ovi Store.

About the Guest Blogger

Matthew Miller started using mobile devices in 1997 and has owned hundreds of PDAs and smartphones. He currently writes the Nokia Experts website and the ZDNet Smartphones & Cell Phones blog. He can be found on Twitter @palmsolo.

Simply put, here’s what is in it: There is a means of following any or all of your favorite bands, including finding the events relating to a given band, as well as the flow of commentary from the artists themselves. That’s one end of it. The other end is your social networking with your friends, commenting on the events, posting messages that are read by the artists as well as your friends, and easily posting pictures that you take at the events and elsewhere. The third part of the app is geo-location, giving you a map showing where an event is being held, the ability to add your own events to the map, and to find local points of interest that are not far from you. Did I mention a Facebook posting interface built into the app? Well, I should have.

But before I get too far, let’s take a moment to watch this interview with the team from Digia that developed the Flowd app using the Qt SDK 1.1. As you will hear, Digia was able to develop this app in about six weeks, which included learning how to use Qt Quick from scratch:

I checked out Flowd on my Nokia N8, and overall found it quite easy to setup and use. The first thing that it does is let you hook up with your Facebook page so that you can share your pictures and posts with it, as in the following screen. Next, it has you set up your profile and upload your profile photo, as I did on the screen below.

Then, there is the business of selecting which artists you want to follow. The artists are listed alphabetically, and the list scrolls as fast as you want it to on the N8 touch screen. Still, herein is the one bone that I have to pick with Flowd, and which I hope will be remedied with a quick update. There are hundreds of artists, and while it is fun to check out what each one is and does, a search function would be helpful. Like I said though, the alphabetical list scrolls very quickly, so a search function is only a nicety, not a must-have. When you find the band you want on the list, just touch the white dot to follow that band, and a green check mark shows up as on the screen below.

What does that get you? It puts that artist’s blog posts on your Flowd page, allows you to track their events and see them on a map. Shown below is the selection set for one of the artists, the Showdown Rock ‘n’ Roll Club.

Clicking on Events gets you to the map of their next event, shown below.

But what is music without friends? So, I started to add friends to my Flowd network. Flowd actually suggested some new friends that I didn’t know, but I preferred to stick to those in my address book. In the screen above, notice that the bottom row of icons consists of your Flow page, local Places, the Artist list, your Friends, and your own profile. In the Friends section, it lets you add friends from your Facebook page, from your contact list, or via email.

The next time that I fired up Flowd, it showed the screen below, which indicates that I am now following Beat Service and Afterlight, and have added Jason Black as a friend.

Clicking on the AfterLight flow, I saw a string of posts that the artist had shared, including an editing screen showing the audio mix that he was working on at the moment.

Two things that I have to mention to round out my experience with the app were the Event Wall, and the local Places features of the app.

The Event Wall is just what it sounds like–the postings of Flowd members regarding a specific event attended by one of the artists you are following. It is an electronic way of getting the buzz about the event.

The second is the Places feature, which might be a way to figure out where a bite to eat or the after-party will be. At my locale in San Francisco, California, the screen looked like the one below:

Overall, I found this new Qt-based app to be nice and tight, combining the music-based social interaction facility with a very easy way to post my photos and messages to Facebook.

Flowd is available for free in Ovi Store.

To learn more about how Flowd was developed using Qt Quick, take a look at this recent post in The Qt Blog.

Making his return from the original Ninja Joe, you will take a hold of Joe, a regular “average Joe,” who secretly is a ninja mastermind behind closed doors. One day the evil Destroyer kidnaps your Ninja Master and it is up to you to pull out all your skills to rescue him.

This Qt-based game focuses more on stealth than actual combat. Don’t worry, you can kick some butt as well, but there is a time and place for that when you’re a ninja. Agents will be scattered across every level and you must avoid their gaze marked by a pink cone. Really want to mess things up? When the agents aren’t looking you can run up behind them and you’ll automatically take them out. Just remember, they won’t look away forever.

As the levels continue Joe will have to avoid more than just agent’s eyes. Security cameras and trip wire lights will also require your ninja abilities to come out in full form. Use anything from concealing cloaks to smoke bombs that are available on certain levels. But be careful, you can only use them once before you’ll have to go back and pick up another.

Accompanying the game play are some fantastic illustrated cut scenes by Eduardo Bromhbley, giving the game a semi-comic book feel. Simply relax, exercise your thumbs for a moment and enjoy the pretty colors as the scenes play through.

The game play itself is fun and different. I’m so used to constantly kicking butt in games that this was a nice change in pace. Instead of attacking I had to hide in the shadows and avoid the conflict. I’m already more than halfway through!

This short video preview from the developers shows you Ninja Joe Undercover hard at work:

If you think you’re up for the ultimate ninja challenge then this may be the game for you. But use your super fast ninja reflexes now because Ninja Joe Undercover is available for free in Ovi Store only through the end of May! And remember, this is totally free – no ads at all. You see, this month marks the 5th birthday for AmnesiaGames, and they’ve decided to give us the present in the form of this great free game!

The game is compatible with Nokia’s new Symbian touch-screen devices, like the Nokia N8.

About the Guest Blogger:

Emily is a self-proclaimed nerd when it comes to all things Disney, old Nickelodeon cartoons, sci-fi/fantasy novels and gaming. Dubbing herself Sexy Gamer Girl last year, Emily started a gaming blog where she can geek out. You can follow her on Twitter @EmilyIsGeekChic for gaming news and other random tidbits about her life.

In this free, Qt-based app, you can dress up a princess character choosing her a face, hair, dress, crown, shoes, jewellery, etc. By swiping your finger left and right, or up and down, you can see the selection of items to choose from. There are also different backgrounds, so you can show off your princess in different surroundings.

For the 30+ mum, the excitement of dressing up a princess was over after a few trials, so I asked my 4-year-old daughter to try the app. She loved it! The selection of dresses, shoes and other items was large enough to keep her interested for a long time.

And it is great that you can save the finished images in the device’s picture gallery. Now mum’s Nokia E7 is full of various princess pictures and one of them is used as the background image on the home screen.

For kids born in the 21st century the touch screen user interface comes naturally and in this app, the usability in terms of logic and navigation is good. We did notice one little thing that could be better. We hope someone at Sola Interactive, the company that created this adorable app, will move the cross button (located in the upper-right corner of the screen) to exit from unfinished work somewhere else! Right now it is too easy to accidentally hit that by button by mistake, and the little user is in floods of tears when the princess disappears. Remember to keep the needs of the potential user – children with small fingers – in mind.

Make Me a Princess is free to download from Ovi Store, and it is available for Nokia’s new Symbian devices.

What’s interesting to me is the developer’s decision to go with a minimalist control set. All you have to do is tap the screen, and anywhere on the screen at that (although it would be nice if Nokia E7 owners could use the keyboard as well). That tap will tell your joggers to “jump” and if they are already in the air from a previous jump then they’ll do a double jump for extra height and distance – or you can hold the screen-press down for a bigger initial jump.

So you might have one control, but there is a certain degree of finesse to using it in the game, and that’s important. One button games have been around for a long time, but only a few of them manage to capture the imagination sufficiently that you want to keep playing. I’m glad to say that Grim Joggers is one of those games.

A big part of that is because it is Joggers, plural. There are a number of iterations of the “endless running and jumping over obstacles” genre, each one looking for a little twist, be it in the graphics, the speed, or the terrain which is randomly generated each time you play. Grim Joggers’ key selling point is that you are not looking after just one runner, but in this case fifteen runners. Keeping them all alive as they jump in sequence is going to be a big challenge as you progress through each level.

You can either play to keep the group together and alive, or treat them as “extra lives” for your leading jogger, focussing on vaulting him over the various obstacles so you can keep on running. With a variety of hazards, including spikes, over-sized venus fly traps, quicksand and pits of fire, on the path in front of you, you’re going to need time not just when you start to jump, but also think about where you are going to land – the last thing you need is to jump so close to one obstacle that you unavoidably land in the second.

Then there are the cliff faces.

Grim Joggers doesn’t restrict itself to a running track or a nice field – you’re going to be jumping from different levels, choosing to run along high or low paths, making your best guess as to which is the safer path for your runners, and making sure that when you do jump over the potholes, you’re able to jump and reach the other side. If you miss, and hit the vertical wall, then you have to say bye-bye to every jogger as they slide, Wile E Coyote style, down off the screen, and end the game.

Adding a touch of strategy to the game, sometimes the right move is to sacrifice a jogger to save more of them with a well timed jump, rather than attempting to get everybody over a gap. Spotting those decision points with enough time to react is the key to gaining a high score, because the increasing bonus you can earn is determined in part by how many joggers are still running. I’ll award some extra credit to the developers for having the game scored in calories burned – nice touch.

There’s a lovely cartoon feel to the graphics on show here, feeling very much like the 16-bit platform era – and with the game requiring the full screen to scroll at varying speeds (the further you get into the game the faster your joggers can move, and the more pixels need ‘throwing’ towards the left of the screen). The graphics chip on the latest Symbian devices shows some solid gaming muscle and keeps everything smooth and fast.

When your joggers die, the cute graphics mean that the horrible fate that awaits your running mates is still on-screen, but is more on the level of a kids cartoon rather than pixel perfect imagery. If you’ve had a good run, then you might win one of the many achievement badges that are on offer. These are important, because when you start, only the first level – Jungle Workout  – is available to play.

You’ll need to collect the achievements to open the four extra levels, including Mine Muscle Trainer and Glacier Calorie Burn.

I also liked the touch of the statistics screen with such numbers as “how many joggers burned to ashes or drowned in quicksand” alongside more traditional measurements such as highest score and longest timed run.

Grim Joggers is a well-programmed, Qt-based game, and even when the speed increases the further into the game you go, the graphics remain clear with little blurring. The controls stay reactive no matter how busy the game area is, and be it through points scoring, statistics, badges earned or levels unlocked there’s something to keep you coming back for another run. It’s great fun – far more than actual jogging is!

Grim Joggers is available for $1.99 (USD) in Ovi Store.

About the guest blogger:

Ewan Spence sits in the space between podcasting, blogging, writing and reporting. You might recognise him from All About Symbian, but you can follow his online adventures through Twitter (@Ewan), as he bounces round the world, covering technology, culture, and (for the next week) the Eurovision Song Contest.

Tap on the home screen to start reading the comic. To move from one page to the next, you just swipe your finger from right to left on the page. On the home screen, you can also access the art gallery, the publisher news feed, comics by RadicalAsia, and the shopping area, where you can buy the second and third parts of the Aladdin: Legacy of the Lost series.

As you start tapping your way through the comic, you cannot help but be amazed by the full color pages. Excellent illustrations breathe life into each of the characters. The pages that show the evil monsters look very real (and scary!). There are over 150 such pages to explore and enjoy!

Lighting effects add to the realism of each scene. I love this iconic image of the magic lamp perched on top of a pointed rock.

While the navigation was good for the most part, I noticed instances where I could not see the next page immediately. I had to go back and forth to arrive at the right page.

Each page has a ‘Settings’ option (gears shaped icon) on the top right corner of the screen. If you prefer reading the comic in multiple sittings, you can do so by creating a bookmark on a page.

By accessing ‘My Bookmarks’ option, you can pick up at the point where you left off.

You can also browse the comic by chapters to get right into the thick of the storyline. In the art gallery, you have access to pictures of Aladdin, Soraya, Sinbad, Qassim and other characters of the story. You can share an update about the app with your friends through the Facebook link on the pictures.

Aladdin: Legacy of the Lost is free to download from the Ovi store. Download the app and keep swiping away on your new Nokia Symbian device (it’s like your very own ‘magic lamp’!),

Aladdin: Legacy of the Lost is the first part of a three part series. If you like the first part, you can check out ‘Aladdin: Legacy of the Lost, 2‘and ‘Aladdin: Legacy of the Lost, 3‘ in the Ovi store, each of which are available for $1.99 (USD). One more thing to note: the installation of this app defaults to the C: (or Phone Memory), so please make sure you have enough available memory in this folder. The installed file size is around 13MB.

The first real photo booths date back to the 1920s, though the real heyday of the photo booth was the 1950s. That’s when mass-produced photo booths began appearing in Woolworth’s and other stores. Photo booths appeared in movies, including “The Band Wagon” starring Fred Astaire, and in popular magazines, including a 1957 photo spread by Richard Avedon in Esquire. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, the photo booth was given new life by Andy Warhol, who used their cheap, cheesy prints as the basis for some of his most famous silkscreen portraits.

There’s something slightly tawdry about photo booths. Behind those thin curtains, teenagers could misbehave! In fact, some stores actually removed the curtains to tone down the lewd photographs.

All that cheap, tawdry fun has now been brought to Nokia touchscreen devices. In fact, the PocketBooth app, built with Nokia’s Qt cross-platform framework by Project Box,  has been designed to simulate a sleek, art deco booth from 1958, the Auto-Phone Model 11. When you launch this app, the first image you see is this picture of a Model 11:

If you’ve ever used a real photo booth, you know that you sit for a series of photos – typically three or four shots — that are automatically taken. You then wait a few minutes for the film to be automatically developed. Then out comes a strip of photos, which you can then cut into individual wallet-sized photographs.

The PocketBooth mobile app follows a similar model. Once you start the app, it uses your Nokia device’s camera to shoot a short series of photographs. The photos are then arranged in a vertical photostrip, which you can save in phone memory or share them with others via email, text message, or any of several social networking services.

Once you get past the start screen, PocketBooth takes you to its camera view. As you can see below, the camera view contains a white frame that shows you what will be included in the photo. In the upper left corner, you have the Settings icon. The X in the upper right corner is the Exit icon. The camera with two arrows in the lower right corner lets you choose between your device’s front and rear cameras. The Photo Strips button in the lower right corner takes you to the photostrips view (where your photos are stored). And the green Start button initiates a photo session and instructs the app to begin taking a series of four photos:

The app takes just a few seconds to process your photos. Next, you go to photostrip view to see your photos. There, you scroll through the photos by dragging your finger up or down. And you zoom in or out by tapping on a photo. In the screenshot below, you can see my silly photos in the middle.

Tapping the camera icon in the lower left returns you to the Photo view. The trash can icon in the centre deletes the photos. And the jumping arrow in the lower right takes you to the Share menu.

The Share menu lets you take any of several actions. You can send your photos via an SMS message, send them via Bluetooth, share with friends via email, publish the photos on Facebook, generate a Twitter tweet about your photos, or save them to your Nokia device’s mass memory. This last option also lets you transfer the photos to a PC or an online photo-sharing site; from either of these, you can also edit the photos and print them. Here is a look at the Share menu:

Each of these Share options initiates another operation. For example, tap on ‘Email Photostrip’, and your device’s email app opens with the photostrip already attached and a short, generic message in place: ‘This photo was created on my phone with PocketBooth’. (You can of course edit or change the message.) It then appears in your recipient’s e-mail inbox looking like this:

That’s the basic operation of PocketBooth. But you also have plenty of options. They are all accessed from the Settings icon on the Photo view. Here’s a look:

In each case, you can choose from a number of preset options; but you cannot add options of your own. For example, while you can select either three or four photos per session (those are the preset options), you cannot add some other number like 10 or 25.

Moving from top to bottom, Strip Size lets you choose the number of photos taken in a single session; the options are three or four. Photo Effect lets you choose from black & white, sepia, antique, 1975, or colour. The Paper Stock options are glossy or matte. Border Colour can be set to either black or white. The time between shots can be set at 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 seconds. Camera lets you choose either your device’s front camera (the one facing you as you look at the display) or rear. Flash settings are auto, on and off. And Sound Effects – the click of the shutter, the sound of a flash – can be set on or off.

I did encounter one small usability glitch with PocketBooth. Namely, you cannot exit the app from the strip view. Instead, you must first tap the camera icon to return to the photo view. Then, on the next screen, you can tap the X icon to finally exit the app. The easy improvement would be to add an X icon to the strip view screen. Otherwise, I found PhotoBooth a fun and easy-to-use app. PocketBooth is available in Ovi Store for $1.99 (USD).

Additional information about the app is available from the developers.

PS: If you’d like to know more about the history of the photo booth, I can recommend this article, first published in The Telegraph in March 2008.

The basic concept is simple enough. Drums Challenge challenges you to a kind of drumming duel. First, the game plays a drum pattern. Then, you try to match it — accurately and in perfect time. Do it well, and you win. Do it poorly, and you’re out on a rim shot.

To play, Drums Challenge displays a modern drum set – snare, bass, cymbals, high-hat, and tom-tom. With music playing in the background, you hear and see a pattern played on the drums. Then, tapping the screen of your Nokia device, you attempt to reproduce the drum pattern on the various drums and cymbals.

The game monitors your screen taps and awards points based on how closely you reproduce the pattern. You also have a battery indicator that loses power each time you miss a drum stroke. Get all the way through a sequence with a charge still in your battery, and you win the challenge. But if the battery indicator is drained before the end of the sequence, you lose.

Win a challenge, and your score is saved, and you are given access to a new, more difficult level to play.

Sounds simple, right? Well, the first level, which involves drumming over a blues, is pretty easy.

The screen controls monitor your play. In the screenshot below, the red-and-blue slider at the top indicates both whose turn it is (yours or the game’s) and how far along you are in the turn. It also gives you a 3-2-1 countdown when your turn is about to begin. Below, you can see that it is almost my turn, as the countdown has reached the 2:

Also note the star-like triangles on the high-hat (the cymbal on the left with the foot pedal). That is how Drums Challenge visually represents a drum being struck.

The 290 in the upper left-hand corner is my current score at the moment I took the screenshot. The battery indicator toward the bottom of the screen shows my progress. As I mentioned, each time you miss a drum shot, the battery loses a bit of its charge. Here you can see that my battery is in the semi-dangerous yellow zone. It is not yet fatal red, but it isn’t a healthy green, either.

As a further refinement, scoring is based on the quality of your drumming – how closely you match the pattern and timing of the challenge. When the game ends, you are given your total score, plus a breakdown by Perfect, Awesome and merely Nice:

Win the easy blues challenge, and you are given access to the next level: heavy metal. That one I found somewhat harder, but I did manage to win on my second try. However, I met my match with the game’s third level: reggae. It combines odd upbeats, complicated patterns, and other forms of fancy drumming, and it also adds a new, larger and more complicated drum set. How did I do? Well, the screenshot below tells the sad story:

Drums Challenge offers several other challenges of increasing difficulty. These include jazz, funk, punk, and Latin, according to publisher MusiGames Studio. But I will have to take their word for it. I could not win the reggae challenge, so was unable to open new, higher-level challenges.

To truly appreciate Drums Challenge, it helps to watch this game in action. For that, check out this YouTube video recorded by Camb078. You will see the game being played on a Nokia N8, the same device I used for this review:

Finally, the Qt-based Drums Challenge app is really large at more than 88 MB. Even the stripped-down free version, Drums Challenge Lite, is quite large at over 21 MB. So be sure to leave yourself ample time for downloading and installing this app – and as you will see, Ovi Store will prompt you to download the game using a WLAN. Also, due to its size, this install file should be stored in your device’s mass — not phone — memory.

Drums Challenge is available on Ovi Store for $1.99 (USD). An abbreviated version, Drums Challenge Lite, is available on Ovi Store for free.

Just seconds after I opened this application, the slick and responsive UI blew me away. But don’t just take my word for it. Take a quick look at the application in action in this short video created by our friend Rafe Blandford from AllAboutSymbian.com.

As mentioned in the video, you can browse the selection of movie trailers in the ‘carousal’ view or the ‘list’ view. I love the carousal view for it’s smooth UI transitions.

The movie trailer selection is divided into four categories – ‘Recommended’, ‘In theaters’, ‘Coming soon’ and ‘Recent additions’. However, if you want to look at all the movies available, you can select the ‘All Movies’ section. The content available through this application is good and I noticed quite a few recent movie trailers.

In addition to the movie trailers, each entry has a short blurb about the movie. You can either stream the trailer over the internet or download the trailer. For most of the movies, you can download a normal or a HD version of the trailer. I watched a crisp looking HD trailer of HOP on my N8. If you love a trailer, you can let your friends know about the movie trailer by using the ‘Share’ option.

To check the status of the downloads, you can click the drop down menu button at the top right corner of the screen.

This app has immense potential to pack in many interesting features. Some features that could be included are deeper integration of social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), and local movie search.

Nokia Trailers is free to download from the Ovi store.

Have a great movie weekend!

Created by DVide Arts, Inc., the game follows the standard RPG formula of the hero needing to save the world. Complete with 3D graphics, this open world is yours to explore. You wake up one day in your little village of Harmony only to be sent by the Elder to help the Queen defeat the mighty dragon created by the Queen’s evil sister Mordrid.

But don’t think you can simply go help the Queen, silly. Any seasoned RPG player knows that you must explore every inch of this new world to help others that are in need of a hero as well. From saving lost villagers, saving a whole town from bankruptcy, and even putting a lost soul to rest, this hero has his hands full.

In fact, you won’t even be allowed to meet with the Queen at the start of the game. Yes, you may have the note for the Queen, but a soldier will continue to tell you that you are yet to be strong enough. Which means this game will cause you to do some serious grinding for experience. As you do away with baddies around the world a bar underneath your red health and blue magic will slowly grow with white. Each time it is filled your level will grow along with your stats.

Fighting is a simple system. As you level up you will gain new abilities that are sword operated, bow operated, and magic operated. Each move will be placed in a slot of three that can be changed by you any time. In order to use any of these moves simply click on the move with your thumb. For magic or arrow use you must be targeting an opponent by clicking on them first. This will also give you the level of the target as well. Each set of three moves can be cycled through with the up and down arrow keys.

Most opponents will be off limits for you at first. Stay close to Harmony when it comes to the bad guys but don’t be afraid to check out the other towns. Just steer clear of the enemies in the other areas at first since they will be able to take you down with one hit. But just because there are high level baddies doesn’t mean there aren’t any goodies you’ll be able to acquire at the time.

While exploring you will come across several people asking you for help. From gathering straw for an elderly lady that wants to sweep to stealing pearls from mermaids, you won’t be bored with all the tasks you can actually do before helping the Queen with her 4 special tasks.

Most of all, do not forget to sell any items you may acquire through your killings. You slowly gather a great amount of money and be able to equip your hero with the best offensive and defensive items there are. Simply go to the item menu by clicking the hero’s face in an item shop and you’ll be able to sell any item you are holding. If outside of a shop an option to “drop” the item or sometimes “use” will appear instead.

This short video trailer from the developers at Dvide Arts will give you a hint of what you can expect:

Never before have I experienced an RPG for a mobile phone that is just as packed with material as a regular console game. And trust me, I own every console there is! This is definitely a game for any lover of RPG’s and will give you hours of play. So what are you waiting for? Go save the world!

Crusade of Destiny is available for $2.99 (USD) in Ovi store.

Breakfest from Arctica Software is available for $2.99 (USD) and is compatible with Nokia  smartphones. There is also a free version with embedded advertisements and a version for the Nokia N900. I tested the paid version on my N8.

The object of the game is quite simply to smash cubes to smithereens. Some of the cubes are walls that you have smash through, some are targets you smash to gain points. The targets you aim to smash are, unfortunately given the current situation in Japan, reactors. For now, let’s skip over that detail and talk about the fun you’ll have smashing digital cubes.

The 3D effects are great, especially when debris flies in your face.

In the game world, your screen is a bat, and a big blue wrecking ball bounces around the arena. The ball bounces off concrete objects but smashes cubes of blue, brown, and orange bricks. You move your bat between the left and right bounds of the arena by your choice of touch, tilt, or key controls.

Keep the ball in play long enough to smash through barricades and expose the orange target cubes.

You cannot move your point of view above the game arena, so once you’re into a level you can’t see behind the first row of obstacles. However, your target cubes emit orange steam to help your targeting, and at the beginning of each level you’re given a birds-eye view of the field.

Get your bearings at the beginning of each level, then it's down to the arena floor!

The principle of the game is simple, but Arctica Software adds some fun twists. You have the opportunity to “power up” your blue wrecking ball. Energy vortices change the physics of the game in certain locations at certain times. And with 50 levels of game-play, Breakfest will keep you engaged for hours.

My only complaint about the game is the way it explains aspects of the game at the beginning of the first few levels. I like “just in time” tips that introduce subtleties of a game a few at a time, but Breakfest presents several screens of instructions before it lets me play. This had the effect of making me feel the game was more complicated than it is. I like games that include an optional tips setting that will pause the game as I play it and point out options I might miss. Play first, read later.

I found the number of information screens at the beginning of the introductory levels distracting.

That’s a minor quibble, though. Breakfest is smashing good fun. Don’t take my words for it, check out this video:

Breakfest is available for $2.99 (USD) in versions for Nokia Symbian and Nokia N900 devices. There is also a free version with embedded advertisements.

Tank Hero is an addictive, 3D action game for Nokia’s new Symbian touchscreen devices. Your one tank competes against many others. Shoot all the tanks on the screen, and you move up to the next level. But get shot yourself, and the round is over. You also accumulate points for winning, and these points can be used to purchase increasingly deadly weapons.

Tank Hero is a lot of fun. This game is challenging and tense, especially as you advance to higher, more difficult levels. The sound effects are subtle but effective, and the 3D effects, developed with OpenGL, are engaging. For example, you can choose a ‘follow’ camera that moves along with your tank. Overall, the effect is highly addictive, repeatedly eliciting my ‘one more game!’ response.

There are two main modes of play: Campaign and Survival. In Campaign, you play in a maze in which your tank is on one side of the wall or walls, and the enemy tanks are on the other. For example, here is the start of Campaign mode’s Level 2. The green tank near the bottom of the screen is mine; the grey tanks on the other side of the wall are the enemy:

In Survival mode, your tank is also in a maze, but enemy tanks can pop up anywhere on the screen – including on your side of the wall:

In general, Campaign mode involves more strategy and sneakiness. Survival mode, especially at the beginning of a round, involves more shooting and speed.

One thing both modes have in common is 40 levels of increasingly difficult play. I found Level 10 about as challenging as I could handle. At that level, the enemy tanks have weapons that can shoot over walls, so gameplay gets fast and furious. Even if you are a serious shooter, there seems little chance of maxing out.

Tank Hero’s controls are simple. A round control pad, which you can situate in either the left-hand or right-hand corners, lets you start and stop the tank’s movement, and turn it in any direction. You control that pad with a thumb. Then, using any finger from the other hand, you tap on any spot of the screen to shoot. Where you tap is essentially your tank’s target. Another option gives you control pads in both corners: the second pad lets you aim your tank’s gun, then shoot.

In the next screenshot, the control pad is shown in the lower left-hand corner. It’s the circle with the four arrows pointing away from the centre:

In the next screenshot, you can see my enemy’s shots, shown in purple streaks, ricocheting off the right-hand barrier. Meanwhile, I am situated in the lower right corner, safely out of the line of fire.

As you win rounds, you accumulate credits. Accumulated enough, and you can purchase additional weapons in the Upgrade Shop. When you acquire a weapon, you also take it with you as you ascend the levels.

The Stock Cannon, essentially the default weapon, fires in bursts that can ricochet off walls. So you can either bank shots, the way you might in billiards, or shoot directly at an enemy.

Once you have 4,000 credits, you can consider the Spread Cannon, which fires a salvo of bullets covering a wider area. The Heat Seeker, which costs 16,000 credits, fires bullets that identify and home in on an enemy tank. The Howitzer, at 12,000 credits, fires explosive shells that cause damage in an large area of contact, and it can also fire over walls.

Once you acquire two or more weapons, you can change weapons in the middle of a round. For example, if you find enemy tanks on your side of a wall, you might use the Spread Cannon to wipe them out. Then, to eliminate tanks on the far side of the wall with ricochet shots, you might select the Stock Cannon. To change weapons, you tap on the weapon icon in the upper left hand corner. Gameplay freezes temporarily, and up comes a row of icons for each weapon you currently own. Tap on a weapon icon to select it, and the game resumes.

Do everything right, and you are rewarded with this Awesome Victory screen, which also details your credits and other information:

But get killed by an enemy tank, and failure is total:

Tank Hero has one small glitch: There is no Exit button. Instead, to exit, you return to the start screen/main menu, then tap on a bent arrow in the lower right-hand screen. This, in turn, takes you to the ‘Are you sure you want to quit?’ screen. Instead, I’d like publisher Clapfoot Games to replace the arrow with an Exit button.

To see Tank Hero in action, watch this video, courtesy of Camb078 and YouTube:

Tank Hero is available for $1.99 (USD) in Ovi Store. The app is fairly large, requiring nearly 4 megabytes of storage space. There is also a smaller (3 MB)  Tank Hero Free in Ovi Store, too.

I checked out the app on my Nokia N8 device and found initial setup to be quite easy. In the screen below, the left and right icons in the lower left control whether you are looking at the help files, the weather setup, the currency setup or the RSS feed setup.

Clicking on the ‘choose template’ field, it pulls up your choice of sports, general news, technology, finance, or investment feeds. Clicking on any one of them will result in the app filling in three default RSS feeds for that area.

In the screen below, I had selected the finance area, and then put as a filter the term Vimpelcom, since I follow that stock in my portfolio, and since the company is a high-risk, high-reward type of player in the emerging mobile operator markets. For each screen that you set, you must click the Save icon to set your choices into the app. Notice that each RSS feed is color-coded, so you can instantly know which feed is providing the information.

I then used the left/right arrow icons to move on to weather, and set my locality for San Francisco, California. That too was easy, just clicking on the default Paris and typing in San Francisco.

Next was currency, where the default conversions are the euro, US dollar, and British pound, but each field can be changed to any of the world’s currencies.

I also wanted to take advantage of the fact that Press Scan could give me access to worldwide news feeds about breaking events. My local newspaper was full of stories about Obama’s birth certificate, the British royal wedding, and the National Football League’s annual draft day, but what I really wanted to know was whether there was still a war going on in Libya, and if so, what was happening. So, I selected the general template, and typed in ‘Libya’ as my filter term.

The app returned the screen below.

This told me that the app had found an article on Libya and Syria on CNN (the blue dateline indicates CNN).  I clicked on the headline and up popped the story of interest, shown on the screen below.

The bottom line was that Press Scan combined simplicity of setup with the power of filters and RSS feeds. It also allowed me to add any RSS feeds that I wanted, providing two additional spaces per subject area for user-designated RSS feeds. For more information about this Web Runtime widget, please check out  http://press-scan.com.

Press Scan is exclusive to Nokia devices at this time, and is available in Ovi Store for $9.99 (USD).

Fitness Planner is an easy to use, Qt-based app for Nokia touch screen devices like the N8 that enables you to set a specific goal for an activity for a particular day. Once you complete the activity you can input your results and then the information is stored and available to view on your device.  There are three main buttons across the top: Calendar, Graphs and Settings.

Several types of activities are supported that should appeal to almost everyone: Walking, Running, Bicycling, Swimming, Rowing, Hiking, Rollerblade Skating, Aerobics, Step Machine, Ski Machine, and Skiing.

Fitness Planner provides both a calendar and graph view for tracking your activities on a daily basis. Personally I prefer the graph view because it provides a simple to understand bar graph depicting my goals and what I achieved per activity.

The UI is intuitive and because of the way BLStream organizes tasks and functions into similar screens there’s no need for a “how to” button or screen.

For the past several weeks I’ve been using Fitness Planner to track some cycling that I’ve done and it was straightforward to use.

First I used the calendar view to select the day and time I planned on going for a ride.  I estimated that I would ride 15 miles within 50 minutes, which is pretty fast.

After the ride I entered the results that were different: 12 miles in 58 minutes. Fitness Planner then gave me a percentage value of what I completed of my goal.

I could then view my progress using the graph view comparing what I did two days prior.

In the graph view above the orange vertical bars were my goals and the green vertical bars are what I actually accomplished.

Two other nice features are the ability for the user to select from one of five languages for the app and to specify the formats for time and units.

In the images below, the left UI is in Spanish and the right UI is in English.

Because of these options, Fitness Planner should appeal to a much broader audience of users globally that will find comfort in using this app in their native language.

With all of the great features that BLStream put into Fitness Planner, there are some nice things I’d like to see in an update: ability to specify a decimal value for distances, like 3.1 miles; and a way to share my daily workouts to my social networks like Twitter and Facebook, which we have seen in similar fitness applications.

So if you’re the type of person that does any type of physical activity and are looking for an easy way to track your progress from your mobile phone, then I highly recommend Fitness Planner.

Fitness Planner is available for $ 0.99 (USD) in Ovi store.

With the YouTube Ringtone app you can browse YouTube. When you are on the page of the desired video you can set it as video or audio ringtone to your active profile or to specific contacts. You can also select an Access point, Memory in use (Phone memory / Memory card / Mass memory) and Quality (Low / Medium / High). You can also select an Access point, Memory in use (Phone memory / Memory card / Mass memory) and Quality (Low / Medium / High). One note of caution about the app is that currently it only supports the audio portion of the ringtone on Symbian^3 devices, while it supports both audio and video on S60 5th Edition devices.

To check it out, I tried it on both my Nokia N8 (Symbian^3) device and my Nokia N97 (S60th 5.0) device. The first thing that you see when you fire up the app is the Preference screen (first time only, after that it already knows). In that screen, it allows you to choose your access point, choose where you want to store the ringtones, and what quality you want for the video. The screen shown below is the default, but I like to store media on mass memory rather than using up valuable phone memory space. The image quality is set to Low by default, and I agree with that, since that option minimizes load times.

After clicking OK on that, the next thing you see is the YouTube website like the screen below (which becomes the first thing you see on subsequent usage of the app).

From there, you navigate YouTube as you normally would to find the content that you want to turn into a ringtone. In my case, it was a video of Reggae song intro hook that I had written, recorded with a friend, and had previously put up on YouTube. I got to it quickly using the YouTube search function.

From here, I just clicked Options to bring up the screen below, and then clicked on “Set as ringtone”, and then clicked on the video option.

It then asked me whether I wanted to associate this ring tone with the Active Profile, or with specific contacts within my address book. I choose the latter, and it brought up my address book contacts. I selected my desk phone from the list, and then clicked OK on the screen below.

It was that simple, but of course I also wanted to test that the app had indeed done what it said it had done. So, I used my desk phone to call my mobile phone, and got two different results on the two types of phones.

On the Nokia N97 phone shown below, I got the full video ringtone, including the Reggae guitar lead hook intro as well as the video sequence of the YouTube clip.

On the Nokia N8, I got the audio ringtone the same as the above, but instead of the video from the YouTube clip I saw only the photo that I had previously stored on the phone for my calling from that number. [Why, yes, I do look exactly like a cartoon image of the young starship captain James T. Kirk. Doesn't everybody? Thank you for asking.] This is true whether one selects the audio or the video option for saving the ring tone on a Nokia N8 device.

I know that KM Software is working hard to include the video option on the new Symbian devices soon, and I expect that it will be an in-line free update when it is available.

Overall, I find this app to be very exciting. It isn’t that the technology of the app is so intriguing, but that the content available on YouTube is just plain astonishing. Talk about personalisation! There is something different out there on YouTube for practically everyone on the planet.

YouTube Ringtone is available on Ovi Store for $1.99 (USD).

Perhaps you’re fascinated by the dresses and the bling, or maybe by the amazing minute-to-minute planning of all the logistics behind the scenes. But if you’re one of those who have been captured by the emotion and the sentiment, you will definitely be fascinated by the love story that has led to this massive day – and if you are, then Wills and Kate Royal Love Story is just what you’ve been waiting for!

This app is presented in an e-book format and consists of 10 chapters. Each chapter features slices of information in relation to different aspects of their love story, (and actually makes an interesting read), along with a small picture gallery. The chapters don’t go into too much detail which is actually a little disappointing seeing as the app isn’t free, so it would be great if there was more content we could add to the app in the form of updates.  However, the layout is crisp, decorated in royal colours and really captures the moment. I reckon it will make a cute digital keepsake to remember this tremendous occasion after the wedding has come and gone.

It is availble in Ovi Store for £1 and is compatible with Nokia Symbian OS – S60 5.0 and new Symbian touch devices such as the Nokia N8. The app is a product of the Daily Mirror and the developers behind this app are Grapple Mobile.

Oh, and if you figure out how to close or exit the app – please let me know!

I’ll leave you with this funny picture I took at my local hairdresser who made his sentiments clear!

Farm Frenzy 2 was developed by Alawar Games. The plot of Farm Frenzy 2 is similar to that of the original. I saw a marked improvement in the graphics. The sounds are more life-like. There are subtle differences in the look of the animals between Farm Frenzy 2 and the original game. Without further delay, let us ‘farm’ right in!

As you start off the game, the levels are straightforward with simple goals. In the first level, your goal is to get two eggs. If you accomplish that within a minute, you get 100 points and if you do it within two minutes, you get 50 points.

All your animals feed on grass. To grow grass, just tap on the center of the game area. You need water to grow grass and once you are out of water you need to replenish the supply to your well. To replenish, you need to tap on the well. Your animals reward you with their products.  You tap on these products to move them to the warehouse.

You can then sell these products to the market. Tap on the warehouse on the bottom of the screen to select which products you would like to ship on the truck to sell in the local city market. Each sale gives you some coins, which you can use to buy processing units, water or animals. However, the sale happens only after your truck goes to the market and comes back to you. You can see the progress on the top right corner of the screen.

You can either sell raw materials such as eggs and pork at a low price or you can process these raw materials to get a higher price for your final products. To process your eggs, you can buy a powdering unit, which produces powder used for baking cakes. You can then buy a baking unit, which will use this powder to produce cakes. After the final product is produced, tap on it to move it to the warehouse.

Dangerous bears check in to your field and toss away your animals killing them. You need to cage these bears by tapping on them continuously. Once you move the bear cages to the warehouse (by tapping on the cage), you can sell them in the market for coins. Bear cages occupy a lot of space in your warehouse. You cannot put all the bear cages in the warehouse. So you need to manage the warehouse space and the trips to the market effectively.

For a minute during one of the games, I was in a real ‘frenzy’ mode collecting eggs, shipping cakes, fighting bears, growing grass, buying pigs and doing seven other things all at the same time. I loved the challenge! To confess, I played non-stop for four full hours yesterday and I am going to continue playing today. If you loved the original, you will adore this sequel.

Farm Frenzy 2 is available from $2.99 (USD) in Ovi store.

OK, let’s talk about graphics first.

Playing this on the Nokia N8 fully utilizes the graphic processing and raw speed of this device. Smooth, crisp, clear graphics and animations that will leave you left in awe.

The game play is real nice. With the 5 different game modes (Quick Match, Exhibition, UEFA Club Competitions, League Cup, and Training), there are always new challenges ahead of you. In UEFA Club Competitions mode, I currently started a career with my favorite team, Internazionale (aka Inter Milan). As you can see, you pretty much have full control of nearly every aspect of the game. You can edit your lineups, change your depth charts, swap out your team strategy and formations, you name it and you can edit it. Once you finish with the settings, you’re ready to hit the pitch.

I really appreciate the simplicity of the game controls. Again, on the Nokia N8 you have a virtual key pad on your left, and your action buttons on the right. At first you might run into the same problem I had while starting this game… you turn over the ball every time you touch it. Don’t worry! The more you play, the more you will get a feel for how and where you should move, as well as when to make a quick pass or a short cross to your striker for a last minute goal to send your squad to victory! OK, maybe you won’t learn that over night, but trust me; keep at it and you’ll get there. And if all else fails, you can drop the difficulty mode down to rookie. That works just as well.

I can’t stress enough how much love and care has been put into this game by Konami. From the smooth graphics and animations, to the fantastic game play, down to the small details of the game menus; they really took out all the stops. I find myself getting lost in one quick game, that suddenly extends to 5 or 6 games instead. Another really addicting part of this game for me is the Penalty Kicks mini-game within the Training Mode. Great stuff all around. A strong recommendation to add to your Nokia gaming collection.

Take a look at Konami’s teaser video. Understood, the game play looks like it is from the XBOX 360, but still this will get you amped for the mobile version:

Cheers to Konami for the video.

Don’t try to cheat your way to the top. I tried and I got a Yellow card.

If at first you don’t succeed at this game, practice! That’s exactly what the Training mode is all about.

GAME ON.

This app is currently available for new Symbian devices including the Nokia N8 and Nokia E7. It can be downloaded for $4.99 (USD) in Ovi Store. Download it here.

With My Little Plant, the good developers at INdT bring the massive ecology of the rain forest down to charmingly small size. I guess that should not have surprised me, they’re great developers and the Brazilian rain forest is their home land.

My Little Plant is free in Ovi Store, and is compatible with the Nokia N8 smartphone.

The graphic design of My Little Plant is utterly charming.

The game concept is easy: you take charge of a little sprout of a plant, a Guarana vine native to the Amazon basin and related to the maple tree.

Grow your little vine, and learn a little about the rain forest.

Your first task is to protect your little plant from insects. Being a fan of E. O. Wilson, it gave me some pain to kill off ants out to get my plant, but that’s life in the rain forest. As ants approach your plant, touch one once and it flips up in the air, rolls over, and falls to the ground dead. Even the death cry is charming in this game. A star rises from where the ant fell; touch the moving star to gain points.

Touch an attacking ant to protect your plant; touch the ant's star to gain points.

The object of the game is to provide for your plant what it needs: fertilizer, water, and sun. Use your points to collect the resources you need: collect five stars and the next ant will produce a watering can or a fertilizer pail. Touch the can or pail to place it in your resource bins.

Collect fertilizer and water to nourish your plant.

Now that you have resources the juggling act begins. Create some breathing room by clearing the ants, then drag a watering can or fertilizer pail over to your plant. The longer you hold the pail or bucket the more you provide for your plant, but make sure you let go soon enough so you can start smashing ants again!

This charming game draws you (and your children) into the game, where you can accidentally learn something.

For example, notice the “cloudy and overcast” background image? The background image is determined by the current weather at an Amazon rain forest weather station from which My Little Plant downloads status updates.

Notice the little bar graphs in the lower-left corner? The blue one indicates how much water your little plant has available. The environment being a rain forest it just might not be advantageous to add water without thinking about the needs of your plant. If you play the game while it’s raining at the weather station, you don’t need to add water; even green things rot if they stay too wet too long. Game players learn that too much of a good thing is not necessarily a good thing.

The time of day when you play the game also matters. Your plant needs sun, so at least some of your play needs to be during daylight hours. That may pose a challenge depending where in the world you are, but it’s a real eye-opener when children first realize the difference between their world and the world of others.

This short video demo from the developers at INdT shows the game in action on the Nokia N8:

This Earth Day, why not connect with the Amazon rain forest via My Little Plant. It’s charming, it’s free, and you might just learn something.

A picture is worth a thousand words they say. How much is a game worth? Priceless, if the game stands for a cause and conveys a great message. Today, we are excited to bring to you Green Dweller - a simple gaming application that aims to enlighten us about green sustainable living. The application features thoughtful games and quizzes to get you up to speed with eco-friendly living practices.

Once you fire up the application, you are prompted to enter your current location. Then, you proceed to create a user name and a password. After you complete the log-in process, you can start exploring the application by clicking the ‘Green Meter’ button on top of your home screen.

The ‘Green Meter’ menu has several sections such as ‘Saplings & Trees’, ‘Play Games’, ‘Green Status’, ‘CO2 Footprint’, ‘Green Wall’ and ‘Adopt a Sapling’.

In the ‘Saplings and Trees’ section, you get access to your little virtual farm area, where you can cultivate your plants. The trick to the game is – You need points to buy seeds, water, and insecticides. You can earn these points by playing games under the ‘Play Games’ section. Your plants behave like real plants – you need to tend to them on a regular basis and they take time to grow.  The fruit of your labor is the ‘green cash’ produced by your trees. You can then use this ‘green cash’ to reduce your carbon credits.

There are three mini-games in the ‘Play Games’ section – ‘Leaky Pipes’, ‘Environment Quiz’ and ‘Grow ‘Em’. Below you can see a snapshot of the ‘Leaky Pipes’ game. The aim of this game is to reduce the wastage of water by continuously tightening the water knobs by tapping on the them. The more water you save, the more points you get. There are 12 different levels of game play in ‘Leaky Pipes’.

Grow ‘Em is a basic control game with an aim to plant as many saplings as possible while avoiding the speeding vehicles on your path. To avoid a speeding vehicle, you press the up arrow icon on the bottom left corner of the screen. You can change the direction of your run by clicking sideways icon. You have three lives at the beginning of the game. Each time you get hit by an approaching vehicle, you lose one life. There are 16 different levels of game play to satisfy your green gaming appetite.

Do you want to learn about your carbon foot print?  Then, head to the ‘CO2 Footprint’ section and take the carbon footprint quiz. I thought I knew a lot about carbon footprint but some questions in the quiz were eye opening.

If you want to know how you are doing, you can check your points tally in the ‘Green Status’ section. Green points you earn in the games will help you purchase more trees. The Green cash that your farm trees generate will help you reduce your carbon credits. As you can see, Green Dweller application creates incentives for eco-friendly living. In my opinion, this kind of clever messaging will play a valuable role in imbibing ecological awareness in children of our generation.

Furthermore, the application includes a social interaction element called the ‘Green Wall Community’. Here you can share your ideas and thoughts about everything green. I believe this feature has potential to be improved. For example, the ‘Green Wall Community’ could be linked to Facebook accounts of users to enable information sharing.

Finally, if you feel an urge to make an immediate difference, go to the ‘Adopt a Sapling’ section where you get links to organizations such as United Nations Environment Program, Plant A Billion Trees and Give India.

Overall, Green Dweller provides a fun and interactive way to introduce and inculcate green sustainable living.

Green Dweller is available for $ 0.99 (USD) in the Ovi store.

This mobile app for Nokia advanced Symbian touchscreen devices announces the time, using your device’s built-in text-to-speech technology. Now I can listen to the current time whenever I want.

Talking Clock Ultimate also lets you set the app to announce the time at pre-set intervals – for example, every 15 minutes – and during pre-set times and days – for example, only on Mondays and Fridays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Install and launch Talking Clock Ultimate, and you start with the app’s main screen. Starting from the top, this screen shows the app’s Status (active or inactive), At (when the app announces the time), Every (days of the week the app will announce the time), and From/To (its hours of desired operation). To chance a setting, tap it. A small options menu appears; make your choice, then tap OK. Here’s a look at the main screen:

In the shot above, you can see that the status is Active – that is, the app is set to announce times, even after I have exited the app. It stays on in background mode. To truly shut off the app, you must change the status to Inactive, and then exit.

The At: command lets you determine how frequently Talking Clock Ultimate announces the time. You can choose one of the defaults, or you can set your own frequency. The defaults are on the hour; four times an hour (on the hour, then every 15 minutes); and twice an hour (on the hour and half-hour). In the screenshot below, you can see that I have selected the four-times-an-hour option:

As I mentioned, Talking Clock Ultimate lets you set the frequency to anything you would like, in minute intervals. To do this, tap Others in the frequency menu shown above. Next, bring up your virtual keypad by tapping the field. Then enter your desired interval in minutes and tap OK. For example, you could set Talking Clock Ultimate to announce the time every 20 minutes, every 40 minutes, every 500 minutes, or even every 1 minute. Here you can see the Others menu being set for every 5 minutes:

Next, you determine the Every settings. That is, on which days of the week do you want Talking Clock Ultimate to announce the time? You can select any day of the way, any combination of days of the week, or all the days of the week. Here’s the mini-menu for making this selection … you can see it is set for Monday through Friday:

Next, set From/To. Here you are setting the time range in which Talking Clock Ultimate will announce. You can set any two times … from 9 a.m. to 5, from 12 noon to 3 p.m., or anything else you would like. Here you can see the menu, set to announce the time from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The From/To setting works only on the days you set in the Every menu. For example, if you set Monday through Friday, and then 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., then that’s the only times when Talking Clock Ultimate will announce the times.

Finally, to get the current time, simply launch Talking Clock Ultimate, and then press Exit. The app will announce the time, then shut itself down. Again, even when closed, as long as it is in Active mode, the app runs in background. So checking the current time does not affect your previous settings.

I do have three items on my Talking Clock wish list. First, I’d like a choice of male or female voices. Right now, there is no choice, and the default is male. Second, I’d appreciate a volume control. Right now, there is none. In theory, you can use the volume button on your Nokia device. But in practice, by the time you reach for your phone, the Talking Clock message is already finished. Finally, the ability to set different time zones would be a cool addition. Right now, the app can use only your local time; so whatever time your phone thinks it is, that’s the time Talking Clock shows.

I tested Talking Clock Ultimate, but in fact the app is available in three versions:

Talking Clock Lite is available on Ovi Store for free. It announces the time only at the top of the hour (for example, at 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m., etc.).

Talking Clock Pro is available on Ovi Store for $0.99 (USD). It adds the ‘At’ setting, so it can announce the time on the hour, half hour, or quarter hour (for example, at 1 p.m., 1:15 p.m., or 1:30 p.m.). The Pro version also adds the Day of the Week setting, so you can set the app to announce the time on, for example, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Talking Clock Ultimate is available on Ovi Store for $1.99 (USD). It offers all the features of Pro, plus it lets you create custom time settings. For example, you could set the app to announce the time every 7 minutes, every 23 minutes, or every 500 minutes. Again, this is the version I tested here, and I ran it on a Nokia N8.

Talking Clock requires that your device has built-in text-to-speech. Nokia’s advanced Symbian touchscreen devices should all work fine. But to make sure, Publisher Titus Soft recommends that you first install the free Lite version; if it works properly, then you may wish to upgrade to either the Pro or Ultimate version.

To start using this application you need to login using your Twitter credentials. The home screen is neatly organized into three major sections. The Twitter action icons section at the top of screen, your Twitter time line section at the center of the screen and ‘Options’/'Refresh’ icons section at the bottom of the screen. The UI design is simple and yet very striking.

If you click on a Tweet, you get options to ‘Reply to the Tweeter’,'Add Tweet to Favorites’, ‘Re-tweet’ and ‘Send a direct message(DM) to the Tweeter’. In this view, you can browse through your time line by swiping your finger across the screen from right to left.

If you are in a mood to share your thoughts, you can click the ‘What’s happening’ icon. You can enter your thoughts in the text area and you can also tag friends by using the ‘@’ icon in the image below. This screen also provides you an option to upload photos.

By clicking on the ‘Options’ icon, you can access your Twitter details such as ‘Mentions’, ‘Favorites’, ‘Retweets’ and ‘Lists’.

Through the settings menu you can enable location scanning, modify timeline refresh period and select data connection options.

Another interesting feature in HipTweet is the location based search. Using this feature, you can search for Tweets or people near your current location. The application uses the built-in GPS receiver in your smartphone to pull out your location. In the screen shot below, I searched for all Tweets mentioning ‘Nokia’ in ‘White Plains,NY’.

As I said earlier, the user experience in HipTweet is great. The speed and responsiveness of vertical scrolling can be improved.  Owing to the large fonts, the number of tweets you can browse is limited. The user could be given an option to browse through older tweets by organizing the tweets in multiple navigable pages. Overall, I am extremely impressed with HipTweet. It provides an easy to use interface for both content creation and consumption.

HipTweet is free to download from Ovi store.

HipTweet was developed by Silicon valley based HipLogic. Apart from HipTweet, they have also developed another social networking app called Spark. Do check out the Ovi Daily App review of *Spark beta here.

AudioBoo is an application which allows you to record audio updates to share with friends and family, but also for use on your own blog or website. Think of it like an audio blog.

I first heard about AudioBoo over a year ago and started using it in Germany when touring a Carl Zeiss factory I was visiting thanks to WOMWorld/Nokia, but at the time the only options available were via a web browser or a beta service by making a phone call (it almost seems quaint today). There was no application for the handset at that time. But, that has changed with the AudioBoo app published by the Bolser Agency, which is a free download from Ovi Store.

To get started, the best thing to do is sign up for a free account on the AudioBoo website.

Then, you will simply need to sign in when you install the Qt-based app on your handset. The screenshot below shows you the icon to look for:

From there you can listen to random recordings (known as a “boo”) as well as record and publish your own. Normal accounts can record 5 minutes per boo, which is normally more than enough for your standard usage. I was lucky enough to be given an extra option from the developers, and now have 20 minutes per recording.

Once you have recorded your own boo you can tag it, give it a title – even use a picture – and then upload. Just a word of warning though, you cannot save your recording locally, once it has been recorded you have to either upload it or record a new boo, but this will wipe the previous recording.

This is a service I used at Nokia World in London back in 2010, and also at Mobile World Congress this year, and it was really handy in getting quick instant news out to everyone without needing to use different applications to post from. If you have your own site or blog you can even use a free widget on the sidebar to share your recordings from your account.

You can hear an AudioBoo that I recorded during a recent test of the app while working on this review.

Having this application on your Nokia smartphone is perfect for mobile blogging as you can keep everyone updated from a single app, and also use it to automatically post links to your recordings on Twitter or Facebook if you enter the login details on the website.

Using AudioBoo is completely free of charge both on your Nokia device and on the website, which means anyone can get started without any setup costs. Note however that because the application transmits recorded audio files, it is highly recommended that you have a decent data plan on your handset unless you are able to just use Wi-Fi instead.

AudioBoo is free to download from Ovi Store.

About the guest blogger

My name is Dan Carter and I run World Of Nokia which is a Nokia news and reviews website based in the UK, but with a reach all around the world. My aim for that site is to help promote the brand to the world and help Nokia truly ‘Connect People’. You can find me at www.worldofnokia.co.uk and by following me on twitter @worldofnokia.

I have been using this application for some time. I have enjoyed exploring and trying out the rich feature set of this app. Before I walk you through it, let’s see the application in action in this video created by Arunay, who blogs here.

After installing Voyager Home Screen on your Nokia smartphone, you can activate the application by going to Applications > ‘vHome’. Here you can perform several actions including starting the application and modifying the look and feel of the home screens within the application.

The ‘Home Skin’ selection menu gives you three options to select your main home screen. The options are: Classic, V Style and Retro Clock. The ‘V Style’ is my favorite as it creates a tile view, which partly resembles the user interface of Windows Phone 7 devices.

Below you can see the ‘Retro Clock’ home skin, which resembles the UI experience on some HTC devices. All variations of the home skin have some common functions such as a Twitter link to tweet from the home screen, a news feed, and a local weather feed.

Once you start the application, all your applications are neatly organized into several screens. You can scroll through them by swiping across your phone screen. This look is similar to that seen in iOS devices such as iPod Touch and iPhone.

If you wish to explore other settings of Voyager Home Screen, click on the ‘Home Settings’ icon. To quit the Voyager Home Screen application, click on the ‘Quit vHome’ icon. This screen also provides one-click access to toggle between ‘General’/'Silent’, and to activate or deactivate Bluetooth.

If you are not satisfied with the arrangement of app icons on your screens, you can move them around by enabling the ‘Edit Mode’. To enable this mode, you can either click the ‘Edit Mode’ icon or press and hold any icon. Once you enable the ‘Edit Mode’, all your application icons start shaking. You can now move an application around to any position on any screen.

Additionally, in this mode, you can uninstall applications by simply holding and dragging an app icon to the trash can icon at the bottom of your screen (See image below). To disable the edit mode, click on your phone’s menu key.

In the settings menu, there are additional customization options. For example, you can enable the ‘Auto Start’ option, which will start Voyager Home Screen automatically after a phone restart. You can also choose from several different grid formats to arrange your app icons.

I organized my applications in a 3X5 grid and I love the way my screens look!

While testing this application, I did notice some display lag on few occasions. Also, when I installed a new application on my N8, with Voyager Home Screen enabled, I could not see the application installation status bar. So, if you are about to install an application on your phone, I would recommend exiting the Voyager Home Screen application before starting the installation.

Apart from these areas of improvement, I am pretty impressed by the features packed into this application. For those of us who need a great and easy way to customize the UI experience on our Nokia phones, Voyager Home Screen is a must-have.

Voyager Home Screen is free to download from Ovi store.

Before you know it, you are under the spell of this game and hooked for what could be a very long time. Although a user who has strong self-restraint could easily play one level and then exit the game or continue later.

There are different modes to the game that enable the user to play in a preferred manner and that makes the game appealing to a wide variety of audiences.

If you prefer the game to be like a mystical journey through a book you can select the ‘Story’ mode and you’ll discover a wonderful story with beautiful illustrations of dragons and characters.

The characters include the goddess Benten who lost her lute, Kirin the wise dragon offers to find the lute for the goddess and he starts with Ninge the mermaid. If you play long enough, you’ll eventually have the pleasure to meet the sea lord, Syatihokio as well.

There is an introduction leading the user into the story and then you are greeted with this beautiful underwater board with colored cubes. The objective of the game is to match pieces of the same color by adding cubes. Once three cubes of the same color are grouped, they disappear from the board. The goal is to clear the board of colored cubes. This is also how you score points and earn money to spend in the store on items that will help you in your journey.

If you like the added pressure of a competitor, that’s an option in the arcade mode. You need to move quickly in this mode as you are on a timer and have the potential to upgrade yourself to a hero.

If puzzle mode is your preference you’ll find that you have to think a bit more for the best solution to different riddles.

Another mode is Infinity, and like the name infers, it has no time limit. The game only ends when there are no longer moves to play.

Finally, there is a Hot Seat mode that you can enjoy with other friends.

The cubes in the game are three dimensional and the board can be stacked up to three cubes high on most squares. The fireball helps to break through challenging areas with bigger impact than a single cube. Sometimes there are blockades that you must work around or burn with the fireball.

This short video trailer from the developers at HeroCraft show the game in action:

The user interface of this game is nothing short of beautiful and engaging. I really enjoyed playing this game and got caught up at times, which is not typical for me. While I have been exposed to a number of mobile games, I’m not an avid game player so I am convinced that this is something that can be quite addictive for just about anyone.

I played Cubix Dragon’s Lore long enough to island hop half way across the sea. I will admit that toward the end of game play I was looking for a little more challenge. However, I may have encountered new challenges in strategy sooner if I had saved my games instead of starting over from the beginning a couple of times. Progressing through the levels of the game did motivate and engage me so I would suggest saving your play and continuing to progress through the different levels.

There are plenty of levels to play as the game offers more than 100 of them! I was sufficiently hooked more than once for long periods of time trying to clear different boards of the game. The competitive games against the enemy and timed games do provide additional challenge at the higher levels. This game is definitely a thumbs up and a must play in my opinion. It will be one of the games that I return to when I have some time to spare and am looking to entertain myself.

Cubix Dragon’s Lore is available for $1.99 (USD) in Ovi Store; and there is also a free trial version that you can try before you buy.

Dilemma is a fun trivia game with a touch of adrenaline, available for free in Ovi Store, and compatible with Nokia smartphones with a touch-based interface. I tested it on my Nokia N8.

Game on

Dilemma at its core is a timed trivia game: answer questions quickly to score points. As you score more points the questions get harder and faster. The fun comes from rushing your brain, and Dilemma never dulls the rush by distracting your brain with complicated controls or inputs. Each dilemma (question) is presented with two possible answers. You touch the left or right option to decide.

As you think through the trivia question, a train is hurtling toward your character: answer quickly or you die. That’s the dilemma.

Simple controls keep your focus on the dilemmas.

Game on phone

When you’re deep into a mobile game it’s easy to forget that your game device is also your mobile phone. It’s probably your e-mail device, Twitter interface, and Facebook updater as well. Handling that interaction between game and multitasking mobile computer is another thing Agate Studio gets right with Dilemma. When I first installed the game, I was reading the opening screen and listening to the soundtrack when my N8 received an e-mail message from my Microsoft Exchange service; my N8 sounds a notification ping when that happens. Not only did Dilemma allow the notification to come through, it managed the hand-off with grace. The soundtrack on Dilemma faded out, I got my notification ping, then the soundtrack faded back in. Quite slick.

The hand-off is managed differently for an incoming call. In this case the soundtrack ends immediately, my screen switches to the phone mode (with caller ID), and then switches back to the game when I’m done with the call (or if I reject the call).

The only problem I had with Dilemma behaving well when suspended occurs if I lock my N8 while in a game. The game sometimes hangs when I do this. To be fair, I don’t know how much of this handoff is the result of great programming by Agate Studio and how much comes from a solid Symbian platform and development framework (the game was developed using Qt). All I know is the result is great.

Back to the game

Trivia games need fun questions that keep you challenged. Dilemma includes a clever mix of math puzzles, pattern recognition, and word play. Here’s a sample:

Simple math puzzles get more complicated as your level increases.

Pattern questions include how many of a shape or of a color.

Text questions can be straightforward ....

... or deliberately tricky. When you're in a hurry, scanning "coffee is cold" seems like a problem.

A little encouragement, and little harassment

Dilemma tells you immediately whether your answer was correct or not. Well, “tells you” is not adequately descriptive. The game heaps praise on you for correct answers, and gets a bit in your face for wrong ones.

Praise accompanies a correct answer.

Scorn and derision await your failures.

Dilemma adds a few additional twists to keep it interesting. Every once in a while it throws in a question for which either answer is correct. You can gain extra lives for your character by answering fast enough. And of course there’s a high score tally.

If you’re looking for a fun diversion with clever graphics and just enough adrenaline to keep it interesting, check out Dilemma for Nokia touch-enabled smartphones. The game is free in Ovi Store.

The game by Finland’s Rovio includes 60 levels of bird-flinging fun – which are divided into chapters that each have their own goals and challenges. If you’ve played one of the earlier versions of Angry Birds – is there anyone left who has not yet tried it? – you will recognize the supporting cast of birds that are available to you to do battle in the jungles of the Brazilian rainforest.

You play the game in landscape mode (it opens that way automatically), and the first 30 levels, in two sets of 15 stages, introduce a great twist to the game. It is your job to rescue other birds that are caged in a giant warehouse through a variety of complex and cumbersome contraptions that are certain to confound, but will still keep you coming back for more.

A couple of observations about the screenshot above – you can see the two sets of stages that are available when you first download the game. As usual, you will need to successfully complete the first set of 30 levels before you can unlock the next set of 30. Also – notice the dates within the picture … more levels are coming soon and throughout the year it appears. And, in this new one, you can earn Awards for all your hard work, too (here’s a hint: keep an eye out for pineapples!).

When you first begin the game, you will get a nice graphical overview of WHY the Angry Birds have migrated south of the border … As usual – no words – just great animation:

The game is visually stunning and self-explanatory, as you would expect – the ideas of the movie Rio seem to be well integrated in subtle ways. The warehouse level  – known as the “Smuggler’s Den” is dark and moody, with loads of random bits for the birds to smash in to – or off of …

And, like usual, you can’t go wrong with this game, that is, if you screw up a level, and fail, you can go back and try again. And again. Until you get it right.

In some recent play with the game at home, I was struggling to get through one of the levels in the Smuggler’s Den set – and I finally did it. At which point my teenage daughter asked if she could try. I handed her my Nokia N8, thinking ‘good luck’ and she promptly freed the captive birds in one shot. She smiled and let me know she had just demolished my previous high score for that level. I asked her how she did it – and this is the good part – she said “Domino Theory” adding, “You know ‘Ergo hoc, ergo propter hoc.‘” To which I said something slightly smarter than “Huh?” She’s been taking Latin in school, and she explained that this means “Therefore this, therefore because of this.” Somehow that explains Domino Theory, and why she is able to kick my butt at this game. If she says so.

Diversion done … back to the game. As you will see – and hear – when you play the game, the level of detail is really a treat. The sound effects include the usual bits associated with the various Angry Birds, but added now are the sounds of the jungle – and in the case of the level where you are working to rescue and save other birds, the sounds those birds make are fabulous. (If you listen closely, you may occasional hear one of the birds says “Pretty Bird.”)

If – and when – you manage to get through the first 30 levels … hang in there, you can do it … your hard work will be rewarded with a big golden (animated) trophy – and of course, it will unlock the next round of 30 levels for you to test your skills.

In the new levels the original, more destructive world of the Angry Birds seems to come back. In “Jungle Escape” you are not blowing away pigs … but rather some annoying, chattering ring-tailed monkeys. They sit there on assorted perches in the middle of the jungle just taunting you! They are a feisty bunch of monkeys – and watching them fall is quite satisfying. This set of levels seems to be a bit harder than the first round where you free the birds, but you do want a challenge, right?

Angry Birds Rio is available for $1.99 (USD) in Ovi Store. There is also a free version available to try – but trust me, you’re gonna want the full game.

And of course, if that isn’t enough, the new version of Angry Birds Seasons – just in time for Easter! – is available now in Ovi Store, too.

The Qt-based HDR Photo Camera app is a serious piece of photographic technology, and it’s priced accordingly. It sells for $9.99 on Ovi Store. But we can see the software appealing to anyone who is serious about making photos with their N8.

The name HDR stands for high dynamic range, which refers to a technique that can overcome an innate limitation found in virtually all cameras. No matter if they use film or a digital image sensor, most cameras are limited in their ability to record extremely dark and extremely bright areas in the same photograph. Thus, when shooting a sunlit scene, you can capture either details within the darkest shadows or details in the brightest areas, but not both.

A large collection of HDR photos, some of them quite stunning, can be seen at the Web site of something called Smashing Magazine. And there are more, and a complete tutorial in HDR, at a site called Stuck in Customs. These images show how the HDR technique can make cloudy skies look almost surreal in their texture while also showing the details of darker objects on the ground, for instance. HDR shots frequently show up in advertising, precisely because they are so eye-catching. And with digital cameras – or, now, a Nokia N8 smartphone – applying the HDR method is much easier; with film, a fair amount of darkroom manipulation was required.

A slightly more technical explanation of HDR: Suppose the scale of brightness in that sunlit scene ranges across a scale of 15 tonal steps, from 0 in the total black of a deep shadow to 15 in the total white of a woman’s white dress in the full sunlight. A camera’s light-capturing ability, however, might extend across only 10 steps, which means that it can capture only one extreme or the other, but not both at the same time.

The HDR technique manages to cover the full breadth of this wider range of tonal values by merging several images, each made at a different exposure. In the case of this app, three exposures – light, medium, and dark – are made of the subject and these are then “fused” together, a process that can take as much as 1 minute. This means, of course, that this app is not the one to use for shooting your pals at a party or making snaps of your child playing soccer or football. HDR essentially works only with static subjects such as landscapes, buildings, and street scenes.

If you look around the Web, you’ll find lots of examples of HDR photography. Many of the images are quite spectacular, with impossibly bright colors and remarkable tonal ranges. From what we could tell, HDR Photo Camera doesn’t reach the extreme heights of what’s possible in HDR photography, but it does a superb job considering it’s running on a smartphone, not a powerful desktop computer working on images shot with a professional camera rig.

Here, for example, is a shot we made with the app (that’s our foot in the foreground):

And here are the three separate exposures that the software fused to make this HDR photo. The first one captures some detail in the TV screen at the far left while the next two let that screen go completely black and reveal more detail in what’s visible through the window at far right.

More examples of photos made with this HDR software on an N8 can be seen at the Web site of the developer, Intellsys, a Brasov, Romania-based company. As you’ll see, the app can produce images that look slightly otherwordly, with skies that are unnaturally dark and color palettes that are too soft and grayish. Contrast can easily be lost, making the images look a bit dull. Such results just show that HDR is not magic, and it is certainly not be the best way to shoot every photo.

Moreover, obtaining the optimum results may require some adjusting of exposures and other parameters. And HDR Photo Camera offers a fair number knobs to twiddle, so to speak, if that’s your thing. Its Settings menu lets you adjust exposure times, image quality, and three advanced settings: contrast, saturation, and “exposedness.” We admit, we did not try out all of these to see what effect they have on final images, but the app’s Help screen, available by tapping on the icon showing two gears, is fairly informative, as are Intellsys’ support pages on the Web.

Some things to think about: Because this app shoots three photos and, in effect, merges them into one, it’s critical that the camera is not moved during the initial shooting. Alas, the N8 does not have a tripod mount, but we found that holding the camera as still as possible –  or even better, bracing our elbows against our legs, while sitting, or against a wall or table – produced good photos nonetheless.  In a night-shooting situation, though, hand-held HDR photography might be a challenge. (Perhaps, it occurs to us, one could strap the camera’s flat body to a standard tripod with a good-sized rubber band.)

Here, for fun, is another HDR image we shot with our N8:

Granted, it’s not the most exciting photo ever made, but notice that the sky shows some late-in-the-day color and that there is lots of detail in the parking areas to the right. Now, check out the normal, undoctored photo that the N8 makes of this same scene, which lacks those details:

In this case, we might actually choose the “straight” photo as the one that captures the light of the moment most accurately. But chances are, with some tweaking of the HDR app’s controls, we’d be able to produce an even better HDR image than the one we show here, which we made in a jiffy using the app’s normal settings.

Be aware that this app does soak up CPU cycles in your phone, and memory, too. To keep it from choking the N8, Intellsys limits the size of photos it can handle – but only a little. The firm also recommends shutting down other apps in the phone while engaging in HDR processing. And it offers the option of handing off the three preliminary images for fusing on a desktop PC, with more processing oomph. This requires a pieces of software that the company has said it will make available in early 2011 – any minute now, in other words. This approach strikes us a good idea for handling the CPU-intensive image-fusing process, although it does mean you can’t see the results until you get home from shooting out there in the big bad world.

There you have it, HDR Photo Camera, a piece of software that will keep your N8 seriously busy but also producing some striking images that are not possible otherwise. If you’ve got any interest in photography, this is definitely an app you’ll want to try out. (In the name of completeness, we must note that another app recently reviewed in this blog – Harald Meyer’s Camera Pro for N8 – also includes HDR functionality in its broad menu of features.)

HDR Photo Camera is available in Ovi Store for $9.99 (USD).

Molome is a lovely, Qt-based photo-sharing application that is exclusive to Nokia’s new Symbian and S60 5.0 devices, and comes from someone you may have heard of before, Sittiphol Phanvilai.

That’s right, Sittiphol is pretty well known to us old timers, especially those of us who owned the very popular Nokia N95 back in the day.

Sittiphol, and HLP International Inc, a highly talented group of developers have been working hard behind the scenes on Molome for sometime now, and having only released the app to Ovi Store on 4 April, it has already seen almost 5,000 downloads! Impressive work for a small company, eh?

So what does this application do, I hear you ask? Well, if you are familiar with the iPhone application called Instagram, then this is pretty much what you will find in Molome, but for Symbian. In fact, I would go so far as to say it’s actually going to be much better than Instagram, as I have some great information on what new users of Molome can expect in the near future when the app is updated. More on that, after my review … but first, check out this cool stop-motion video about Molome shot on a Nokia N8:

As mentioned earlier, Molome is a application built with Nokia’s Qt, which not only brings a very smooth experience to this app, its speed, and performance is also impressive.

Once installed on your Nokia smartphone, its very easy to set up. Simply create your free account, then connect Molome to your social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and then your ready to start shooting photos. Click the “Share” button within the app to take a picture using your phone’s camera – you will have the choice of toggling the flash On/Off, as well as using auto focus or macro settings.

Once you take that perfect shot, you can then start adding a variety of filters to your photos within Molome (including color options, sepia tones, borders, the look of old paper or slide film and more – 16 in all for now), then upload quickly to your Molome online account, which will then also share your photo to your social networks, it’s a simple as that. But, it’s not just about Sharing here, Molome extends your social media networks, and even offers you the chance to be awarded “Badges” for your photo uploads.

Let me show you what Molome looks like. The screenshot below displays your Timeline.

As you can see, you are presented with a variety of photos from all the users you choose to follow.  That’s right, you can follow your friends and family and see what photos they upload to Molome. But not just that, you can comment on those photos, and “Love” them too.

From the Options found along the bottom of the screen within Molome, moving right, the next screen shows you the Most popular photos. These are ranked in popularity from the amount of “Loves” and Comments.

Next up is an Option which is not yet available in this early version, its called “Notifications”.  This option will be added very soon, and will pretty much do as the title says, notify you of any activity related to any of your photos.

Profiles, is the next section, and this by default shows your own profile, indicating the amount of friends, and family following you, but also how many people you follow too. It also shows you how many photos you have uploaded with Molome.

It’s within Profiles where you can search for other users by their usernames, and once Molome has found someone you can then choose to follow them.

You will notice that one of my photos within Molome above is on its side.  As mentioned earlier, there are many improvements coming to Molome, and one of which is Auto-Rotate, this means that when you shoot a photo in Physical Landscape, once it is uploaded Molome will rotate your photo so it is displayed correctly.

Other improvements to come soon are being able to add your own personal Avatar to your profile, new UI improvements, and of course those notifications.

As you can see from the screenshot above, this is Settings which is available via Options.  All there is right now is an option to clear cache, and to toggle the camera shutter sound to On or Off.

New settings to be added here soon will be the option to store photos to Mass Storage, as at the moment they are stored on Phone Memory.

I had the pleasure of chatting with the developer, Sittiphol, this past weekend and he gave me some great insights into Molome, including how the name was chosen. Here’s what Sittiphol had to say:

“MOLOME project was first started by me, Sittiphol, from the demand of myself to apply the world best camera phone, Nokia N8, to take the photo, edit in “Style” in very short time and share it on Twitter/Facebook instantly. However, I still couldn’t find any application that could do the task on Symbian yet. So… I decided to do it myself and MOLOME project has begun from that time on.

Why MOLOME? … The day our team made the discussion about the name, we got so many words but the keys are “Mobile”, “Follow Me” and “Lomo Style”. So at last those words combined to “MOLOME” which had the feeling of fun around.

The logo of MOLOME is the animal that has cool adaptable eyes like an “owl” … The owl is just like a feature on MOLOME which is able to change your normal image into a “Styling” image and also be able to share it to popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook. If the image is cool enough, we will promote it to the front page of molo.me website as well.

For effect filters, there are now 16 filters available in MOLOME, each filter make the total different feeling. It is now your time to choose the best one to make your image cool by “single touch”!”

Molome is available as a free download in Ovi Store.

How do you Molome? Share your ideas in the Comments section below.

About the guest blogger

My name is Micky Aldridge, aka @Mickyfin on Twitter, you may know me from Nokiausers where I’m Editor-in-Chief, and Owner of NokiaDNA.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @nokiausers and @NokiaDNA too.

Well, OK, maybe it isn’t time to break out in to song just yet, but with the free CardStar app running on my Nokia smartphone – I have been using it every chance I get on my Nokia N8 – I can say goodbye to all of those pesky, annoying, hard-to-find, cluttering-up-my-wallet loyalty program cards once and for all. And, this doesn’t mean I won’t be using those cards and enjoying the benefits of membership – oh no! Rather, it means I will let CardStar do all of the heavy lifting for me. Let me explain.

CardStar on your Nokia gives you an easy way to take all of the information that is part of various loyalty (membership or rewards) programs, and place those details right in to the app for future use, such as at the grocery store, or pharmacy.

This Qt-based app is easy to set up  – you begin by selecting the merchant you want to add to your list (press the + symbol that is in the center along the bottom line of the app). You will see a list of recognized merchants, as well as a search option to find names. If it is not found, you can add in new names and details.

Then, you simply enter the code number (or membership number) found along the bottom of any of the bar codes on your membership cards, and Save the information.

From there, the app will generate an image of the barcode that matches corresponds to that merchant’s membership information, as you can see below.

Additionally, as you can see, the app also displays other information about the merchant selected, and will also show you any current deals/specials that may be available from that store.

But does it work? It sure does!

OK, I admit, I was a bit skeptical when I first took the app on a shopping trip with me. I intentionally left the little collection of plastic key fob cards behind – if the app couldn’t cut it, I’d be out of luck. So, at the check out, I took out my Nokia N8, showed the barcode for the merchant to the cashier – he gave me a slightly puzzled look – and then scanned the code right from my phone’s screen! Presto! It worked. And the savings were mine, all mine.

I have subsequently been using the CardStar app at the grocery store, and elsewhere – anywhere I can. And each time it has been easy as pie.

This is officially one of those apps that I will not stop using. It does exactly what is promised, and it has already made both my wallet and keyring substantially lighter! Thank you, CardStar.

CardStar is free to download in Ovi Store, and it will repay you in ways you can only begin to imagine.

Every so often, an application comes along that grabs the imagination. It doesn’t necessarily have to do something totally new, it doesn’t actually have to do something better. It simply has to make you stop and think to appreciate its content by the manner of its display.

And this is where Headlines comes in. Most people are aware of the ‘geeky’ concept of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and feed readers, but don’t go away just yet … we promise this is good stuff – Headlines by Mind-Flip aims to get away from entering long RSS addresses and scrolling through long, boring textual headlines. The Headlines app, while limited in raw functionality, brings you plenty of eye candy and user-friendliness.

Typically, a RSS news item from a site might comprise a headline, a bit of body text (usually the opening paragraph of the full story) and a link to an appropriate small image. Rather than have all your feeds and items listed chronologically, as is traditional with a bare bones feed reader, Headlines (as the name suggests) just displays the titles (headlines) and images, laying them out in a side-scrolling ‘magazine’ format.

This video from the developers shows Headlines in action:

The idea is that you can scroll left to right to see more headlines from your chosen feed, and up and down to scroll to other news feeds. And you know what? It all works rather well – it’s an innovative way to see at a glance what’s happening in the world (or in your chosen sphere of information) and to be able to browse through the initial text behind each headline. Once in the story view, left and right icons let you move quickly between stories from the same feed.

You’ll notice when you first start Headlines that the gathering of feeds and the downloading of story thumbnail graphics takes (up to) a few tens of seconds – you obviously don’t want this delay every time you return to the application and want to refresh your chosen news feeds. Headlines cleverly auto-refreshes these in the background, even waiting for a moment when you’re not using your phone so that its activity doesn’t slow down or interfere with anything else you’re doing. The basic auto-refresh period is a simple setting, as shown here, but in addition to waiting an extra short period for the phone to be idle, Headlines also delays a refresh while a story’s detail view is in the ‘foreground’, in case you left it there so as to remember to read it or follow it later. Clever stuff.

All of which sounds idyllic, but there are some significant caveats to this eye candy vision of RSS heaven, each of which needs to be fully understood. Firstly, and most significantly, RSS news feeds aren’t some perfectly curated affair – what goes into a site’s RSS feed is entirely up to the feed’s owner. Some put in just a bare headline and two lines of text, others go the whole hog, with complete articles posted to the feed, complete with original images. And everything in between. Headlines comes pre-populated with a couple of feeds and has a dozen more listed behind a ‘Recommended’ pane, and I gather there has been some effort made to find feeds that include a sensible amount of detail and compatible imagery – but there will still be some experimentation required at your end.

Secondly, going along with the ‘all RSS feeds aren’t created equal’ theme, many will resolve to a high bandwidth desktop site. In other words, you’ll read the first paragraph of a story and want to read more. At this point, you’re utterly dependent on the original address of the story on the web and the intelligence (or otherwise) of the web server involved. Headlines launches your mobile Web browser and you’re possibly sent into a thirty second wait while the page is downloaded and rendered. It’s certainly not Headlines’ fault, but it’s very much something to be aware of.

Thirdly, Headlines is limited to just three RSS feeds. Yep, just three. I’d love to say that this is by design, in that you’re encouraged to find just the three best news sources for your own interests and then treat Headlines as a quick way to scan right across these, without getting distracted by a dozen other sources – but that would be untrue. The current limit is a technical one (it’s complicated and memory-related) and the developer is working on finding a solution. As a way to visually scan my top three feeds, I still found Headlines to fulfil its remit, but every user, at some point, is going to want to browse a fourth, or fifth, and so on.

Finally, there’s no way, at present, to enter new feed addresses. Headlines uses a feed directory, hosted at ‘RSS Mountain’ and this will already know the magic runes for most RSS sources you might want to enter, but again there will come a time when it would be handy to plug in an address for a specialist (or very new) feed – here’s hoping this feature can be added in a future version too.

I’ve been quite impressed by the way I can switch to Headlines at any point and know that the content is bang up to date (remember, it’s all refreshed in the background, as long as you keep the application running). I can quickly scan headlines (pun intended) both in terms of text and images – the usual cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words comes to mind. In thirty seconds, I can scroll left, right, up and down and get an overview of what’s happening in the world. With three minutes to spare, I can delve into the detail view and then tap through each story summary in turn, making my overview a lot more detailed.

Headlines certainly isn’t perfect and the variations in RSS feed quality are often also a problem, but with a slicker application promised (I was reviewing v1.1.0) and better curation of the ‘Recommended’ feed list in the future, I’m optimistic that this is a tool that’s going to be popular.

Headlines is available for $0.99 (USD) in Ovi Store.

About the Guest Blogger

Steve Litchfield is one of the editors at All About Symbian, and the creator of The Phones Show. You can follow him on Twitter @stevelitchfield.

The lack of Help text, however, will unfortunately leave many users shaking their heads and fists more frequently than their phones. The first screen below is explanatory, but does leave room for guessing.

Upon starting the app, users are prompted to enter a code to start sharing pictures with their contacts. It is never explained what this code does or why it’s necessary, but this little code is the foundation upon which ShakePic operates. In order to share your images successfully with a friend, both of you must have the free ShakePic app running on your phones using the same code. Otherwise, you can shake your phone until your arm is ready to fall off, yet your BFF will never get that cute picture you just took of your cat.

Assuming you and your friends have all figured out that whole code thing, selecting photos to share is straightforward. Browse through your gallery – six images at a time – and simply click on those you wish to send. ShakePic will then add these images to a send list, and you’re then only a shake away from sharing them with another ShakePic user.

Some users will likely find the browsing process more cumbersome than it needs to be. It takes a fair amount of time and patience to poke through a gallery with hundreds of images six at a time. Moving from one screen of six to another takes a few seconds each instance, and discovering a faster way of doing this proved impossible. Again, some instructions would be helpful here.

This short video demo from the developers shows the app in action on two of Nokia’s new Symbian devices, and does make the action quite clear:

Despite its shortcomings, ShakePic remains a fun and useful app that simplifies the process of sharing images between friends. It’s just a shame we can’t use it to shake out some help text as well.

Additional background about this Qt-based app is on a project site from the developers from The Idea Box.

ShakePic is free to download from Ovi Store. OR, if you want to try something a little different, The Idea Box site lists the following option, which we thought was handy: Install a code reader (search for ‘QR reader’ in Ovi Store) and scan the code below with your QR reader app to download ShakePic directly from Ovi Store:

With Colorizit you can perform this same kind of magic on your own photos stored in a touchscreen Nokia device. It’s easy, too: In essence, you just use your finger as a paintbrush to color the portions of the image you want to see that way. Indeed, Colorizit by Gamelion (which is part of BLStream)is as clever and well-designed a mobile app as we’ve seen. And it’s not expensive, either: just $0.99 (USD) in Ovi Store.

Before we dig into the details of the app, let’s take a quick look at the results one can achieve with it. First, we loaded this full-color image into the program, a photo we took recently out on the beach, right in front of our winter home:

No, it’s not true, we made that up! Actually, this image is included in the Nokia N8 smartphone as one of several wallpaper images. Pretty neat, huh?

Next, we loaded the image into Colorizit, which automatically strips out colors and reduces the image to black-and-white, or monochrome:

Now, using our index finger, we began to selectively restore the original orange color of the boat, like so:

And here, after some more “painting,” is the final result.

Not bad, though you can see we were sloppy with the top edge of the boat, where our painting finger wandered off into the sand. Not to worry, though, as we’re about to explain.

We mentioned earlier that Colorizit is well-designed, and it is – except for one missing item, which we’ll get to. To help you “paint” the finer details of an image with your blunt fingertip, for instance, you can tap on the paintbrush icon. (It will be in either the upper-right or lower-right corner of the touchscreen, depending on how you’re holding your phone.) With the first tap, this icon will change to a pair of arrows crossed at right angles. This means you now can use your finger to move the current image back and forth and up and down across the screen, for access to its full area.

Tapping the dual-arrow icon will make a magnifying glass will appear and now, by dragging your fingertip diagonally across the screen, you’ll see the image get larger or smaller, depending on the direction of your finger. With a combination of moving and scaling the image this way, you’ll be able to get to any part of the image and have enough precision to color just the details you want. This kind of zooming in is also helpful for getting the edges of objects done properly, too.

If you still find your coloring a bit sloppy, you have two choices to fix it. The icon that shows a circular arrow is what’s normally called an undo button, and tapping it, as you might expect, removes the last coloring stroke you made. You can make this same move again and again, but only for a limited number of times – less than a dozen, anyway. Your other option is to first make sure the colored-circle icon – next to the one that shows an overlapping pair of masks – appears in black-and-white. (Just tap it and it will toggle back and forth.) And now, you can use your finger as an eraser, wiping colors clean off the screen.

That mask icon is a puzzler – to us, at least. Activating it with a finger tap makes your finger paint in a translucent red color. Another tap and any red area of the image changes to the image’s original colors, whatever they happened to be. Our guess is that this function is intended to help you work on images where the original colors are very pale and therefore difficult to see.

Finally, there’s an icon that reveals a set of four circular sub-icons that are graded as to opaqueness. These control the density of the color your finger makes as you slide it across your image. The solid white circle is full intensity while the small, cross-hatched circle paints a more translucent hue.

At least, that’s what we surmise about these icons. The one thing missing in this app – unless we somehow missed it ourselves – is a set of instructions on how to use the program. There’s no sign of that. Yet, the absence of a help screen probably won’t matter to most people. The program is quite simple and, it appears, fairly self-explanatory. Also missing, if we might offer our own suggestion for an improvement, is the ability to color parts of an image in a new hue, different from the ones in the original. This does not seem to be possible, and by the same token, you can’t load a monochrome image – some of us still make those! – and colorize it in any way. We tried, but no luck.

Finished Colorizit images can be saved to the phone’s memory or, with a click of the appropriate icons inside Colorizit itself, posted via data connection to either your Facebook or Flickr pages as a way to share the work with friends and the public.

And there you have it, Colorizit, the app that erases all colors and then restores them where you want. We imagine most people, experienced photographers or not, could have a good deal of fun with this program.

Oh, and before we forget (!),to use this software, you must have Nokia’s Qt library installed on your phone. If you don’t have Qt, the Colorizit install file will automatically get it for you – a one-time event – but beware: Because Qt is a sizeable chunk of software – more than 10MB – you’ll probably want to have it download via your phone’s WiFi connection, not your more-costly cellular data connection. Chances are, though, Qt already is on your device, especially if you’ve been acquiring many new apps from Ovi Store over the past few months.

Colorizit is available for $0.99 (USD) in Ovi Store.

For more information about the company behind this app, take a look at this short video interview with the CEO of BLStream, Anton Gauffin where he talks about their new Nokia application, ShutterPro, which will extend the functionality of the camera built in to your Nokia smartphone such as extended digital zoom as well as various photo filters – coming soon to Ovi Store. We’ll keep you posted!