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Posts Tagged ‘beta’

Nokia Beta Labs goes into beta, by beta’ring itself over its betas

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

beta

The Finish phone maker’s experimental site for offering up their latest and greatest applications has just gone into a beta rollout of itself.  Initially we weren’t going to write this up as a news piece, but the more and more we thought about it the more and more we chuckled to ourselves over the irony of it all.

The new site to be found at http://new.betalabs.nokia.com/ and comes across much more friendly in terms of navigation, along with being laid out better for all and sundry.  It does stand out over their previous site, seen at http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/, which was OKAY in itself, but this new version has a lot more going for it.

In the worlds of Nokia – ‘This is the new Beta Labs service, trialled as a beta through itself. The purpose of Beta Labs is to provide Nokia beta software for customers, receive feedback and so make them better – together’.

The language of which just made us chuckle no end. Exactly how many uses of the word ‘beta’ can you get into a sentence, before the message gets across?

So, we had some fun ourselves.  The other headlines we considered were –

‘Master Beta of website gets a hand off’

‘Beta of Beta site gets Beta’d’

‘Better Beta of Beta, Beta’s for Beta apps’

And

‘Beta Beta Beta site has Beta of Betas to be Beta’d’

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Posted in Mobile Applications, nokia | Comments

New mobile BBC iPlayer hits beta

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

A blog post has appeared on the BBC informing of a new iPlayer mobile website in beta trials, plus support for new phones.

Posted by Richard Titus, the new Future Media Controller, Audio & Music and Mobile goes on to highlight some interesting new developments.

We’re probably all well aware the iPhone was the first to be bestowed with access to the iPlayer, then the Nokia 96 back in October and now N85 too.

What some might not be aware is that the new iPlayer portal is now available for the Samsung Omnia and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. The Sony Ericsson C905 is also being geared up for access to the site by the end of next week, with compatibility for more devices in the next few weeks.

Just aim your phone, the ones listed above, at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer and their system should figure out what device is trying to access the site.

Those who already use it will be familiar with the layout and will spot a few new tabs. As they’ve extended the portal with some new features and navigation methods.

They’ve also broadened their support for the first Windows Mobile devices with the likes of the Samsung Omnia and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, first hitting the mark with good WIFI and 3G.

More can be seen on the blog post here.

Let’s hope other channels follow suit with their on-demand offerings too.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Skyfire 0.8 heads into open beta

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Skyfire is the browser that everyone is watching at the moment. Having seen multiple demonstrations of it, I’m happy to confirm that it really is shit-hot.

It offers full web PC browsing support — and, in particular, it can handle Ajax, Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media — everything that your average mobile browser chokes on. This is the kind of service you need when you’re out and about and you absolutely, positively, have to view some content on a site quickly and without arsing about.

I can’t tell you how depressing it is sitting there waiting for your bog standard Nokia or Sony browser to parse a 250k page. It’s horrific, from a geek viewpoint. You see the text download and you try and navigate… uh.. oh… now the text has disappeared while it parses the style sheet. And downloads the imagery. Total arse.

It’s going to be a particularly useful must-have for Windows Mobile users suffering with the default browser. Symbian too. Nokia hasn’t done much in the way of improving the browsing experience on their devices for quite a while. The fact you still have to click, click, click into navigation options to select ‘go to web address’ (as though that’s some alien stupid command that not many people would want to use) still hugely annoys me EVERY TIME I use my E90 browser.

Version 0.8 of Skyfire for Windows Mobile offers the following:

* Better video quality
* Ability to make Skyfire the default browser
* Faster launch and auto-reconnect
* Improved zooming
* Ability to download content
* In-line text entry

To be clear, it’s still US-only. They’re rushing to offer international support. Patience, patience… Western European support isn’t far away.

Register and download here.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

100x Skyfire S60 beta invites – any takers?

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

SMS Text News Screenshot

If you’d like to try the S60 version of the game-changing browser, Skyfire, then read on.

We’ve got 100 invites to beta test the browser. Interested? It’s *definitely* worth a look. Head over to this address and enter the code SMSTN when prompted.

In case you’re in need of a prompt:

Skyfire Labs, makers of the popular Skyfire mobile browser which allows users to access the full PC web from their mobile handsets, announced today a private beta of the Skyfire browser for the S60 platform.

With full Flash support as well as Ajax and all other Web 2.0 standards, the Skyfire browser delivers a full desktop experience of the Internet to your mobile phone, at blazing fast speeds. The secret to Skyfire is in the clouds. Using proprietary technology, Skyfire’s servers do all the heavy lifting, and send the full web impression to your phone in the blink of an eye. Because the majority of the processing is done on Skyfire’s end, the end user experiences less wait time, less power consumption and less data crunching on their handset.

Of all the mobile browsers on the market today, Skyfire is the only one to support all Web 2.0 standards, including full support for Flash. Because of this unparalleled support, Skyfire users can watch their favorite YouTube or Hulu.com videos, or check Google Maps without having to launch a separate application, like on the iPhone.

And get ready to experience this:

Picture 27

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Exclusive look at the new Loopt beta

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Our man in the Valley is back, this time with a rather swish exclusive on the new Loopt beta.

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So I now want to talk about the TechCrunch event at August Capital last Friday. Before the meetup, there was a panel on the “Mobile Browsing Web Wars”. If you want to know about this read this post.

But I can sum it up for you in one sentence: A bunch of dudes, one woman, all talking about why their business model is the best. But I’ve got more important things to talk about: the schmooze-fest that followed, and as promised, an exclusive look at the new Loopt beta for you SMS Text News readers.

So the party was, as Ewan might say “fooking brilliant”. It really was. Beyond A-List attendees, free liquor, and these really cool cheeseburger sliders.

Loopt had a booth up and an influential blogger (not trying to be coy here, just don’t want them to deduct my identity) told me to go to the Loopt table and get the new beta. So I went to the table and dropped the blogger’s name and the Loopt gentleman tried to talk me out of it.
“It doesn’t work too well, it’s really buggy, are you sure?”

After convincing him that I wanted to take the plunge, he plugged in my iPhone to his computer and waited. And waited. After a few long minutes, it was ready, and now a new Loopt app with a small “TC” logo on it appeared on my home page.

At this point I see that they went out of their way to make this a special version just for the TechCrunch event, so I don’t know how many things they gave away. But I know that there was no line up to the table and each loading of the app took a long time, so I deduce that very few actually got it. And I haven’t seen anything about this new beta on the blogosphere yet, so maybe they made everyone sign an NDA or something?

But they didn’t make me, or even tell me verbally to keep this secret, so here goes!

The new feature allows users to connect and look at people in their area who aren’t their friends.

Before, you could only see where your friends are, but now you can see when you are at a bar, or party or whatever, live Loopt users.

Like everything else about Loopt, kinda cool, kinda creepy. OK very creepy. Especially with Loopt’s past issues about spamming users friends while trolling for invites.

Despite CEO Sam Altman’s apology and insistence that it would never happen again, it should of never happened in the first place. If I’m giving these guys my phone number, my location and my friend’s phone numbers, I don’t want to know what their next fuck-up will be.

See the screenshots to look at the new feature, which Loopt is calling ‘Mix”:

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Sprint adds MySpace to its friends

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Sprint is obviously feeling generous these days – it’s giving away free mobile access to MySpace Mobile on all web-enabled phones – which it claims is a first for any US operator – to coincide with the official launch of MySpace’s mobile site.

MySpace users will get all the usual goodies – including being able to edit MySpace profiles, view and add friends, post blogs and bulletins and send and receive MySpace messages – by clicking through from Sprint’s web portal on their mobiles. It’s worth noting it’s only free to Sprint’s data subscribers though.

MySpace has been signing with all manner of operators as it faces tough competition from the likes of Facebook. It doesn’t seem to be doing too badly though – it’s had one million visitors a day to its MySpace mobile site even though it’s still been in beta til now.

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Posted in Mobile Applications | Comments

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