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Make a swift exit from dull birthday parties
MANAUS, Brazil – If you thought researchers spent all their time knee-deep in nano-technology or with their heads in the clouds, then these two new apps from the Nokia Technology Institute (INdT) in Brazil might come as something of a surprise. What we have here is an app for getting out of sticky social situations and another for helping celebrate your friends’ birthdays. Find out more, and how to get your hands on them after the break.
Happy Birthday lets you turn your phone into a birthday cake. You enter your friend’s name and their date of birth and it produces a personally iced cake complete with candles. Hand it over to them and they can blow out the candles by puffing on the microphone.
Very silly, of course, but a fun way to show off your phone and do something nice for a friend at the same time. Happy Birthday works with S60 5th edition touch devices and is free from the Ovi Store.
The second app is called Desguiator. Again, very small and single-minded, it allows you to set your phone to ring in response to a simple gesture, such as tapping it. As we understand it, the idea is to prime it before what might be a disastrous date or other unwanted meetings. Just as the situation is becoming hopeless, a discrete tap – your phone rings, and – oh dear – you have to leave.
Desguiator is also a free download from Ovi Store and designed for touch-enabled S60 v5 phones.
In case you were wondering, the INdT’s work does not primarily consist of turning out party-trick apps. Its real work is much more serious. It’s been involved, for example, in creating apps to help contain the outbreak of contagious diseases through quick and easy mobile monitoring and data collation from field health workers. Still, good of them to use their spare time to create a pair of interesting apps for the rest of us.
image credit: Seattle Municipal Archives
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OviDailyApp – musical notes
GLOBAL – The chances are, your mobile device does double duty as an MP3 player while you’re out and about (as well as being your radio, camera, videocamera, GPS device, email client and umm.. phone). In this week’s round-up of collectable apps, we focus on tools to make more of the mobile music experience. Shake, rattle and roll down after the break for this week’s play list.
Find out more about the music on your device with TuneWiki, as spotted on the OviDailyApp blog this week. The standard player shows track, artist and album names, and even album artwork on newer devices. TuneWiki takes this to a whole new level. It will find lyrics to most popular songs – with more than 2.5 million songs in its database. It can translate those lyrics into over 40 languages. You can find videos for any song title or play music from 26,000 internet radio stations. There’s also social features – though these don’t seem to offer Twitter or Facebook integration yet.
TuneWiki comes in an ad-supported version, which is free, and a paid version called TuneWiki Music Pro. The latter is on special offer at the moment, at just £1.50. Both versions are for Nokia S60 v.5 touch devices.
App-lovers will already be no strangers to Shazam. To our minds, it was one of the apps which first showed the revolutionary capability of connected, smart devices. To recap for newbies, Shazam listens to music wherever you are – in a bar or at a nightclub, for example – and matches the tune to the songs in its database, with breathtaking accuracy. It’s perfect for those ‘oh I know this – it’s on the tip of my tongue‘ moments – and for cheating in the pub quiz.
Shazam is free for thirty days and works on S60 Nokia devices. After thirty days, you can still use it up to five times a month. Otherwise, you can upgrade to the paid version, the price of which varies, but can be seen on the ‘upgrade’ screen once you’ve got it on your phone.
Third up this week is Moodagent Playlist DJ – which came top of the music category on Ovi Store last week. It’s a great app for lazy music lovers, or those whose music collection is so vast that they need to be reminded about the tunes from the far reaches of their music library. As the name hints, you set the five mood and tempo sliders for the sort of thing you want to hear and it creates new playlists from your library that match the criteria you’ve set.
Moodagent Playlist DJ is free and works on a variety of S60 devices – full list from the publisher here.
That’s it from us, so over to you. What are your must-have music accessories for your Nokia device?
image credit: Akash k
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This week in videos #3
GLOBAL - It’s been another busy week here on Conversations with news coming at us left, right and centre. It wouldn’t be fair for you to just read the words we write, so here’s a visual rundown of what’s been happening on the web. In this week’s videos, we have: a chat with Mary McDowell, following the launch of the Nokia X3 Touch and Type; Flash games galore; Nokia stars in yet another film; Conspiracy for Good comes to a close and the Nokia N900 goes 3D. Join us after the jump for the big reveal.
This week’s big news was the launch of the Nokia X3 Touch and Type. You’ve seen the launch video and the chat with Marko Ahtisaari, Senior Vice President, Design at Nokia, now our very own Phil Schwarzmann talks to Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President, Nokia Mobile Phones. In the interview, Phil and Mary chat about the new product offering, innovation within Nokia and Mary’s new role. Watch the video for all the latest news.
Next up, it’s game-on. We’re big fans of gaming here on Conversations and what better way to spend a few minutes than to get a full run-down of the top games available on Ovi Store. The Ovi Blog managed to grab a video with game developers Breakdesign from Joe Teh’s TechieLobang blog. The video features a full rundown of the developer shack’s games including The Roach Game, Ninjani and Monsterzilla.
We’ve seen Nokia stars before, but this is the latest one and I, for one, am excited. Yes, Nokia has made it into the pocket of Bruce Willis in the latest Die Hard movie. You ready to get nasty? Watch this trailer for a sneak peak at the movie and Nokia’s starring role.
From one star to another, this time Tim Kring, Heroes creator. If you’ve been following the blog you’ll know all about Conspiracy For Good. It’s the multi-platform social experiment that’s been taking over Ovi Store, London and most of our phones. All good things have to come to an end, and sadly, that includes CFG. If you missed the whole thing, here’s what you missed.
Last week, we brought you the Nokia N900 packing the game-gripper. This week, the multimedia mogul has gone into the third dimension. This great hands-on video shows the talents of the phone as a 3D viewer. Don the glasses and get watching.
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