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Brightkite has added Facebook support to their list of supported sites. You can use this support to update your status and/or your location, notes and photos. Brightkite is becoming a very useful hub for linking social networking sites together, although we would also recommend you look at sites like ping.fm and Fire Eagle as other solutions.
If you would like to view OSM (OpenStreetMap) maps on your iPhone, then this application may be for you. Called route-me, it allows you to view OpenStreetMap, Microsoft Virtual Earth and CloudMade maps. It’s still early days, but it looks promising.
Head over to their website for a little more information.
TomTom have joined in the Boxing Day Sales, and have offered a £50 saving on their top of the range TomTom GO940 LIVE
. This brings the price down to around £390, and also still offers £50 of fuel vouchers that we mentioned before. Head over to TomTom for more information and to purchase.
Well, UK Gadgeteer has been running for roughly 15 months, and in that time we have written nearly 750 articles, reviewed a nice selection of the latest gadgets, and had lots of fun in the process! Next year promises to be even bigger and better, with many more reviews (we’ve got a range of gadgets on test over the xmas period and will be releasing the reviews throughout January).
We’re taking a few days break, but will be back afresh in the New Year, and in the meantime I would like to personally thanks everyone who reads, comments and/or subscribes to the RSS feed, and also to all the contributors and helpers behind the scenes.
To handle the anticipated demand throughout 2009, we seamlessly upgraded to a new server last weekend, which should see us through for some while.
To the manufacturers who send us review samples; thanks to you too; we’ve already started discussions with a number of new companies, so 2009 should see even more reviews.
Brightkite have added Flickr integration into their range of functions. If you head to Account Settings -> Sharing, you’ll now find details of how to configure Flickr uploading. Now, when you upload a picture to Brightkite, it will automatically add them to Flickr too, and will even geotag the picture based on your current Brightkite location.
Brightkite have confirmed to us they will preserve any EXIF data, and will simply add Flickr tags based on your current location; so those who already geotag their photos when the picture is taken (or don’t update their Brightkite location sufficiently often) might need to think carefully before selecting the geotagging option.
Although many people use ShoZu to control their picture uploads, this offers another option, and ensures pictures uploaded to services like Brightkite can still end up in a single repository for long term storage.
In an interesting move, 3UK have added a new low cost tariff to their 3Store. The new tariff, 3 MM100 Plan is part of the Mix’n'Match range, which means it comes with free voicemail, 300 minutes of 3UK-3UK calls, “Free” Windows Live Messenger (limits apply), “Free” Skype (limits apply), and 100 minutes or texts (where 1 minute = 1 text). This tariff is being labelled as a £12 per month contract, but is on special offer at £9 per month from today.
The main downside of this contract is it only offers a small number of phone options (all free); 3 Skypephone, 3Skypephone S2, and the Sony Ericsson K660i (although this is available in an exclusive colour of Lime White as well as the more common Black).
This is a very good headline and attention grabing tariff from 3, but we suspect most people will still head for one of the higher tariffs (which currently offer unlimited 3000 3UK-3UK calls, instead of the 300 included in this new tariff).
Oh, and we’re sorry 3UK, but using the phrase “Free” instead of “Unlimited” is better, but still not giving the total picture; with both the “Free” items listed above still having limits. Go on, give us all a nice xmas present and remove those limits and make 2009 the year that the mobile operators use “unlimited” correctly…
Update: 3 have informed us this is a special offer over the Christmas period, so it may not last into the New Year…
mobbler, our preferred S60 last.fm client has been updated to v0.3.2. The new features include:
As always, mobbler can be downloaded from here, and if you have a recent version of the application, it may notify you of the update. It’s nice to see free applications like this being able to offer S60 5th Edition support so quickly, which bodes well for the future of the platform as the new touchscreen devices (Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97) become available.
Thanks to nokiAAdict for providing us the full Changelog (and also the screenshot).
Nokia have released a beta application called “Handwriting Calculator”. Although this will not appeal to everyone, the key and most interesting thing about this application is that they have released Windows, Maemo (used on the Nokia Internet Tablets) and Symbian S60 (5th Edition, ie touchscreen devices) versions at the same time. This shows a commitment to the various platforms, and should mean we will hopefully continue to see other applications, services and beta tools released across the platforms.
Nokia, having purchased TrollTech earlier this year, have talked about releasing cross platforms applications using Qt during 2009, and have stated they are expecting to achieve this on both the Maemo and the S60 platforms; this bodes well for Nokia to allow them to show a united front across their platforms.
Here’s a short video on the new Handwriting Calculator:
More information here at Nokia Beta Labs.
The BBC have announced this week that their iPlayer service now supports Mac and Linux, such that viewers can now download programmes. The BBC have achieved this by working with Adobe to produce a solution in AIR, which is cross platform. However, this is only available to BBC iPlayer Labs users in the short term, with it being rolled out to everyone during 2009. Right now, there are also only a handful of shows that are supported by the new platform, although more will be coming in time, so although the BBC are happy for people to apply to the new beta service, they recommend you don’t uninstall the old version for a while.
Brightkite have updated their iPhone client to v1.1; the new featutes include:
This new version is already live in the iTunes App Store.