lis
24
Given the ubiquity of services such as Facebook and Twitter you might think that people were less inclined to publish their own blogs. However, you’d be wrong.
At the end of 2011, the social media consultants, NM Incite, said they were tracking over 181m blogs on the Internet, up from just 36m five years ago.
In the same year, the blogging platform, Tumblr, was the fastest growing social networking website in the USA. It’s rapidly closing in on 80m blogs with 34bn individual blog posts.
Being a blog ourselves, it’s great to see that the blogosphere is in such rude health. Just like a regular website, a blog can be informative but at their best they also encourage… Conversations.
For millions of people around the world it is often much simpler than that. A blog is an opportunity to self-publish, write about their interests or just keep an account of what they are eating or the places they have been.
Part of the attraction is that they are simple to maintain and you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to do it. This, of course, is where your Nokia Lumia smartphone can help you out.
There are apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace so that you can blog on your Nokia Lumia for each of the three most popular blogging platforms, WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr.
Whether you have a blog already, or you are thinking about starting one, here are some of the choices available to you.
WordPress
WordPress is an open source project and is maintained by a community of developers for everyone to use. It’s just shy of its 10th anniversary and claims to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world.
In the spirit of WordPress itself, this is an open source app and is by some distance the highest rated WordPress client in the Marketplace.
You can write posts, edit them, moderate comments and even view statistics for your blog.
Writer is another tool for WordPress blogs but it also claims to be compatible with blogs on other publishing services such as Moveable Type, Joomla, and Drupal.
Blogger
Blogger is now Google’s very own blogging tool, although the search giant acquired it, rather than created it themselves.
Blogger, when it was first launched in 1999, was one of the very first companies dedicated to offering self-publish tools.
This is a very easy to use Blogger client for your Nokia Lumia, although there is a price to be paid for its simplicity. Currently, you can’t add images to your posts.
Other than the issue over the images, Blogg has a really clean and no-nonsense user interface, which is perfect for quick updates from your phone when you’re on the move.
UpdateMyFeed (£1.49)
If images are important to your Blogger account then you might consider paying for this app. Other advanced features include the ability to save drafts, adding tags and category management.
As well as Blogger, UpdateMyFeed also supports other clients such as WordPress and BlogEngine.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a relatively new kid on the block compared to WordPress and Blogger (it was founded in 2007) but has rapidly become a real darling of the social media landscape.
It’s great for showing off images and has become a favourite among celebrities too.
This is a wonderful app that takes full advantage of the Windows Phone interface with its easy swiping across different screens.
There are nice touches such as being able to take and then post photos within the app using your Lumia’s camera and even supports multiple Tumblr accounts.
Many people use Tumblr as a photo blog and that’s been recognised by the developers behind this app. It’s been created specifically to share videos and images on your blog.
In addition to Tumblr, it also supports other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
Do you use your Lumia to update a blog? Let us know in the comments below.
Tags: None
lis
24
You only have to check out the latest releases to see that video games have produced an amazingly bizarre variety of memorable characters. It all started with Pac-Man and his better half Ms. Pac-man. The latter famously got girl gaming into full gear back in the early 1980s. Besides the heroes and heroines, we have seen some very peculiar individuals. So let’s take a look at some of the most extreme pixel personalities, challenging for the title of the strangest ever.
Manuel “Manny” Calavera in Grim Fandango
This classic adventure game from 1998 draws from Mexican culture of the dead, but in a good way. The main character is basically a walking skull, but a skull that packs personality. A soul mate is found in the role-playing game Planescape: Torment (1999) where a floating skull “Morte” follows the main character, and pretty much steals the show with wise-cracking comments.
Tingle in the Zelda game series
This guy certainly tingles some nerves with his ambigous disposition, and outspoken love of fairies. He debuted in the highly touted, epic Zelda game Majora’s Mask (2000) and has since graced – or haunted – many a Zelda sequel with his tingling personality.
image:
Voldo in Soul Calibur
Martial arts game series, such as Street Fighter and Tekken both march forth a motley crew of characters, but most of them are pretty ordinary when compared to the weirdness called Voldo in Soul Calibur. Voldo is downright creepy, both in how he looks and moves. His signature posture has inspired players to perform a number of choreographies and post them to YouTube.
Super Meat Boy, from Super Meat Boy
A recent indie game success story about a boy without a skin, desperately chasing his beloved Bandage Girl. Super Meat Boy the character is weird in an endearing way, which is totally opposite what the Super Meat Boy the game is. Here we have a super hard, old school platforming title, where fractions of seconds decide your faith between success and failure. Yet parts of Super Meat Boy’s success and memorability can be attributed to the quirky and weird set of pixel personalities who occupy its cut-throat world. Oh, did I forget to mention Dr. Fetus?
King of All Cosmos in Katamari Damacy
The Katamari series is by definition weird. There’s nothing really out of the ordinary when the background story states that the main character’s father is a King. However, when it dawns to you that the King went on a drinking spree, and as a result, all the stars and other celestial bodies were wiped out from the sky, you start to get an idea. Naturally the consequence is that you, the Prince, have to collect everything to restore order, buy rolling around an adhesive ball that picks up stuff along the way. ‘King of All Cosmos’ steals the show in the interludes to the Prince’s menial world-restoring chores. Along the way, the King bestows the player with wisdoms such as “If a heart attacks, we better be careful. Even worse, all the other organs could attack us. We better be prepared.”
Weird, eh? But singling out five out of the thousands of characters is bound to do injustice to some of the bizarre ones out there. So, please let us know which crazy characters you think warrant a place in the video game Hall of Strange.
Image credit: Patrick Hoesly
Tags: None
lis
24
Congratulations! You’ve got a brand-new smartphone. And now you fancy a couple of shiny accessories to sweeten the deal – a spare battery, an extra car-charger, a sneaky new pair of headphones to replace the set you left in the gym last week. But how do you filter out the genuine products from the glut of counterfeit competitors out there? And why would you bother?
Cheap as chips
Well, first, it’s a question of quality – and the ultra-cheap price is the giveaway. Genuine products take serious development. And all that research and safety-testing is worth the effort: back in 2004, the UK’s Camden Trading Standards had to destroy £25k worth of fake car-chargers after reports that they melted during use.
Power failure
Fake batteries can contain dangerous metals like lead or mercury; dodgy circuitry can make them overheat and burn you. And the cheap price also flags up other issues: genuine manufacturers abide by minimum wage requirements and fair trading laws, and pay government tax and import duty – none of which matters to the fakers, who can churn out their low-quality units without any regard for international standards.
If that wasn’t enough, fake accessories are more likely to break and as they’re not covered by a warranty, you’re probably going to have to replace them more frequently – meaning that that nifty bargain wasn’t so much of a, well, bargain. So next time you see a 99p price-sticker slapped on the front of a Li-Ion battery, be alert!
But, price aside, how to tell the goodies from the baddies? The mobile phone industry’s guide, How To Spot A Fake Phone, has some good tips.
I Spy
Have a good look at the accessory. If you can compare it with an item known to be genuine, tiny differences are easier to spot. Watch out for poor spelling, inaccurate label printing, mistakes in the company’s logo, an illegitimate hologram. Genuine Nokia batteries with holograms should reveal four dots and the Nokia original Enhancements logo.
It’s also not unheard of for ‘Nokia’ to be misspelled on counterfeit products. Fake covers often don’t quite fit the phones they’re supposed to – see if you can try before you buy. Look at the packaging: if it’s in a plastic bag it’s unlikely to be genuine.
Say what?
Counterfeit accessories will usually advertise themselves as ‘compatible with’, ‘suitable for’ or ‘for use with’ a range of product numbers. If it says ‘will fit’ or ‘very high quality’ on the box, then the box doth protest too much! Legitimate Nokia products will specify exactly which models the accessory is for – ‘compatible’ models are fakers.
Help!
Registered manufacturers and seller offer customer support and servicing for your Nokia product. If your dealer doesn’t, there’s a good chance he’s working on the black market. Hang onto your proof of purchase and notify the authorities about the potential fake.
Had a bad experience with fakes or got any top tips to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Tags: None
lis
24
As part of the Nokia Connects: GO competition, we sent a Nokia Lumia 900 to Riel Green and Sennyo of Casual Arcane, a mesmerising juggling duo from the USA for them to capture some of their skills – and they didn’t disappoint. Before you feast your eyes on the video, though, we asked them some questions:
In a nutshell, can you tell everybody what is it that you guys do and what some of the ‘disciplines’ are that you practice?
Well, in a nutshell, we bring simple objects to life. We study a wide variety of props but our favorites to bring alive are Contact Juggling, Buugeng (s-shaped staffs), and different sizes of hoops.
Tell me more about contact juggling… how does it work? It looks like magic to me!
Yes! It makes us very happy to hear we’ve managed to give an impression of magic. We promise you there are no gimmicks, tricks or deceptions involved at all. Contact juggling is the art of manipulating the sphere and it takes hours upon hours of careful practice to build the skills required to give the prop the illusion of floating. We’re often challenged by audience members to know the secrets when they refuse to accept that there aren’t any. Though, simply handing them the sphere to inspect for themselves, and giving a few demonstrations, helps them understand it is nothing more than a sphere gracefully rolling on our hands and body.
How did you come to form Casual Arcane and who came up with the name?
The two of us were originally in a group of four performers called Aether Arts. Due to some member relocations, it was impossible to continue performing regularly as a group. With just the two of us remaining, we had no choice but to start a duo. As far as the name goes, we both came up with it. We wanted to create a sense of subtle duality. The both of us have noticed, often, our similarities are connected only by how opposite are – kind of like a Yin Yang type of thing. Something else we noticed was we’re not intense performers. We’re not focused on building an act entirely out of impressive moves. Themes, characters, and immersing the audience with a sense of fantasy is just as important to us as the manipulation skills. So we decided on Casual Arcane to reflect our ideas of duality and sharing a calm performing style mixed with a surreal experience.
How often do you have to practice your moves, I imagine it must take a lot of work to perfect them?
We have to practice every day. Not only to get better, but also to hold onto the skills we have already attained. Much of what we do requires very small, controlled muscle movements which need constant exercise to develop and improve. Without exercise, we’d become rusty and the illusions would suffer. It is an endless learning process. There are no limits on ways to advance what we know; There is always room for growth and we are enjoying the process.
Tell us about your time with the Lumia 900 for Nokia Connects Go, how did you find using the phone for two weeks?
We really enjoyed it. We’ve had a few years of experience with different kinds of smartphones so we approached the Lumia 900 the same way. It’s menu design was very simple and easy to customize. It was very quick to load and install applications. It didn’t lag while we used it. Navigating the internet was effortless. The memory size was a comfortable 16gb so we filled it with music and took it everywhere. The screen was HUGE and the resolution was unbelievably clear. We can’t think of any time where we didn’t enjoy using it. We were kind of sad to send it back.
Thanks guys. For more on the Nokia Connects: Go competition see some of the recent entries like the offroad unicyclist Jacob Spera and a showcase of some of the earlier videos. So, given a Nokia Lumia 900 and two weeks, what kind of a video could you produce? Let us know in the comments, or on Twitter, and you could be trialling one soon. Of course, entries into the Nokia Connects:Go competition are open to anyone, at any time 
(check out the Ts & Cs)
Tags: None
lis
24
Last week we introduced HERE, the world’s first location cloud that delivers a location platform, content and apps across almost any screen and operating system.
Because HERE and Nokia Lumia are naturally made for each other, providing the best location experience on a smartphone, you are going to soon see updates to Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, Nokia Transport and Nokia City Lens.
But HERE is open to all devices and operating systems to give more people, with almost any type of device, the ability to use the best location platform in the world. You probably already know that HERE Maps is now available on iOS (check out this favourable review on Forbes), but today we would like to have a look at here.com.
Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820
Our first Windows Phone 8 smartphones.
Be a part of it.
Here.com is the natural evolution of maps.nokia.com, which is being regularly updated to offer a great mapping experience when you’re home or in the office. Indeed, just two weeks ago we introduced Groupon Now! deals, weather forecasts and maps labs to give you the opportunity to test new features before anyone else. But there’s more. With here.com we have introduced few more features for you to enjoy.
Now you can organize your favourite places in collections such as “Hip Bars” or “Cheap Eats” and sync them with your mobile device* so you can build your personal map and easily find them again. For instance, you can add a place to your collections on your phone and post a review when you get home: wherever you are, you’re always in sync. Just sign-in with your Nokia or Facebook account to get started.
If you already loved our maps in 3D, you are going to enjoy them even more on here.com. Powered by the latest technologies like WebGL, here.com now offers a 3D experience without the need of any plugin. Just open here.com with a supported browser and select the 3D view to explore the world without leaving your living room. You can also plan and preview your route in 3D or wear 3D goggles to enjoy a stereoscopic view of 25 major cities around the world.
We are also extending the coverage of cities where you can enjoy our street level images. This gives you the opportunity to see what a place looks like in greater detail before getting there.
Last, but not least, Map Creator is now available for over 100 countries so that you can help us building the world’s freshest, most up-to-date maps. You can add or edit roads and paths and share your work with the whole world. We are committed to providing the best quality maps: in some countries we are using our innovative collection technologies blended with a team of local experts. In other cases, we recognize that a different approach is needed and this is why we have made Map Creator, available in countries where we need it the most.
Have you used here.com yet? Let us know in the comments section below or Tweet to @heremaps
*Syncing collections between your Nokia Lumia and here.com is not yet available. You can still sync all your favourite places, but on the go they are going to be listed under one list.
image credit: Eric Fischer
Tags: None
lis
24
Given the ubiquity of services such as Facebook and Twitter you might think that people were less inclined to publish their own blogs. However, you’d be wrong.
At the end of 2011, the social media consultants, NM Incite, said they were tracking over 181m blogs on the Internet, up from just 36m five years ago.
In the same year, the blogging platform, Tumblr, was the fastest growing social networking website in the USA. It’s rapidly closing in on 80m blogs with 34bn individual blog posts.
Being a blog ourselves, it’s great to see that the blogosphere is in such rude health. Just like a regular website, a blog can be informative but at their best they also encourage… Conversations.
For millions of people around the world it is often much simpler than that. A blog is an opportunity to self-publish, write about their interests or just keep an account of what they are eating or the places they have been.
Part of the attraction is that they are simple to maintain and you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to do it. This, of course, is where your Nokia Lumia smartphone can help you out.
There are apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace so that you can blog on your Nokia Lumia for each of the three most popular blogging platforms, WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr.
Whether you have a blog already, or you are thinking about starting one, here are some of the choices available to you.
WordPress
WordPress is an open source project and is maintained by a community of developers for everyone to use. It’s just shy of its 10th anniversary and claims to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world.
In the spirit of WordPress itself, this is an open source app and is by some distance the highest rated WordPress client in the Marketplace.
You can write posts, edit them, moderate comments and even view statistics for your blog.
Writer is another tool for WordPress blogs but it also claims to be compatible with blogs on other publishing services such as Moveable Type, Joomla, and Drupal.
Blogger
Blogger is now Google’s very own blogging tool, although the search giant acquired it, rather than created it themselves.
Blogger, when it was first launched in 1999, was one of the very first companies dedicated to offering self-publish tools.
This is a very easy to use Blogger client for your Nokia Lumia, although there is a price to be paid for its simplicity. Currently, you can’t add images to your posts.
Other than the issue over the images, Blogg has a really clean and no-nonsense user interface, which is perfect for quick updates from your phone when you’re on the move.
UpdateMyFeed (£1.49)
If images are important to your Blogger account then you might consider paying for this app. Other advanced features include the ability to save drafts, adding tags and category management.
As well as Blogger, UpdateMyFeed also supports other clients such as WordPress and BlogEngine.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a relatively new kid on the block compared to WordPress and Blogger (it was founded in 2007) but has rapidly become a real darling of the social media landscape.
It’s great for showing off images and has become a favourite among celebrities too.
This is a wonderful app that takes full advantage of the Windows Phone interface with its easy swiping across different screens.
There are nice touches such as being able to take and then post photos within the app using your Lumia’s camera and even supports multiple Tumblr accounts.
Many people use Tumblr as a photo blog and that’s been recognised by the developers behind this app. It’s been created specifically to share videos and images on your blog.
In addition to Tumblr, it also supports other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
Do you use your Lumia to update a blog? Let us know in the comments below.
Tags: None
lis
24
You only have to check out the latest releases to see that video games have produced an amazingly bizarre variety of memorable characters. It all started with Pac-Man and his better half Ms. Pac-man. The latter famously got girl gaming into full gear back in the early 1980s. Besides the heroes and heroines, we have seen some very peculiar individuals. So let’s take a look at some of the most extreme pixel personalities, challenging for the title of the strangest ever.
Manuel “Manny” Calavera in Grim Fandango
This classic adventure game from 1998 draws from Mexican culture of the dead, but in a good way. The main character is basically a walking skull, but a skull that packs personality. A soul mate is found in the role-playing game Planescape: Torment (1999) where a floating skull “Morte” follows the main character, and pretty much steals the show with wise-cracking comments.
Tingle in the Zelda game series
This guy certainly tingles some nerves with his ambigous disposition, and outspoken love of fairies. He debuted in the highly touted, epic Zelda game Majora’s Mask (2000) and has since graced – or haunted – many a Zelda sequel with his tingling personality.
image:
Voldo in Soul Calibur
Martial arts game series, such as Street Fighter and Tekken both march forth a motley crew of characters, but most of them are pretty ordinary when compared to the weirdness called Voldo in Soul Calibur. Voldo is downright creepy, both in how he looks and moves. His signature posture has inspired players to perform a number of choreographies and post them to YouTube.
Super Meat Boy, from Super Meat Boy
A recent indie game success story about a boy without a skin, desperately chasing his beloved Bandage Girl. Super Meat Boy the character is weird in an endearing way, which is totally opposite what the Super Meat Boy the game is. Here we have a super hard, old school platforming title, where fractions of seconds decide your faith between success and failure. Yet parts of Super Meat Boy’s success and memorability can be attributed to the quirky and weird set of pixel personalities who occupy its cut-throat world. Oh, did I forget to mention Dr. Fetus?
King of All Cosmos in Katamari Damacy
The Katamari series is by definition weird. There’s nothing really out of the ordinary when the background story states that the main character’s father is a King. However, when it dawns to you that the King went on a drinking spree, and as a result, all the stars and other celestial bodies were wiped out from the sky, you start to get an idea. Naturally the consequence is that you, the Prince, have to collect everything to restore order, buy rolling around an adhesive ball that picks up stuff along the way. ‘King of All Cosmos’ steals the show in the interludes to the Prince’s menial world-restoring chores. Along the way, the King bestows the player with wisdoms such as “If a heart attacks, we better be careful. Even worse, all the other organs could attack us. We better be prepared.”
Weird, eh? But singling out five out of the thousands of characters is bound to do injustice to some of the bizarre ones out there. So, please let us know which crazy characters you think warrant a place in the video game Hall of Strange.
Image credit: Patrick Hoesly
Tags: None
lis
24
Congratulations! You’ve got a brand-new smartphone. And now you fancy a couple of shiny accessories to sweeten the deal – a spare battery, an extra car-charger, a sneaky new pair of headphones to replace the set you left in the gym last week. But how do you filter out the genuine products from the glut of counterfeit competitors out there? And why would you bother?
Cheap as chips
Well, first, it’s a question of quality – and the ultra-cheap price is the giveaway. Genuine products take serious development. And all that research and safety-testing is worth the effort: back in 2004, the UK’s Camden Trading Standards had to destroy £25k worth of fake car-chargers after reports that they melted during use.
Power failure
Fake batteries can contain dangerous metals like lead or mercury; dodgy circuitry can make them overheat and burn you. And the cheap price also flags up other issues: genuine manufacturers abide by minimum wage requirements and fair trading laws, and pay government tax and import duty – none of which matters to the fakers, who can churn out their low-quality units without any regard for international standards.
If that wasn’t enough, fake accessories are more likely to break and as they’re not covered by a warranty, you’re probably going to have to replace them more frequently – meaning that that nifty bargain wasn’t so much of a, well, bargain. So next time you see a 99p price-sticker slapped on the front of a Li-Ion battery, be alert!
But, price aside, how to tell the goodies from the baddies? The mobile phone industry’s guide, How To Spot A Fake Phone, has some good tips.
I Spy
Have a good look at the accessory. If you can compare it with an item known to be genuine, tiny differences are easier to spot. Watch out for poor spelling, inaccurate label printing, mistakes in the company’s logo, an illegitimate hologram. Genuine Nokia batteries with holograms should reveal four dots and the Nokia original Enhancements logo.
It’s also not unheard of for ‘Nokia’ to be misspelled on counterfeit products. Fake covers often don’t quite fit the phones they’re supposed to – see if you can try before you buy. Look at the packaging: if it’s in a plastic bag it’s unlikely to be genuine.
Say what?
Counterfeit accessories will usually advertise themselves as ‘compatible with’, ‘suitable for’ or ‘for use with’ a range of product numbers. If it says ‘will fit’ or ‘very high quality’ on the box, then the box doth protest too much! Legitimate Nokia products will specify exactly which models the accessory is for – ‘compatible’ models are fakers.
Help!
Registered manufacturers and seller offer customer support and servicing for your Nokia product. If your dealer doesn’t, there’s a good chance he’s working on the black market. Hang onto your proof of purchase and notify the authorities about the potential fake.
Had a bad experience with fakes or got any top tips to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Tags: None
lis
23
Zakończyliśmy już proces zmiany serwera dla bloga i forum. Przy okazji pojawiła się jedna nowość. Forum dostępne jest teraz pod docelowym adresem ForumPlay.pl Planujemy również wkrótce zmienić wygląd forum. Zapraszamy! 
Tags: None
lis
23
Zakończyliśmy już proces zmiany serwera dla bloga i forum. Przy okazji pojawiła się jedna nowość. Forum dostępne jest teraz pod docelowym adresem ForumPlay.pl Planujemy również wkrótce zmienić wygląd forum. Zapraszamy!
Tags: None
