Opera has released a beta version of Opera Mini 5, an aesthetically pleasing and feature-rich update to the popular mobile web browser.

The new software features tabbed browsing, a “speed dial” thumbnail bookmark browser, a password manager, and an enhanced user interface for use with touchscreen devices. Users can use easy search text on a page.

The story of Nokia buying out Symbian had caused us to cheer in joy with the anticipation that it’d usher in some kind of application revolution for S60. Alas, that never happened and it seems it will never happen again. Symbian Foundation is planning to replace the S60’s Avkon API with Qt when Symbian^4 is released in late 2010.

This means one thing straight forward and that is the future version of Symbian might not support S60 apps. I am not really disappointed with this because in the first place the apps for S60 were few, very very few. Nokia did manage to entice me with the N-Gage offering but other than that there was nothing much for a software geek like me.

Just to make it sound little more convincing all of this basically means that Symbian is going for a completer UI overhaul with new application suite for Symbian^4. This development can also mean that we may now keep loftier anticipations from Symbian for the better future versions in all the departments and most importantly in attracting developers to create lots and lots of cool apps. After all, why should iPhone owners have all the fun.

SugarSync’s developer, released a version of the cross-platform multimedia syncing management software for Android phones. SugarSync for Android lets you view and download files on your Android Netbook or mobile phone, and upload local files to your free or premium SugarSync repository.

The Android application emulates the multi-platform access seen in SugarSync’s other detailed syncing apps, with a home screen offering you access to any of the desktops, iPhones, web uploads, or other platforms you have hooked up with SugarSync. Where it falls down are sluggish waits between tapping, holding and waiting for options to appear for local and cloud-stored files. When you do get those options, however, they’re pretty neat, and a fairly easy way to stream pictures, music, and any compatible media formats to your phone without having to take up space on a microSD card.

The application is much more photocentric on Android phones, where being able to upload and download mobile photos to and from your SugarSync account is the only media format guarantee. Android Netbook users should be able to view the full range of supported file types. Files you upload from multiple desktops, laptops or mobile phones are accessible from other platforms or the Web. You will also be able to share files and folders from the phone.

If you happen to be one of those lucky people who own a Nokia tablet phone then you must try out an amazing Media Center application called Canola. It is as the name suggests your one stop door for all your media needs on the Nokia tablet phones. Just in case if you have any confusion about Nokia Tablets then I must tell you that this application is only compatible with Nokia 770, Nokia N800 and Nokia N810.

The user interface of Canola is quite impressive and pretty simple. The breaking point for most Media Center applications is the lack of support for enough video and audio file formats. Canola just manages to escape from that. It has inbuilt support for mp3, wma audio file and video support for avi, wmv, asf, 3gp and mp4 file types. Canola supports addons which mean the support for other file types can be made possible using them. It has its weaknesses but it’s still a cause for our delight that something beautiful is being made for mobiles. For some reason the development on for the mobile devices is just not that upto the pace.

Amazon’s Kindle is making news for all the right reasons and I really believe that Kindle is not only a great product but also a necessity if we have to reduce the environmental damage that goes in cutting trees and making paper. Newspapers have been losing the sheen against the vast online resources for news. The profits of newspaper companies are dwindling as more people are getting their news from blogs and online networks like twitter.

Amazon Kindle is only available in handful of countries but people in other places need not worry because they can still read ebooks on their smart phones. There are only a few eBook Readers for small screen mobile devices but MobiPocket Reader is without any contention the best among them.

MobiPocket Reader is the most popular and also the most advanced among the mobile eBook applications. It supports wide variety of mobile devices including Symbian OS, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and a host of dedicated ePpaer devices like iliad and Cybook. The eBook store store of MobiPocket Reader is vast and there’s a handsome bookshelf which can boast of quality works and the recent bestsellers.

I used MobiPocket Reader for quite some time and I have come to a firm conclusion that it’s the best ebook reader for smartphones out there. Mobipocket has a mobile store from where you can purchase ebook compatible with the application. I will rather tell you about few sites which let you download books in public domain free of cost.

1. Project Gutenberg: It is one of the largest database of free ebooks on the web. It also provides majority of ebooks in the .mobi file type which is supported by the Mobipocket Reader. You can find lot of classics in here.

2. Feedbooks: It is another website giving you whole lot of free ebooks for your leisure reading. If you are browsing from a mobile phone you might like to visit its mobile version.

3. Manybooks: This website has a better interface than the Gutenberg with recommendations and better categorization.

4. Booksinmyphone: This is the another website which lets you download free ebooks.

One of the problem that most Symbian mobile phone users repeatedly face is that there are not many twitter clients for S60. I have been using a Nokia N81 for some time while I love to tweet on the go. I used to tweet on the mobile version of twitter earlier but it was getting very expensive for I am not using an unlimited plan. I later resorted to some native Symbian clients for Twitter which would consumer lesser data than using the mobile web version of twitter.

Some of the good and the better Twitter S60 clients that I came across are:

Gravity: It was the first S60 compatible Twitter client and one of the favorite among heavy twitter users on Symbian devices. It also has one of the best user interface but it does consume lot of data which might be a problem if you are not using an unlimited data usage plan. It is a paid client at $9.95 but you can download a trial version which has lesser features. It supports multiple accounts, Twitter Search, Laconica, posting of pictures via MobyPicture & TwitPic etc.

Twibble is an absolutely free Java application for twitter. It misses out on some features such as finding your friends and followers unlike Gravity. You can see the profiles of a user which you might like to check out when you get a new follower. I have been using it for some time and I prefer it for lazy tweeting as it is said to consume far less data than some better clients.

WirelessIRC+Twitter is another client from the house of Gravity and as the name suggests it does more than just tweeting. It is a native IRC client for your S60 3rd Edition phone with additional support for Twitter and Bonjour Local Chat.

TweetS60 is another free Twitter client like Twibble and it is in beta stage. I haven’t given it a try as of yet but I’d love to receive feedback from the beta testers of this client in the comments section.

Twittix is also one of the better Twitter S60 3rd Edition Twitter client which has features comparable to Gravity. It is also compatible with latest S60 5th Edition devices such as Nokia 5800 Xpress Music. One feature that makes Twittix even better than Gravity is that you can forward tweets as a sms to any of your contact irrespective of his presence on twitter.

Twim is another mobile Twitter client that runs on devices that are compatible with Java MIDP 2.0. It lets you browse history, replies, friends, direct messages and public feeds.

Twitter might not have the same number of users as Facebook or MySpace but it is the darling of any big blog and the hype generated by Twitter in the internet industry is not matched by any other web startup in the present. Since most users can’t and won’t spend all their time in front of a computer so a good option that remains in such situations is that of using twitter on a mobile phone. Twitter in last few months have been instrumental in breaking stories and most people only tweet using a mobile phone in such cases so it makes sense to look at some options for tweeting on the go.

Users can try the default mobile version of twitter but it still falls short of features if you compare it with some other better browser based twitter services. Have a look at some of them:

Dabr is a web based client which works pretty much like the mobile version of twitter but it offers more reasons than that. Dabr makes tweeting much easier and wholesome on a mobile phone. Just like m.twitter, Dabr also asks for your twitter credentials like username and password in order to start tweeting. It shows you the small thumbnail of any twitpic mentioned in a tweet. It shows you direct tweets, your followers, friends, public timeline and you may even search across twitter.

Slandr is great if you like to retweet and also want to share your location. It has Pic and tweet feature which lets you upload pictures and tweet omitting the need to use twitpic separately as it is neatly integrated with slandr.

Tweete doesn’t support the images of twitter users which makes it slightly less appealing but if you are on some connection which doesn’t support fast internet connectivity then you might like to give it a try. It gives you neat four icons to reply, direct message, favorite or retweet.

Twitstat Mobile is one more simple web based mobile service to access twitter and its user-interface might not to be everyone’s liking and you gotta try to see it yourself. It allows you to do all the functions that other services in the list can and you may also select some tweehearts if you like the tweet of a person.

Opera Mini has shed its beta status and has become official. It comes with some promising new improvements like better video support, double tapping to zoom in and out, improved trackball speed and downloading pages for viewing in offline mode.

It allows uploading and downloading of files through the browser and allows pages to be saved  for offline viewing. Certain issues regarding double tapping the screen now activates zoom, trackball speed issues have been addressed and text size can now be changed to “extra large” for easier navigation.

You can also watch videos in portrait mode as pictured above. Opera views YouTube videos by using the YouTube application that comes pre-built on the G1.

Changes From The Beta Version:

• Videos will be redirected to the system’s video player.
• Double tap now works for zooming in and out.
• Inline URL entry instead of using native input
• Fixed password text entry to hide characters
• Fixed problems with exiting application when back button was pressed
• Improved trackball speed
• All internal pages ike the start page now have font size extra large for easier navigation.
• Now you can upload and download files through Opera Mini and save pages for offline viewing.

Wi2Geo is a Russian startup which has launched an urban navigation service and a social network called Wi2Geo. There’s a little sense behind such eccentric name as Wi2gEO stands for Wireless to Geography - wireless technologies in geography. Wi2Geo is an alternative GPS system, which allows you to learn the location of your friends using WiFi.

Wi2Geo-client for S60 3rd Edition mobile devices can be downloaded from their website by putting in your mobile phone number at their website. Depending on the situation Wi2Geo using the navigation on the WiFi-points, cellular base stations or GPS.

Fring has announced support for new Windows mobile devices like Sony Ericsson’s Xperia and Samsung Omnia. The latest release of Fring for Windows Mobile (officially version 3.34) comes with add-ons support.

The notable feature in the new version of Fring is a file transfer function which lets you send digital files to all your fring buddies along with Skype, MSN and Yahoo contacts. Some user-interface changes have also been done which makes for easy access of information.

The Add-ons feature is just like Xperia panels as it provides certain functionailty wit the help of small widgets or gadgets.