Here’s an interesting application, which was pointed out to me today; it’s called Juice Defender (despite the screenshot saying Juice Control), which allows you to create a set of rules to limit certain battery draining functions; for instance, you can set it to only activate 3G & WiFi for a minute every few minutes, and whilst it does the activation, it will also check for updates and emails, but will then shut those connections back down to help save battery.  There is a element of being location-aware, so you can set rules based on location too (although you’ll need Ultimate Juice for that, which is available from the Android Market).

There are 5 main triggers:

• Battery – when battery level gets low (less than 15%), disable APN/WiFi, and re-enable them when battery level is restored. APN/WiFi will also be enabled while the device is being recharged.

• Schedule – regularly enable APN/WiFi for a short period of time, to let background data sync occur (email, Twitter, Facebook, stock quotes…). If Quick is disabled APN/WiFi stays enabled for a longer period, useful if your data connection is very slow or you need to sync lots of data.

• Night schedule (requires UltimateJuice) – disable APN/WiFi during night time; you can also optionally put the phone in Silent Mode.

• Screen – enable APN/WiFi while the screen is on to allow browsing, tweeting, procrastination and general internet-powered enjoyment, regardless of scheduled events and battery level.

• Location (requires UltimateJuice) – this trigger controlled by the ‘AutoWiFi’ button. It disables WiFi when the device is not in range of any known WiFi network. The location is determined via the cellular network, so it’s usually quite coarse. It’s a fully automatic set-it-and-forget-it WiFi manager!

The priority order of the triggers is 1) location (WiFi only), 2) screen, 3) battery, 4) night schedule, 5) schedule – this means, for example, that when the screen is on APN/WiFi will be enabled even when the battery is low, or that the regular schedule won’t occur during the night period.

This looks a very interesting application, although whether Locale (which we covered here) offers more facilities (especially if you have regular access to a power source).  If you are interested in Juice Defender, then see the authors website here.

Although I was tempted to write a “War and Peace” article on the issues of privacy surrounding Location Based Services, I won’t.  Last week a website was set up called Please Rob Me, which tries to show the risk of providing too much information on the Internet, which could lead to impacts in the real world; the point the website is making is that by providing information as to where your home is, and the fact you aren’t there, could increase your risk of being robbed.  Now, although it’s unlikely a robber is sitting watching your FourSquare / Brightkite / Google Latitude check-ins, the risk still exists.

So, what can be done about it?  Well, first of all, it’s well worth reading these articles (here from FourSquare, and here from Brightkite), but in essence, here are some key thoughts:

• When you check-in, think carefully about the settings you use, and whether you want (or need) the world to know about you are at this location (especially if the location is your home).

• Think about whether it’s wise to then have this information passed over to Facebook and/or Twitter.  Whereas FourSquare and Brightkite especially offer privacy controls, once you publish the information and location on Twitter (and increasingly Facebook with their new privacy settings), it’s available for anyone and everyone to see and search for.  Oh, and a lot of people are getting fed up with Twitter streams filling up with FourSquare check-ins, so it’s wise to turn this broadcasting off, if only to not annoy your friends.

• Don’t forget other services, such as Plazes, Dopplr, TripIt and Upcoming also reveal where you are going to be in the future, which you may want to think twice about too; although some, like TripIt, allow you to set some trips as private so they won’t display in public information until you change that per-trip setting.

• If you are using Fire Eagle to broker your location information (and it’s a very useful tool in this respect), again, remember it has the ability to control whether applications / websites can read and/or write your location information, and if reading it, what level of accuracy you give them access to.

• As Brightkite mention, if you realise afterwards it might not have been a wise move, look for a delete option to remove the information.

If you look at my profiles on these services (and others like it, let’s not forget this problem isn’t new, it’s just FourSquare and Brightkite are getting more and more users), you’ll often find the I don’t broadcast any location unless it’s to friends, and even then, I may not reveal all the information; on Google Latitude for example, I can set some people to only getting city-level location information, so instead of being able to precisely pinpoint me on a map, they simply get a rough location; this is a useful feature for people you may speak to online occasionally, but don’t have enough information to be able to implicitly trust them (note: this isn’t about not trusting them at all, in my opinion it’s about whether you would tell them your whole life history warts’n'all).

As a passing comment, the latest version of Gravity, v1.30 (6350), includes support for FourSquare, as well as offering geo-location facilities; for S60 5th Edition and S60 3rd Edition FP2 devices (Nokia E72 etc.), this can be either cell ID location information, WiFi positioning information, or GPS information, whereas for S60 3rd Edition FP1 devices, it’s currently only cell ID and WiFi positioning (due to needing to get each version of the app through the long Symbian Signed process to allow access to the GPS information on an FP1 device).  If you are not a FourSquare fan, we’ve recently covered the S60 5th Edition Brightkite client (see here) that could be used instead.

So, although you’ll find I have accounts on most of the location based social networking services (Plazes, FourSquare, Brightkite, Google Latitude, TripIt, Dopplr, Upcoming), you’ll often find I’m (as FourSquare nicely phrase it) “Off the Grid”, or only visible if we’re already friends, and equally, although I have the ability to provide geo-location information on my tweets, I rarely do, as (in my opinion) it’s often not relevant where the tweet was actually written.

Also, you’re more likely to find me using location based services that have a range of privacy options, in the way that Brightkite used to (unless I’m mistaken this isn’t possible now) and Google Latitude still does; allowing not just control over who can access the information, but how accurately they can access it.

HTC have released 2 very exciting Android phones this week; the HTC Legend (above) and the HTC Desire.  HTC have released some information about the devices here, but in summary:

The HTC Legend is made from a single aluminium block, features a 3.2″ AMOLED screen with an optical joystick.

The HTC Desire features a 3.7″ AMOLED screen, 5 megapixel camera, and is, in essence, very similar to the Google Nexus One, although it lacks the dual-mic noise cancelling feature of the Google phone.

One of the new UI features that HTC will add to both devices is the new “HTC Friend Stream that seamlessly aggregates all of your social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised flow of updates. This simple aggregation makes it easier than ever to focus on what friends are doing as well as to view the images and links that they share.  In addition to Friend Stream, people can be organised into specific social circles, such as groups of friends, colleagues or any other way that makes sense.”

In terms of availability, the HTC Desire should be available on Orange in April, and on T-Mobile on 26th March.  If you can’t wait for this, T-Mobile have just released the T-Mobile Pulse Mini on PAYG for £99.99, which is a very low price point for an Android device.  When I met up with 3UK a few weeks back, they talked about having the Hero replacement by June, and I do wonder whether they will be carrying the HTC Legend.

In other news, HTC have confirmed that the Android 2.1 update for the Hero will become available in March 2010 (although network operator versions may take a little longer), and have also apparently stated that the HTC Magic will not be receiving this update.  The Hero update will include the new enhanced Sense features mentioned above.

3UK announced on Friday that they are now selling the Nokia 5230 on their network.  As it’s a Symbian S60 5th Edition phone, it allows 3UK to promote more than just the basic phone features; as well as the typical Skype on 3, Windows Live Messenger, and Email on 3, 3UK have said the phone will ship with a Twitter client (it will be interesting to see which client they have selected for this), an integrated Facebook application, and it also supports the Spotify Symbian client allowing the use of Spotify (in case you want to use Spotify Premium on your 3UK mobile phone, you can add the £9.99 Spotify Premium to your mobile phone bill; see here for more details, although a minimum 6 month subscription will be required).  Oh, and if you are using Spotify on your Symbian phone, Spotify have recently released a minor upgrade for their client, which you will want to download from here.

Although it’s available on a contract, it’s also available on PAYG for £150, which sounds like a good deal…

Except, as raised by others (see Abul’s post here), you can buy the same phone SIM-free and network unlocked for £100 direct from Carphone Warehouse!  3UK have explained that Carphone Warehouse simply have better buying power (with their ability to buy the phones for sale across the whole of Europe), and hence can afford to sell the phone cheaper.

Either way, if you are looking for a nice Symbian phone (albeit without WiFi) which includes a GPS (and hence the new free Ovi Maps), in either Black or White, then head to 3UK or Carphone Warehouse.

3UK want to promote the use of Twitter, and so for the whole of February and March, access to Twitter will be free!  What exactly is and isn’t included?  Well, 3UK have stated that access to Twitter for tweeting messages and pictures will be free of charge, whether you are accessing Twitter via the mobile browser, or using the integrated client on devices such as the INQ Mini 3G, Sony Ericsson T715, or even the INQ Chat 3G.  If you already pay for Internet access on your mobile phone, then accessing twitter will not come out of your internet data allowance.

Although this is only a 2 month period, this means that right now you can use Skype, Twitter and Windows Live Messenger for free on your device.  As always, 3UK seem to be pushing the boundaries on what could and should be included within the contract, and we hope this promotion can be extended in the long term.

3mobilebuzz, who manage PR and device loans (amongst other things) are running an awards event tomorrow night, and UK Gadgeteer is one of finalists!  To win, we need your support; if you are on twitter please tweet the following message:

I vote for @UKGadgeteer in the @3mobilebuzz #3mbcreative #3UKNYmeetup awards http://bit.ly/3MBcreative

Also, thanks for all the questions that you have provided to raise with 3UK tomorrow night; I will try my best to get all questions answered and will provide feedback later this week / early next week.

Thanks for your support,

Stephen

PS It’s a bit of a slow news day today, it’s as if Apple are planning to launch a new device… (6pm UK time!)

In terms of the majority of the software on the phone, it’s very similar to the INQ Mini 3G that I covered here and here, so what’s different about the Chat, what’s good, and what’s bad?

Well, that QWERTY keyboard is the main physical difference, and it is a very nice keyboard.  It’s similar to the Symbian QWERTY layout, and just slightly different to the BlackBerry layout (the Symbol and Shift keys are reversed compared to a BlackBerry, which makes it a challenge to get used to if you are a long term BlackBerry user).

A GPS is the other key difference to the INQ Mini 3G, and to be honest, it sometimes took it’s time to get a fix, but generally worked ok.  The included Google Maps worked well with the GPS.  Unlike Symbian devices, there is no configuration control over the GPS settings, so no facility for changing the Positioning Server over to Google to help speed up the initial fix.  One downside of Google Maps was it was expecting numeric key input, and that meant pressing the Symbol and the relevant key to emulate a number; it was a shame it wasn’t aware of the QWERTY and mapped keys allowing a single key press for functions.  As with all Brew OS devices, there is no cell ID location function within Google Maps, which limits you to waiting for the GPS to find a fix; if you are used to a device that can also use cell ID location information, then this seems to impact the fast “locate me” type functions when you know roughly where you are and just want to seatch for something local to your position…

In general terms, the integration of the Social Networking apps remains a key selling point of this phone, bringing together Skype, Facebook and Twitter, and linking the first two into the Contact List too.  Personally, it felt like the Twitter app was more of an add-on, with less integration than the other two, and no facilities for downloading contacts or avatars like the Facebook and Skype apps offer.

It’s nice to see the INQ Hub included as standard on the INQ Chat 3G (see here for how to access from the INQ Mini 3G), and overall the phone seemed a nice device.  For a device which can be described as a smartphone (although only just, given it’s limited to Java apps) the battery lasted well over a day, and unless you are using Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger and Skype constantly, should easily last two days.  With all 3 apps turned on, it still managed to last over a full working day, which is certainly a key timeframe.

Compared to Symbian, the lack of worrying about Access Points and just letting the device go ahead and connect to the Internet for you was a nice refreshing change, although for many it may fell like a level of control has been taken away from you.  Of course, with no WiFi support, the only option is 3G connectivity, which helps with the simplification.

So, overall, you may think my opinion is that this is a good, cheap phone worthy of consideration…? Well, I’m afraid it wasn’t as perfect as I would have liked…  Firstly, start running all those Social Networking apps together, and the phone often freezes when one of them is performing an update in the background, which can leave the phone locked for a minute or two, and although it doesn’t come with the Social Networking support out of the box (yet), buying a Nokia E63 and adding Gravity (plus the 3UK specific Skype and WLM apps) gets you very close, with the additional benefit of a true multitasking OS, and WiFi support too (although no GPS).  If it wasn’t for the device feeling so underpowered, then I would be supporting it as a worthy device, but it did occasionally leave me very frustrated.

So, if you don’t want to run all the Social Networking apps all the time,but want a device with a QWERTY keyboard, and the ability to use your favourite Social Networking sites out of the box, then certainly go and try out the INQ Chat 3G; you may be pleasantly surprised at the functionality on offer given the price, and hopefully a firmware update, or software updates will resolve the responsiveness issues I found.

As always, thanks to 3mobilebuzz for the loan of the device, and if you want more information, or to purchase an INQ Chat 3G, then head to the 3Store to see more.

Truphone have released v3.0 of their Android client, which now offers Wi-Fi calling, so as well as other Truphone users, you can also call Skype and Google Talk users free of charge.  The Tru Friends feature allows you to see whether your Truphone contacts are online.  Also, Truphone have improved the IM facilities for all the platforms they support (Skype, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo, MSN and even Twitter).

There are a couple of gotchas though; you’ll need to uninstall the old version first, and Truphone are currently only supporting HTC devices (G1, Magic, Hero), but they are planning support for the Motorola Milestone and the new Google Nexus One soon.

Two little stories have caught my attention this week regarding the Nokia N900, Nokia’s new Maemo based Internet Tablet Phone.  Firstly, from Liam Green-Hughes (who has written up his First Looks review of the Nokia N900 here), and in that article he mentions a little third party utility called FM RDS Notify.  As the Nokia N900 ships, you have support for an FM transmitter, which when you connect to an RDS-compatible stereo (such as in the car), you will see “Nokia” displayed when music is playing.  However, FM RDS Notify takes that capability a stage further, and puts more useful information into the RDS data information of the FM signal, allowing details of the current music track playing to appear on the stereo instead.

However, it doesn’t stop there; it can also display the details of the current caller (should be be on the phone), or even display SMS messages.  Although the application is currently only in the Extras-devel repository, and not the more mainstream Extras respository, I’m sure it will move over in time, as the application develops.  It already has some impressive functionality for what is v0.3, and the first version was only released back in late December!

The other interesting app for the Nokia N900 is Barriosquare, which is a FourSquare client for the Nokia N900.  Now, FourSquare is only starting to become popular in the UK, but has been running for some while in the US.  FourSquare combines the Social Networking aspects of sites like Twitter and merges in the location, and there is even an element of competition on who can “login” to an individual location the most and claim the “Mayor” badge for that location.  Using the public API to the website, a single developer has managed to create the application.

And that’s the power of the Nokia N900; individual developers can create a free app for the device and release it via the repositories and then everyone can access that new utility, that new feature which enhances the whole device just a little more.  The same sort of idea is available for most platforms through their App Store, but Maemo developers have embraced the idea of the Linux repositories offering free applications, and many of the enhancement applications are going to remain free, even when Nokia release a paid App Store for Maemo.

Although in my mind it will never be an iPhone killer, the Nokia N900 is certainly a phone that any serious techie should at least consider seriously; even with all the work that’s gone into Maemo 5, it’s still a little bit specialised to recommend the Nokia N900 to someone not used to smartphones and tinkering with their phone, but for the target market, apps like these will continue to make the Nokia N900 shine.

Some content around Barriosquare courtesy of thenokiablog.

Although only a rumour at this stage, the PeekFON (which we first covered here) currently offers access to email across Europe without paying roaming fees, and FON have stated they hope to bring web browsing and Twitter support to the device too.  However, what’s interesting is that Peek themselves have recently worked on a Facebook application (currently in beta) for their US devices.  It’s likely this may also be available on the PeekFON (there’s no reason why not, and it may help promote the device further).

Also, in the article we’ve already linked to, we indicated the Peek Twitter-only device could not access twitpic, or any other URLs within tweets, both points which we understand are not true, and the device is actually slightly more feature rich than many people give it credit for.  The Twitter-only device is still US-only, whereas the PeekFON will be available here for sale for €99 (which includes 6 months pan-European email, and then the device is €12.90 per month, although no long term contract is required); although as of today, it’s still a pre-register page.

Interestingly, it’s looks like this is actually not a “real” application for the device.  The application is actually a Facebook application, and seems to offer the ability to publish new information to your facebook account via a dedicated email address (so you simply send out emails from the Peek device), and equally it will collect the content from your news feed and regularly email that to your device.  In which case, even more reason to hope this becomes available for the PeekFON for Europe too.

If FON are able to offer a range of facilities on the device, then this will offer a greater range of services than just email, and then the international traveller will be well prepared with a single device.

Nokia BetaLabs have released an update to their Nokia Messaging for Social Networks beta product, which now features improved Facebook access, and also adds the first round of Twitter support.  Nokia have also commented that they will be adding other Social Networking sites over time.

As well as the initial version, which offered to let people view, post, and comment on messages, share their location and status while keeping up with their Facebook friends, the new version adds the following Facebook features:

• Upload pictures and videos
• Events: View upcoming events, birthdays and import to device calendar
• Search friends
• Click-to-call / click-to-SMS / click-to-FB Email

In terms of the Twitter support, it includes the ability to see your friends’ tweets, reply to them, and open links in their tweets, but more advanced functions like Direct Messages, Trends, and Follower information all have placeholders, but are marked as coming soon.

The application also has some location sharing features, which are built on top of Ovi Maps, and it also offers a Homescreen widget.  This app is, however, limited to the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the Nokia X6 right now.

This does look an interesting application, and may, over time, become a useful tool for those wanting to keep online from their device.  This is the sort of functionality we are seeing built directly into other phones as they ship (eg the INQ Mini 3G, and the INQ Chat 3G), so it will be nice when Nokia are shipping this by default on their phones to offer a similar experience as other manufacturers are managing.

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.

Although nothing has been announced yet, if you go into the Settings page within Twitter, and select Mobile, the UK entry has been updated as:

• UK: 86444 (Vodafone, Orange, 3 and O2 customers)

Now, this seems to imply that 3UK have joined the other listed networks in providing the ability to send and receive twitter messages and DMs via SMS.  Obviously until it’s formally announced we won’t know the exact limits (eg the number of free SMS you can receive per month, or exactly how the billing of sent SMS will work), but this is a positive move for 3UK, although with their inclusion of free internet on PAYG, and the fact that many of their phones are now shipping with Twitter clients directly may limit how many people truly need such a function, but it’s nice to know it’s coming…

That just leaves T-Mobile who aren’t playing…

Thanks to Liam Green-Hughes who drew my attention to this earlier today.

The Peek email only device has been quite popular in the US since it launched (and in fact, they now also have a Twitter only device too, which unlike some of the reviews does include Twitpic support and the ability to open links, but not much else).  However, FON, another company I have been a supporter of with their Wi-Fi sharing network, have now announced they will be selling the PeekFON with European GPRS roaming from this month (although not shipping until next month).

The device will go on sale tomorrow (Tuesday 15th) for €99, and that will include 6 months of European GPRS roaming to allow you access to your email anywhere where the device can get a working mobile phone signal.  After that, it’s €12.90 per month, and there is no cancellation policy, so no long term contract to worry about either.

For now, the device is an email-only device (although with a full QWERTY keyboard, that’s still going to be a popular device), and in time, FON hope to add web browsing and Twitter support too.

This device doesn’t use the FON Wi-Fi Hotspot technology at all, but has been launched as a complimentary product; if it supports your email service provider (it’s not yet clear whether this will use your existing email provider, or require you to use a dedicated email address), then this does look an interesting device for the reguar traveller, especially with that lack of roaming costs across Europe; imagine being on holiday, or on a business trip, and still be able to keep up with all your email without fear of “bill shock”; an even better proposition when they are able to add twitter and web browsing support.

Certainly, the Peek device in the US allows access to up to 2 email accounts, and that includes Google Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo!, so assuming that the software inside is similar, then this European device should also support a variety of email accounts.  It will feature a 2.5″ screen, a scroll wheel (and back button) on the side, and the QWERTY keyboard.  It’s roughly 4″ x 2.7″ x 0.4″ and weighs around 100 grams, and in essence, is similar to the early BlackBerry device in the sense that it is a data only device.  It seems to have a total of 16MB of Flash, of which 8MB is allocated to the OS, and 8MB for email data.  It’s said in the US to manage 4  to 5 days between charges (wow, that’s so much better than most mobile phones!) and a recharge takes around 2 hours.  It should support blinking LED, ringing and vibrate to alert you to new email.

Finally, it appears to be able to view JPG attachments, but not anything else; there’s a second device in the US that supports 5 email accounts, push email, sending SMSes, and PDF & DOC support as well as JPG attachments, but I don’t think this is the device being targetted in Europe right now, although it’s not clear.

FON have announced that the mobile data will be provided by Europe’s first pan-European MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), Spotnik.

Obviously, for those with corporate BlackBerry devices (and others who don’t actually pay the bill for mobile data roaming) this will not be popular, but for the rest of us, it’s certainly a device to consider.  Imagine letting your elder kids go off travelling around Europe for 6 months knowing that they can keep in contact with you…

Personally, I think devices that offer full European roaming built into the device are going to sell well as niche devices; in that respect this device is similar to the Amazon Kindle (which features even greater worldwide coverage), and although many people will not want or need this device (preferring to either pay the roaming charges, or will swap a local country SIM into their phone), for some people this offers a very cheap way of getting access to email and twitter (once supported) across Europe, and for that requirements, we recommend you at least look at this device…

We’ll publish more on this, including links to purchasing it once they go live, but for now, keep an eye on the FON website…

It’s been a busy few days.  Firstly, Nimbuzz announced a fairly major upgrade within their client such that they now have much better twitter support within their application (shown above).  The full feature list for this new version includes:

• Full Twitter client – Timelines, Tweet, DM, Searches, Trends, Profiles and much more!!
• Kinetic scroll – available for Symbian 5th edition touch screen phones  (e.g. Nokia 5800, Nokia N97, N97 mini, Nokia 5730, Nokia  X6 )
• Chat History – see all your past conversations
• Pop-Up notification – for new chats and other events whenever Nimbuzz runs in the background
• DTMF tones in calls – now you can press 1 in a call
• NimbuzzOut rate calculator – see the rates for calling to different countries
• Upgraded UI -  new chat screen layout & contact list layout

Also, NokiAAddict wrote a handy guide to setting up and configuring the Nimbuzz client to support a SIP VOIP account, which may be useful for those trying Nimbuzz for the first time, but want the additional benefit of standard SIP support, and as NokiAAddict are UK based, the guide shows using a UK VOIP provider.  See here for their article.

Then, Skype announced the launch of their Symbian client entering Beta for a select range of handsets (S60 3rd Edition FP1 and FP2, but no S60 5th Edition touch devices at this stage).  This includes:

• Free Skype-to-Skype calling
• Call phones with Skype credits or subscription
• Receive calls on your Online Number
• Instant Messaging
• Group conversations
• File sending and receiving

Now, remember that this Skype client uses the 3G / WiFi connection to actually make the call, Skype are recommending users have an unlimited data contract, and of course, for 3UK users, you will still be better using the slightly more limited Skype for 3 application, as this uses the 3G voice infrastructure for the call, and doesn’t come out of your data allowance.  More information can be found here and the user guide can be found here.

Finally, Truphone have just announced a major design update to their iPhone application.  This new version includes:

• New look and feel
• Streamlined sign-up
• In app guided tour
• Tru Friends presence
• Speaker phone support
• Improved IM and chat with multi-chat switcher
• Full Twitter integration

What’s certainly clear is that all these 3 companies are innovating in the mobile space, and offering their customers alternatives to traditional mobile calling plans.

Spotify have released an update to their Spotify client today, and the new features include:

• 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 can now runs on the popular Motorola Droid phone.
• Home screen widget – control Spotify from the home screen!

The new version should be available from the Android Market, or head to m.spotify.com and select manual install.

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.

This short video (from Nokia Conversations) shows how the Hermes application works on the new Nokia N900.  It can go and collect information from Facebook and Twitter (although only Facebook is shown in the video), and match up your contacts with your online friends, and then it will bring your friend’s latest avatar picture, birthday information, and profile URL into the local Address Book.  It’ll even import those birthdays into the Calendar too.

It can either be set to Retrieve (which collects the missing pieces of information from your contacts), or Refresh, which will overwrite all the local information from the online information.  We like this level of integration, and hope the developer continues to develop it to offer more functions.  This offers a similar base function to that of the INQ Mini 3G (although we don’t believe that Hermes brings status information into the Address Book.  If you have a friend on Facebook, but not already in your Address Book, and the only information available from Facebook is their birthday, Hermes will even create a generally empty Contact record to allow the birthday to still be recorded and stored in the Calendar.

The developer, for example, is working on a facility to keep a history of downloaded images (avatars), to allow you to select one, even if your friend has moved onto a different one, and he’s also looking at an auto-update facility, especially for Facebook.

Here’s another video of it in action (courtesy of thenokiablog.com)

We’ve mentioned Locale for Android a few times before, so we thought we should talk in some more detail about the application, the power it offers, and why, here at UK Gadgeteer where we like integration, it’s caught our attention.

Locale is designed to take actions based on your location (and many other triggers); a typical example is that of selecting a Silent profile when you arrive at a certain location, but Locale offers a lot more than that…

(more…)

We’ve heard of a number of interesting Kindle updates that should come to the International Kindle at some point, although possibly not until 2010.

Firstly, we understand that Amazon have announced that by the first half of 2010 the Kindle will support organising eBooks into folders.  Of course, this comes just after the beta release of Kindle for PC (Kindle for Mac is due out into beta soon), which although it does not improve the organisation, does allow you to pick up where you left off on either your Kindle or your iPhone Kindle client.

Secondly, and probably more key to the uptake of the Kindle around the world, is news that Amazon may well be bringing the full web browser experience to the International version.  Now, when we say “full” experience, this means that the ability to view web sites on the B&W screen, without high CPU facilities such as Flash (it’s often better on the Kindle to head to mobile optimised websites), and it will be a little slow.  At the moment, the only Kindle accessible website is the English Wikipedia mobile website, so extending this will be very useful, and allow a number of small applciations (such as some games) to be able to work too.

This web access would remain free too, which will make the device even better for accessing email, news websites, blogs, Twitter, etc. as it is commonly used in the US; although at this moment in time there is no ETA for this function to be made available.