S60Tips.com

Mau-Mau for S60 is a very addictive game from Lonely Cat Games. If you don’t know Mau-Mau, it is a card game for 2 – 5 players, very similar to Uno. In this game, you have to play against three AI opponents. It is definitely a very good game, you will get easily addicted with it.

There is one feature missing from this game (from my opinion), which is multi-player gaming. It would be much nicer if we can play against our friends via Bluetooth, GPRS, 3G or WLAN. Hope they will include this feature in the next version.

Mau Mau (S60 3rd edition)

Mau Mau (Symbian)

Update (07-Dec-2006): Added a link to Mau-Mau for S60 3rd Edition.

Compatible devices: S60 1st, 2nd, 3rd Edition, Nokia N-Series, Nokia E-Series.

I am sure you have seen list box in many S60 applications, such as Contacts, Messaging, Notes, Gallery and many more. How do you usually select multiple items? The common way to do that is by selecting Options | Mark/unmark | Mark menu. If you want to select 10 items, you have to do it 10 times. Is there a faster way to do that? Yes, there is….
I am sure you have seen list box in many S60 applications, such as Contacts, Messaging, Notes, Gallery and many more. How do you usually select multiple items? The common way to do that is by selecting Options | Mark/unmark | Mark menu. If you want to select 10 items, you have to do it 10 times. Is there a faster way to do that? Yes, there is….

Here is the trick:

• Firstly, highlight the first item you want to select.
• Press Edit key () on your phone. While still pressing Edit key, press Down key to select the next item. Now you have two items selected. If you press Down key again (while still pressing Edit key), the next item will be selected. It is faster than selecting Options menu, isn’t it?
• You can also press Up key to select one or more previous items.

That’s how we select contiguous items. How can we select random items?

• Firstly, highlight the first item.
• Then go to the next other item.
• Press Edit key and OK key at the same time. If you don’t know what OK key is, it is the center key of your joystick. Now you have two items selected.
• You can go to the next other item and once again press Edit key and OK key at the same time. Now you have three items selected.

Here is the trick:

• Firstly, highlight the first item you want to select.
• Press Edit key () on your phone. While still pressing Edit key, press Down key to select the next item. Now you have two items selected. If you press Down key again (while still pressing Edit key), the next item will be selected. It is faster than selecting Options menu, isn’t it?
• You can also press Up key to select one or more previous items.

That’s how we select contiguous items. How can we select random items?

• Firstly, highlight the first item.
• Then go to the next other item.
• Press Edit key and OK key at the same time. If you don’t know what OK key is, it is the center key of your joystick. Now you have two items selected.
• You can go to the next other item and once again press Edit key and OK key at the same time. Now you have three items selected.

Many new S60 phones support true tones in MP3 or AAC formats. For example, Nokia 3250, 6630, 6680, 6681, 6681 and all N-Series phones. Can we create true tones from our own music collection? The answer is yes. What do we need? We need software to create true tones. Basically you can use any sound editing software that has the following features:

• Importing audio files from MP3 or other formats.
• Editing audio files. Actually we need only a feature to select and copy part of the audio.
• Converting audio files to MP3 or AAC.

There are some sound editing applications out there, for example:

• WavePad. WavePad is a commercial software. There is a free version with limited features, which should be sufficient for us to create true tones. One limitation of the free version is no support to AAC format. It should be fine; we can use MP3 as our true tones.
• AudaCity. AudaCity is an open source project. It supports MP3 (after downloading additional codec). Unfortunately, it does not support AAC yet.

I will show you how to create true tones using WavePad. The steps should be similar for AudaCity.

• Open your music file in WavePad.
• Select part of the music file you want to make true tones (see pictures below). In many cases, you don’t want to make the whole song as true tone. Firstly because the whole song is too long for true tones (usually 20 – 30 seconds is sufficient for true tones). Secondly, you may want only use the refrain part of your song.
• Select Edit | Copy.
• Select File | New to create a new music file. You can simply select 44,100 kHz and stereo. Don’t worry; you are able to change the format later when you save the music file.
• Select Edit | Paste.
• Select File | Save as. Save the file as MP3. As I mentioned above, the free version of WavePad does not support AAC.
• Now you have MP3 file that you can use as true tones. Transfer the file to your phone using PC Suite or memory card.
• Enjoy your new true tone.