Good news! Digia's released an updated beta version of their @Web browser for the UIQ 3 platform; below is a copy of the change log taken from their support page: (note that you must sign in to see the change log)

• Pages can be loaded with or without images (setting item)
  
• Bookmark list now supports kinetic scrolling
  
• Bookmark URL size is increased to 258 characters
• Flash disabled (was accidentially enabled in Beta 1 causing some problems in pages with flash content)
• Panning improvements
• Stability improvements
• URL fix when navigating back and forward
• Zoom interaction improvement

Guess what this means? Another review that you can look forward to in these couple of days. Again I shall take it for a spin along against Opera v8.65 and Opera Mini.

And just to be sure that everyone read the small print on Digia's support page:

Our plan is to provide the third beta in September.

I'm definitely looking forward to that. Aren't you?

ares over from the UIQ Evangelist has gotten hold of the very slick theme that some of you might have seen running on Sony Ericsson's cancelled Paris "P5" UIQ 3 smart phone.


To be honest, I think Sony Ericsson at the very least should make these themes public, even if they made the choice to cancel the phones. Some of the themes do look excellent in my opinion, so why not offer it to their existing customers?


The theme is available from the UIQ Evangelist - a big thank you to ares and asri for hosting it!

You might recall that some very distant time ago I introduced this nifty app Longcuts, which is an application that binds other applications to keyboard shortcuts. Version 0.8 of the software has just been released a few days ago, and here's the change log from the previous version:

• Major bugs fixed.
• Registration mechanism added.
• About box added :).
• Loading on boot option is removed.
• Making the app system is made optional.

You can download the application here.

With Sony Ericsson now focusing on the Xperia and dropping the P-series, how is the sales of Sony Ericsson P1's faring in your country? It's now currently going for HK$2500 (US$320) from mobile phone stores (with full 1 year warranty), while if you get a "water-good" (also known as grey products or parallel imports) P1 (i.e. without a Hong Kong warranty), it's as cheap as HKD$1900 (US$244).

At this rate, I presume it might come free if you sign a 2 year contract with carriers by the end of this year.

It's a good time for potential smart phone users to climb aboard. After all, there are plenty of great apps out there (just search categories on this blog, as well as other ones) that enhance the overall experience on the P1, and it's a really functional, multi-usable PDA phone for business and casual users. And it's rather inexpensive too!

So how much is a Sony Ericsson P1 smart phone going for in your country?

Although I myself don't use ICQ, I know it remains a very popular choice for IM between groups of people - so here's a new application called QIP which is a ICQ client for the UIQ 3 platform.

There's not a lot of choices when it goes down to using ICQ - eBuddy doesn't support it, and you've got to pay to use IM+ or Agile Messenger, so QIP fits in to that void we've got. The website doesn't give a lot of information (partly because the whole thing is in Russian, and Google Translate doesn't give much help), apart from support for proxies, emoticons, and something about status messages.

The daring ones should give this one a try.

Source: SE4EVA.ru [English Translation by Google Translate]

So in the last few days I've been putting Documents 2 Go through some rigid testing (and playing around) to see how well it fairs - and I'm rather impressed with the copy I downloaded, despite it only being a trial version. It seems DataViz seems to have got this app spot on with regards to business users; but enough of my praising - let me show some screenshots first of the app.

Installation of Documents To Go is fairly straightforward and easy - once it's installed (which can be done by transferring the SISX file to your memory stick or via the PC Suite), three different apps will appear under the 'Tools' folder - DocumentsToGo Sheet/Slide/Word. The three apps allow for the editing and creation of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files on the go on your smart phone.



In the first part I'll elaborate more about DocumentsToGo Sheet app first: it really is rather fantastic and easy to use. As you can see from above, the interface bears a bit of resemblance to QuickOffice, which comes along on the SE P1 phones, so it shouldn't be too much of challenge for first time business users. However, the user gets a couple more options in customising the Word Document compared to QuickOffice - for example, inserting page breaks, bookmarks, hyperlinks, manipulating tables, etc.

Opening existing Word Documents was extremely easy and intuitive, and the support for older Word files (XP) as well as the newer version of MS Word makes this a very powerful utility app for those who need to regularly edit and manipulate Word Documents on the go.

One major flaw that would hinder the overall experience that I found in this app was that when creating a new document and inputing characters in to the document, every letter would appear to be in uppercase, if the user has set Auto-Capitalisation on. The workaround is to turn off Auto-Capitalisation in order to get all the letters to appear in lowercase - it's very tedious and frustrating if you've got alot to input, and it more or less defeats the purpose of auto-capitalisation (which does not mean capitalising every letter). I presume an update and fix for this problem is in the works.

Overall, I found the experience of using this app a pleasure (save for the capitalisation problem) and definitely gives QuickOffice a run for its money. Hardcore Office users and Business users would love this application.