Enhance Your RSS Experience with Resco News

If you are into reading RSS feeds on your S60 handsets, you might have already set up the built-in Nokia RSS Reader to manage your important feeds. You might also have set up Google Reader to help you read your feed updates online. As a free application, Nokia RSS Reader does a good job of handling RSS feeds at a relatively basic level, and as a free service, Google Reader offers an enhanced model of accessing RSS feeds provided that you keep visiting the Google Reader page.

Personally speaking, I’m a big fan of the built-in Nokia RSS Reader and recommend it to those who want to get their feet wet without focusing on the so-called bells and whistles of other options. However, if you want to go up the RSS ladder, Resco News is what you need. You should pay $11.95 for this boosted experience, but it’s worth every penny. Resco News is such a feature-rich application that it’s managed to supplant the built-in RSS Reader on my N82.

What is Resco News?

To start with a conventional definition, Resco News is an RSS reader that provides access to the information which can be found on the Web in the form of RSS feeds. But the power of Resco News resides in its ability to organize feeds into both default and user-defined tabs, categorize RSS feeds – called “channels”, display RSS items – called “headlines” – in plain text or as HTML with active hyperlinks, export RSS items to HTML, update and remove headlines automatically, import/export channels from/to OPML files, open articles in one’s preferred web browser, and so on. It is compatible with various flavors of RSS, ATOM, and OPML, and can also download podcasts.

Getting started

You can trial Resco News for 14 days without any limitations. Use this URL to download Resco News for S60 V7 and V8 handsets, and use this URL to get the S60 3^rd Edition release. I’ve used Resco News for S60 3^rd Edition handsets, V1.24, to prepare this review.

When installed, Resco News can be found in the Applications folder. The moment you start it, Resco News greets you with some tips about RSS feeds and how to best utilize the application. If you want more tips, press “Key 2″ for help. Selecting “OK” moves you to the next window which allows you to select the place where RSS headlines and articles are to be stored. The next window helps you subscribe to one or more RSS categories based on your interests. These pre-defined categories are:

• News,
• Tech,
• Politics,
• Business, Markets, Law,
• Sports,
• Other, Science,
• Blogs.

Each category contains a number of RSS feeds and you can later subscribe to each item individually, unsubscribe from each feed or remove the categories altogether. Needless to say, you can opt to select none of these categories.

Knowing the interface a bit better

Resco News has three inalterable tab sheets:

• Channels,
• Subscribed,
• Bookmarks.

The application remembers your position, so if you exit Resco News and start it later, you’ll land on the tab sheet which had the focus upon exit. The “Channels” tab sheet displays all RSS categories and their belonging feeds. User-created RSS feeds which belong to no categories also appear here. BTW, the application uses the term “channel” to refer to RSS feeds and “headline” to refer to RSS articles. Anyhow, you can create RSS categories and RSS feeds here or reorganize everything which belongs to this tab. If you’ve selected one or more RSS categories upon installing Resco News, you can view their RSS feeds by expanding each category. The number of subcategories and channels gets displayed in brackets after each category name. Basically, pressing “Select” on each category expands it as if it were the parent in a tree view. As each category gets expanded, you can press “Down” to move among its RSS feeds. You can subscribe to your desired feed by pressing “Key 1″ and selecting the “Subscribe” menu item. All subscribed feeds appear in the “Subscribed” tab. Also, the “Channels” tab sheet has a special category called “Web resources” that stores web links instead of RSS feeds. It maintains the list of web sites that contain the links to RSS feeds

Having finished viewing RSS feeds belonging to a category, you can either move on to other categories or press “Select” on the expanded RSS category to collapse it. Let’s see which options Resco News offers if we press “Key 1″ on a category in the “Channels” tab:

• New, submenu:
  • Channel,
  • Dynamic channel,
  • Category,
  • Subcategory,
  • Search.
• Expand/Collapse, submenu:
  • Expand,
  • Expand all,
  • Collapse all.
• Add to tab,
• Edit, submenu:
  • Properties,
  • Delete [c],
  • Move.
• Send,
• Tools, submenu:
  • Import,
  • Export,
  • Export all.
• Tabs, submenu:
  • Add,
  • Go to [5].
• Settings, submenu:
  • Display,
  • Update,
  • Articles,
  • Connections.
• Help, submenu:
  • Help,
  • About Resco News,
  • Memory info.
• Exit.

“Key 1″ displays fewer menu items if pressed on an RSS feed, and the options you see as a result of pressing “Key 1″ largely depends on both the focused tab sheet and the focused item inside a tab.

The “Bookmarks” tab sheet displays all headlines which have been bookmarked by the user. When a headline is open, you can press star “*” to add it to the Bookmarks tab. Note that removing a bookmark deletes that article permanently.

With so many RSS categories and feeds it might be difficult to keep track of the needed category or reach the category in question, you might wonder. Resco News can work with indefinite user-defined tabs, so you can create several tabs for related feed categories, create your RSS categories and feeds in the Channels tab sheet and move them to the desired tab. Removing items from user-defined tabs doesn’t delete them from the Channels tab. User tabs can be easily added, renamed or removed via the “Tabs” submenu, accessible from each focused user tab.

Let’s see Resco News in action

Creating a feed

Imagine you want to add a new RSS feed. Move to the Channels tab and do the following:

1. Go to the Channels tab.
2. Press “Key 1″, move to the “New” submenu and select “Channel”.
3. A window opens which allows you to modify various pieces of information related to the feed you’re creating. As you finish working with a control, press “Down” to move to the next.
4. The first control is a text box which accepts the feed title and the second is a text box which accepts the feed URL. In my opinion, typing the URL is the most difficult step in creating a feed, but if the URL has been copied to the clipboard it gets pasted here automatically.
5. The rest of the controls allow you to adjust the update period, article maintenance and article formatting. If you don’t modify any of these settings, they obey the default Resco News settings, accessible from the Settings submenu. When you’re done, press “Key 1″ to select “OK”.

You can opt to subscribe to the newly created feed and then move it to whatever user tab you want. It’s worth mentioning that you should subscribe to or unsubscribe from all feeds in the Channels tab, but the Subscriptions tab can also be used to unsubscribe from feeds.

RSS modification

Move to the feed you’ve created and subscribed to, press “Key 1″ and select “Add to tab”. If you’ve created user tabs, you can copy the feed to one of them now. Moreover, the newly created feed can be edited, deleted or moved up/down in a tab via the “Edit” submenu.

Updating a feed and reading headlines

To update a feed, move to it in a tab other than the “Channels” tab, press “Key 1″, move to the “Update” submenu and select “Channel [1]“. You can press “1″ to do the same. Your feed gets updated and the number of “read”/”unread” items – or headlines – appears in brackets in front of the feed name. Press “Select” on the feed name to expand it, move to the headline you want and press “Select” on it. This way the headline text which might or might not be in HTML gets displayed. Here pressing “Key 1″ offers the following options:

• Read full story [2],
• Download images,
• Add bookmark [*],
• Set as unread [#],
• Copy, submenu:
  • URL,
  • Title,
  • Description.
• Encoding, submenu:
  • *(contains a wide range of encoding options.)*
• Font size, submenu:
  • Small,
  • Normal – selected,
  • Large.
• Send,
• Tools, submenu:
  • Export.
• Settings, submenu:
  • Display,
  • Update,
  • Articles,
  • Connection.
• Help, submenu:
  • Help,
  • About Resco News,
  • Memory info.
• Exit.

Your options are numerous: you can open the full article via your preferred web browser by pressing “2″, set the headline as a bookmark (*), set it as read/unread (#), copy it to the clipboard, send it to others, modify its font size, click its URLs, and so forth. Like categories and channels, headlines can be deleted.

A word about settings

Resco News offers a wide range of settings via the “settings” submenu. You can learn about their functions by consulting the comprehensive on-device help. In passing, however, pay attention to the settings found in both “Update” and “Articles” tab sheets to determine how often feeds are to be updated and how read headlines are to be treated.

Conclusions

Resco News is by far the most advanced and the most user-friendly S60 RSS reader I’ve seen. Its user tabs, flexible categories, bookmarks, intuitive expand/collapse, inclusive help and multifarious options make it a must-have for everyone. These upsides aside, the fact that you have to type the feed URL or copy it to clipboard to create a feed is a serious annoyance. Future releases of Resco News should become capable of adding feeds via the built-in S60 web browser. This means if you come across a web page which has an RSS feed, selecting the “Subscribe” option should bring up Resco News rather than the built-in Nokia RSS Reader. I know that RSS feeds can be imported from OPML files without a hitch, but when you’re browsing the web on your handset you can’t easily create an OPML file for the page which has one or more feeds. Moreover, Resco News should be enhanced so that it can optionally run as a service in the background in order to display the availability of new updates via a pop-up message. To mention a bug, on my N82 the “Send” feature is problematic in that the “Mail to” option always wants to create new email accounts in spite of the fact that I already have several email accounts.

Finally, I have to congratulate Resco for having developed such a mature product which promises regular updates as well. Any chance of having a new application called “Resco mail”?

Notes for Symbian screen reader users

1. Resco News is compatible with Nuance TALKS. However, as with the built-in Nokia RSS Reader the headline text cannot be read without opening the article via the web browser. Fortunately, TALKS “Object Viewer” can capture the window text via an unidentified object – this is not the case with Nokia RSS Reader. In addition, the headline text can be copied to the clipboard and pasted elsewhere.
2. Resco News makes use of a number of icons to indicate the read/unread status of headlines, the expand/collapse status of categories, the subscribe status of feeds, etc. I’ve labeled more than 10 icons via TALKS “Graphics Labeler”, so if you want to use them let me know in the “Comments” section and I’ll send them to your email address.

The Nuts and Bolts of Nokia N78 Taken from a Trusty Source

You’ve probably read various N78 reviews on the web, and I’m not going to weary you with such a review now. However, most of what you read below originates from the message my friend, Stephen Giggar, sent me. Steve’s nickname is “doctor phone, and he’s also sent a good number of comments to my blog posts.

What to like about the N78

1. Being able to turn on the speaking of voice alerts for battery information. Uses the Nokia voice.
2. Being able to turn off the beep when you plug in a headset.
3. When assigning shortcut keys, the list is in Alphabetical order.
4. The App. Manager has changed in that when you first go into it, it asks what you want to see. You can say show me all the Installed Apps or show me the files to be installed.
5. The Speakers are about the same as what is on the N73 and N95 as far as volume is concerned.
6. The startup time of the N78 is very close to the N82 when you turn it on. Two or Three seconds different.
7. The SIM card slides into the phone the same way as the N73. Easy to remove as well.
8. Using the built-in file manager, when you first go into it you can arrow to the memory you want to read and see how much is free without having to select anything. You use the Up and Down arrow to go to the memory you want.
9. When sending software to the phone to be installed, the process has become very fast with the transfer. High Speed USB 2.0 and not Full speed USB 2.0.
10. The battery is easy for a person to remove if they do not have any finger nails after you get the back off.
11. The built-in email client has a setting which allows users to define what the “Clear” key should do when it’s pressed to delete emails. It can be set to “Always ask”, “Device only”, and “Device and server”.

What to Dislike about the N78

1. When the light goes out; You must press a key to wake up the phone and then press the key you want even if the screen saver hasn’t come on.
2. The phone responds slower than the N73 and other phones even if you had already opened a program (like Log).
3. The Menu always shows up in the “Task manager”.
4. “Show open task” is in all of the options for menu items. Would need to get use to that. That is the same as pressing and holding the menu key for about 1 second.
5. Battery cover takes the whole back of the phone. So you have to remove the whole back to take the battery out. You also have to make sure that you have it lined up correctly or you could break it while putting it back. Also it doesn’t feel like it would hold up if you need to swap batteries a lot.
6. The bar-like keypad keys might generate initial headaches. The N78 keypad is quite similar to that of the N81.

CNET Reviews Nokia N78 with Mixed Results

When a smartphone reaches consumers and I can’t review it myself, I tend to listen to what other reviewers say. In the case of CNET, however, I don’t listen to their reviews – I oftentimes rely on them. I just noticed that CNET has reviewed the N78, and it gets a not-so-exciting score of 7.3. The comprehensive article starts with the following statements:

• The good: The Nokia N78 features a 3.2-megapixel camera and integrated GPS for navigation and geotagging capabilities. The smartphone also offers U.S. 3G support, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.
• The bad: The N78 didn’t have the best call quality, nor did it produce great pictures. It’s also expensive.

Apart from the aforementioned issues, the review mentions that the N78 has weak speakers in spite of the fact that I’ve been told by many individuals that its speakers are pretty much similar to those of the N95 and the N81. It seems to me that CNET reviewers aren’t interested in S60 3rd Edition Nokia handsets because a smartphone like the N82 also gets the same 7.3 score. Interestingly, at one point Nokia 5300 XpressMusic was their favorite handset with its 8.3 score. Do you think the N78 deserves a higher rating mark?

Searching Made Easy with T9 Nav

If you need an efficient application which can act as a universal content finder and launcher on your S60 3^rd Edition handset, T9 Nav® might be what you’re looking for. T9 Nav which has been developed by Nuance Communications allows you to locate whatever you might imagine by simply typing the first few letters of its name. The application quickly reacts to your key presses via a T9-based mechanism, meaning you shouldn’t press keypad keys several times to type a certain character. For instance, if you want to find a contact entry whose first name starts with “John”, simply type “5646″. Of course, in almost all instances there would be no need to type the complete name because you’ll reach what you want by typing its first few letters.

 

Getting started

Once you finish installing the application, it asks you if you want T9 Nav to autostart. This can later be modified by pressing “Key 1″ and going to the “Settings” window. As you launch the application you can start typing, and the results which T9 Nav calls “high-frequency” items appear at the top of the list. You can press Up/Down to move around the results, and press “Select” on each item to activate it. Each found item is preceded by an icon which indicates to which category it belongs. Needless to say, pressing “Key 1″ on each item displays a menu which begins with context-sensitive items. For instance, if you press “Key 1″ on a contact entry, you’ll see the following:

• Open,
• Call, submenu:
  • Voice call,
  • Video call.
• Ptt options, submenu:
  • Talk 1 to 1,
  • Talk to many,
  • Send callback request.
• Create message,
• Send,
• Help,
• Tutorial,
• About,
• Exit.

Similarly, pressing “Key 1″ on a found entry which belongs to the Media category displays the following options:

• Open,
• Send,
• Settings,
• Help,
• Tutorial,
• About,
• Exit.

Also, you can press Joystick right to move to other tab sheets which display items belonging to a certain category. These tab sheets are:

• All,
• Contacts,
• Settings,
• Media,
• Bookmarks,
• Applications,
• Calendar,
• Key words.

Few things to mention

T9 is currently available as a beta application and the current built, V00.05.06_RC11, expires on July 31st. Nuance will send periodic feedback forms to the email address you provide upon downloading T9 Nav. Personally speaking, I’d like the following features to be implemented in future releases:

1. Make it capable of running as a service, optionally. This will force T9 Nav to leave the “Task manager”.
2. Modify T9 Nav so that it can initiate more than one search in a session. Currently, if you finish searching but don’t leave the application and decide to initiate another search, pressing the “Clear” key a few times sends the application to the background rather than removing the first typed character.
3. Extend its searching algorithms — it should become capable of locating SMS, MMS, and email messages.
4. Make it capable of integrating into the “Standby” window, optionally. This way, users can initiate searches without moving to a separate window.

Notes for Symbian screen reader users

If you use Nuance TALKS to access T9 Nav, note that you should set the “Full list items” setting to “No”. Otherwise, TALKS wouldn’t read the found items. Simply use the “App-specific settings” feature so that this TALKS-related change can affect T9 Nav not other applications. Finally, if you’re into labeling icons via TALKS, you might be happy to know that all T9 Nav icons which indicate the category of results can be labeled. This helps with easier navigation in the “All” tab sheet. I’m not sure if those who work on Nuance TALKS&ZOOMS are simultaneously involved in the development of T9 NAV, but I hope the final release remains a truly accessible application.

Like to Launch Applications by a Single Key Press? Use “Phone Shortcuts” then

Like many computer users, I’ve defined hot keys for a good number of applications I frequently use. Being able to press a hot key to bring up an application instead of looking for it on the Desktop or in the Start menu is real cool. Now, courtesy of Tektronic Phone Shortcuts, it’s become possible to do the same thing with S60 3^rd Edition handsets.

Phone Shortcuts allows you to associate handset keys with installed applications. All numbers, Star (*) and Number (#) can be used to launch applications more easily and quickly, even when the keypad is locked. The application can autostart as the phone boots. Also, it can run in the background as a hidden service without appearing in the “Task manager”. If you launch Phone Shortcuts for the first time, you can press Left and Right to move around 12 controls which have the following names:

• 1. Empty,
• 2. Empty,
• 3. Empty,
• …………
• 0. Empty,
• #. Empty.

Here the word “Empty” means you’ve not yet defined an application for the focused key. Pressing “Key 1″ on one of these so-called empty controls displays the following menu options:

• Edit shortcut,
• Settings,
• Help,
• About,
• Privacy note.

To exit the application and actually hide it, you should press “Key 2″.

Customizing the application

Let’s see what the “Settings” option offers.

• Start app. then exit – Yes.

With this option set to “Yes”, pressing a key which has been defined to launch an application briefly opens Phone Shortcuts and then closes it. If set to “No”, the app remains open.

• Hotkey state – Enabled: key Clear ( C ).

This means that holding down the “C” key brings Phone Shortcuts to the foreground even when it doesn’t appear in the “Task manager”. The next option allows you to define how long the “Clear” key should be held down in order for the application to appear:

• Hotkey timeout: X second(s).

This can be a number between 1 and 10. The greater the number, the longer you should hold “C” to bring Phone Shortcuts to the foreground. The next option is useful if you want to bring the application to the foreground even when the keypad is locked:

• Hotkey ignores keylock – Yes.

Interestingly, with this option set to “Yes” holding down the “Clear” key unlocks the keypad and moves you to the application. What the final option does is quite obvious:

• Autostart at boot – Yes.

Note that once you’re done making your changes, you should press “Key 1″ and select “Save”. Otherwise you’ll lose your changes.

Defining keys

To add an application to a key, first move to that key name in the main Phone Shortcuts window, press “Key 1″ and select “Edit shortcut”. A dialog with the following control appears:

• Select application – None (empty).

Simply press the “Select” key or choose the “Change” option from the menu to define an application for that key. The process of selecting an application isn’t quite straightforward because the app list isn’t an alphabetical one and you should press Up/Down several times to reach the program you want – this is, IMHO, something the developers should address by letting us type the first few letters of the application we want. Anyway, once you select the desired application, two more controls are added to the dialog:

• Shortcut hotkey – Disabled.
• Start at boot – No.

If the first option is kept “Disabled”, it means that its associated application can be launched only when the focus is on the name of its key. For instance, if you associate “7″ with “Alon MP3 Dictaphone” and keep the “Shortcut hotkey” option disabled, you should launch Phone Shortcuts and move to “number 7″ to activate “Alon MP3 Dictaphone” by pressing “Select” on it or selecting the “Start application” option from the menu. Also, simply pressing “7″ activates “Alon MP3 Dictaphone” if you know with which key it has been associated. If it is said to “Enabled”, two familiar options appear:

• Hotkey timeout – X second(s).
• Hotkey ignores keylock – Yes.

Finally, the “Start at boot” option is useful if you want to force the associated application to autostart as Phone Shortcuts gets activated upon booting the handset. Note that at most five applications can be set to autostart this way. Having modified all required settings, don’t forget to select the “Save” option from the menu.

If you later decide to change or remove a pre-defined shortcut, simply move to its control in the main Phone Shortcuts window, press “Key 1″ and select “Edit shortcut”.

Final considerations

A caveat of using Phone Shortcuts is that it interferes with the “speed dial” function and indeed disables it if you associate a “speed dial” key with an application. However, you can kill it if you want to continue using the “speed dial” feature. Alternatively, you can keep some keys for “speed dial” and preserve some for Phone Shortcuts. Phone Shortcuts has truly changed the way I use my N82 and I already have a product license for this €6.99 application. The current version number is 1.02. As always, use its trial on your handsets before making your purchasing decision.

Hi-N-Bye – the only Shaker on my N82

As you know, many applications have been developed to take advantage of the built-in accelerometer which ships with the N82 and all members of the N95 family. However, I just make heavy use of one of them on my N82 because this is the only app whose shaking-based functions I like. KEYnetik’s Hi-N-Bye allows me to answer incoming calls and finish conversations by performing two familiar and classic answering/rejecting gestures. Furthermore, I can activate or deactivate the loudspeaker and switch between two calls by simply shaking the handset. Not only is Hi-N-Bye fully customizable, it is also compatible with Symbian screen readers. It can auto-start as soon as the phone starts, and this behavior can be customized by users, too. I can define the time length after which Hi-n-Bye gets temporarily disabled as soon as someone calls so as to save battery power. The nice point about this application is that it has almost no effect on your power consumption even when it is adjusted to control all calls without any time limitations. One important note: don’t forget to select the “Save settings” option after modifying any settings or you’ll lose all modified settings as the program restarts. Don’t forget to download and install the accelerometer plug-in before installing Hi-N-Bye because Hi-N-Bye won’t start otherwise.

The functionality of this application is enhanced if it becomes capable of handling missed calls and received SMS messages. For instance, it would be cool to move to the “Missed calls” tab sheet or move to Inbox by just shaking the phone, and return to the Standby window by means of another shake. The application costs €5.99.

Interesting Comparison of Mobile Vo-IP and IM Applications

While I was browsing the Talkonaut web site, I came across this brief table. Basically, the table tries to compare the free mobile Vo-IP/IM application, Talkonaut, with other apps of its ilk by demonstrating what each program can and can’t do. Fortunately the table is objective enough to be outlined below.

Comparison of mobile Vo-IP+IM applications

Feature/application	Octro	Nimbuzz	Talkonaut	Fring	Truphone	IM+ Skype	Gizmo5
1. Freeware	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	No	yes
2. VoIP over GPRS	yes	Yes	yes	yes	no	No	no
3. VoIP over WIFI	yes	Yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no
4. Peer-to-Peer VoIP	yes, Jingle Audio	No, planned	yes, Jingle Audio	yes, proprietary	no	no	no
5. VoIP calls over GSM	no	yes, call-in	yes, callback	no	no	yes, callback	yes, callback
6. SIP calls	no	Yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes, callback
7. Gtalk VoIP calls	yes	Yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes, callback
8. MSN VoIP calls	no	Yes	yes	yes	no	no	yes, callback
9. Yahoo VoIP calls	no	No, planned	yes	no	no	no	yes, callback
10. AIM/ICQ VoIP calls	No	no, planned	yes	yes	no	no	yes, callback
11. Skype VoIP calls	no	Yes	no	yes	no	yes	no
12. SMS over IP	no	yes	yes	no	yes	yes, via Skype	yes
13. IM chat to Gtalk	yes	Yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
14. IM chat to MSN	yes	Yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
15. IM chat to Yahoo	yes	Yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
16. IM chat to ICQ/AIM	yes	Yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
17. IM chat to Skype	no	Yes	no	yes	no	yes	no
18. IM chat to Facebook	no	No	no	no	no	no	yes
19. IM chat to MySpace	no	No	no	no	no	no	yes
20. IM chat to Twitter	yes, over Jabber	yes, over Jabber	yes, over Jabber	yes	no	yes, over Jabber	yes, over Jabber
21. Multi-user chat	no	yes, proprietary	yes, Jabber standard	no	no	yes, proprietary	yes, Jabber standard
22. Custom/non-standard GUI	no	yes	yes	no	no	yes	yes
23. File transfer	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
Score	12	18	19	16	5	12	18

The following conclusions have also been drawn from the table.

• Only Octro, Talkonaut, Nimbuzz, Truphone and Fring can be considered as real mobile VoIP applications, which means they utilize data connections to send VoIP traffic over.
• Talkonaut is the most feature-rich mobile VoIP software currently available on the market.
• For those users who don’t need Skype support, Talkonaut can be considered as the best mVoIP solution.

Nothing can be said to damage the integrity of these conclusions, and Talkonaut is also a very good application if you exclude its incompatibility with Symbian screen readers. What’s more, who doesn’t need Skype these days? Furthermore, both iSkoot for Skype and IM+ Mobile Messenger – which aren’t true VoIP mobile applications – are absent in the list.

What else do you think could have been included in the table? Perhaps retaining the history previous chats? Do you know of any other applications which could have been listed?

Please Change my Profile: How to Do It with Style

Profiles are at the heart of our everyday mobile computing. Many of us switch back and forth among a wide range of default and tailor-made profiles without ever wondering how we could manage daily tasks in case our handsets didn’t offer such a feature. At any rate, there are many things our profiles can’t achieve without the assistance of third-party applications. I was sure I would uninstall all relevant third-party applications after finishing this review, but now I’m determined to keep at least one of them on my N82 because what the Symbian operating system offers with regards to profiles is obviously insufficient. If you want to know which application is more feature-rich when it comes to wielding profiles, read the rest of this article. Two applications exist which do all sorts of profile tinkering: Handy Profiles by Epocware and Best Profiles by Smartphoneware.

 

What do they share?

Both applications have a tab sheet which displays the list of available profiles on your handset. You can opt to switch to a certain profile manually or set the application to do it for you automatically based on a pre-specified rule. Both apps are launched when the handset starts without annoying you in the task manager. In terms of extra features and rule adjustment Best Profiles can be regarded as the more advanced app, though. Other than the tab sheet which displays the list of profiles, Best Profiles has 4 more tabs.

 

Handy Profiles

Found in the Handy folder, Handy Profiles displays the profile list as it is opened. Pressing “Key 1″ on a profile displays the following options:

• Activate,
• Timed activation,
• Personalize,
• Edit rules,
• New,
• Set as default,
• Settings,\
• Help,
• About,
• Register,
• Exit.

If the focus is on a profile other than General, you’ll also get a “Rename” option which is useful for changing the profile name. As you can guess, pressing “Select” on Activate makes the currently highlighted profile active, and an icon appears to the left of the activated profile. The “Timed activation” feature allows you to specify how long a specified profile should remain active. Selecting the “Personalize” option opens the familiar personalize profile window which helps you change your ringing tone, switch on/off the vibrating mode, alter the keypad tones, and so forth. Handy Profile’s “Set as default” option is unique in that it can force the handset to use a profile if no other rule applies to other profiles. For instance, if you set the General profile as your default profile, the phone always switches to it if other rules haven’t been defined to activate the Silent profile.

The “New” option is practically useless as far as profile modification inside Handy Profiles is concerned, because selecting it displays the following message:

“Third-party applications cannot create and delete profiles due to security reasons. You can do this in standard Profiles application. Do you want to start it now?”

The nice point about both Handy Profiles and Best Profiles is that they can activate different profiles based on the rules you specify; however, Handy Profiles is rather limited in terms of rule provision. Neither does it allow users to move back and forth among rules in different tabs. You should specify rules for each profile separately by selecting the “Edit rules” option. Handy Profiles allows three rule types via the “New” submenu of the Rules window:

• Time interval,
• Calendar entry,
• Location.

I’ve talked about the “Time interval” option above, but the one offered here is much more flexible in that it can accept both the start/end times and the days in which profile activation should occur. The “Calendar entry” option allows you to specify a word which is to be found in your calendar entries. You can specify the location which is to be searched for the key word – Subject, location, description, anywhere. Whenever your pre-specified key word gets attached to a calendar entry, the profile for which you’ve created that rule gets activated. The “New location” entry functions in affiliation with GSM cells. That is, the application searches for your current GSM cell and, upon your initial confirmation, activates a profile whenever that cell is reached. You can also select a previously found cell or several cells for this to happen. This is not an accurate method of profile switching, but it proves to be quite useful for many occasions. The more rules you specify, the better you can customize automatic profile switching because each rule does its own job without taking into account what other rules are supposed to do.

Handy Profiles offers a handy feature via its Settings window which customizes the behavior of the Power key when it’s either pressed or held down. This setting, missing in Best Profiles, can help you switch to Handy Profiles or the standard profile list when you press the Power key. Quite astonishingly, you can select to switch to Handy Profiles when you hold down the Power key – this prevents the long press of Power key from switching off the handset! Finally, there’s no way of actually shutting down Handy Profiles as the phone starts because the application doesn’t allow you to disable it, and this should be achieved by killing it via an application like Best TaskMan — Handy Taskman can’t simply do it.

Best Profiles

Before using Best Profiles, you should turn it on by pressing “Key 1″ to access the menu options. This means that you can easily prevent Best Profiles from taking over your profiles when the need arises – not implemented in Handy Profiles. Found in the humble Applications folder, Best Profiles displays five tab sheets:

• Profiles,
• Schedules,
• Calendar rules,
• GSM locations,
• Charger rules.

The first tab, “Profiles”, displays the list of system profiles. Pressing “Key 1″ on each profile displays the following options:

• Turn off/Turn on,
• Activate, submenu:
  • Activate,
  • Activate at,
  • Activate after,
  • Activate for,
  • Activate and lock,
  • Activate and lock for.
• Advanced settings,
• Switch to, submenu:
  • Profiles,
  • Schedule,
  • Calendar rules,
  • GSM locations,
  • Charger rules.
• About,
• Help,
• Exit.

Unlike Handy Profiles, Best Profiles provides a wide range of options at the time of activating a profile. The Activate submenu is capable of controlling how long a profile should remain active or when it should become activated. Both “Activate and lock” and “Activate and lock for” options help users activate a certain profile and at the same time stop the processing of other rules, meaning you can simply activate a profile without worrying about the interference of other profile rules, and this can be done with or without a timer. Needless to say, when a profile is active, an icon appears to its right.

The Schedules tab is a versitle tool for defining various rules by which profiles would be activated or deactivated. Again, the flexibility you see here cannot be observed in the more expensive app: Handy Profiles. If you select the “New” option from the menu, you can modify the following fields:

• Activate time — (specify a time),
• Condition — (specify a day or several days),
• Profile — (specify a profile name),
• Priority – (specify the level),
• Allow deactivate – (no or yes).

If “Allow deactivate” is set to “Yes”, you can select to activate either the previous profile or another system profile. Moreover, pressing “Key 1″ in this tab reveals another option titled “View today rules). This is a convenient way of monitoring the profiles which are to be activated on a specific date along with their rules. Very exciting, isn’t it? This is also present in the next tab: Calendar rules. The Calendar rules tab is very similar to the same feature found in Handy Profiles; however, unlike Best Profiles, Handy Profiles can specify the place where searching should be executed. Again, you can opt to restore a previously used profile in this tab. The “GSM locations” tab sheet offers the features found in Handy Profiles, with the exception that Best Profiles can specify the activation condition – “on enter” or “on exit”.

The fifth and final tab sheet, “Charger rules”, allows you to switch to a profile whenever you plug or unplug the charger. It has two rules titled “Charger on” and “Charger off”, respectively, and their default state is set to “Don’t change”. Can you locate such a thing in Handy Profiles?

Where “advanced settings” enter the stage

If the focus is in the first Best Profiles tab sheet, you can modify several important settings by selecting “Advanced settings” from the menu. Let’s take a look at these seven settings without providing any description whatsoever:

• Wallpaper – don’t change,
• Sound on activate – no sound,
• Sound volume,
• Bluetooth – don’t change,
• Backlight – normal,
• Run application – no application,
• Theme – don’t change.

Imagine being able to activate a certain application, turn on Bluetooth, switch to a different theme and alter the wallpaper without any intervention at the time of activating a certain profile. Best Profiles is capable of doing all of these. What’s more, it can be set to close the app it has opened or enable Bluetooth with or without the “visible” mode.

Which one do you prefer?

I’m not sure about your choice as you might want to give both apps a try, but my favorite is “Best Profiles” with its advanced activation rules, advanced settings, schedules and multiple/easily accessible tabs. Handy Profiles can nicely take over the behavior of the Power key, but it lacks Best Profile’s wide range of features such as charger rules and application switching. Both apps offer comprehensive program help as they are installed on your handset. At the time of this writing, Best Profiles costs $11.95 and Handy Profiles costs €19.95. Again, the price tag is a tad in favor of Best Profiles, but don’t forget to try them on your own before making a purchasing decision.

Nokia BH-903 Review: Part 2 Keys, Performance and Conclusions

In my first post about Nokia BH-903, I talked about what makes this stereo Bluetooth headset unique among its competitors. To recap, it’s a 32-g headset with an in-the-ear style which is compatible with various V2.0 bluetooth profiles, comes with an OLED display and an internal FM radio, and provides more than 9 hours of music and talk time.

 

Keys

When you’re dealing with an ultra-light stereo Bluetooth headset, you should accustom yourself to its tiny keys and buttons, too. The BH-903’s keys can be found in two different locations. Music-related ones are located near the OLED display (that is at the end of two cables which connect the display unit to the earphones), and call-related ones and the microphone are on the small apparatus near the right earphone.

 

The OLED display and its surrounding buttons

The unit which is tightly attached to the end of the headset cables houses the display and a few buttons: IMG: Nokia BH-903 display and keys. Here Nokia engineers have tried to build the unit like a standard handset so as not to reinvent the wheel and make the lives of BH-903 users difficult. With this analogy in mind, if you take the main unit in your left hand, you’ll notice the Power button above the display (at the top of the unit). Holding it down for a few seconds switches the headset on, which is confirmed by a short beep heard through the earphones. To switch off the headset, hold the same key down for a couple seconds and you’ll hear a different beep to indicate that the system is no longer active. Also, the Power key can act as the lock/unlock key; that is, if you briefly press and release it, the headset is locked. To unlock the headset, you should do the same. The lock/unlock process is accompanied by two distinct beeps, and the OLED display helps you identify the lock/unlock status. At first, you might want to familiarize yourself with the display indicators, but the more you use the BH-903, the less you refer to the display.

The frequently mentioned OLED display is below the Power key and occupies about one-third of the attached unit. The display mimics the feel and look of a standard handset display as closely as possible. For instance, as you turn on the headset, the famous Nokia logo appears on the screen. By the same token, as you recharge the battery, the charging indicators can be seen there. When the headset is on but not used for about 10 seconds, the display goes to the power saving mode. In this mode, the display turns off for about 5 seconds and turns on for about 1 second at regular intervals. To activate the display when it is in the power saving mode, you should press any key.

Just below the display, a square area can be seen which houses several buttons. Most of these keys aren’t tactilely visible. The Previous/Rewind key is on the upper left side, and the Next/Fast forward key is located on the upper right side. These also act as the Scroll keys when the headset Menu is active. Just below these keys you can easily touch the slightly raised Selection key, useful when working with the menu. More interesting, however, is the touch-sensitive Volume key surrounding the Selection key. You should move your finger around the Selection key on the touch-sensitive area clockwise to increase or anticlockwise to decrease the volume, and the headset uses distinct beeps when the volume can no longer be altered either way. This is quite innovative and appeals to the style-conscious. The volume can easily be altered after spending a couple of minutes with the headset.

The Stop key is placed toward the bottom of the square area on the lower left side, and the Play/pause key is on the right side. The Menu key is situated below the square area toward the bottom of the main unit, and is useful when you want to access different functions of the headset such as the music player, the FM radio, recent calls and settings. By default, the headset turns on with the music player in the foreground and whenever you access music-related functions on your handset, the headset also switches to the music player. Just to clarify, the Settings option allows you to adjust the display brightness, manage Bluetooth devices, set the auto-keylock time, select a desired language and reset the headset. The headset settings can also be reset by holding down the Power key and the Answer/End key at the same time, and pressing the Selection key to confirm the operation while the headset is switched off. Finally, the charging socket is located at the bottom of the unit on the opposite of the Power button.

The call buttons

The small control near the right earphone houses the midget microphone on the back, the Mute key on the side, and the relatively bigger Answer/End call key on the front. When someone calls, you can press the Answer/End call key once to accept it, or twice to reject it. When no call is in progress, press the Answer/End call key twice to call the last dialed number. Pressing this key once ends a call during a conversation. The built-in microphone can also be used for audio-recording in spite of the fact that the microphone quality doesn’t match that of the handset microphone.

The FM radio

One of the benefits of a so-called cabled wireless stereo Bluetooth headset is that its cables act as the antenna for the built-in FM radio. To use this feature, press the Menu key and select FM radio. You’ll immediately hear the familiar sound associated with FM receivers.

To search for radio stations, hold down the Forward or Rewind key for about 2 seconds. To stop the search, you should press the Stop key. When the headset finds a station, the station starts to play and the name, frequency, and signal strength of the station are displayed. According to the BH-903 manual, the station name is displayed only if the station supports the RDS (Radio Data Systems) technology. Anyhow, to save the station in the headset, hold down the Play/ Pause key, press the Forward or Rewind key to move to the desired memory location, and hold down the play/pause key. To move among saved stations, press the Forward or Rewind key repeatedly. To pause listening to the radio, press the Stop key, and to resume listening, press the Play/Pause key. Finally, to stop listening to the radio and exit the radio, press the Stop key twice. I’ve found the voice quality to be pleasantly acceptable.

It’s worth mentioning that using the FM radio requires the memorization of these functions for the visually impaired because the headset doesn’t offer an accessible interface when it comes to using the radio. The same can be said about accessing the Settings or the Recent calls option from the menu.

 

Concluding remarks

With all the details interspersed, you might be wondering if Nokia BH-903 is my desired headset. To be quite frank, it’s not. It’s true that with the BH-903 you get an FM radio, an OLED display and an ultra-portable unit, but I’ve never been a fan of in-the-ear headphones/headsets because I find this wearing style problematic, to say the least. Due to the fact that the headset uses small earphones, the audio quality it provides noticeably fails to match that of the over-ear Nokia BH-604 and Nokia BH-503. I’m bold enough to claim that the BH-903 isn’t for audiophiles; rather, it’s been designed to meet the needs of frequent commuters who want to carry as light and portable a headset as possible. Neither can it filter out surrounding sounds as efficiently as the aforementioned headsets. Also, as hilarious as it might sound, I’ve noticed that the BH-903 requires a pocketed shirt to house the display unit comfortably. Otherwise, the highly desirable OLED display would shamelessly move leftward and rightward when you take a stroll or you have to hide it under your shirt. Finally, I’ve found out that the BH-903 is quite sensitive to key touches; that is, the sound you hear through its earphones tend to lose or gain extra pitch as you press a key on either the handset or the headset. This also happens when the headset is connected to a compatible Bluetooth-enabled computer: namely my Dell XPS M1210 notebook which has Windows Vista SP1. All in all, Nokia BH-503 still remains my preferred stereo Bluetooth headset.

All said, I should admit that the BH-903 functions quite efficiently compared with other in-the-ear units on the market, and what I’ve mentioned regarding the BH-903 is typical of all in-the-ear headsets. Other than that, Nokia BH-903 has a high-quality microphone which is perfect for both telephonic conversations and audio recording. If your number-one need is a light headset with an OLED display, don’t hesitate to purchase Nokia BH-903.

 

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Comes with an OLED display,
• Offers decent battery life,
• Has an FM radio,
• Locks its keys manually or automatically,
• Allows accessing the “recent calls” list,
• Is highly portable,
• Appeals to fashionmongers,
• Enjoys innovative touch-sensitive volume keys,
• Uses distinct audible beeps and visual cues to indicate different actions,
• Comes with sturdy cables.

 

Cons:

• Its cables might get in the way sometimes,
• The in-the-ear style doesn’t provide a totally secure wearing experience,
• Offers average audio quality,
• Doesn’t have an accessible interface for the visually impaired,
• Would have been more comfortable with tactilely identifiable keys.

What’s the Most Efficient Blacklister in Town?

Before moving on any further, let me clarify a point outright. I have a lot of respect for companies like Epocware and SmartphoneWare which make the Symbian S60 market quite competitive by producing a wide range of applications for this platform. In fact, the success of the Symbian OS is, for the most part, attributable to what these companies creatively provide. The purpose of such comparisons is to both stir up competition and inspire Symbian S60 users to know these applications better.

At any rate, I’m sure everyone needs a good blacklister on their handsets for many reasons. It has become a must-have application on my N82. If you also want to use such a handy feature, you can try a few applications to see which one suits your needs. I know of two blacklisters which do their assigned jobs elegantly: Handy Blacklist produced by Epocware and Best Blacklist by SmartphoneWare. The former costs $19.95 and the latter costs $9.95.

What do they share?

Handy Blacklist and Best Blacklist enjoy a number of similar features which have been implemented a bit differently. Both applications can run as a service, meaning when you open them for the first time and later close them, they can remain in the memory and perform their job without appearing in the usual list of background tasks. Handy Blacklist and Best Blacklist (which has the unadorned name of “Blacklist” on the phone) rely on two different lists to allow or reject calls: a black list and a white list, or in the case of Handy Blacklist, an allow list. Best Blacklist can have an unlimited number of black lists and white lists, but Handy Blacklist only allows the addition of multiple allow lists and makes use of just one black list. In Best Blacklist, you should first enable what the developers call “Service” by pressing “Key 2″, define the members of a black list or a white list, and then activate that list in order for the phone to allow or reject calls. When pressed, “Key 2″ enables and disables the service, respectively. In Handy Blacklist, on the other hand, you simply define the members of a desired list and activate it to make use of the application, and there’s no need to enable or disable Service first as it doesn’t have this option anyway.

Handy Blacklist

Handy Blacklist has two tab sheets:

• Lists,
• Log.

The first item in the “Lists” tab is called “Black list” and cannot be deleted by the user. The second item, by default, has the name of “Allow list”. Multiple allow lists can be created and removed here. If, for instance, you press “Key 1″ when the focus is on the “Allow list”, you’ll see the following options:

• Activate,
• Timed activation,
• Edit,
• New allow list,
• Rename,
• Delete,
• Set reject action,
• Settings,
• Help,
• About,
• Exit.

Some of them are self-explanatory, but some aren’t. For instance, the “Timed activation” feature allows you to activate a certain list for a specified period of time. Also, the “Set reject action” option allows you to define the behavior of the application when a call is rejected. You can opt to simply reject calls with short beeps as if the line were busy or send an SMS to the person whose call gets rejected. With Best Blacklist, you can’t send an SMS message to the rejected number.

Upon adding numbers to an allowed list, the Add submenu helps you select numbers from the following places:

• Recent calls,
• Contacts – using the first tab sheet of the Contacts application,
• Contact group – using the second tab sheet of the Contacts app,
• Manually.

When you want to add numbers to your black list, a couple more options are added: “Private numbers” and “Unknown numbers”. Unlike Handy Blacklist, Best Blacklist cannot add numbers to its lists from recent calls. Also, the Settings option in Handy Blacklist allows you to enable or disable the option of adding a rejected number to the black list – this is missing in Best Blacklist.

The second Handy Blacklist tab sheet, “Log”, is useful for reviewing blacklisted numbers. Here you can clear the log, call the person whose number was blacklisted, and, as a unique Handy Blacklist feature, send an SMS message to the focused number in the list.

Best Blacklist

The power of Best Blacklist resides in its capability to create multiple black lists and white lists without any limitations. It has one main window which displays your lists. Pressing “Key 1″ on a list displays the following options:

• List, submenu:
  • Activate list,
  • Add list,
  • Edit list,
  • Delete list,
  • Move up,
  • Move down.
• Edit list,
• Scheduler,
• View log,
• Misc, submenu:
  • Register,
  • About.
• Close.

Best Blacklist has a unique feature called Scheduler whereby you can define the schedule for each and every list you add. For instance, you can set the application to activate a list at 8 A.M. on Mondays and activate another at 9 P.M. on Tuesdays. This is missing in Handy Blacklist. You just specify the time, the date and select a list for a schedule to function. Moreover, as you see in the options above, Best Blacklist can alter the position of each item in the list, but Handy Blacklist doesn’t.

To get a brief overview of rejected calls, Best Blacklist displays the number of rejected calls as opposed to the number of accepted calls in the main window. So you might hear something like “Rejected: 3/5″ whenever this window gains focus.

Which one is better?

Who dares to declare a winner in this tight competition? Handy Blacklist V3.0 has a couple more features such as flexible log management, adding items from recent calls, and quick inclusion of a rejected number in the black list, but this comes with a +$10 higher price. Best Blacklist V1.02 fights back with its -$10 price tag and unique features such as the Scheduler and the addition/modification of all list types. You might find it interesting to know that Handy Blacklist offers a comprehensive manual as it is installed, but Best Blacklist doesn’t have online help. If you’ve tried both or have selected one of them, let us know what your reasons were in the Comments section.

Note

If you use Nuance TALKS&ZOOMS screen reader on your handset, you can label the icon which displays the active or inactive status of a list in both applications. This icon follows the name of each list, and you should label two icons in each application.