Son Of The Engadget Demobilizer – A New Bookmarklet To View Engadget’s Desktop Version In Opera Mini

One of my favorite tech news sites, engadget.com, recently started forcing Opera Mini users to a new mobile version of the site that looks like it was designed for legacy dumb phone browsers (image, left). I could live with the boring plain text on a white background, but not with the severely degraded and distorted images. But the worst part of the new design is the pagination, which breaks most articles into multiple tiny pages. Even on dumbphones, Opera Mini can load … Continue reading

UC Browser 8.4 for Java Released With Bug Fixes, New Features

UC Mobile LTD quietly released a new version of the UC Browser for Java ME a couple of days ago. It’s version 8.4. By convention even numbered point releases of UC such as 8.4 are “stable” releases that contain few or no new features while odd numbered versions like 8.3 are “new feature” releases. So 8.4 is basically 8.3 minus the bugs. 8.4 incorporates the following features that were added in 8.3: UDisk – Download content from the web to … Continue reading

Opera Mini 7.0 Update 1 for Symbian Released, Fixes Re-connection Issue and Other Bugs

Opera Software released an updated version of Opera Mini 7.0 for Symbian last week. It’s dubbed “Opera Mini 7.0 Update 1 for Symbian” or version 7.0.30697 and includes bug fixes and performance enhancements but no new features. According to Opera the changes in this version are: Fixed problem with broken text on web pages Fixed network re-connection issues Improved scrolling performance on S60 v3.x keypad devices Improved file type detection for downloads Opera Smart Page language will now always follow browser localization Various … Continue reading

With the Nexus 7, Google Aims to Dominate Post-PC Personal Computing

Google I/O was last week. While I didn’t attend, I did follow it closely at a Google I/0 Extended event at Google’s San Francisco offices where I watched both keynotes and a number of the tech sessions on the big screen. The most signifigant announcement of I/0 was the $199.99 (for the 8GB version) Nexus 7 tablet. It out-specs all the other 7 inch tablets in the market by a significant margin. I expect the Nexus 7 will quickly become the best … Continue reading

New Nokia Web Tools 2.0 Makes Creating Series 40 Web Apps Easier Than Ever

In my Nokia Series 40 Browser V 2.0.2 Review, I mentioned that the phone supports running Series 40 web apps. They have a look and feel similar to native apps and can use device features including geolocation and messaging. This post takes a look at Nokia Web Tools,  a set of applications for creating, testing and deploying  these apps. Series 40 web apps are built using the familiar web technologies of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. While you  theoretically could  create web … Continue reading

Firefox Mobile Is Getting a New UI

I hadn’t used Firefox Mobile in a while because I didn’t have a phone that met the browser’s minimum hardware requirements. But now that I have a Motorola Photon with the requisite ARM v7 CPU, I downloaded the Firefox Beta (v 14.0) and was surprised to see an attractive new user interface (images above). The redesigned UI is only in the Firefox Beta, which is available in the Play Store, or a recent Firefox Nightly. The old swipe interface is still used in … Continue reading

The Best Sites to Follow the US Open Golf Championships On Your Phone

The big United States Open Golf Championships starts tomorrow at San Francisco’s Olympic Country Club, which is practically in my backyard. The tournament, which features 156 of the top professional and amateur golfers in the world, runs through Sunday, unless regular play ends in a tie which would trigger a fifth round on Monday. This years favorites include Tiger Woods, Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Rory Macllroy and Phil Mickelson. US Open spectator tickets are sold out but are still available from secondary sources like StubHub starting … Continue reading

Opera Mini 7.0 Now Available For Java ME, BlackBerry and S60

Opera Software has just announced the availability of version 7.0 of the Opera Mini browser for Java ME, BlackBerry and Symbian S60 second edition and latter including all Nokia Belle devices. Opera sent me a pre-release copy of the Java ME version earlier today. Here are my initial impressions. Opera Mini 7.0 is the release version of the Opera Mini Next Beta, that launched three months ago. It contains many bug fixes and stability improvements, but no new features compared with Opera Mini … Continue reading