Shortly after the formal launch, the BBC have upgraded the Symbian iPlayer client.  The new version supports accessing the content over 3G (although presumably still limited to UK 3G networks), and also supports the downloading of some shows for playing offline.  Head over to the BBC to download.

BBC iPlayer for Symbian phones is now live.  Although it was announced that the Nokia N96 would ship with the iPlayer client, the BBC has released the client here for any recent Symbian mobile phone which also encompasses the WRT (Web Runtime) client.  If your N95, N95 8Gb, or N85 is running the latest firmware, it should work for example.  The iPlayer client only works over a WiFi connection as opposed to a 3G connection at present.

It looks like Nokia and BBC have done a deal such that the N96 will come with a BBC iPlayer Symbian version built in. There’s a lot of discussion going on at the moment about whether or not it may be possible to get this client to work on other Symbian phones, although we’ll have to wait to see.  It looks like it will support downloaded programmes as well as streaming programmes.

Vodafone are providing their customers free access to the BBC’s Olympics coverage.  The access is mainly via the Vodafone Live! portal, although Nokia N95 8GB users can also download a BBC News “widget” to provide direct access to the content from the phone.

Story courtesy of Tech Digest.

ShoZu have been busy people. First of all, they’ve announced ShoZu for iPhone, which should be available in the next few weeks, in line with the updated Apple iPhone 2.0 firmware, and the Apple App Store. ShoZu allows you to take photos, and then ShoZu will organisee uploading those pictures to your selected sites in the background. A very popular Symbian S60 app, and now available for the iPhone, supporting the same range of sites. As well as the traditional upload facilities, there are now facilities for downloading pictures from your friends, reading and commenting on your and your friends’ photos / posts, interaction with Facebook, and geotagging your photos for you. It even supports a variety of “Citizen Journalism Sites”, such as the BBC website, Scoopt, CNN and ITV.com.

ShoZu supports many sites, and the other big news is that they have recently added support for Ovi, the new Nokia sharing site. Interestingly, two months ago they only support 29 site; now they support 46, and looking through the list the majority of picture based sites we could think of were included. Although they support Twitter, they need to expand their range of text based sites (such as Plazes and Jaiku that add location information to the messages) to complete their support and claim to be able to support the majority of Web 2.0 sites.

Some content thanks to Jonathan at atmaspheric | endeavours, and Darla Mack at her website.

BBC have announced that their iPlayer 2.0 interface is now in beta testing. This builds on the success of the current iPlayer website, but will offer a much more personalised web browsing experience, better radio and TV listings, and higher quality options.

According to this article on the BBC website, sales of smartphones will outstrip laptops in the next 12 to 18 months. With Symbian recently reporting that more than 200 million Symbian smartphones have been manufactured and shipped (the actual figure is at least 206 million), and Nokia predicting it will sell over 35 million GPS enabled handsets in the coming year, it’s all go for smartphones.  It will also be interesting to see how the other manufacturers react; there’s already strong indications the new 3G iPhone will ship with a built in GPS, or at least GPS support.

BBC Link via SMS Text News.

The BBC has signed a deal with Virgin Media to make the iPlayer available to their customers via their TVs. Little technical informatino is available, nor the exact launch date. The most information available from the BBC is that “Virgin Media customers will be able to see full-screen pictures without the need for downloading.”

Nokia have signed up a number of key players to support the LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks, as a 4th generation mobile network in direct competition to Intel’s WiMAX initiative. Sony Ericsson, NEC and Alcatel-Lucent, NextWave Wireless and Nokia Siemens Networks are all part of the licensing framework which is designed to keep the LTE patent costs down to a minimum to ensure it has the best chance of success.

More information on the initial partnership on the BBC Technology website.

After releasing the initial support for the Nintendo Wii last week, the BBC have also explained that they weren’t able to reach a deal with Sony to provide the same functionality on the PS3. However, an enterprising individual has created the website PS3iPlayer.com, which, if you access it from your PS3, will get you access to the BBC iPlayer website. It’s doesn’t work perfectly, but it at least shows what could be possible if the BBC and Sony were able to resolve their artistic differences.

Story courtesy of Tech Digest.

BBC have announced that their iPlayer will be coming to the Nintendo Wii starting from yesterday. It will be available via the Internet Channel (which if you haven’t already got this will cost you 500 Points). An initial version should now be available, although more versions will be available throughout the year as the service develops. It is, however, limited to people in the UK who are licence-fee payers.

Ofcom have announced that we should have at least 4 HD (Hi-Def) channels broadcasting on Freeview in time for the 2012 London Olympics. Some of these channels could come online as early as 2009, in the areas where analogue TV has been turned off. The BBC will get one of the channels, and the other three will be auctioned off.

Story courtesy of Reuters.

Amid all the Apple announcements yesterday, the BBC updated their website so that they now have iPhone support for their iPlayer. This will allow UK iPhone users the ability to watch selected BBC TV programmes again for up to 7 days after broadcast.

Story courtesy of Berble.com.

We’ve already covered the Revo Blik range here, but Revo have also created the Mondo, an Internet (WiFi) radio designed to link into your existing HiFi. The unit includes a remote control, and connects to your stereo via RCA cables (included). It has a digital alarm clock built in, and that subtle white on black LCD display. As well as over 7,500 internet radio stations, it also supports Listen Again facilities, like those provided by the BBC. It also has WMA and MP3 support, and can play music wirelessly streamed from your PC or Mac.

It’s available now for roughly £100.

When the BBC first launched the iPlayer service, it was Windows only. Now the BBC have announced support for Mac and Linux, with programmes being streamed using Flash. However, some programmes are only available for download, as opposed to watching via a stream, and the download solution is still Windows only. However, it’s a step in the right direction.

Thanks to Roo Reynolds for the story and pic.