After the successful launch of the Revo Ikon (released last year), Revo have now added another touchscreen DAB radio to their portfolio, and have released this unit as the first “under £200 colour touchscreen digital radio with multi-format reception”. What does that really mean? It means DAB radio (and DAB+), FM radio, Internet radio, ability to play Last.fm music streams, ability to play music from a PC, ability to play music from an iPhone / iPod attached via it’s dock, and if that’s not enough, it’s got an AUX socket and stereo RCA sockets for piping other music to the device.

The radio features a 3.5″ TFT colour touchscreen, with a similar user interface as that used on the Revo Ikon, and has an 8W amplifier and NXT’s Balanced Radiator loudspeaker technology.

I like the range of technologies that Revo put into their DAB radios, and expanded their touchscreen range makes sense, especially by introducing a cheaper device (although with a less powerful amplifier and it appears to not have the stereo speakers of the Revo Ikon).  As with the Revo Ikon and the PURE Sensia, the device only comes with a limited trial subscription to Last.fm (in this case, 31 days), so to continue to use the streaming facilities you’ll need to pay £3 per month.

The Revo AXiS will be available from 1st October 2010, and be sold at £199.95.

Over the last month or so, Pure Digital have been busy.  They’ve launched two new radios, updated the PURE Sensia software, and have now released a new service, Pure FlowSongs, which is a very interesting (and nicely integrated) service for some of their Internet radios…

Firstly, the Pure One Mi (pronounced Me), only costs £34.99, and includes DAB and FM radio, a clear digital display, 16 presets, multi-lingual menus and a USB socket for future updates, and is one of the more compact models they have ever produced.

They’ve also release the Pure Oasis Flow, a weatherproof and splash resistant, rechargeable internet-connected digital radio, costing £169.99, which features DAB and FM radio (as well as the internet radio via Wi-Fi), and should work for up to 15 hours on DAB.  It also supports the new Pure FlowSongs, covered below.

The PURE Sensia update is interesting.  When the radio first launched, I wondered how many additional plugins we would see over time for this device, and whether Pure would be able to continue to support it with new features.  Well, last month, Pure added Picasa support to the Twitter, Facebook and Weather applications already available.  This allows you to login to your online Picasa account and view a slideshow of your online pictures, either in the smaller visual panel, or full screen.  Some photo information can be overlaid on the picture, and you can change the timing of the slideshow, as well as pause it.

However, the most interesting item is Pure FlowSongs, which was announced this week.  This is only available in the UK (as a public beta), and is supported on the following radios:

PURE Sensia, PURE EVOKE Flow, PURE AVANTI Flow, Pure Oasis Flow and PURE Siesta Flow

The new software to support Pure FlowSongs will be released on Monday (16th August) and will allow you to identify, and then purchase any song you hear on the radio.  Importantly, you can be listening to the DAB radio, FM radio, or an Internet radio station (the software is limited to the internet-connected radios due to what happens next, not that the radio source needs to be internet based); the radio will then use a Shazam service (well known for their mobile application to detect what music is being played) to identify the song.  In the case of the PURE Sensia, there is an addition button on the screen (see below) whereas other radios will need a button combination to be pressed.

If you want to use the service, your radio needs to be registered at the Pure Lounge, and you’ll need to provide a credit or debit card to topup your online account, but then you’ll get a free 90 day trial of the identification service (normally £2.99 a year), and if you decide to purchase a song, they will cost an additional 79p to £1.29, and this uses the 7Digital music service.  The purchasing function on the device will be protected by a 4 digit PIN for security.

Once purchased, the song can then be downloaded (as an mp3) to your PC or Mac, but it will also be located within your Lounge account, allowing you to stream the song to your radio too.  Pure Digital also state the songs can be uploaded to an iPod, and have stated the mp3 files are DRM-free, allowing them to be played back on any mp3 device.  When you stream, the mp3 will be 128kbps, but the downloaded files will be up to 320kbps.

The integration of the Shazam service to allow you to identify any music being played is a very powerful extra facility for these radios; over the last year I’ve been impressed with both Pure Digital and Revo for adding support for Last.fm into some of their devices, and I think this ability to identify and even purchase songs adds even more to the experience.  Even better, although not yet available as part of the beta, Pure Digital are looking to enable you to buy whole albums using this method, which is likely to work out better value.

mobbler, the very popular Symbian Last.fm client has moved from version 0.09(265) to version 1.09(265), and is now Symbian Signed (and will be available from the Ovi Store very soon).  Although only a minor feature update, the move to Symbian Signed and being part of the Ovi Store is a major move for mobbler.

The feature differences with this new version are:

• Set the album art of the current song as your phone’s wallpaper
• Opening the browser is no longer embedded

If you hadn’t seen the new v0.09 version, it added the following features (with the first item a nice feature to help minimise data allowance) :

• If you’re listening to the radio, but you have a track on your device, Mobbler will now play the track on your device instead of streaming it to save you some bandwidth and battery. You will get a little hard disk icon in the bottom left of the album art if this happens.
• We can now fetch and show lyrics of the current track from Lyricsfly.com
• You can now add and remove track, album, and artist tags on the current track and also from the list views
• We now show if you have loved a track before
• We now show if the artist you are listening to is touring. You will get a red banner on the top right of the album art. On S60 5th Edition you’ll be able to click the banner to view the events.
• Remember the last searched for track, album, artist, tag
• Bug fixes

This new version has another logo change; the v1 logo loses the “crazy paving” background effect.  mobbler intend to continue releasing versions under the Symbian Signed process, but will still supply beta releases as self-signed versions.

Just like buses, you wait for ages and then two come along together…

It’s been a bit of a week for firmware updates, and many recent devices have seen updates this week.  The Nokia E72 has now got the v22 firmware, The Nokia N86 gets v21, and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic gets v40.  Each of these offers improvements for the device, and are worthy of investigation if you own these devices.  Of course, the operator-specific branded firmwares will take a little longer to be released.

For example, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic changelog includes:

• Additional Kinetic Scrolling
• Changed UI in the homescreen similar to the 5530XM
• Updated Nokia Messaging
• OVI Contacts pre-installed
• New screen alarm when locked
• Keyboard updated: when in vertical mode it’s alpha-numeric, if you turn your phone to landscape mode, it automatically changes to full qwerty
• Keyboard updated: when you press a “key” the key that appears on top is now bigger
• Software updater is now updated and has some more options
• When phone key lock is on and you receive a call you see a slide to unlock and a slide to answer bar

However, the Maemo based Nokia N900 has had an even better week…

Earlier in the week, a small minor firmware update was released, which allowed the Ovi Store to become available for the Maemo platform, and then over the next day or so, the PR1.1 first major firmware release will start appearing on devices for applying.  This brings many little minor fixes to the platform, many of which were reported via the Maemo bug tracker direct to the developers, but probably the single biggest bugfix that is directly relevant to the UK is that 3UK SIMs are now supported by this firmware update.  So, if you have a 3UK SIM you want to use with a Nokia N900, then apply this update (2.2009.51-1) and then you should no longer suffer from “SIM card rejected” messages.

If you are yet to buy a Nokia N900, and have been put off by the high SIM-free price of the device, then Vodafone have announced they will be selling the phone soon.  There are rumours that stocks are already in store, but sales are being held to prevent it impacting on the launch of the iPhone on Vodafone, but I doubt whether anyone will be swayed from one to the other, as they seem to attract a very different customer.  Either way, this new firmware will be well worth applying to your Nokia N900 as soon as it’s available for you.

If you want to access this major update as an OTA (Over The Air) upgrade, you’ll need to apply the more minor upgrade from earlier in the week first, and then shortly afterwards this new firmware should become visible, however, if you use Nokia’s PC based Software Updater, you are able to jump straight to the latest firmware without the intermediate step.

The only issue with this firmware update is that is does not bring the portrait-mode support that was expected, so it’s likely we’ll see another firmware update for the Nokia N900 in the coming months to address that oft-requested feature; also, MMS is still missing, although there is a third party app providing MMS support if you really need it (see here for more details, and here for another program by the same author which allows a secondary APN to be defined on the device, which is often needed to be able to send MMS).  However, we should point out that Nokia and Maemo are aware that the OTA firmware update will not work if certain other software is installed (especially applications from the extras-devel repository, which is not enabled by default on the Nokia N900).  If you are directed to perform the firmware update via your PC, one option is to turn off this repository, and uninstall any applications installed from it, and see if that fixed the “under-the-covers” software problems.

If you really want to see a fairly complete list of fixes, then head to the Maemo PR1.1 release information, although be warned, it’s quite technical, and quite long too!

Finally, if you want to get the latest version of Vagalume (the Maemo Last.fm / Libre.fm client) streaming Last.fm on your Nokia N900, then nokiAAddict has also written up the information on how to achieve this here.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Changelog courtesy of nokiAAddict.

Mobbler, the very versatile Last.fm client for Symbian has been updated to v0.08(237).  This now includes the following changes:

• Open a map in Google Maps (if installed) for an event location
• Can now view a list of queued scrobbles through the Tools menu, and delete unwanted scrobbles
• Open a QR Code to let friends download Mobbler
• Now downloads avatars in shoutboxes
• Radio now works on Nokia E52 and E72 (disabled equaliser for these devices)
• mobblerhelper.sis is no longer needed for 3.0 phones
• Some minor defect fixes

The first is a nice feature, showing integration amongst different applications, and the second feature, although not something I’ve ever needed, I can see the benefit of.  As mentioned within the list; if you have a S60 3rd Edition (non-FP1 or FP2) phone, and have mobbler installed, you’ll need to uninstall the mobblerhelper application before upgrading to this new version.  If you upgrade with it still installed, you’ll get an error as part of the upgrade, and the new install will fail.

Although many people have Google Maps installed, it would be nice to see mobbler use the Ovi Maps application which is pretty standard across the Symbian devices, and which recently announced an API allowing other applications to be able to access the data as required, and using Ovi Maps instead may well happen in the future if the mobbler authors are able to organise it.

Update: It’s now been updated again, and this new version v0.08(241) adds the following two fixes:

• Non-subscribers can now listen to the radio again (error was made in some tidying up changes)
• Should no longer get an update error if mobblerhelper is installed

The Maemo Last.fm client, Vagalume (which also works on a variety of Linux OSes), has been updated to v.0.8.1.  This new version (which has been released for the existing OSes as well as the new Maemo 5 OS), offers a range of new features…

• Implemented the Last.fm Web Services API v2.0
• Support for Libre.fm and other Last.fm-compatible services
• Support for Maemo 5 (Nokia N900)
• New icon that replaces the classic Vagalume logo
• New CD case image to place the album cover artwork
• New feature to stop playback after a given time (“sleep timer”)
• New menu option to play any user’s tag radio
• New “Add bookmark” and “Bookmark this radio” menu entries
• New configuration setting to download free tracks automatically
• Add {station} keyword to the IM status template
• Use system-wide Gnome audio settings
• Mixer support to change the volume in non-Maemo targets
• Added Polish translation
• Autocompletion support for combo box entries
• Make url and email clickable on the about dialog
• vagalumectl: new commands to show and hide the player window
• Fix some timeout problems in HTTP requests

What’s nice to see is support for Libre.fm, which is a similar setup to Last.fm, but designed around Free music, and hence as no subscription to pay.  It uses a very similar API to access the music as Last.fm, so it will be interesting to see whether we start to see other clients, such as the Symbian mobbler client also supporting this site.

Since the initial v0.8 release, a minor update has already been released which fixes a minor install issue with the Nokia N900, and also falls back to the old Last.fm API should the new one not work.

For me, it’s nice to see this client not abandoning the elder Nokia Maemo devices, and I hope many other Maemo applications offer continued support for these devices (eg Nokia N800, Nokia N810), which still function perfectly well, even if they can’t run the latest OS.

If you aren’t seeing Vagalume in the Application Manager on the Nokia N900, then follow Gerry’s advice here to activate the “Maemo Extras” application repository to get access to more applications.

Firstly Spotify have updated their Symbian client (v0.3.22), with the following improvements:

• A fix for disappearing offline tracks.
• A fix for the problem when adding tracks to existing playlists on touch screens.
• Text input of special characters now added, e.g. Norwegian and French.
• Text input on special types of keyboards now added, e.g. non-touch phones with dual keyboards.
• New devices supported include the Nokia E72, Nokia N82, Nokia 6110 Navigator, Nokia 6210, Navigator,Nokia 6290, Nokia N79.

Also, they have upgraded their Android client (v.0.3.24) with the following improvements:

• URI support – Open/Share Spotify URI’s to or from SMS, email, the Facebook or Twitter apps, etc.
• Updated player with cover art swipe support (similar to the iPhone version).
• Android 2.0/Eclair support. Spotify now runs on the popular Motorola Droid phone.
• Home screen widget – control Spotify from the home screen!

It’s nice to see Spotify working to try to unify their features across multiple devices, although we’re still hoping they can add support to scrobble tracks to Last.fm from their mobile clients soon.

It’s an impressive figure; Last.fm managed to gain an additional half a million users in just a single 24 hour period.  How did they manage that; simple; they launched Last.fm on the Microsoft XBOX Live platform (which now features Last.fm, Twitter & Facebook support).  More interestingly, Last.fm have now produced a short report on the build up to the launch, and how they monitored their systems before and during the launch.

To read more about the Last.fm XBOX launch, head to their website here.

As we seem to be talking about music today, this week saw the launch of the Spotify client for Symbian S60 (both 3rd Edition and 5th Edition), and it seems to have been generally well received.  Granted there are maybe a few minor issues with the UI (it’s difficult to tell what music is available in offline mode) and some have (quite rightly) questioned the £120 per year cost of being able to listen, but not own the music.

Basically, if you like to listen to lots and lots of different music, potentially more than you own (in both music tastes as well as disk space limits) then Spotify may well be the solution for you.  It’s more expensive than Last.fm (which is more geared around giving you access to music you already own or is similar to your own music), but for many it’s worth the extra cost.  If, on the other hand, you don’t buy much music each month, and your current music collection fits happily onto your music device of choice, then maybe the cost of the Spotify Premium account would be better spent on buying more music, but for those that want to use the service, Spotify have added the Symbian client to their existing Android and Apple iPhone clients.

As we mentioned with the Spotify bundle deal with 3UK (here), you need to be careful not to over-use any 3G data connection you have, as music streaming can quickly eat through your monthly allowance, but by careful use of offline playlists and Wi-Fi connections, you should be able to listen to fresh music on a regular basis via Spotify.

To access and download the client, simply point your mobile browser to m.spotify.com, once downloaded, you’ll need to enter your Spotify account details (which needs to be a Premium account at £10 per month, no minimum contract period).  Even better, this version supports all Symbian devices, including those from Samsung and the Sony Ericsson Satio, so isn’t limited to Nokia devices.

Offline playlists are limited to 3,333 tracks (assuming you have enough space for all of those tracks), and every 30 days you will need to resync; if you go abroad, you can continue to use Spotify Premium in a country not normally supported by the service for 14 days, so you can have your music as long as your holidays aren’t too long (and you can afford the data roaming costs; if not; use the offline facilities which gives you a little longer anyway).

Another key difference between Spotify and Last.fm is that Spotify allows you to select an album to play, whereas Last.fm concentrates more on the artist, and will give you a selection of their songs, but not in strict album order.  Finally, both services limit you to 1 live online music stream, even if the same account has been configured in multiple devices.

With the limits on 3G data usage in the UK, and the higher cost than Last.fm (which can also be used on hardware devices), it’s difficult to see many people paying this subscription in the long term, but at least they are supporting a wide range of mobile devices.

Integration; one of the key driving forces behind the establishment of UK Gadgeteer, and Upcoming have released a new feature which seems to offer just that.  In case you’ve never heard of them (and although there’s not been much innovation coming from them recently, we’d be surprised if you’ve never heard of them…) Upcoming offer an ability to find out about, and confirm your attendance at events up and down the country (actually, all around the world).

Some organisations, like OpenStreetMap use Upcoming to help organise some of their events, and to help get a guide to the number of likely attendees, whereas for others, Upcoming is a form of Social Networking site, but based around events, and not people.

To improve the experience, and to offer something new, Upcoming announced a new feature this week; they can now take the details from your Pandora (US-only site), Last.fm and iTunes accounts, and extract the music artists you listen to.  Then, it will store this information as part of your profile, and should any of your musical artists be performing in your local area, Upcoming will notify you of the event.

Now, to some degree, Last.fm already has event information built into their offering, but it’s nice to see Upcoming happy to reach out to other sources to pick up information to improve their own service.

If you don’t have an Upcoming account (you can use your Yahoo! account to login) then personally we feel you may be better sticking with using Last.fm’s event functionality, but if you do have an account, login, let it find your artists, and see if the new feature is useful to you.

Some content and the screenshot courtesy of Lifehacker.