Check-in on #Foursquare via #Gravity
Published by Ewan Spence on allaboutsymbian.com this morning, find the full article here
Popular Symbian Twitter client Gravity, hot on the heals of the addition of geo-location, has now added support for Foursquare to check in from the client. Driven, like many of the changes in Gravity, by user requests, you simply add your Foursquare account from the main screen then click through and update your location via GPS. It’s currently available to download for 5th Edition devices in the alpha builds of Gravity. Read on for screens etc.
This update shows one of the many reasons that Gravity is one of the best illustrations of what a good eco-system can offer. First of all for those users who just want something that works, the regular stable build of Gravity is always available. Only if you want to rush ahead and test out new features, potentially with bugs, do you grab the alpha version.
Secondly, it shows how important having open access to your data if you have a web service is. Foursquare, as we’ve previously noted. has still to release a Symbian based client, relying on their mobile website or SMS check-in. But they do have an Api that programmers can access… and this is what Gravity is using.
It helps Foursquare, it helps Gravity, it helps the users, it’s a win on all fronts.
And it’s just another reason why Jan Ole Suhr and Gravity is one of the best demonstrations of what a virtuous cycle a smartphone community can deliver to end users, developers and service providers.
#Symbian #S^3 officially announced, previewed on video
View the video on the engadget.com article here
#Symbian Foundation’s #Wikipedia Reader Widget v1.00rc2 S60v3
News From Dreamstrikes:
Coming out of the Symbian Foundation’s developer wiki system is a handy Wikipedia widget that installs on any Symbian-powered smartphone with Web runtime (so that’s most of them). Search results are all optimised for the small screen and it seems a quick and efficient way to access Wikipedia’s content. 
The Wikipedia Reader widget is in beta, but should work on:
1. All Series 60 3rd Edition FP2 and later phones
2. Samsung Series 60 3rd Edition FP1
3. Nokia Series 60 3rd Edition FP1 phones with latest firmware update
Known issues:
Widget has Beta support for reading Wikipedia in all available languages. This function has following issues:
1. Even though content and searching in any language is generally working, menus and messages are not localised yet
2. History and Bookmarks do not remember the language in which page was viewed ("only current language" issue)
3. In history and bookmarks views, article tit
titles may not be displayed correctly for some scripts ("unicode storage" issue)
Change Log v1.0rc2:
– Fixed search language;
– Fixed problems with apostrophe in article name.
Symbian^3 to be code complete by end of Q1 according to Nokia:
Coming soon then 🙂
http://conversations.nokia.com
Jon.
Some interesting news of future #symbian releases from mynokiablog.com
Some very interesting news on future Symbian releases:
A series of Symbian^4 screenshots from the Symbian Foundation shows the open-source project in action.
Screen shots are on the following website:
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/10810.html
An excerpt below:
Scott Weiss, UI Technology Manager at Symbian Foundation, recently submitted official Symbian^4 screenshots to the My Nokia Blog. Screenshots and videos of the upcoming interface should also be made available from Symbian’s website soon. According to Weiss, Symbian^4 brings the menu bar, toolbar, persistent back button as well as other innovations. A lot of things should be available already in Symbian^3 though, such as multiple home screen pages and the ability to customize each home screen page with a different wallpaper.
The Symbian^4 UI will take full advantage of 3D graphics hardware acceleration, meaning that the interface will require such technology to work smoothly. A company like Google recently said that their main focus moving forward will be to develop interfaces taking advantage of such technology too. We also assume that Apple’s iPhone 4.0 will be offering a range of new goodies requiring 3D graphics hardware acceleration.
In other words, if you’re going to enjoy the latest and greatest in mobile user interfaces in the future, a mid-range smartphone will simply not get things moving fast enough for you. As far as Symbian^4 smartphones are concerned, it’s not known how manufacturers will adopt to that new world. Like most new smartphone interfaces it’s also touchscreen-only. Given the popularity of finger-touch, we doubt a smartphone will ever need a non-touch interface again though. Standard cell phones are getting more advanced anyway, which will be a great option for those who want to access common smartphone features the old (and cheap) way.
Anyway, we recommend checking out a post that discusses the new Symbian^4 screenshots over at the My Nokia Blog.
Jon Farquharson
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