What to update this week on your E71?

Well, we have not available next firmware for E71, but in last several days there were released a few really popular and cool applications for E71 and other S60 devices.

Nokia Sports Tracker has been updated from version 2.05 to 2.06. You can get it by choosing in menu of your already installed application: Option > Check for Updates.

Nimbuzz – this multi-IM and voice communicator had a major update to version 2.0 which has a new organized in tabs user interface. Full information on changes in this version can be found here at Nimbuzz Blog

All last.fm users can now fully enjoy Mobbler – S60 last.fm client. Previous version 0.4.4 introducing Web Services has been quickly updated to version 0.4.5, which is free of following known issues:

• the font we were selecting was not working properly on some phones,
• some devices could not play radio because they do not support the equalizer,
• updated the Swedish translation.

I know some of my blog readers have encountered last week this font issue.

Mobbler 0.4.4 – even better last.fm for S60

Today Last.fm client to S60 phones called Mobbler has been updated to version 0.4.4. New version brings a lot of small but nice changes. Full list of changes is available in Release Notes:

“The left joypad (or plus button) now allows you to do things with the current track like share the artist or track with a friends or add the track to one of your playlists, as well as viewing info about that track. We plan to add and make improvements here in future, like viewing bios etc. You can view your Last.fm data through the View submenu on the options menu. There are a number of lists you can view here and there a a few actions you can do in them. We are planning to add more and more options here in the future. There is now a sleep timer to turn Mobbler off for those of you that like taking our software to bed with them. You can now disable scrobbling so that you can listen to tracks without your friends knowing. You can also select the scrobble percentage that you want to scrobble anywhere between 50% and 100%. Album art is now higher quality and scaled correctly, so you may notice an improvement. Also Mobbler will display album art for music player tracks, if it can find it in the folder of the mp3. If not you can change a setting so that it will try to find it through Last.fm, display it, and save it in the mp3 folder for next time. We have added gestures for those of you that have 3rd edition devices with an accelerometer. So far all you can do is skip to the next track by flicking the phone to the right.”

I really like new, improved UI on my E71 and access to more Last.fm web services. Try it on your phone. As it is non-commercial project please check discovered & reported bugs, then maybe share your observations too at http://code.google.com/p/mobbler/

Mobbler updated

Today I have discovered that S60 Last.fm client called Mobbler has been updated to version 0.3.5. Application change log doesn’t say about big changes, but it is always worth of having most updated software.

0.3.5 – Fixed a problem with the radio playing
There have been a few problems with Last.fm’s legacy servers recently. Mainly that they stop working and therefore Mobbler stops working. We found that we could change Mobbler so that it requests playlists with mp3 locations on Last.fm’s new servers so hopefully this will stop the problems we have been having with the radio not working.

Fring is now last.fm player

Well known multi-IM and VoIP application – Fring is now more just an Internet communicator. As I have read it today at All About Symbian, thanks to new a feature of Fring plug-ins it is now possible to make this app also a last.fm streaming radio player. As AAS people are suggesting it is only a basic implementation of popular music service. I definitely agree and my personal opinion is that more popular and desired would be simply starting with scrobbling support (updating your last.fm profile with music played on your player). This feature is currently provided by last.fm client called Mobbler. Oh, talking about Mobbler, it has been updated to version 0.3.4 about three weeks ago. Check it out!

Take your music with you.. last.fm on Nokia E71

Last week one of blog readers – Serg dropped me an e-mail with the link to Mobbler – last.fm client working on S60 devices, including my Nokia E71.

I started testing it and I admit that I haven’t used last.fm earlier at all and now I really enjoy the wonder of last.fm! I thought it would be a good idea to describe Mobbler for E71’s users. I have found out that Mobbler is generally well-known for both last.fm’ and S60’ users. Symbian-Guru called it even The 2nd Greatest S60 Application. I agree this is a really cool application as it has almost all last.fm features like: scrobbling, tagging, describing songs as loved or banned.

Anyway, during my search I have also found other client of last.fm for Symbian S60 working on Nokia E71, too. I’m talking about Strands Social Player which also offers scrobbling, or streaming music to your device. It also has its own social networking tools like linking your friends, etc. The application is maybe a bit more complex but IMHO it has a nicer user interface.

Both applications are definitely worth trying, but please keep it mind that music streaming consumes large amount of data. If you are then using EDGE or UMTS (3G), it will definitely have impact on your phone bill, unless you have a flat data rate. Of course, it also supports WLAN so being at home, in the office, or within a range of public hot spots both Mobbler and Strands could be an entertainment for free.

If you are interested only in mobile Internet radio listening, there is one more alternative. Check Nokia’s Internet Radio which allows listening to your favorite radio stations broadcasting online. This application has a nice, smooth GUI and also works using both packet transmission (EDGE or UMTS) and WLAN.

That’s it, now start enjoying the music!