Opera has released the second public beta of Opera Mobile 9.5. There are two major changes since the last beta release. First, Opera Mobile 9.5 is available for Symbia UIQ as well as Windows Mobile devices. And second, the browser now supports Opera Widgets.

Widgets for mobile devices don't necessarily work the same way as widgets on a full sized computer. You can't fit a bunch of widgets on a 2 or 3 inch screen at the same time the way you can with desktop widgets. So what exactly is an Opera Mobile Widget?

Basically, it's a one-click web application. Rather than launching your mobile web browser and navigating to a page, you can click a widget icon and access a web page or application designed to work well with the Opera Mobile browser. Right now there 5 widgets available, including a clock, weather app, and Twitter application. The advantage of using widgets instead of bookmarks is that you can save the icons on your home screen or in a widget directory and you can access them with a single click.

Opera Mobile 9.5 also features the ability to view the full desktop version of web pages or zoom in for a closer look, much as you can do with Safari for the iPhone or the Google Android web browser.

The browser is free while in beta. No word on when the final version will be released, but there's a good chance that it will cost about $30 when it is available. That's the price Opera typically charges for its mobile browser. Of course, if Mozilla manages to push out Firefox mobile before then, Opera might feel the need to drop the price a bit.

If you frequently find yourself browsing on a low-bandwidth connection, you can potentially speed up your browsing experience by using the compressing proxy server at Toonel.net. The concept is simple: install their application on your computer (versions are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Sun Solaris, and even Windows Mobile and Symbian), then set your proxy settings to point to your localhost IP address on port 8080 (127.0.0.1:8080). Once you do, all of your web traffic is routed through Toonel.net's server, which compresses it before it gets to you.

The compression used is lossless, which is required to ensure the pages show up as expected, though there are image-specific options that allow you to change the compression that is applied to JPEG and GIF images. This is likely only worthwhile on a very slow network, since it takes the server a bit of time to recompress images before your browser can download them, but could be handy on a struggling network.

I wouldn't recommend running Toonel.net full-time, or even at all if you're always on a broadband connection, but if you find yourself struggling with a lack of bandwidth, this is a great trick to have in your back pocket.

[via TechRadar]

Live video streaming from your mobile phone is probably a mobile carrier worst nightmare simply because the amount of bandwidth video consumes. And leading that nightmare is Qik.

Simply put, Qik takes your mobile phone's built in video camera and transforms it into a webcam that connects to the Qik site where it will host live feeds of your video, as it happens. That's right, people can now watch you make a fool of yourself anywhere you go.

We were able to test the Qik service on our 3G connected Windows Mobile phone. The installation was quick and only required a few SMS messages be sent back and forth to authorize our account. Once configured just launch the application and your video will automatically appear on the Qik website. Video quality is acceptable and we only experienced slight delays due in part to our mobile connection and location.

Once you end your transmission the live video is then archived to the site for later viewing. Of course like any good site, they offer 2 different privacy settings for your feeds, public and private. At least this way not everyone in the world can see that you haven't cleaned up your room.

Currently in alpha, Qik supports a handful of Windows Mobile and Symbian phones with iPhone testing starting soon. We hope that future updates to the service will also include the ability to adjust video size and image quality. They do recommend an unlimited data plan and in the few days that we used the service we would also recommend it as well.

Opera's been working on its next generation mobile web browser for months now. And while a handful of folks have been able to get their hands on devices preloaded with Opera Mobile 9.5, most of us have been waiting impatiently to get our hands the downloadable version.

While Opera might not have much market share in the desktop browser space, the company's mobile browser is miles ahead of the browsers that come standard with most Windows Mobile, Symbian, or other cellphones. Opera Mini and Opera Mobile 8.65 are already some of the best mobile browsers around. Opera Mobile 9.5 adds Flash Lite 3 support, quicker page rendering, full page zoom, a password manager, and the ability to copy and paste text selections.

Today the Opera Mobile team announced that the first public beta version of Opera Mobile 9.5 will be available for download on July 15th. If history is anything to go by, Opera will probably charge somewhere between $20 and $30 for this browser eventually. But while in beta, the browser will be free.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Nokia has announced that it is buying out the 52 percent of Symbian that it didn't already own and opening up the platform. Nokia and a number of other companies including AT&T, LG, and Samsung have also announced the creation of the Symbian Foundation.

Now, open source software is great for developers because it mean that anyone can easily look at the code, tweak it, and write applications designed to run well on the platform. But ther's also a huge benefit for telecom companies. Nokia will provide access to the Symbian OS royalty-free to members of the Symbian Foundation. And anyone can join the foundation for a nominal $1500 annual fee.

Symbian currently has about 60 percent of the mobile browser market share. The move to make the platform open source should help Nokia and Symbian maintain that lead in the face of challenges from the LiMo Foundation and Google's Linux-based Android platform.

[via OStatic]

Now that Firefox 3 has finally shipped, the developers at Mozilla are starting to make time for other projects. Don't get us wrong, those busy little bees are already working on Firefox 3.1, but they're also working on something entirely new: a mobile web browser.

The mobile version of Firefox, (currently codenamed Fennec -- a final name hasn't been picked yet), will use the same rendering engine as Firefox 3. In other words, any web page you can view with the desktop browser will be usable on a mobile device. That includes AJAX-heavy web applications. But nobody's pretending that you can just run Firefox 3 on a cellphone without making any changes. After all, mobile devices have small screens, slow processors, low amounts of memory, and often rely on relatively slow internet connections.

Last week we showed you a first look at a concept interface that might make its way into the final product. But it might not. So we decided to speak with Jay Sullivan, VP of Mobile for Mozilla. He gave us a run down of what's in store for Fennec, including what types of devices will be supported and when you'll be able to try the browser out for yourself.

A little over a month after releasing a public beta of Opera Mini 4.1, the Opera team has pushed out the final version of its latest cellphone browser. The newest build is reportedly 50% faster than opera mini 4.0. It also has a handful of new features including the ability to save web paes fr offline viewing, the ability to upload and download images from within the browser, and improved page and web search features.

The final build looks a lot like the public beta, but the developers have fixed a bunch of bugs and made some changes to the page saving and address auto-complete features.

Opera Mini 4.1 is available as a free download for dozens of different cellphone models.

StyleTap is an application that lets you run PalmOS software on Windows Mobile devices. The company has been working on a Symbian version of StyleTap since last year, and is now looking for beta testers. The test will begin on May 12th, and users can sign up by sending an email to StyleTap asking to be part of the beta.

In other news, while the company hasn't exactly committed to releasing a version of StyleTap for the iPhone, it's looking more and more likely that we'll see an official version at some point. In February, the team posted a video demonstrating an experimental version of StyleTap running on an iPhone. This was before Apple released the iPhone SDK, so the team obviously had to Jailbreak an iPhone to get the software running.

Now that the SDK is available, an official version could be in the works, but according to the StyleTap blog, developing the application isn't quite as easy as you might think, thanks to some "legal roadblocks." So StyleTap is asking anyone who'd be willing to pay for software that lets you run Palm apps on an iPhone to let Apple know.

[via jkOnTheRun]

StyleTap, makers of PalmOS emulation software for Windows Mobile is showing off a video demonstrating their software running on an iPod Touch. The company has made it abundantly clear that there are no plans at this point to release StyleTap for the iPhone/iPod. But you know, they could if they wanted to.

Apple hasn't actually released an SDK for the iPhone yet, so the only way to run third party applications like the one StyleTap is demonstrating would be to hack your iPhone. Since StyleTap is a commercial product, we're going to go out on a limb and assume they wouldn't sell software that requires you to Jailbreak your iPhone. The company would probably wait until after the SDK is released before launching any sort of a product.

In the meantime, StyleTap is working on a version that will run on Symbian phones.

[via Palm InfoCenter]

Opera plans to show off its next generation mobile web browser at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. While Opera Mobile 9.5 won't be available commercially until this spring, the company has released a video previewing some of the browser's more exciting features.

Opera also has a tendency to release public betas of its mobile software several months in advance of a commercial release. So there's a good chance you'll be able to use Opera Mobile 9.5 beta for free for a while before buying it.

In a nutshell, Opera Mobile 9.5 appears to have many of the features that have made Opera Mini popular. But unlike the Java-based Opera Mini, Opera Mobile is designed to run on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. Opera Mobile 9.5 allows users to view full screen versions of web pages, or to zoom in for more detail. You also get tabbed browsing, fast page rendering, and convenient bookmark, transfer, and history managers.

The browser will also include a mobile version of Opera's widget engine which allows you to access some web content like Flickr images without opening a web browser. It also packs Flash Lite 3 integration for accessing Flash-heavy web pages like MySpace or YouTube.

[via the::unwired]

Social video site Seesmic has announced some cool new features at DEMO08, a conference that showcases new software and web projects. Even though it's still in private beta, the so-called video Twitter now allows you to instantly see video responses to posts as an uninterrupted stream.

Now Seesmic also has a mobile application for Nokia's multi-talented N95 smartphone. Rather than being a live stream application such as like Qik, mobile Seesmic posts will be pre-recorded video snippets. You will also be able to view Seesmic videos on the mobile application.

While we're happy to see Seesmic branching out, we can't help but hope they touch more mobile phones than just the N95. Perhaps they can expand to additional Nokia handsets or even better yet, to Windows Mobile.

[via CNet]

The largest mobile phone maker in the world, Finland's Nokia, has made a major move by acquiring TrollTech. You may not have heard of TrollTech, but you've probably used their software. They are the make of an application development framework called Qt. This framework is used for creating GUI programs and other programs that are used in applications. TrollTech's Qt is used in notable software packages such as Skype, Google Earth, and Opera, among others.

What does this mean for the average web/computer user? Basically Nokia's acquisition means in the future we will be able to enjoy awesome applications that work on our computers, Nokia mobile phones, and on the Internet. Current platforms that are similar to Qt include AIR, Flash, and Java.

The acquisition needs to be approved by TrollTech shareholders and regulatory, but it looks very probable that the acquisition will go off without a hitch.

[via Engadget]

YouTube has launched some major upgrades to its mobile video site. While a number of blogs are reporting that Google launched a new m.youtube.com site today, that web page has actually been active since last summer.

But when YouTube Mobile launched, users could only access a small subset of YouTube videos. Now Google has made the entire YouTube universe available via the mobile site. The new improved mobile site has all the usual features. You can search, favorite, leave comments, or share videos with friends. Plus you can rack up minutes on your data plan. How can you beat that?

Google has also released a public beta of a YouTube Java midlet that should work on some phones. Nokia's N73, N95, E65, 6110, 6120 and SonyEricsson k800 and w880 are officially supported, but you may have some luck getting the program to run on other handsets if you're lucky.

[via NewTeeVee]