Stoeger’s S60 Ticker makes an attempt to fix this, by running notifications for text messages and e-mails into a ‘ticker’ bar and drawing it over any application for you to see. Let’s see how it works in daily use…

First, you’ll be running a daemon at all times, but I haven’t noticed any lag or drop in performance on my E71 (which multitasks like a champ, and never dips below 30MB of RAM). You’ll need to install the TickerServer and the application that manages the settings. Once you’ve done that, browse into your Applications folder and you’ll see S60 Ticker. Hit it, gramps.

Here, you can adjust the settings for how to display notifications and which events are displayed.

Browsing into General, there are a gamut of options to adjust. You can set the bar on the top or bottom, you can set it flush against the “border” of the screen, or move it to the middle of the screen. I put mine on the top, looks a bit cleaner. You can set scrolling speed. I set mine at 4x.

We can also adjust where the notification bar becomes available – Anywhere (it’s drawn over any running Application. ANY) or Active Standby only. I use ANY, so I can immediately dismiss the notification and continue “working”.

Next, you can configure the hotkey to bring up and dismiss the notification bar. I use the backspace button for ease of single handed use, but will be switching it to the OK selection on the dpad as I also use Google Search and the hotkey is forcefully bound to the backspace key. For shame Google, for shame.

You can also adjust theme support (read: transparency), color and font type and size. Lots to personalize.

Now, moving into the type of events for notification – there are 2 of real use – SMS and Email. They both have the same settings. You can set an automatic “dismiss” of the notification/ticker bar by adjusting the display duration. Setting it to –1 will run for infinite, 0 will disable that event notification.

What’s also neat here, is that not only can you dismiss a notification, you can even automatically mark a message as read. This is handy, as I use RemindMe – which constantly notifies me of an unread message or email.

Well, enough configuring. I bet you want to see what it looks like. Pictures are hard to do it justice, but it’s extremely fluid. Here’s an incoming message that’s scrolled across the top, with the time coming after it.  

You can select the notification bar by hitting your hotkey (holding the center of the dpad) and the bar will be selected, the left of the bar gives a number indicating how many notifications are waiting, if only one – it will display the time. Now, simply swipe/push UP on the dpad and your notification bar will glide away in a very smooth motion.

If you do this, the notification bar goes away and into “sleep” mode, but the notifications are still there. To remove a notification completely, simply select it and hit the backspace key. For sanity sake, I’ve also made a horribly out-of-focus video with Muse playing in the background. It’s real choppy. It’s raw cause I’m hardcore like that. Arf arf! What!

So, you get the idea. What a great way to display notifications. A few niggles about it, if you’re running a ton of memory intensive applications, you will notice a slouch when a message comes in. Okay that’s my only actual real complaint. I would like to see the ability to systematically remove a notification when hitting backspace on a selected even, as it is – you can only currently mark all messages and ‘read’ when they come in, and have them displayed by the ticker.

So, the unlock key for the daemon costs $10.39 currently. Is it worth $10 big ones? If you’re big into flashy notifications and don’t want to be interrupted while on your device, it’s extremely handy. I would like to see them drop the price perhaps. $5 would be a good area to settle at. Give it a shot, there’s a free trial you can use.

Comments and suggestions for more software reviews are REALLY NEEDED. If it’s out there, I’ll review it for you. My E75 review will be up within a little bit, probably next week – it’s exam crunch time for me.

Stay safe and remember…

There’s a reason I haven’t gone back to Windows Mobile. There’s a reason I haven’t gone over to Android. There’s numerous reasons I haven’t switched to an iPhone and the *only* reason I haven’t tried WebOS is because the only available device is on a CDMA carrier.

What are the other reasons? Here are the top 5, in no particular order.

1). SMB/SAMBA support.

I run Windows and Linux at home. I have an 802.11 network with WDS. I have multiple routers feeding my home location for seamless hand-offs anywhere. I can step inside my garage, and access any computer on the network via SMB. I can lounge on the deck and access my main workstation, my laptops or my audio server. This of course isn’t native, but it is done with the very intuitive software from Telexy Networks called SymSMB. Not free, and it’s also been officially discontinued but it’s worth every penny and it’s a first install on any of my S60 devices.

2). Intelligent Profile Switching.

Just like many people, I sleep. I also wake up. I go to school (or work) and I have other daily activities. I don’t want my phone interrupting me when I’m busy. A ringer switch isn’t smart enough to know when to enable itself (I’m looking at you, iPhone). I want to have my phone work itself around me. When I walk into a theater – go to vibrate/silent mode and turn the brightness down to 5% just incase I need to use it. When I’m sleeping – silence all SMS, MMS and e-mail, switch the ringer to a lower volume and play a more soothing tone to wake me up, and while you’re at it let’s also drop the brightness down to 20% and turn on bluetooth so I can answer with my headphones since I’ve been known to fall asleep with them on. Oh, and I want it to happen only on week-nights between 10 PM and 7 AM. But, I’d also like you to know when I’m in class and switch to Offline mode since I don’t always get a signal and when I’m done, switch back Online and retrieve my messages for me.

Doesn’t sound possible does it? It is and my E71 does everything I’ve mentioned, thanks to SmartphoneWare Best Profiles. It has the ability to switch profiles based on GSM LAC-ID (location based), calendar entries (fully customizable search) and time of day.

3). WiFi Sharing/Tethering.

Oh hi, I’m on the VIA train with my friends. We’re all on laptops, doing work, checking our favorite websites or just playing games. We didn’t need to pay an extra $15 for WiFi access. When we get to our hotel, we don’t need to use the insecure pipeline they provide. When my home connection goes down, I don’t have to switch to dial-up just to stay online. Why, thank you JoikuSpot. Using JoikuSpot, I can share my 3G/UMTS connection with 254 clients. That’s right, 254 people. I don’t have to pay an extra $10 to my provider for a “tethering SOC”. I don’t have to buy a new device to do so (I see you, MiFi). I can simply fire up the software, which does all the work of configuring a DHCP server, enabling WiFi and setting it into EITHER Ad-hoc mode or full Infrastructure with the option of using WEP (I know, I know). I give my friends the SSID and key, and before you can punch Mahatma Ghandi in the solar-plexus – we’re all online consuming the internet best as we can.

4). Hardware Changes.

Another easy reason? I can make subtle changes to the hardware on my device. I bought my E71 as a gray steel. I purchased a white keyboard and a black housing after the fact. I can change them out at anytime I feel like it. This might be trivial, but after a few months of using one color, swapping makes it feel like a whole new device at times. I can match my dark themes with the black housing and my lighter themes with the white housing.

5). Open Platform.

I like S60 and Symbian. I like how Nokia has put it all together. I like their integration. I like their beta applications (ImageExchange). I like their officially released applications (SportsTracker, Share Online, Nokia Maps). I like the ability to have Python on my device. I like the ability to have Ruby on my device. I can write full MS Word, Excel and and PowerPoint compatible documents. I can get instant push email via numerous 3rd party providers or via IMAP Idle. I can access the filesystem. I can torrent. I can download podcasts directly to my device, and play them in almost any format at my leisure. I have A2DP with AVRCP. I have full OBEX-FTP.

Okay, so the last item was a bit of cheating, but as you can see, S60 on the E71 and comparable hardware is just simply the bee’s knee’s to me. Android is bringing some great changes to the mobile platform world, same goes for WebOS. Hopefully Symbian Foundation can step up to the plate. As for me, I’ll be sticking with S60 and my E71 until something that can fulfill the above needs comes out. The E72 does it, but too many little changes and not enough larger ones, such as the screen.

Here are a few pictures of after the modifications, I’m currently using the white keyboard with the black bezel and a silver chin, although I wish I had a black chin to even everything out. Oh well, I might take it off and use some Krylon Fusion to paint it, which is made specifically for hard plastics. Anywhere, here is some eye candy.

Email me if you want huge/large resolution pictures.

And yes, in that last picture I used a short-hook lock pick to open the casing.