Nimbuzz - Skype and other messenger programs for Nokia E65

I used to have Fring for phoning and chatting on Skype, and other messenger programs. But recently I downloaded the Nimbuzz, a free application, and for my suprise I found a better Skype for my Nokia E65 (As looking on the official Skype webpage, there is a Skype Lite for Nokia phones like E65, I will test this application in the future hopefully.)
So Nimbuzz. It can be downloaded at www.nimbuzz.com. Beside Skype you can use Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AIM, studiVZ, GoogleTalk, Facebook, MySpace, Jabber. It has nince orange colors, not that this should matter to anyone.

At startup the application ask for permission to join a network, and here I can select the network I'm planning to use this program with. And after that I set it to ask all the time what connection should it use - my data plan is for only 30 MB-s so I rather not use it for messaging, when a wi-fi network is avaiable.

When you start the application for the first time, you have to choose a Nimbuzz password and username, and after that it saves and remembers all usernames and passwords for your messenger programs. By default your contact are listed alphabetically by their status. This order can be changed at Menu/Setting/My Application Setting.

The application is easy to use: we choose the person we would like to be in contact with, and after an enter the possibilities aare listed: you can send a short message, you can call him, send a photo or a file. Conference calls are also supported, this feature I haven't used it. For fine tuning it needs to be used a lot, if any questions should arise, please ask them, I will try to answer them.

And now the screen captures:

Theme for E65

Sholud we use a factory theme or one that was made by others?

Pro
These built in themes are optimized for the Nokia E65 or other Symbian phone, so they don't slow down the phone. Themes built by other are unique, individual, they reflect our personality, so there is a big chance no one is using them.

Against
Official themes are boring, they can be found on anybody else's phone. Also, themes built by others can be very large, they can slow down the phone in an ubearable way. Namely they are disturbing the phone's functionality.

What I'm using?
After long periods of searching and tryouts I'm using the official Dots Blue theme. This is the closest to the DOts Green theme I'm desperately searching for, it's simple, plain, and does not slow down the phone.

Where can I find other themes?
If you are looking for good taste theme, this is your page. The themes are normal, good looking, it is wotrh going back to look for new ones.

Movies on my little screen

When I heard for the first time, that it is possible to watch entire movies on the phone, I asked myself why? But after I spent some time thinking about it, I realised it is not such a bad idea, after all if you are on a train or a plane you don't really need to watch a movie on the laptop, or you don't have to carry around you your laptop just to watch a movie on the plane.

There are two approaches: the official one is when I tried to covert with the official Nokia program the .avi file in to .mp4 so the Real Player can play it. I tried it, but there was only sound - no image and no subtitles.

So i tried the unofficial aproach: I needed a coder and a player. The coder is PocketdivXEncoder - v0.3.60. This is really optimized for Pocket PC, but it is free and can be used for Symbian as well. The software - you have to install it on your PC - automatically recoqnizes that an .srt file is avaiable for subtitle, and it burnes it with the movies. It takes 40 minutes to code a 1,1 GB .avi file (with a 1 Ghz Intel Celeron 512 MB memory computer) and the result is a 200 MB file. I transferred it to my phone memory, where a newly installed player, DivX Player was waiting. And the result was awesome I was watching the movie on my new platform, on my mobile. :-D soo cool indeed.

S60 Ticker

This application it is sooo coool, that I wonder, why only now has someone developed it? This someone are some german guys, use the Google translator if you don't know the language.

There are two separate applications that you have to install: one is S60 Ticker Server than you need the S60 Ticker. The program itself does on thing, but it is very cool: it shows in a moving stripe the content of the SMS you just received. I think it is very usefull, and the next step should be e-mails, MMS messages.

There are a bunch of settings in the program. You can set for instance, that the message should appear only on the main screen - but also on all other screens. You can also set where the stripe to apear: at the top or bottom. You can adjust the speed on a scale from 1 to 5. You can also set that the program should autostart, when you switch on your phone or not. You can put the clock at the begining of the stripe, but this is not working with my phone, so I disabled it.

On the second settings screen you can set the dislpay duration of your incoming SMS. There is also a counter, that shows the number of SMS' displayed by the application.

The third screen containes the setting of demo mode.

Thats about it all. I really enjoy it, and show off with it to my friends.
And some screencaptures:

G-mail on E65

It is not too hard, to set up the e-mail account on the phone, but I really didn't like to use it, I hardly sent on or two e-mails on the phone. Last time I wanted to check my mails it didn't worked, so I had to go to the browser, acces the web. Last time I read the stuff that is written their - if you want faster gmail, click here - so I followed the instructions. The app can also be downloaded from www.gmail.com/app, if you have patience to write in the adress manually.



In the installed application menu the Gmail icon appeared.



You have to give your password and user name only once. Using it is quite simple, enjoy it!

Skype calls with Nokia E65

This was the first software I wanted to have on my mobile. Since Skype is busy doing something else, and they are not developing a Symbian based Skype-client I looked over the internet to find a suitable solution. I found this webpage, the fring asked for my's phone type and number, they sent me an SMS with a link to the application. Being at home and on wi-fi I clicked it and downloaded OTA (meaning over-the-air) on my mobile. The software is free of charge.

After I installed it, I found out, that I can use not only Skype, but MSN Messenger, Yahoo, and ICQ - if I remember my ICQ number at all - but Google Talk, AIM, Twitter and some SIP providers are also supported. To use it is very simple: we have to mark what service we are planning to use, we give our user name, password and the program is already on.



As you can see, that some SIP providers are also available, you can choose from the following, or you have to specify an another:



If you logged in, you can not separate an ICQ user from a Skype user or MSN user, but this is not the purpose, you can interact with them - send short messages or just call them by clicking on their name and pressing the green call button on your mobile.



You can terminate the program by using Exit, but if you want to look up a phone number, than you can use the Hide option. The program will be active in the background.

I used Skype to make a long (and a no cost) phone call to my sister from US - she was in Romania. Because data roaming is very expensive first I put my phone in Offline mode, than I had the guts to call her. I don't have SkypeOut, but you can use it on your phone as well. Very cool feature!