Need something to listen to on your N-Gage compatible device? I always enjoy the All About Symbian podcasts. This week they talk about Mile High Pinball, Reset Generation, the Nokia N82, and several other topics.
Give it a listen here.
Those of you needing a helping hand with your fishing game are in luck — game developers Infinite Dreams have put up a Help forum for their excellent N-Gage fishing game, Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep.
The forums contain maps of each of the four fishing resorts in the game, as well as threads for asking questions, and the opportunity to get help in the game.
And if you can’t find what you are looking there, be sure to head over to the N-Gage Arena forum for Creatures of the Deep, by far the most popular next generation forum to date, full of tips and help for the game.
While “Mosh and Seek” may sound like professional wrestlers playing hide and seek, they are in fact parts of a broader effort by Nokia to facilitate the creation and sharing of content for mobile devices.
MOSH — short for Mobilize and Share — is an application, currently in beta, that allows users to upload, download, and share mobile content they or others have created with others in the MOSH community.
Revealed at the CTIA show in San Francisco this week, SEEK is a new extension to MOSH that allows you to submit customized search requests to the MOSH community to help you find the exact content you are looking for:
“SEEK is the third dimension in the evolution of MOSH. The first dimension was the ability to upload and share content with a global audience; the second was downloading and customizing your device; now SEEK provides the ability to seek content and interact with the community, SEEK will tap into the power of the MOSH community and provide customized responses to people’s mobile needs.”
If you haven’t tried out MOSH yet, now’s a good time. The application is free and should work on any Nokia device. Check the site for more.
Gulfnews.com, a news outlet located in the United Arab Emirates, has posted up a thorough and accurate overview of the next generation of the N-Gage program on its English language website. 
While none of the details will be new to anyone who’s been following this blog for a while, we should all be pleased to see this kind of coverage outside the gamer press.
It’s also a nice demonstration of the N-Gage’s global appeal; speaking from experience I know that our N-Gage Players of the Month came from all around the world — Turkey, Poland, India, to name a few — and not just the traditional gaming markets of the US, Western Europe, and Japan. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t also the case for the next generation of N-Gage.
Go ahead and comment where you guys are from. Oh, and on an unrelated note, for those of you who thought side-talking was awkward, I got a kick out of this… :)
If you haven’t already done so, be sure to watch the webcasts from the recent London Go Play event. There are two webcasts available: one is the press conference and the second is a panel discussion.
The same page also includes links to downloadable press kits and presentations for you to enjoy.
Well there have been a lot of stories floating around the internets about the Next Generation of N-Gage recently, and of course we are all waiting with baited breath to see what’s around the corner. But the magazine Mental Floss decided today to take a fond look back and did a little feature about “side talking”. They recommend in particular “side talking with animals”
And todays word of the day: triskaidekaphobia \tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\, noun: A morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th 
Long-time Arena members may remember John “Vanityklaw” Kuner, one of our admins and formerly the boss of both Redrum and Ikona. He’s been on sabbatical from the N-Gage program since the Fall of 2006, working on a project that could be more important than videogames.
“What’s that?” you ask. “More important than videogames? Impossible! How can that be?”
We found it hard to believe too, until he started telling us about Project VIEW. This is a project that uses digital storytelling with camera phones for cross-cultural connections.
What that means in practice is helping people who normally wouldn’t get to interact face to face get to know each other through video. For example, imagine students in India exchanging video clips with students in Norway, describing their favorite places to eat.
This is a great way for people in different parts of the world get to know each other face to face, but without the intervening distortions of media or the expense of travel — sort of like Pen Pals for the Digital Age.
Project VIEW is part of the Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, a forum for social entrepreneurs to develop IT-based solutions in the areas of health, education, and finance for emerging markets.
If you’d like to learn more — or better yet, participate — visit the Project VIEW website.
Here is a sample from the project:
Hey gang, Ikona here, back from GDC with another hot session report. This one was a real eye-opener, since we got a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a new N-Gage game project that is unannounced and still under development.
The session was called “Designing Next Generation Connected Games”, and it was led by Scott Foe, best known on the N-Gage for producing Pocket Kingdom, one of the first massively multiplayer mobile games. He was also named as one of the “next generation of top gamemakers” in a recent feature published by The Escapist.
His session was aimed at fellow game developers, encouraging them to create games for the new N-Gage platform and offering suggestions on how to do that. To illustrate his points, he talked about the game he has under development — code-named “Project White Rock” — and shared some of the insights gleaned from it.
Along the way, he also dropped a juicy hint about whom he’s working with on this project.
A lot of you have been asking if RedLynx, whose High Seize and Pathway to Glory series are still some of the most popular games on the original N-Gage, are going to make games for the next generation of N-Gage.
Well nothing official has been said, but Foe did flash the RedLynx logo up there and said, “I’d like to announce\ RedLynx was working on this game with me, but I can’t” — so you can draw your own conclusions.
Nothing from the actual game was shown, so that’s going to have to remain a mystery for now, too — however I was able to ask around a bit and I’m pretty sure this is an original project, not a sequel to Pocket Kingdom or any of the existing RedLynx games.
He also hinted at the possibility that this new project could be both cross-platform and multi-platform — meaning that the game would work not only on N-Gage-compatible devices but also PCs, and that the gameplay experience on both would be equivalent.
All in all, one of the best sessions I’ve been to at this year’s show, and definitely of interest to any N-Gage fan.
– Ikona out
Wow, AllAboutSymbian has just put up a really interesting article which gives their perspective on the challenges and opportunities for the next generation of N-Gage. The article lays out some past successes (N-Gage Arena, first party games, and the marketing of Pocket Kingdom), some problems, and how they think we are mitigating some of those problems. Apart from being an excellent and objective article, it also provides a pretty good overview of how the next generation of N-Gage gaming is going to work, i.e. it’s going to work across different Nseries devices and other Nokia S60 devices.
The one thing they were highly critical of in the article was the continuing use of the N-Gage brand name, which they gave some pretty well thought out reasons for. I’m not sure it’s quite as black and white as they laid it out in the article, I think perceptions change with experience and if we can provide a great experience what the brand means will change.
BTW the guy behind the success of Pocket Kingdom, Scott Foe will be speaking at GDC, check him out if you get the chance. I’ll be there as well but not speaking, but I might be blogging about stuff going on there.
The multimedia group is doing a survey that will help develop the next generation of the Nokia Podcasting application. There is also an update to the existing podcasting application so it will run on the N95 if your lucky enough to have one
