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.

LightNotepad V1.58 Released

The small, popular and accessible text editor for S60 3^rd Edition handsets, LightNotepad, was updated to V1.58 yesterday. This free application which gets frequent updates is a must-have for those who want to read and edit text documents on their handsets, and I’m bold enough to claim that LightNotepad easily surpasses its Windows counterpart as far as reading-related features are concerned. This release provides the following new features and bug fixes:

• Short cuts Ctrl+E = Find and Ctrl+O Open.
• Remember settings on exit (Screen size and orientation, Zoom, and WordWrap).
• Ask at start-up to load last used file, and remember cursor position.
• Bug fix; Remember file name, while recovering file from abnormal program termination.
• Install same language as phone is. (English, Finnish, Spanish, Italian.).

This is the direct download URL for those who want to get the update without visiting the developer’s web site. If you like LightNotepad, consider donating some money to the guy who’s behind this and other free Symbian applications by going to the program page.

Python for S60 V1.4.4 Released

The popular SourceForge Symbian application, Python for S60, was just updated to V1.4.4. If you have Python-based applications on your handset, don’t hesitate to install this update. Technical enhancements in this release are:

• PC Suite synchronized contact field types broken.
• E32.start_service() crashes pys60 1.4.2.
• Unread(sms_id) returns 32.
• Calendar can’t see appointments on last day of a month.
• Audio.say won’t say äö.
• Print in _internalsocketobject.
• PyS60 1.4.0 text drawing fails on Image with tuple.
• Select_access_point() and access_points() bug.
• Custom font drawing doesn’t work with Image.
• Error import socket because of e32socket error.

Python-based projects are important because the applications they provide have been accessible so far.

Posting to Mobile Space from the N82 via Scribe

I’m posting this article via Scribe which is an S60 WordPress plug-in. I’ll later review this fantastic application.

Nokia Map Loader 2.0 Introduces a Web Shop

Nokia Beta Labs has announced the availability of Map Loader 2.0 which offers a web shop. With this application installed, you can buy navigation and city guides directly from your PC. It has a new tab page – called “Services” – which helps you browse through Drive, DriveWalk, Traffic and City guides before deciding what to buy. Map Loader 2.0 also supports PC Suite connections, meaning you can connect different S60 handsets to your PC via Bluetooth or cabel and take advantage of the new features provided by the application.

I’m just downloading the application and can’t say if it is accessible with Windows screen readers. Keep an eye on the Comments section. . .

Fring releases API to the Public

(Note: I don’t know why Fring owners insist on writing it with a lowercase f.)

LONDON, 18th June 2008, fring™ today released the fringAPI™, bringing fringsters a potentially unlimited selection of mobile games, tools, services and communities to enrich their mobile-internet experience.

The fringAPI™ enables third-party web-developers using only XML and JavaScript know-how to bring the fring community new mobile applications and mobile versions of web-based applications, providing access to fring client GUI with web browser extensions and basic phone functions. Tightly integrated within fring, all new applications are enriched with fring’s built-in presence indicators including real-time awareness of users’ presence (online, away, offline, or in a call). Users will benefit from a rich, augmented experience combining a selection of new mobile applications with fring’s award-winning service featuring VoIP talk, multi-community chat, online presence, file transfer, 3G-Wi-Fi auto-roaming and more interaction between fring users (fringstersTM) and their online buddies.

“We built the fring community by harnessing and bringing our users the benefits of internet communication & experience, within the challenging mobile environment. By opening the fringAPI, we are now sharing our “mobile-internet key” to let talented developers worldwide add-on any flavor of mobile internet fun and functionality for our users to enjoy.” Explained Alex Nerst, Co-Founder and CTO of fring. “We’re looking forward to the ride, welcoming the worldwide pool of talented developers to join us in creating the best and broadest selection of mobile internet applications via fring.”

Any fringAdd-on™ application is automatically integrated into the fring interface free of charge with strict privacy control, and becomes widely accessible to fringsters on hundreds of devices1 across platforms, service providers and communities.  The fringAPI is currently available for fring clients for Nokia S60 v9.2 and additional devices and platforms will be added in the coming weeks. Developers can obtain information and documentation from the Developer Zone at http://developers.fring.com .

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.

FlyingBird Releases Money Manager for S60 3rd Edition

FlyingBird Software, the provider of productivity software for Symbian OS smartphones, has announced the S60 version of its popular and award-winning Money Manager personal finance application. Money Manager is a complete personal financial manager for mobile devices that allows users to securely record transactions, track account balances, generate reports and budgets, and manage their finances while on the go.

Flying Money Manager features:

• streamlined and intuitive user interface,
• fast and easy data entry,
• scheduled and memorized transactions,
• splitting of transaction categories,
• multi-currency support,
• predefined expense and income categories,
• reports export to Microsoft Excel format,
• back-up and restore,
• QIF import/export.

The software supports most account types, including checking, savings, credit card, cash, asset, liability, and credit line accounts. Flying Money Manager s60v3 may be used as a stand-alone application on a handheld or as mobile companion for the desktop applications like MS Money or Quicken.

The security of personal financial data on mobile devices is of concern to many. To address this Flying Money Manager s60v3 has built-in secure password protection, using 256-bit Blowfish encryption to protect against malicious hacking or other threats. Money Manager s60v3 works on Nokia Nseries, Eseries and other Nokia, LG and Samsung smartphones based on S60 3rd Edition.

Flying Money Manager s60v3 is available now for $29.95 at www.flyingbirdsoft.com. A full functioning 15-day trial version as well as additional information is available at http://www.flyingbirdsoft.com/products/money-s60.

Best Blacklist Updated to V2.01

One of my favorite SmartphoneWare S60 3^rd Edition applications, Best Blacklist, was just updated to V2.01. The new release offers the following features:

• Switch between main view and log with joystick left/right.
• Option to show log entry details to see telephone number added.
• Send SMS from LOG view added.
• Pressing green (call) key in log view calls back the selected entry.
• German version added. Now available in English, Russian, German and Chinese.

I just installed it on my N82 and it is as snappy as the previous 2.0 release. SmartphoneWare clearly wants to create a powerful Handy Blacklist competitor with this update.

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.