As we previously suspected, the Launch of the Lumia 900 in Finland was at hand; Nokia Finland just announced the Lumia 900 Finland variant a few moments ago, as expected this is the ROW (rest-of-the-world) variant meaning it lacks the LTE support- which of course is not an issue considering Finland doesn’t support LTE as of yet.

Alongside the Lumia 900 also debuted the Official launch of Nokia TV as a Beta for FINLAND ONLY- Nokia has not yet confirmed whether or not this service will spread to other regions (I assume it will take some time considering the amount of licencing agreements required to carry out something like this), the Launch of Nokia TV adds it to the other great Entertainment services from the awesome Entertainment team which Currently Include Mix Radio as well as Nokia Reading.

Nokia TV is a rich hub experience where all local broadcasters stream their content to Lumia 900 (and Lumia 800, who will have to DL the app from the marketplace). Nokia TV app focuses on local catchup TV, i.e. what was played last night or the night before. Content is normally hosted for about 2 weeks but could be up to 30 days, really depending on the content provider. Nokia TV app complements the already existing distribution channels that the content provider has in the market- Nokia TV app hosts the meta data the actual content is streamed direct from the provider; enabling the provider to show relevant adverting before a show.

Update (Jay, cheers Janne for the tip!): Here’s some more info from NokConv Finland:

The new Nokia TV application brings Internet content Finnish TV-Snow-Nokia smartphones.

Nokia TV-application through Snow-smartphone Nokia entertainment of Finland, Nokia is expanding music service, television services. Application deployment is easy and does not require a login or registration.

Users can watch YLE, MTV3, Channel Four, URHOtv’s Voice, and programs. Capacity will grow in the future in other domestic and foreign program suppliers.

http://aani.nokia.fi/2012/05/24/televisiota-voi-katsella-paikasta-riippumatta/

Janne confirms and says:

I’ve now seen multiple reports of people getting their phones, so it is definitely out in Finland in all the three colors and sporting “Tango” with the Wi-Fi sharing and better MMS settings and so on. Also Nokia TV is installed standard, as is Tango Video Calls (unrelated WP “Tango”). The silicone cover is not in the standard package it seems, so that is extra (it is on sale and stock too, both the back covering and bumper style). The USB cable is white like the charger.

This is a very simple but useful app – it’s called Big Oven. It’s a recipe app, great for adding variety to an otherwise monotonous meal schedule.

I really like the left over feature where you set three ingredients that you have and it will suggests recipes out of that. It would be better if you can set more and that if it didn’t include ingredients you didn’t have (it uses the three items as more of a base trio).  If you have a ‘Big Oven’ account, you can have the grocery list option (where it will add all the ingredients necessary for your next shop)  as well as let you upload recipes yourself and more. I wish it wasn’t necessary to sign in like other recipe apps.

The app looks nice when you dig into the menu/recipe. The main view though is a little plain (it’s just black) but when you click on, it has that nice slightly faded picture (mostly of the dish you’ve picked)

#191) Big Oven 

Price:  Free

Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/d22ea47a-2bff-df11-9264-00237de2db9e

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA6SEhfT5ck&feature=youtu.be

Developer Blurb:

 

Take 170,000+ recipes (including your own) anywhere on your Windows Phone!

 

With over five million downloads, and one million registered cooks from around the world, BigOven is one of the top mobile food apps. As featured in the New York Times. Voted “Best Recipe App, 2011″ by the readers of About.com. Named “Best App for Foodies” by PC Magazine, “Best Apps for New Moms” by Time Magazine and “Best App for Eating In” by the Huffington Post.

 

This app is fully native for Windows Phone!

 

NEW

* RecipeScan(tm) – want to enter a recipe? Simply snap a photo of the written recipe!

* Metric

* Take and submit photo of a recipe right from your phone!

 

Anyone can:

* View recipes easily anywhere (grocery store, on vacation!)

* Find new recipes to try — search by an ingredient (“chicken”), title (“lasagna”), or keywords (“spicy beef chinese”)

* Get ideas to use up leftovers: just enter ingredients from your fridge or pantry to find out what you can make

* View recipes in landscape mode!

 

Free BigOven.com Members can:

* Post their own recipes and photos on BigOven.com from any web browser, and view them easily on phone

* Save Favorites and “Try Soon” lists of recipes so you’re never stuck without dinner ideas

* Share recipes with friends: Tell friends to post on BigOven.com too, and easily share favorites!

* Add recipe reviews

* Share recipes via email, on Facebook and Twitter, right from your phone

* Browse over 1,000 food glossary entries to learn more about that special ingredient at the grocery store

 

BigOven PRO members (optional paid membership, free 30-day trial at www.bigoven.com/pro):

* Nutrition facts — calories, carbs, fat, protein, and more

* Post recipes PRIVATELY and retrieve them on your phone

* No advertisements whenever you’re logged in

* Grocery list — add/remove recipes and individual items

* Grocery list synchronizes with the web; edit from a web browser or your phone and it’s viewable anywhere

* Email grocery list

Rating:

Design: 7

Usability: 8

Performance: 9

Price: 10

Liking Comments

I’ve mentioned it before that the Facebook app for Windows Phone is probably one of the best designed apps ever (fully putting the Metro Ui panes to their potential- my all time favorite designed app is IMDB btw), regardless it just got a whole lot cooler with the latest update which brings a slew of new highly requested features including:

New in version 2.5:

• Added ability to like comments,
•  full-threaded Facebook messaging including group messaging,
•  tagging friends using ‘with’ and ‘at’ formats,
• delete posts and comments via long press context menu,
• active links in posts,
• updates to photo comments and likes pages to match posts comments and likes page.

If you haven’t already downloaded it do so by scanning the QR code below and enjoy

P.S.- Facebook also just launched a Camera app for iOS which basically brings their instagram purchase into direct FB integration (maybe this will come soon to Wp?)

Source

Many have wanted Shazam to come to MeeGo-Harmattan, and in true Maemo Community fashion, devs make alternatives. This is exactly what Eyrie is. Eyrie will listen to what music you’re playing, and after recording a 30 second sound clip, detects what the song is. It uses the EchoNest library, an open-source way of detecting a song’s “fingerprint”.

Now, it’s still an early version, but seems promising. Its quick to launch, and is quick to tell you if it has failed or give you a result. The database for results can only be as large as EchoNest, so hopefully it will get better.

The dev has posted a video of it working (see below). I tried it myself, comparing it to Shazam on my 800, using the same songs, and it got 1/4, where Shazam got 4/4. Admittedly though, Shazam has been around for a lot longer, and has had the time to improve its library. It’s still a great app, and it’s good to see developers take the initiative to bring these sort of apps the platform.

Web Link | Mobile Link

The app can be downloaded from the developer’s web site. Make sure you have allowed installation of 3rd party apps

Source: Michael Sheldon

We demoed the original PAC-MAN game in #180 and here is the Championship Edition DX.

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/05/13/lumiappaday-180-pac-man-demoed-on-the-nokia-lumia-800-xboxlive/

As you’ll see in the video, it’s an interesting twist to the original. First the controls are much improved for touch – no more virtual joystick, just flick the direction you want. There’s also multitouch gestures to activate the ‘bomb’ as well as a different gameplay in that all the points you pick up aren’t immediately visible.

It’s a decent game but it is outrageously priced.

#189) PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX

Price:  £5.49

Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/34bbb588-4a74-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKk3XPEWLdk

Developer Blurb:

PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX, which is a best-seller on Xbox LIVE Arcade, now appears on the scene on Windows Phone 7!

It is optimized for Windows Phone 7, but its exhilaration and addictiveness are still there!
Mazes are changing continuously!
Ghosts that follow PAC-MAN in a row!
Once you start playing, you won’t be able to stop!
Why don’t you give it a try?

Rating:

Design: 7

Usability: 8

Performance: 8

Price: 2

Let me start by saying this is a great game that you’re going to need to try out! If you liked Dalton that we demoed on the N9, this is like that.

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/01/27/n9apps-dalton-the-awesome-demoed-on-the-nokia-n9/

This is quite simply, a running game called Running Dude. The principle is simple – just run and jump. But it’s really addictive. It has it’s own sense of quirky style with some interesting power ups in the game, such as robots to jump into, rocket packs, ones that shake your environment or flip it 180 and superman. That’s just what I came across whilst demoing it.

It’s a must have at just £0.79 and there’s a free version.

#189) Running Dude 

Price:  £0.79 or Free

Link (Paid): http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/697d6e23-5b02-4920-b952-41d7905f2fff

Link (Free):  http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/28499550-80b4-4e25-ae34-e2ac99a3b7e2

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-8G3Gx1B0E&feature=youtu.be

Developer Blurb:

A challenging run ‘n’ jump game with twisted effects that will make your mind boggle. Download the free version to try it out!

Featuring:
A unique retro style
Enemies to avoid or kill
Jetpack power-up
Mind boggling effects
Live tile featuring top high score

New in v1.3
New graphics added
New gameplay mode – Stage, perfect for the beginner!

New in v1.2
Global leaderboard – tap the key button to create a username and password!
New powerup – SUPERDUDE!
Fixed mech falling through the floor bug!

New in v1.1
Several bug fixes
Added a new Mech power-up

Coming soon:
Social network integration
More twists and turns, weapons, enemies

Rating:

Design: 9

Usability: 10

Performance: 10 

Price: 10

100th day of school is a children’s educational app that can help with their reading.

• The pages will turn with a book like animation.
• Tap on the words and have them read out loud. The words reappear in larger font and each word being said is highlighted in red.
• Tap Elmo and he’ll ask you some questions.

I just noticed there is no marketplace link for this as it’s a Nokia Lumia exclusive:

You’ll have to go through your Nokia Lumia’s Marketplace app.

BTW, coincidentally there’s a post from NokConv today about the Sesame street app and lifelong reading:

“We used interactivity to drive attention back to the book. In many apps today, interactivity takes a way from the reading experience, we wanted to avoid that.”

http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/05/21/nokia-and-sesame-workshop-helping-kids-become-lifelong-readers/

#188) 100th Day of School 

Price:  Free

Link: N.A. Lumia only

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkTgrxX4ogg

Developer Blurb:

Join Elmo in an interactive read-aloud experience!

Every day at school is filled with new and exciting experiences. Now you can celebrate school with all your favorite Sesame Street friends. Join Elmo, Zoe, Abby Cadabby and others as they experience the 100th Day of School.

Are you ready? Let’s go to school!

Rating:

Design: 9

Usability: 9

Performance: 9 

Price: 9

Just a minor heads-up- the recently released unofficial whatsapp client for Meego has gotten it’s first Update mostly fixing some minor bugs that users would face while signing in.

Changelog includes:

• Added support for displaying received Emoji
• Fixed interpreting login failure as a connection error, resulting in reconnect loop then segmentation fault
• Fixed crash during sync because of encoding issue (resulting in “No Contacts” after sync)
• Fixed notifications clicks for people not in contacts
• Fixed connection crash when push name has non ASCII chars (resulting in “Connecting” forever)
• Added Country picker in Registration instead of entering Country Code manually

If you haven’t downloaded it yet get it from http://www.wazapp.im/

Thanks for the tip stormtroller

I said one a week, so am pushing this back a week. This is just awesome! I’ve used AccuWeather since I first got my N9, mainly as it integrated with the Events screen. I had tried MeeCast, and really liked the UI, but the integration with Events screen made AccuWeather the better option. For some reason today, I decided to install it again. AND I AM GLAD I DID!

MeeCast now integrates with the events view, as long as you uninstall AccuWeather. (Uninstall is done via Settings>Applications>Manage Apps>AccuWeather>Uninstall). It gives you a better looking (at least in my opinion) widget iconset. But it doesn’t stop there! This is where the app gets really cool.

You can add the same sort of icon shown in the widget on the standby screen as well. This will overwrite the Operator Logo of your device, but makes the Standby Screen more useful. After all, Marko said it’s there to give you “daily info at a glance”. (I don’t know the exact quote, but along those lines.)

The next cool thing is you can add the same icon to the lockscreen. Obviously, I don’t know if you would use both of these, but the fact that you can, is awesome. Move over Lumia and Live Tiles, the N9 has Lockscreen and Standby Screen Widgets.

Would be nice to see more apps utilising this sort of thing.

Michael

Cliffed is a reaction style race to the bottom. Your guy can’t jump so when he comes across a boulder, he must go all the way around back to the other side to get at the gap in the floor. Hurry though because if you fall our of frame (i.e. the top bit catches you up) you lose. A good tactic is to try and free-fall as long as you can on the gaps.

#187) Cliffed 

Price:  £2.29

Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/a9d4b78e-bbe3-df11-a844-00237de2db9e

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3tJv8iHlOo

Developer Blurb:

Challenge yourself to the most addictive race to the bottom! IUGO presents its latest sensation in casual gaming with this frantic 2D scrolling racer. WARNING: This game will get your heart and fingers racing!

 

Features:

 

+ 20+ unique and playful characters to choose from

+ Pick up and play! Great for all ages.

+ Endless game play

+ 4 difficulty modes!

+ Different themed backgrounds such as Desert and City

+ local leaderboards

+ Stylized, clean graphics

+ IUGO’s signature quality and polish

Rating:

Design: 8

Usability: 9

Performance: 9 

Price: 7