Archive for 'Newsflash'

Our good friend tehkseven has been hard at work, putting together fine examples of Original Nokia Ringtones, but like no other, he has remixed 20 of them so they are completely custom, and one of a kind.

These original Nokia ringtone remixes have a total new take on the original and as i was playing through them, i couldn’t believe what i was hearing – the imagination and thought that’s gone in to some of these is truly astounding.

Head across to tehkseven today, and check them out, they are all completely free too! Enjoy!

The blockbuster acquisition, the most expensive in Microsoft’s history comes just days after rumors surfaced in the tech world that Google and Facebook were interested in partnering with, or buying Skype, but Microsoft beat the two Giants to the punch!

Microsoft said it will use Skype to “increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications” across its suite of products, including Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and other Windows devices.

The deal gives Microsoft an immediate foothold in the VoIP world, as Skype counted 170 million users in 2010.

Skype, which launched in 2003, was acquired by eBay in 2005 for $3.1 billion; eBay then sold “the majority of its stake in 2009 to a private investment group for $1.2 billion less than it paid.”

The company generated $860 million in revenue in 2010 last year, though had an overall loss of $7 million for the year.

Microsoft said Skype will become a new business division within the company — headed by Skype CEO Tony Bates, who will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Full Press Release

According to the Finnish news site Iltalehti, Nokia’s Stephen Elop has moved properties recently, and is now a neighbor of Finland’s Ex-President, Mauno Koivisto.

Elop’s new rented Penthouse, costing €4000 Euros a month is not short of space either with 184 Square Meter layout, the valued 1.5 Million Euro property has six rooms, a kitchen, and of course a Sauna.

As you may of noticed, its been pretty quiet here on Nokiausers homepage for a few weeks now, but that does not mean we have not been busy working.  There has been a lot of new things happening behind the scenes here at Nokiausers HQ in Finland, and the USA.

First up you will have noticed our new look, both on our homepage, and within our forums.  Not just this though, but we have also upgraded the sites software bringing it right up to date with all the latest forum, and publishing features.

Some of these new features have been requested by many of our registered forum members.  One such feature is iTrader, which is to help keep our members safe when buying or selling mobile related devices within our Marketplace. If you are not familiar with iTrader, you can find out more here, but basically what it allows members to do, is rate buyers and sellers based on their experience during any transaction between said member/s.

We have also added new sub-forums to cater for new Nokia devices, and upcoming models also.  One such area is to cover the new Nokia E7 QWERTY device, and has already proved popular.

If you had previously subscribed to our homepage, you may want to upgrade, and replace the existing RSS feed with our new one, which can be found here.

We have also updated both our twitter page, and facebook page, bringing them both up to date with the new related themes.

Nokiausers facebook page

Nokiausers twitter page

Now, not all these new changes to Nokiausers have been welcomed with open arms, and in saying that, we have been open to feedback here within the forums, and value you opinion. So if you have any ideas, suggestions, or complaints, then please do let us know, as there are still several changes to the site pending implementation.

Another addition also to be added is a TIPS link here on our front page, so if any of our readers have an inside scoop on any Nokia News, they are welcome to TIP us, and they will be credited for their efforts by way of link to their blog, or twitter account.

According to a few sources around the web there are several reports that Snaptu, the popular mobile application which caters for all your Social Media Networking sites has indeed been acquired recently by facebook for up to $70 Million Dollars (unconfirmed).

Snaptu, since these various reports of the acquisition have now released an Official Statement on their own blog, which below you will find a few snippets.

The Snaptu team is excited to announce today that we recently agreed to be acquired by Facebook.

Our goal when we founded Snaptu in 2007 was to provide useful and innovative services to the 95 percent of mobile users that don’t have access to advanced smart phones.

Earlier this year, we announced the launch of a new Facebook mobile application to give people a great mobile experience on a broad range of feature phones. The Facebook for Feature Phones app currently works on more than 2,500 devices.

We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development. And joining Facebook means we can make an even bigger impact on the world.

Congrats to the Snaptu team on this news from all of us at Nokiausers who many have enjoyed Snaptu on our Nokia devices since 2007!

Well, its my first day here at the actual Mobile World Congress event itself here in Barcelona, and after a disappointing evening Nokia Press event last night, with no new announcements, no confirmed dates on anything to look forward to,·its interesting to see for myself just how strong the competition Nokia has here on display.

The first thing I spotted here was the very strong prescence of Samsung, and LG, both offering an amazing array of stunning devices running Android, and the performance of Android on these devices was mighty impressive too, so quick, and no lag it was a real eye opener for me.· The only previous experience I had with Android was on the early Nexus device, which was running quite an old version of Android.·Since that experience, the OS has certainly come on leaps and bounds, and I now understand why Stephen Elop was firm on making the statement last night, that Nokia’s number 1 mission is to take on the mighty Android as they are currently spreading like wildfire, and moving so quickly in the mobile world.

I personally believe that Nokia have one hell of a job, well, a mission on their hands, they really do, and I’m hoping that their new alliance with Microsoft, and the Nokia Windows Phone is executed, and followed through with Military precision, and that the Nokia Windows Phone has nothing less than what Symbian users have come to expect on their devices, with full functionality we all have come to take for granted these days, and I’m not just talking about the simple copy and paste functionality here either.

Yes, I expect Nokia to carry over their amazing optics to the Windows Phone too, and by that I mean with Xenon, and led too, this is something I am yet to see here at MWC, I have not seen a since mobile device with a Xenon flash, but have seen more, and more devices with great video functionality, like HDMI out, and 1028p video recording, even·from a Tablet!

So how confident am I really about Nokia going head to head with the Android ecosystem, not to mention Apple??

Well, being a Nokia enthusiast is one thing, but honesty from an open minded writer such as myself is expected of me, so what I will tell you today, I’m worried about Nokia, and their current position they are in, that have so so much to do, and in no time to do it, they need to convince their Symbian developers, and stop then from switching over to Android for a start, but how will they do this?

Nokia·have to put together one hell of a programme together, and market it perfectly so it offers positive reasons for Symbian developers to stay developing for Nokia handsets of the future.·This has to be a strong financial incentive, and quite generous, lets call it a strongand powerful developer investment. There will be lots of questions asked, as for starters, these Symbian developers were convinced, and assured that Nokia was committed to Symbian, but we all know why Symbian has been really dropped.·It all started when other brands started removing Symbian from their devices, and the fall of the Symbian Foundation that followed, which in the real world left Symbian dead in the water anyway, and its this reason why Nokia had to do something radical like the Microsoft partnership. Its a no brainer.

Nokia have to put together some serious press addressed literature now too to stop, and halt all of the confusion that is going around not just the world wide web, but from everyone in the physical world too; I’m over hearing people talking about last nights Nokia press event here in the Media Centre where I’m writing this article, and whats people, members of the press, and bloggers etc, they are talking that Nokia is dead, and laughing at Nokia about the Nokia Is back statement, and saying “Back Where”, we can’t see you!

So that concludes my first installment live from the Mobile World Congress, look out for more later today here on Nokiausers, and over at NokiaDNA.com

As they say, all good things come to an end, and this is no different with MeCanto either. ·I personally knew their service would eventually move to subscription based service, as their offerings were really generous.

I have been a member of MeCanto, formerly known as Hyrax since the start, and they offer unlimited Music Cloud storage with both desktop, and mobile device clients to playback your music via a data connection, or wifi. ·This in itself proves that in this day and age, you don’t need to fill up your device internal storage, and simply playback your music collection from the cloud.

MeCanto subscription prices are not too bad though, so please don’t throw the towel in on their superb service. ·If you have music stored on their MeCanto servers, don’t worry, its still safe, and will not be deleted, but its recommended that you read, and follow the following news letter, and directions.

“In order to continue providing you with a high quality service and support the improvement and expansion of MeCanto, we are planning to start collecting monthly subscription fees for the service.

Don’t worry! Your account is still fully active and will continue to be so in the near future. We’ve given away free subscriptions for the upcoming months based on how active your account was in the past (see “Subscription Info” tab in the Settings->Account Info).

We’ve tried to keep the subscription fee as fair as possible, and we’re pretty happy with the result (only $1.99/month or €1.49/month). Once you purchase a subscription you’ll be able to cancel it at any time. Canceling a subscription or failing to pay before your trial period is over will not automatically delete your account so you don’t have to worry about losing your data.

Finally I’d like to tell you a bit about our current development plans for MeCanto. Our small team is focusing on the stuff that matters most to you. We are getting very good feedback from our support community and have built a list of goals for the upcoming months. Here are just a few:

• Entire collection shuffle
• Lossless audio file support (FLAC)
• Subscribing to your favorite podcasts directly in MeCanto
• Audio bookmarks
• Mac OS/X client support
• Constant improvement and additions to our mobile apps (Android/iPhone/Symbian)
• And more…

We’re looking forward to continue seeing you on MeCanto.

Feel free to post any questions you have in our support site or just email us at support@mecanto.com.
Sincerely,
The MeCanto team”.

I have just finished listening to the latest release of the audio podcast chat, The Phones Show, featuring this week a very good friend of mine, Michael Hell, who like me does not beat about the bush, and speaks his mind about all things mobile.  

 Take a listen for yourselves, as I’m sure you too will enjoy this latest episode of The Phones Show Chat 69, also starring Tim Salmon, and the one and only Steve Litchfield.

Get yourself comfortable, as this weeks show is over an hour, and can be found by heading across to http://stevelitchfield.com/sshow/chat.html

Note from Steve:-

If you appreciate both it and The Phones Show video podcast and wish to help keep us ‘on the air’, then please sign up or donate by using the button below. Thanks!

From myself, and the Nokiausers team here in Finland, the United Kingdom, and The United States, we would like to wish all our forums members, front page subscribers, and readers a very Happy New Year, wishing you all the very best for 2011.!

2010 has been a tough year for Nokia with the competition out there in today’s Mobile world, its been a battlefield out there for sure during 2010, with ongoing lawsuits, and whatnot.  

Here’s to 2011, which I’s sure will be a great year for Nokia. My lips are sealed on much on whats coming, but I promise you it will be worth the wait.  I will be headed to Barcelona in Spain, February to cover the Annual Mobile World Congress, so I will do my best to cover all Nokia related news live from the event. Be sure to follow me over on twitter @NokiaUsers for the latest updates right from the trade stands, and conferences between the 14th and 17th of February.

Photo Credit Miska_too