Contrary to popular belief I’m not dead

Posted by Lester Madden under Augmented Reality, Smartphones, Software, Symbian, Travel

I left Symbian at the end of August and have had a nice relaxing September at home. I haven’t been up too much, other than catching up on a few xBox titles I missed out on.

New Nokia Devices, E72 & 5530 XpressMusic

Posted by Lester Madden under General, Smartphones, Software

Most of you will know that I love both my Nokia 5800 and my Nokia E71. I’m torn between them in a love triangle, I love the touch screen but I love the flexibility of a keyboard. The N97 will partly end my woes as I’ll have touch screen device with a keyboard. But it will only make me yearn for device with touch, keyboard, and HD screen. (a projector wouldn’t go amiss either) Nether-the-less it will keep me happy for a while.

In the meantime Nokia have announced a few other devices based on S60 5th Edition. (Symbian)
The E72 (click here for a review) which is an updated of the highly successful E71 and the 5530 XpressMusic (click here for a review) which is a 5800 clone.

Nokia E72

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

Dating Over Skype

Posted by Lester Madden under Skype, Software

Well that’s Easter over. I hope your break was better than mine. I had one of those ‘nothing you do is right’ and ‘ it’s your fault’ type of weekends, so I’m almost happy to be back at work.

3D Photo Browser For The Nokia 5800

Posted by Lester Madden under Smartphones, Software, Symbian

Do you ever get one of those days were you want to scream and kick your PC to pieces? Yesterday my laptop was doing the strangest things. When I tried to send an email I could type anywhere except inside the message area. I could write in the subject field, the email address field or any other application, but when I clicked into the message area text refused to be accepted.

Cooliris: Meet Your Browser’s New Best Friend

Posted by Lester Madden under Smartphones, Software

It’s not often I get excited about browser plug-ins (or an iPhone app) but Cooliris rocks.
Cooliris provides a lightning fast cinematic way to view images and video and more.

Augumented Reality Demo For Nokia Devices

Posted by Lester Madden under Augmented Reality, Smartphones, Software, Symbian

When I left school I wanted to write computer games. The problem was couldn’t draw so my skills in the computer gaming world were somewhat limited. So I ended up doing systems programming which didn’t require any game development skills, just good old ODBC to suck data out a database somewhere and display it in a form. I still shed the odd tear at what could have been but I am content with playing games and keeping up to date with future gaming technology.

Blurry Eyed And Street Map

Posted by Lester Madden under General, Software

It’s been a while since I blogged. Not because I have forgotten or been stumped for words recently, but I had laser vision correction surgery last weekend and my focusing has not been that great. It’s normal apparently, it takes around a week for the vision to settle down.  It’s getting better but still hard to focus on the screen.

Augmented Reality

Posted by Lester Madden under Augmented Reality, General, Software

Imagine you are walking down the street and feeling hungry. Wouldn’t it be great if you could take out your trusty smartphone, point the camera at a restaurant and have the menu appear on your phone?

A Real ShakerRacer

Posted by Lester Madden under General, Software, Symbian

A nice relaxing weekend is almost over. Almost because I have today (Monday) off as holiday, so I’m still relaxing. Yesterday I went to see Tina Turner in concert at the O2 in London. I’m not really a fan, but it was very entertaining.

Someone sent me an SMS to ask if I enjoyed the show. The only problem was they sent it to my house phone not my mobile. In the UK that means your phone rings every 30 minutes until you pick it up and listen to the full message. 12:30am the first call started, by the time we located the phone it hung up. 1:00am we got the next one, I finally answered the call at 1:30am only to be greeted with an electronic voice asking me if I enjoyed the show. I’m not sure who sent me the message but in the words of Mr T. I pity the fool.

While is seems like a long time off, especially if you are a delegate, but the Smartphone show is only 7 months away. That means that it’s time to start planning what’s going to be at the show. Last year we launched Mobile DevFest to bring back developers to the show and had an amazing event. This year we want to make it even bigger and better for developers, so if you have any killer ideas that you would like to see, feel free to let me know.

Last year the central attraction of the Mobile DevFest was ShakerRacer. Control a radio controlled car over BlueTooth from a Nokia N95 using the accelerometer API. As you see from the photo below we had a huge race circuit to race the car around.

I found a real version of ShakerRacer where a couple of university students put a BlueTooth module in to real car for their BSc. It’s the daddy of ShakerRacers, the only shame is they didn’t thrash the car in the video, but knowing how hard it was to control the mini version that was probably a wise move.

From closed to open

Posted by Lester Madden under General, Software, Symbian

Wow has it really been that long since I last posted? Where has all the time gone?

What have I been up to since I last blogged, well I started working for Symbian who ship the OS for the worlds leading smartphones. If you’re using a Nokia device then chances are you using Symbian OS. My job is to get 3^rd party developers and device developers to build using our OS. Yes that right I have entered the exciting world of marketing.