• First of all, visit http://www.erightsoft.com/S6Kg1.html
• You should see a link that looks like advertising that says "Download SUPER setup file". It is not advertising! It is a real download link (see screenshot below).

Links

• Converting Your Videos to RealPlayer
• Converting Your Movies to "DivX Player for S60"

One thing that I was wondering on Podcasting application is how to import OPML file. After googling it, I found a nice article from Symbian Guru, How To: Importing OPML Files Into Nokia Podcasting. For those who have never used OPML, it is an XML file used to exchange web feeds between different application/services. For instance, if you have a list of blogs on Google Reader and want to transfer it to Feed Reader, you can use OPML. You export your blogs list from Google Reader as OPML file and then import it to Feed Reader.

Here is the summary of how to import OPML file to Nokia Podcasting application (for detail steps, please visit Symbian Guru’s posting).

• Prepare OPML file. For example, if you are using iTunes, you can select Files | Export menu.
• Copy the OPML file to your device, either to phone memory or memory card.
• Launch Podcasting application.
• Go to Directories section.
• Select Options | Import OPML file menu.

 

Links

• Featured Freeware – Nokia Podcasting
• Synchronizing Music Files and Podcasts from iTunes to S60 Phones

In order to do that, you need a file manager is capable of browsing to all folders. Unfortunately the default S60′s file manager won’t do the job. You need a more powerful one, for example Y-Browser.

After downloading and installing Y-Browser, run it, select your image and select Options | File | Attributes menu. Set "Hidden" field to "Yes".

Finally…. a YouTube video player that works. I have tried some YouTube video player for S60; but I was not satisfied with all of them. Why? I always hit a problem with my firewall. This includes the official YouTube Mobile web site (http://m.youtube.com). Read also my previous posting on how to solve firewall problem.

Today, I found one player that is really good. It is called emTube. It works from behind firewall. It allows you to search YouTube database as well as view the featured, top rated and most viewed videos. You can even save the video to your device.

Click here to download emTube

Bonus Links

• Google and Your S60 Phones – Part III (YouTube Videos)

Recently I posted a comment on Nokia Support Discussion about DRM-free music from iTunes Plus. As you may already know, Apple has started selling DRM-free songs on iTunes Plus Music Store. Unfortunately, Apple has slightly modified the tag of iTunes Plus songs. As a result, they cannot be played on S60 devices by default.

Mac users don’t have this problem because Nokia Multimedia Transfer properly modifies the tag. Unfortunately, Windows users, who are using PC Suite, cannot enjoy this feature.

Can we still play music from iTunes Plus then? There are two possible solutions.

Convert to 128 kbps AAC

The first solution, which I recommend, is convert your iTunes Plus music to 128 kbps AAC. You can do it from iTunes by selecting Advanced | Convert Selection to AAC menu.

The original iTunes Plus music is stored as 256 kbps AAC. Somehow, when you convert it to lower bit rate, the tag can be recognized by S60 devices. It is right that you will degrade the quality; but in my opinion, playing 256 kbps and 128 kbps on mobile phone is not that different.

Use “Music Fixer” to Fix the Tags

If you want to keep the quality at 256 kbps; the solution is fix the tag. Thanks to Joshua King who has provided a Python script to fix the tag, called Music Fixer. Note that you need Python runtime to run the script.
Note that this script should be run on the device (not on the PC). It should be run after you synchronize your songs from the PC.

Bonus Links

• Synchronizing Music Files and Podcasts from iTunes to S60 Phones
• Anything About Synchronization
• Some Music Applications for S60

MyStrands

MyStrands is a Web 2.0 service for music. It allows you to scrobble yourself so that you friends know the songs what you’re listening to. It’s not only that, you can get recommendations based on the music that you listen. You can also find other people that have the same “music taste” as you.

Click here to find more information about MyStrands

Nokia Podcasting
Do you want to hear your favorite podcasts on your S60 device? Nokia Podcasting is the answer. Just like the Internet Radio, be aware when using this application because it uses data connection.

There are some devices that include Nokia Podcasting already. You can download Nokia Podcasting from Nokia Download! application or from the link below.

Click here to find more information about Nokia Podcasting

iTunes Agent
This is one of my favorite music applications. It allows you to synchronize iTunes to your S60 device. It does not synchronize your DRM-protected songs. Note that you need to download iTunes Agent to your PC. No need additional software on your device.

Click here to find out more information about iTunes Agent

Bonus Links

• Synchronizing Music Files and Podcasts from iTunes to S60 Phones
• Synchronizing MP3 Files from Windows Media Player to S60 Phones
• Displaying Album Art on Nokia Nseries Music Edition

Panoramic photography is a format of photography that aims to create images with exceptionally wide fields of view, but has also come to refer to any photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio.

Normally, professional photographers create a panorama picture using a special camera, called rotating panoramic camera. Nowadays, we are able to create software. It is also called photos stitching. The idea is to “stitch” or combine several pictures taken from a standard camera using a special interpolation algorithm.

The picture below shows an example of panorama picture. The pictures were taken from Nokia N95 and stitched using Canon Photo Stitch. It’s not perfect yet since I’m an expert yet.

What do you need to create panorama picture? The first thing is, of course, several sequencing pictures. After that, you need software to “stitch” your pictures. There are several available applications that will do the job, e.g.:

• ArcSoft Panorama Maker ($39.99). This software is very easy to use; unfortunately it doesn’t come for free. There is a 14-day trial version.
• hugin (open source). It is an open source project for panorama application. The hugin community has created nice tutorials as well.
• Canon Photo Stitch. This is the one that I used to create the picture above. Unfortunately, the software is only bundled with Canon digital camera.
• … many other applications.

Tip: For best result, a picture must have at least 25% overlap with its neighbors.

A barcode (also bar code) is a machine-readable (uses dark ink on white substrate to create high and low reflectance which is converted to 1′s and 0′s) representation of information in a visual format on a surface.

There are basically three types of bar code, i.e. linear, stacked and 2D (matrix). The left picture below shows an example of linear bar code. It encodes “S60Tips.com”. The right picture shows an example of 2D bar code. It encodes http://www.s60tips.com”.

You can create 2D bar code from Nokia’s new service, Mobile Codes. Note that it is currently in beta version. That’s why the URL still points to an IP address. There are also many other web sites that are able to generate bar codes, either linear or 2D. You can just Google them.

How about bar code reader? There are several applications that can scan bar code, i.e.:

• Nokia Barcode Reader
• Kaywa Reader
• Glass Reader
• UpCode Reader
• Semacode Reader

My favorite one is Kaywa Reader (see screenshot below).

Compatible devices: S60 3rd Edition, Nokia Nseries, Nokia Eseries.

Nokia has just released Nokia Video Manager, a PC application that allows u to transfer videos from PC to our phone. Currently it supports a limited number of devices only, as indicated in the web site, i.e. Nokia 6110 Navigator, Nokia 6290, Nokia 5700 XpressMusic phones.

Unfortunately, I don’t have those devices; so I couldn’t try this application. I have tried to convert some video files to my Nokia N73 and E61. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The converted videos cannot be played; RealPlayer only plays the audio only. Anyone has luck converting videos to Nokia Nseries or Eseries?

If you have the same problem as me, I have another suggestion to convert and play videos on our S60 phones, i.e. using SUPER application? Here are some of my old postings that discusses SUPER.

• Converting Your Videos to RealPlayer. It shows how to convert your video to be played on RealPlayer.
• Converting Your Movies to DivX Player for S60. It shows how to convert your videos to be played on DivX Player for Mobile.

Bonus Links

• Some Shortcuts in RealPlayer for S60
• Featured Freeware – DivX Player for S60

Compatible devices: S60 2nd, 3rd Edition, Nokia Nseries, Nokia Eseries.

Furthermore, as its name implies, we can post pictures to our blogs. It supports TypePad as the default blogging service. However, we can use other blogging services as well, for example flickr. How can we post picture from Nokia Lifeblog (PC version) to Flickr? If you want to post pictures directly from your device, please check some links at the end of this posting.

Firstly, you need to find Flickr’s user name and password for Lifeblog. Note that they are not the same as your Flickr’s user name password. Go to http://www.flickr.com/tools/lifeblog/ to find out more about them.

Next, you need to setup the blogging account in Nokia Lifeblog. To do it, run Lifeblog and select Tools | Blog Account Manager menu. Click Add new and type the following information on the dialog.

• Blog server address: http://www.fllickr.com/services/atom2blog/
• User name: [your user name as shown on the URL discussed above]
• Password: [your user name as shown on the URL discussed above]

Now you are ready. If you want to send a picture to Flickr, simply select the picture and select File | Post to Web menu. One additional tip, you can type “tag: ” in the description field to enter tags for your picture. Separate each tag with comma.

Bonus Link

• Managing Your Images/Videos using Nokia Lifeblog
• How to Flickr from Nokia Lifeblog? -> Check this out if you want to post pictures from your device (not from PC).
• How to Flickr from Nokia Flickr Uploader? -> Another way of posting pictures from device to Flickr.
• How to Flickr from Shozu? -> Yet another way of posting pictures using third party application.

Compatible devices: S60 2nd, 3rd Edition, Nokia Nseries.

Update (03-April-2007): Added links to my previous postings about Flickr.