So - del.icio.us has been bought by Yahoo, (yahoo blog / del.icio.us blog), and everyone has an opinion on tagging.

We'll just reference Stephen Green (who is nice and concise) - Let's say we have a system where people manually assign keywords to documents (tagging) and let's also say that people can run queries against this index of keywords. You can think of such a query as an attempt by the searcher to assign keywords to a document that he or she would like to get in response to the query. The problem is that the person who originally assigned a tag to the document and the searcher who "assigned a tag" to the document are going to be inconsistent, so the searcher won't pick quite the same tag.

This is true. However, it also misses the point. No one ever said that tagging was the answer for search engines (it's clearly not), or that it was superior to keyword searching within documents. However - pictures (what flickr uses tags for) are not documents, and neither are links (what del.icio.us uses tags for).

When considering links and pictures, tagging, and being able to search those tags, is alot more useful than having no tagging. Links and pictures include some metadata, but usually not nearly enough to find a particular one in a pile.

Even if people are internally inconsistent, having the ability to search for a particular photo by inputting something (dimly remembered text) is better than being forced to search by scrolling by date. That's why we think all photo albums should support tags.

Indeed, we think that in the future, certain tags should be added automatically. For pictures, having EXIF data include things like geographical location (by GPS or from cell networks) would be nice.

[Image Credit: Om Malik]

Isn't it nice to have friends who test prototype phones? The HP iPaq rw4500 prototype is pictured to the left - and while we know it's specifications: QVGA Display, 1.3MP camera, Windows Mobile 5.0, possibly WiFi - we don't know if it's going to see the light of day.

We do know that the Orange SPV C600 will be seeing lots of daylight though - and this review by coolsmartphone is one of the best yet.

It's a beast of a review, and worth a read. One thing which really struck me, though, are the UI "problems" this phone still seems to have - as compared to Symbian. We'll discuss this in a future article, probably. The phone looks awfully promising though, and unless you want 3G, (in which case the Nokia N80 is it!) this looks to be a pretty good smartphone to get - and it's tiny.

Pity about the conspicuous lack of WiFi, but that's just 'silly operator' mentality.

[via Slasphone]

In case you weren't aware, Symplification.com is powered by the open source content management system called Drupal.

With the recent release of the Drupal 4.7 beta1, Symplification is going to undergo a massive overhaul to take advantage of the new codebase, don a new theme, and will also add the following features:

• software ranking
• e-mail article friend
• subscribe - newsletter/daily/per post etc.
• Glossary of terms (bluetooth, smartphone etc)
• individual website for each Symbian phone, including pictures, specifications
• phone timeline

Anything else you want which we've missed? Tell us.

And also - thank you for visiting. We've managed to sustain excellent growth over the last couple of months, with unique visitors (according to awstats) at a high of 33k, and visitor numbers increasing by more than 20% per month for the past three months.

That's what makes us want to continue to make Symplification your one-stop for Symbian S60 news and analysis.

PCMag says: Don't have a $1,500 GPS system in your car or a $750 device on the dash? Soon, anyone with a cell phone will be able to have a navigation system with turn-by-turn routing and voice instructions. That's the promise of Verizon's new service, VZ Navigator, which will be available as a $10-a-month or $3-a-day location-based service (LBS). The $3-for-24-hours service will provide an option for someone who needs the navigation service for just a day or two, while traveling.

Sounds good - the only problem is that the Verizon service is launching initially on only one phone, the just-announced Motorola V325, a mid-range $80 handset. Who wants to have to use that? And Verizon doesn't carry any Symbian handsets, so...

The other problem is the methodology: "The phone gets a quick fix on your location by triangulating on the nearest cell towers (which are all GPS-equipped on carriers using CDMA technology, meaning Verizon and Sprint)." This makes it seem as though only Verizon and Sprint CDMA will use it - so it's not ever going to be a global solution or anything.

Oh well - the value proposition is there - if you happen to be stuck with the V325 anyway.

Ever felt that the controls were your main problem when playing Sky Force, and that the lack of a razer-ish solution was crimping your style?

Brando's solution might not have the fancy lights and 2000 dpi resolution, but with 6 customizable buttons and an AAA battery, gaming without an N-Gage becomes more palatable.

And it kinda looks - extremely geeky.

[via Gadgetspy]

Vodafone will begin broadcasting high-profile mobile TV channels to it's 3G enabled Vodafone Live! handsets all over the world this month, with content consisting of a range of crowd-pleasing sports, entertainment and documentary programs, including: "Sex and the City," "Six Feet Under," "Eurosport, "MTV", Mobile versions of Seasons 1-4 of "24," "UEFA Champions League," "Discovery Channel" and "Fashion TV."

The launch of these global mobile TV channels, as well as their availability, packaging and programming, will vary according to market.

Meanwhile, NBC-owned television shows will be available for download from the iTunes Music Store for use with the video iPod at US $1.99 per episode, including: "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Surface," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Dragnet," "The Office," "Law & Order," and "Knight Rider."

We'll follow up upon these stories as they develop, to determine whether our predictions of bundled Mobile TV subscriptions are accurate, and to determine the popularity of pre-paid content.

[via MobileMag and Techdirt]