nokia xpressmusic 5300 - Free Applications and Games Available on Nokia Site

I discovered today that there are some pretty cool applications available for nokia phones, and in particular the phone I'm using. If you go to nokia's european site, you can download some free apps. I found "sensor" a bluetooth mobile social networking program, a 3D snakes game, a decent snowboarding game, and a unit conversion tool. When looking on the US nokia site these apps are not to be found. The apps installed using nokia's pc suite program without difficulty. I do have my phone set to think it's a british phone though to get around t-mobile's blocking of java programs from their cheaper internet service, so this might have helped.

Why does Europe get cooler stuff that the US does without additional cost? I'm not sure. I recommend using NSS and setting your phone up this way if the programs don't work for you.

The program I was really looking for was the nokia sensor app. It allows you to see other phones with the application running and thus see if friends are nearby or meet people. It's probably something like the helios buddy beacon. Of course, if nobody else around is able to run the application then it's worthless.

As for a review of this phone, I haven't found the music buttons to be very useful so if I hadn't enabled these extra features and applications (I also have installed msn's search program that can show live traffic and google maps and mail) then this phone would be a complete piece of junk.

As it is I'm rather happy with it, although I can't wait for a google phone.

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TV on your computer

Why get satellite or cable anymore if you have hi-speed? I don't know. Two new services are running now, joost and graboid.

Joost just came out in beta and is awesome with a great interface and lots of things to watch. You can find all the shows you'd have a hard time finding on cable and would need a dvr to record if you have, like, a work or play life. You can also chat with others watching the channel, although nobody was when I was there, which is fine with me. There are some options for news too but they are quite limited and dated now, don't expect news flashes as of yet. The video quality is pretty good too. The best part is that it's free! This does mean that it has advertisements in between the shows, but it seems much better than normal tv.

Get Joost

Graboid has some subscription options for different download quotas.
Graboid will also let you save videos, but it's really just a newsgroup aggregator. I'm not sure how long it will be around since it let's you get movies that are in theaters, and I don't think it's paying the studios for that privilege.

Get Graboid

A way to make money, hooray

My friend Garth started doing this thing a while back where he loans out money and earns interest (around 12-25% a year). No, he's not a loan shark, he's "buying loans" at prosper.com. You can also get a loan at lower than bank rates apparently to pay off credit cards or whatever. I'm starting off small, hoping to bid $50 on someone's loan this week. You bid in $50 increments, so if someone is loaning $1000 it can come from up to 20 people. Prosper actually takes care of the loan details, you're just purchasing that part of it, taking the risk and the interest earned. They also have deals with collection agencies if your lender defaults on you. It's not foolproof, but it seems to work, and people have a sense of community with who they are borrowing from.

They have a deal right now where you get $25 after making your first loan (as a lender). That's a 50% return right there. Follow this link to do that. http://www.prosper.com/join/gamp