Video Preview Of My'Sound Beta 3

My'Sound Beta 3 Released for Public!

Wondering how i spent my prize money from the photo competition? Well i donated a small sum to a French Developer known as R4p43l who has been working on a promising new music player called My'Sound! I got an early preview of Beta 2 which was still for donators only, and frankly speaking i was rather disappointed with the application.

After installing it i was just bursting with excitement, only to be greeted by fonts that look like little boxes in the application, like this "E[][][][][]". First thing i did was contact the developer, R4ph43l of course, but he seemed puzzled as hell and denied it was a problem with his application.

Ahh, that's when i realised R4ph43l didn't take into consideration that APAC region phones use APAC fonts with Chinese support, a little different from the Euro region fonts. I'd like to thank bidboy from Symbian Freak for being so helpful and sending me a copy of the Euro fonts and CK for downloading them. What i did was route them with using FontRouter LT to replace the default fonts and poof! My'Sound worked just fine.

Still, compared to the Hype Symbian Freak created about this application, this application will disappoint some users. First of all, even after i talked to R4ph43l about this problem and sent him a copy of the APAC fonts it seems he still hasn't solved the fonts problem in Beta 3. Users with APAC phones of APAC fonts will have the "[][][][][][]" box problem.

Secondly,  it seems as though this "Public" version is no full version. Once you open the application it will pop up asking for a full licence code. Even for donators like me my old code does not work and i had to reactivate my IMEI. Not a problem thanks to R4ph43l's easy reactivation method available on his web site. The trial version does not allow : Mood, Folders, Shake-Me!, Themes, Disable red key and 10s mode. R4ph43l expects a donation of no less than 3€ for a complete version.

The application is rather basic i would say, and you need to have the album art JPEGs ready if you want it to look good. My'Sound, supposedly focused on music itself isn't even able to read the album art embedded in all my music files.  JPEGs of the album art need to be put in the same folder as the song albums for My'Sound to pick them up, a rather troublesome task for users who have their entire song collection chucked on their phones.

The Shake-Me! function is more for showing of than being practical considering it is so sensitive. A slight tilt of the phone changes the tracks and in the real world the only time you'll keep your N95 in a perfectly horizontal manner is when it's on the table. I would take Samir's ShakeMe application and Nokia's built in music player any day of the year compared to My'Sound if i wanted to "shake-to-change" tracks practically.

On a more positive note, i really like the fact that R4ph43l has made several improvements to Beta 3. For instance in beta 2 My'Sound was only able to scan a predefined number of folders in the phone. If you had your music elsewhere in personal folders the application wouldn't be able to pick it up. R4ph43l fixed this problem by incorperating a simple file browser into beta 3 so you can manually select and play music from your personal folders.

My'Sound also has neat little features like gorgeous themes, MoodMe functions, crossfading (which i would really like to see in Nokia's default music player), sleep mode and several other little bells and whistles that make it a promising music player if R4ph43l fixes most of the bugs. It would also be nice if he could add multimedia keys support for devices such as the N95 and N96.

In a nutshell My'Sound isn't really what i expected but there is a promising future for this application. Many improvements need to be made but i'd say this french developer has made a good start to changing the way we look at mobile music players. The thing i like most about My'Sound - .wma support!

Do try out this Python written music player, click on the link below to download.

My'Sound Beta 3 by R4ph43l

..and why not visit R4ph43l's website for more information.

 

Here are more screenshots taken from my phone, there are two other theme, one green and one blue but i did not include them in the screenshots.

The ONE - Long Awaited N-gage Game Released

For those of you who have been waiting month after month for this game, wait no more!
without a doubt this is one of the most eagerly anticipated N-gage game ever since the new generation of N-gage was announced, and that was was back last year. Just update your N-gage on your compatible device and ther you will see it.
I'm downloading the game as i speak, so comments will come later.




A few minutes later..............

Ok i have finished installing the game. Just clicking "Start game" and looking at the intros flooded my head with images and memories of combat game si used to play as a kid.
King Of Fighters, Mortal Combat, Street Fighter, and some PS2 games like Tekken, suddenly i have to summon up my brain and fingers to get ready for a lot of action - again... so i hoped...

...and The ONE certainly did not disappoint. Graphics are pretty good, but not as good as it could have been with the processing power of Nseries phones these days. Still, it's a pretty good job, and i would say the line between console gaming and gaming on Nseries devices is really starting to blur with this game. The gaming experience is absolutely phenomenal.
The gameplay is pretty cool too, no superpowers or range attacks, all hand to hand combat. So if you played Tekken before you'll feel right at home with this ONE.
Extra care has been taken to enhance the feel and experience of hand to hand combat. For instance the screen shakes when you take a hard hit. Shadows, good 3D camera action and snapshot feature if you want to caoture the moment you kick the AI's ass in style, dust when you finally pound him down,
all these little feaures really has taken the N-gage gaming to a whole new level, a level users expected in the first place!

Good job with this one Nokia, i hope i will stumble across more exciting features of this game, but even now i'm already urging to grab my credit card and buy this ONE.
Sweet dreams for me tonight!~

Zi, signing off.

Why you should think before you act - Lightsaber mishap

Hey guys, i apologise for the lack of presence lately, as this will be the final hurdle for me to cross in my high school days. Big, no wait, HUGE exam coming up next month so blogging isn't really my priority at the moment.
Anyway, the amount of unnecessary applications for both the iPhone and the Nseries phone, the N95 in particular have been blooming like mad the past few months. Each developer fanboy wants to develop something just for fun as if to say "haha! can the iPhone do this?" and vice versa.
Look, for the N95 we have applications like nGun, nWhip, WaterBox, LightSaber which do nothing more than make a few cool sounds by detecting movements with the accelerometer. The iPhone fairs no better, with applications like I Am Rich (basically it's just a wallpaper of a Ruby) going on the Apple app store selling for USD999.99. Call me crazy but i can't imagine how Apple would allow something as rediculous as this to be on their app store, c'mon! Who is going to pay that much just to have a red dot on his iPhone?!!?
Coming back to our topic, you lot should really be careful how you play around with these fun but useless applications, particularly the ones which utilise the accelerometer of either phone.
I have heard several stories of N95 users who end up throwing their beloved N95s on hard concrete after a few drinks in the bar because they were flinging the lightsaber around like crazy...but i've never actually seen it.
Well, here's a video of something similar happening while a couple decided to have some fun with the lightsaber.
You perverts, that's not what i meant!

Best iPhone Comparison - ever!

Unless you've been living under a rock the past few weeks, you'd know that Apple released a "new iPhone" with added 3G support. Essentially it's the same iPhone with added 3G support, but still, no MMS, same crappy camera, no flash, no video recording, no copy/paste function, no changeable battery.... and so many more. -probably not even worth wasting the space in this post to list it all out.

Let's have a look at the best iPhone 3G comparison out there, courtesy of kylepsp from N95users.

I think even a stone's texture feels better than the iPhone's touchscreen.. but nah, i'll let Steve have this one. ;D

Oh wait there is good news though, you can get a white edition of the iPhone 3G for only a hundred dollars more! :D

DontTouch and AlertMe released (nAlertMe clones)

Samir Oueldi, a highly acclaimed Symbian developer stole the limelight last month, when he announced his new website aikonlab dedicated to the development and testing of revolutionary symbian s60 applications. Along with the release of his website, Samir posted 2 videos of his new concepts, boldly publishing a release date at the end of the videos. Supposedly released at 13th september, his applications Handwave and nAlertMe instantly became subject of symbian and Nokia discussions throughout the world, and excited pretty much every Nseries user out there. 2 days after that, the added subject of "opening in a few hours" on Samir's new website got users even more excited, and practically checking his website very hour.

...but after 3 grueling long weeks, i think the world is tired of waiting for Samir. Perhaps Handwave was just a cheap gimmick done using a bluetooth keyboard, to survey the acceptance of such an application, perhaps Samir still hasn't gotten over his divorce, perhaps Samir just needs more time to code the programs? We will never know. But one thing is certain, users out there have gotten so sick and tired of Samir's delays that they have literally taken matters into their own hands and started coding applications that mimic Samir's concept.

I'm proud to announce AlertMe by Ahmed Yildrim(a.k.a. Mclightning) and DontTouch by zoellner86. Both applications are theft alarms that utilise the built in accelerometer of the N95 and N82, much like Samir's concept. Basically the phone records a set position by taking in data from the accelerometer. When the phone is moved, or disturbed by even the slightest movement, the accelerometer will detect the change and immediately trigger an alarm. The thing i absolutely love about both apps is the ability to run these applications in the background with the keypad locked. Not only does this give you more time in an event of a phone theft, it also "child-proofs" your phone from unwanted itchy fingers. Well enough chit-chat, here are the applications, and what the developers had to say:

1.AlertMe by Ahmed Yildrim (Mclightning)

Mclightning: As u can know we wait so long time for nAlertMe and i get bored of this. i created an app. like nAlertMe 3 days ago and i wrote a topic to get help about making sis file from py files.then today i solved how to make sis from python files and thanks JimmPoo and pocketsly for helps.

How To use:

• First of all you need to save the position of the phone from the "Save Pos." menu

• Then when you press start button it will start the protection
  if phone moves it will start to alarming

• You can change the sensitivity from the menu by writing a number between 0 and 10.but Please dont write numbers lower than 5.write 10 for low sensitivity. 5 is default

My personal opinion: This came before DontTouch, so it is a little unstable, most importantly AlertMe is overly sensitive.

2.DontTouch by zoellner86

Zoellner86: 4 People who can never wait for Samir's nAlertMe,..
This is my try to make a "clone".
U can feel free 2 use it.
Ahmet YILDIRIM (AlertMe) was quicker than me, but i think my one is ok too.
u need MegaPyModulePack and PyS60
have fun.

How To Use?

• Set sensitivity by clicking "Sens"
• Press start and place phone in desired position
• Countdown will start and initiate the alarm

  

My personal opinion: This was just released today and is a much more stable version. I'm also digging this background image. I highly recommend you try this one.

Additional installation notes:

• Before you install anything, remove RDaccelerometer and axyz (if you have them) from the app manager
• Install Megapymodule pack 1.4.1. This is very important!! If you have v1.4.2 installed, uninstall that version and install this one instead.
• After those preperations, you can now install either AlertMe or DontTouch to phone memory.

Download Links

**Update: AlertMe v2.0 (Improved source code, collaboration of the two developers, password protection added. Default password is "0")

AlertMe v1.5

DontTouch v1.0

MMpack 1.4.1

Nokia 5800 official video and interactive demos galore!

Here's the link to the Interactive demo

...and here are the videos, have fun!